AI Is the Next Competitive Advantage with Matt Zembruski | #LeadWithLegacy | Episode 18

AI is not the future—it is already here.

In Episode 18 of the Lead with Legacy™ Podcast, Amanda Chambers and Sloane Lott sit down with AI Agility founder Matt Zembruski to unpack what AI really means for leaders, teams, and organizations today.

Matt shares how his 30+ year journey in business, talent development, and agile leadership led him into AI transformation—and why the biggest opportunity is not replacing people, but empowering them. From moving organizations from “AI aware” to “AI capable,” to helping leaders understand the urgency of adoption, this conversation is both practical and forward-thinking.

If you are a leader wondering where to start, how to prepare your team, or how AI will impact your future, this episode is for you.

🔔 Subscribe for leadership insights, honest conversations, and practical wisdom you can apply immediately.

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Connect with Matt Zembruski:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzembruski/

Learn more at:
https://leadingaiagility.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Lead with Legacy, the official podcast of IOL Global. Here we will explore leadership that outlives titles and trends. Through conversations with faith-based and marketplace leaders, we will discuss integrity, conviction, and purpose. To learn more about us, visit us at iOL Global.com. Hello, welcome to another episode of Lead with Legacy. I am so honored and so blessed to have Matt with us today. Matt is an AI expert. I'm going to let him explain what he does because he is definitely smarter than I am in all of this. And so we're just so honored, Matt, to have you here and learn from you today. We got some good questions for you so that you can you can help all of us kind of move forward in the age of AI. I know it's such a hot topic and everybody's talking about it, but you are in the thick of it. Um and we've actually been doing some trainings with you, which you've been so gracious about. Um we're learning so much from you and your team. So go ahead and introduce yourself to us. Tell us who you are, what you guys are doing, and then we'll get into some deeper questions with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

