From Warrior Training to AI Summit: Juanita Carpenter & Ceanne Livingston on Practical AI for Sma...

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Human Side of AI, and I'm Flora, your host. Today's episode is so much fun. I get to sit down with Club Jam member Juanita Liz Carpenter and Cian Livingston, two women who met years ago inside Wake Up Warrior, this incredibly intense business and mental strength training program. And somehow years later, they end up building something together, the AI Digital Growth Summit. So here we are. We get into how they actually met, Sian's path from building funnels for Russell Brunson to becoming a 2 Comma Club Mentor, and I still have to Google that, and how one conversation about an AI assistant turned into a full summit for real estate professionals and small business owners who are overwhelmed by AI but don't have time to become AI experts. Does that feel relatable or what? If you've ever felt like everyone around you is speaking a language you don't quite get, like Let's— this one's for you. Let's get into it.

Flora is not an AI assistant.

No, very wrong.

I know, it's funny because I have an assistant named Ernest. What is your assistant's name, Sienna?

Olivia.

Okay, Olivia is her AI assistant. And then I brought my— well, he's usually my graphic designer, but I brought him on for the summit to help. And she goes, all this time I thought he was AI. I was like, How funny.

What a strange world we're living in where we're like, no, I really am a human, and you have to like prove it. Well, I love that I pushed record and that's what started this. So it's true, I am not an AI bot. Liz and Sienna, where are you guys calling from?

I'm from Northern California.

And I'm in Southwest Florida. Okay.

So y'all didn't meet just on the street. How did you guys meet?

I— we met.

I don't know how long it's been. It's probably been 2 or 3 years ago. Maybe it's been a while.

Oh, see, Anna, it's been longer.

It hasn't been longer. I don't know.

It's like 3 times.

We were in Wake Up Warrior with Gary J. Wyatt together.

What is that?

Which is a really intense, like, think Navy, like Marine type Navy SEAL training mentally. Like the guys will go out on the beach and like gain points and different things where they're like, we meet live and do like the whole like workout thing, fitness thing.

Why?

Like, I'll explain. This is actually business training, Flora.

Oh, okay. Okay, cool. So you both met in a business training program?

Yeah.

Cool. And why, what brought you guys there? What brought you both there individually?

Hmm. I'll let Sienna go first.

Well, I went, my, our friend, mutual friend Samuel kept on teasing me about this program and he did talk about these things called the Stack, which is kind of like an electronic journal type of, you know, totally AI before AI was even happening. And, um, and I just like had so many like traumatic stuff in my past, and I was hitting brick wall after brick wall and I couldn't get over the wall. And, um, he's just like, you need to join this program. It's really designed for men, but women are allowed to come in. And so finally he sent me the link. I mean, I think I waited like 2 or 3 months, right, with him teasing me about it. And, um, So I joined, and actually right after I joined, I actually won like a scholarship, um, to intense, like 20, 21, 20 people get to work right up close with Garrett. And he's like a really like military type of intense trainer in the program. And I think I was in the program for, I mean, it's probably been 6 or 7 years that I've been involved with Warrior. And just going through intense business training where, you know, it was just like, he's like really good friends with like Russell Brunson and Jim Rohn, um, copywriting, you know. It's just like, I won scholarship into a year of business training, which is actually, to get into the program you have to be a man, you have to at least make a, a hundred grand a year, you have to be a a dad, married dad with children, but he let some of us women in there, and it was really, really intensive training that I went on for a year with him.

Wow, that's cool.

Ended up over the years just continuing, continuing, continuing, and then actually being trained to be a trainer.

Um, awesome.

I can train in his program— or not in his program, but I can use his, his body of work to to help other coaches or help my, my people.

Awesome. So, so you— that's how you got into this, this world. And then Liz, how did you find your way? Because you're, you're— I don't think you're a dad.

No, this is so funny. How did the women get in? Yeah, I'm Because Garrett is one of the top coaches in ClickFunnels, which is Russell Brunson's company, I happened to see Garrett on a stage that was being played on the ClickFunnels website when I went to it. Because at that time, I think both me and Sienna were in the funnel website building thing. We're like, this is how people make money. They need to have a funnel. You can't just be like, oh, I'm gonna run ads and hope everything works.

Everything was top of funnel, top of funnel, top of funnel for a while.

Yeah. So I saw Garrett playing in the background, like it was like a video playing on the landing page. And I saw him in combat boots pacing the stage and I clicked on it and I heard him like yelling at the audience. I was just like, oh, this guy's intense. I have to find out who he is. Now I do have a military dad, so I wasn't put off by that at all. My dad did 20 years in the military.

Wait, so Yes. I got him hot there. So I'm, my father's actually a retired Navy SEAL, SEAL Team 6.

Oh.

