I ❤️ AI Q&A: How to Use Curiosity to Overcome Resistance & Sway Skeptical Stakeholders

Well, it's fine. But super exciting to have you all. I don't know what I call this thing, but we definitely are live right now. If you are listening to the sound of my voice and here, I hope you'll join us on camera, but if not, you're not required. It's just nice to, you know, see people's faces. And happy Friday. This is our I Love AI community call. It's a chance for Q&A, open questions, just kind of like, What are we doing? How are things going? We will do our best at the end of the call to set aside 15 minutes to just network with each other. I do want to give you a quick update on all things Noelle Russell Russell and where I've been this week. This is the coming to the end. I have one more event to do in June, which is crazy, like squeeze it in. But this is the end of a crazy month. I've done 17 live events this month. So it's just been nuts, but in a great way. So I've talked to all sorts of audiences across about 16 different industries. I mean, it's just really, really fun time. But this week I started my week in, oh goodness, Chicago, uh, at DSG, which is the Distributors, um, or Distribution Strategy Group. They are a niche group association focused on the distribution people in the world, a very, very specific audience. And my job, of course, was to go and educate them on the opportunity that AI provides them. And it was a great event. People loved it. It was one of my— I feel like I got the most positive res— I probably can count on one hand when I've got an audience that, like, almost exactly matches the type of information I provide and in the way that I provide it. And this was one of those. I actually had two of those this week. Um, so that was first DSG. It was, uh, super fun. I got a chance to not only, um, deliver that talk, but I got a chance, of course, to stay behind. I did my— many of you know, I give away these little baby tigers now when I go to these events. And so I gave— I put— I taped baby tigers underneath the seats, uh, and anyone who found one got a book of mine. So it was really fun. Uh, then I went to NTT. They had a launch, uh, executive launch program. That they did in San Diego, which was great. I wish every time I go to San Diego I'm there like less than 24 hours, but it was a beautiful day. I think, as far as I know, I think I landed when it was dark and I left when it was beautiful. But you know San Diego, like it's always beautiful in San Diego. So, but I had a great time there. NTT is one of the largest technology providers. They serve some of the biggest brands in the world and many, many industries. And so it was a wonderful collection of people. There were organizations in manufacturing, there was organizations in transportation, cars, like automotive. Who else was there? Shipping. There were so many different people. And so when you bring a group of people like that together, it was really cool. They had these breakout sessions and some of the titles of the breakout sessions were like very common themes that you run into from a resistance perspective as a practitioner trying to push the edge, push the innovative edge. And so you kind of imagine like one of them— I'm trying to remember, they had very clever names because it's a design team that put this together and they think of good things like this. So I will butcher the names that they came up with, but it was kind of like, you know, what happens when you walk in and everyone says no was kind of the theme of one. It's like resistance, you know, the art of resistance or something like that. And then, um, another one was about like the the experience when you actually go outside of your silo to seek kind of advice or consultation. When you talk to, if you're in marketing and you go talk to sales or engineering about how they're solving their own problems. And it was interesting 'cause the people that were in these breakouts would say like, it was so nice, number one, to not feel alone 'cause nobody was in the same industry, right? It was like all over the place, but every industry had the same problems. Every industry, there are people pushing the edge. Every industry, there are people going, not so fast, young person. Um, and, and I don't mean young person from an age perspective, I mean from like a mindset perspective. They're like, look, young whippersnapper, you're not gonna go and do this ChatGPT stuff around here. And it was cool to hear one of the, um, robotics professionals, uh, in one of the shipping companies, he, he, he phrased it, he was one of the people that recapped his experience and he said it was so cool because he gained empathy for the other side. And he, of course, as a robotics professional leader, he's the robotics executive, he's like pushing the edge, right? Like, let's do new things, let's try new stuff. And he said at the end of that, he gained empathy for the people who are like, well, let's just slow down a second. Because he realized like the reason they're slowing down is not because they just wanna slow down, right? The reason they're slowing down is 'cause they might be concerned about compliance or something. I often say like, Who hurt you? Right? Like they've been hurt before. They've had projects fail. They've had like something happened. And so there's some pain there that usually shows up as resistance. And if you stop long enough as like, I'm one of these people, push, push, push, let's do this, we should go. Um, if I stop long enough to ask that question, like what, what hurt you? What caused this? Like, why do you say that? Just being curious. And that was what NTT's program, the, the theme was curiosity. Like, and I think it was like, Noelle Russell, um, I can't remember the like tagline because I'm terrible at names, but it was like curiosity, uh, is the, you know, the main ingredient of those who thrive. And I could not agree more. Like, just being willing to ask questions instead of just assuming people are— I, I will say, I probably many times in my career have just assumed people were just negative. Like, just, you're that person who's always gonna say no. Like, I just— that's my bias, right? And again, that