I LOVE AI With Noelle

Yeah, are you okay? You're gonna live stream? I know you're like, ah, get off! Welcome everyone, welcome! Hello, hello, welcome in! Happy Friday! Like, what day is it? Happy Friday! Oh my gosh, I was just, uh, you know, our, our, uh, Christmas holidays has begun, which means my kids and my husband have all plans for like, hey, you're no longer working, so They've got like, just like my normal work life, my personal life is like, we're gonna do this and then this. And so I don't know how many of you have, um, you know, traditions that you do during the holiday season, but we have a bunch and we write them down every year. Um, you're gonna do that, the golf cart thing? Yes, I remember that from last year. That's right, that's right. So we went out and, uh, it's cool. We've like leveled up our whole neighborhood a lot. We're always the Griswold family with like ridiculous lights. I should have shared a picture. It's not too late. I'll share a picture with you. It's, it's a little over— like the whole street is lit up by our house. But other houses have like gotten a little competitive and have raised their— we've raised the tide of Christmas all around our house. But down the street there is a house with a huge— I mean, they like, they like threw down like the gauntlet because we were like, well, next year. But they have this huge snowman. It's as tall as or bigger than their house. And they've got like all these inflatables. We don't do inflatables, we just do lights. But, um, anyway, so game on. Uh, but it's always really cool. So on our list, uh, our holiday list are all sorts of fun things like, um, being able to, uh, make gingerbread cookies. But not— we've tried to like buy them and do and frost them, or get the tube and frost them, but really the best are the ones you make. Like powder, like flour, and, you know, ginger. Um, and so yeah, so that's on our list. We also have Christmas movies. Our elf, uh, judge, uh, judge our elf or not. Our elf was a little late to the game this year. Um, but I wish I would— I wish I had the letter he wrote us, uh, or she wrote us. But, um, and the letter said that she had been stopped by the, uh, po— I did not— I was not a part of this, but, uh, the, the elf had been stopped by the polar authorities for illicit pixie dust transactions. So I don't know what that means, but that's what we told our kids. Uh, that's what they got. They got this letter, and he— the little elf was like all huddling by himself and, uh, in like pinstripes. So anyway, but He's free. Uh, actually it's a girl. She's free. She showed up, uh, anyway, so that's one of our traditions. Um, other traditions is to watch movies because I don't watch TV or movies pretty much all year long. And, uh, so this is something my family looks forward to. And so right, like I had, like, y'all remember I got off. Oh my gosh. So many cool things happened, but I got off the call we did together at 11. Oh, it's been a while since my cat was trapped in here with us. So that's Delilah. Hello, Delilah.

Hello.

Say hello, everyone. Don't jump on me. Um, but this is the one— I have 3 cats. This is the one that likes me, so I'm glad that she's here for the last one. Um, of course I cannot, you know— here we go, here we go, there we go. Oh, I have to like shrink down. Hold on, let me, let me, let me raise my camera so that my whole head can be seen. There we go. All right, there we go. So that is it. If I had better I thought I had better ones, but this is the one I wore out in public with my family.

That—

I mean, my name's Noelle Russell Russell. Would you— I mean, what else would you expect? Anyway, so we had— so during the time between the call and then I had a client call, which is why I had to end so abruptly at— I think it was 1 o'clock, so it was like 11 to 1, but I ended at 1 o'clock. I had a client call. I use a platform, so I'm just gonna invite you all to it. If you've never used it before, let me put it here. I'll put my profile here, but you can definitely, right, um, definitely, uh, go and check it out. It's called HTTP. Oh, I'm not in the chat. Hold on. HTTP. Oh goodness, is my keyboard working? What's happening? There we go. It's gonna— it's showing up soon. Usually it takes a second. Oh, I had it on the wrong number. There we go. Okay, um, HTTP. Do not get on my keyboard. Y'all know, some of you cat owners, you know, like, that's where she's headed. You're like, she—

you're done.

You are not typing. Okay, so it's called intro.co, and it's an opportunity for random people to find you, um, intro.co, uh, and get advice from you if you choose to give it to them. So it's Noelle Russell.

There you go.

So if you want, I'm going to click on it, make sure it actually works. And takes you to the right spot. Yeah, that's me. So it allows you to set, you know, your own amount of time. So a person that I had never heard of booked time with me in order to invite me to become an advisor for their company. And they get, you know, they were like, I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm like, but you're someone selling something.

But it was great.

It was great conversation. They're building something really, really cool. And of course, y'all know, I was like, so what's in it for me? Anyway, seem like cool deal. So if it all works out at the end, I'll tell you that story and you could be like, I remember when you mentioned that. Uh, but that was fun. But intro.co is how they found me. So again, I always say like, how does your reputation precede you? Create as many third parties that have you and what you do, even if you never book a call on that site. Um, it's just a way for when people Google you, it pops up like, oh, I've got an intro.co, another one that I use. Is TopMate.io. Oops, I didn't put the, uh, link in there, so it won't resolve. Um, another one, TopMate.io. I'm going to click on that, make sure— oh well, that's the website. I guess I could give you my, um— I've been on this platform so long that I was one of the OGs, so I got to get just my first name. Uh, TopMate.io/Noelle So that one's a little easier. I'm going to click on it, make sure it works, takes you to the right place. So that's my profile there. I've had lots of calls with lots of members of this community on these platforms. It's how many people got introduced to me. I like TopMate because they give you like, it's gamified. So the more you do, the more they give you little, you know, you know me, little stickers to have on your port— on your profile. But it was the first place that I sold something that wasn't me speaking. It was like a PDF that I sold. And then I was like, well, this is kind of cool. So that was years or 5 years ago that I launched this site. And I don't know how much I've generated from it, but I'm always looking for ways to get my content into the world and better yet, monetize it. So there's no harm in this. I have about 3 different business accounts. Oh my gosh, Kitty. I have 3 different business like accounts. And so I just watch them and every so often things end up showing up in these accounts. I'm like, where did that $200 come from? And I'll go and chase it down and be like, oh my gosh, 18 people bought my generative AI upscaling guide, which I need to update actually. And I don't monitor this like this is not Noelle Russell. It just means that people actually bought this thing. Okay, go shoot. Oh my gosh. Everything's highlighted on my screen anyway. So yeah, so you're welcome to use it, see it. It also, they, they on your behalf will get collect testimonials for you so you can use those testimonials. Same thing with intro. Some of my best testimonials come because after someone pays to, to talk to you, they're like, how did that go? And they're always like, oh my gosh, so valuable, so great. And so, but many, like I said, many of the people that I've worked with through these platforms actually ended up becoming members of our community, which is always pretty nice. So I just wanted to share those with you as, again, as you move into 2024. Like, this is easy. Set up a profile, you know, create a couple PDFs that solidify some of the things that you think about, your frameworks, your ideas, and just put it out there. Like, it would be awesome if someone bought a thing, but they don't necessarily have to buy the thing. It's more to tell the internet, tell the world that you are a person, you do a thing, you have an idea, you have a business, you have, uh, services to sell. So I think it's only complemented what I— I haven't paid. I don't think I pay for any of these platforms because I pay, which is how I like to do business. I will pay if someone buys something for me, I will pay the platform a chunk of that too, because they hosted it, right? Because I never would have sold it anyway. So I'm a big believer on back, backend deals, right? Where I might give you a percentage of a deal if, uh, if it, you know, if I end up getting benefit from it, I don't want to just pay $100 a month indefinitely for something that might work or might not work. But if you tell me I can use your platform for free and you just take 3% of everything that I do, that's, that's worth it to me. That's just my philosophy. It also makes the math very easy for me, so I don't have to worry about budgeting or anything like that. So anyway, just a couple tools as we kick off today. So welcome, happy Friday. It is, you know, the last, I I Love AI Call of the Year, um, hence the attire. I won't wear these the whole time because they bother my head, but it's cute. I got some good pictures, um, that I can then share on social that we did this together. Uh, but one of the things I thought would be really, um, valuable is to number one recap what we did last week, which I can't believe it's been a week already. It feels like, I don't know, it feels a long time ago and yesterday all at the same time. Um, but what I, uh, what we did last week was the 1-hour kind of crash course in designing your life. And it is available, uh, if you join, uh, the community, the I Love AI community, it's available on replay. Uh, you can actually go through it. I also created from my transcript, created a worksheet that a PDF that you could follow through. I also put that same worksheet in the notes of the school. Um, posts so you can just go and follow along. And it's really like, it's the, it's the bare bones of everything that I do. I think it's a little bit more helpful to, which is what I do to actually implement the ideas I shared last week, is actually sit down and write it all out. Like, I have multiple books over the years where I just write out and I'll put month 1 through 12 of next year, what am I gonna do every month? And then I quarter, I put, I bucket them by quarters and What does that mean for all these 3 months? What does that mean I will have done at the quarterly level? What does that mean I'll do for the whole year? Like I start with the year and work backwards and I fill all the way down to the day. What do I need to do every day? And sometimes it might be hard to gather a metric. So I will just say if I want to be, which I do, right? I just signed— I haven't signed it yet. I'm like this close to signing the contract with Wiley. We've been in negotiations. So we're like almost done. It actually might be in my inbox, who knows, because I was busy all day. Uh, but they'll send this contract, I sign it, and then I'm locked in for my second book with Wiley. And it is about scaling, uh, so you know this book, right? Scaling Responsible AI. Uh, the next book is all about, uh, delivering agentic and scaling agentic systems, right? So kind of what's the next step once you know what responsible AI looks like at a, kind of atomic level, how do you scale your organization? And so the subtitle, so this one is Scaling Responsible AI from Enthusiasm to Execution. The next one, Scaling Agentic Systems: Human First, AI Focused. And so it is a almost a contrarian viewpoint because so many people are AI first right now. I don't even think they know what it means, but they're saying, I'm AI first, we're AI first, we're an AI first company. And I cannot tell you from someone who's been doing this a long time how dangerous that philosophy can be. I hope that they don't mean it, right? I hope that they don't think that being AI first is going to serve them well because every company that has done that, I mean, we now know 95% of every AI pilot basically that has been developed using this mentality ends up not achieving success, ends up not getting the value. And the main reason I think that they do not render any value at all to the organization is because they're not human first. There is a philosophy actually. Gartner, right, has this thing called the hype cycle. I don't know how many of you are familiar with it, but Gartner has a hype cycle. It's literally what we all talk about when we say hype. It's this economic and go-to-market kind of index that happens at the beginning of a product. So we watched it with ChatGPT. Everyone got excited. And on the way up of this hype cycle, There, so this, uh, Gartner has like a hype cycle diagram, especially in different industries, but specifically in AI. And you watch year over year, you watch these topics start kind of at like low levels of hype and then get, I mean, AI is a great one to watch over the last 6 years cuz you watch it be like mid hype to be like peak hype. But at the top of that hype cycle, when it goes over the curve, there's what's called the trough of disillusionment. And this is where people actually start resisting the technology, right? They become disillusioned. They're like, now in the olden days, like 2000, um, we, when we built technology, or even 2010, oh my gosh, even 2020, when we built technology, the trough of disillusionment was when we realized we got sold on a promise that the tech couldn't meet, right? Where we're like, ah man, this was all a scam, right? Like this was a, you know, You don't— it doesn't do what you said. I have to do all this work to get that value. Like they just realize that the, the proof in the pudding isn't exactly the dreamy state they were sold during the hype cycle. Here's the interesting thing about the AI hype cycle is that it actually is capable of delivering on all the promises, right? Except the burden is on the implementer to do it correctly in alignment with responsible use, accessibility, awareness, empathy. Like there's all of these, qualifications that have to happen in order for you to achieve that. So the disillusionment isn't that the AI doesn't meet the hype, it actually does meet the hype. The disillusionment is in trust. In AI, a new variable has come into play called— that's all around trust. And the reason I think this is so fascinating is because when you look at the study that was done on the 95% of projects that were failing to ever create any value whatsoever. One of the top reasons companies are stating, the top reasons that that failure is occurring is because I think the words they use were, um, AI is failing to be adopted in the organization, meaning that the cool tech is being created, it's being thrown over to the business like, hey, we built a model for that. And the people who own the work, who own the workflow, who do the work themselves, They're resisting. And that's the new level of disillusionment, is that the people who we are building for aren't actually using the tech. And just ask the people at Google Lens, right? Like, you can build good tech. If no one uses it, your product dies. And that's the same thing that's gonna happen in these companies. If, you know, if, if we do not build good technology, which is a given, but more importantly, if we don't build trust with our, our employees, with our customers, with our vendors, that we're building this safely, responsibly, and, and in an effort to amplify humanity, people will just not use it. And then everybody loses, right? Like companies don't get where they wanna go. They do not achieve success. They end up going backwards when they could be going forwards. Companies instead of growing start dying. This is like dystopia, like Skynet. It's like what we're talking about. So I think it's really an exciting time. That I'm looking forward to. But here's the thing, this book won't come out until March 2027.

