How Can You Overcome Your Fear of AI and Embrace Its Potential?

In this episode of "Chat with Matt: Conversations that Count," Natalie welcomes Matt Zembruski, Founder and CEO of AI Agility. They discuss overcoming fear of AI, building AI literacy, and how Matt’s hands-on AI Professional Certification Training Program helps organizations achieve measurable ROI. Matt shares real-world success stories, including generating $1.26 million in business value at Spencer Technologies. The episode highlights how embracing AI can make professionals more efficient and irreplaceable.

What you'll hear:

• Overcoming fear and building confidence in using artificial intelligence (AI).
• The significance of AI literacy and practicing AI in a safe environment.
• Enhancing efficiency and irreplaceability for employees and business owners through AI.
• The transformative impact of AI on job roles and business operations.
• Measuring return on investment (ROI) in AI training programs.
• Common mistakes companies make in adopting AI, such as inaction and overthinking.
• The importance of structured training and ongoing support for AI adoption.
• The role of AI in personal and professional growth, including its potential to improve work-life balance.
• The necessity of investing in skills and tools to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
• The potential for AI to serve as an equalizer across different backgrounds and industries.

 Connect with Matt on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Get my FREE Financial Check-up Guide

Connect with me on:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn

Transcript

1:00:00

(Upbeat Music) Hey friends, welcome back to Chat With Matt, conversations that count, where we talk real life, real money, and real strategies to build wealth without worry. Today's episode is brought to you by Casa de Confidence Productions. Julie and Dan Collins are a powerhouse team making podcasters like myself look and sound better every single day. If you've ever been curious about podcasting, I encourage you to visit their website, Casa de Confidence.website, the link will also be in the show notes, but you can learn more and connect with them to see if their team is a fit for you. Today, we are diving into AI, and I am so excited about this conversation and this guest. We're talking business transformation and what it actually takes to build teams that win in a rapidly evolving market. Let's start first with our money tip of the day. Don't confuse cost with capacity. Investments that expand your ability to perform, produce, and compete are not expenses. They're accelerators. In a way, they're assets. The fastest growing businesses in 2025, they're not the ones that are cutting everything. They're the ones strategically investing in skills, systems, and tools that multiply output. So before you ask what something costs, ask what it will cost you not to level up. And that's what we're gonna be talking in today. So this is exactly what Matt Zimbroski is here to talk to me about today. This is a game changer for any organization that wants to lead and not lag. So let me tell you a little bit about Matt. He's the founder and CEO of AI Agility, the corporate AI training company that's rewriting the rules on how organizations adopt artificial intelligence. With 30 plus years in technology and business transformation, he helps companies transform their teams into AI powered competitive advantages. His signature offering is the AI Professional Certification Training Program, a four week hands-on intensive that delivers measurable ROI and not just theory. And let me also say this, I happen to currently be participating in this AI Professional Certification Training Program. And before I hit record today, we were talking a little bit about how it goes. I'm about halfway through the class and I am just blown away and amazed at the content that this class entails. I thought I used AI pretty well for what I do. And my mind is blown at the possibilities that are out there for me. So Matt, welcome to the show. I'm excited to talk about this topic with my listeners today. Thank you, Natalie. Very honored to be here. Awesome, awesome. Well, I do have some questions that we're gonna go through, Matt, and talk about what you do and some of the mistakes people can make. But the first question I wanna start off with that I think has probably been asked of you a million times, there is a bit of fear around AI for people to step into it and really embrace it. What, for somebody that's maybe afraid to really step in and start using it, what advice would you give them on how to start or how they can build confidence in using it as the tool that it is and it's continuing to become? Yeah, I get asked that question all the time, Natalie, to write. And it's a very, very good question because I'm very conscious. Both my parents were human resources their whole careers, 30 plus years. So I think of the world through people. I think of what people are seeing. And I have a tech background. I've been playing with AI for years, very comfortable with it. I've shared it with a lot of people, but I know most people are not like that. So when I'm talking with someone and they're not moving with AI or they're a business leader and they're not doing it, I ask myself the same question, why are they not doing it yet? And what it really gets to is two parts. Number one is basic AI literacy. Like what is AI? What can it do to what can it not do? Like basic education about it in a very comfortable, safe way. I mean, it's always out there in the news, the media. It's so overgeneralized the term now. It's really hard to really understand what AI is until you stop work with someone like me or another person who's been working with AI a lot. And then just get used to it a little bit, get familiar with it. So the first part is education. The second part is starting to practice with it yourself in a safe way. This gives you over the fear. And by a safe way, I think of like, when you as a little kid growing up, you're playing in the sandbox with a friend and you're just, you're scooping up dirt and you're making piles and doing all sorts of stuff. It's free, it's fun. It doesn't matter all the same, gets wiped away at the end of the day and reset. So it's a fun environment. What you want is you want a safe space where you can practice. So learn a little bit about it and then apply it to where you're at right now, but do it in a safe way where it doesn't matter. If you just learned something and it doesn't do anything, then that's fine. That's what I find is the best way for people to start to get engaged, get over the fear, because they move very fast from the fear to a basic understanding to an experiential understanding and then to the aha moment of like, holy cow, I could use it for this, like in the shower next day. It's like, whoa, I've been stressing about this. This is gonna take me five hours to do. I have to do it on Friday for the end of the week. Well, I can do this at AI in like 20 minutes. This is gonna be great. And then you get excited about the efficiencies and it just helps you level up your game with business or as an employee, whatever you're doing. Yeah, and wouldn't you say, Matt, exactly to that last point you just said, for people who have a fear of AI replacing them, to learn AI, would you agree that that actually puts you at a level where you could become