Introducing Network After Work and the Virtual AI Summit

About this podcast episode

🎙️ Small teams with big dreams get the work done! 💡🚀🏆🎉

👉 Featuring a plug for Bill Raymond’s upcoming AI Virtual Summit

We are delighted to have Tatiana Maldonado, COO at Network After Work, on today’s podcast to speak about teamwork, networking, and running a small business.

Network After Work is a small business with a small team, serving 87 cities with thousands of members. They help individuals, small businesses, and large corporations network to get work done and form lasting business relationships. Tatiana and Bill pull back the curtain to discuss how the team runs at Network After Work.

Since Bill will speak at Network After Work’s upcoming AI Summit, we will share how we use AI to be more productive.

In this podcast, you will learn the following:

✅ Tatiana’s role as COO at Network After Work

✅ The history of Network After Work

✅ How teams must work from a place of trust

✅ The mindset for hiring people into your team

🎉 How we use AI to get work done faster

👇 Sign up now for free access to Bill’s How to Maximize AI Virtual Summit. 👇 Join Bill Raymond at the free Network After Work Virtual AI Presentation at the AI Summit on July 18, 2023 at 1:00 pm Eastern Time

Transcript

(transcripts are auto-generated, so please excuse the brevity)

[00:00:00] Podcast intro clip

[00:00:00] Bill Raymond: This is the Agile In Action Podcast, and we do love to talk about teams.

Could you share a little bit about how you all manage your work together?

[00:00:09] Tatiana Maldonado: We don’t have anything fancy, right? So like people use. I don’t even know what they’re called. They click up, monday.com, all that good stuff. And those are all great, especially if you have a larger team. But you know, there’s really three of us.

So there’s James, he’s the owner, then there’s me and I run the operations, and then there’s Justine So she helps book all of the venues that we are at across the country. And we’re all in different cities.

But we pretty much work really seamlessly together because we all have our task.

And I just wanna say it would never work if we didn’t trust each other. Because if you don’t trust each other within a company, or even if you have a small business, if you don’t trust your other workers and you’re constantly looking over them and looking over them, nothing’s gonna get done.

[00:00:51] Intro

[00:00:51] Speaker: Welcome to the Agile in Action Podcast with Bill Raymond. Bill will explore how business disruptors are adopting agile techniques to gain a competitive advantage in this fast-paced technology driven market.

[00:01:04] Bill Raymond: Welcome to the podcast. Today I’m joined by Tatiana Maldonado, COO of Network After Work. Hi Tatiana, how are you today?

[00:01:13] Tatiana Maldonado: I’m well, how are you? Thanks for having me on.

[00:01:15] Bill Raymond: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the conversation. We’re going to introduce the audience to Network After Work, and I learned about your organization because you had reached out to me to do a conversation. You’re having a AI Virtual Summit, and I’ve been learning a lot about AI and how that affects business leaders.

And so I’ve been working on a deck and I said, you know what? I’ll present it here with you first. And I really appreciate you reaching out to me, and I’m excited that we can do this podcast together.

[00:01:43] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, I’m excited too. You know, AI is one of those topics that people either know about it or they got no clue about anything, which that’s me, right? No clue. So I reach out to nice speakers like you who want to help business owners grow in certain industries.

[00:01:59] Bill Raymond: Yeah, and this is exciting and I’m looking forward to it. And in this podcast, we’ll talk a little bit about what the conversation is towards the end. I’d really like this to be a conversation about you and network after work.So with that, could we just get started by you introducing yourself a little bit?

[00:02:15] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, of course. So as he said, I’m Tatiana and I’m the COO of network after work. And I’ve been with network after work for about nine years now. And just a little bit about network after work. It’s an all-in-one networking community. We are founded on the basis of networking and getting business owners and professionals together to expand their network.

So we do in-person events, virtual events, as well as summits, webinars, peer groups, all sorts of stuff to kind of get all entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, uh, business professionals, small business owners, large business corporations together to grow.