What?

2027? I was like, what? But here's the reason. Not the reason, but one of the reasons was because they were like, but you just wrote this book. We want you to spend another year like doing this. And then by then, of course, my goal is that I'm going to be going around the country on my book tour continuing. But I'll be going around the world talking to executives and leaders that are implementing, right, this, meaning that they are now starting to scale agentic systems. And so in 2027, it'll be much more of an anthology of success and failure, in my humble and hopeful opinion. There'll be much more of an anthology of real experience, which is, you know me, doer, not talker, right? I'd rather not hypothesize, but actually be like, here's who won and here's who lost, and here's how to become part of the 5% that are winning. And so, so I'm excited for it. It'll be fun. But human first, AI focused. You'll hear that over and over and over again in the new year. Couple other fun things that we're doing in the new year. I was mentioning on our earlier call, we are launching a podcast.

We are—

we already at the podcast already launched. It's just, um, how do I say this? It is a stat. It's not live. I don't do it live. I like record it and then I publish it. Um, or I get another company to record it and then they gimme the recording and then I publish it. So if you go and look, it's called Good Morning AI. It's found anywhere podcasts are played. You could also find it on the AI Leadership Institute website. I host like some of the episodes there just to get people, give people a sense. Um, but in this podcast, you know, I, I, the one thing that was missing this year is I was like, I really, you know, Good Morning AI, you could, some of you know the US. That we have this like Good Morning America in New Zealand. There's Good Morning New Zealand. There's like this morning show thing. I'm walking— so 2 days ago I was at NBCUniversal speaking at one of their events in one of their studios. It was such a fun experience. But I'm walking by and I see on the wall, like, I'm looking— I'm, I'm basically seeing what the camera sees and looking at the people doing the work in the studio. And in the middle of 4 women In the middle, they're talking about this Asian woman who has fallen in love, of course, with her AI, and she's now working with a lawyer. You might have seen this, right? To like solidify that relationship in a legal contract, like marriage. And I was like, oh, we could have so much fun with this. Um, but there's so many of these stories, right? And the benefit that we have is that we actually know what good AI looks like. We know how to build safe, responsible systems, we could not just poke fun and not just have, you know, like these anecdotal stories, but also talk about the dangers, like actually put into the world, hey, there are things to be worried about, but there are mitigations for those worries. I think the danger in some of these shows that talk about these like edge cases is that they just let like anyone watching live in the edge. They never, they never satisfy like, hey, but What happens if she marries this thing? Like, what does that mean? And I think there's a lot of really amazing, interesting conversations. I also have a lot of friends at Stanford and MIT, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, and I was like, we could just invite them all to the conversation. Um, and my hope, uh, oh yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, Sky. They did an episode on Watson about a kid and his obs— yes, his obsession of AI. These are things like, Now AI is literally— I've been saying this for like a decade. I want AI to be for everyone. And now it is. The challenge is, is who's controlling the narrative on what it is, what it can do, who gets to use it, who doesn't. And with— and all of us talk differently about this tech. Like literally everyone in, at least in the AI Leadership Institute, right? We all have our own industry perspective. We have our own decades of experience. We have our own customers, our own, our own relationships as consumers. And we just— I feel like next year needs to be the year that we all kind of get up there and— oh, thank you, Sherlyn. So if you want to see it, uh, the link is in the chat. If you want to see the YouTube version, you can also go to, um, you know, what is it called, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts or whatever. It's everywhere. You can just Google it, uh, and you'll see all the places it is. Uh, but yeah, so we're going to do that. And I was like, wouldn't it be fun to like have My C-suite in the house. So Sky and Padmini both said that they were up for it. We're gonna try it. We're gonna do it live. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try and do it every day. Let's just try. Uh, this is my hope for you, that you'll just try something crazy, um, in alignment with a dream that you have, which is me to get everyone in the world to realize that they need to develop an awareness of artificial intelligence, but that AI can be, while it is dangerous and while it could do negative things, it also can be fun, exciting, and most importantly, humanity has a huge part to play in its either destruction or success. And if they don't— if you don't know that your job is to be a producer and you just consume this technology, like, that's, that's my goal is like next year, like, everybody needs to know your job is to actually build these things, not use them.

You are a builder.

Um, and so we had, uh, one of our members of the AI Leadership Institute do a build session yesterday called the Skillathon. Many of our members joined the Skillathon, so I hope you had a chance to either be a part of it. But wow, what an amazing, amazing activity. It was really cool. Yeah, right? Everyone should be wearing I Heart AI. Yes, it would be amazing. It'd be amazing. And stickers on their laptops, like, let's go. I think we have to— I mean, Baby Tigers. So I a long time grabbed the URL. Of course, I get an idea First thing I do is grab a URL. I'll just tell you a fun fact. I want, I like, don't judge me, boiled peanuts. Some people think they're disgusting. It maybe it says I grew up in the South, whatever. Um, but I like boiled peanuts and they're delicious. If you've never had them, I wouldn't try them. They're not for everybody, but I love 'em. I love 'em. And I was like, oh my gosh, I could create gourmet boiled peanuts. And so I'm thinking about like boiled peanuts with like sage and like all these flavors and thyme. And anyway, don't worry, it did not happen. I did not move my life and focus on boiled peanuts. However, I did go buy wearenuts.com. To this day, I still own it because I was like, one day I might build the boiled peanuts company. Anyway, so every good idea, like, grab the URL. What's the harm? Um, anyway, so I have your— if you ever want to know who owns that domain, that's me. Uh, but similarly, I grabbed Baby Tiger. Ai. And it's interesting, right, Darren, you and I the same. Like, I have so many, as soon as I get an idea, I'm like, well, I'm just gonna, it's like, you know, the olden days of the Wild West. We just roll out in our wagon and put our stake down. Who knows if I'm gonna build the plantation there, but I'm gonna at least like put my stake in the ground and let, let the world know I'm thinking about it. Um, but the, uh, Baby Tiger AI, it's interesting. When I first came up with that idea, I was like, oh, this is gonna be great.. But then in my, my mind, what I thought is, oh, people aren't gonna wanna be baby tigers. Like, they're not gonna wanna go to a baby tiger website because that's like infancy. And nobody wants to admit that they're infants. Like, everyone wants to admit that, like, everyone wants to say, we're in AI, we're doing AI, we're doing it well, it's working. Until this study came out and like told everyone that 95% of these projects were failing. Um, but up until that point, people were pretty like, oh yeah, it's working for us. But so I was like, I was worried about it, but then I started doing a lot of vibathons and that's when I was like, oh, that's what it is. And what I realized, hype cycle, just to like close the loop on the Gartner hype cycle conversation, I realized that it's actually critical that people go through that hype, right? Like you can't get to the other side, you can't get to meaningful adoption without people getting excited about what they're doing. And so Baby Tiger is actually literally the, it's the, the hype cycle or the vibathon stage, right? It's the first time you build something. It's the first time you're like, wait, what? I could do this. The difference though is that I then of course, like, you know, herd the tigers and teach them how to, how to be, uh, raised safely and responsibly and at scale. But that, I think that concept, like sometimes, And I think Cynthia went through this too, where we get an idea in our head and we're like, this is it. And then we're like, oh, maybe, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe, maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe this— people, I mean, same thing with baby tiger. People will think it means, and they will, and I'm like making assumptions about something that actually wasn't true at all. But this is my mind giving me an excuse not to go down that scary path of like starting a whole new thing. And so I didn't until the Vibathon thing happened. I'm like, oh, now it's cool to make baby tigers. So, so now of course it's a much more successful initiative. But I just encourage you, a couple things, right? Get a domain when you get an idea. I don't mean that, uh, there's like, uh, my friend Sandy Carter. I think I have a book around here. I should give her some props.

Yes.