That sounds great. Thank you so much, Amanda and Sloan, for having me on today. I'm really, really uh blessed and uh and and honored to be on your podcast. This is exciting. Um, yeah, my name is Matt Sembruski. I'm founder and CEO of AI Agility. And our our company's purpose is to really help empower all the individuals out there, especially all the white-collar workers, just like all of us have many of us have had office jobs, corporate jobs, various jobs throughout the years. But if you've ever put your hands on a keyboard and you've been getting paid for that, then you're officially a white-collar worker, or you have been in the past, and your job's gonna change. That's the scary news. But the good news is we're gonna help you stay ahead of that change and uh and really help uh um expand and empower your career going forward. We have founded the company on the belief and the knowing that AI plus people become superhuman in the workplace. And that's really what we've been proving since we launched the company in uh earlier in 2025. And it's a lot of fun working with organizations. What we do essentially is we offer various services, but our primary premier service that we offer is a very hands-on, experiential training workshop style that you you both have participated in. So you've seen it. And uh, having been in the corporate world for 30 plus years and seen a lot of trainings and things, whenever I'm involved with trainings, it's um it's very different than what most people have experienced. And my purpose, especially with AI, is to help meet you where you're at as fast as possible, like ideally in the first few minutes of any workshop, and then help you start to move it forward with your own experiential knowledge and doing, meaning that we would show you examples. Okay, here's what AI is, here's what it isn't, here's an example of what it can do for you. Okay, now let's do that example together. Now you go do it on your own, and we're all opening up the computer together. We're all working on it together, doing, okay, what did you see? What worked, what didn't work. So it's very experiential. And anyway, from uh from an introduction point of view for this podcast, I just wanted to let people know. Very passionate about AI, but not passionate about it just because it's the new coolest technology, but passionate about the way it can help people and the way it can empower and really upskill and support people. Because I'm a believer in leveraging technology to really bring out the best in people and what they can offer for their own careers, for their lives, and for the companies that they're in. Because the biggest asset every company has, whether you have five employees or 5,000, are your people. And I grew up, both my parents were human resources their whole careers. So I grew up with seeing the world through the work through the lens of people. And when you see a company through the lens of people, you can really help the company accelerate when you know how to empower those people with whatever's in front of them. And right now, AI and technology are the biggest uh enablers and um empowering forces that can really supercharge anyone's anyone in the workplace. So I'm really excited to be able to share that with your audience.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Excited for you to share it. So, yeah, like you said, we have been um going through your program. It is phenomenal. Um, the way that it's very hands-on, but it's easy, it's very functional, um, especially for those of us who are not as deep as you and some of our other friends are, um, and we're still learning. And so you're very patient with us. And you so you use a lot of tools in the program that, you know, we get to put our input, we get to try this and try that, and you just kind of walk us through it. And it's really, really been amazing and really beautiful just to learn through all of those things. Alongside somebody who is an expert. And it's not lost on me that you're that your company name is AI Agility, because those are two massive buzzwords right now. So I don't know if you plan that or not, but I'm sure the SEO goes crazy over it. Um, it's like, oh, he's AI and he's agile. What? So yeah, especially like in the project management world, which I know you do some work in too. Um, and that's where I was immersed for a long time. And now I'm kind of not I'm still in it, but um in a little bit different direction. And I think too, like you were saying, the C-suite people have to get the people under them um immersed in all of this and and learning it and knowing it and using it appropriately and using it well and using it smart. And so I love what you guys are doing. Um, it's really amazing, it's really forward thinking, really progressive. So we have a couple questions for you, and we're just gonna chat a little bit. I want people to get to know you a little bit better, and and like you said, the things that you guys are doing and the things you offer. How did your 30-plus year journey in business and talent development lead you into AI transformation work?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah, great question, Amanda. The um I think about serving people all the time. Short story in the beginning, in from 2010 to 2000, the end of 2019, when I was full-time corporate, I also was full-time as an entrepreneur, bringing my mom's homemade energy bar to market, which was an amazing, awesome entrepreneurial story in and of itself. It ended up being right within that decade, which is sort of weird. At the end of the decade, I brought it into some of the Whole Foods and stuff, had success, and you know, made a couple dollars and things like that. But it was an absolutely amazing entrepreneurial experience for me. And uh what I loved most about that is that I was able to help people eat healthier and live healthier and get more energy because I made a product that they could, without thinking about it, just eat it. And it was organic, vegan, you know, gluten-free, all sorts of great stuff. I mean, it really made me into a foodie snob as a result because I scrutinized every single ingredient, uh reduced the ingredients that were in it and made it as applicable to people as possible. But at the end of that decade, um, my business coach and um, you know, my my girlfriend wife and my cousin, who is one of my advisors uh for my company, all said the same thing to me. Okay, it's time for you to shut that company down and move into your agile work that you're doing and serve the world in a different way because I'm passionate about health, fitness, and nutrition. But they said, you know what, you're gonna get a bigger multiplier and being able to help people by moving into what you do in the corporate world, but do that from an entrepreneur's perspective. So at the end of 2019, I made that hard decision. Worked out great with the oncoming pandemic because that would have changed the whole game anyway. I didn't know that was coming, but God did. So I was led in the right direction. And then um, what I did at the beginning of 2020 is I started leaning into the market. And this answers your question. Like, well, you know, how did I get here? I asked all the people in my network on LinkedIn, like all the all the scrum masters and agile coaches, because I have a lot of experience. You mentioned agility, you know, technical project management into uh scrum master, into agile coach, and I've done all these things. So I asked all these people, I said, what's going on for you? And I did this before COVID, but also during COVID, the beginning of it. And uh I found out that there was just a big need in the marketplace to help people with their job searches and with their ability to get employed. Some people were out of work, some people were trying to get promoted, et cetera, et cetera. So again, thinking from a people perspective, I leaned in, and one of the big things that came back was wow, they really need help with this sort of like job placement, job search consulting, and even um, you know, uh job coaching, like career coaching type stuff. So I did a little bit of that over those few years, and then that evolved into AI dropped in a big way in November 2022 with ChatGPT. And having a technology background, I've been aware of AI, but when it dropped to the public world in November 2022, I said, this is very interesting. Let me see how it can be applied to me and to all the other people in my network, right? How can it help people? Because I always think from that perspective. And I said, wow, this can actually help people with all the stuff I was helping them with and more. And it can accelerate all of this. So, what does that look like? And I started experimenting. I reached out to like my brother's a big executive in the hospitality world. I reached out to people in different industries, as well as the agile world and the technical project manager and the project manager world, everybody. I started saying, How are you using AI? How is it helping you? How's it not? And then what I what I realized there quickly is that there was a lot of power in AI that was getting bigger, bigger, faster than anybody could possibly comprehend. And everyone's getting all sort of crazy with all the power in it. But it's like, what can it do for you? What can it do for each of you and me and each of the people listening to this? How can it matter to them to move the needle forward for their like if it's a C-suite executive listening to this right now? How can it help them reach their corporate goals? How can it help them up level their staff, make their culture better, right? In their company, all these different things. If AI can make anything better, if we focus on that, then how do we help people do that? So then I said, okay, I need to create a new company, AI agility, and focus it in on helping people and organizations best adopt AI quickly and practically, so they can get the most benefit out of AI and leverage the benefits of it to really compete better in the marketplace and you know, sustain and grow their careers better, sustain and grow their companies better, because a lot of things are gonna be changing, especially 2026, 2027. This whole shift is happening and it's accelerating. And right now, anyone listening to this is still ahead of the shift. So lean into it, dive into it hard right now, because you'll stay ahead of this big tsunami that's coming. But if you wait till later this year, you're probably gonna be too late. You're gonna be trying to play catch up, and then it's gonna be a wilder race. So there's really a strong sense of urgency that I have burning inside of me to share this with everybody.