[00:02:51] Bill Raymond: It’s a great networking event and I’ve just been catching up on some of the work you all have been doing, and I think you’re doing some great work for the community. Could you give a little history about network after work?

[00:03:02] Tatiana Maldonado: Of course. Yeah. So Network after work was the founders is are is James Miller as well as his wife Samantha. And they found a network after work in Chicago. So the very first city was Chicago and that was. In-person events and at some point it started to expand and now we’re at across 87 cities, nationally.

So we do large city, small cities. we’re in LA, San Francisco, Birmingham. Pretty much any city that you can recognize we’re probably in. So that’s where it originated. And as we grew, let’s see, COVID hit of course. So killing, in-person networking events just because, bars, restaurants were c losed.

we weren’t really allowed to go out and, conversate face-to-face. So with that happening, we then, shifted. So well, if we can’t meet in person, we can meet online. And with that shift, we were able to hold virtual, networking events, which we still do we still give the option to host virtual networking events, which is still a great platform because

you are now not only able to meet someone, say in Wisconsin where I’m at, but now you can meet someone nationally, especially if you’re a business trying to take it, across through the other states. So we now still keep virtual networking events, but then we also wanted to give business owners and entrepreneurs a way to continue to grow throughout the pandemic.

And so we really expanded on our virtual summits and webinars, which are all free for people to watch. And it just helps them grow in different topics. social media, business growth, email marketing, anything you can think of that helps grow your business is a summit or webinar topic that we host.

And I’d like to talk a little bit more about those topics in just a moment. What is the value people get out of these events? You already talked about the ability to learn something new and they’re free, and, of course the word networking is in there, so I’m assuming this is also going to help build connections.Absolutely. So, you know, I do think that sometimes the word networking gets a bad rap. And it’s because people see the word networking and they think, I don’t wanna go to a networking event, someone’s just gonna sell me something. They’re gonna just pass me their business card and move along.

I just wanted to make it clear here that networking, it’s not only about like trading information, right? It also serves as an avenue to create a long-term relationship. And networking isn’t just about making a sale, right? You can do a lot of things. You can learn something from someone else.

You can go have a friendship people are networking to meet people and to have friends and have a long-term relationship. Yes, that can turn into referrals, which is a great thing for anyone’s business. It can turn into maybe a business partnership. It can turn into. For example, you and I, we met off of LinkedIn kind of networking on the messages and then now we’re here.

So there’s a lot of opportunities that can come from attending a networking event. so I’m really excited to let everyone know, yes, networking is great and also you do it every day. Let’s be real, like we’re networking now. We’re just like having this great conversation. People network on LinkedIn, they network on Facebook.

So I really want people to know that networking is not just about the hard sale.

[00:06:07] Bill Raymond: What types of topics do you cover during these events?

[00:06:10] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, so our online summits and webinars, we cover topics ranging anything business growth, and then we break it down, right? So we have, anything pertaining to social media. Which is a separate topic from LinkedIn. So our social media, we speak on Instagram, TikTok, all the other platforms, YouTube, how to be presentable on camera, especially in the reels age, and creating YouTube videos.

And then we have our LinkedIn, which is a separate topic, and that’s because most of our business owners grow using the LinkedIn platform. So we like to keep that separate. And then we have our email marketing. So focused on email marketing, and then we have a business growth that’s all focused business growth, and that can be from start to middle to, I’m here, I’m already making millions, but I wanna make just a little bit more.

So just getting that extra little boost and extra little education, because we all know education’s great when it comes to running businesses, so we want to give just a little bit extra for those business owners that are large.

[00:07:11] Bill Raymond: These are types of skills, even if you’re not a small business, just building your own profile. If you’re looking for work or you’re looking to get yourself a little bit more known out there, taking courses on, taking some live webinars and networking with people on how to better improve your LinkedIn skills and social media skills, that’s probably good for anyone.