Oh my gosh, this was not meant to happen, but— and we're not going to talk about it, but you could see her, um, title. Did I not just talk about that? Oopsie. Anyway, it's fine. That was, that was last year. Um, But she wrote AI First, Human Always, which kind of gets there, but you all know how I feel about that. But I still love it. Cindy Carter, um, we share the same publisher, Wiley, uh, and Cindy Carter, uh, was just— get this— she was a VP at IBM 20 years ago when I was a wee babe in an engineering organization. So I've, uh, been— and she said something to me way back in the day, 20 years ago. She was in a panel The way I'm in panels now and young women come up to me and they're like, oh my gosh, what you said, that was so impactful. I was that fangirl of Sandy's and she's still in this space. And I'll tell you, I'm gonna write it down so I don't forget why, um, why I'm telling you this. But, uh, but she said in a panel, she said the number one thing you need as a woman and like, what do I call, I'm not really, I'm a little A-type I guess cuz I'm ambitious. But anyway, as a powerful, successful breadwinning woman, the best thing you can do is have a partner. That understands that about you, that compliments that about you. Now, I did not get that right. I heard her say that and I was like, wow, really, really smart. I didn't, didn't follow those instructions at first. But Warren, as many of you know, is like literally that person who like, he's known me since I was, I mean, we were high school sweethearts. We dated all through high school. And so he's known me before all of this. And so he grounds me, number one, but he 100% is like, I know what you're capable of and I've known it since you were 16. So like, it just is so different to have a person like that. And it doesn't have to be your spouse, but it does, it is important to have someone. I actually think our AI Leadership Institute, we get to be that for each other, right? Like we see you, we know what you're capable of. Keep going, keep working. Um, but Sandy was the first one to tell me like, it is so important, important. And now I've extended it to be like, that's my inner circle. Like my inner circle needs to be those people that are gonna support me and unconditionally kind of drive me. I, I said in my book, actually, this is what, I don't know if y'all read what I wrote to my husband. It was really important to me. I hope I don't cry. Um, but I wrote to my husband, my high school sweetheart and my best friend. You are the ultimate hype man. Your unwavering support, love, and gentle pressure to pursue my own greatness made this book possible. Oh my God, I could cry. Um, But gentle, like, that's what you need. You need to surround yourself with people who will gently pressure you to pursue your own greatness. I mean, I don't even know where that came from. It wasn't ChatGPT, but my heart. But it's so true. Like, I could not, you know, like, you need someone to just be like, just keep going, keep going, you know? And sometimes I don't want to hear it. Sometimes I'm like, I'm tired. I don't want to go. So today, for example, he's like, you have 4 hours between your next scene. He's like, just lay down. And take a nap. And I'm like, take a nap? What? I had— I— so I have an Oura Ring, as you all know. I think it was 3 minutes of latency, meaning my head was on that pillow 3 minutes before I fell asleep. Anyway, that's called sleep deprivation, apparently. Uh, but, uh, but it was cool because he knew that. He was like, don't worry, I won't let you miss anything. Unlike last week, he's like, I won't let, uh, make you miss anything. But you need people who are gonna be like So that's part of how I get to be great is like, I got 20 minutes, I woke up and I'm like, I'm a new person. Anyway, so it was really, really cool. All of that to say, back to the domains. Sandy Carter ended up going to Unstoppable Domains for a while. And so she introduced me. This is like me with you all as I like uncover new brands and stuff. I tell you and then you go and check it out. So she ended up saying, uh, working at Unstoppable Domains. These are a— I'll call them a Web3 domain shop. And so you could buy domains, but in Web3 you own the domain. You don't pay monthly, you just pay outright and you own that domain, which they aren't great names. Like, I think all my— most of my domains end in X for some reason. So it's like noelle.x. I couldn't get behind it, but But I bought a bunch of domains because it was like $5, and I own the domain. All I'd have to do is host it somewhere, which is what I do now with my GoDaddy domains. I just pay GoDaddy like every single month for all of them. Um, anyway, so, so I ended up every time I got an idea, I would buy an Unstoppable Domain. So I just wanted to let you know in case you've never heard of that. Uh, it's part, you know, blockchain, uh, crypto, uh, NFTs, these domains were also part of that craze and are still a huge part. Um, so really, really neat. Okay. Uh, anyway, so I just wanted to share with you a couple things that are happening now. For those of you who don't know where I've been, uh, last—

this—

oh gosh, this week, last week, last week I was in Vegas. Monday I got a chance to speak in Fort Lauderdale at the GovTech Summit, hosting, uh, the local leadership in Miami-Dade County, uh, Broward County, Palm Beach County, basically South, South Florida, as opposed to— and I will tell you one of the coolest things that happened, transparency. I don't think I signed anything that said I couldn't talk about this. I hope they don't get mad. But one of the members of the audience, like, there was literally the CIO, CI, uh, CIO of both counties were there talking on stage, um, and someone from the audience was like Can we just get along? And what he meant was, is that he was like, I sense a competition. And of course there is between counties, and we're trying to do the same thing. We're all trying to serve our residents at the highest level. And Dade, you're doing cool stuff. Broward, you're doing cool stuff. I'm in meetings where I'm like, I have to like take sides. And I'm like, is there a way, you know, this is him talking, is there a way for us to like get along. And I realize this is true probably everywhere, right? Like, and what the CIO of Miami-Dade County and Broward County said was, first of all, they admitted it. They were like, you're right, we should do better. We should do better about sharing information, do better about getting in the same room, do better about reducing like the silos. But what I really liked about what they said was there, you know, there's no reason that we shouldn't share, like data sharing. I, if you look in healthcare, there's a, I mean, even in academia, MIT versus Stanford, like in the halls of those academic institutions are amazing PhD projects that have been shelved. Some of you know my perspective on this, but amazing PhD work that they've been doing. And the only way that those projects continue to live is if another PhD candidate comes in and says, that seems cool, I'll pick it up. Most people though have their own thing they're trying to do. And so there's all of this research that people spend 4 to 10 years building that just gets shelved when the person's like, I got my PhD dissertation approved, bye. And I'm like, but you're like this close, you know, Acres of Diamonds, you're this close to uncovering, you know, a protein fold that'll save humanity, that'll feed kids forever, that'll cure cancer. Like, but that's not why, You know, they're there to test a hypothesis and present a conclusion. And like the, the goal of academia, it's just so fascinating. And while it's a good goal, like I like the idea that they're pursuing, you know, academic agendas and getting their PhDs, that's great. But what happens to that research? What happens to all of that? And so I always think, you know, I'm like, we should figure out a way. And so that's why I was like, the same idea is true. How do we open source those projects? How do we, create some level of transparency on what we're doing, especially at the state, local, and— we call it, uh, SLED, or even Fed SLED, but Fed is a little— I don't really, you know, I'm waiting a few years. But anyway, so there's the SLED part, state, local, and education, right? S-L-E-D. So state, local, education. They have very little budget. They have great people though. Mission-oriented, that are trying to save the world for their little, their communities. Great people. How do we empower those people? Those are exactly the kind of people I wanna help. I wanna save. Um, anyway, so I encourage you if you're thinking about like who you can help and how you can help them, like that's an incredible, so I had a great time, uh, and I was really excited to hear them say that, but they, leaders can say that, but they need a culture that will do it, right? Like if you're working, I don't know if you know government culture, but it tends to not move really quickly. It tends not to be super gamified, or like, you know, like no one's— you know, people don't come with like crazy Christmas ads. There's usually the one— that's me— the one that comes in with the crazy ad, but it's not like— it's not a culture of fun often. And so I do think that there's a lot of work some of us can do to actually support that, right? Go in and do a vibathon with this, um, local municipality. Do it for pro bono if you want to, like just I think there's a lot we could do to help people that are not the yachts of the world, right? Not working for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, not working for a $100 million company that generates revenue and, you know, closes a bunch of business. But like, uh, the municipality of our own local environment, get, join the Chamber of Commerce, right? Just teach what you know. Uh, that's the biggest gift, you know, we can give is just teach people that are in an environment that is not this. I mean, so many of us, I think, get confused, uh, about like how much the world knows about AI because we're in like a room like this where everyone kind of knows a little bit about AI. But every— that room I was in, 2 people knew what NotebookLM was, right? Like I'm used to everyone and their hand going up saying, I've used ChatGPT. Now I don't know, they might've been worried that they were gonna get fired as a result of them. So they were like, maybe, uh, but hardly anyone, right? Like, They had used ChatGPT at home. None of them were using it at work. And so I think there's a big gap, uh, in, in I think state and local, uh, organizations. And the reason I also like state and local is that they're autonomous from the federal government. So we're, we, we, regardless of the political climate, they get to make decisions. Similarly, some of you might know California recently passed a law, um, that said that if you are using AI in an outward marketing campaign, that you have to disclose that you're AI in California. So if you're doing any kind of sales, I right now have an AI system that I have built that reaches out to people. It's an SMS agent, so reaches out to people and says, hey, it's Allie from AI Leadership Institute. Just wanted to find out, are you still interested in getting educated on AI this year? And they write back and say yes. And my AI goes, great, answer a couple questions. And my, you know, the, the AI asks the questions, saves the answers, puts it in my CRM, but then finally says, would you like to talk about it right now? And then hands that off to the sales team. And now, and granted, I'm never, I never hide these things on every website. At the bottom it says, Noelle partners with AI on everything. I'm AI infused. But now I have to ex, like say, I'm a, I'm Allie from AI Leadership and I'm a synthesized agent here to help you. Now, many of you have heard my keynotes. That is in, it's exactly what my keynote says at the beginning. I'm nearly Noelle. I'm a synthesized avatar here to help with the keynote introduction of Noelle Russell. But the funny thing is, is that I notice that people are always clapping when that video starts, so they never hear that part. And even if they weren't clapping, the first 10 seconds of any conversation, we're not locked in yet. Like, we're figuring it out, right? We're looking at the— listening to the person, but we're like usually, you know, distracted. And we usually lock in around word 10. Um, and so I think it's really interesting, like, I could probably disclose it, but when I disclose it is important. How often I disclose it is important. That is not in the legislation. It is only that you must disclose. But like, you disclose it super early, people won't even remember it by the end of the conversation. And especially if your AI is good, they will just think— they will just default. So there's a book I would encourage you to read. Malcolm Gladwell. You all know Malcolm Gladwell. He's written lots of books. Great author. I don't think I have it handy. Maybe I do. I don't see it. But Malcolm Gladwell, he wrote a book called Talking to Strangers. And while it is about humans, it could just as easily be about AI. Like, it is a good book to read because of the tendency as humans that we have to default to truth, that we presume truth first. And this is a danger in the world of AI, and it's why we have so many problems with AI, is that we as the human consumer of AI presume the thing we're talking to would be truthful. It's why Google's so successful, that even though they're giving us paid ads, we're presuming just because that's our, our nature is to default to, of course you'd gimme the best one first, not knowing even when it says sponsored, it doesn't even matter. Like it's, this is like what I say about these these, you know, declarations of it's an AI, it won't even matter. Like it will be— the burden will be on us as builders, us as consumers to know the difference and to just do a better job. But, but yeah, so it's, it's interesting. But Malcolm Gladwell, I encourage you to read it through the lens of a technologist as I do everything. But originally I read it because I had suffered like a really bad human interacted with me in a very bad way and, uh, and kind of changed the drug— the whole trajectory of my personal life. And I was like, why would people do that? Why would people hurt people like, like bad, like so bad? Why, why do people murder people? Why do people, you know, like molest children? Like all of these things. Like, I was like, I don't understand where— what's happening. And so I got very, um, passionate about this. And so when I read this book, it explains that about humanity But here's the sad thing about AI is AI is a reflection of our humanity. And so those tendencies, socio, you know, socio, um, or social, what are they called? Sociopaths. Yeah. Sociopaths, narcissism, like all that stuff shows up if you ask the right question. And if you are narcissistic, you will trigger that behavior and it will echo your narcissism or your psychopathy or whatever. Like I was just, we don't talk about this and I don't want it like it's Christmas. But I think like if anyone's gonna change the world, it's gonna be us like looking that in the face and knowing that there is a way to mitigate against it. But not if you don't know it. Not if like, what if you're using AI as a consumer and you don't realize the way you're talking to it actually changes the way it talks to you? And I mean, I, I don't know how many of you saw this. It's not new. It's called Anyone remember that Netflix show? What was it called? The Social Dilemma. Oh, it's so good. Um, I mean, you'll then want to like cut off all internet and I won't ever see you because you'll kill your LinkedIn profile and you'll get out of social media. But The Social Dilemma, uh, it's on— I think it's still on Netflix. You could definitely Google it. It's probably on YouTube. But, um, it is so good. I don't know if I can spell dilemma correctly. Um, hopefully Oh no. All right, I'm just gonna hit enter. It didn't turn red for me, so anyway, you get the idea. Um, oh, is that the link? I don't know what link is that. What is that, Sky? Did you put in there? Oh, that was a while ago. No, that, that's for the book you were just— Oh, yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect, perfect. So that's the Malcolm Gladwell book, but it does talk about— so I just think it's so cool because we are in a world now where humanity and technology are intrinsically intertwined. So the more we know about both, the better we can be at both. And I do think as, as responsible leaders, that's our superpower, is that most of you are here because you are kind of tighter on the humanity side than on the technology side, and that you are interested in pursuing a humanity that gets better, faster, and stronger with this technology. And so the more we understand humans and kind of the negative consequences of humanity, the better we can be prepared for the types of things these models will do. As well. But yeah, The Social Dilemma, that, that basically talked about the travesty of social media and what that does to people. But AI is going to do the same thing only through a conversation, which I actually think is worse, right? We're not drawing you in by saying, hey, come like your friend's stuff. We're just like, hey, how are you doing today? It's way more slippery. And, and we're seeing that already, right? Character AI. I have a character AI, by the way, Noelle Russell. You can go talk to her. It, whatever. Um, you could go talk to it and I created it because I wanted kids. So I was doing a lot of high school sessions back then and I wanted ki— I was like, they were using character AI. By the way, kids are, have been using character AI for years, like years. It's not like AI showed up and they're, I mean, character AI used to be like old school natural language. It was just hard-coded characters. And now of course it's LLM driven and generative, which makes it even more scary, but But I don't know how many of you remember, I mean, I don't mean to go dark on Christmas, that, that story about that, the kid who ended up ending his life because of a relationship he had developed with an AI on Character AI. Character AI ended up, I think they're still in litigation on that whole scenario. But it also brought up this huge concern, right, for parents, for educators. And again, it's like, In my mind, I'm like, these are the things not only should we talk about, but that's why I like the idea of this kind of podcast, is that we could talk about serious things in a way that allows people to just think about it but not be scared by it. That's my goal. My dream is that I will be able to, to discuss it. Um, yeah, exactly, Hal. Oh, that's, um, Arthur C. Clarke, right? Didn't he write that book? Anyway, but Hal and people, you know, I worked at IBM for so many years. If you haven't seen 2001 It's something worth watching. I think I would watch all these old sci-fi movies and read these books because it's crazy how much is happening right now. But people would tell me back in the day when I worked at IBM that how was IBM? Because if you move all of the letters over one, it's IBM, right? H-I-A-B-L-M. Crazy, right? Like, I don't know, maybe, uh, but I doubt it. Right? Yeah, it's not— it's the, the side— these effects are not awesome, but it's a good— that's why I like the book, because the book, you can— your brain can put in the effects. The book is really good. Anyway, so some pretty cool stuff. I always like to mention these things because it's food for thought, number one, but at the end of the day, as AI gets better, I always say like AI is going to continue to get better and better. It'll be a million— these models will get a million times better over the course of the next 5 years on the current trajectory of evolution we're seeing, like a million times better. We're seeing 100x improvements, right? Model over model. And so if the models keep getting better, we're going to need to develop a better humanity. So as part of AI, you know, I love AI, is like, okay, so how do I get better? How do I as a human like become better at communicating my needs, talking, explaining what I want, knowing how to measure it, These are all the things that keep AI from being successful because the humans leading it don't know enough about what they want or how to explain it or how to get the right results or measure those results. And so I think it's really interesting. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool.