irreplaceable in that you know how to use that in your role for your company or in a way that you have the ability to start your own business, if that's something you have an interest in based on your experience and then using an AI tool to just take it to the next level? Yeah, that's absolutely critical for everybody right now. I know that I know the news media, it's all about AI replacing jobs and jobs going away and all these things. In reality, jobs are not going away. They're all being transformed. Like everybody in this job right now is being transformed, whether you're a CEO or an entry level employer or anywhere in any organization. Entrepreneurs, our roles are constantly being changed and transformed as well. The pace of change and transformation is up super high now. AI is at the center of this storm of opportunity and you need to lean into it is how you get better with it. And it's not gonna replace you if you're starting to get used to it. You start to go play in a sandbox, whether you get used to it, start to get your AI skills, get your feet on the ground with it and start to apply it even in small little steps, even if it's something simple like, oh, I'm just gonna see if I can use it to help me write a better email to my friend, right? Something simple that doesn't really matter. And then see what AI does and say, oh, I like that, I don't like that. All right, maybe I can use it for this, that you start to get used to it. It's like anything else. It's like learning a language. It's like dating, you're gonna date before you get married. You have to take time with it. You have to invest some of your time, energy, your focus and attention. And then as you do that, yes, that equips you for the future of work. It helps you future-proof your career. It adds tremendous value to the organization you're in, whether you're running your own business or whether you're an employee. AI skills are the number one thing worldwide right now that are the most value. And again, it applies to every role. It doesn't matter what your role is. Everybody can be using more AI than they're using now, even if you think you're an expert already. Everybody can be using more AI in more effective ways. You just wanna lean into it. How can I better partner with AI? And that's what I focus on part of my mantra that I bring to all my courses is humans plus AI can become super humans in the workplace. And then everybody wins. Everybody rises up with that. If you're the only way you're gonna lose in this new economy is if you put your head in the sand and you don't do anything. You're like, oh my goodness, AI is gonna take my job and you're afraid. If you don't do anything and you don't adapt at all, you are gonna get run over by this new wave of change. But you have an opportunity. And what's great about this, which I love, is AI is a great equalizer. Doesn't matter what your background is, what your educational level is, what country you're from, what your culture is, anything. Everybody's equal when it comes to AI. And you already, everybody listening already has a role. Hopefully they have a job. If they're in job search, it can help them accelerate the job search. But as you mentioned in the very beginning when you kicked out the podcast, AI is really the great accelerator. If you're focused and you wanna grow in a certain direction personally and professionally, you sprinkle AI in and it makes you a better employee, makes you a better spouse, parent. There's so many ways that you can leverage whoever's AI to bring out more of your good and more of what you wanna do for service. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for taking the time to go through that. Because I think when people listen to AI, they're gonna be like, oh, what's Natalie talking about AI this week? And so I wanna have that, I wanted to lead with that conversation to kind of open people's minds to the other things we're gonna talk about as well. But you said something that I think was really important. You said it starts with the education. And that's what I talk about in financial services too. I start with the education because when people know better, they do better. And so then let's start taking small steps in your finances before we start taking the big steps and really tackling those huge goals that you have long-term that are going to take longer to get to. It's the same thing with AI. Start small, have fun with it, see what's actually possible. And then that's gonna identify for you, this is the direction I wanna go. This is where this fits for me. And it opens all kinds of doors and opportunities for you. So thanks for taking the time to go there. And I will say too, in your personal life, you said it makes you a better mom, a better dad, a better partner, because you can use it in so many ways. Now, I've seen some posts on social media where people are like using it for their counsel or telling them what to do in certain. I don't necessarily recommend that. You're not talking to a human and AI does not have emotions. What I will say though, is as a caretaker for my mom with dementia, like when you're just stepping into this, and I've been in a caretaker role now for three years, a little over three years, and there's still, as her disease advances, there's new questions, new things we're seeing. And sometimes it's hard to know exactly where to go that you're gonna get information that you can trust. And so I have started starting with chat. ChatGPT is my regular everyday buddy that I'll ask the simple questions. And through Matt's course, and we'll talk a little bit more about it, there are so many incredible tools that I'm gonna use different things for different projects and things going forward. But I'll go to chat and say, where can I get some great information on this particular aspect of dementia? To better understand it so that it can ask better questions of her doctor, so that I can understand what's happening, even though my mom can't explain it to me. And then I can figure out what do I need to learn to support her through this piece. And so it's a place I can start, and then I can dig from there, going to the Alzheimer's Association and things like that. But you can use it in everyday ways to kind of open your mind like you're thinking, oh, I wonder about this. You can ask, and it can be a little bit of a guide, and then you can branch off from there. And so it can be used in your everyday life. And I told Matt before I hit recording, I have named my chat Chatty, and it calls me Natty, because when I was little, I talked a lot, go figure, I have a podcast now. But everybody when I was little called me Chatty Natty. And so that's our little thing we got going in my chat GPT. But Matt, I want to kind of shift now and get really specific in some of the pieces of what you teach in AI and how it benefits people. So let's start by talking about how do you actually measure ROI in AI training? Like most training programs can't really prove that they deliver business value. How are you able to do that with what you're teaching and what you're helping business owners and employees with? Yeah, that aspect of it's really important to me. So my background is with engineering and math and science and all that good stuff. And I went to school for electrical computer engineering, but when you're in engineering college, they teach you about measuring things, right? Measure what's important to