comes from who's hurt me in my career, where I'm like, You didn't say no for any good reason. You just don't like me. And then I don't give the, you know, you don't come to that next conversation with that fresh sense of like question and curiosity. You kind of come biased with like, oh no, I already know they're gonna say no to this. And I, you know, your barriers go up. So it was really cool cuz it was very human, right? Curiosity became the most human thing. We were talking all about AI and robotics and machines and GPUs and NPUs. And it ended up being very much a human conversation about how do you get the humans to adopt? How do you stay energetic in your approach to encouraging that adoption? So it was really fun. So I got to do my typical keynote. I also got to host a panel with this amazing company. I don't know if she's, I don't know, she probably isn't here, but she might be listening. But her name's Alicia. She, my mom's name is Alicia. My daughter's middle name is Alicia. So I was a big fan of her as soon as I met her. But she was on my panel and she is the co-founder and COO of a company called Claimable. And what I love about this company and other companies like it is that she demonstrates a problem that 5 years ago could not be solved the way she solved it, the way she's solving it. Her company is less than a year old and already quite successful, but it's because she had— and Claimable, their job, you should look them up, but their job is if you get reject, like your insurance gets rejected, Right? She has all this data on how many people actually go through the effort of like filing a claim. Right? And that most people that do file a claim get rejected, especially because they don't know how to file it. They don't know how to put their own case forward. Most of us are not great storytellers. And so she's created this platform that listens to the person, their challenges, their concerns, obviously validates it, coaches them, says, yes, this is really something that you should get paid out on. And then they use artificial intelligence to craft the narrative based on precedent, based on law, based like it's, yeah, it's super cool. And it was so interesting because she was like, the only way we could do this is because we have an LLM that can coerce that person to say what's wrong and then go to like legal and compliance and healthcare data and pull all that into a beautiful letter. That's then sent to the health insurance company and they have something like a 70% or maybe it's 90%, forgive me, but a extremely high rate of winning, which is their metric for success. One thing she told me, she's a small company, but she was like, we do innovation days, which is something that I do in my companies. Um, but like every quarter they get together and they just innovate and play and build and something ends up being useful. And I was like, that, and that's like the art of curiosity, right? Harnessing that excitement inside a company. So it's pretty cool, really exciting. Um, Reina, hello! Um, I met Reina in person. I'm like, I feel like I know you. Uh, we met in person just a couple weeks ago, so I'm so glad you're here. How exciting! And Sandy, what's up? Um, so good to see you all. Thank you for being here. Um, but yeah, so it was really, really good, like, listening. And so then that's sparked. Actually, it's funny how the universe works. So I don't sleep well when I'm traveling by myself for all sorts of reasons. I have an aura that tells me how badly I sleep. It like gives me very bad grades. Like I usually get bad grades in school, but this is like, F, you got an F for sleeping. So instead, I'll turn on YouTube and I'll listen to stuff that I don't have time to listen to. And so I happened upon Sam Altman. He was just at Y Combinator. I'm going to encourage all of you to go listen to his talk. It's fascinating. No matter what you— I used to say this about Jeff Bezos, like, no matter what you think about him, there's some things they say that's like good stuff. And so this is one of those conversations. No matter what you think about Sam Altman, A, it's— you should always keep an open mind about these people. Like, people that build companies like this, not everyone's perfect, but it takes a certain personality to build something like this. What was the name of the event? Y Combinator. So just type into YouTube Y Combinator, Sam Altman. It's on an orange background, but you'll notice the day it was just published a few days ago. So maybe, maybe 5 days ago, it's brand new. And what I liked about it, what was so inspiring, educational, is that it dovetailed exactly into what she did, which he says, like, right now is the best time to be an entrepreneur. But specifically a builder because you can find a problem and with potentially no code at all, vibe code your way to a viable solution, a remarkable solution, and then build on top of that. But you can get customers on remarkableness, like you can start getting people to pay you to deliver. And, and she had mentioned on stage when I was interviewing her, she was like, yeah, the solving this problem was not possible before LLMs. And so it made me think, and he was, yeah, he was like focused on like, if you just could find a problem that only an LLM could solve, LLMs is your tool. Yeah. But like, the problem has to be solved by someone who knows how to use that tool to solve that problem. And there is hundreds of them. So fast forward, like I, I meet her, I'm, I'm interviewing her and I'm like, oh my gosh, what Sam Altman said 2 days ago when I couldn't sleep in Chicago. I'm now in San Diego interviewing this woman. I'm like, it's exactly what Sam said. Like, she's solving a problem that couldn't be solved before. And he also created a lot of empathy for me because he said, we only were able to build ChatGPT because of all of these, like, tens of thousands, maybe millions of people before them that, like, did the silicon work and the transistor work and the internet work and the mobile work. Like, all of this, like, even the Alexa work. Like, all of that led up to ChatGPT becoming a thing at this time. Like the researchers that were 20 years old when they came up with like the transformer