Hi there. >> Hi. How are you? >> Good. How are you guys doing? >> Good. >> So, I I was invited by Denise White. I'm an AI cons Oh, she there. Hey, Denise. >> Hi.
>> Okay. So, so you guys probably already know. Yeah, we're just waiting for Romy. Um, is Carlos coming? Do you know? >> Carlos is not. >> No. Okay. We're just waiting for one more person, which is the chair of the actual event. >> Yeah, no problem.
Thought it was going to be a full meeting. >> Yeah, a lot of people couldn't get that meeting. >> Which Carlos? >> Oh, Carlos >> and Matthew. >> Um, >> is it Matthew? I'm
>> not sure. >> Is Matthew the chair or no? >> Oh, economic development committee, but this is a subcommittee and Romy's the technical chair for this one. Coffee. Yeah, we can go ahead. Yeah. >> Okay, perfect. So, we'll call the meeting to order at 5:41.
So, thank you guys all for being here. We're going to go ahead and start with the role. So, uh Romy, Po Remure. I'm the chair of the subcommittee. And we've got Denise White. Um and that's all the committee members for now. I know we have some guests. We're excited to have
you both here. So, thank you for making the time. Um, so just for uh for public record, I'm going to have you guys state your uh first and last name and the company that you're with, please. And we'll start with our virtual guest, Thiago. >> Yeah, no problem. My name is Thiago Feedera and I'm with Elevate AI
Consulting. >> Perfect. How do you spell your last name, Thiago? >> It's F as in Frank. E R R E I R A. Perfect. Awesome. And Drew, if you'll do the same, please.
>> I'm Andreas Vita Ros and I'm representing Vita Custom Designs. And then you needed more information or that was it? >> No, that's it, sir. Thank you. Okay. Awesome. All right. So, I'm going to move from uh uh public comments to old
business first uh just until we can get through just a few things. And this will also help you guys kind of know where we are in the process for this and then I'll jump back into public comments for kind of you know our discussion with you guys today. Okay. Um so as I think uh everyone in the room knows uh this is a
subcommittee for the uh small business boot camp that is put on by the economic development committee for the town of Miami Lakes. This will be our fourth annual small business boot camp. Um and it is exactly what it sounds like. It's a symposium um with a workshop intention
uh that's driven towards mostly small to midsize business owners, not necessarily that are based in in the town. Um it's an event put on by the town of Miami Lakes to the benefit of all. Um it is an open and free event and the our our event date is going to be Friday,
September 25th, 2026. Um last year we had around 60 participants in attendance. That's kind of been how we've been tracking for the last three years that we've done the event. This year our goal is to break a h 100red and I feel confident that we're going to do that um because we finally figured out
you know the the the cuto off period for registration. Um so basically we're going to let registrations remain open until you know if until we hit or exceed 500 free registrations. At that point we'll cut it off due to space limitation. Um, but I think once we do
that, we should definitely have a hundred participants in attendance. Um, so just to go over some dates, we have the date of our event, Friday, September 25th. Um, we are having all of our speakers confirmed uh by May 1st. Today's meeting is part of that
exercise. Um, we're going to have all of the marketing collateral done by June 1st. And I just want to put on the record that we did confirm our marketing consultant, uh, which is Vanessa from Vanity PR. um she is all set and ready to go and has agreed to stay with us for
this new year. Um and uh and then once marketing collateral is turned in by Vanessa on June 1st, um then the committee uh delegates and her will meet with the town communications department no later than June 15th so that we can start rolling out ads for registration
on Facebook ads and social ads starting July 15th um in time for the September event. So about our currently confirmed speakers, we have two of them. Uh we've got Rioberto Leal who is a local uh kind of you know legend business owner. Um
he's going to be speak speaking on how to scale your business. He's uh a corporate employee turned business owner who has scaled to having three private schools within the area. And then we have Roxanna Miranda who's one of the owners of Laser, a very popular uh laser
hair removal uh boutique in town. She is fantastic at branding her business herself online and she's going to be uh giving a presentation on, you know, her her uh method to creating a brand for your business. Um we do have uh town chambers officially reserved, right,
Isabella? >> Perfect. Yay. Thank you. And um and then as far as budget goes, we had motions passed and approved to allocate the money for our marketing consultant um for our uh uh networking happy hour and
for social ads. And we still have $250 remaining in the budget for dry goods and uh and paper day of inc incidentals. Okay, so that concludes old business. Any questions, Denise? Anything you want to add there? We're good. >> Okay, sweet. So we will jump and move
right into new business. Uh and that takes me back to our public comments. So um so basically you know we had both of you guys recommended to us for uh for this part of the of uh of the seminar that we want to uh offer a speaker for
um AI for small business. So what we're looking for um and again have you guys uh you know not have I think you attended last year right Drew or a port a portion of it. I don't remember attending. I think I was out of here. >> Okay. I just I know you've done the the
the the swag bags before. >> Yeah, I did the swag bags. I don't remember. >> Okay. But you haven't attended. Okay, good. So, even even even playing fields, neither one of you have attended before. Um the I I'll kind of start at the beginning. The first year that we did this, we always had an idea that we
wanted this to be kind of, you know, really heavy in instructional. uh you know like I feel like people come to symposiums and we talk about big ideas right and you know maybe you walk away with an idea or two concrete wise that
you may want to implement but very few people give a presentation and actually walk you through the step by step and like give you the how like you know uh I specialize in payroll and HR so my job is very concrete like I have to give a
lot of direction of you need to you know take out this amount of money for this and this goes next and it's very step by step and you know you you give almost like if you're teaching your toddler to tie your shoes, right? Like you have to give them a lot of explanation and direction. That's really the the goal
that we've been massaging into this workshop for now the last three years is every year we want to get closer and closer to giving our attend uh attendees the how that they can walk away from there. You know, we're not at the point yet where we've developed any kind of
collateral like manuals or whatnot. Um, but you know, we want them to walk away there with actionable steps that they can go home and they can implement into their small business or, you know, their midsize business and say, "Okay, I'm going to go do this because I learned it from this speaker at this event." Right?