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Yeah. And I well, I want to speak to that too, because one of the things that I really admire about you, Matt, is that you're very generous, you're very kind. Um, and you want people to know, not because we want people to be scared, but you want people to know because you want them to be prepared before we get to that point. You don't want people to be scared about it. It's not going to replace all of us. Okay. It's going to replace some roles. It already has replaced some roles, and as it should, because it's helpful. For me, a small business owner with a few people on our team, it is one of my team members right now, right? It's helping me to an extent that how you know I would have to have other team members, but it it has not kept me from hiring people because we've hired two people. I don't even think I was gonna hire myself, much less other people, you know. So, but I also have to train and empower and have these conversations with people like you. Um, we had a conversation with Brittany about these things to become smarter and better at them so that we can utilize them and then allow our people to utilize them safely and well. And so one of the things, like I said, I really, really admire about you is that you're so generous in telling people, look, you're gonna have to do this. If you want to be the, you know, moving forward, forward thinking, this is where we're going. And so it's kind of like you got to get on the boat because we're going, we're we're leaving, you know. And but I appreciate that you're honest about it, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on. And we've we've had a unique opportunity and blessing to get to do some work with you and with your team. You have an amazing team for anybody who's who's curious. His team is phenomenal. And so I just kind of wanted to put that out there. Like one of the things that I really, really admire is that you're very kind, very generous, very giving, you're very servant-led. And so this isn't this isn't like, oh, Matt's trying to make a million dollars off AI. It's Matt really wants us all to know what's going on. And so I just I want to throw that out because it's it's just one of the things that I I appreciate about you. Um, I'm gonna let Sloane take us away with a couple of questions. I'll be quiet for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Never, you don't ever have to be quiet. I do want to circle back around um to the answer that you gave Miss Amanda here. You talked about, you said, you know, you became aware of I AI, and so you really started exploring that and what is what does it look like? How can we use it? How can we use it every day? So you became aware and then you became capable, right? And so that's what you're helping to bridge that that gap for people to take them from AI aware to AI capable. But what is the difference in aware and capable?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Yeah, that's um a really good question, and uh something else I think about all the time too, because we can all become aware of things from the news, from the radio, from articles, from whatever. And the awareness is just the first piece. It's like AI is a big thing. Okay, there's and and you may know things that are so awareness is about just the the you know that it's there, you know that maybe there's some good, there's some bad, there's some ugly involved, maybe, maybe it can help you, maybe it's gonna take your job, whatever. There's a lot of unknowns with awareness because awareness is sort of like the first date, right? It's like, okay, you don't really know the person, you have to ask a lot of questions, but it's like awareness is is like walking in the door to the coffee shop on the first date. You haven't sat down yet, you haven't like had a conversation yet, you haven't started to lean into it to understand is this a relationship I want to continue or not want to continue? You know, is the coffee good here, right? All that stuff. Like you haven't you haven't got there yet because you're just literally just walking in the front door. So that's awareness. Awareness is the very beginning. And I think everybody's pretty much aware of AI now. They weren't a couple years ago. Um, and and one of the reasons for that is because AI is just all natural language capable. It's the you don't have to have any technology background. It's it's the great equalizer of everything. And now to go to capable, and that's where I spend my time, so it's a great, great question. And that's why I designed the program and built my company and everything around this, because I genuinely, and I know you both know this, and I appreciate all your kind words, I genuinely want to see as many people become AI capable as possible because AI is here, it's it's like a calculator, like when you got to use a calculator after you had to do everything out by hand in grade school, then you get to use a calculator in eighth grade or whenever that was, and it's like, oh, cool, now I don't have to do all that stuff. I can use a calculator because I already know how to think critically about math, right? I already know that. So now I can use a calculator to help me do a lot of the stuff faster. AI is like that times like a million. So with that said, it's a super powerful thing, but to get people capable, you have to meet them where they're at. And everybody's in a different place. Everybody has a different role, different background, different, you know, uh fear or or uh or excitement about technology, about new things. I have a lot of background in uh change management over the last 20 plus years. So I think about this. I put myself through changes and challenges all the time on purpose, so I can experience what it's like to go through, because we all experience changes and challenges differently. And when I can experience that fully, then I can help other people go through their experience. Like if I'm comfortable speaking to a group of 20 people, someone else may not be comfortable even speaking up on a Zoom call, right? So I can't compare me to other people, but I can know, like, if it's uncomfortable for me to speak to 10,000 people, like in a in a in a baseball stadium or something, you know, maybe that's as uncomfortable as someone else feels just speaking up on a Zoom call, right? So if I challenge myself to do those harder things, then I know how it is to bring myself through that and I can lead by example. So that's the change management aspect of it, because that sort of happens behind the scenes here. So when I think about it, to move somebody from AI aware to AI capable, right, I have to lead them through that change management journey there. So I have to, I have to say, okay, what are the what are the things that matter most to them? Like what keeps them up at night right now? Are they worried about losing their job? What are the most important aspects of their job? How do they deliver value for their job? And this is different for every person, right? So I design a program that could, it has a lot of like fill in the blanks almost. So we do exercises together, but you're filling in the blanks with your own situation. And we do surveys in advance and after and all these things. So we can really, I want every individual going through every program that we have to get the maximum that they can out of it. It's not just like, oh, this is how you do your ABCs, whatever. It's more of like, hey, here's a little bit of knowledge, but now here's an exercise you can apply to where you're at right now, so you can start to be more capable. And then that builds a lot of stuff in there. So that's like the the longer answer to your question AI aware to AI capable. Built into that is the change management journey that no one really thinks about unless you're a change management professional. But it's important to get people to move from where they are now, just aware, to move to be confident and capable. And I do that through our proprietary programs and so forth to uh to do that. Because at the end of it, you know, if you wave a magic wand, it's like, wow, now all these people are capable. Now they all feel more confident in their jobs. Now they're embracing AI, now they're going faster, their companies are going faster. They're at less risk for being let go, and they're there are a higher chance of getting promoted, right? All these things happen, but you have to like really get into the uh the active use and practice of it. So that's why that's very it's that's why it's a very experiential program.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

