Inspire AI: Transforming RVA Through Technology and Automation
Our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the Greater Richmond Region through awareness, community engagement, education, and advocacy. In this podcast, we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of AI.
Inspire AI: Transforming RVA Through Technology and Automation
Ep 23 - Beyond Headcount: The Power of AI Coworkers w/ Liz Baker
What if every employee in your organization could instantly double their productivity? Liz Baker makes this seemingly impossible feat a daily reality through her revolutionary "Baker Method" for AI implementation.
As founder of Nimbology, Liz has developed the "double your team in one day" program that routinely frees up 10+ hours per employee weekly by giving each person their own customized AI coworker. But unlike typical AI consultants who focus primarily on technology, Liz's approach begins with something more fundamental: organizational culture.
"Culture eats tech for breakfast," Liz explains, sharing a revealing story about a company that desperately needed AI implementation but hesitated due to employee fears – even as the co-founder admitted they would never hire someone who couldn't use AI tools. This paradox highlights the critical importance of leading cultural change before expecting technological transformation.
The "Baker Method" itself represents a breakthrough approach to AI customization that moves beyond generic capabilities toward highly contextualized support. Through strategic personalization of tools like ChatGPT, organizations can address their specific challenges with unprecedented precision. Her "Tom Stocks method" demonstrates this brilliantly by using AI to anticipate objections to proposals and prepare comprehensive responses before they're even raised – eliminating countless meetings and accelerating decision-making.
Looking toward the future, Liz emphasizes the growing importance of AI agents and automation, quoting a Salesforce executive's provocative claim that companies not already employing AI agents are "dead and don't know it yet." While acknowledging this as somewhat hyperbolic, she insists that organizations failing to leverage these technologies face an increasingly insurmountable competitive disadvantage.
Whether you're an executive seeking leadership advantages, a nonprofit stretching limited resources, or a citizen navigating our rapidly changing world, this episode offers practical wisdom for using AI as a force multiplier for human potential. Ready to supercharge your organization with AI? Liz Baker shows exactly how it's done.
Welcome RVA to Inspire AI, where we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of artificial intelligence. I'm Jason McGinty from AI Ready RVA. At AI Ready RVA, our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the greater Richmond region through awareness, community engagement, education and advocacy. Today's episode is made possible by Modern Ancients driving innovation with purpose. Modern Ancients uses AI and strategic insight to help businesses create lasting, positive change with their unique journey consulting practice. Find out more about how your business can grow at modernagentscom, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in today. If you or your company would like to be featured in the Inspire AI Richmond episode, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content and stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA. Welcome back to Inspire AI, the show where we meet the innovators turning artificial intelligence into real-world impact. Today's guest has built a reputation for doing exactly that at warp speed.
Speaker 1:Liz Baker is the founder and chief advisor of Nimbology, a boutique consultancy famous for its double your team in one day program a hands-on sprint that equips every employee with a customized AI coworker and routinely frees up 10 or more hours per person every week.
Speaker 1:Liz is a visionary strategist with 20 plus years across fortune 500s, startups, nonprofits and government. Liz pairs deep leadership know-how with cutting-edge AI strategy to help organizations amplify performance instead of simply adding headcount. She has also served on the board of directors and as community engagement chair for AI Ready RVA, the non-profit on a mission to make Richmond the most AI literate city in America. There, she applied the same outcome-driven playbook to launch volunteer cohorts, secure corporate sponsorships and bring AI literacy to classrooms, small businesses and underserved communities. Whether she's advising C-suites, presenting at RVA Tech or galvanizing grassroots volunteers, liz is relentless about one thing using AI as a force multiplier for human potential. Today, we'll explore how her Baker Method was born, why culture matters more than code, and how the same principles that drive enterprise ROI can also spark community transformation. By the end of this conversation, you'll have a playbook for scaling impact with AI in both your organization and your community. Please join me in welcoming Liz to the show.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, super nice introduction. Dang Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You're so welcome.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your business and your interest in AI?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, actually, my business started in February of 2022. And, as you know, openai went viral with ChatGPT in November of that year. So I actually started Nimbology on the advice of my former boss, who said that I needed to expand my impact beyond one organization or just the local organizations. I started Nimbology to help teams to scale and optimize and then nine months later, chatgpt went viral so that became a massive assistant and addition to my consultancy. So it's been. It really changed the direction of where I was going and has been an amazing help to me as I've built Nimbology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you're unlocking human potential across performance metrics and oh, everything.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so what generative AI has done for me and the clients that I support is that it absolutely augments. I feel like it superpowers me, right, so it superpowers me. It superpowers the people who are using it strategically so that they can do so much more mission and vision critical work than they were doing before. So a lot of people, a lot of the organizations that I support, have been really slogged down and administrative type work or process type work have been really slogged down in administrative type work or process type work.