Um, so with a topic like AI for business, and I'm purely speaking for myself here because, you know, I didn't come up with this topic idea. It was another one of our committee members, but selfishly I'm super interested in this topic because I, you know, I I I
hear the the topic and I'm like, "Yep, I need that." Like, that's something that I need. So, I find myself constantly turning to AI and, you know, just for example sake so you guys can know how I've been using it. I have a professional paid for Gemini
subscription and I've actually paid for a chat GPT subscription, a professional license. I used that for a whole year. I tried that and I switched to Gemini. Um, and I find myself that I I feel like I'm constantly using my AI basically like a smarter version of just googling, right?
Like, you know, h find me this, how about that? How, you know, how do I do this? Um, I don't think that I'm like really getting all the the juice out of the orange in terms of like what it can do for me. Um, you know, just recently this week, I did have it put together a
spreadsheet for me, but I had to prompt it like three or four times because I kept feeling like it was missing information and not understanding what I wanted. >> You have to learn how to talk. >> Yeah. Right. So, I I know that there's Right. So, so that's kind of like the goal I think of this of of this
particular speaker um spotlight is really teaching the audience how to prompt your AI to do some serious heavy lifting for you not just like oh you know I don't know I I mean I will say it isn't from what I do what I do is a
highly technical thing and it requires a lot of research so having a you know a good AI does cut my research time down like by half. So, it is a very valuable thing for me to use it for. But again, you know, I feel like there are so many
more cool and productive things that it could do like actually producing materials or, you know, I don't know, like scanning documents or whatnot. Things that I probably haven't even come up with because I I'm I I won't even pretend to to to be qualified in this
field. But that's really what we're looking for out of this particular topic. And I think um you know and the reason why we wanted to have you both here is to kind of get your thoughts on what your ideas were you know if you were to be the the chosen speaker and I mean you know this is an open forum and
obviously both of you are here you know there there is we're open to possibilities and that if we want to make this collaborative or whatnot or you know if maybe we want to uh uh you know split this topic in two because one of you specializes in something else you
know we're very open um but we'd love to to hear your thoughts, you know, and hopefully you put some thoughts together for us about what you envision. Um, so no pressure, but you know, I always defer to our online guest first because I I want you to be able to get all your thoughts out. It's a little bit more
challenging to have like a back and forth conversation when you're online. So Thiago, if you don't mind sharing kind of what you had in mind um and then we'll we'll give an opportunity to Drew. >> Yeah, absolutely. So what you said is exactly correct and that's what I see at most companies that I work with are just
people that are using AI like uh Google and not really feeling like they're getting the most out of it. Right. So I think there's definitely opportunity here to split the topic in two as you mentioned. I think that would be because it's just such a big topic and you can get down into really specifics. Right.
So the idea that I had and I just presented this at a conference in Fort Lauderdale last weekend and I'm presenting the same topic at the Emerge America tech conference at the Miami Beach Convent Con convention center uh next week and it's about uh the new SEO
right which is called AEO so AI search answer engine optimization and the big topic there for small businesses is really what how do you get referred and found by Chad GP PT. So when a client now that people are not using Google as
much now that they're using Chat GPT and Gemini and all of these other tools, how if they are searching for your product or your business, how do you actually get recommended by these tools? Uh for my business, it's made a huge difference. That's how I'm generating
most of my business right now. I don't do like cold email calling or you know all these random emails that probably all of you receive a million of them a day. Uh I don't do that. I just now I get between five to seven calls booked every single week for my business from
people that found me on ChadBt or Claude or Gemini. Uh and so that that's the topic that I was talking about at the cases and faces conference in Fort Lauderdale last week and I'm doing a full session on it on emerge as well because I think it's just really really relevant for small businesses. Most
businesses have already been optimizing their content, doing SEO for many years now. And now there's an additional step, a few additional steps that businesses need to take in order to make sure that again when someone asks about you or your service in your area, CHPT or
Gemini, they're only giving the top two or three recommendations, right? You don't even get that full page of Google links anymore that you used to get and click through. Now it is just referring that what it considers to be the top professionals or the top businesses. And
so this topic would be all about how do you optimize your content to make sure that you are one of those top two or three answers that the AI tools are um recommending. >> Cool. That that's super interesting. I didn't even know that that was a thing. I love it. Um I uh just a few questions
for you. uh in your experience for a business to even I'm sure you know there's there's quite a bit that the business would have to do to for for the the AI to to find them, right? Um so in your experience for for them to have a
remote shot at being one of those three recommendations because I agree it tends to recommend things in threes. um is this a business that would already need to be investing in SEO like putting marketing or ad dollars towards that already?