[00:07:31] Tatiana Maldonado: Absolutely. I mean, you don’t even have to be a business owner to do anything related to any of these topics, right? So you can already, you could be working for someone. Marketing and say, I know nothing about LinkedIn, and my boss wants me to be on LinkedIn, so I’m gonna go learn, and then I’m gonna bring it back to my boss and say, Hey, this is what I’ve learned.

Can I implement this? there’s, you should always be seeking education, is what I say. because the world is fast, it’s moving fast, and it’s telling us you gotta learn, you gotta grow. You can’t stay here if you wanna be here.

[00:08:02] Bill Raymond: Now, you did mention that a lot of these events are free, but there is a membership element to this as well. Can you share what that looks like?

[00:08:11] Tatiana Maldonado: Absolutely. So yes, we do want to provide that free support for people when it comes to the learning aspect of business and networking and all kinds of topics. But we also have our membership and our membership’s more inclusive, right? You joined the membership and you get access to not only any networking event across the country that’s in-person networking event I’m referencing.

So if you’re in Chicago, but you’re also a traveler, you know you’re gonna be in New York. And in New York we have a networking event that week you’re free to attend as a member at no charge, across the country. But you also get access to our community group. And in that group, it’s a great group.

You have access to contact other people and search them. Say, Hey, I’m looking for a copywriter, for example. I really need a copywriter to help me write some blog posts. You can go in, you can filter it by the title, the industry, and what they do. You can say blog copywriter, and then message them there, and then, If you’re looking for a new partner, you can look for partners. That way you can share your wins. the community group is there to root you on. We really wanna uplift you. So that’s support of the community. and then you get access, to all of the recordings, right?

So all of our live summits and webinars, and I wanna preference live. You’re showing up live, you’re ready to learn and grow. You’re there, which I always recommend live anyways, because the speakers are gonna answer your questions right there and then, right? You get access to those speakers on the live and you have your burning question, you’re gonna get it answered.

So you get access to that free. Yes. But all of the recordings are in our community group. And then in our community group you also get access to extra recordings, stuff that’s not live, stuff that’s exclusive to the community. So it’s a really good, great group. you’re gonna continue to learn and grow.

You also get access to blog posts. I do two blog posts a week, and that’s on multiple topics. Anywhere from how to successfully start your morning routine to, is AI gonna take our jobs? I go into that on our blog post, and then you get done for you templates. And those templates include done for you follow up email templates, right?

So you just attended a networking event, but you have no idea how to follow up with someone. Like how do I even respond? Like how do I message someone to tell me? No, thank you. So we have those done for you templates, so just to make it easier. And so you can learn and grow that way as well.

[00:10:28] Bill Raymond: Where are some of these events located? Where if they’re in person?

[00:10:32] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah. again, we’re across 87 cities. I can’t name all 87 obviously at the top of my head, but we’re in any major city you can think of. So New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago. probably almost any city in Florida that’s major. So Orlando, Tampa. Oh, Milwaukee. We’re in Minneapolis, so those are all the big cities.

[00:10:53] Bill Raymond: We’re also in smaller cities, so we’re in like Birmingham. let’s see. We’re in Nashville. so many, there’s 87 cities. We’re not in Hawaii. one day we’ll get into Hawaii, but we’re basically across the, United States. Oh, that’s very cool. Yeah. listen, if you need to start a Hawaii chapter, just let me know and I’ll fly

Are

[00:11:10] Tatiana Maldonado: you volunteering?

over. Yep. I love Hawaii. It’s one of my favorite places to go.

[00:11:14] Bill Raymond: You already said that some of the members are, for example, small business owners or people that are, trying to maybe further their career. But could you maybe lay out a little bit more what the member makeup looks like?

[00:11:27] Tatiana Maldonado: A majority, so let’s say like 45% are gonna be small business owners. but when I say that, it’s in any industry you can think of, right? So we have. Coaches, which is typically a small business coaches, people selling products. We have, other industries are like pharmaceutical reps.

We have people in banking. We have, oh gosh, probably any industry you can think of. We have accounting, We have like aviation. We have, a realm of people in all industries. It’s not just small business owners, do small business owners, take a majority of our members. Yeah. but then you also have to think what is their business right then?