And it is, and we have benefited from that. I like the way you use different things like Menti. You know, you ask questions and and you get to anonymously say one of the other days, uh you ask, what are you using it for? And so people put in different things. And then you went to the next exercise and you said, the majority of you said this. So I'm gonna show you how to do it. We're gonna do a prompt and we're gonna, and and it was really great uh to do that. One of the things that Miss Amanda and I believe is that there's enough success for everyone, right? And so you through this change management journey, you're teaching other people how to be successful, right? And it doesn't take away from your success if I'm successful, right? We're all benefiting, we're all in this uh together, and we're made for community. So I I really think it's the human touch, right? And and humans, we have to, we're in charge of the AI, right? It can't do it without it, but it really humanizes it for the learner and for the professional. And I just really appreciate you choosing to take up a servant role in this sphere. I think it's I think it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Thank you so much. I really appreciate uh everything that you're saying, Swan. I love working with um with both of you and with everybody because there's so much. I'll share another another uh comment about this. AI, we're talking about going from awareness to capable, right? Which is great. That's sort of like your your first part of the journey, your first bite of the apple. Once you get going on that, though, the next thing I want people to think about, and this applies to C-suite executives with their companies too, is whatever your goals are for 2026, they need to be bigger. And I don't want to, I don't say that to scare you, but I say that to empower you to say, what if your goals could be twice as big, three times as big, 10 times as big for the next year? And what if AI could get you there with the same or less effort than you were planning to put in to get to your existing goal? Because that is a true statement, and you just need to know how to get there, how to like work together with AI to make that happen. Because what's happening is there's there's 12 and 13-year-olds out there with no experience, and they're creating million-dollar companies and even bigger than that, like $100 million companies, because they're leaning into it, they're leveraging this AI superpower to move them toward very big goals. And there's gonna be a lot of things happening in the small to medium business world, even with large enterprise. Large enterprise, large enterprises are coming down their quantities and their number of employees, which unfortunately means a lot of layoffs. So small to medium companies have hiring freezes or the slow down they're they're hiring in general, and they're gonna be, they're gonna be either staying there or going up once they start to embrace AI and start to work with AI.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is you know, I think we're gonna see this stagnation, which we're already seeing. But then I think we're gonna come back to a little bit more even keel because these companies are going to want and need the people who know how to do this. And so I think that there's like this this interim. It's like, okay, who's gonna get on the bow and who's gonna learn how to do It and then we can employ those people to come and do it because, in my opinion, and I could be wrong because I am not an expert, but I don't think that we're going to get away from having humans working working within these systems. I think that there has to be a human element to it. We need a human element to it. It's just going to be a matter more. And I know you've talked about this as well. How well are we going to adapt? How well are we going to learn and become a part of this and it be the use case that we're using on a regular basis? And I just want to go back to what you said about the calculator. I was terrible at math. I'm still terrible at math. I am so old that I was, I was one of the kids actually, that the teacher was like, you're not going to have a way to do this, you know? And I do, and thank God that I do. I'm so grateful. My dad is so grateful because we struggled with math my whole life. Now, if you need me to write you a paper or do any kind of literature grammar for you, I'm your girl, but math is not it for me. So when you put it in that perspective for me, I'm like, I'm all in. Give me the calculator, I can do it. Because, you know, without the cat, and I think that's the thing too, is like it can be really scary, right? Because there's all this stuff coming at us. There's all this news and information, and oh, what if it takes over the world and all this? And if when you think of it in the perspective of when you're old like me and there wasn't, you didn't have the calculator all the time, right? Or you weren't allowed to use it, and now we have it, you know, on our phone and we can use it all the time. I don't think it's made me any more any less capable. It's just been a tool that I can use to get things done faster. And so just like that calculator on my phone that I get to keep in my pocket or my my purse, this is gonna be the catalyst. It's just the next thing that we can use, and we have to learn how to use it. It doesn't have to be scary. It is a little bit, right? We're being honest, it's a little bit scary, it's a little bit overwhelming. Sometimes I think the overwhelm for me comes like when am I gonna find the time to figure out more about it? Because I'm pretty good at at the base, we use a lot of AI. And I think too, I think people don't realize how integrated I AI is into so many things that we've been using for a while. But with the work that we do with the the marketing, we manage multiple, I think seven or eight YouTube channels now. And even with my executive coaching that I do, we're doing, you know, courses, online courses, things like that. There is not a single piece of that that we're not using some kind of AI. This podcast that we're doing right now, we were talking about beforehand, we're using an AI founded program to do this. That when we get done, most all of the edit uh the editing and things that we need and the captions and all that, they all come up for us automatically. So it's not a matter of, oh, we're so scared of it. It's how do we figure out how to use it? And there's a little bit of a learning curve, but I think everybody, not well, I can't say everybody, but I think there's a so many good-hearted, genuine people like you and your team who want people to be so aware and so able to learn it and learn it well going forward and to realize that it's the it's the next calculator, right? It's it's a privilege that we get to do this. Um so that being said, across industries and organizations, which you talked a little bit about this, what separates companies that are successfully adopting the AI and those that are really struggling to adopt it?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, what separates them? So the the first thing is is um is leadership makes the decision. So, you know, small to medium businesses, even large enterprise, same thing. Things come down, decisions to use AI come down from the top. Number one, as you said, Amanda, a minute ago, everybody's using AI in some way, even if you're in the workplace. You know, I I work with I I have some friends who are professional like software developers. And this is like two years ago, you know, I'd ask them, Oh, are you guys using AI? Oh no, our company isn't. I was like, well, do you actually use AI in your job, you know, for your work? And he's then they're like, Oh, yeah, of course I do. I use ChatGPT on the side, it helps me do my coding and all the stuff. And then I do this stuff here. So everybody's using AI. Why? Because it's so powerful, it's so helpful. It's like, it's like having people who are hired to do math at your company and saying, Well, we're gonna, we don't have a calculator policy yet, so we're not allowing any people to use calculators. People are still gonna use calculators because they're there, they can do their job better, it's more accurate, it's easier, right? So that's what's happening with AI. So I say that because what separates them is leadership making the decision to lean into this and figure out how they start to employ their staff with the benefits of AI. And employee might be the wrong word, how they start to empower their staff with the benefits of AI. So this starts with like an AI governance and use policy, and doesn't matter what the size of the company is, you need to think this through. Because until you do, right now it's the Wild West in your organization. If you're listening to this, people are using AI in whatever way they want. My brother's in the hotel industry, I mentioned, um, he's told me examples of people where a lot of hotel properties don't have AI policies in place, right? Maybe a small boutique hotel. But guess what? The a lot of the customer service or guest service uh people, they're using AI and it's helping them a ton because it helps them troubleshoot. If you're new and you're trying to check somebody in, you don't know how to use the check-in software that that particular hotel uses. Guess what? Chat GPT can help you solve that problem before the next guest walks in the door. That's amazing. But if you're not leading this from leadership's perspective and getting organized about this, which means number one, saying we're gonna leverage AI, we're gonna help our company in any way we can with AI. And this is the important part that's a differentiator between my company and others, is we're gonna empower our staff with AI. Right? We're not just gonna do AI better because we're a company and we're gonna grow and make more money together or whatever. We're gonna empower our staff so our staff can be more capable and they can get more done with higher quality and less stress. These are people, right? We're all people. We have emotions, right? We don't want to get burned out. We're not bringing AI in and AI systems in and trying to like, you know, wave a magic wand. Well, AI's here now, so we don't need the people. That's what a lot of the news media is saying. And that's just it's not black and white like that. There's there's AI investments you make. But so to make my answer, my long answer shorter, it's leadership making the decision to invest in their people so the people can become empowered with AI, so the people can upskill and they can improve their company over time. So that's where it is. It really starts with leadership. The companies that don't get in front of this right now, which are most of them, they're all starting to dabble a little bit, but we're still a little early. Within a few months, we're probably gonna be at the middle, and then we're gonna quickly be late for the companies that, you know, into the late adopters. It's all gonna come on really, really fast. Yeah. But the companies who are are uh getting ahead of it right now, they're starting to move faster. Like one program we did last year for um 65 individuals went through, and this is a company that does about $100 million in annual sales, and and a company in Massachusetts, but 65 of their individuals went through our program. And in one month, two hours a week or four weeks with our core program, we're able, we were able to measure an annual ROI return from that training of $1.26 million. So that was just eight hours of workshop plus support inside and outside of it. And then we did that. And that just shows you how fast things can come on with a company. That was a company that leaned into it. They said their leadership said, we need to do more with AI. Let's work with AI agility, let's let's get some help for our staff and let's see what that can do. And because I have an engineering background, I was like, well, let's measure our success. I don't want to just say, hey, great, now we're all doing AI, we're all doing better. What does that mean? Are you saving time? Is it improving your quality? Has it lowered your stress? And we watched all those factors and we saw what mattered. And I was brought to tears with some of the examples that people had at the end because it's just literally people knowing that they have this one woman who was very shy in the beginning. At the end, she shared, I now know how I have this amazing superpower at my fingertips that I wasn't aware of before. And it's gonna change everything about the way that I do my work.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