you. And measure what matters is a great book out there by John Doar and he put it together. There's all sorts of great material about KPIs and how to measure ROI and all these different things. But I say that because it's really important to me for people to get value from the program. If they're gonna invest their time, money, energy, focus, attention into the program and that program is offered by my company, I want them to get the most value they possibly can. So how do we show that? We show that by saying, okay, what are they looking to get out of it? How are we gonna measure that? And then we put them on a program where by the end of the program, they're submitting a capstone project which has a set of criteria that they're entering. So you can think of it very simple terms. What problem are they trying to solve? Or what activity do they currently do in their workplace that they want to start leveraging their relationship with AI to make it better so they can go better, faster, stronger for that activity. If they're in customer service, they're gonna provide better customer service, higher quality, they're gonna be able to do it faster, respond faster to customers, whatever it may be. But it's typically time. Time is the most common factor that people want to track. They say, well, like a friend of mine who's in the financial services space, he says, Matt, I just want five to 10 hours back a week to spend with my family. I got five kids. He wants to spend time with his wife and his kids. And that's really important to him. And I hear that from his heart to my company. I'm like, okay, well, that's the mission we're on then. How do you do that? So for him, to use as an example, it's like, where do you spend most of your time, week to week? Or even for him, there's certain annual things he does where he has to collect a lot of data and financial information. Of course, he does this for himself personally. He does this for his clients. And you being in the industry, you know better than me and Natalie about how it all works. There's a lot of data that you have access to for each person, each one of your clients. And how can you best look over that data? How can you best report on that data? Things like that. That provides for his clients, that's gonna help him provide a much better level of reporting. So getting back to your question, it's determining what you want to get out of it. What does success mean to you with your AI, working with AI? And if that's saving time, five to 10 hours a week, it's totally doable. So let's start leaning into how do you spend your time? And how can AI start to help you spend that time more effectively or take hours off your plate and give them back to you to do higher value activities? So if time is the factor, and that's the most common one, sometimes people are measuring quality, sometimes they're measuring stress, which is a little bit more of a subjective criteria, but people are usually leveling up in all these areas. But for some people, stress is the biggest thing. But let's just look at time. If you look at time and say five to 10 hours a week, then for their capstone project, which is their culminating project in the program, they're gonna go, they experiment a little bit, they figure out what they wanna really do for their capstone project. But when they figure that out, then they say, okay, I'm gonna do this for my capstone project. This is what I'm, I wanna save at least five hours a week. And based on my working with AI, it looks like if I do this and this with AI, I'm gonna put this to the test, but it looks like I'll be able to save at least five hours a week. So they have their own hypothesis, their own way of tracking it. What they feel is their desired outcome of their project. Again, everything is filled out with the criteria. And then they go and do the experiment. They're actually applying AI to their situation and experientially going through it and seeing what works, what didn't work with their hypothesis. So it's applying the scientific method and project-based learning into it. But then at the end, we're measuring it. Okay, you thought you were gonna get five hours back. What actually happened? And what tools did you use to get there? So then we have a little mini case study they've created for themselves. And what's great about that is that everybody can learn from all the other case studies of the other participants in the program. And then at the end, you're tracking that. So that's how it's done. You really wanna determine what matters to you, what does success mean? How do you wanna measure that success? And then you're gonna go through and test that to see if it works as good as you thought it would or better than you thought it would. And if you need any help with this, that's what me and my team and the other participants are throughout the program. It's a very supportive, safe environment to learn because a lot of people are using AI for the first time in a very methodical way. They may have played with it. They may have done a little Google search lookups or whatever with chat GPT, basic stuff. But when they really get into it and say, hey, I want it to transform my job. I wanna get five hours back with my family. That's a whole separate mission. That's like, all right, we gotta get this done. How do we do this? And it's a creative path. Every participant has their own creative journey through the program, but we measure it. We have the form, we measure it with the criteria and anybody who needs help with that, we provide them help. Some people have challenges trying to choose what project they wanna go after or what they're gonna measure for the project or how they're gonna measure it, what they can do. So we talk about these details of it. Well, it's exciting to me, Natalie, is everybody who comes through the program and graduates completes this capstone project and they have all these aha moments throughout the way. Like, I didn't know I could save, I'm gonna save 10 hours on this annual activity I do that normally takes me 15 hours. I'm gonna be able to do it under five hours now. That's like 10 hours back in that person's life. And sometimes it's 10 hours back per client that they have. So there's all these efficiencies that are there. And it excites me when people level up their lives and they can show it. And what's great about showing it, I'll add one more point in, when you can show it and prove it out, like one company that went through my program, they had 65 people graduate through the program. Oh, wow. So they all completed capstone project. And at the end I said, oh, why don't I use AI to go through and look at all their exact results, what they got from before and after, how they're saving time and how they're reducing stress, all this. And I said, let me calculate what their annualized ROI would be just from the four weeks of training. And they got over a million dollars back in documented business value, just from a four week training over the course of eight hours based on the way they applied it. Cause it's not just the training just to learn and check a box. Like I said, it's very hands-on. It's all about applying it to you and your workplace and what you're doing to really level up. And then you become super human. You're moving faster and you're playing at a different level and it's exciting. Everybody's excited. Yeah, and let's be real. If you can do, you said