Then that kind of expands.

[00:12:06] Bill Raymond: I think you mentioned you’re working from various locations. This is the Agile In Action Podcast, and we do love to talk about teams and how teams work together.

given the fact that you are a number of different team members running Network After Work. Could you share a little bit about how you all manage your work together?

[00:12:27] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, absolutely. So Google Docs is our friend, our best friend.

[00:12:31] Bill Raymond: We don’t have anything fancy, right? So like people use. I don’t even know what they’re called. They click up, monday.com, all that good stuff. And those are all great, especially if you have a larger team. But you know, there’s really three of us.

[00:12:43] Tatiana Maldonado: So there’s James, he’s the owner, then there’s me and I run the operations, and then there’s Justine and she helps us with on the events end. So she helps book all of the venues that we are at across the country. And we’re all in different cities. So we don’t use anything. We don’t pay for a platform or any sort just because we’re so small.

but we do use Google Docs, and I love Google Docs. you just organize everything there. We have our setup of, there’s calendars and Justine has her own calendar. I have my own, and James has his things and everything just gets dropped into that Google Docs. But we pretty much work really seamlessly together because we all have our task. Justine’s focused on events. Yes. If we, if she, sometimes if she’s done, she’s do you need help on anything? And yeah, we cross do things. but then I have my task and I’m overseeing everything and making sure everything’s posted. And, I do the email marketing and all that stuff.

And then there’s James, of course, and he runs the whole company. So we really work seamlessly as a small group. And I just wanna say it would never work if we didn’t trust each other, because if you don’t trust each other within a company, or even if you have a small business, if you don’t trust your other workers and you’re constantly looking over them and looking over them, nothing’s gonna get done.

[00:13:55] Bill Raymond: Yeah, I remember when I was my. I guess you could always say my first job, right? of course I had lots of little first jobs,

[00:14:03] Tatiana Maldonado: Oh yes.

[00:14:04] Bill Raymond: But one of my first little first jobs was working for a very small tech company and they, there was no trust. There were literally three people in there and I was the fourth one and I just felt like everyone was just looking over my shoulder.

Trying to see what I was doing all the time. I couldn’t figure it out. And then I started to realize, even if I was, just writing some sort of an email to someone, it, it felt as if, it was, it had to go through all these different layers first, and I’m like, it’s, we’re four people here.

[00:14:34] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah. And when you know there’s no trust in your company, that’s when mistakes happen. That’s exactly when mistakes happen because you’re so focused on not making that mistake because you’re like, something’s gonna happen. Someone’s watched me, someone’s watching my email, and then you’re mistake happens because you’re way too focused on it

[00:14:49] Bill Raymond: Yeah.

[00:14:49] Tatiana Maldonado: And you, if there’s no trust, there’s nothing.

I just, when I first started, I. I was probably the same, right? Because I came, I. From a larger place. And then I started with a smaller company. And when you’re coming from a larger place that you know, there’s not really trust and people are like really hounding you and on your back, you go to a small company and you’re like, they’re gonna do the same thing.

So you’re like a robot trying to get everything done so fast and you’re trying to just be the best you can and then overachieve and overachieve. And then you blow that light bulb about right. You start running on fumes. And that’s how I did when I first started.

I was like, okay, breathe. My manager trusts me and I have to show him and prove to him that I can do what I can do, so that way that trust continues. And so then you just take it from there?

[00:15:31] Bill Raymond: Yeah, I think that’s great advice and it’s very simple. Trust the people you work with.

[00:15:37] Tatiana Maldonado: Yes. If not, why did you hire them?

[00:15:38] Bill Raymond: I am curious, like if you are going to go and hire someone, what are some of the recommendations that you would provide?

[00:15:45] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, a higher slow, like I, is there a rush for you to hire? Because if there’s a rush, you might Pick the wrong candidate. That’s not going to vibe with you. You wanna think about that work, that workplace culture, the workplace environment, that’s probably first and foremost, right?