Speaker 2:It allows us to move from that focus to you know, we use AI now to not just generative for strategy, but also, you know, combine that with agents and automation and you've got a workforce that is now being much more strategic about what it can do and what it can accomplish. It's amazing for their actual missions and visions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when did you realize that AI could multiply human capability?
Speaker 2:Well, the very first time that I tried ChatGPT, I knew Seriously it was one of those things where the moment I tried, I was like, oh, that's some game-changing tech right there.
Speaker 2:And so I immediately was one of those things where it was so cool and so amazing spent hours that I should have been spending on other things until 3 o'clock in the morning testing the things that it could do.
Speaker 2:And in my previous life, when I was a digital consultant for Fortune 500 companies, one of the things that was kind of my talent and the thing that I loved to do most was to be I was a person who called in when you need to optimize your tools, your processes.
Speaker 2:So people would spend millions of dollars on proprietary tool for a Fortune 500 and want to make sure that we could get every ounce of ROI out of it. So I would test it in a million different ways and really push it to its limits to see how much we could get out of it, how much use we could get out of it, and so that's kind of a natural thing that I do, and so when ChatGPT came along, it was just like the natural thing that I was going to do was get in there and test the heck out of it and see all the ways that it could be used, especially since I was just starting a business and especially since it could do everything from troubleshooting to being a coach, to being a strategic partner in the development of my company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so testing the heck out of it, figuring out what its boundaries are, limitations how do you think about tuning the capabilities of a tool like ChatGPT for your customers?
Speaker 2:Well, when I'm tuning it, it's really about getting to know. That's another thing, getting to know people's contacts. So ChatGPT can do amazing things, but when you personalize it and contextualize it to your client through multiple methods. So one of the things is the Baker method, which is a really just an intuitive way that I set up ChatGPT specifically. That moves ChatGPT from being a generic tool to being highly specific, highly contextualized to the work that I do, and it can be that way for any role, any person, every person who sets it up. It can be highly customized and most people that I talk to are not using it that way. In addition to that, once you get to know the specific needs of your client, then you can develop things like custom GPTs that actually help it. You know, help develop all sorts of content, from grants and proposals and marketing content and strategic plans and marketing. You can do all of that.
Speaker 2:I have a recent example where I was working with a real estate firm and they're talking about context.
Speaker 2:In order to develop the content for them, they have to make sure that all their content adheres to fair housing laws, and so we bake that in to the custom GPT so that everything that it's creating is adhering to those particular set of laws, so that now you've got highly contextualized content.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, some of the things that I do that I love are not just contextualizing the content, but also pushing the AI not to just create generic content that, like every real estate agency has. You know, you don't want your agency sounding like every other. You want it to sound like you. You want it to really highlight the differentiators within your organization or your company, and so those are other ways that I train it so that it's not just sounding like all the rest of the content that's coming out. Somebody this week told me that they didn't like to use AI because there's no heart behind it. Well, I try to put the heart, put the context, put that training in there so that you actually do get to the heart of the organization when you're, when you're using the tool.