better, faster. Stronger. Yeah, better, faster, stronger. Okay, so if you can do your work better, faster, stronger, meaning you have an improved result, but it happens faster, then you do get that time back. And let's be honest, there is a value to time. Sometimes time is money, right? There's a monetary aspect to it, but there's also sometimes in the case of your client who wants to get five to 10 hours back a week for his family, you can't put a price on the memory and the time that you spend with the people you love most. So that's, I mean, that's a whole other measurement. And yet he gets that five to 10 hours back, but I'm also guessing along the way because what I'm learning, and I shared this with Matt before I hit record as well, is my mind is blown at how I can use this in so many different ways for my business. I knew what I was coming in looking for. Let me get better at the ways I'm already using AI and capture some of my time, speed up some of my processes. And for me, if I capture back five hours a week, that's five more clients I can sit down with every single week. That's five more families I can help on their way to financial freedom, right? So that is not just value for me. If I'm able to help those families, that's value for those families. So that exponential multiplication of what you can create, whether it's monetarily, whether it's memory based with the ones you love or whatever, that's a game changer for people. Our world is moving faster. Life is throwing more and more things at us all the time. I hear people at least once or twice a week say, I need more time. I need more time. Well, you can't get more time, but if you can do things faster in the time you have, it's like getting more time, right? You still have the 24 hours a day, seven days a week factor in place. But if you can do your tasks quicker and better in a lot of cases, then that is gifting yourself back time where you feel like you can show up in all the areas the way that you want to. And that creates a little more of that harmony. I'm not a believer that balance, full balance ever exists, but I say harmony. You can create more harmony in different areas of your life if you're maximizing what you're doing in each one. And that's what AI gives you the ability to do. And let's be real, ROI, those KPIs, if you're a business owner, those are the things that move the needle in your business, right? So if you're a business owner who's like, hey, I'm doing good, but I want to scale, you can go through Matt's course. And I will tell you as a participant, it is a very comfortable environment. It is open. We are asking questions throughout. We are giving examples to Matt and he's incorporating those in what we go to. And so it's very interactive and flexible, but you are learning a ton of stuff. And I love that. And they're a great resource, he and his team. So definitely an opportunity to, how do I get in here? And like Matt said, people are coming in there as brand new AI users. You don't have to already be continuously using AI to qualify for a program like this. So considering that you don't have to spend a lot of time or maybe waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to use AI, you can jump into a course like this, figure it out quickly. And when he says four weeks, this is not every day. It's once a week for two hours for four weeks. And that is how much we're learning. It's absolutely blowing my mind. And I'm literally, we finished the second class. So we've got a couple more classes to go. And I'm excited about, I haven't figured out what my capstone project's gonna be, but I'm excited about figuring that out to run with that. So let me ask now, Matt, what are the biggest mistakes that companies make when trying to get their teams to adopt AI? The biggest mistake is just not moving. A lot of people right now, because it's still early. I know AI is everywhere and everybody's psyche now, but it's not everywhere in terms of implementation. So there's a lot of leaders and company owners and leaders who are thinking of, everyone's thinking about AI now, but a lot of them aren't ready to act on it yet because they don't quite feel comfortable enough with it. So they're sort of overthinking it. Whereas in reality, AI is a very, I don't think anyone else has really said this in the media, but it's a very easy way to start to adopt, to move toward change management. So if you want to improve the speed and effectiveness of your company and even your culture, I'm working with some brilliant neuroscientists who are leveraging AI to improve the culture of companies. So my point in saying all that is that the biggest mistakes are, number one, not moving at all. Like get your team to your staff literate with AI. That's like number, number, number, number one. And you can do it with like very inexpensively, you can do some very simple little AI literacy, little trainings, but I would highly recommend something like my company offers where it's an experiential first step training where you're gonna move from where you are to the next level up. So again, this is meant to be a very safe first few steps with AI. And I'm focused on leveling up the people, the staff, your human capital, the people who are there, right? Because I see the world, both my parents and their human resources for their whole careers, I see the world through people. And I love that's why I love working with the human resources and senior leaders of companies because they understand they're empathetic to the people, to their staff, like how do we help the people become happier and move faster and be more productive for the company? Well, AI is your answer, but you need to move on it. So the number one mistake I will say is just waiting. Like don't wait any longer. The pace of change has never been faster and it's growing at an exponential pace to the point we as humans can't even see how fast it's changing outside. But the way we win is by leaning into this opportunity and the way you lean in as a leader, as a company leader, you need to lean in by allowing your staff to become more AI literate and more AI experienced. And I call it moving from AI curious to AI capable as part of my program, because that's really what it is. And if you're a business leader out there and you have a staff of a hundred or a thousand or whatever, you owe it to your staff to help them become more comfortable with AI because before you know it, and they're already doing this, they're already using AI outside of their desk with their own chat GPT on their phone. They're planning with stuff. So they're experimenting in a more of a Wild West type way. But when you start to get organized as a leader and you start to move on this and start to get training for your staff and your team and yourself, start to really upgrade it, that's typically where most companies start. They'll upgrade their leadership team first and their core leaders so they can really understand it and know how to apply it. Then you can start to benefit from it. And your people can start to move faster and become more capable and effective there. So the number one thing that I've seen out there is really not moving. The number two thing I would say is just over overthinking which leads to not moving. But if you're over analyzing it, you can take some simple baby steps with AI, like with my training program with your staff, and start to experiment. So get educated yourself, start