Because if you guys aren’t on the same wavelength, it’s probably not gonna work, right? You’re gonna butt heads a lot and the last thing you want is an employee butting heads with you. As an owner, you wanted to run seamlessly. but I really think like clearly defining the job role, if you are a small business, you’re not, you’re probably not hiring 20 to 50 people, right?

You’re probably hiring one to two to start so clearly define that job role. So that way if I’m applying for your job and it says my job role is email marketing, I can be the kind of person who’s okay, great. My job’s email marketing, so I have no room to open for you saying, Hey, I know you’re doing emails, but can you also help me with social media?

I might tell you no, that wasn’t in my job role. So clearly define that. That’s first and foremost. Like even if you want them to do multiple things, say it, you’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to grow and learn and do multiple things, especially with a small business. And then, you know, determining your budget, those are some things you wanna keep in mind.

Inflation’s real, People are asking for higher wages, right? And rightfully so. Especially with the price of living up. So think about that budget. Can you afford one person or two two people, right? If you can only do the one person, then definitely right in that job description, I may need you to do other things just so the person knows.

Then there won’t be any hesitation for your employee to say, absolutely, I got you. Don’t worry about it. And then I, uh, I do wanna say, so people do have resumes, which are great. Resumes are great, but they’re not as great as the experience, right? So I can have a resume and I can look pretty darn good on paper, but your business is probably gonna run differently than what my paper looks like, right?

I don’t know exactly how your business runs or what your processes are, but I’m willing to learn. So really be open-minded. Don’t just look at their resume and say, They’ve never worked on Canva before. Are they kidding me? No, throw ‘em out. But I could be like the best graphic design artist you’ve ever met in your life, right?

So I think just keeping open mind, because a lot of people are out there and they have some great backgrounds. And it doesn’t always reflect on a resume anyways.

[00:18:04] Bill Raymond: For sure. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve seen the resume and I just said, this is the person I need to hire. And I was feeling like I was in a rush to get that person through that I didn’t feel like maybe we had to go through the whole process of my interviewing and another person checking on the person, seeing how they’ll interact.

And sometimes you can get really, hardcore into, I have to hire this quickly, but, it’s a big mistake. If you hire the wrong person, it will. hiring fast is never a good idea.

Sometimes a client will hire me and they’ll say, okay Bill, we wanna get started on this date. where is your team? And I’ll let them know. Sometimes, I, there are times when I just know that client and I know I. That I need to make sure that not only do they, do I work well with these folks, will that person work well with the client? And sometimes I need to take that a little extra time and just say, we can get started. However, the role that you’re looking for right here, it’s going to be a little bit longer because I want to make sure that I roll someone else off that I know is gonna work really well with you, and if you have that open, honest conversation, I’ve rarely ever had someone say, all right, we’re not going with you anymore.

[00:19:17] Tatiana Maldonado: Again, I think that’s a really respectable trait, right? you’re thinking, do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?

[00:19:23] Bill Raymond: Two things. Like how do you want it done? Do you want me, I can hire someone really fast. Yeah, I can find some really fast, but that doesn’t mean they’re gonna do the project.

[00:19:30] Tatiana Maldonado: And that’s great because, keeping that open line of communication just to say, I want this to be like a great project for you. I want this to exceed all of your expectations, so I’m gonna do it the right way. And I’m gonna hire slow and hire the right person for the job.

[00:19:45] Bill Raymond: Yeah, and I do think that there is times when we need to hire someone, but we’re feeling busy, so we might ask someone else to help with the intake of those resumes and maybe do an, an initial scan. And the one, one of the things that you said, that resonated with me as well, when you’re talking about, qualifications that really matter.

Very often when we don’t have the time to write up a proper job description, what we do is say, you need to have this certification or that certification.

[00:20:13] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah.

[00:20:14] Bill Raymond: And certainly there are times when you absolutely must for legal reasons, but for example, in our industry, right, in the project management industry, there’s the Project Management Institute has a project management professional certification.