Yes.

Awesome. Introspection. I agree, Mr. Novak. Absolutely. I think, you know, I was talking to— who was I talking to? Oh, I was on, um, Instagram Live with someone. I mentioned this to the call earlier today. Uh, I was in Instagram Live with someone and on that, you know, he is very much, he's not really, he was a technologist and has now gone on to do other things. So he's like engineer by trade. Um, but he now focuses a lot more on mindset and leadership and, um, you know, doing the right things and taking the right action and holding yourself accountable. And it's interesting though, because those exact things that he say— says, I'm like, well, that's exactly what we have to do with the model. Same thing. Understand your purpose.

Yeah.

And your model should have a purpose, right? Understand, you know, kind of how you're going to measure success as a person, like set targets, set goals. Your model should have the same thing. Um, and so I think the more we learn about ourselves, the better we can manage these systems. And that I think is the, the hard thing because humans in general would rather stay in the dark about themselves. From my experience raising 6 of them, right? Like, not a lot of people are asking questions about how they can become better or how they, you know, like, they're, they're kind of happy. Oh my gosh, yeah, another movie, Her. Uh, that's, that's another— I don't want to like— anyway, but I liked it. I liked the movie Her. There was a couple— there was a, a section of that movie that I'd encourage you to watch. It's on YouTube too. Um, I like the whole movie, but the section I like the most is when they were going through the process of giving her a name. And it was very— I mean, this is before ChatGPT launched, so it's very cool. You know, art— what do they say? Art imitates life, imitates art, imitates life. Like it is a cycle. And we are in a sci-fi kind of art imitates life cycle that I don't think people know where we are. Like, are we imitating what we talked about in 1935? Or is, you know, the current, you know, movies, books, products, is that imitating what we've said in the past? It's a very interesting world. Yes, what's your name? Exactly. Yes, yes, exactly. Anyway, very cool. And of course, we couldn't, you know, say, talk about sci-fi influence without talking about the meaning of life. Oh man. So many, so many things. To talk about. Okay, so that was fun, a little, little side quest. I just thought I would share with you a little bit about that. Um, oh my gosh, the Holy Grail! That's true, that's true. Uh, my dad was watching— so some of you, are any of you Monty Python people? Am I like— I'm telling you a lot about who I am today. Uh, but Monty Python, I grew up on Monty Python and Benny Hill. I'm just telling y'all, so like 8 of you are gonna be like, oh my gosh. Uh, but my dad, I walked in on him the other day and he was watching Monty Python The Holy Grail. And I was like— and but the sad thing, he has a traumatic brain injury, right? So he's watching it like it was the first time, and I've seen it with him hundreds of times. Um, it was crazy. Yes, yes, that's right, Hitchhiker's Guide, Joe. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I'm glad somebody said it. Um, anyway, yes, so one of the things though, as I mentioned, we are in heavy holiday spirit here. We almost are anti-AI in our traditions. We don't have any technology really involved in the traditions that we do, from ice skating to, you know, you name it. It's a bit of a hiatus, and that's intentional. My family looks forward to it, to me not like having robot talk all the time. And I like it. I think it's good to take a break, again, cognitively as well. But, uh, one of the things I wanted to share with you, uh, what was it? Um, where is it? I'm trying to see if I have it here. Oh, I might have brought it to the other room. But there is, um, quite a bit of cool technology. Of course I have to share the technology. I don't know if Jason's on the call because it's late. It might be late where he is. Um, but Jason Spaulding, one of our ad leadership OGs, like, oh geez, uh, he ended up getting me a cool new device. So I'm going to share it with you all. Can you see it?

Yes.

Oh, let me turn it. It's a nail chip and it's like $6.

What?

So it's a nail chip. So basically what this allows you to do, any, some of you have like a Blink card or a Dot Card or where you go to a conference and you scan a QR code and you get everyone's contact information. Um, now granted this can connect to anything, but I'm just thinking to myself, I put a chip in my, you know, I do my nails all the time, right? So I'm gonna put a chip under this nail. I'm going to CES. I'm gonna take a bunch of video where I can just tap people with my finger and be like, here you go, you have been blessed with my contact information. And it should— I don't know, we'll see what happens. I should open it and see what it looks like, right? Yeah, I should. I didn't open it in the previous call. Let's see. I'm afraid to like break it or use it, but let's see. All right. Oh, uh, oh my gosh, that's cool. So it's like a tiny— I don't know if you can see it, it's a tiny little way or in there? Oh yeah, yeah, you can see it. Um, that's pretty cool. Now I have to test it out, read the instructions. Okay, I'm not doing it now, but starts with a QR code. But that's cool. I mean, for $6, like, why not try it? Even if you're, you know, not one who gets their nails done for whatever reason, uh, you know, you can just go and get some clear polish, see what it does. But the reason I say it is that nail chips are just one example. They have what's called NFC paper. That's another thing that I had learned from Jason. He had it on his phone. But you can use NFC paper and C Paper Creates, like, I don't know if you use these around your house. So I'm going to tell you an example of something that I've been doing for years in a service that started it all at Amazon. A little history lesson. So at Amazon, I don't know how many of you remember the— we called them Dash buttons, or like there were little buttons that you could press and when you pressed it, it would order something on Amazon. Now, the reason they were created and it was based on a service called Dash Replenishment Service., and it was a web service. And this web service, its job was you were doing dishes and you spray the last spray of Dawn dish, you know, power wash onto your dishes, and you're like, no, I don't have any more dish. And all you would have to do is go and press the button and it would— and now this was back in the day when Fresh was like 2-hour delivery, um, you— in 2 hours it would show up at your doorstep, like just Pop. And so I had a bunch of kids, so I had a bunch of buttons. I had wipes and diapers tied. Um, I had all, I mean, all of the cook, uh, coffee pods for Keurig coffee maker. It was very popular back then. Um, anyway, so I had all these buttons. So as soon as I needed, I would just press the button. So Jeff Bezos's vision was contextual shopping. Contextual shopping. Oh my gosh, I wonder if that's what just showed up. Um, so I tested it today with the new Alexa Plus. Uh, but what it meant was like, if you're in the minute and you realize you need something, you wanna just say it and it shows up at your door. So today I was taking a nap and I woke up and now I'm— it's like, I mean, I took like a 20-minute nap from like 9 AM to 9:40 or something. And, um, and I was like, oh no, my husband was like, we need coffee pods because we're running out and they don't ship for whatever reason. This store does not ship on the weekend. So if we don't get it on a Friday, we have to wait till Monday. It's like life-changing, people. And so I was like, oh, Well, let me ask Alexa. So, oh, let me, um, mute her real quick because I don't want to order another set. Um, so I ask Alexa, hey Alexa, uh, add coffee pods to my shopping cart, which is the way that you tell Alexa. Oh, sorry if anyone triggered in. Um, but it now adds it to my shopping cart, and which is great. And it'll say, hey, I just added it to your shopping cart. I'm like, so I just thought in that moment, I'm like, go ahead and order it. And it just ordered it. It was like, ordered, it'll be here today. I was like, this is amazing, right? Like, it's just, it was so free. And my husband and I are like laying there, you know, like I just woke up from my nap. I'm like, we need coffee pods, add them to the cart, which now I realize I could have just said order it, but I didn't, you know, this is chain of thought prompting, if you will. So I tell Alexa, I appreciate you adding it, but now go ahead and order it. And it just went ahead and ordered it and it just showed up like 10 minutes ago, just showed up on my on my door. I'm like, yeah, let's go. I do think it's an interesting world thinking about contextual shopping because it is for the haves, right? How many people in the world, like, holistically can just order stuff on Amazon whenever they want, right? Like, you run out of something and you're just, just order it and you don't—