model, like they only could get to that point because they built on top of someone, right? They didn't organically create a transformer. They were solving a problem in another model that was broken. And so it's— it was cool that he gave a nod to kind of the evolution of AI and that there's so much that happens to make a single idea possible. And similarly, Alicia said the same thing, and she's like, I could not do the work I get to do now and solve a problem that I care deeply about. I couldn't do this unless a company like ChatGPT or Gemini, like, existed. Yeah. So now I'm like, at night thinking, what can I build? Like, and I don't know, I'm gonna say this. I'm live on a bunch of channels, so I don't wanna say this too loud, but there's not a lot of women on these when I go to pages that are selling products, there's not a lot of women. Not only are they not on the board, they're not in the leadership page. They're certainly not the face of the company. Like, they all kind of look the same, the people that are like, like all the same. And I was just like, as a woman, as a woman of color, I'm like, we should build more stuff. Like, what in the world has happened where women aren't building more? There's— there are builders like Alicia. She's a builder. She built this company. But it's definitely not the norm, right? Like, I definitely see more of one than the other. And, uh, and so I'm just passionate about that. So we're gonna talk about that next week in the challenge, um, about not just building— like, I'm a consultancy, like, I, I sell what's in my brain, um, as a service. But I actually now was like, maybe what's in my brain could be used to build something that couldn't be built before. Sure. And not only is it my consultancy, but I'm actually gonna deliver a product as part of that. And I think that might be the future. So I am on a plane last night, um, headed— I took the red-eye, so if I'm not completely coherent, that's why. I have not slept yet. Again, I'm on the plane, I'm like, I have 4 hours from takeoff to touchdown. I'm like, should I sleep? Should I not sleep? Anyone watch Yellowstone? So they just added it to Delta and I started watching Yellowstone, so I can't sleep now. Like, it's a disaster, that show. Sons of Anarchy and like Yellowstone. They're all the same. Like, they're just not good. Like, not good for sleeping. Anyway, so I'm like, I can't watch any more of this. So I turn on YouTube again, and I'm, I'm just thinking about ideas. I get on my plane to Salt Lake City, and this woman, older woman sitting next to me— I don't know how we even got on the topic, but she— something happened. Maybe she saw my book, I don't know. But she asked me about artificial intelligence or if I knew anything about it, and I'm like, Why, yes I do. And, uh, she and her husband, and her husband and her are sitting on like aisles. I don't know, like something happens when you get much older and all my older friend couples, they sit on the aisles. Um, maybe it's because I, I always take the middle seat if we're like in coach, or I always take the aisle seat if we're in first class, my husband and I. And I think I do that because I'm like, surely the window's more comfortable for you. So I'm kind of giving it to him. And I feel like somewhere around age 65, and maybe Sheri can tell me, I'm going to be like, I actually don't care about you getting— I'm going to get an aisle. If I want an aisle, I'm going to get— I feel like somewhere around the 30-year mark of marriage, you're just like, you know what, I'm just gonna do what I want. But I'm not there yet. I'm still in my blissful, like, uh, I will make sure you're more comfortable. I find it— I, I just don't care that much, but, but deep down, maybe I do. Um, but I'm talking to her and she's like, yeah, my husband over there Uh, they both run a construction company called California Builders. Y'all should look 'em up, give 'em some love on Google. Um, but she was asking me, she's like, is there a product? And this is the magic. Every company is asking, is there a product that solves this problem? Whatever it is, is there a problem that solves this problem? And we literally, if we just ask people, we could build that. Whatever it is, we could just build that for them. Very custom. What do they call it? Spoke. But if we find a problem in a domain like construction, if I decide to listen to her and go, sure, tell me more about this problem, let me build you a solution for this problem, I can then sell that problem to every construction company. Niche created. And now it's arbitrage. I do it once and I can sell it to everyone. And, uh, you can make— and I could be a one-person company making a billion dollars. And that's the future. This is the future I heard Sam Altman talking about. And the future is now, like the tech can do this now. There's a new capability. I don't wanna steal my own thunder from the challenge next week, but we're gonna talk about building agents. And even now, if you haven't looked recently, ChatGPT just added MCP to all of their connectors. So you can go in and add like your Google, your, of course, your calendar, your email, SharePoint, Google Drive, like you can add all of these, but when you ask a question, you can pick the source. That it's gonna ground in. So if you ask a question in the same ChatGPT window, hey, what's on my calendar for next week? And you drop down the list and say, look at my Google Calendar, it'll ask you very detailed questions. It'll store the memories of the answers. And then you're not using that and you go ask it another question about like, hey, I'm gonna be in Seattle next week, what should I wear? And it'll be like, well, it's gonna be Tuesday and I could check the weather for Tuesday because I know you're gonna be there for these dates cuz that was on your calendar and now it's stored in I mean, things are going to get crazy. Microsoft also launched WML— no, I don't— I messed this up last time too. But basically they launched a markup or a protocol language for agentifying, MCP-ifying, A2C, everything. So it allows you to wrap any existing web application or mobile application in MCP so that you can communicate to it as an agent. And