>> So the good thing about it uh is that what I teach and the way that I teach businesses to implement it is completely free, right? You can optimize the content on your website, what AI search and these tools are actually doing. is matching all the content that you have on your website and then matching that
to your Google reviews or Yelp reviews or any other information that it can find about you, your LinkedIn posts and your content. It's kind of putting it all together in a cocktail mixer and shaking it up and serving it as one of those top answers. And so, yes, there is
money that you can invest just like you can with SEO and get those paid ads. But for me and for my business up to this point, I've spent zero on ads and I'm just optimizing my content and making sure that it's properly structured so that these AI tools can read it. So it's
essentially SETO plus a few additional steps. >> Sure. Okay. No, I mean I that that's great because my only feedback was going to be, you know, not that we would not welcome or want to attract bigger businesses that may be doing that, but and you know, I'm not trying to impress
anyone. This is a free workshop. You know, we're in our fourth year. We, you know, we market it locally and uh and typically our turnout has has been on more of the startup side. So most of these guys, you know, are just setting
up their their Google My Business page or, you know, are barely breaking uh maybe a hundred customer reviews. So they're they're not the kind of businesses that maybe have put in heavy ad dollars into SEO or something like that. You know, we're thrilled if they have a professional looking website. Um
so that's that's good. Yeah. >> Yeah. And like just something that I I want to add that like that's the real opportunity is actually for the small and mediumsiz businesses you know because a lot of even the bigger businesses have not realized that they have to do these additional steps on top of the AC SEO and the keyword
optimization that they've already been doing. >> Yeah. >> And so for a business like mine I've been in business for it's going to be about two years now. Uh I don't have hundreds of reviews on my page yet. But when I look at when I'm tracking different prompts and different things
that that consumers and leads are looking for when they're looking for my services, I'm ranking against Accenture and EY and PWG. You know what I mean? Because that that is the opportunity now for small businesses. It should level that playing field and actually be
referred when because not everybody wants to work with Accenture or PWG or whatever these big companies, right? So when somebody is looking for those services and for those small specialized businesses, you want to make sure that you're there because just like if you're not on page one of Google, right, nobody would click through to page two, now
it's even more serious because you just need to be one of those top two or three recommendations that the AI tools give. So it's a huge opportunity for small businesses and startups. >> Awesome. That's super interesting. Um Diablo, I have one last question for you. Um uh again just because we we want
to be able to provide something that people can go home and put to work for them you know as soon as possible that can that can make an immediate impact in their business. So this is a function of like you mentioned improving your
website improving your content. How would you feel uh or you know or again if maybe it's not something we split the topic or something but how would you feel about uh being able to almost train a little bit on leveraging AI to build a
website or to help generate you know the the content for the website or to help uh you know again the right prompts the right language to get out of the AI the right you know marketing and branding that somebody wants to use
>> 100%. I mean, it just depends how long the workshop is, right? And so, uh, for this conference that I just did last weekend, they only gave me 20 minutes. And so, that was just enough time to cover what the topic is and why it's important. And we didn't get so many of those recommendations. >> For what I'm doing for emerge next week,
I have a full hour and it's meant to be more of actionable uh, steps that people can actually take. Uh, and so we just kind of have to find that right balance and depending on the amount of time that it's allotted, uh, how much we can cover that is hands-on versus just more
informational. >> Okay, perfect. Awesome. So, um, I'll I'll I'll kind of segue from there over to Drew. So, Drew, we'd love to hear your thoughts on maybe what you intended for this. Um, of course, you can piggyback off of anything Thiago said or
anything in particular that you thought would would make sense here. So I don't particularly do marketing and what he does is marketing mostly. So I I'm more on the practical side of things. I use it on a daily basis whether if it's to help with
um reviewing documents, giving me the right information that I need out of those documents. If I have um a bunch of stuff that I need to put into an Excel sheet and quantify things without having to sit there and um do it all in Excel,
I've dumped data dumped into AI. And like you said, um crap in, crap out. If you don't give the right information, it's not going to give you the right information out. And it may take you a couple of times, but once you understand how to talk to it and how to prompt what
you want from it, you can. Um, I I do think maybe doing like a split where he talks about marketing would help a lot. I I use AI to write stuff for my Instagram. I use it to write um if I had an interaction with somebody at
an event and it's a lead that I want to follow up on. I talk about my interaction with that person to AI and what we spoke about and I asked how are different ways that I can approach this email and it gives me three different versions or two different versions. One
that's a little bit more direct, one that's a little bit more open-ended questioning. Um, and that way the other person's more engaged to want to write back because it's more personal, more more personalized instead of a robot writing and especially those stupid
little dashes that it adds on the chat. Um, if you see too many commas, somebody's deleting those dashes. Um, but a little bit about me, uh, Thiago, I'm actually an IT engineer. I've been doing IT for the last 20 years and I
decided to go into being a maker and 3D printing, UV printing, laser engraving and all that stuff. So my background in IT has immensely helped me with AI and I was one of the first adopters as soon as it dropped in 2021 2022 that you could just start using it chat GPT I was one
of the first ones there asking it questions breaking it making it have a meltdown and have a midlife crisis itself. Um, but like I said, what you put in is what you get back. There are so many AI tools that are out there for small business. Um, outside of just chat
GPT, um, like you said, Gemini, uh, Claude, >> um, for programming, I've actually used AI to help me with some of my programming because I'm I wouldn't say I am an expert in programming. I would say I'm intermediate. So for my Arduino
projects and other projects that I need to light up LEDs or control a screen or Raspberry Pi, I'll use Chat GPT or Claude Code to double check my work and make sure that if I have an issue or an error, not only do I use it to tell me
what the correct code would be, but explain to me why was that the correct code, how does that code change affect the rest of the stack in my code. So, I use it far more than just marketing. I haven't gotten into the SEO stuff. I haven't really dove into that, but I've
used it to help me fix my website up. I've used it to to um help me rewrite emails. And when I get replies from customers, um get ideas on how I could re-engage the customer because there's sometimes that it's a dead end and you
know, two weeks go by and you're like, how do I bring this conversation back up? How do I how do I re-engage? And so giving it its full thread and saying what would be the best approach. Sometimes it gives you a good reply to hey circling around wanting to see if you had any questions. Are there any
modifications that you would like to your order? I had one customer that was telling me literally bought two years ago uh QR codes from me and spent $11 per QR code. Um, and this time around I
had to raise it because we're two years later and cost of everything went up and I raised it two bucks or three bucks and the guy was like, "Oh, it's too much. I'm sorry. We can't go with you. We found somebody else that's going to do it for 350. I'm just giving you um I'm giving you uh like clarity into why
we're going this route. Can you meet it? If not, I'm going to get the sample from this guy and we'll see if we proceed forward." And I'm like, "I'm sorry. you know, I have overhead and I have uh I pay a living wage to my part-timer. I really can't come anywhere near $3 as it
is. I sell one of those on Etsy for 30 or $40. You're asking I'm giving you a bulk discount of 500 units for 11 something. Um consulted chat GPT and and I was like that's not a bad idea. ChatGpt said
maybe there's some other things that can be done. Maybe altering the design a little bit can save money. And I'm like, you know what, that's a good idea. Let me go and see what I can do. So, I altered it by half an inch and I'm able to yield more out of the sheet of