That’s not something you have to have to be a good project manager. There’s agile certifications as well that is not something that you have to have in order to be a good team member that can contribute. So I actually think that the more eyes you have on the resumes coming in and the less requirements you put down for specific certifications or absolutist things that you want on the resume, really think about if I had the right person, can I train them?

If I had the right person, can they do this job? And that’s probably a better. I bet, what do they call it? The gut feel, I, I can look at this resume and say, this resonates with me and I think I need to talk to that person.

[00:21:09] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, I never understand the certification because there’s so many certifications out there now, and it’s more just like a money grab to me, if anything. Again, unless you’re in like certain fields, like obviously I want my doctor to have a certification. I want,just for the legal, like lawyers and stuff, they have all their certifications.

There’s certain points that you need it, but I just saw something and it just crossed my thing because I was like Googling AI and there was like a job posting and they came up and it’s said be ChatGPT certified. And I was like, what? What is that? What is that?

It said, you’ve attended or have access to ChatGPT University. And I was like, what is that a thing? And I looked it up. I couldn’t find a university, so I have no idea what they were talking about. And I was like, I didn’t even know ChatGPT had a university like is this a random certification now? So it’s just like all those small things and you’re just like, why? Why?

[00:21:59] Bill Raymond: Exactly. The whole point of chat g p T is you could just type things in and you get some sort of a response, right? So it doesn’t take that much. However, maybe there is a ChatGPT University and all apologies to those folks that are, might be out there working for them.

But I will say this, it is also possible that someone asked ChatGPT to create a resume and ChatGPT made it up.

[00:22:20] Tatiana Maldonado: Oh yeah, that is possible. Yeah, cuz I’ve never heard of it. But yeah, just some things that are fascinating. You just, sometimes you have to say these skills are, I do see a lot of resume or draw postings that, that say, these skills are preferred, but we’re willing to train the right people.

And I think that’s your go-to, that’s your go-to line. You’re willing to train the right person.

[00:22:39] Bill Raymond: Yeah. I’m glad we had this conversation because at first I said, Hey, how about we just do a quick little 15 minute podcast to, advertise what we’re doing with this virtual summit, and then you and I go talking and I was like, wow, I really like your organization, what you’re doing, and I love the atmosphere.

I love the upbeat sort of, let’s keep going, things going, and the atmosphere of trust and it just really got me excited. That’s why I really wanted to have a longer conversation with you on the podcast today.

[00:23:05] Tatiana Maldonado: Yeah, no, I think it’s great and because we, you do things with team building and it’s, it’s essentially everything comes together as one. And look at that. We’re networking.

[00:23:14] Bill Raymond: Yeah, absolutely. And, but I would like to talk a little bit just for a short minute about this AI virtual summit that we’re doing together. First of all, could you explain what The AI Virtual Summit is?

[00:23:26] Tatiana Maldonado: Absolutely. as I said earlier, we do the virtual summits and webinars. Those typically happen on Zoom. So we, as we continue to go, we’re like, what do people want? People are asking like, Hey, do you have more things that are, I just had someone ask the other day, are you having AI Summit? I was like, actually we are, people want to learn about AI.

It’s the new I’m not gonna say trend cause I don’t know if that’s the right word to say, but it’s the new thing. Clearly AI is not a new concept, but for business owners it’s fairly new, especially when it comes to copywriting, graphic design and all that stuff that can help you expand your business.

So we wanted to bring, this is our first AI summit, so it’s how to maximize AI Virtual Summit. It’s gonna happen on Zoom. It’s typically the platform we use and we’re gonna have two speakers for this. And I’m really excited because our first speaker, you.

[00:24:14] Bill Raymond: Oh.

[00:24:15] Tatiana Maldonado: Really getting go into, what is AI, right?

What does it mean? What’s the difference between AI and ChatGPT? I still don’t know, so I look forward to hearing this first part. Just the basics. We really wanna make sure business owners have that basic level training of ai. Why? Because you can’t just jump into something and not know a single thing, right?