I—

it never told me the cost. It never said anything. It just said ordered. Now granted, I've ordered it before, so maybe it assumed I knew the cost. Um, but I would love to create a world where anyone could order anything that they need when they need it and it just shows up. But the reality is, is that that is a cost. Like, there is money being transacted, and not everybody can just like throw down $30 here, $40 here, $100 here, like, uh, transactionally, contextually. But it is interesting to think about that. Now What I'm gonna— what might hurt your brain a little bit, and I want us to think about, is universal basic income, right? Have you heard of this term? This is the future of society in a world where we eliminate so many jobs and we create huge amounts of unemployment. It's not sad. I mean, this might be the future, right? Where AI can do all the work we do, that we spend 2 hours a day at work instead of 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, whatever, right? That we, we don't do, we don't have to do as much in order to keep the economy running. But that means that people will get unemployed, companies will lay off people. What happens? And so there's a concept, uh, that has been played around with in academia and, uh, macroeconomics around what happens when you have that happen. You can't have like societal unemployment, like bad things happen. Great Depression, mini depression, like bad things happen. And so The concept would be, well, all these companies are still making money, so now instead of paying you as an employee, they're going to pay into universal basic income and everyone gets paid enough to live and survive. I don't know, I'm not telling you I believe in this, I'm just giving you like the word on the street message. It's good to talk about, right? But like, now does that mean we all have the ability to contextually buy from Amazon anytime we want because we're all on this universal basic income? Is universal basic income us all getting $500K a year, or is it us all living on $140K or $60K, right? Are we on food stamps as a society, or are we living our best lives? Um, that's all in the fine print of, of like what they're talking about when they, when they do talk about these things. So, uh, but all things to be considered because we are going to be fast accelerating on this path. Um, I haven't seen the numbers yet. We'll see them probably, uh, in January. As a part of Q1 rollouts. But there's been a lot of layoffs that are not hugely advertised, and I know this because people are saying, oh, they're calling me and being like, oh yeah, they just laid off, you know, 16,000 people. I'm like, huh, I didn't see anything about that. And I'm not gonna toot their horn, but it is definitely happening, and it happens at this time of year anyway. Um, but I think a lot of companies are— they're struggling. I can't tell you how many, uh, of companies are saying the economy is slow, the economy is— so they're slower to purchase. Who said that to me the other day? Oh yeah, a woman, uh, at our alma mater, uh, the Big A, at a big consulting firm. She said like customers are slower to buy, sales processes are taking longer. And I will tell you, I've been told this throughout my whole career, and it's— it was never true for me. Like, I could always get someone to buy if I could tell them the right value. Like, no one ever was like, oh, we don't have money for that. Like, if you give them the right value— and here's an example— if I come to you and say, hey, I got this really cool Ferrari, it's only going to cost you $10,000 because I just got to get rid of it, how many of you gonna figure out a way to get $10,000? Like, you'll come to this community and be like, if you give me $1,000, I will let you ride in it one time. Like, you'll be pretty creative when you realize the value proposition of getting something that's hundreds of thousands of dollars for 10 grand. Like, you'll, you'll figure it out. And that's kind of what we're seeing in the world of AI, is that the challenge is— and this is why we do AI solution architecture— most people selling AI solutions have no idea how to propose the value, to set up the value proposition. And that's why I'm so passionate. And thank you all for, um, doing your homework, uh, in the solution architect course. I got my Final submissions yesterday and last one today. Maybe one more. I'm waiting maybe on one, but they're going out anyway. But these solutions are how do you talk about this in a way that a business understands? AI solution architecture is— I believe as an AI leader, we all have to think like this. Not what cool tech can I use? You know, so many people ask me like, how do you keep up with the latest tech and how do you use the latest models? And like, my focus is on business problems I can solve. Right? Like, what's the business problem I can solve for this client? And then I go and look at potential models. But the first thing is, is, is there a problem to be solved and how do I solve it? And it might not even be a technical solution. It actually might be a cultural solution. It might be a trust solution. It might be getting everyone into a, a room and getting them to just talk to each other. That might be the solution. But being a solution architect means we're willing to ask hard questions in the baby tiger mode that these companies are in. And so I think that's pretty fun, uh, and pretty cool. And that's— so I gave you a couple of resources. Hopefully you'll take them down. What I'm reading right now, what I'm watching right now, uh, some— I mean, I, I— yeah, the— oh no, I said this in the last one. So my book I'm reading right now that I just downloaded, that I've read before but I'm reading again in the light of 2026, is, uh, The Ultimate Sales Letter. I don't know how many of you read it. It's by Dan Kennedy. He's one of my favorite people. He's harsh, but that doesn't mean I can't like him. Um, but he's a copywriter. He knows how to sell stuff. And what I like about what he talks about is the burden on us who are talking to our clients to know what value is to them. And if we don't know, it's our responsibility to ask them, to look foolish, to lose the customer even in, in effort to understand who they are, where they're coming from, and what hurts them right now. And I love that approach. And that's what I do. I like humbly lay down and just say, I'm here to find out if I can help you. Not, I'm here to sell you on what I can help you regardless of your problem. Like, I'm here to just find out, does what I have, will that help you? And when you take that approach, people just see you totally differently. You're not there to pawn some sales solution off on them, right? Like, you're not there pushing, you're actually pulling. Like, you're like, hey, tell me what's going on. What's, what's wrong? What, What hurts you? What bothers your employees? What frustrates your customers? And in that conversation, my goal of course is to map what you need to what I do. But it's also, I mean, now I get to pull in my, my, uh, Miracle on 34th Street, uh, reference. So watch that movie. That's one of our traditions. On Miracle on 34th Street, Kris Kringle sits there and starts telling kids and their parents to go to the competitor. To actually get stuff. Like, Kris Krueger is like, oh, we don't, we don't sell that, but, or we do sell it, but it's super expensive here. You should go across the street to our competitors and buy it. They've got it. And here's a coupon for our competitors. And that's kind of the approach I take now, right? I wanna find out and I wanna, I wanna care so much about your business and so much about the problems that I'm willing to be like, you know what, that's not for me to do, but XYZ over there, They do this and they're great. And my job as a solution architect is to pave that way. And just like it did in Miracle on 34th Street, it comes back. This is why my motto is, I nurture the world and the world nourishes me. But it's not linear. It's not, I give so I can get. I just give and give and give and people just keep giving back to me at all different levels. I mean, like this. Yay. I'm so excited for this. Um, But like, it just constantly, um, is a virtuous cycle that I've created. And I encourage you to just start a mini virtuous cycle on your own. Um, and that starts of course with you talking about your ideas like I do. I mean, that's what I'm doing right now. I give you— I spew all my ideas on you. Take it or leave it. I always say try it on like a coat, see if it fits. If it doesn't fit, just take it off. Think your own way. Um, but I think it's really healthy when you— when we just sit and have some discourse. So speaking of discourse, let's see. Oh my gosh, let's see. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Oh goodness. Um, okay, I'm looking through these messages to make sure. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. I know, Renee, I'm waiting for you. You got it, I got it. Um, AI Solutions Architect is due. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is due after New Year's to give you like time to you know, relax and enjoy your life. Absolutely. I was talking about Responsible AI Leader today, uh, specifically because we did two classes back to back. So hopefully you were in both, but if not, um, and just so you all know, so we finished our second course. We did Responsible AI Leader at the end of November, and then immediately following that, we did the AI Solution Architect. We had over 900 people find out about that and join the waitlist. For the next time we're running it. But the series that we take people through is it starts with become a responsible AI leader, understand what it means to like assess someone's needs, just like what I just said, like what, what hurts you? How do I help you? How do I create a framework that you can adopt? How do I build a responsible AI adoption plan for your business? Then we do solution architecture, which is now I know what they need. How do I design a solution for them? And the next one, which is what we'll start the year with, is Agentic AI Practitioner, right? Which is now how do you build the thing? And that's not for everybody, but I encourage everyone to take it because I always say the best gift you can give yourself is doing something really hard. Number one, like cold ice baths, but do something really hard, like build an agent that you think you are not qualified to build. Take a class. You'll have guardrails. You'll, it's like bowling with what are those things? Guard gutter rails, you know? Like my kids, we put up these gutter rails and they, even with that, they can manage to not hit a pin, but it's much less likely. So it allows you to kind of operate where you're gonna build agents, but there's structure, there's prebuilt repositories that you're gonna create, but it lets you either have empathy for who's gonna actually build it, or you might uncover a super secret, like, oh my gosh, I actually like this stuff. And you'll realize that building is something that you wanna do. But that is the next phase. So if you feel like as a solution architect, you're missing a piece, you technically are, right? So Responsible AI Leader is the ground, is the foundation. It's how you start every project. Solution Architecture is how you design for the problem you've identified. And then Agentic AI Practitioner is the course where we walk through building agents, about 12 of them. And it's hard. And I, I like hard things. I hope you like hard things. I try to make it fun anyway. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.

Okay.