to create your own AI center of excellence or community of practice within your company. And you need to start with some basic training first. But once you've done the basic training, that's the next mistake I would say is more of an opportunity. Your next real opportunity is to create something that lives beyond the training, which would be called like a community of excellence, a center of excellence or community of practice around your AI within your company. That way the people who are really embracing the journey, not everybody will embrace it, but the staff that you have that really embraces the journey, you wanna have them have a way to be able to plug in to future learning, future education, future handholding assistance support for your company. And so that's something else. So number one is just leaning into it is step one. But number two is really starting to set up the infrastructure for long-term support. Get the training and then have something in place that your company can plug into. Even if it's not just for your company, maybe you're plugging into something else, like with the community, my company is gonna be offering soon, something like that. That way you have ongoing support. Yeah, I love that. So it kinda leans back to where we started the conversation. There's some fear of the unknown or not sure how it fits into your market, your industry. But let's be honest, Matt, I spent 20 years in corporate America in finance and accounting. And throughout that 20 years, things were always moving faster and we didn't have AI. Things were already moving faster. And if you didn't step quickly in the direction of the changes, you were gonna get left behind in your industry. And I worked in multiple industries throughout my career. I look back and I worked in horticulture for two different companies. Honestly, my favorite industry I ever worked in in corporate America. And I was partially cost accounting and then also VP of finance at both companies. I'm sitting here as I'm learning AI and I'm thinking what a difference this would have made. Trying to build a cost accounting system, which I did two different times at two different companies. There is so much incremental data. And when you're talking horticulture, like those margins are almost non-existent in some areas and yet they're necessary products to have in the marketplace. But all the components, the cost of seed, the cost of two tablespoons of dirt, right? If we would have had AI, oh my gosh, the difference it would have made in the power it would have given business owners and the horticulture industry, which 10 years ago when I was there, it was getting massacred by cost in trying to produce for and sell to big box retailers and still make a profit. Would have been a game changer in that area. And every business should be looking at their cost, whether you offer a service or you offer a good for purchase. There are costs associated with that and you need to know your numbers. So that's so important that like you said, getting the education and being willing to step in that direction and then create an infrastructure around it to continue building and getting the support that you need as you grow in how to implement AI in your world. So I love that. I think that's super important. And I mean, the truth is if you don't move with the things that are moving, which right now is AI, you literally will get the left behind multiple times faster than you would have in the past. Like in the blink of an eye, everything can change in your industry and you're not even gonna know how it happened, let alone where to start. So I agree like leaning into this and understanding, there is an impact AI can make in any business out there. For any person out there, no matter whether you're a stay at home mom, you're a teacher, you're a business owner, AI can make a difference for you and you've got to lean into it so that you can control the direction you go instead of having outside forces control what happens. So I love that piece of it. And that infrastructure, that ongoing support is gonna be important because as fast as AI is moving, it's just gonna get faster and faster. So you've got to have that infrastructure, you've got to have that ongoing support to make sure that you keep moving as fast as you need to in the directions you can go because it changes so quickly. And I love that your program can support people with that. And I think too, like you mentioned that company, you had 65 people, I think you said, graduate from your program. The overall ROI to the company was a million, over a million dollars. And what did that cost them? A fraction. Yeah, they got over a 20 times ROI just on their training investment. Just that one company. Exactly. And I think that's an important thing. Yes, sometimes as business owners, come on you guys, you got to spend money to make money. You do. But the multiplication in this investment for the result is, I mean, it's a game changer and it's a no-brainer. So, I mean, I know we're gonna get to Matt sharing how to get in touch with him and what his offerings are, but I'm definitely gonna say already, like if you are AI curious in any way, shape or form, or if you're utilizing it and wondering how to take it to the next level, a conversation with Matt is your next best step. And if what you need is something that Matt doesn't offer, he's gonna tell you where to go, or he's gonna create it for you. I can promise you that. So, all right. So, based on that, a company leader is listening to this podcast right now, and they're thinking, my team needs this, so what's my first step? And I'm sure it leans to some of what we already talked about. Well, what's their first step in, all right, I'm ready. I'm ready to step in this direction. How do I start? Yeah, as you just mentioned, Natalie, the best first step, because this is very, it is the fast-moving target. Every company, I think of every person, every company, every organization that I engage with as its own unique entity with their own unique needs, right? So therefore, it's a customized journey. And for me to best understand the needs, the best way to engage is to get some time on my calendar, let's have a conversation. There's no obligation at all with the conversation. It's just more of me understanding what their situation is, how large is your company, what are the types of work that your company does, or the individuals who would go through the training about how many people you're talking about, where are you at right now in terms of AI adoption? What tools are you using? Do you have any governance or infrastructure in place now? There's a whole lot of questions I go through that are very engaging, but it's for me to understand where they are right now with their AI transformation journey. Most people are at the very, very beginning of that journey. And even if they think they're far down the path, they may be just a little bit down the path, but I'll meet them where they're at and say, "Okay, yeah, this training," like sometimes if companies are super, and it's very rare, but if they're super advanced and they just need a super advanced training, I can build the custom training for them, or I could refer them to one of my partners, and we could point them in that direction. But for most people, the best way to engage, get time on my calendar, I'll talk through what their specific needs are, see if it's a fit for my training