And for someone, it's like, whoo! Such a great answer, and so true, too, because okay, just let's take, for example, your program, it's eight hours, this particular one that we're talking about. And I have no doubt there's gonna be more to follow that. But um as a leader, leaders, regardless of the level, right, they may look at that and go, uh, I can't send 65 of my employees through eight hours of training and pay them for the training and they're not working. But the advantage that's gonna come out on the other side of that is just leaps and bounds because you do not have a choice but to invest in this right now. It's an investment that if if you as a leader in your company do not lean into this and employ some some people like AI Agility to assist you in learning and allowing your team to learn these systems and learn them well, that you have to know how to use them because, like you said, people are gonna use them anyways, people are gonna use the calculator anyways. And if you're using it wrong, that's when we start to get into some trouble when we're not governing it, when we're not using it well. Um, and so it's not a scare tactic, but it is important that we do the things that we need to do to learn how to use these programs and use them well and effectively. And it's so helpful. Like I said, I there, I don't know that there's a single operation that we are doing in IOL right now that we are not using some kind of AI. Is it scary? It's a little scary. Um, do we have to learn a lot of stuff? Yeah, and there's times when with both Sloan and Amy and um Dr. Chambers, I have to say, I need you to stop and watch this video and learn how to use this. Um, like we're going through your program now. We have to learn how to do these things and do them well because we don't even know like the very tiniest part of what all these systems are able to do, and we need to use them safely and effectively. So we're so grateful to you and your team and all that you're doing for us and for everyone else, too, because you are you are very kind in this in in using your intelligence to teach us about this artificial intelligence and then not scare people about it, but to train them how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