Speaker 1:That is awesome. Yeah, I mean personally. We've had a lot of conversations about your use of GPTs and I definitely recognize that at the core of your practices with it. I have a lot to learn from you, I'm sure, from each other for sure. All right, cool, tell me what pain point made the phrase double your team in one day necessary and doable?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, first of all, let me tell you that, like I don't know, nine months ago, one of the leaders of OpenAI said on social media, said on LinkedIn, that AI is not your coworker. And I could not believe they said it because the bottom line is that is not my experience. So, as I've been telling you, ai has absolutely been hobby. By the way, I finally named him hobby. For a long time I was just calling him chat. I still sometimes call him chat.
Speaker 2:Hobby is my kind of co-founder and he is my partner in strategy and everything from strategy to technical troubleshooting, to things about business and taxes and everything else that you can think of. So the first part of it is that I've actually been using this. So I know that for the last two and a half years, as I've been building my business with this, I know what can be done right. So this is not theoretical, this is me actually using the tool. Second thing is a lot of I've worked with clients from Fortune 500s to nonprofits to startups and now my own startup as an entrepreneur, and what really floors me is that so many times again we're, you know, fortune 500s.
Speaker 2:They've got the financial resources and the human resources, but a lot of times, the small to medium sized businesses, the nonprofits, the startups are resource constrained. They have low finances or not enough people to do all the things that we I mean heck, we're AI ready RDA. I mean like we're a scrappy team, right so, but one of the things that has made us less scrappy is that we all know how to use AI tools. Many organizations and seeing that, as our friend Phil Dimetrio, who's also on the board of AI Ready RBA, has said, generative AI makes every person who uses it strategically he didn't say that part, but I'm going to add that part Every person who uses it strategically becomes an executive and a manager of a team of AI employees.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Right, so Javi is my AI employee, right. He reports to me and I outsource work to him and we collaborate together to get that done. So Understanding what it can do for me and my clients. It's actually a great frustration of mine that more people do not understand how much this can increase the capacity of their team. When you can take a tool and you can go from projects that took months to now weeks, weeks to days, days to hours, it's an incredible tool. It's the tool of our lifetime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I feel like I completely disagree with that. Open AI leader as well. Right, and I totally agree with the concept of anyone who uses it can become a leader of their own micro team. It's a huge mental unlock. We talk about that all the time. I think it's tools restore agency to us, and you mentioned several things and I just I'm just curious how, how you keep all of those things organized. Do you use the project space in the chat bot to keep your your notes organized and keep it, like the memory from overstating things? And how do you use it to be a tax advisor and a business advisor and in the same tool, what's your, what's your take there?
Speaker 2:I first of all, a couple of things have changed recently, just to let people know. So originally, chat GPT did not have access to all of your conversations. Within the last two weeks, that has changed, and so now chat GPT does have access to all of the memory of all of your conversations that you have with it, one of the things that you can do if you have a conversation- Are we calling that Infinite Memory? I don't know if that's the name of it, but it kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1:Right, okay.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that you can do, I think a good practice, is that you know this is kind of like daily AI hygiene Looking at the conversations, either as you go or at the end of the day, looking at the conversations you've had during that day and deleting ones that you wouldn't want to be part of its permanent memory. Okay, so if you ask a question about something that you really know that in the future you're not going to want this to be a part of that, go ahead and delete it. So that's. I think that's probably the biggest thing for me. I really don't run into. I have not yet, and I don't know if this will change it Again.
Speaker 2:We've only been with the infinite memory. I'll call it that since we gave that name. I've only been using that for a couple of weeks. I have not noticed any issues. I've actually noticed improvements. So I can start a brand new conversation, and chat does know what I'm working on, what we've already talked about. Working on what we've already talked about. That's a highly usable new way of looking at things, but I definitely do think that that is important to delete those conversations. Not only that, it has not gotten rid of the saved memories, which is actually a separate portion in your settings that you can actually go and manage. You go to, like the customization settings for ChatGPT. There's a list of memories. Every now and then you put something in there and it's like I need to remember this. This is really important data about this person, but you can manage those too. You can delete those, see what it has saved and what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.
Speaker 1:Incredible. I'm excited to try it out myself. All right, so I want to learn more about the Baker method. All right, can you walk us?