acrylic. So, now I'm able to meet that $11. And so, I said, "Hey, look, I can I could go back to the original $11. I just have to make it a little bit smaller. Let me know." And like last week, his manager asked me to jump on a
call in 30 minutes. Jumped on the call and the manager's like, "The other one was crap. we like yours, we'll take the smaller option. If as long as we can keep it at $11, we're good. >> Cool. >> So, finding other ways to still bring back that business and engage with those
customers, ideas on how to um show appreciation to customers. >> Uh so, like my largest customers, no offense to you guys, my largest customers received a care package over the over the Christmas season. >> Yeah, it's okay. I don't expect the care
package from 450 postcards. I mean, they did spend 10,000 or more with me. So, I got they got a nice little Kala Tumblr with their name on it and and some little trinkets and goodies. So, like finding ideas to to um
to to talk to customers, ideas for products, sometimes you have it, you're right there, and being able to kind of talk back and forth. As a matter of fact, Chat TPT actually has an audible version that you could talk to it. So there's times I'm on my car in my truck and I'm just I look like a crazy talking
to Chat GPT and it's talking back to me and I'm like, you know, like what can I do about this? Oh, you could try this, that, the other. Um I just recently used it. I wanted to find out who do I need to talk to for FIFA because unfortunately though FIFA
is um it did get a lot of money from the county, they're not spending it with the small business they were supposed to. So, I know that FIFA is not going to work with me. I've been to all of their things with them saying, "Sign up,
follow us, do this." But then when they put out that that request for >> Yeah. They're like, "T-shirt with logo." Okay. What sizes? What colors? What logo? Is it full color logo? Nothing. They give you nothing to go by. So, you never can really bid on it because it's
already set for somebody else, right? So finding out who are the sponsors, how can I get in contact with those sponsors, who are the proper people that I need to talk to, um talking about LinkedIn and and hunting down people on LinkedIn. Uh what
positions would be working on the FIFA marketing side for Coca-Cola? What are some of the marketing firms that Coca-Cola uses? Who are the people that are going to be doing the purchasing in those departments, and those businesses? So finding on LinkedIn, going by job
descriptions, you know, and and just yeah, start adding people and cold calling or cold messaging and seeing if it leads somewhere. It doesn't hurt. Sometimes um yes, it would be nice to have people look for you and sometimes
you have to look for that opportunity. And so that's why I'm saying like we're split in the sense that he brings a lot to the table when it comes to people finding you. But being on the business side where I'm looking for that business. >> Yeah. >> Um I've I've had people send me AI
generated art and I've had to fix AI generated art. So, I've had to learn how to use the generator um use uh uh Nano Banana to fix the AI generated art and then use another AI um plugin for Adobe
to vectorize everything because I need things to be vectorred. I need things to be clean. My laser needs vectors. Um and my printer the the you can give me a PNG. PNG is not bad as long as it's 600 uh dots per square inch or higher, but
if you give me anything lower uh JPEG, you're going to see all the little pixels on the logo when I print it. It looks like garbage. >> Um so I use AI in a in in a business operational aspect.
>> Cool. So, what I'm kind of thinking, um, Denise, tell me if you agree, uh, is maybe doing one one like one session that's like practical business uses of AI, which Drew, I think
you would be really good at that, and then doing another session with Thiago, which is uh, leveraging AI to grow your business. um you know or we can come up with a catchier title. Run that through GPT through through the GPT and tell me
what the catchier title is. Um uh Drew, I think what would be really cool to understand from you um obviously not going super detailed into the printing aspect that you use it for or the coding aspect that you use it for because I mean you can mention that but not
everyone in the room is doing that. But I'm sure that you have probably programmed, you know, your AI to already like know who you are, what you do, what you want to hear, etc. >> So when I ask for pitches, it does give
me pitches and then I tell it which um which person I'm going for, who they do, who they are, what company they're about, and it helps me with pitch. >> Exly. I'm assuming I I forgot what it's called in in chat GPT in in Gemini. It's called gems. Like I'm uh like if you've
already like like oh my gosh I'm the worst at explaining this. It's like me trying to explain like I don't know like like surgery to somebody. Um uh so Gemini has a thing called gems and I know that chat GBPT has its own version of it. It's not called gems.
It's called something else where >> they're called custom GPTs. >> Thank you. Yes, custom GPTs. Thank you. Um, so like that you, you know, create a custom GPT because you're going to do X, Y, or Z. I don't know if that's the most appropriate use for it. I know that it learns intuitively with every question
that you ask it because of what I the nature of what I do, which is maybe something that you guys can address, right? So the nature of what I do is I'm I'm in financial services. So, for that reason, when I ask something that's
clientreated to uh an AI, I leave proprietary business information out of the equation because I don't want to throw my client's names out there or, you know, anything like that. So, you know, I've always been very much like a business owner wants to do like XYZ
business owner wants to do this. So, for that reason, I feel like my AI experience hasn't been very personalized because I've left a lot of that, you know, names and and industries and things like that out of the equation,
but I'm sure yours is. So, you know, so maybe if you can like dig a little bit into how to properly program your AI. I'm sure there's a way to program, for example, my AI for it to understand who I am and why I can't give it certain client information, but it for still to
get a sense of who I am and what I do and then maybe start contributing more towards, you know, what Thiago is is talking about, which is understanding, okay, if you're looking for a consultant that specializes in XYZ, you know, Romy at Hive Works would be a fantastic fit
because, you know, she's great at all these things. So, does that kind of make sense? you know, like I I I I I I think that there's a lot of people struggling with that. Like how to talk to your AI and program it so that it gives you the best results. >> Oh, great. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. We can I could definitely come up with something along those lines, a little PowerPoint, and maybe give them some prompts that help it help help them get the AI give help them to give the AI the information that it needs to be able to know more about them. I mean, mine
I've used it for like I'm participating in MakerFair in two weeks. It's a it's a basically a show and tell of makers showing off the stuff that they've made and projects that they're working on. Um, and I had to create a whole bio
about myself and I gave it the the the scenario, the situation, where we're at, where we're going, and who who am I trying to represent? like am I representing Vita Custom Designs? If I'm representing Blitch Lab or if I'm representing Imperial Tech Shop, any of
those versions of our business, um it would give me a nice detail about the business and then about a bio about me. Um yeah, I've I've used it for so many different things. >> Well, I'm actually curious like since you have multiple
>> right now and you type in VA custom designs, >> we will show up or if you type in my name, we will show up. I'm curious like you know >> and I wasn't trying to do that before it just showed up. >> You you that have multiple lines of business right and like you specialize in different things in each one you have
one AI what have you done to teach that AI hey this is this and this is that and when I ask you a question about this aspect of my business I want you to answer this way and not mix the two or you know what I mean? >> It's just how you start the prompt. It's
how you start the prompt. Um, I'm representing XYZ, in this case, Imperial Tech Shop. I'll be at the MakerFair, uh, the 25th and the 26th, and I will be showing off a lot of my projects. Here are the projects that I've done. Um, and give it, you know, you can feed it
photos. You can feed it more information about the projects, and then it could give you um, little writeouts about the project. And you can even create little QR codes that will stick onto the project where the person can scan, send you to to your website that gives more information about that project. maybe a
video that you have on YouTube. So like there's there's a lot that can be done. >> Cool. Well, like Thiago said, we only have like 15 minutes. >> 15 minutes. >> So you're So you would each get 15 minutes with your own presentation.