And I went the other way where if anyone, especially a man, yells at me, I'm like, ooh, no, not my, not my thing. In fact, not to derail this, but someone asked me yesterday if I wanted to do an MMA class with them. And I was appalled that anyone would ever think that I would like want to be in a, a stranglehold. Anyway, so I think it's interesting that with your similar background, you were like, oh, this looks like fun.

Yes, exactly. Okay. I wanted to join the Marines at 17.

Okay.

So, and, but my whole thing was I wanted to be mentally and physically strong. It's not that I was like, oh yeah, let's go to war. Like, mine was just, I want to be mentally and physically strong. So it's the same attraction with Warrior. Garrett is quite fit.

Wow.

He's fit.

He does like bodybuilding competitions now. But so what attracted me was wanting to be strong and then having the kind of mousy personality. And people didn't take me seriously when I was speaking. And so like, this looks like the training combined with funnel building because he's a funnel building expert that would bring me in business to the next level. Because just picture— you have to get this image of me correctly— a person who does not make eye contact, put the big glasses on, would rather be reading a book than playing outside. That's accurate. Okay.

Yeah. So still having a very hard time getting that person in this scene.

Yeah. But the desire to improve and being a personal development addict, I have to confess, since there's way, way, way, way, way before then, starting in my early 20s in sales training, starting on coaching and sales training and all of that, this was just, to me, felt like a natural best step. And I know you're like, what? But Garrett's persona as the military man, why did that attract you? Like, yeah, I was just used to it.

I get it. I— the personal development addiction thing, I, I get, I get, I love it. So, so, okay, so you both land there, and then how— at this point, Sienna, you've, you've become a trainer for the program.

No, well, I am certified to become a trainer. So let me back up again because we talked— started talking about Russell. Um, I've been in marketing for over 20 years, like gone to school and got the degree and da da da. So I bumped into Russell Brunson like in 2016 because I had been building like WordPress websites.

Okay, how do you actually bump into him?

Webinar. I don't know, I didn't bump into him. Okay, like online. Bumped into him, saw like Hit Whatever the Webinar is, like this funnel thing. I'm like, what's that? And I started like learning about the webinar, started learning about all the difference between a website and a funnel. And we're not doing AI at this time, and I'm building funnels, you know. And then I get onto a call with Gary and he's like, your funnel fucking sucks. Sorry, your funnel sucks.

Oh, okay, nice.

I mean, that's what he said. Your funnel F-ing sucks. And, um, and it crushed me. I was just like, not, you know, it— and it just— I have to like self-examine because it's like a part of that is just like, that's my identity, um, you know. And part of the program is identity with Garrett. But, you know, it was like I started my my journey with Russell in 2016, became a certified funnel builder, um, went through the whole, um, Two Comma Club. I haven't won a Two Comma Award, but I was like mentored by him in the Two Comma Club for a year. Actually met him in, um, Utah, or no, Idaho, um, and gradually came out of that and started using GoHighLevel. But it's just like both Russell and, um, are huge impact on my life, in my training, in mindset, and in skills and ability.

Wait, so, so then how did the two of you meet? So you guys met at this, this workshop?

Yeah, probably. Yep. No, we met online. Just, we had these calls, these Shelter Calls, um, and in a group, not like kind of like a Facebook group. It wasn't on Facebook.

And I imagine there's a lot of people in these groups. So how did the two of you get connected? What drew you to each other?

Um, we had breakout rooms and just, um, I don't know if you have a different, um, anything else to answer, Liz, just—

No, we, we, we met on the Zoom calls because Voya would have a weekly training call for all of the members. And there's also an app that you, you could connect with other members in as well. Like it, it, it's tracking daily personal development actions and, and also your productivity.

So, so me, what then that out of all the members drew the two of you together?

Well, this is more recently. She and I have been meeting with some of the other Warrior trainers on a weekly call separate from the one with Wake Up Warrior because Garrett has restructured his, his, um, program again where it's men-focused and not like, uh, men and women like he had it before. Like, he's, he's restructured again, which that's been an ongoing story with him.

So also, how cool that like in that blip you guys got to get in there and you guys got to connect. So yeah, so you guys are on these calls and, and And what, I mean, what was that conversation that brought this friendship together?

Like, well, we were already like associates slash friends before that, and we'd be talking through the years, but what brought us together on this was her sharing about her assistant Olivia on the call. And I was like, I need one of those. I need one of those. So I contacted her after the call, and then the conversation led to Hey, let's do a summit. I'm like, all right, let's. So you can teach other, we could say other trainers and teach other small business owners about having, because her assistant literally, literally like can do all the things that I would pay Ernest for. And I'm like, man.

Well, so, so you guys say, hey, let's do this summit together. Talk to us about that.

