There is something about writing a speech for a summit in the middle of a move of more than 2,600 miles.

I wrote my session, The Visibility Paradox, surrounded by boxes, in the middle of relocating my entire life from Maine back to Houston, Texas. I thought it was horrible. I nearly believed that about it, too, right up until it was out in the world and I could hear it the way other people heard it. It was not nearly as bad as I thought it was. It was mine, and it held.

What I did not expect was that showing up to speak would be the smaller half of what those three days gave me.

The AI in Motion Summit ran October 22 to 24 inside the Collaboration Hub on Skool, hosted by Janay Trevillion and others. I was introduced to some of the most talented people I have met in this industry, at every level of experience, from every kind of business, all of them learning out loud. I watched firsthand transformations happen in real time. People learning new tools. People learning a better way to use the tools they already had. And I had my own transformational experience sitting right there among them, as a speaker who was also, unmistakably, a student.

 

The Session that Set the Tone

On the first day, Denise Pegrem gave a session I wish I had heard five years ago. Three years ago. Any time before the expensive lessons.

Her message, and I am paraphrasing a woman who deserves to be heard in her own words, was to slow down. Do not blindly sign on the dotted line before you have read the terms and conditions and learned the true capabilities of a tool. Test everything free before you pay for another 20, 50, or 100 dollar tier that you do not actually need and do not yet know how to use. Consider all the options, and take the time to evaluate what is true for your business, your clients, and your budget. You can always scale up. Sometimes you cannot scale down as fast without going under.

I wrote in the community that day that if I had heard her session years earlier, I could have saved myself so much heartache and so much money, and slowed down the rush and adrenaline of the pull to urgency over integrity.

Urgency over integrity. That phrase has not left me since I typed it.

I also said, and I believe this in my bones now, that there is a responsibility when it comes to working with AI that needs to be learned, earned, and respected. It is a privilege to work with these tools in our businesses and our daily lives. With that privilege comes the responsibility.

 

The Thing Every Speaker Agreed Upon

I have been part of a lot of summits, mostly as an attendee. This is the first one I have witnessed where speaker after speaker was adamant about the same cluster of truths.

Protect your privacy. Be responsible with AI. Set AI up properly before you start using it.

Out of all the training I have had, this summit spoke to all of it more than anything else I have taken or been part of. And it matters, because so many people jump in not knowing what they are doing, not knowing the access AI has to their personal and private data, not knowing what they have agreed to because nobody taught them to read it first.

These are things I wish I would have learned at the very beginning. I would have played with AI in a much different way.

 

The Center of it All, for Me

Being grounded in yourself and in the work that you do, knowing who you are as a person and what you intend to use AI for, is paramount.

Not letting autonomy and authority be given over to AI. Staying true to yourself, whether that is a daily grounding practice, or slowing down and evaluating the tools you are using and the expenses attached to them against your phase of life and your phase of business and your actual intentions.

I was told recently, in another coaching circle, that all technology has an agenda. I have sat with that, and here is where I land. Yes, it does. Technology is built with one. It is built to expedite, to retrieve, to do something, to make something better. That is its design, and design is a kind of agenda. Which means the intention behind the person using it is not a small detail. If you do not have the right intentions behind what you build or what you use a tool for, or you have no intentions at all and you are just moving at the speed of the pull, it can go wrong fast.

The tool has a direction. You had better have one too.

 

Building in Community

The other thing this summit gave me is harder to quantify and maybe more important.

So many businesses now are entirely online. Solo entrepreneurs. People with a very small circle, or people with limited access to the outside world for whatever reason. Finding a safe place to share and create and learn is a huge experience, and I believe it needs to be portrayed more in our world, because it is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.

I know my own pattern. I go into my rabbit holes and I build fast and hard and alone, and building alone means building without a second set of eyes. Finding this community is making me want to change how I build. Not slower for the sake of slow. Shared, for the sake of seeing what I cannot see from inside the build.

Every speaker at this summit brought a genuine gift to explore, and the mixture was the magic of it. Different people. Different levels of experience. Different industries, and how AI lives inside each one. I am still, only a day later, sitting with things that were said in a short session or a chat thread, with action items attached.

I wrote my speech in the middle of a move, doubting it the whole way. I delivered it into a room that was learning as hard as it was teaching. And what I took home was not a new tool.

It was a reminder I intend to keep. My source stays the authority. The tools work for me, at my pace, under my intentions.

If you are looking for a a great community to learn, advance your skills, or connect with I highly recommend the Collaboration Hub on Skool.