program or not. If it is a fit, then we can talk about the next steps there. And we haven't really talked about this, but the class you're going through is an open class where we have individuals from different companies, different industries there. A lot of the training that I do is actually private. Which is just for a particular company or just for a particular organization. It could be profit, nonprofit company. And by private, it's great because then it's just your people in that training. And guess what? The entire training is customized for your company. So there is a course curriculum that I go through, but I customize it for your company, your roles, what you're doing in the marketplace, and what your individuals who are going to be participating in the training, what they want to get out of it. So we talk about all this upfront. In addition to our little consultative call that we have, beyond that, once you say you want to move forward with the training, then we have another call where we set up and we get more of the details. If I work with you and your team to really understand the details of where you're at, where you want to go, what you want to get out of training. And then we build that customization into your training program, which would be private just for your team. And then you get reporting and you get updates on everything that's happening. So as a leadership team, you would go through the program yourself if you want to, and then your staff will go through and you'd get a lot of visibility to that. So the first step is a conversation with me so I can really understand if they're a strong fit and if they are a fit like what it would look like for them so they can feel comfortable about where they're gonna get. And also I can understand what their ultimate vision is for the company. It's really important. Another thing I'll put in here is if you're not planning to grow and lean into the opportunity for you as a business leader or company owner, if you're not looking to grow and compete in a more intense way going forward, you need to reconsider that because the opportunities now for your competitors and for other companies to really get into AI and to really go faster with the same employee base or less employees is just all over the place right now. So the people who are really focused on growth and they're excited like, wow, one of the companies I've worked with, they're in $100 million in annual sales right now and they recently, their CEO retired because he had founded the company, had been there a while. New CEO came in and he said, okay, we're focused on doubling our revenue. It took us 50 years to get to 100 million but now we're gonna focus on getting to 200 million. So having that in front of you to better serve their customers is not just a monetary goal. Obviously they're focused on service but when you wanna grow and everybody should wanna grow if you're a business today, when you wanna grow and you're focused on what that metric looks like to you, then talk to me and we'll say, okay, how can we use AI as a supercharger to grow your company, to grow your staff, to grow your opportunity to better serve in the marketplace? And that's what really excites me about it. When I see companies and people and individuals just do better in their careers, do better in the workplace and these companies just really start to supercharge their journey. It's amazing how many opportunities there are for little micro growth and macro growth opportunities within the companies that AI can help expose once you know how to use it, once you know what tools are gonna give you the best benefit, what strategies are gonna work well for you or in your industry, all that. So a call with me, we'll talk, we move it forward and then my team and I, we design a custom training program for them based on our core curriculum and then we get started and we can get started fast. We can get some teams started within less than 30 days. We can say, okay, let's put the date on the calendar and we start going. And I would encourage anyone listening to books and time on my calendar, even if you're just a maybe, that way we can have a conversation because this is moving really fast and you do not wanna get left behind because as you said now, you're gonna blink and you're gonna say, what happened? Where'd my business go? Where did my company go? Where did my opportunity go in the marketplace? You wanna maximize the opportunity you have in front of you by investing a little bit of your time and a little bit of your money and leveling up your staff and really just accelerating the opportunity that your company has in front of it right now. Yeah, I agree with that for sure. And I think you said two things that really jump out to me. You said, I meet them where they're at and I think that's super important. I want to reiterate that. If you are just now thinking, I need to find out how AI, maybe you don't even know yet. Some people might be thinking, I haven't used AI yet, but I know it can make a difference in these areas. If you don't even know what areas that can make a difference, I encourage you to still have that conversation with Matt because when he understands what your business does, what your employees do, he can help identify for you and say, these are the areas you can get the biggest bang for your buck starting here and then build from there. So meeting people where they're at, which is, I say that to my clients all the time, I'm gonna meet you where you're at. But then the next thing you said is, you need to understand what their goals are so you can build that training roadmap to get them where they wanna go. I'm building that financial roadmap. I need to know my client's goals and dreams so that, and I need to know where they are today. So those two components then allow me to build a map from A to B in the most efficient way possible. And so definitely that conversation with Matt is the place to start. And as we wind this down, before I have you share with how people can find you and get in touch with you, I wanna touch real quick. I love the money story that you shared in your little intake form you sent to me. So will you share a little bit about what that was like when you started AI Agility? Yes, and I'm glad you reminded me on that now because we were talking about this earlier. Yeah, I gave you that a lot of thought as we were preparing for the podcast. Yeah, the money journey is interesting. We all have our own relationships with money. And this is more in your area than mine. I know you give this a lot of thought now and all your clients have different ways of thinking about money. As an entrepreneur, it's important to make investments where you wanna put your passion and really get the most value from. So my journey for AI Agility was very interesting. I'm always focused on the people and how can I best serve the marketplace? So my first couple of years, first few years working with Chat GPT and really deep in AI helped a lot of people, helped them accelerate their careers, helped them get better jobs, helped companies start to move forward faster. And the whole time I was looking, I wasn't if my company wasn't formed even yet at that point, AI Agility. I was thinking, wow, how can I best serve the marketplace? And I realized there was a massive gap between the companies that could take advantage of AI and who was actually taking advantage of it. Who