this, I think, is how we're gonna, like, it, this is the glue that we needed, right? Is that now when you're like, I go to a client, I'm like, tell me about your architecture. And I start to think about how am I going to build an agentic solution. I almost always run into a situation where I'm like, well, talking to that's gonna be hard. And now we've got this wrapper, kind of like a ChatGPT wrapper, but it's a, uh, MCP wrapper that wraps it and allows me to interface with it in this common protocol. And now we're watching it happen live with OpenAI. So OpenAI has just demonstrated it. I would play around with it. I've been playing around with it for a while, but now I'm like, what problems can I solve? Right? That's the entrepreneur in me is how many people. So she asked me two things I thought was interesting. One, um, is just managing work is hard in a construction company. Um, managing bill of goods, uh, managing costs, like all of those things are hard. But what she said, which I thought was hilarious, is she's like, could you just build a new QuickBooks? 'cause that's kind of awful. And I was like, oh my gosh, I won't say that. I mean, I love QuickBooks 'cause I'm a customer and you know, like maybe they will treat me worse if the algorithm senses I don't like them. Um, but it's not awesome all the time, I'll put it that way. And it's a bit old, like the interface, even if you go to their website, it's like this massive dropdown menu of like all the different levels you might be in. And what if you don't know what level? I didn't even know what level I bought into, so I couldn't figure out how to log into my own system. Like, there's definitely some room for iteration. And really any software built in the last 10 years, especially if they've grown to be big companies or are owned by big companies, a little company like us could reinvent that thing for a very specific problem. So we're not even going after them trying to solve it for everybody. We do it for construction or roofing or HVAC or med spas or chiropractors, and that's like it. You're done. You could like retire and build systems that take, you know, 10 hours a week and enjoy your life. Um, because I do think the world as an employee is going to change significantly when a company realizes you can do in 10 hours, you can do 40 hours of work. Do you think they're going to give you 30 hours? No, they're going to expect you to do 4 times more work, like 400% growth. That's what they're going to expect. And the street, Wall Street, can expect that of these companies. We're already seeing it. I don't know if you saw Accenture's, um, analyst readouts recently, but they are claiming that they're using generative AI, um, to the tune of billions of dollars in revenue. But that doesn't mean they're getting this huge uptick on the street. The street's like, well, if you're using all that stuff, then you should be able to do more than that, which is exactly what executives are gonna do. They're gonna be like, the bar for delivering productivity is gonna grow. And as an employee, that's gonna suck. Suck because I'm gonna want space to think. Like, this was the dream. If I work hard enough to do things fast, this is what we did as professionals, right? You'd get so good at your job, you could just do it in less time than everyone else. And then you could use that time to ideate and strategize and, like, enjoy your life. And now we're realizing with AI, we can do the same thing but faster, but we don't get that space. We're gonna use that space to just deliver more value. And while it sounds good for a customer, it's not great for employee experience. Experience. So, so I think these small companies building things that are niche and problem-focused, uh, it can be an easier, better time to do that. So if you have that in you, something like writing a book, if you have it in you, it might be a good time to jump into that. Not everybody, um, but certainly some people. So that was my like mental journey this week. I encourage you definitely to listen to Sam Altman. Um, it took me down a rabbit hole of other stuff he's talked about. Not all of it's as good as that talk. So I would just start there. Um, but it was, uh, yeah, it was really, really enlightening because I do think I need to shift my own perspective to what could I build to solve this problem, not just teach people how to think about it, but like once I teach them how to think about it, how do I actually hand them then a product that they could use? Um, I do think that the products— I mean, and I'm not saying like a SaaS product that I'm going to sell again to everyone for $99, I mean, like, you're gonna go in and say, I can solve this problem for you. So I just built what I call a sales agent. I have a— oh, I'll put it in the chat too. I think I showed you this before, but I created— here, I get these ideas. I'm like, I'm gonna start a new company. So I get these ideas, and I have a bunch of people that I can help already. Oh, there might be questions in the chat. Hold on, let me go. Yes, Joe, exactly. Okay, I'm going back. Before I jump into this next thing, I'm going back. Yeah, you do all look great. Yeah, exactly. I don't ever sleep. I'm sleeping tonight. I'll tell you all that is happening. I told my husband by 5:15 I'm in bed. We'll see. Oh, cool. Sheryl Lynn put it in the chat. Nice. Thank you for that. One more reason to join the chat, people. So if you are catching me live on LinkedIn or YouTube or Facebook or wherever this might be broadcasting, please feel free to join us. It's myname.ai, Noelle Russell. You can join us. It's free. Hop in a Zoom, get some fun help, and, and learn kind of the craziness that is my life, but then also learn from each other, which is even better. Um, yes. Oh my gosh. So Yara just said something very meaningful to me specifically, cuz I am a mom of a lot of kids. Uh, lack of support with childcare, unseen work, chores contribute to women holding back on taking advantage of this opportunity. But even more so, that's why I think I'm almost— so a few, maybe 2 years ago, Anna might be here. A couple years ago, I taught a class twice called Women in Leadership. It wasn't about AI, though AI was