Okay. Um the uh we haven't finalized the agenda yet, but typically it winds up being 20 minutes including Q&A for your particular session. Um but keep in mind that you know that that includes any Q&A from the audience. And if you eat up the whole 20 minutes, then we jump right
into the next speaker. Um, so and and we keep it that length because at this point and you know we haven't we haven't wanted to extend the event to an all day event. It's the event is only for it's like a half day thing. So it's from you
know 9 in the morning and we conclude uh you know around like 12:30 1ish to go straight into a networking happy hour and people hang out at that networking happy hour for around uh you know an hour and a half to two hours and then we're done and it's a Friday and people
typically are going home around 2:30 or so you know so um so for that reason and again because it's a free event at this stage of of where we're at that's why we've kept the the the speaker um uh symposiums down to around that 15 minute
mark to allow for check-in and a break and all that good stuff. Yeah. >> Um I guess what I'll do is I'll also cover anything like um gotchas in the sense of >> chachi PT does not follow HIPPA laws. >> So don't talk about private stuff.
>> Correct. Um >> or for example again if you wanted to like if you needed to ask it something or you wanted it to help you with something you know how would you go about that? Yeah >> to protect your identity or to protect your client's identity XYZ you know um
and and I mean obviously you know we're we >> nobody here you know we're we're not we're not necessarily like you know advising them on how to run their business. Um but uh I know for example something just came out recently uh it
was actually a federal ruling for people in law enforce uh in in as you know in the legal fields and their clients which you know any one of us you know knock on wood could be involved in a suit at some point with our businesses. Uh basically the court ruled that anything that you
feed AI is open to discovery. Uh yeah anything you feed AI is open to discovery. It's not a >> It's not because it's not exactly because it's not attorney client privilege. It's not it's not covered under attorney client privilege. So, you know that that there's obviously you
know you do that information what you will, right? Um but >> friends ch there you go problem solve. >> Exactly. So, um so yeah, I but I think I think these two these two separate panels would be really cool. Um
>> I think that makes total sense. And I just want can I just say one thing? Uh it occurred to me that I didn't even properly introduce myself or what I my company actually does before I jumped right into the topic. >> Um but but um the name of my company is
Elevate AI Consulting and on top of that I'm also an adjunct professor at the University of Miami uh where I teach a course. Yeah, go Kanees. uh where I teach a course uh called human- centered AI uh which is a course that I specifically designed because I
identified that there was a gap in the AI teaching where all of the courses were being designed for people who are already already like uh looking to be developers or technology majors and I thought where's the AI course for the history major for the business major for
the architecture major right everybody's going to be using AI and we need courses specifically for that and just a little bit about my business as well. Um, our bread and butter is actually teaching workshops and boot camps. Uh, the our
main product that we sell is actually our AI training boot camp and our number one workshop is an AI fundamentals workshop where we're teaching exactly those things like how to set the proper settings, uh, how to prompt and how to properly set up your projects and things
like that. So just very basic things where right before this call I was just in a workshop for the Miami Beach LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce that was a claude power hour exactly about those things you know and so uh AEO is just one of
these services that we offer as a company which I thought would be a good topic for uh small businesses. Yeah. >> Uh but our bread and butter is really teaching all different kinds of workshops uh for small businesses across the country. >> Very cool. Very cool. Awesome. Um, so
yeah, I think this is a a really good like, you know, use of of you guys, of your experience, and I think people are going to get a lot out of it. Um, so just since I have you both here, you know, we'll we'll confirm that we'll have you both as speakers for that day. And just to give you the the spiel, so
um uh Thiago, I hate to break it to you, but this will not be a revenue generating event for you. So we appreciate >> No, that's okay. We appreciate you donating your time and expertise. Um, that's totally, you know, and I tell this to anybody who's a speaker. Um, you
know, the the point of you speaking is, you know, to impart your knowledge and your wisdom on our participants. Um, you know, we appreciate your selflessness in doing that. Although it is not intended for you to promote your business, you
certainly can uh, you know, use your business as an example. So obviously I'm sure you're going to show a ton of things that you've done for your businesses with a with AI that's you know an indirect promotion of your business Thiago again you know same thing goes for you obviously you know
we'll include in your bio your credentiing there's absolutely an opportunity during the networking portion of the event that maybe you'll get some clients or some you know some additional business coming your way because of that. Um, but the the presentation in and of itself, you know,
is not meant to be a direct promotion of your business. It's meant to highlight, you know, your knowledge on the subject and the fact that you're a subject matter expert. Um, so so that's that's just my little PSA on that. Um and again >> I completely understand and I and I just
wanted to say for me just because it's very aligned with the topic that I'm talking about >> doing events like this and different conferences and speaking is actually some of the things that give me the credibility that then gets the AI to actually refer my business
>> next year. Yes. And uh and you guys will get uh you know like a a formal email and you'll have on there you know uh to send us your social uh handles and your logo and everything and you guys will be on all of our marketing and again we have a marketing consultant that's hired
specifically to help us with this event. So she'll tag you on everything and you know and she'll be taking uh reals and videos and feel free and you know and capturing you particularly. So, you're free to use all of that, you know, to to to to repost and share and, you know, ma
amplify the the the the event um and yourself and your own brand as much as you like. Um so, a couple of just uh key things um about the event. Again, agenda is not uh uh formally completed yet, but assume that you'll be here sometime
around 9:00 a.m. in the morning. And you know if uh you are not obligated to stay for the length of the event but we would hope that you would. And again you can expect to be here until around yeah 2 2:30 with the happy hour included. Okay. And the happy hour it's not a full
lunch. Uh but they are very generous. So most people walk away pretty full from the happy hour. Uh it will be within walking distance of the location. So, we have the event here in Miami Lakes uh town chambers and it's literally maybe about I don't know 200 steps away at uh
Chela's Miami uh which is a really nice uh local business that we have here that has a fantastic happy hour environment. Um and that's where we have our happy hour um afterwards and you'll be able to mix and mingle with everybody that comes. Um, we would hope, especially from you guys, who are the most probably
tech-savvy, social savvy speakers that we have, that you guys will help promote this event as much as possible once collateral is out there to increase registrations and, you know, hopefully we even break a 100 participants this year. >> Ask for whatever she tags us and stuff, we'll be posting. >> Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Perfect. Okay. Um,
do you guys have any questions for us? >> I mean, I was here for number one and number two. I missed number three. Yeah. >> Uh, do do does my questions have to be particularly for the AI thing or does it have to be for like can it be about anything else? >> Oh, anything else? Yeah. Yeah.