I'll answer that. Like, I go— I'm not going to go all the way back to high school, but in high school I was the editor of my school paper and I interviewed people, and I loved that. I loved interviewing people. And like, I'm like seeing like Lewis Howes on YouTube, I'm like, I'm gonna do that. And through the years in my marketing, I've, I've helped, um, quite a few people build summits. I built my own summit and turned it into a podcast. Been in the challenge world for quite a while. And I'm like, I love doing this. And, you know, quite a few months before, like, I was getting really diving into getting certified in AI and playing with AI. My mom, I quit my business a couple years ago because my mom got dementia, kind of put that aside. And in the background, I'm like learning how to do AI still. And like, like, what I want to do, I want to relaunch, but I'm not sure how. Relaunch my business. And, um, and I'm just like, I had the idea of doing a summit again. Like, oh, that's just too much work. I'm not ready to do that. So that had been brewing in the back of my mind. So when she asked me, do you want to do a summit? It wasn't like some like weird off-the-wall question. She didn't know what I was thinking. I hadn't really shared that with anybody. So it was just like, um, I want to launch. I've been thinking about launching. I'm not sure how to launch, but I know I love this space. And it was just like, I have to say yes.

So there's so many like reasons y'all probably shouldn't have connected, right? And you did. And you know, even going back to just you both not being dads, right? And then you have— you both have had this seed planted internally of this idea of a summit, and then you connect, and this idea of a summit comes. But it's not just a summit, it's also a business launch for you, Sienna.

Yep.

Okay, am I missing any big players yet before we continue?

No, I don't think so.

Okay, I thought it was her idea.

Okay, so we've got this summit. So give us, give us this What, you know, no pun intended, back to high level, but like, what is this high-level vision of the summit? Who's— who is going to go? How do they get to go? Who is going to be at the summit? What are they teaching? What are they learning? All of the things. When is the summit? Where is the summit?

I'll let Liz answer the, um, who's going to be there.

Okay, so talking to the speakers mostly, we, we have We have two main segments or audience segments. One is real estate background because Sienna had created AI tools and funnels for realtors before that. So she has a list of real estate professionals. The other is the small business owner that will say covering all different small business areas, the people that spend so much time working in their business that the idea of learning AI and applying it is very stressful. And just like Jam's audience, we have a lot of the business owners or brick and mortar as well as consultants or coaches online. And it's like, oh yeah, how are you going to apply AI to your business? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to all learn cloud.

Yay.

But the actual integration, I've been looking at the research. It's not good across the board for any area of businesses. There's a real, um, difficulty with getting the AI, systematizing it in a way that it's not taking more of your time and that is creating something that you're, you're proud of or that you can use daily to, um, make your business more profitable, etc. So we both were like, okay, we need something that it's going to be practical for the small business owner that doesn't have an AI background. And both of us are certified AI consultants. So we did the deep dive because we had the time. But I would say most business owners, you could say the realtor, broker, the real estate professional, they are so busy from the day to day in and outs that to go deep on AI is a challenge. Yeah, you know, staying on top of it is another job. Yeah.

And it's so interesting because it's like, if you know the sky is blue, you think everyone knows the sky is blue, right? And it's, it's so hard to be in this space where you're around so many professionals and you're speaking this language with so many, and then you realize like, this actually isn't the majority. Um, and it's it takes a lot of like awareness, right, to kind of step back and realize, oh yeah, I'm in this personal development space or AI space, but, you know, and I speak this language and I've been told the sky is blue, but like not everyone knows that, right? Or the sky isn't blue to them. That was a bad example, but I think you get it.

I think it's a good—

so how are people accessing the summit?

We have the main registration page ai-digital-growth-summit.com.

Awesome.

And it is on August 13th and 14th for general attendees. And, well, this is the last week for speakers to register. It's like wrapped up. It's, it's been amazing being the outreach person for the speakers because, um, that also tells you where a speaker is when they're like, absolutely interested, I'm gonna get that in. And then it's like, okay, you're gonna get it in. Wait, wait, wait, I don't see it. That's—

it's—

I had no idea that my sales skills as far as follow-up would apply to this situation, but it's been swell.

It's been like tracking, chasing, chasing, chasing.

It's been swell.

So someone in the real estate, um, space comes in, someone who's a small business and is still feeling a little overwhelmed by this AI world, they, they go to the, your website, and what is it again?

AI Digital Growth Summit. Say it again. AI Digital Growth Summit.

And I'll share that in resource links. Um, and what can they expect to take away from the summit?