certainly in it. It was just about what it takes to, like, be a woman in leadership and really what it took for me to be myself. And so I taught, like, all of my tools, like what my morning routine was, how I manage my work, how I plan my work, my You know, how I use productivity tools, like everything, how I do performance reviews, my feedback process, like all the things, like just how do I manage not just doing my job but also managing my— people ask me all the time when I get off stage, they're like, how do you do it? So I built a class and it was very successful. We did it twice, mostly for people. It was for women specifically in the Ukraine that had gotten displaced in the early days of the war. And so I was trying to like give back. To them because these people were rock stars in the Ukraine and then they got displaced to like Prague or other cities and they had to start at the bottom because they were women and nobody thought they— like they didn't— anyway, it was a disaster. So I was like, here's how you manage that because it happens to all of us honestly. Many times in my career I've been, I call it wing clipping where they just clip your, like you're about to like take off and they're like, ah, not so fast, young person. Like slow your roll, go sit in this box for a few years, and maybe we'll let you out later if you're good and behave well. Um, and they don't ever let me out, by the way. I usually have to quit to get out of that box. Um, so I just felt so— I resonated so well with this, like, stage that they were in. So I taught them all this, but I feel like it might be time to do something like that again, because now the difference is, back then, all I could do was give them my tools to, like, do the job, whatever they had, better. But now we have tools to actually solve problems we care about with technology and not have to know how to write that code. Like, we don't have to be engineers. You can be, but you don't have to be. So like, the power of vibe coding and clarity of thought and leadership, like, oh no, I feel like the world's about to change in a really big way if we allow it. Like, if we allow ourselves to be part of that, which to Yara's point, many times we opt ourselves out because we're like, well, I can't do that. I've got I have 3 kids, or I'm pregnant, or I like, um, all sorts of things, or I'm going through a divorce. I mean, I— many of you know, like, I have— Warren is my high school sweetheart, but I, you know, failed twice before I went back and was like, okay, let me just go do that. Yeah, some of us know, some of us know. Um, but, uh, but yeah, and so I'm just— I'm grateful for the life I have now, but it wasn't— it was hard-earned. Um, and so lots of those reasons are the reasons we don't do something. We say not right now. But it's right now, this, like Alexa, um, Alexa came at a time where it wasn't great for me, but I knew, like, it was one of those things where you're like, this is a billion-dollar idea, I should do this. But everyone around me, all the women I talked to, they were all like, nope, not gonna do it, not gonna join some team, it might not work out, I have a great thing going where I'm at, I just got promoted, my boss really likes me, my team is awesome. And in 5 years, none of those reasons were a thing anymore. They all went away. Like, the boss moved on and they ended up with a bad boss, or their team disintegrated, which happens to all good teams. Um, you know, the, the promotion they got ended up becoming a job they— you know, the job goal changed as soon as they— like, everything they used to not get on the team, um, became, you know, a non-issue within a few years. And I was just like, I wish you would have just said yes. But we as women, we're just We're not, we're not good at that. We're good at like being like, what's the most rational thing that kind of serves everybody? I do agree, Joe, women in STEM, absolutely. Just encouraging young women like my— I have two young girls, they're 8, and I'm just, yes, very passionate about trying to get them to just see themselves differently than the world will tell them. And now when they're exposed to social media, it's worse. They will get into these rabbit holes on TikTok where all the girls kind of look the same. They might be different ethnicities, either even, but they're not saying like, it's so cool to build robots or code, or— I mean, they're all putting on makeup. I mean, it's kind of like Barbie 20 years ago, or 30, 40 years ago. Anyway, uh, a long time ago, uh, like when you saw these Barbies, they weren't like— now they're kind of cool and they have all these roles, but back then they were all just pretty. With high heels and good figure. And so I worry about our future where that is the aspirational goal is like, I want to look like the people that I'm seeing and I don't see them doing anything hard or starting a business. So that's why I really want to see this change. When I go to a company, I want to see more of us because my kids need to see it. So yeah, supporting women, it's a thing. I do it all. It's like in my DNA. Mostly because I also find that the men who have managed me, my best leaders were girl dads, like people that had daughters, because they just saw the world differently. They're like, holy crap, this is bad. If my kids grow up, my girls grow up and deal with this nonsense that's happening, like, I don't want that. And so I find that the best, the best male leaders that I've ever worked with were also fathers of girls. So we should have more girls, we should help more girls. But anyway, OK, cool. Oh, Joe's testing as a current agent. Wow. Oh, awesome. We were talking about MCP, so well, now I think you should really look at that. I can't remember what it's called at Microsoft. WML, maybe? Anyone look it up? But it's like Microsoft, it just got launched at Build. I'll Google it and find it. Bing it or something. But it just, it's an API wrapper, no code changes needed. So it's something to look into. I mentioned this last week too, but NVIDIA also has MCP and H2C wrappers, H2C, H2P, anyway, wrappers for models so that you don't have to change the code. You just wrap it in this model and you get all the