>> So, question I see here for the budget. >> Uhhuh. >> Um, I asked Matthew if he counted how many bags he has left over from last year >> to let me know if you guys need a refresh because that count of bags, >> you know, will refresh whatever it was
to make it full 100. >> That is a great point. I hadn't even honestly thought of bags because Matt handled most of that, but Matt's been occupied as you know. Absolutely. So, um, so that is a great point because I had >> in his car last I spoke whenever you guys had the last meeting. I had texted
him and I'm like, "Hey, let me know if you guys need more bags. I know we didn't put the year on the bag for the reason for that reason >> that it could be continuously used." >> Um, but how many were used last year so that if you need a replacement, we work on that. >> That's a great point. >> Well, not work on it now closer.
Isabella, can you make a note to put boot camp updates on the the next formal ED the next official committee uh EDC committee agenda and put like a subpoint about swag bags so that we bring it up and um if need be we have a motion to
fund them. Okay. >> Because I yeah you know I see 250 um remains in the budget. >> There's more than that. Don't worry. >> It's different to make it work. Don't worry, there there's there's a little bit more than that um in other parts of the EDC budget uh that that we
keep there on purpose for like you know snacks and things like that. Cool. But thank you for bringing that up. That that is >> awesome. Um okay. >> Anything else from you Thiago? >> No, just I want to say thank you so much for having me. Thanks Denise for for
thinking of me uh for this and I'm looking forward to it. I love doing events like this so I really appreciate just being included. thrilled to have you. Um uh so just uh Denise, this is more for you and I, but because typically to accommodate the time we
have a set number of speakers, um since we're going to split this topic into two and we don't have a speaker for the art of small business lending, >> I'm going to suggest that we cut that topic just to create room for these guys and we kind of brand, which you and I
can brainstorm about. We focus on branding this particular speaking uh this particular year's boot camp around AI and around maybe growth because we have two other speakers confirmed that are about growing your business. It's you know it's growing into a multi-
entity operation magnifying your social media presence you know so we kind of focus it directly on that and you know a lot of times people come wanting financial guidance but I don't think we're going to focus on that this year. Um yeah >> on the financial guidance
uh so I'm also a part of the strive 305 ambassador group like people >> um I'm just trying to think like there are some things that are out there that maybe I can touch on while talk like right before I jump into the AI maybe you could talk about the rise loan
that's through the county and Dade uh credit federal union you get 75 up to 75,000 at prime minus one >> so like there's probably some small topics that I could cover as a Strive member. >> Yeah, I hear you. >> I don't know. It's
>> You have 15 minutes. I would rather not water down people. Okay, I hear you. >> Um, but I am going to leverage your Strive 305 connection and tell you that the last speaker that we are missing is
what we call our inspirational speaker. And Thiago, feel free to make recommendations as well. So, the inspirational speaker is kind of like our, you know, our cleanup batter for uh for the uh the symposium. And what we're
looking for is, you know, someone who in a small business sense has kind of quote unquote made it. You know, they started as a soloreneur and you know, like to give you an example, our our speaker that's confirmed on how to scale your business, he was our our alternative to
this. you know, he started again from working in a corporate job to leaving that, you know, leaving everything behind, going off on his own, you know, opening his first daycare, and I mean, now he has three super successful, what I would call legacy schools that people,
you know, are now like on their third generation of kids, uh, bringing in, right? So, uh, Kids Choice is here in Miami Lakes and he has two others that are in Halia, uh, Our Lady of Lords and, um, Snow White and the Southern Dwarfs. >> Yeah. Yeah, I know. Super cute.
>> I know someone. >> So, right. A lot of people now at this point are like, "Oh, yeah. You know, I know so and so that went there because it's a super recognizable name." And I mean, you know, not just in terms of the impact that he's made in the community, but, you know, just bottom line wise, he runs a super successful business. You
know, this he's built a business now that his kids are going to never have to wonder what they're going to have to do with their life, you know. So, so everybody wants to feel that way, right? last year. Our uh our inspirational speaker is a good friend of mine. You know, again, he loves cars and he
basically like invented the concept of being a car broker, which now is a very normal thing, but when he was doing it, he was one of the only guys doing it. Now he has relationships with pretty much every major car dealership in the country. And you know, he volumes some
ridiculous amount, you know, every single month of car sales, right? And again, if he didn't want to work ever again, he probably wouldn't have to. >> He's stuck at the chamber, too. >> Correct. Yep. Yep. So, um, yeah. So, that so that's kind of the the person that we're looking for. And again, you
know, it doesn't have to be a Fortune 500 CEO. It's somebody, you know, local or somebody that's, you know, based in Miami. And again, that would be willing to give us, you know, uh, a half day's worth of their time to just impart, you know, some wisdom, some knowledge on
people who want to be where they're at in the next 10 to 15 years, you know. Um, so that's who we're looking for to wrap up our speaker lineup. If you guys have any recommendations for friends or colleagues, um, we'd love to to take those and if you can make an email
introduction, that would be fantastic. >> Awesome. Yeah, I have a couple of ideas in mind and I'll reach out to those people and see if it's something they've been interested in and uh if if it is I'll I'll I'll do the email intro for sure. >> That would be wonderful. Okay, fantastic. Um I think with that we are
ready to adjourn our meeting. Do we Oh, I just want to address sorry one two last points here on the new business. Um um but that being said, if you guys want to take off or if you want to log off Thiago, we are not offended because this is more internal stuff. But thank you so
much for being here. >> I'll get I'll get your contact. >> Thank you guys for having me. >> I'll get your cont because if I can end on a note that you come in and you pick up off of then we could do something like that. >> That'd be awesome. Yeah. Get my uh if Denise you can share my email with him.