Um, cool. All right. Oh my gosh, cool. Yes. Oh my gosh, it was really good. Um, the— I get so many really fun responses to the, uh, AI leadership course. Like, people were like, oh my gosh, I should reposition everything I'm doing, like, to this idea. Uh, I just talked to a company just today, I think right after I woke up, and I hope it was not visible. You know, sometimes you get those lines on your face. Anyway, hopefully that wasn't the case. Uh, but I just talked to them and I said, um, I— they were like, how do we even start? And all I did was literally present the architecture from the Responsible AI course. I'm like, this is how you start. And they're like, well, we should just do that. So they're literally pulling together a PO right now. Like, great, let's go. Um, it's, it's funny, I think we tend to overthink what a solution needs to look like for these customers. They just want to get going. They just want to feel protected in their journey. And I think that's something that everyone who's taken these courses can do, uh, to get started. The next question though, and one of our members brought it up, is like, okay, but what if they get so excited they want you to build something? There are builders here, right here amongst us, that would be happy to help you. It's literally a comment in a community chat away, right? Like Kim is a builder, Joe's a builder, Nitin is a builder, right? Like we have so many build— and that's just 'cause I see you all right here, but There's many, many builders, uh, in our community. And so we are in, uh, 2026 creating a partnership directory of trusted builders so that when you get to that point as an architect, as a consultant, as a strategist— and I hope every one of you do— where the client's like, awesome, let's go, let's build this, let's put it into production, you don't have to go, um, good luck with that, that's not me, right? Like, now you can be like, oh, that's me and my team. And you can partner with us to get that done. So much fun in that. Yes, great question, Darren. So we also are kicking off the new year, and this is for AI Leadership Institute members. It's never too late. You can apply anytime. You'll also be able to apply anytime. But if you actually join the Leadership Institute between now and the end of the year, we have like a special going on right now, which is an AI sprint. And many of the members here have already joined us. So super excited. But we have two, uh, different sprints. You can choose one or the other. One is an authority sprint, which means that we're going to, which is, I'm a big fan of, I think that if you're not building a business, like if you're a career person, this is the best thing you could do for your career. It helps you stand out. What my friend John Maxwell, he's an author, right? He's written 90 books, I think. Um, you would see him at the airport. He, or not him, but you'd see his books at the airport in one of those like spinny kiosk things. Um, but he says like all the time, get yourself out of the people pile. Like LinkedIn, Jobs, Indeed— people piles, piles of people. And the only way to differentiate yourself is to either be a doer, meaning you constantly get on LinkedIn and like demo what you're doing, or get third parties to credentialize you. And, uh, these credentials, they're not the same as taking a course and getting a stamp, which is kind of what we're doing in a lot of our classes. This is you have to actually take a third party like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and get certified by them in the area of AI. And it's very credible. I'm just a big fan of it. So I went to re:Invent to test out my theory that I knew what I knew. And of course it was good. I got that certification. But Google, Amazon, Microsoft, 90 days, 3 certifications from the biggest AI cloud providers in the world. It's a great way to kick off the year, right? So some of you are on that track. Um, and that is only available to people who join the Leadership Institute by the end of the year, which means you got like a week and a half or so. Um, the other, uh, portion, and yes, thank you, Sherilyn. So that's the Essentials link in the chat if you want to talk to us about it. But the other thing, which is what Darren was mentioning, is not only the Authority cohort, we also have a Business Accelerator cohort. And for some of you, you're going to want to do both. And I'm going to encourage you to do one because we do them both. Twice a year, once in the beginning and once in the middle of the year, so we can ensure your overall 2026 success. But for those of you who are going on your own, you're building a consultancy or already have one, but feel like you've stagnated and don't know how to get more clients, we are doing an accelerator that will go from idea, meaning the idea that you have, validate your idea, validate your niche, validate your audience, and then build a social media platform. We call it an algorithmic heartbeat, building out social media content. You can see Everything that I do, like all the content that you're seeing, is scheduled and choreographed. And so I teach you how to do that. And then also, once you've started building an algorithmic heartbeat, meaning the LinkedIn algorithm, Instagram algorithm, YouTube algorithm knows who you are, now you need to ask people to raise their hand to work with you. And so you'll create a lead magnet. So I show you how to build— I build lead magnets like all the time. So I will show you what I do. I get lead back. I mean, you saw the What was it? The advent calendar, right? That was my lead magnet idea. We passed 1,000 people. What? 1,000 people signed up for that thing. I don't even think I told 1,000 people. I was like, this is amazing. So 1,000 people signed up for that. And, and it's cool because Lovable tells you when people, like when you hit these milestones. So it was amazing. But that's what I want to teach you, right? Like how do you, and it's all connected. Like you have to have a good idea. As long as that idea is sound, then You could start talking about it. Then people are gonna be like, oh, tell me more. You can create for them a lead magnet. It might be an ebook, it might be an advent calendar. You could do a lovable, uh, assessment, like all sorts of fun things. Um, and then from there, now that they've raised their hand, now what do you do? Oh, you could use AI to nurture them, get them on a sales call. Then you get 'em on a sales call. Now what do you do? Right? And then we teach you how to do the sales call, get them to close, ask for the sale., and then at the end, now this is by the end of like maybe 6 weeks in, you've got the whole piece. The last 6 weeks is dedicated to just repeating the process 10 times. So my hope is by the end of the first month, 6 weeks at the most, you've done the cycle. You built all the content, you create a lead magnet, you got your first customer, and now we are like, put fire, you know, add oil and fuel to that and just, and then my hope is once you do 10, Right? What's the difference between 10, 20, 40, 100? It's just a, a matter of how many times you wanna run through that cycle. Um, and that's, that usually that's what did for me when I got my first 10 clients. I was like, this is real. Like, this is happening. I could do this. And so that's what I want for you. By the end of Q1, you'll have 10 new clients or your first 10 clients. And, and it could be anything. I always say like client means someone paid you. So we're not gonna go for, you know, our first $10 million clients. Like, we're gonna just like grease the skids on how do we get people to transact with us. As soon as you can get someone to pay you a dollar, though that's not what we're going for, the relationship you have with them changes. Your first dollar is the hardest dollar to get from someone, as many of you know. Do you— how many of you know, like, I do this thing where I ask you to pay me a dollar because it's the hardest dollar to get. But once you've convinced yourself that you can put your credit card in and give me a dollar, when I come back and say, hey, I've got this thing, and it meets your needs and it's amazing, they're like, well, I already gave you a dollar, right? Like that barrier is gone. And now they'll actually kind of prove to themselves like, hey, Noelle Russell Russell was trustworthy enough for me to invest a dollar in. I could probably do this thing for $50 or $1,000 or $5,000 or $15,000 or $25,000. Like that's how it goes. But the first, first dollar, first transaction is the hardest. And so that's what I'll be teaching you in that. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes, yes. Yay. Oh yeah, cool. Awesome. The Microsoft thing.

Yay.

Oh, I'm super excited. Yeah, the, the track is going to be super fun. So I will be doing all the tracks, but I'm going to encourage you to pick a track like either you're about authority or you're about customers. It's really hard to do both because I will tell you, getting customers is way harder than getting certified. You might think it's hard, but like I could get you certified. That's not hard. But, uh, getting you customers takes a lot of work. It's your business. It's kind of, for me, it's like my soul, like what I'm giving, what I'm gonna like, how I'm gonna make things. Sometimes it doesn't work. We need to do fast cycles. You're building all the time. So it's very hands-on, very practical. We're building your business in a quarter. And so it's a different level of, of, um, of work, but it's worth it, right? Well, what would you do for 10 customers.

I don't know.

I feel like it'll, uh, it'll change the trajectory of your business either if you've already, if you're in a business or if you're building a brand new one. Um, all right, cool. So thanks for that question. Yeah. So both of those start mid-January. You'll see those dates before we do that though. People who are, another bonus that you get if you join now is that you also get access to, we're doing a 4-hour session on June, January, June, January 5th, a 4-hour version of what we did last Friday, which was the Design Your Life. So we will be reverse engineering, but we're going to sit in rooms and like write it down and talk about it and say it out loud and commit to ourselves that we are going to do the things. I'm not going to encourage you to do a lot, but I am going to encourage you to write down something. So I, for example, have— I'm about to sign a, a deal with Wiley for my second book. I'm super excited, but that means I have to start writing again. Ah, so, so I need to write it down and make it a goal and do it every single day. So, so, uh, this is where we'll have an opportunity. Sky, Padmini, myself will be holding accountability sessions. So for those of you who just want to get in a group and talk about what we're doing and hold ourselves accountable for the goals that we're setting for ourselves, uh, sometimes it— that's all it takes is just being accountable, coming to a meeting every week and going I did that, or, oh man, I didn't, but that's okay, I recommit to doing it right now. And sometimes we'll wait on the, on the call while you go do the thing you committed to doing. Um, so, uh, so that is part of the success for next year. Really cool, amazing. So it's, uh, a whirlwind tour through things that I would have done. I'm not traveling the rest of the year. My next event is CES. If you're going to be at CES, I hope you'll be there. I always like to, you know, we did a little It wasn't terrible, but I always like to just be real. Like, there are some real challenges with the evolution of this technology that I think all of us can be part of the solution. And I hope that no matter what you're planning for 2026, you're including in it some part of what you're doing helping to bring awareness to the entire world. And maybe it's, uh, like, maybe you care about high school kids, maybe you care about You know, kindergartners, maybe you care about the elderly, maybe you care about kids with, you know, significant or, uh, disabilities, kids who are in, you know, hospitals, like whatever. I, I'm just rolling off the things that I care about, but like go and teach them what you're learning as you learn it. Like you learn a new tool, go show it to them. I told you all about Huxe, H-U-X-E, like go show it to them. Like just demonstrate cool stuff. They will likely have been like, no, I've never seen anything like this before. And it's amazing when you show something, baby tiger mode, right? When you show somebody something and they've never seen it work before, they're like, their whole life changes because they're like, all the things I've ever dreamt about, I could do now. All the ideas I've had, all the creativity I have, I can actually do something with. And that's what I love about this technology. So in addition to building businesses, in addition to generating value, I really do hope that you will consider what you could do to bring what we're learning to people who may not be able to access it. Uh, we are in a, a little bubble. I don't know if you know this, but we're in like a little, a little affluent little area, uh, of the world where we get to talk about AI, we get to use AI, we get to buy subscriptions to tools. And a lot of people, I mean, just 20 miles south of me do not have that ability. And so I'm making a commitment to myself to just do a better job of, of making what I'm learning accessible to them. And that's kind of doing what we're doing, getting on social media, posting on TikTok, like You know, a lot of— oh my gosh, a lot of people. Just be aware of the haters. Just be aware of the haters. It's okay. I was told if somebody hates on you, you've made it. So I wish it on all of you that somebody says, what are you doing talking about this? You don't know what you're talking about. AI is going to kill us all. When they say that, you've made it. You have won. So I hope you enjoy it when it happens. But right now is our time where we come together. So I'm going to encourage you, obviously there's a couple weeks left to join our program. We would love to have you, but the, the I Love AI community is free for everyone and we will be in the new year, we will be teaching lessons from the curriculum every single week. We'll be taking questions. Usually we get a lot of questions when people join. You, everyone, I ask you a question. And so during the middle of the year, this is the last one, so I didn't do that, but during the middle of the year, Um, every time someone new joins, I just go and look at the questions they asked. So with the last 3 people who joined, all of them— and they didn't join in the same event— all of them were like, what's this agentik stuff? Like, I'm hearing agentik, I don't know what it is. So that's why our first class that we do in the Institute is going to be agentik in the beginning of the year. And it doesn't matter, like, it's a circle, it's not a line, it's a circle. So all this, all of it, like, let's say you don't know anything and you jump into agentik and you're like, I'm building agents. I don't know anything. That's okay, because then eventually you'll learn the basics and then you'll learn leadership and then you'll learn architecture. It all comes together, but you have to start somewhere. My dad is the king of I'll do it, I'll do it tomorrow. So I'm like, hey, Dad, you need to change your clothes. Like, you're wearing it for 2 days. I know you love that shirt. He has an iRobot shirt, so you can understand, like, it's out of print. He loves this shirt. I'm like, you got to change your clothes. And he's like, yeah, yeah, change it tomorrow. I'm like, or we could change it right now. Like, you know, right, right, right, right now. As a matter of fact, I saw a post, uh, on, uh, Threads recently, and it— I wonder if I can pull it up. I'll see if I can find it. Uh, I really, really liked it. Uh, oh, actually, I think I rewrote it somehow in my, um, in my AI little system. Oh my gosh, I almost ended the meeting by accident. There we go. That would have been a disaster. Okay, here we go. I'm gonna go and check it out, see if I can find real quick. Let's see all my projects.