For leaders that are listening, uh that they're feeling overwhelmed about this. Where should they start?

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yeah, so they they can start in a few different ways. Number one, they can start by getting on my calendar. I'm happy to have a conversation with them, right? Like 30 minutes, let's block it on the calendar, let's have a conversation so I can understand where they're overwhelmed, where they what what they what they know, don't know about AI, what what AI would need to do for them, for them to want to do something with it now, right? For them to make a m a move now. So getting on my calendar is one. I'm happy to talk with anybody one-on-one, especially leaders, because they have a lot of influence in their organizations. And I know if once a leader is is committed, they unlock the opportunity for their whole organization to benefit. Another way is, and a number of leaders have chosen to do this, is just participate in one of our upcoming uh programs. We have our next one in June, and this would be going through our core AI accelerator program two hours a week for four weeks. And this this would be a group program if they choose to just go in themselves. So it's not customized just for them or their company, it's customized for the whole group because we customize every program that we do for the audience for whoever is part of it. So this one will go across industries, et cetera. The other way they can do it, and this is the way the uh the company I mentioned as an example earlier chose to do. They said, wow, we we like we like Matt and what he's doing with AI agility. This looks really cool. And uh, we want to do something like this. So, why don't, Matt, why don't you design a program for our company that would be the same thing? Maybe it's 90 minutes a week, maybe it's two hours a week, whatever, for four weeks. We've done them in even one hour a week for four weeks for like in special situations. And they all have different goals and so forth. But the bottom line is that's another way for them to engage. Like, listen, Matt, why don't why don't you do a program for 20 of our organizational leaders or 20 of our operational managers, or even for this particular business unit, Matt, let's pilot it for this business unit of this company. We've done that too, and help us in that particular area. So different ways to engage, whether it's hopping on a meeting with me, um, jumping into our next program as a one person or two or three people with your team, or whether it's Matt, why don't we talk about you know what it would what it would involve to do a custom program for our company, whether that's for 20 people or whether that's for 200, we can do all of that. It depends on how much they're they're ready to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

You know, those are easy first steps in a world that is so overwhelming with a topic that is so overwhelming, just reach out to Matt. He's you know, and come up with a plan. That first step isn't hard.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

So I I think that's yeah, just to explain to everybody too, that's how so I just found like I saw you on LinkedIn, though I was like, who's this guy? And he's like doing a thing, and you had videos and all this, and I was watching your videos, and so I just sent you a message. I was like, hey Matt, so we have our IOL Global has strategic partners, and we are strategic partners with Corbo Tech, um, who are very, very forward thinking. Our team is working very closely with inside that corporation to do quite a few things. Benjamin Rabeski, who is the CEO and founder of that company, is very AI forward, as you well know. And I was like, this guy, Matt, and this guy, Ben, they need to get together because they're gonna be able to talk for like 400 hours about all the AI stuff. And so it was really just me just coming across you and then putting you two together, and then us having some conversations, um, and then our team kind of working with your team and everything. And so that's it just kind of organically flowed together. Um, and it was really just like I saw Matt and Matt's really, really approachable. Um he's you know, he's one of those C level that you can just, hey, I want to talk to you. And he's like, Okay, let's talk. Um, and so it's been really great, and I'm really honored um that we've gotten connected, that God kind of brought that path together, and that now we're all in like this big group doing all these things together, and it's really fun. Um, we have two questions we ask on this podcast. We asked it to everybody. I'm gonna ask you the first one. I'm gonna let Sloan um bring us up on the tail end with the last one. Who is a leader that deeply influenced your life and what did they teach you?