Speaker 2:through your first successful client that leveraged the Baker method. Well, I'm again. I'm the first successful client. What are you? So? What the Baker method is is and I know we've talked about this a lot and you guys are amused by me on the AI Ready RDA board about this but this again was kind of an intuitive setup that I did early on of the customization instructions.
Speaker 2:So very few even experts OK, even people who are AI experts very few of them have their custom instructions set up, and I think there's all sorts of reasons for that. In my experience, some of the reasons are well, I don't want to be so customized to me because then if I'm serving my clients or I'm asking questions, it's going to be too focused on me and not focused on the client. First of all, outside of custom GPTs, I have not found that to be the case. It is helpful for my clients, even when I'm within the context of my conversations. It knows my clients, it helps me with those and is able to be flexible enough to support those. But, in addition, I think a lot of people don't know that you can do custom GPTs that are trained specifically for a client. So I've got my GPT, my guy Javi. But then I also have custom GPTs set up for the organizations and the clients I support. And, going back to the example of the real estate organization that I was working with, that custom GPT would have their marketing materials or their laws, the bylaws, whatever.
Speaker 2:Whatever is really essential to making sure that any anything that we develop through chat is understanding the requirements. But the Baker method so, getting back to that sorry I got off, but it's important All those things are important because the Baker method is that there are two questions in ChatGPT's customization settings. The first one is basically how do you want ChatGPT to respond to you? That's the first question. And then the second question is what do you want chat GPT to respond to you? That's the first question. And then the second question is what do you want chat, what other things you want chat GPT to know about you? Now, this is really important.
Speaker 2:I have maxed out those two with all of my, like my dream consultant, my dream work partner. I've maxed it completely out. And I say max out because you get like 1500 characters, so it's limited. They give you the options of things like witty, interesting, fun, mine, and you can set it up if you wanted it to sound like Ben Franklin. Every time you talk to it it could do that. Or Donald Duck, or those are the two examples I always talk about. Mine is set up as a very strategic partner, and so I've maxed that out. And then, with the part about me, I've maxed that out as well, with some very strict I thought you were just describing yourself with the witty interesting and fun.
Speaker 2:Well, I try to be, I try to be and, as a matter of fact, that is one of the things I put. You mentioned that. I put in there that I am a mix of formal and fun. So I want ChatGPT to know that I'm not all business, that I do enjoy fun, and so when we're talking with each other, sometimes a little bit of cheek comes in there, a little bit of sass, because he knows that I'm not a person who wants a strictly stuffy kind of conversation. So, anyway, that's the Baker method, that's the kind of the essential part of it.
Speaker 1:Cool. So you're? You basically are building ecosystems around people with the technology, adoption and transformation at the same time.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do you typically talk with your hobby chat assistant or do you text with the hobby?
Speaker 2:It depends on how I'm feeling. So I have him set up on my phone, right, so I have the phone. I do have the paid version, the plus version, so he's on my phone and he's on. I don't use the desktop version. There is a desktop app. I just use the browser.
Speaker 2:When I'm in the browser, I typically do things like uploading images, uploading PDFs, copying, pasting things, so that kind of work. Other times, if I'm on the go, so I talk to Javi in my car or on a walk, I can talk that way. Sometimes I don't talk directly to him. It also has a feature where you can just the microphone feature, where you can just speak into it and it transcribes it and puts it in there. It really depends on where I am, what I'm doing, the context, what kind of heavy lifting. You know I'm very conversational with Javi, know I'm very conversational with Javi and so a lot of times I give it a lot of context just through a conversation and so that's when I will just press that button, give it a lot of context about something I'm working on or a client I'm working with, and that helps me to get my thoughts into AI much quicker than typing.