benefit. What? Oh my gosh, cool. Yvette just mentioned that there's a, an article, uh, on Accenture on the topic that I mentioned. I can't talk about a lot of the things that, um, were a challenge there, but I will just say anecdotally, hypothetically, that in an organization where a very cool new tech like generative AI becomes available, it is very tempting to label everything that way. Like, if you're selling GenAI to a company and they're like, I love GenAI, but they don't have anything, you know, like set up to make GenAI possible and you wouldn't go do data work, maybe you're gonna label that data work that eventually might be GenAI, you're gonna label that GenAI, right? Like, so there's some magic that happens in some of these numbers that I'm like, well, it's reason I don't do that anymore. But I think it's interesting to see the momentum behind like how much, what is real and what isn't real in what people are saying they're doing with this technology. I think there's lots of people doing real things, But I also think there's a lot of hype, right? Like, there's just a lot of hype. So being authentic and real about your results and getting results. That's why I have a thing I always say, like, get receipts. You know, it's the most important thing you can do. It's the reason I was so successful at Amazon, because I just built stuff. So if somebody is like, do you know this? I'd be like, here's 16 repositories of code I built that currently runs on Alexa. Like, there are real receipts. You can go and call the code. You can say, Alexa, open Mindfulness, and it will run. And then you can go to GitHub and see the mindfulness skill I built. So there was like no question. But I also feel like as a woman, I felt obligated to overdeliver in that way, right? Like many of us know, like we have to like, where everyone else built one app, I had to build 100 to just like be like, no, I belong here. You don't have to double-check everything I do. And even after all that, people still will be like, I don't know if you know, like, It's fine. I don't— I'm not worried about it now because I always say work hard in silence, let success be my noise. Like, that is my mantra. It's on my phone. But it can be frustrating and it's certainly going to be frustrating. I think one of the generational challenges I run into with artificial intelligence is like, there's so much I can do, but I'm also part of this suck it up generation where I go into an organization. I was just talking to somebody. Oh my gosh. I shouldn't say this, but I'm not going to say it exactly, but there was a gentleman who kind of immediately dismissed me, did not know who I was, immediately dismissed me. And I was like, I didn't say anything, but I was like, I'm going to be the keynote later, so you are probably going to be like, ooh, that was bad. And I'm like talking to him and he's like, you know, kind of like calling me kiddo basically. Like, look kiddo, like I get that you think you know what you're talking about, but, and he started talking about all the cool things he did and I was like, Cool, that's cool, buddy. Yeah, I like it. I agree with you. This is one thing as a solution architect I learned a long time ago. Always agree, always agree. Doesn't matter what they say. I've learned to agree in very unique ways. So this is like, some of you need to hear this so that you have this tool in your back pocket. I have relatives like this that I have, like, I don't want to fight ever. I'm anti-confrontation. So I would say things like, you might be right. And where I'm, it's not in my mind, I'm like, you're absolutely not right. But I can say that with a smile and be like, yeah, you might be right, huh? Like, or, um, I— or I say 'I see' a lot. I'll be like, 'I see. Oh yeah, I get that.' That's what I'll say a lot too. 'I get that. I get why you might say something like that.' And I try not to say with disdain, which is almost a little bit sounded that way, but like, I had to come up with ways of being positive and not confirming what they were saying, but not disagreeing either. And it's a magical, like, a very sensitive thing to do, but people are gonna tell you completely wrong things, especially in the world of AI. And they will be executives that I need to sell to that are gonna see me get on stage. So I was like, oh, absolutely. I, that's, that could be true. You might be right about that. Yeah, I never thought about it that way. I say that a lot too. Never thought about it that way. Even if I have thought about it many times, I'm just like trying to create ways to not be like, you are So wrong. Like, where did you even hear that? Like, wow. Oh, wow. Same thing, Kim, right? I've never looked at it that way. Exactly. Exactly. I'm sure you're right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bless your heart. Yeah. So, so I think it's a good skill to have because in the world of AI, lots of people say stuff and they think they know what they're talking about because they watched a couple videos on YouTube. And as soon as you scratch the surface, you realize they don't really know, but it does not serve you to put them in their place ever. Yeah, all the women on the call will know because we've had to like, you know, not necessarily bite our tongue, but like make something someone else's idea in order for it to happen. And it's kind of the same thing. Like if you call someone's baby ugly, they're not going to let you take care of their baby. Like in all the things, like that's true for pretty much every topic. So I've learned to harness that. Yeah, and you never know who you're talking to. Yeah, I wish everybody knew that because he didn't know who he was talking to. And he, yeah, he didn't come up to me after the talk. But I feel like he knows me now. So he might even be listening right now. So hopefully you don't feel called out. It's fine. It's all good. No worries. But I do think that empathy is super helpful as you're trying to just get good decisions to be made. 