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Oh wow. That would have been a good one to prepare for. I'm gonna say two people. All right. So first one that comes to mind is my mom, and the second one is my dad. And I'm gonna tell you why. Okay. Number one, parents are leaders, whether they know it or not. And uh, as I mentioned, I grew up with seeing everything in the lens of people and seeing people being happy and happiness being a value that like we want we want more people to be happy. So, what does that mean? So I got to see my parents. My mom, um, my mom had passed similar to your your mom, Amanda. I'd heard your story, and my mom, same thing, uh late 20 teens, she had passed as well. But growing up, my mom um taught me that you know, she embodied unconditional love and what that meant. No matter what, everybody was accepted. My house was the one house on the street where, and I remember this vividly, a lot of examples, where anybody could come into our house, didn't matter if you were in trouble with the law, you were in trouble with your parents, you're in trouble with whatever, or you're just having a good day, bad day, you could come into our house, you'd be accepted, you'd be cared for and you know, embraced with open arms. My mom's Sicilian, half-sicilian, so it's always hugging, right? So she taught me how to hug and all this. And so I learned unconditional love and acceptance for my mom as a leader, my mom being a leader, and that's helped me embody that as a leader. And my dad from a corporate, both my parents were human resources, their careers, but my dad had it in a bigger way. He worked at a large uh defense contracting company. So he was involved with literally hiring and laying off just thousands and thousands of people, like every year, every couple of years. It's just, I mean, you just imagine um all this. I mean, they were building nuclear submarines and things like this. There's just tens of thousands of workers all the time, and they get a new contract, they hire people, then they they lose the contract, they lose people, and back and forth. My dad taught me a lot of what I shared here in the ethos of my answers. And, you know, how do you um how do you lead people to their better life? Like, what does that mean for them? So, like when I mentioned my dad helped hire, like when you get hired and you hire a thousand people, they're all great. Now I'm gonna have a job, now I can get paid, I can feed my family. But what about when you lay off a thousand people? What do you do there? So, what my dad did, he showed me through leadership, is that hey, and he partnered with my mom on some of this, which was really cool because they didn't work at the same place at the same time. But they they created a uh, I forgot what they called it, but it was like a it was like a retraining or replacement like workshops and essentially like almost like a job placement type center experience because when people got out of that, and a lot of these people um were from various walks of life, military, non-military, et cetera, um maybe they didn't have a lot of experience in doing the job search because they were younger and they had just gotten laid off for the first time ever. So he would help them, you know, they would help them like better write their resumes, lean into theirs their strengths, and how can they be more confident with the interviews, with the job search, with all this stuff? So they helped with all of that. And so that's why that's always been near and dear to my heart. All that is service-based, right? It's all service-based. How do you serve the community? Like I remember a girl but woman now who was walking down the street. She went to a different private school. I went to public school, but she went to private school. I remember she was walking down the street, and it was in the winter in New England, and she slipped on the ice and she had heels on or whatever. She was probably 16 at the time, and she scraped her knee up, and she was just absolutely a wreck. And it happened right outside our house. So she came into our house. My mom helped her out and everything, calmed her down. She was very emotional. She was going to miss her bus, and she had to get a ride to school. And I forgot who got her to school. But that example, like that, from the personal example, showing my mom's leadership in the house, seeing how my mom made that situation better for her, and then seeing how my mom and dad made that situation of people losing their jobs better for them and empowering them through working with the whole, the, the whole human, holistic human, right? The emotions, the confidence, the lack of confidence, right? The skills, the non-skills. Like, how do you help somebody become better? And they both led me through their example, they led me to do the same thing throughout my career.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