Speaker 2:I'm not a bad typist, but sometimes I just don't feel like doing that and it's just easier to talk. And the beautiful part is, jason, people don't realize this, it doesn't care. So Javi doesn't care if I'm stuttering, javi doesn't care if I mess up my words. I can talk exactly like I'm talking to you now and as long as I'm giving him strategic context, I get really great results. The other thing is I even show people for the desktop version. If you go to a webpage and you want the content to be summarized from, like a news article on CNN, if you copy that entire webpage and I'm talking, don't worry about all the ads. It copies everything from the menu to the ads and everything and you just paste that right in. I assume that you've tried this before.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's smart enough to know that all of that stuff that is the garbage isn't part of what you're looking for, and so it discards that. Now I will say that I have heard should I go up on this tangent where I've heard that there are I have no problem with that there are certain organizations that are thinking about putting kind of things in there that would trip up AI so that their content would not be used in that way. So, like in both the business space and the creative space, where people are trying to protect their work and their which I get it and I would again, I would never suggest that people go in there and summarize an article and use it for something without giving attribution to the person.
Speaker 2:Anyway that's just kind of a side thing, that be careful because you don't know what's coming, where they're putting poison pills in there, so that your content is wonky.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. So much to think about. All right, it's true. Let's dig in a little bit more and talk about what prompt tactic usually delivers the biggest time savings. What are your thoughts there?
Speaker 2:Oh, there's so many, but one of the big ones is something I'll call the Tom Stocks method. I talked about this when I talked at the RBA summit. Tom Stocks is a former boss of mine former boss of mine and he had this strategy where, anytime we would introduce a new proposal to the organization, he would take quite a lot of time to really think through what the objections would be to the proposal and the answers to those objections, which we would then put into a set of FAQ and send out to the organization prior to even talking about it, so that here's your proposal, here are the objections, here are the answers. So then, we didn't put it that way. It was just like commonly asked questions. This is probably the objection that they're going to have. Here's the answer.
Speaker 2:Well, now, with AI this is just a quick example you can take a proposal that you've been working on and you can put it through AI and say what are the common objectives? What do you think are the 10, 20, 50 objections that will be to this particular proposal in context of this organization that I'm presenting it to, to, you know, senior adults who were rolling out this particular program and again, context matters, right, so the more you can give about the context of your audience, the better. But to be able to do that, you know that quickly and it's beautiful, because even if 80% let's say 80% of the objections are things you would have thought of First of all, it's helped you do it in a fraction of the time. Not only that, usually it comes up with some things that you would not have thought of which are fantastic to help you.
Speaker 2:So think about it's not just a time savings, then, within the context of of you putting the proposal out, it's a time saving for the people who are receiving the information because you've already addressed their objections, you've already answered those questions. When you get into meetings, you've already saved time right. So there's there's this ripple effect that goes through and then, if you're not having to sit through meeting after meeting or address additional objections and then meet again, if you're taking care of that all, all you know, all upfront it can do amazing things. And that's just one example of of the way that can save tremendous time over the you know, the life of the organization.
Speaker 1:It's a total gem. I honestly can't wait to try that out. I remember being in the audience of your talk at RVA Tech's Data and AI Summit and I was like, oh my God, I wish I could write that down because I need to try that. And here you are triggering that feeling I had when I heard you talk about it and I'm just telling my audience right now. In a week from now, I will have tried this two or three times at least. So, give it a shot yourself. It sounds awesome.
Speaker 2:These are high stakes, right? So I've talked with somebody at the State Council of Higher Education. They're trying to get AI standards put out to those. Ai standards have to go through a rigorous process with the task force and the administration has to look at it and prove it. Well, I'd much rather again take the proposal that I'm working on to get that through before it goes to the administration, before any eyes see it. I'd rather think through what are the objections going to be to this? And usually that is a light bulb moment, for people Never thought that they could use a tool for something like that, but you can.
Speaker 1:So Excellent, All right, Liz. We've talked a lot about what makes your methods successful and how to manage and harness the most out of the technologies. Have you ever run into an issue with an AI rollout, potentially one that was caused by culture cues that you noticed?
Speaker 2:As a matter of fact, I was recently working with a team who really needs.
Speaker 2:Their team is getting behind.