was actually leaning in and getting their staff trained and really starting to move faster with AI adoption. And especially in the mid-size business market, I would say a lot of the big, big companies are putting millions of dollars in. They're still moving a lot slower than they should be, in my opinion. But then the small to mid-size businesses, they're all sort of like not sure, especially the non-technical business owners and non-technical leadership. They're not as short because they're not as technical and they think maybe they need to be technical to take advantage of it. So I saw this huge gap and I said, you know what, the gap is here. I want to lean into this. I want to, this is how I'm going to serve. This is how I'm going to make the mark. I'm going to create a company, AI Agility. I created a company and I said, okay, I'm not going to go slow. I don't want to be the bottleneck here. I don't just want to start to get the word out. I said, because AI is moving so fast, I need to lead by example. I'm all in it. How do I go all in? Well, I'm going to put, I'm going to build my team around me. So I, for the first time ever, I went just from me to me having an executive assistant, me having a marketing team, me having another assistant who is helping build out some of the other marketing and operations that we do, me having a team that's supporting me on the podcast. I'm launching a new podcast within the next month as well. Rebranded everything. So launched a new company and then built a team around me and also hired the smartest business coach I know in the world, who is this brilliant gentleman out of Ireland. When I was meditating one day, I said, okay, I'm all in it. What do I got to do? I said, well, I need to bring a coach back on my team so I can be coached. For me to really accelerate and lean into this, I can't do it all myself, no matter how good anybody is. So I built this whole team around me and I said, all right, this is gonna be expensive. It's more money than I have, obviously I'm just starting the company and just getting going. This is within the last year or so. But I did that and I did that on purpose because I said, I believe in this. I know that this is where I can serve people. I've seen it, I've done it, and I know there are literally millions of people who need this service right now and I don't wanna go slow and just tell 10 people and then have one training course in this. I want everybody to know, I wanna shout from the rooftops. I can help you for such an economical way to really move forward faster. In order to do that, I need a team around me to support me and get out there from a marketing perspective. So my story was, okay, start up the whole company from scratch, build a team around me, put all the money in, which means me incurring some debt to do that, putting all the money in to build the systems, the team, and everything around me to represent what needs to be built in order to succeed as a company and then lean into it and then start going. And then as I'm doing that, and then the second I leaned into it, Natalie, what was amazing is the universe delivered right back. I literally contacted a woman in my area who is a brilliant training professional and she has a training organization. She trains people all across the country, but especially on the East Coast. And I said, hey, I can be, my company can be your AI training organization for any AI training that you wanna bring to any of your clients, all of our business clients. And she said, oh, I'm actually looking for someone like that. Great, I'll put your name down and we'll figure it out. And I already knew who she was. So we had a business relationship together, but we hadn't really done business together before. So literally two days later, Natalie, I get the text, hey, we have a company that needs AI training, can you offer something like this? Boom, boom, boom. I said, that's exactly what I have to offer. I said, great, so guess what? That became a client and it came in right away. So by leaning into it and jumping off the cliff, so to speak, like where you're jumping into the unknown, financially, that was my financial journey to be able to go. And on the other side of that was, hey, opportunity is coming. I'm supporting people now. I'm helping all these different people. I've been brought to tears with some of the testimonials that people have had coming through the program because when people have these aha moments and it changes their life, it changes the way they're working, that's what gets me out of bed. So for me, my financial journey was, okay, all in, go for it, start the company in the way that can best serve the market and best get the word out to the market in the biggest way possible. That's what I did. And by leaning into it, I was able to help and serve a lot more people. Just as you talk about all the time, Natalie, the more successful you are in business, the more people you can serve, the more you work with AI to make yourself more efficient and more effective at what you could do, more productive. You free up more hours, you can serve more clients, you can spend more time with your family, whatever it happens to be, but you can spend more of the things that you can invest more in what matters to you in doing that. So for me, it was about serving as many clients in as deep and as impactful a way as I possibly could, as quickly as I could. And I'm continuing to lean into that as we continue to expand our team and expand our offerings. I'm working with multiple people and multiple verticals right now, and it's really, really exciting because it's very new. As much as AI has been in the market or the news for the last three years, it's still very new from an AI adoption point of view. And it's so exciting to me to partner with every single participant that comes through the program, every single company I work with. It's so exciting to see the transformation that happens through that journey. And I've 20 plus years of my experience is in change management and project management and agile coaching and leadership coaching and helping teams, leaders and organizations really level up their performance. I've never seen change management happen as fast as AI allows it to happen. Well, once people know what tools, strategies, techniques, et cetera, to use, they're like, wow, this is really cool. I didn't realize that was right in front of me. And people say, I didn't realize this was at my fingertips. This is gonna change everything about the way I do my entire job. I mean, when does that come along? Even the internet was a big change for people, but it took years to really sink in. AI, literally, you can have this change management curve happen in a matter of weeks and people can get comfortable with it. And when you see them start to adopt it, it's good. So I put the bet on myself. When I was thinking about it, I said, if I'm gonna bet on anybody, I'm gonna bet on me. So I'm gonna bet I'm all in. This is what I wanna do. I wanna make the biggest impact to the world. So I got very mission centered, very focused on what my mission is to really help and bring out the highest invest in other people by better leveraging AI. I know what's there. I know most people are taking advantage of it. I said, I owe it to myself and to all these people to put that out there in the biggest way. And I said, the money I invest in my company is just a stepping stone. It's