'cause arguing with your customer no matter what, and I watch people do it all the time where they're like, well, that's not exactly right. As soon as you say that, the person's this far from you. Like they go from being like, oh, let me think about that together to being like, oh, you're on the other side of the table. Another thing, this is all my AI Solutions Architect course. Another thing, a little cheat I do is when I walk into a room, I grew up at IBM and so it would always be like IBMers on one side of the table and then everyone else. Microsoft does it too where the Microsoft people are like on one side of the table and the client's on the on the other side of the table. And so what I will intentionally do is come like maybe 4 minutes, 5 minutes early, not super early, but not late, but enough time where the account team has made their stance on a certain side table. And I will go sit on the side of the client. And when you do that, it creates this like aesthetic of I'm on your side without you ever saying it. And it's so good. It's like such a good thing. And sometimes you can't, because like all the seats will be taken. And I will sometimes, you know, in these rooms there's the conference table and then they have like chairs behind. I will literally be like a little kid and be like, let's scoot my chair up right next to the decision maker. Be like, you mind if I sit here? And now at this moment they don't know who I am or what I'm going to talk about, but I'm usually the— I'm, you know, I pride myself on my ability to like manage a room. And so when I do my session, it's the best one of the day and Everyone loves it. But that moment, like, I'm not battling them being like, she's on the other side, she's the other side of the table. Like, they already are kind of like, huh, she's not on our side, that's pretty cool, what's going on with this? So it just changes their, their behavior. So similarly, Kim, like, yeah, you never know who you're talking to, so you might as well like change— like, anything you could do to kind of change these core dynamics that happen in these company meetings, that it is old habits from 30, 40 years ago where how these conversations happen. It's also why I use AI to do a lot of my nurturing. Like, I have an LLM that nurtures my leads and it nurtures them in a very conversational way. So it's like, that's the thing we couldn't do 2 years ago is I can actually have someone, I can send a message to someone in a, you know, SMS on their phone from an LLM and say, Hey, you were at Noelle's keynote. Super cool, right? Did you— I noticed you downloaded the PDF. Did you get a chance to read it? That's it. People who are engageable will say, oh yeah, I did. It was pretty good. Or, oh no, I haven't. Either way, as soon as they engage, you're like, oh, because people who don't want to engage just won't reply. They'll just delete the message. So now once you have them, that LLM can say, okay, I know they read the PDF, so now I have that context. And I can say, I don't know about you, but my favorite part is this. And this usually means, like, if you resonate with this topic, it's usually because you really need awareness in your organization. How are you going to train everybody? Have you thought about how you're going to train your organization? And they're like, yes, I have. 30% of them. 70% will say no. But Noelle doesn't need to hear no. I don't need to hear no 7 times out of 10. My LLM, though, is like, whatever, dude. Like, bro, say no, say yes. But 30% say, actually, I was just talking to my team about training. And then I can say, great, you know what? Noelle has some availability between now and next quarter. Would you like to get it on her calendar? Enter Agentic AI. This chatbot used to only be able to go, cool, I'll let Noelle know and she'll contact you to set her own appointment. Today, that agent can use a tool, Google Calendar or Calendly or any of these tools, and actually go and look at my calendar. And say, Noelle has Tuesday at 3 and Wednesday at 4 available. Would you like to book? And they say yes. And then I use Zapier, but then I send, you know, that message goes out to the LLM. The LLM uses the tool, books it on the calendar. Then my calendar has a Zapier attached to it, says if you book this, if the LLM puts something on my calendar, send an invite with that person to them, send their, add them to that invitation., right? Because that's an easier— that's a Zap we've been doing for a long time. But it's like a simple automation that's added on to this LLM's capability. I'm sure there's more agentic ways to do it, but it's pretty simple. And now they're on my calendar, and I know they want to be there, right? I didn't, like, force them into it. They didn't accidentally fall into it. I've qualified them with 3 questions about, do you actually want training? Because that's what I do. If you don't want training, we shouldn't talk. And it's just been really, really, really successful for the clients. I built this for cybersecurity company. I built it for a roofing company, which is why I was so interested about this construction woman who was sitting next to me. I'm like, oh, what can I build for you? So I will be hitting her up and being like, do you have leads I can convert? But it's great because this is the job most business development and salespeople just hate to do, is like that cold nurture to getting on a calendar. Most salespeople like the calendar part, getting on a meeting with someone that already likes them. Like, they're like, yeah, this is what I wanna do. It's all that stuff. It's the 70 nos that you have to get for the 30 yeses that is like killer. I don't like it. I'll do it, but I don't like it. And so AI is really great at that. Anyway, all right, let's see, did I overtalk? Oh no, we're out of time. All right, so today I shared a little bit about my journey, but I also really encourage you to take some homework. We are going to be using Restream next week. So what that means is on Monday you're going to get a link. This link is going to send you to a live event. If you are VIP, which means if you're in the AI Leadership Institute as a member or you signed up for VIP in the challenge, you will get access to a Zoom call where we actually put fingers on keyboard and build whatever it is. So the hour is for everyone. We have over 350 people signed up for the challenge, which is pretty awesome, and