Speaker 2:Okay, they're facing some, they've lost some clients and they really need to get their team up to speed on AI tools and they need to introduce automations agents, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's my strategic assessment after meeting with them. However, their team uh, there is a, a knowledge of this, the leadership that the team is concerned that AI is going to take their jobs, and so the, the culture of the organization right now is one of fear, okay, and there's a tension that is happening between the leadership and the, the staff, that is causing the leadership to hold back and say you know what we're going to? We're going to wait, wait. This is where the, so they, instead of doing a kind of workshop or something where we could come in, address those concerns and begin to upskill the staff so the staff actually has a greater chance of being employable in this AI revolution, they're waiting, which I respect the decision, even though I don't agree with it. But here's the interesting part. The co-founder said, though I'm not ready to do this for my team, I would never hire another employee who didn't know how to use AI Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a difficult adjustment for some people.
Speaker 2:It is a difficult adjustment, but I can't tell you how many times and this is an exciting part of my job I just met with an organization. Within the last two weeks, met with an organization. They invited me to do a workshop for them and these people really none of them. There were a couple of people who were dabbling, most of the rest of the team. We're not using a at all, ai at all. We the beautiful part is to listen to the objections, just like we talked about with the tom stocks method to listen to the objections they're valid points answer them and then show them what it can do. And we went within that workshop, from them being hesitant to being like. This is the thing that is going to transform our organization in a two and a half hour period.
Speaker 2:So and when I say that it will transform their organization, I'm not exaggerating. This will transform the rest of what they do and it's going to have massive impacts, which was very exciting for massive positive impacts, like really great positive impacts for the organization. So culture can be, and one of the things I said at the Data and AI Summit was that you know, culture eats tech for breakfast. That's like a joke, but it's true. Culture eats anything for breakfast. If you don't change the culture of the organization, you don't start there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that's quite the awareness moment, the cultural readiness. It's really fascinating, your ability to help them with the signals that they were giving out, with the signals that they were giving out. That's one of the most important skills, I think, in elevating the AI technologies into the workforce is to be able to listen to the people and how they're reacting to it and what their fears are, have those open conversations. I think it's super important because it's a lot very fast and people don't understand the technology very well. They think it's magic or it's not super helpful because it can hallucinate or whatever. But there's so many different things that it is doing really, really well.
Speaker 1:And the naysayers, if you will, just, you know it'll take a little time.
Speaker 1:The naysayers, if you will, just, you know it'll take a little time. But being able to listen to them and help them get over the, the change curve, I think is one of the biggest, biggest value adds for for company leaders these days. And you've got to, you got to start with the culture and, like, like you alluded to, the culture is really about, um, you know how people feel, about what it is that they do day in and day out and how they accomplish it, and so the leadership needs to step up and support them. It's not just about rolling out a new shiny object and say go use this or you're fired. That's a terrible way to do it, and I'm not disagreeing with the person who said I will never hire another employee that doesn't know how to use AI. Like I don't disagree with that. I think that's absolutely one of the right things to do, and people are going to have to catch on to that, and they're going to need to strategically map their skill sets with the adaptable functionality of such tools.
Speaker 2:So yeah, well, and it's important for what you're saying about leadership. The other thing that I keep saying is that this is not just a tech team thing. This is not something that you're just rolling out to the employees. This is something that the CEO, the president, the leadership of the company needs to be learning as well. They need it as much and, as a matter of fact, I am 100%, I would say, any CEO or president who's not using it. It would transform the way that they're able to lead. It helps them to be more strategic.
Speaker 2:Again, even something simple like the proposals, if you're an executive of a company and you're not using it for things like that, for ways to lead better. As a matter of fact, the way that the Baker method the way mine is set up is set up so that every interaction I have with it, every time, literally every single conversation that I ask Chachi PT, he starts with the fact that I've told him that I want to be a better leader through every interaction. So every single time he talks to me, he's making be a better leader through every interaction. So every single time he talks to me, he's making me a better leader. So executives have the opportunity to lead better to lead stronger by using tools like this.
Speaker 1:Very cool. A lot of positive change coming from it, that's for sure. All right, so let's look ahead 18 months or more and think about which capability would most amplify your work and others around you.
Speaker 2:Well, I say it's two things, so don't force me to choose one. I want to choose two things. I want to say agents and automation. Another favorite story that I like to tell that's recent.