all gonna come back many times over. And then as it comes back, it gives me the ability to impact more people's lives. I expand that, I scale that and I grow to that. I love that. I mean, the perfect example of what I said earlier, you've got to spend money to make money. You had an idea of how you can make a difference for people and you knew to do it as quickly and as big as was needed, you were gonna have to invest in that. And being willing to do that is a game changer for a business. And so again, I go back to people out there who might be trying to figure out or wondering, is it too late for me already? Well, you just heard Matt say, yeah, AI has been talked about in the news and stuff for the last three years, but it's still very new from an implementation perspective. And because of that, like the time is now. You're not, if you're wondering if you're too late, no, you're not too late. But it's being implemented now in a way that it's gonna become maybe not too late ever, but you're gonna be a lot further behind a lot faster, the more people start to implement it. So if you're AI curious again, I mean, the next step is reaching out to Matt and working with him and his team to identify, is it a good fit? Where can you get the biggest bang for your buck? What I can tell you about Matt is he's a person of integrity without a doubt. He's not gonna put something in place that's not gonna benefit you. He's gonna have the conversation to identify where you can benefit the most first and then help you build a plan on how to expand that. So that being said, Matt, how can people get in touch with you? What are you offering with that conversation again, just a reminder for people on how they can take that next step, which is having a conversation with you. Yeah, so we can provide a link out to where they can book time by calendar. We can provide that link as part of the podcast notes. If they want to email me directly, it's matt at leadingAAjility.com. LeadingAAjility.com is my company website. The company is AI Agility. So that would be how they would get in touch with me. The easiest way is probably just the link that we can put in the podcast notes, but they can email me at matt, M-A-T-T, two T's, at leadingAAjility.com. And then we'll have a conversation depending if it's an individual who just wants individual training, they can do that in one of our courses that have more public registration. So it's across multiple companies, multiple industries. And then I'm happy to talk with them about that. I really want me to be clear and them to be clear, whoever's contacting me, that they're gonna get tremendous value from this because once I know what their situation is, I'm gonna personally guarantee you're gonna get 10 times ROI back on your investment of time and money in the training. And I'm gonna work with you until you get that. Most people are getting that back within one month to two months after taking the training. So within 30 to 60 days, they're getting that 10 times ROI. If not, you're gonna be getting it over the course of a year and we're gonna keep working together until you get there. But most companies are getting that very, very quickly. If you're a company and you're a company leader, then let's definitely talk directly about what your needs are, where you wanna go, and having that conversation to really move it forward. And again, the core program that we do typically is two hours a week for four weeks in a row. And the reason it's set up like that is because it takes time for all of this training to digest in people. If you do it more than two hours in a day, it's really hard for people to absorb more. And the goal is for them to absorb the maximum amount of education and the maximum amount of practice real time with the group, with me, in real time so they can really start to experience that. And then when they're working on their assignment, there's assignments each week that everybody does as well. When they were working on their assignments, that helps them get more prepared for next week's material where they can then take it to another level. So conversation with me to kick it off is the best way to start. They can go to my website, leadingaiagility.com if they wanna see some information about the program, what's included with it, a little bit more details and et cetera. Awesome, awesome. And yes, we'll have those links in the show notes. They'll also be all over social media. When I post about the episode, it's gonna drop probably in two or three weeks. And so perfect timing. Look, we're coming up on the new year. Y'all are working on your goals for the new year this month. If you're forward thinking, I know I'm spending a lot of time in my focus of what do I need to leave behind from 2025? And how do I grow going into 2026? So there's no better time for you to reach out to Matt. Go to his website. You can contact me through the show notes. If you want information on how to contact Matt sooner than the episode drops, you can reach out through the show notes. The links will be in the show notes, but you can reach out to me directly, Natalie at nataliekheimconsulting.com or through social media. And I'll get you in touch with Matt immediately to start having those conversations as well. I may even do a couple teasers over the next two weeks before the episode drops, because I think planning and budgeting for this kind of training early in the year next year, is really important. So the faster you can get in touch with Matt, the better. So I'll definitely put some things out in this coming week, even though the episode's a couple of weeks out, I'll put some information out so you can reach out to him ASAP. And I can personally testify to the growth that you're gonna experience. Like I said, I'm two weeks into this training and it is a game changer. My mind is blown at the small investment I'm gonna have to make in time to create game changing actions, activity and mobility in my business already. So I'm gonna give this personal testimony right here live on the podcast, that this course is more than worth the investment of money and time that you're gonna be putting into it. So I do encourage you to reach out to Matt. As we wind this episode down, of course I've always got my hot take for the week. And this week, it is that too many people are praying for next level results while still making baby level investments in their skills, in their teams and in their systems. What Matt just shared is a blueprint. Winners invest like winners before they're treated like winners. If you want your business, your team and your career to evolve, you have to evolve first. Bet on your capacity, not your comfort. Like Matt said, he bet on himself. Who else would he bet on? You're the one person that you can control. So it's the best investment that you can make. And I challenge you guys to pursue that. If today's episode lit a fire in you, share it with someone who's leading a team, building a business or trying to stay ahead of the curve. Be sure to follow Matt and check out AI agility if your organization needs real measurement, real and measurable transformation. And as always message me on LinkedIn or Instagram, tell me your biggest tech takeaway from this episode and let's keep building wealth, wisdom and wins together. Thanks for all of you listening again this week and until next time, protect your peace, protect your people and protect your wealth.