we have 3 more days. And so Thank you to everybody who's like shared it and it's really cool to see that many people say yes. And I'm hoping more people will over the weekend. So maybe we'll get to 500, maybe we'll get to 1,000. My goal is 1,000, so we'll see what we can do. I'll be working every night. I'm gonna, what do they call it, boost TikToks. For like $80, you can boost a TikTok and get like 10,000 views on it. So it just has to be good and people have to say yes. But we'll see what happens by the time we start. But that being said, it's going to be done on Restream, which is basically live to LinkedIn, live to YouTube. So you can pick any of those links. We'll send you both and you can watch it from there. But those of you who are in VIP will get a chance to actually do the actual workshop. So every day is a different workshop that we have delivered. But I can't— I don't have time. Like, what if people get stuck? So I decided to do a lightweight version in the free challenge portion and then an actual hands-on version in the second part. It's about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, after that session, which makes for a long day, but it's like super hands-on. You're gonna get PDF files. Like, yeah, you'll get to build agents. You're gonna create an adoption strategy. Every day, something different, something new. So really cool. If you haven't joined yet, of course, please join. It's pretty easy to find, www.upskilling.ai/riseup. We'll put it in the chat on LinkedIn and YouTube where this is currently being hosted. So if you catch this on the replay, not too late to join us. You actually can join anytime next week. So if you have friends that you want, that none of this, you don't, you have need no skills to be here. If you have skills, you're like, a bunch of ideas are going to come to you. If you have no skills, it'll level set you so you're like, okay, I can, I can deal with this. So it really is for everyone. Um, I'm really excited about it. So what I want to do is in the next session, I don't know how many of you do this like all week, like do you find resources? Do you uncover like cool things? So I would love for you to just hop in a break breakout room and just share it. Like me, I just shared with you my Sam Altman discovery of that session. Do you have a resource, a tool you use for the first time, a feature in a tool you've used? Just one thing. I mean, some of us, this is like grateful for us at my family. I tell them to say one and they can't. They're like, I have four. So do your best, but at least one, and just be ready to take some notes. And also when you come back, if somebody from your breakout wants to throw a little cheat sheet or copy and paste them or something into the chat for all of us, that would be amazing. I will copy the chat, put it into ChatGPT, make it something pretty, and send it all to our school community for those of you who are part of that. No problem, Sanjeen. You've been with me all day, so thank you for hanging out. So I'm going to throw us into— so that's the goal is one, introduce yourself, use your I help statement if you have one, meaning what you do, who you help, how you help them, what you do. Especially if you don't, just like who you are, what you do for a job. Um, give everyone a chance to get to know you. I try to be a little diverse, but some of you are like magnets and you just end up in the same room all the time. So I'm doing my best. Um, but let me go ahead and break you out, and then yeah, hopefully what you can do is at least get one cool new idea, new tool, new book, new podcast, Doesn't matter what it is, but something you uncovered this week. So let me do this. Okay, I have it. I'm gonna sign up. Oh yeah, that's right. I have to hit create. This looks good. Oh good. All right, that looks good. All right, cool. This is good, good, good. All my bots. Nope. Let me move you to this room. Okay, almost there. Um, all right, it looks good. All right, hopefully y'all can stay. Let's see, what time is it? We got like it. Good time, I think. Oh my, my phone died. Let's see. Okay. Yeah. So we got like 10 minutes. So go in, introduce yourselves. They're pretty small rooms. You have time to introduce yourself and then time for 2 to 3 minutes to share a cool tool or idea you found this week. Ready? Have fun. I'll talk to you soon. Say yes to the box that pops up on your screen. Oopsie, sorry, Carol. I'm going to move you again. So sorry, um, to Room 2. No, 2 room 3. All right, there we go. All right, while all of our friends are in our breakout rooms, let's see, let me make sure everyone seems happy. It's a craft, this breakout room thing. Um, well, thank you all for being here. This is our I Love AI community call. Please don't hesitate to join us live. You get a chance to jump in rooms learn from each other, share tools. We will be posting this. We do have a school community. You are welcome to join. That is available to any one of you. You can just go to my name, Noelle Russell Russell, .ai. You will see not only our free community, which anyone can join— we just passed 1,600 members— and you will also, though, see an opportunity to upgrade to our AI Leadership Masterclass. That AI leadership membership will give you access to all the cool things that we do. From our Agentic AI for Beginners course to AI Solutions Architect to all the cool things we're gonna talk about next week. So never too late to become a member if you wanna do that. Otherwise, you are free, more than welcome to join our free community, hang out with us, share your ideas, learn a little bit along the way. I'm gonna go ahead and stop because otherwise it'll be 7 minutes of us just talking. But Noelle, N-O-E-L-L-E, .ai, come join us. It'll be super fun. And when you're in the Zoom, you get to ask questions and live interact and show up on the screen and It's amazing. So thanks for being here. Thanks for listening. I hope you found some value in some of the things I said. I hope I didn't say anything that got me in too much trouble. Um, but there's always something. But thanks for being here, and we'll see you all later. Bye everybody. All right, so I'm gonna disconnect our live. See you later.