That is such a beautiful story, like on so many levels, because not only I I can see just the small amount that I've gotten to know you, Matt, and I could see that in all of you. And the fact that they worked together, which is is kind of rare nowadays, but that they work together to help masses of people in a really trying time in their life. We can we could take a lot of of initiative from that and and a lot of learning from that. Um I think, you know, there it I think there's a we'll call it a trend because it's you know the trendy word, but I think we're coming back to those principles of serving other people, and that there is real substantial value in that, right? There's value for you, there's value for me, there's value for Sloan when we're serving. And I don't, it just keeps coming back to this as a total God thing, but that's what really when I opened this company, God was telling me serve God and serve people however we need to do it. It doesn't always look like a paycheck, but he's gonna provide regardless. Um, and standing on that servitude and that servant leadership is so important. And what a beautiful tribute to your mom and dad. That's in because you are a beautiful tribute to them. Now look at you, and like I said earlier, you're so generous and so kind, and you have just such a good heart, and you want people to know and learn and be better, and it just shines through you. Um, and and that's not lip service. It's true. There's some people I don't I don't necessarily want to do a lot of stuff with. I don't want to collaborate a lot because we're on a different plane, right? And and we're not trying to to, you know, we there's not any of us out there, especially if us running businesses that aren't trying to make money. We've got to make some money, right? We want to make money because we want to be able to, I want to make money so I can pay Sloan because I need to keep her around. You need to pay Manny so you can keep her around. But there's a different level to it, right? My purpose and your purpose is to serve the people around us to the best of our ability, and that doesn't always look like a paycheck. So that was really beautiful. Sloan's got the last question for you.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

All right, Matt, when you think about your legacy, what do you want to leave? Uh what do you want to leave behind? Your work, your life, your leadership? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah, that's a that's another really good question. And it's funny, I think about this a lot too. I don't know what my answer fully is, but I'll give you my best answer. When I was um right out of college, my first job as an engineer in the marketing department for a A large company or whatever, there was an article that somehow got this before the internet is an article that was like thrown on my desk from some magazine, and uh and it rocked my world. I think I was 22. It was literally probably my first year working, like full-time as an adult. And uh, and the title of the article, and I don't know if it was in Entrepreneur Magazine or Success Magazine, or if it was in another business magazine, but the title of the article was what do you want to be remembered for? And as a 22-year-old kid, I was like, holy cow, that's actually a really good question. And that's essentially what you're asking here. So I think about this a lot, and that's why, from a service perspective, what do I want to be remembered for? What's my legacy? For me, it's not about ego, it's not about me, it's not about me being remembered, it's about me creating something that lives beyond me, that helps many, many people in the world bring out their highest and best in their lives. Um and what I mean by that is, uh, and I've done this in different ways, now I'm doing it with AI, but to be able to, when you when you can empower somebody to have a better life, even if you just share like one thing with them and then they move on, and like three years later, they're literally like their life is 10 times better than they ever imagined it could be. It's like it's like a grade school teacher, right? You're a grade school teacher and you make a difference in someone's life. We all had those teachers. And then you may never talk to that teacher again, but 20 years later, you remember that teacher, and what that teacher said to you or how they supported you that year, made a difference in your life's trajectory. So I guess that's my longer way of answering that I want to be um not remembering myself or my ego or my company, but I want I want my impact to be that um that sort of redirectional arc, but helping people bring out their highest and best through what I've done with my service and and make that part of the way that they operate. So they're really they're committed to their own personal professional growth. But it it um I've somehow made that easier for them to be better, to be better as a parent, to be better as an employee, to be better in all their different roles. I've somehow, through my service, made it easier for people to uh like right now, like embrace AI, adopt AI. AI is not something to be feared, it's something to plug into who you are in your own unique way to bring out your highest and best in service so you can serve others. So right now, I'd say my legacy is to leverage, help people leverage technology so they can bring out their highest and best in their service to the world. And it just unlocks their potential.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

Fantastic answer. We kind of put you on the spot. Made you have a therapy session today.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

That was a tricky one. It's getting hot in here.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Woo! It does a little bit, right? You did really, really great though. Wonderful answers, truthful answers, really, really honest and humble answers. And I love that. And I I you know what, Matt, I have no doubt that not only have you already met that goal, you will continue to meet that and exceed that goal. And such an honor for us to know you. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for giving of your time. I know time is precious, and especially for all you guys who are like 100 miles an hour with all this AI, and it's it's a lot. And I know you guys are putting in so much work and so many hours trying to because you've got to be 10 steps ahead of us to be able to teach us how to do it. And that's a lot. Um, there's a lot on all your shoulders. And so we are praying for you guys. We're praying for your company. Um, and you know, that you'll be blessed. I hope, I hope that you are able to take some stuff away from this. And I hope others that are listening can take away from it. Um, real quick before we wrap up, we're gonna put all of your stuff. Um, when we post all of this everywhere, all of your information will be there. Um, but Matt is on LinkedIn, he's very active there. Um, for those of you who are on LinkedIn, and if you're not, you should get on LinkedIn. That was just a plug, that was free. But also, he has his website. Um, you can contact him there, his team, and he is are all very, very responsive and and quick to get back to you. Um, Sloan and I have had a fabulous time working with you guys, and we hope we can continue to collaborate in the future. And um, so yeah, thanks a lot for being on.

unknown 48:38

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for for having me on. I'm honored to be here. Very excited to help empower the world with AI.

SPEAKER_02 48:47

We're excited, and thank you for helping us and for helping our business to to be able to be forward thinking and learning and and learning the things that we need to so that we can help other people succeed too. So we appreciate you, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Yeah, I love working with you both. Looking forward to more. Lots more to come.

SPEAKER_03 49:03

Thank you.