You wanna have the basics. Do I really need AI for my business? Is this really gonna help me? What are the reasons why it’s gonna help me? And then our second speaker who’s Omi, he’s gonna really go in on what are the right tools for specific industries that you may need. I’m a pharmaceutical sales rep.

Do I even need AI? Is there anything that it’s gonna help me with when it comes to my sales? Possibly. I don’t know. We’ll find out. So I’m really excited cause it’s our very first AI Summit. Typically we have the LinkedIn and the social media business growth. So we’re really trying to get into that AI Summit to, pinpoint how it can help small businesses and businesses in general grow.

[00:25:13] Bill Raymond: Yeah, and I think it’s super important. I can’t tell you, how much AI I use every day in order to get my work done. I’m not a huge ChatGPT user. I, you know, one of the things I think is interesting with ai, and we’re not gonna get into a deep conversation about it here, but one of the things that I think is interesting is that a lot of these big things that you see right now, ChatGPT, do DALL-E, Mid Journey. All these things suck a whole bunch of data out of the internet and then reproduce

the content that you’re asking it for. So one of the things that you don’t get is your own voice. And so one of the things that I am not a huge fan of when I’m working with AI is, for example, asking something to write something for me because I write in a specific way that people come to appreciate.

And there’s a little bit of a sense of humor while it’s still professional. And if you read a Bill article, you know what a Bill article is, and I don’t want it to sound like some article that got spit out of a machine, which is a lot of these can do. but I can tell you that there’s a lot more that goes on in the background where you necessarily don’t even say it’s AI.

You don’t necessarily say, oh, this is, I’m using an AI tool right now, but you are. For example, when we are done with this podcast, I’m going to import these files into a program that’s going to automatically create the subtitles. It’s going to automatically level all the sound for me. It’s gonna make it all sound nice.

These are things that I used to have to hire a sound engineer for. And a person to type up all of the subtitles for, and now I can just do that in a matter of minutes. It’s all there now. That’s AI, and it may not be anything that’s like glorious, like ChatGPT this brand new thing in the world, but it’s all around us and I think it’s important for us to know what it is and how it works.

[00:27:09] Tatiana Maldonado: I agree. And you know what? I do use AI, and I write all of our blog posts and things like that, but if I’m having some kind of block, which we all get, right? if I have a writer’s block, God, what is my next blog post gonna be about? I wrote about this, and this. I just can’t think right now.

Then I’ll go into the AI and I’ll say, can you gimme 10 blog posts, ideas for entrepreneurs? And then all these ideas will come up. And I’m like, I’m reading them. I’m reading ‘em. I like that one. Now I’m gonna write about that one. So I think it’s a, it’s one of those things because either way it goes, we go into Google and we can Google give you 10 blog post ideas, and then I have to search through everything, or I can just go to the AI and they’ll just do it for me.

And then you get that, writer’s block out of the way and you’re like, yes, I like that one. I’m gonna do this. Or if I have trouble, What I do like it for social media, right? So I can take one of my blog posts, I can put the link in and I can say, can you break this down and give me 10 social media posts?

And then obviously you wanna always reread your work and then change some words. But I think it’s great cuz it gives you the hash hashtags. You can change the hashtags, but it gives you kind of everything to help you. A little bit more. sometimes we’re like, God, I got no idea what to write on my LinkedIn page.

What am I gonna write today? And you can just break down an article, simple and easy. And it’s my articles, right? So it’s my blog post. I’m breaking down my words. It’s just breaking it down in 10 different sections. So there’s 10 different posts right there that I can use. And I just wanna say something.

People are so afraid that jobs are gonna be lost. So I read something that was interesting today and it said, With AI, it was like an article saying about 85 million jobs will be lost, but 97 million jobs will be gained. So it’s just gonna shift a focus on the type of jobs, right? So one job may be lost, but they’ll still need another job to contribute to the AI function, right?

I don’t know any other statistics beside that, but I think AI is good for business. I don’t know anything about any other aspect of life besides the business aspect. One, you can use AI to really help with any blocks that you have.