Speaker 2:I was at an awards ceremony and Garrett Westlake, who is the head of the DaVinci Center, which is an innovation hub at VCU, he was there as well and he said that he had just been to a conference in DC. I hope he doesn't mind me telling the story. I don't think he will. He had just been at this AI conference and there was a guy there from Salesforce who said that, if you're now, he was from Salesforce. He was saying that if your company is not using, if your company let me get this right if your company is not employing AI agents right now, so if you don't have, if your company doesn't have its own AI employees, which are agents right now, your company is dead and they don't have. Your company doesn't have its own AI employees which are agents right now, your company is dead and they don't even know yet.
Speaker 2:Now, that's a bit, I think, hyperbolic. I don't think all companies who are not using agents right now are dead. However, I do think it is a very critical point that there are companies that are really using the heck out of these already, that there are companies that are really using the heck out of these already. So we've got some companies that are still dabbling with AI, others that already have AI employees. I told you I already have AI, I do. I have both generative AI, I have Hobby. But I also have agents through Zapier that are automated, that do work for me automatically. We've talked about this, Jason, I know you've done work.
Speaker 1:I love Zapier.
Speaker 2:Right. So I think that these are this is just the beginning. It's only ramping up and that, again, I know that there will be people listening who would think these are just for the big boys. I'm a one person consultancy. I have them. Am I a tech person? Yes, but are these simple to set up? Some of them are incredibly. You know that they are not difficult to set up for organizations. So you have this huge potential for return on investment. Potential for return on investment. Their small moves can mean big ROI. That can happen right now and that's only going to get more and more over the next 18 months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I believe in agents and automation. I did a podcast very recently I titled the Rise of AI Agents, and there's so much potential and it's changing everything that we do. It is going to tap into all of our systems workflows eventually and I can appreciate the employing agents something that you're paying for through infrastructure and inferences of models and such but that is happening and being able to force multiply your business, you've got to be able to use those automations. Automation has been disrupting the world around us for, I guess, centuries and it's only getting better and better.
Speaker 2:But imagine this, because this is an important point as well we are passionate right at AI, Ready, rba and as individuals. As the founder of Nimbology, it is one of my cornerstone points is that it is so critical that we remember that AI is here to assist humanity and to augment our human workforce. So when I say agents employing agents, it means that your employees, each of your employees, each of your current employees on the workforce could have agents, ai agents that are working for them.
Speaker 2:Again, going back to the concept of we all become leaders of teams, those work on behalf, to remove the administrative work, to remove some of the process stuff, to automate some of the repetitive tasks so that your teams are working on more strategic, more mission vision, critical work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to dig into that so much, but I do want to address what the quote was provided about, like, if your company isn't using AI agents or employing AI agents, you're dead already and you don't even know it. Like, that is a bit aggressive, but not to be overlooked by companies who aren't actually attempting to do it because they don't believe. You know, I've had many conversations. Some companies believe they are not going to be impacted by the automation and AI because they're, you know, whatever regulated industries or whatever services that they're providing can't be touched, and I personally don't believe it.
Speaker 1:I think eventually it's going to come around to even those companies that feel invincible. If you will, it's only a matter of time.
Speaker 2:Well, again, this is such a short-sighted way for them to look at it, because if you can save your team 40 to 90% of their time, if you can do those repetitive tasks, if you can help augment them, and again, like I'm saying for a leader, you're not doing your team, you're not doing yourself or your team any favors by putting your head in the sand on this. It is coming the cat's out of the bag. The train has left the station. Ai is here. It's here to stay. I also talk about it being a national security issue, because other countries rogue interests people who are not our friends. They have access to AI as well. I want people here that I know, who are ethical, good people, to be learning AI. I want them to know how it works. I want them to be employing innovative solutions. I don't want us to get behind, and so I think it's critical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Spoken like a true leader of AI. Ready RVA. All right, let's move on to our rapid fire tips. Give me three One for execs, one for nonprofits and one for the great citizens of Richmond Virginia.