Um that would be super great. I'm looking forward to it. >> Guys collaborating on that. Um and yeah when we set the agenda I I'll let you guys decide what is what which order is best. Um, so if you want to pick who goes first and then who goes second as
well as you know the other two topics that are on the agenda. So the the inspirational speaker will go dead last. Um and um and then we have uh a client yeah a client a speaker talking about how to scale his business which just in
my brain maybe goes well after you Thiago. uh and um and we have uh uh a business owner talking about you know how they've built their social media brand. So um so keeping that in mind maybe you guys thinking about the
cohesive agenda what order you think would be best. What I don't want pe what I don't want to happen is you know it's a lot of AI and computer-driven stuff back to back to back. So we want to keep it somehow that to keep people engaged right and and not have it fall flat.
Yeah, that makes sense. I think um I mean we we we can see how the agenda shakes out, but if Drew is doing more of the fundamental stuff and the prompting and the settings, maybe that makes sense to as a place to start and then I'm talking a little bit about the answer engine optimization and that's like a
good ramp up for that. I'm I'm almost thinking, and this is just me thinking out loud, um, but I'm almost thinking that Drew might go first, like, uh, you know, first speaker, >> and then Roxanna, which is, uh, social media and and and branding your
business, might go second because I'm sure that she will probably piggyback off of all the prompting and all of the, you know, all of the the base building that Drew talks about, you know, leveraging that for marketing. Um, and
then maybe you go Thiago after that to kind of use all that content for driving results and then Bert can can wrap up. >> That makes total sense. That's a good flow. >> Okay, cool. See, I have some ideas
without a computer. >> Uh, all right. I'll jump off then. Thank you guys so much for having me. >> Okay. Thank you, Thiago. We appreciate you. I'm looking forward to >> person. Nice to meet everybody. Yeah. Okay. >> All right. Perfect. Okay. So then we're
missing just one speaker at the end. Okay. Cool. >> Yeah. My idea would be the, you know, building it up and then used use cases >> and then, you know, from there it can go on to the >> I keep hearing this in my head because,
you know, I I learned this years ago and I think for your uh uh part it would be really critical. It's, you know, tell me, uh, uh, tell me, teach me, show me. I forgot if it's tell me, show me, teach
me. Um, uh, uh, no, it's tell me, teach me, show me how. Walk me through, you know. So, tell me, teach me, walk me through so that you can, you know, okay, I'm going to tell you, okay, so yeah, I use it for this and it's great. Teach me, you know, this is what you're going
to do. Show me how. like actually show them an example of maybe something that you've done or I don't know, you know, maybe give them like a live example. I'm gonna ask it to do this right now. That' be cool. >> What what my idea would be is at the end
of my 15 minutes to have um where they can scan a QR code and then they can see a longer version of like I'll give them a condensed version and cover all the points. Yeah. But if they wanted to know more about each point, then have that QR code where they
can go and pull down the e do and read through it or see the the PowerPoint in its entirety because there's a lot to cover with just basics. >> Right. Right. Right. >> And um the marketing definitely I have not besides using it to fix my website
and put in the right keywords so that when you Google me you find me um the SEO stuff but I haven't really dove into the marketing portion of it. and you were there at the chamber lunch, right? >> So, we had um this this last Wednesday
we had three marketing agencies and they're all about AI right now and they're talking about how they use it. >> Um >> they they spoke not just about AI and marketing, but just marketing in general, but >> yeah, AI helps a lot. >> Sweet.
>> And in all aspects. >> Yeah, for sure. >> Okay, cool. So then let's just wrap up with these last two topics. Uh what time is it? >> Okay, we're not going to go too too long because we only have like 10 minutes, but the best of Miami Lakes collaboration and the ad in the Miami Laker. The ad in the Miami Laker, we
basically just need to look up pricing. Um I do not have a direct connection at the Miami Lakers. Does anybody here? You do. Okay. So if you could just take on the task, Denise, just reach out to them. We want to know pricing for a full page or a half page ad, color and black
and white options. Um, to run an ad in the Laker for uh, Best of Miami Lakes Boot Camp collaboration. And I don't know how they work, but if there's any kind of possibility of, you
know, better pricing if we run it two weeks back to back or how that works or not two weeks, two issues back to back or something like that. >> Okay. >> Okay. And u and if you can bring that information to the next official EDC meeting because again, if we need to make a motion. >> Yeah. If we need to make Yeah, because
that will happen before our next committee meeting so that if we need to make a motion to allocate funds, we can do that. >> Super. Okay. And then best of Miami Lakes collab is uh remind me the last I forget where we left off on that the last meeting. I know we talked about it.
I know we talked about that we just needed better collaboration and tighter timelines and things like that. I don't know if there's anything that we can do today to kind of rev start revving that up and get that in place to make any motions that we need uh at the committee next month.
>> Um best in Miami Lakes. Um let me see. It starts in August. That's what Claire still said, but she doesn't have any other info yet on >> It starts in August in terms of like that's when we start accepting like just generic nominations. >> Goes live in August.