I think the biggest, um, biggest thing is, I mean, a lot of people, like, I'm starting to teach on the 7 layers of AI, and it's just like we all come into AI, or most of us come in using some type of GPT Chatbot or something like that, and, and we, we talk to it like it's Google or you know, and, or we, you know, a lot of people like Jam was talking about, um, from, you know, and, you know, and, and, but it's conversational, um, and, you know, just going through the 7 steps of, of, um, what AI is and having different guest speakers talk about that. And I think the most cool, biggest goal is to Um, how do you start today using AI to do something that you're already doing in your business and handing a task over to, um, an agent, or, um, or, or learning what you can do to make your business so that you can save time so you have more time to spend with your family or friends or whatever you want to do? And you know, that's kind of how I see it. I wanna help people use AI so it's not just like something I'm doing and something I'm like playing with, but making it a powerful part of your business.

Wow. So what do people need to be prepared when they come to the summit? Do they need to have the, you know, the desktop version of Claude? Do they need to have paid ChatGPT? Like what do they need to have to to come ready for this?

I don't think they really— I mean, I, I guess different speakers might have it. That's a good question. I'm working on building a system that goes with our VIP to our VIP, VIP members. So it's like a dashboard, summit dashboard. So whether I'll have that ready for launch this time or next time, because I want people to be able to not only just sit there and listen and talk, you know, and hear different ideas, write notes, but get something out of it.

Yeah.

So, you know, I, you know, that's a good question. Maybe, maybe you have an idea about that, Liz, if there's something that you think that they should come on board.

Because each of the speakers have a very specific topic and most of them will have like a freebie or I guess that's the best way to say, a freebie that they give to the audience.

Cool.

It's an introduction to, in its beginner sense, right? It's introduction to how they can use it exactly how that speaker is using the AI. So it will be various models. You know, some of them are heavy in ChatGPT and some of them are using other AI models that most people are not using. So we have this guy that's into the AI music, so he's going to be talking about Suno and video making. And he had made a video for us singing about the AI Digital Growth Summit, and he's like, here, I don't know if you could use it. I was like, absolutely yes, Dan, thank you. Um, so, so while he might be focusing on singing ads or comedy ads, another speaker will be focused at like on real estate. How do you generate, uh, make a mini version of the house that you want to show, and this is how I did that. And it has a practical application where they can follow along and do that. But yeah, each of the speakers is taking on something very specific to what they've already done in their businesses.

Well, and what I'm hearing from you is what people need to bring is an open mind and time and space to listen and and the willingness to apply what they're learning to their own personal and professional.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean, I think that— I mean, I listened to a couple of Jams podcasts this morning and just talking about— I don't even know if this— I think this applies. It's like taking something that you already have in your hand and applying AI to it. Um, conversational. And like, even coming to the summit, like, you know, I'm overwhelmed with my business, you know, showing houses or whatever, whatever they're doing, coaching, meeting with clients. And I really don't like the marketing aspect of it. I don't know how to do that. I want to spend this time with my kids.

Yeah.

Um, instead, and, and coming in, in a way with that too, of like, how can I use— not like, what am I going to do that's new? How can I come into the summit and learn ideas that I can implement now into my business just to give me more time freedom?

That was my frame of mind why I approached Sienna, because I have a group of women. A lot of them are single. They might be single moms as well. And I'm like, how can we get your time back? So that you can spend more time with your kids or you can go out with your friends that you never see since after you had kids, your career and home life are like, ah, ah, ah. So yeah, so that is one of the main things. Can we actually use AI with the promise that it was for us at first to buy us back some of our time?

Totally.

Or to make things easier, right? Um, because both of us, I think, are going through the same experience. Advancing and advances so fast that you can play the game of chasing the next development, or you can play the game of implementation. And then maybe you, you touch base with another consultant who has been staying abreast of it, and you're just like, okay, I have this implemented. I have this automation in my business now. You're telling me how I can improve it or tweak it a little bit. I'm all ears. But not to constantly be in that loop of what's the next thing that dropped? What's the next innovation with Claude and ChatGPT and Grok and Copilot?

And, you know, AI without the overwhelm. Absolutely.

I love it.

Well, you already answered my last question. I was going to say, do you think this is going to be an annual thing? And I love that you already said, you know, I'll be there building it for this one and the next one. So I just hope that this is a huge success. I hope it's a huge success for the two of you. I hope it's a huge success for attendees and for presenters. And I think what you're doing is wonderful and mainly because it has a wonderful reason, right? It's not— you're not here to just like, you know, there's a good cause behind it. You're, you're helping people and you're making it accessible and you're helping so many. I mean, just not attendees, like, and I just think that's really cool. And I love this idea of, of doing good with AI. And I think you're doing that. So thank you both so much for sharing your story. I've got to now research this Garrett guy. And I really love how y'all's paths have crossed and that, you know, it's brought us to this conversation today. So thank you both so much for your time.

All right. Thank you.

Talk soon.

Bye-bye. Thank you.

Bye.