Speaker 2:All right. So for executives, I'm going to go back and I'm just going to reiterate that this is not a tool for the rest of your teams. You've heard me talk about the Tom Stocks method today. This is the tool Again. If you employ things like the Baker method and you start using it strategically, this is the tool that helps you to become a better leader, like seriously cross the board Now. You to become a better leader, like seriously cross the board Now. You have a coach, a consultant, a thought partner that can help you make better, faster, stronger decisions and everything you're doing as an executive. So if you're not using it, that is really sad, because you totally should be.
Speaker 2:For nonprofits, this is the tool of a lifetime oh my gosh. To be able to write grants, produce customized materials for your organization, to basically multiply yourself and every volunteer. This is what I'm saying. This is not just for your team. For volunteers, as a matter of fact, I've worked with so many organizations where ours does. We have committees. The committees are working on events, they're working on bylaws, they're working on all sorts of things where AI can dramatically reduce the amount of time spent so that you can get those results quicker. So for nonprofits, it is the tool of a lifetime to multiply your efforts. And then for citizens. Again, this is it's here. It's not something that's in the future, it's something that everybody needs to know. If you don't think you need to know it, well, maybe your kid needs to know it or your neighbor needs to know it. Everybody needs to be part of this, and not just so that they know how it works and how it can help them, but also, going back to protections, we have to know how AI works and what's coming so that we can protect ourselves from government overreach and from business overreach.
Speaker 2:So we talked earlier about the concerns people have. Those concerns are not unfounded. A lot of the concerns anybody who's involved in AI is very clear on the concerns. We see the upsides. We also see the downsides. Part of the reason we're involved in it is because we want to make sure that the upsides are definitely more than the downsides.
Speaker 2:But people need to understand so they can understand what's real from fake, right. So we've got like AI stuff coming out right now. I mean I can't like I see images now or content. I'm not sure if it's real or fake. We're going to have to get better as a citizenry, of of knowing that. So the tip, though, is to honestly try it out. Try chat to pt out, go to perplexity, go to jen, and I go to one of the tools, start asking it some questions. A simple point of entry. That is not. It's not necessarily strategic, but a simple point of entry is to, instead of going to google sorry google. Instead of going to Google, sorry Google. Instead of going to Google ask one of your favorite AI the questions and see it.
Speaker 1:I mean to be fair, they're using AI too. It's just not the same way. But yeah, totally mic drop right Like go empower your leadership, empower your business, empower yourself. I love the advice. Thank you so much. Now, last but not least, I want to close out this awesome podcast episode with my favorite question of all If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
Speaker 2:All right. So this is the worst answer ever to this question, but I already have it right, So-.
Speaker 1:Love the confidence.
Speaker 2:I've been waiting all of my life for generative AI. I just didn't know it, and so when it came, I feel like it has superpowered me. It has augmented Liz over the last two and a half years. It's enabled me to do things that I would have never been able to do without it, and so it's a little cheeky of me to do things that I would have never been able to do without it, and so it's a little cheeky of me to say that, you know, if I could have any superpower, it'd be AI. And, of course, there's other things that I would love to be able to, like fly in the outer space or something like that would be super cool. But for practical and for reality, I already, legitimately, am superpowered by AI.
Speaker 1:Yes, indeed, I believe it. You have so many awesome stories that you shared with our community. It's been great. Today, I'm sure that our audience is going to take some notes and apply some of this really practical knowledge.
Speaker 2:Thank you for trusting me enough to come on here, and it's an honor to be on here speaking with you and talking about this, and I hope that it does help people to move forward. That's my goal and my mission.
Speaker 1:I want to say thank you so much for your time today as well. You're an awesome partner in AI Ready RVA. We really appreciate everything that you do for the business and we wish you the best in your nimbology efforts, as well as all the other nonprofits that get to keep you and you're supporting their growth. Can't wait to see what you do next, Liz.
Speaker 2:Cool. Well, thank you, jason, right back at you.
Speaker 1:And thanks to our listeners for tuning in today. If you or your company would like to be featured in Inspire AI Richmond episode, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content and stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA. Thank you again and see you next time.