>> Okay. Um August and then September is the event typically. I I don't know if we wrote down any specific dates at the last committee meeting. Um but typically do we know if it let's just say it were to start August 1st. I don't know. Just
to throw a date out there. Do we know typically how long we leave it open for nominations before we name the the finalist? >> Yeah, that one I would have to check how I Yeah, but I can check on that for you. >> Or if we could do this maybe um
if Claire if you can check with Claell like if we were to so for example we said ads to start no later than July 15th. So, July, August. So, we would have maybe around two weeks or so if we coordinate with the Laker um
to advertise that or I mean not not even we we'd have more time because we could still run an ad in early August or mid August. But if we were to open up nominations for Best of Miami Lakes August 1 just to put a date on it, you know, August 1st, easy, clean start
nominations in August. Accept nominations through the entire month of August. So, so nominations are open August 1st through August 31st and then that gives us a 25day window
>> to go through those nominations f pick who the finalists are going to be. And this is what the part that we didn't get to do last year that we dropped the ball on. be able to reach out to those finalists personally and say, "Hey, you
will be announced as a finalist at the boot camp and we want you there." >> Okay? Because that would give us, you know, almost 30 days to accomplish that, which I think I mean, we couldn't do it all the way up until the 25th, but let's just call it two weeks. I think that would be enough time.
>> Yeah. I'll get >> if she would if she would be okay with that timeline. When would you want to have something like the baby moving? >> So, I would say if we're going to open it August 1st, I would say that we definitely would want to run one in
July, maybe like again July 15th or something like that, like the middle of July. >> Um, and one for sure the first week of August or whatever approximate date they they release an an issue to let everybody know that uh that uh
nominations are open. If if depending on the cost, if we can run three or four so that maybe we do two in July and two in August, that would be great. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Is that the cutest stuff that just finished
first? Okay. >> The entire month of August to give you that window. Yeah. >> Okay. And then finals will be announced. >> Correct. Because if if my memory serves me right, >> we uh here in in EDC, we set the
categories, right? So we set the categories and then nominations open and it's write in, right? So everybody just writes in who they want to nominate >> and then the nominations close and based on like you know a word cloud we kind of
designate who are going to be those finalists and then those finalists are the ones that people actually vote on and then the winners are announced in each category. Right? That I I think that's how it goes. I >> did not involve that. >> Okay. I wait last year was the first year that we kind of got our hands back
in the pot. So because the story is EDC used to own Gust of Miami Lakes and then it got like hijacked from EDC and we never got to touch it again. So I mean I've been I've served on EDC I think for like the last four maybe five years. My god. And and and just last year was the first year that we got that back. So
I've never you know so I kind of remember the process but you know it wasn't like it wasn't something that we were super filled in on. Um, so you know, so we're trying to bring back our baby and also work it into the boot camp to kind of, you know, pump up both.
>> Um, so I think that's how it goes. Um, I forget uh >> I forget how much time we give people to vote. I definitely I mean this has nothing to do with the boot camp, but I definitely think we should make it a much bigger deal who the winners are.
>> Yeah. >> It was It was very underwhelming. Yeah. >> I mean, don't get me wrong, some of the people out there, I didn't even realize. >> Yes, the the sticker was the sticker speaks for itself. I mean, I think when you go to a place and you see the sticker, it's cool. But yeah, handing
out the sticker was super antilimactic. I literally walked into Cancun. >> And I was like, here you go. Here's a social media. >> It needs to be a thing. Yeah, it needs to be a thing. Posted on their needs. I I think we should do almost like not a ribbon cutting but like a sticker
ceremony or something like that. Yeah. >> I love that. >> Okay, cool. Okay, >> you can do all kinds of fun stuff for that. >> Every year they get a new wall plaque or it's a wall plaque and then every year they get like a new little placard that
goes on there. >> Well, that's cool. Okay, sweet. We can look into all that. >> Oh, I asked about the AB um situation. You were asking about live streaming. So regarding streaming and recording, they can use Vimeo as a streaming source on YouTube. So for recording, sessions can
be captured locally by recording directly to the computer in our AV room and council chambers. There's a limitation on continuous recording length. So it's about four hours per session, but it would be fine for this event. >> Yeah, that's great. We could actually I mean I actually would say it would
probably be better not to do one long continuous 4-hour thing cuz nobody clicks on a 4-hour video. I actually think it would be more effective if we were just to record each speaker. >> Okay. >> I think we have a much more >> closer we can >> Yeah. I think we have a much higher rate of viewership if they see like a 15inute
workshop on this, you know, and and it'll probably be easier for like Vanessa to cut it down and use parts of it and things like that. >> Okay. Yeah. So, there won't be any um uh additional costs that are available day of to coverage for this event. >> Okay. Um, so we just have to coordinate
with them on things like if you want to split the video or things like that. So >> if we can reserve one of those guys already so they block their calendar. Thank you. >> But they will need to remind you closely. >> Okay, cool. Awesome. >> Um, but yeah, no cost and yeah, it can
be recorded and streamed. >> Fantastic. >> Yay. Okay, I don't have anything else. Anybody have anything else? Okay, then we will adjourn this meeting at 6:43 the next one. Oh, good call. We forgot I didn't put that on the agenda to schedule the next one. Um, we will
probably do it like we've been doing a month from now. So, that's looking like the second the third week of May. So, that Oh, that's the week of my birthday. My birthday's on Monday. So, we will not have a meeting on Monday, May 11th.
Um, but I am open for any other day of that week. So, if we want to look at the basically from May 12th onward, >> the 13th. Yeah. Wednesday. >> That works for me. May 13th. Are there any big town events or do you have a a networking? >> No, mine is the next day.
>> Events that day at 6:00 and 7. >> Okay. So, so could we meet at 5 in this room? >> If you're out of here by 6, >> I don't see a problem with that. >> Am I coming back for that? >> No, you don't need to be here.
>> I mean, that's not a problem. I'm like >> you don't need to be come back. Although if you do want to like you know apply for the EDC we are accepting members Drew. >> Wouldn't it be a conflict of interest if I use myself to >> that is true. So I understand that you value the business.
>> I am I'm happy to consult but I would not be a part. >> Thank you Drew. Okay. We could do >> I'm happy to support >> um Tuesday is available at 12. You're talking to do >> I am fine with doing Tuesday. Do we
rather do 5:30 or 6 in that case? >> Yeah. >> What what's what time is better for you? >> 5:30. >> 5:30. Okay. So, the 12th at 5:30. Okay. >> You guys can come up with great ideas, cool ideas, and you come to me or
everything. >> Cool. Okay. Good stuff. All right, guys. Thank you so much. adjourning at now 6:45 >> 6:45 sorry >> let me know when we're off the record so I can