Good.

Oh yeah, here we go.

There we go. Here we go. All right.

So, yeah, so here— and this is like my dad, literally, I say this to him all the time. So start in December, start in your 40s, start on the 31st of the month, start on a Friday, start at 5 p.m., start late, just start. And I like this concept because these are all the things we're like, ah, I'm too old for that. Ah, um, you know, it's at the end of the month. I'll wait till the beginning of next month. Or, ah, it's the end of the week. I'll wait till next week. And, and this is what, um, Cynthia was doing in her own mind too. The one who ran the Skillathon, uh, yesterday and had hundreds of people register and she was gonna wait until next quarter, but she pulled the future right into the present and had an amazing experience. And that's what I'm gonna encourage you to do too. Like, it's December, start now. Don't wait till January 1st. Start right now. Right? Like, if you're like, oh, you know, I, I'm at the end of this chapter in my life, like, start right now. Don't wait, don't wait. You know, it's Friday, start today. Don't wait till Monday. So many of us have these like patterns in our head that are completely fictitious about when we can start something, when we can get going. You know, it's 5 PM, I'm wrapping up. Or you're starting something brand new, like you're initiating a new project. Right? You could start late, just, just start. Like the most important thing you can do is put your fingers on a keyboard and start building something. And AI is there to support you, help you, encourage you, but it requires you to actually start, right? AI is a consumer-based model. It doesn't do anything until you type something into that text box. And that is the most important decision you can make is when am I gonna start typing stuff into that text box and what is it gonna be about? So I, I'm a huge believer. I do usually most of my ideation comes right now. It's already started because my, the pressure of me kind of delivering value on stage all year long, like as soon as I do my last stage event, my brain changes, right? 'Cause it's like you don't have to do that anymore. You, a whole bunch of space is created. So yesterday I got this idea. So I get this newsletter, it's paper. I get this newsletter all the, like every month. And, uh, I saw this where it says December 2025, and I was like, oh, I'm creating an AI Leadership physical newsletter. It's gonna be a newsletter that has articles. You read it like prompts, like paper highlighted. This is like, I was like, why? I've thought about doing this for so long. There is zero reason why I shouldn't do it. And of course I'm like, I'll start it in the new year. And I was like, or I'm gonna start it right now. Um, so that's one of those ideas, right? Like, uh, the other one, I can't remember. Anyway, I have so many, like, all these little things that I'm like, why? In my mind, I'm like, I'll do that in January, I'll start that, you know, at the end of the month, I'll do that. I always have these, like, inherent weird delays. There's no reason for that. I remember asking ChatGPT to create a plan for me, and I artificially gave it the— I told it start at this time, and there was no reason. I could have started that day, but my mind, like, It's like a, a weird habit. So if you, I would encourage you first to just observe yourself and how you think about things when you get an idea. How quickly do you go from idea to execution? I clock myself now, right? If I get an idea, like I'm trying to build that thing today. Kim, I think is the same way. Like we've got a couple builders. They, you get an idea and you're like, hey, let's just build it. We've got so many tools that support this, you know, Pay Me GPT, right? The AI builder tool, like, uh, Copilot Agent. Like there's so many different tools at our fingertips. Cloud Code, lovable. I, I got an idea to build an advent calendar and poof, there, now I have a new advent calendar. Um, AI MSP, right? I got an idea to build a company that would be the managed service provider for companies implementing AI models. And literally, this is what, how you know it's an idea that's like meant for you, cuz you, as soon as you get the idea and then you allow yourself to take action, it's like, da da da da da da da da da, like you can't even stop it. It's like, flowing from you. And so I encourage you to just let it flow. Like, give yourself permission to let one of your ideas go over the next couple weeks and see what you can build. You don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but, uh, but you might be— I also want to warn you, it could become very addictive and you might not be able to do anything else. So I already told my family, I'm like, I have a couple ideas that I'm working on. Um, but they're— yeah, it's not work when you're, you know, when you live on purpose it's not work. When you're doing something intentionally for a reason, it doesn't feel like work. It feels like fun. And I love it.

I love it.

Um, all right, now's the time for any questions before we head into our groups for the last few minutes of our call so we can say hi. Okay, Kim, yes, come on up.

Okay, so you would be talking about what you just covered there. You would be very proud of me. I did something and I actually put it out there even though I Totally didn't think it was 100%. It's not what I wanted, but I put it out there and some of the people in here have been participating and I appreciate it. It's not great. Like, a lot of people aren't doing it, but it's out there and I'm learning from it being out there. Like, what I want to do next time on the real one that I do on the actual 12 Days of Christmas, which is actually after Christmas. Yeah, it's the time period after. But I thought, you know what, I'm going to put it out before Christmas just to have it. Yeah. And, and it has working out great. So you have inspired me this year to be more like, I build every day. I build something every day. And my goal for December was to build something every day and I've been doing it, but I'm not, I'm like, they're just mine. Like, yes. And everybody's like, oh my gosh, you did that? And I'm like, yeah, you wanna see it? And they'll all just rave about it. And I'm like, and they're like, what are you gonna do with it? I'm like, um, I guess I should put it out there.

And so you, you.

I, I will give you credit on that. You have pushed me this year and I appreciate it so much. That's my goal for 2026 is do better at that. Yes.

And I love this idea of build every day, like even just doing like a 30-day sprint of even just ideas. Like, I love that idea. We should do that in the community.

Yeah, I did. That was my December goal. Oh yeah. Every morning I, I have a 2-hour block and that's all I do is I build. Yes. And, and so now I have other people that are getting on doing it with me. They show up when we get on.

Exactly.

I love that.

We should do that.

We should do that.

Yeah, I'm up for any of that stuff. I do that in my school community. I'm, I'm there every day live doing stuff.

And yeah, exactly, where? Tell us where.

Uh, yeah, I will. I'll put it in.

Yeah, yeah, that's so cool. I love that idea. Um, well, yeah, I love it, I love it. Because how do we— I mean, the best thing to do is build, but I like the, the idea of doing it every day, right? Creating habits. I, I always get my calls all confused by the end, but Like, how do you anchor things, right? And anchor it to something that you're doing, and then doing it together is a whole nother thing. Um, oh yay, okay, bye Maurice, thank you, happy holidays. Um, awesome, amazing, yeah, super fun. Uh, cool. But yeah, that's amazing, I'm so glad you did that. And like, I always say this, and I actually say it I think to protect my own self, is I'm like, I'm not putting out— I'm not putting it out there as a product, like a finished thing. I'm putting it out there as a demonstration of thought, right? A demonstration of courage. And so I, I almost like protect myself. I'm like, no, that's not real. It could be, I guess, but it's not. Like, I'm doing it to show other people that you can do it. And then I accidentally uncover like, hey, it's pretty good, people actually like it. But it allows me to get past my own resistance of like, oh my gosh, people are going to judge me for this. I'm like, oh no, I'm, I'm not doing it to be like, look what the cool thing I built. I'm doing it to just you know, share with people what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. And I think that's really powerful. Um, stream of unconsciousness. Uh, amazing. Yay, thank you. Awesome.

Cool.

Mike, am I a member?

I should—

I hope I'm—

I'm not.

What? I'm a member now? Oh gosh. Ah, yes.

Yeah, I sent you that, that invite, but I will, I will take care of you, make sure you've got access to everything.

Yay, I'm in, I'm in. Okay, cool.. I just put my stuff in there. So yes, say yes to me. I love it. And I love the name. That's so cool. Oh my gosh. Amazing. Um, but that's what it's about, right? And then create a little tribe and then have fun, like building stuff together. Oh my gosh. Changing the world. This is amazing. Cool. That's amazing. Thank you. I just sent you, sent my, my little request. Another fun thing that we're doing. So last, was it Friday? Yeah, I think. I think it was Friday. Oh yeah, it was right after the thing. We went into some webinar which I did not fully understand, to be honest. Um, it was a pitch, uh, for some product, but at the end of the webinar— oh, it was for Graphy, uh, which is a— I didn't even— I don't even know the platform. It's fine. But at the end of the webinar, I was a panelist. You— many of you came and showed up. It was amazing. Um, yes, happy holidays! Um, and at the end, uh, it was so funny because they did a pitch and I was like, well, that's pretty good. It was like $30 or something to build something on their platform. And I'm like, well, I'll do that. And so I, I did, I like sent my name in and then there's like a few of us here that signed up and I was like, we should just not like a AI leadership or like a lesson, me drive, but like we all just go and do the thing they're telling us, right? Like put it in practice. And that's kind of what I see like with your, you know, Build Every Day, like just put it in practice. And these little communities can be really helpful. I mean, that's how I learn. So, so yeah, so for those of you who signed up, if you signed up, if you went to that thing, um, there was like, I think 10 of us or something. Yeah, we're gonna do a little, every time they have a call, we're gonna have a call where we just build what they say. And like I said, and then of course I'll, we'll all help each other along the way. But the idea is that you build a product and that you make back the money you invested. Um, and I'm like, hey, I'm all for that game. Like, let's see if we can, you know, monetize more power to us. Uh, so really, really cool. All right, let's see. Oh no, I'm just looking. I have all these messages from note takers. I think they're like private messages, but they're not. Yes, thank you all. Thank you all, you note takers. Okay, great. Um, so yeah, so for those of you who are here and still want to hang out, I'd like to take 10 minutes to chat with each other. One thing that you have— I— and if you haven't, think about it now. What, what's one thing you can commit that you want to commit to doing maybe in January next year? Not a resolution, but like an action that you can take. And then, as you may have just heard me say, maybe we start now. But what's one thing that you want to do? Doesn't matter what it is— build something, lead a class, get online, do a podcast, uh, maybe build some— something for your company. Maybe it's get a job, like, whatever it is. Um, but I think it's a great way to end, uh, the year. So we'll take 10 minutes, go around. A person with the longest hair gets to kind of facilitate the discussion. Um, Sometimes it's the shortest, but yeah, but today it'll be the longest. And, uh, you will, yeah, just have everybody— don't forget to introduce yourself. Don't take a long time introducing. We like to use our I help statement, right? Like what you do, what your name is, what you do, how you do it is basically as simple as it is. Um, and if you don't know what you do and how you do it, you can also say like, this is where I'm at right now. Uh, you're in transition or you're starting a new company or you're looking for help. If you're looking for help, this is a great opportunity to voice that. Um, you never know. Everyone here knows a lot of people here, so, uh, connection is one of the things we do really well. So we're happy to introduce you to someone else if they're not in the room, uh, to make sure that we, you know, help you. So that is the biggest thing. Uh, if you are not going to join us for a quick breakout, um, and just— it's going to be about 10 minutes. Uh, you don't have to click the button, just don't join. Um, otherwise it will— you'll like ghost the people in your session. And don't ghost people on Christmas, that's no fun. So I'm going to go ahead and start our breakouts. Almost there. Hi Joe, good to see you. What's up? Good to see you, William. Nice to see— I feel like I haven't seen you for a while. Okay, here we go. Um, let's see. Oh yeah, here we go, breakout rooms. Uh, there we go. All right, I'm going here. I'm going to now try— I mean, we got a few note takers today, so I do need to create a note taker room for our note takers and move them out really quick. If you see a note taker I think you can kick them out. Um, let's see. Okay, cool. Yeah, this is good. All right, all right, we are ready. Let's do this. Let's have some fun. And I'm gonna hop into one of them, uh, as soon as it gets going. So I'll see you— see 4 of you very soon. Okay, talk to you later. All right, come back in. I'll see you in 10 minutes. Have fun. What are you gonna do?