[00:29:06] Bill Raymond: Yeah, for sure. I agree with you. I, some people’s roles will change some titles will go away, but other titles are gonna appear, as you said.

[00:29:15] Tatiana Maldonado: That’s right. Yep. So learn about it now so you have it right. Learn about it. And you know, that goes with any industry. I mean, even if you’re in the medical industry, if something changes, you have to learn about it, right? You have to learn about it to continue to grow within that, industry.

I used to do, I used to be in the pharmacy, so we had to have continuing education, you can’t just not continue education. If you stop your continuing education, you lost your certification.

you have to keep growing. You have to keep growing with those industries. So I think that’s just what we’re doing.

We’re just growing.

[00:29:41] Bill Raymond: Yeah. that’s such great advice. I really appreciate the time that you spent with me today. I guess I have a few questions before we wrap up.

[00:29:48] Tatiana Maldonado: All right.

[00:29:48] Bill Raymond: Of course, we’re having this virtual summit, and, this podcast will live on forever, but we should speci specify exactly when this virtual summit is and how folks can access it.

[00:29:59] Tatiana Maldonado: Absolutely. So the summit is gonna be Tuesday, July 18th, and that’s gonna be from 1:00 to 3:00 PM Eastern Time. So don’t forget Eastern Time. I know the time zones are all different. And we’re gonna have the two speakers and that’s gonna be via Zoom. And it’s gonna be great. And if you’re part of the community, it’s gonna be recorded so you don’t have to show up live, even though I recommend it.

It’s gonna be some fun learning, especially if you’re new to AI or you’re ready to figure out if AI is even right for you. It may not be. It’s not gonna be right for everybody, but just even have that clarity, what is this thing that I’m seeing all over the place?

so I think it’s gonna be a good summit to learn and grow from.

[00:30:34] Bill Raymond: And did you say you use Eventbrite?

[00:30:36] Tatiana Maldonado: Yes, sorry. Yes, we use Eventbrite for all of our events. We do use our website as well, https://networkafterwork.com, and you can see all the events there, but the event link’s gonna take you directly to Eventbrite. it all depends on what platform you use, but.

You can find us on Eventbrite, just Google network after work or in the search bar in Eventbrite network. After work, it’ll pull up all of our events.

[00:30:55] Bill Raymond: I absolutely love that app. I can just go ahead and follow the sessions I like to attend and I just get a little notification. It says, oh, here’s something coming up, and I can just say, yep, I’m interested in that, or no I’m not.

Yeah, it’s a platform that’s really evolved that Eventbrite, we’ve been using it for years and it’s really gotten pretty big. Tatiana Maldonado, I really appreciate your time today. Before we wrap up, is there any way people might be able to reach out to you? Maybe if they want to talk a little bit further about this conversation or perhaps be part of network after work?

[00:31:25] Tatiana Maldonado: Absolutely, and I’m always available I’m gonna do like a coffee conversation with someone that reached out to me, so I’m happy to do any Zoom. You can just reach out to me on LinkedIn. It’s the easiest way to reach out to me. It’s the number one platform that I use, especially when it comes to communicating with other people.

[00:31:41] Bill Raymond: That’s great, and I will make sure that the links to this virtual summit and Tatiana’s LinkedIn link are on the https://agileinaction.com website. And of course, if you’re in a podcast app right now, just go down to the show notes, a description and those links will be there as well. Thank you so much for your time today, Tatiana.

I really enjoyed it.

[00:32:00] Tatiana Maldonado: Oh, I thank you for having me on, and I’m excited for the upcoming event.

[00:32:04] Outro

[00:32:04] Speaker: Thank you for listening to the Agile in Action Podcast with Bill Raymond. Subscribe now to stay current on the latest trends in team, organization, and agile techniques. Please take a moment to rate and comment to help us grow our community. This podcast is produced in affiliation with Cambermast LLC, and our executive producer is Reama Dagasan.

If there is a topic you would like Bill to cover, contact him directly at bill.Raymond@agileinaction.com.