Tell me.

Okay, bye. Click the blue button, take the blue pill. Make sure I gave everyone— Nitin, oh yeah, you're there. Okay, Eva, Yara, are you going, Nitin? Can you make it or are you busy? Click the button.

Hi Noelle, can, can I remain with you for a while?

Yes, of course. Okay, okay, you're welcome too. I'll tell AFO to come back to you. Oh yeah, you know what, I'm going to move AFO here.

There we go. All right.

Oops, no ticker AI. Whoopsie, I missed it. Oh my gosh, there's a lot of you.

There we go.

Oh my gosh, there's a lot of note takers today. Okay, there we go. I tried to move it. Hold on, I'm just managing. Goodbye. All right, there we go, there we go. Is Yara—

are you in here?

Um, AFA, Darren, William, good. Celine. Okay, cool. I think we're good.

All right, we're good.

How's it going?

Good, good. How are you doing?

Oh, amazing. Everything's great. Everything's wonderful. Thank you for always being here. Are you excited for the holiday?

Yes, yes. I had a question that I wanted to ask you. So I've been doing this company for 4 years, basically building the foundation for process engineering and more recently adding AI bits into it. And now VCs are showing some interest, and I was wondering whether you have any perspective on— there are a couple of VCs who are in the hard tech domain, yeah, like New Industrial Corporation and Bravo BV VC. Yes, Bravo Victor VC. So I was wondering whether you know of these two VC companies and Yeah, absolutely.

So one of the things I always, like, it just depends on your, like, your endgame, right? Like VC funding is great. Most organizations begin with that end in mind. The only challenge with it is, is that, you know, how much you give away in that transaction, right? Like, and even if you don't give a lot away, it's a slippery slope, right? Once they become investors, especially if they have a say in how you run the business anyway. But if your endgame is to actually get your, like, maybe this is why as an entrepreneur we try not to fall in love with like the thing that we built and instead the problem that we're building for. Because as you know, it might be great, right? You've been doing this for years. You've grown it to a point where another company, like another leadership team could take it and scale it and you get paid for that, which is great. And now you can go on and work on other things. Um, but I always like to, you know, I just like to understand their intentions and kind of, I also look at previous, VC investments that they've made and what's happened to those companies. That's usually very telling as well. And then as things get serious, just ask to interview some of their other VC, you know, investments. It's due diligence. Like they're gonna do due diligence on you, so don't be afraid to do a lot of due diligence on them. And then at the end of the day, of course you can always ask a wonderful model like ChatGPT, you know, what question should I ask?, but typically I ask questions around like, how, you know, how, how have you treated owners in the past? Those are the things. But today I find, you know, the kind of olden days of VC funding, like 2008 through 2020, I feel like a lot of VC firms are, especially in this space, right? Because you're in like a different part of the industry. It's not a SaaS provider. I feel like there's just a, a better relationship. So like, how close will you be working with them? What kind of decisions do they wanna be able to make? Those kind of things. But it is exciting. Right. So that's the other thing though, is it's kind of baby tiger excitement. You like don't want to, you know, you don't want to get too enamored with the idea of getting funded only to then find out like that. You don't want to look back 5 years from now and realize that was the day that you lost it. Like, you know, like that was the beginning of the end unless you're intentional and the end is coming for everything. Like all the things, right? Everything has a season. And so this could be the best possible outcome. For, for the business. But I like to go in with my eyes wide open and, and know kind of what that outcome looks like. But yeah, that's really exciting though. I mean, I'm always— I just had a couple of investors look at AI Leadership Institute, and, um, and I'm like, I'm just not ready to share. So I told them, I'm like, um, yeah, no, no, I'm not ready. But I get— I think it's very flattering and it's very cool. And always be interviewing, right? Always be looking for acquisitions and investors. And, but it is, and, and I will also give you, so there's a woman, her name's Sharon Lechter. She wrote, um, uh, Rich Dad Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki back in the day, if you remember that book. She's written many, many other books, has her own foundation. But one of the pieces of advice she gave to me that I've used to my benefit ever since is every partnership will end. And so think about the end as you're designing the contract. Even though, like you said, it's baby tiger mode, you're gonna be like all excited, but like every, every single one comes to an end. No matter how, like she was partnered with Robert Kiyosaki, like, like, and it came to an end eventually. So it's sometimes we get all caught up in the moment and we, we don't look necessarily far enough in the future of like, how does this, what's the end game here? How do I, cuz I, and that's how I am with every company honestly that I work with. Like I always think, What's the best outcome? Like, what if they, you know, want my IP? I'm like, well, honestly, you can have my IP for this much money, right? So I write those considerations into my contracts. Like, am I gonna be sad if you pay me $200 million for something? I won't be sad. I mean, I might be a little sad, but not that sad, right? Like, so what it— thinking through, like, what does that end look like? And then yeah, having the courage to kind of talk about that early. Mm-hmm. Because most people, they just let it fester. And then again, they're like, I knew, I knew that was gonna happen. I knew there was something wrong. You know, like, just think, think as much as you can about those partnerships and plan for the end in the beginning. And that is the best thing that you can do.

Yeah, that's wonderful advice. That's amazing.

Yeah, I agree. Sharon Lecter, I was like, oh my gosh, that's brilliant. And of course, people who give you that advice, they learn the hard way. Right? They end up getting into excited relationships and then they end up kind of crashing and burning. So yeah, so I was very grateful for it because I didn't have to make that mistake now that she made that mistake on my behalf.

Right, right.

And it was very costly for her. So I was really grateful for that.

Yeah.

Yeah. One thing about BBVC was that they had their LP fund event at M-Hub. Yeah. And I kind of gatecrashed into it and they really liked me and they had 5 portfolio companies present. In the land, sea, air, cyber domain, and space domain. And all 5 of them are capabilities that I can orchestrate and combine together. And then they invited me for an after-party. And the 6th company kind of did a podcast there. And it was amazing.

So I think these are the people in your vibe. So that's cool. I love that.

And we would And even in the afterparty, we were talking about stealth bombers and material properties and all that. So yeah, it was—

yeah, when you find like your people, like that is, that is very special, especially if they're— yeah, if they have money to help you see another day, that's also very special. So yeah, that could be really, that could be really, really cool.

I'll let you know. I've been kind of creating a deck for my consumption first. And then to present to PBVC. Let's see what happens over the holidays. And I'll let you know.

That's using all the AI solution architecture stuff that we talk about.

Yes.

Yeah, it's really exciting. Oh, that's cool. If you want me to look at it or anything, I'm happy to.

Definitely. Yeah, once I finish it, I'll send it over.

Yes.

Absolutely.

I would love to. Very cool. Thank you very much. These sessions have been amazing. That's why I don't try to miss out on the Friday with you.

Yes. I'm so glad. That's exciting. And it's so cool because we keep, you know, all of us keep moving forward and we get to watch each other's success. So that's exciting.

Yep.

Wonderful.

Cool.

Amazing. Anyone? I think there were a few other people here who stayed behind, but— oh, I guess— oh, Yara. Was Yara busy? Maybe Yara was busy because she was in your room with you, but you were here, but she stayed too, so it was fine.

Okay.

All right, awesome.

Thank you.

I'm gonna go ahead and, uh, I'm gonna sign off on LinkedIn really quick and then, then we'll have more time. So thank everybody for coming. Super excited to have you here. Thank you for being here. Hopefully you've enjoyed our conversations and don't forget you can join this Zoom call. You can have a conversation with us. You can ask questions. You can meet new friends. You can also be on the journey of learning safe, responsible AI at scale with all of us. We do a lot of things, not just get together every Friday and get to know what each other's doing and working and growing our unique businesses and careers. But we also get an opportunity to put our fingers on a keyboard and build things together. We do live learning labs, we do hackathons, vibathons, skillathons. And so it's a really exciting time. Uh, if you're looking for a place where you can, you know, just have a safe place to ask questions, a safe place to, to get to know what AI is, what it can do, and most importantly, how it can improve your career or your business, this is a great place to join. So all you have to do is join us. It's my name, Noelle, N-O-E-L-L-E dot AI. It's a great easy access. Just type in noelle.ai. It'll send you to our, uh, our landing page that shows all the different communities that we have access to. And don't forget, we have a leadership program that, uh, enrollment for these bonuses closes at the end of the year, December 31st. So if you wanna get in on doing an authority cohort, or if you wanna get in on doing, which is getting certified on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft AI certifications in 90 days, or growing a business, let's say you decided 2026 is your year to launch a brand new company and you wanna get your first 10 clients by the end of March. Either one, we're doing those accelerators, uh, starting in mid-January. So, but you have to be part of the leadership program in order to do it. So. Join us, head on over, noelle.ai. We'd love to have you. Thanks so much for being here and we'll see you. Oh my gosh, we'll see you next year. So have a wonderful happy holidays and I will see you in 2026.