Artificial Intelligence Podcast: ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney and all other AI Tools

Networking in the AI Era with Melissa Llarena

August 19, 2024 • Jonathan Green : Artificial Intelligence Expert and Author of ChatGPT Profits • Episode 322

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Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast with Jonathan Green! In this episode, we explore the impact of AI on networking with our special guest, Melissa Llarena, an expert in genuine networking and founder of the Mom Founder Imagination Hub podcast.

Melissa shares insights on how to use AI to enhance your networking efforts without losing authenticity. She emphasizes the importance of maintaining a personal touch and using AI as a tool to prepare and research rather than to replace genuine interactions.

Notable Quotes:

  • “AI is never gonna replace the need for someone to have guts.” - [Melissa Llarena]
  • “AI might have that language for you, but at the end of the day, you yourself deep inside know it wasn’t even your words.” - [Melissa Llarena]
  • “The intention in terms of the way that you got that guest and the way that you’re letting them shine on your podcast matters.” - [Melissa Llarena]
  • “You can pull from different categories of your life to add value and not feel insecure about networking.” - [Melissa Llarena]

Melissa also addresses common pitfalls in using AI for networking, such as relying too heavily on AI-generated messages and losing personal touch. She provides practical advice on how to leverage AI for research and preparation to enhance your networking efforts genuinely.

Connect with Melissa Llarena:

Melissa offers a free playbook for mom entrepreneurs and a set of best practices for using AI in networking. Reach out to her on Instagram to get these valuable resources.

Connect with Jonathan Green

[00:00:00] Jonathan Green 2024: Is artificial intelligence ruining network with today's special guest, Melissa Llarena. 

Today's episode is brought to you by the bestseller Chat, GPT Profits. This book is the Missing Instruction Manual to get you up and running with chat GBT in a matter of minutes as a special gift. You can get it absolutely free@artificialintelligencepod.com slash gift, or at the link right below this episode.

Make sure to grab your copy before it goes back up to full price.

Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you wanna make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now. Then you can come to the right place. Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. You will learn how to use artificial intelligence to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep.

Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by bestselling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

So excited to have you here. So today I've been thinking about this a lot and this is a topic near and dear to my heart. So before we get started, we're gonna go into your backstory.

We're going to talk about artificial intelligence networking, which I'm so excited about. Let the listeners know who haven't met you before, what they're gonna learn over the next 20 minutes.

Let's give 'em a reason to stick around. Even though I haven't met you before, that you've got something awesome to share with them. What are they gonna learn today? 

[00:01:15] Melissa Llarena: Absolutely. So how to use AI to accelerate your way out of the rat race and not stop you, hinder you or hold you back. That is the number one lesson here.

I. 

[00:01:26] Jonathan Green 2024: So if you are like me and you're getting more and more unsolicited messages about, I get so many messages in DMS on LinkedIn that I spend most of my time being annoyed and I rate messages, I get on a spectrum of how mad they make me and when I use them in my trainings in other places. So this is something near and dear to my heart and I was just talking to a good friend of mine about networking has changed a lot traditionally.

In the past, you would network in person or you would meet people. And now a lot of people, especially over 40, are saying that networking seems to have disappeared. And I, for me, a big part of my networking, the reason I have this podcast to appear on other people's podcast is it's a great way to meet other people.

But so many people think that the solution to networking is the shot shotgun approach. If I just give my business card to enough people, someone will say yes, and then I have successfully networked and. I think that now we have artificial intelligence, which means I can do 10 times even more instead of 70 people a day.

I can message 700 or 7,000. What do you think is, how do you, maybe the first thing to say is, what do you think is happening to the market that art, how artificial intelligence is affecting networking, good or bad? What's your initial perspective? 

[00:02:45] Melissa Llarena: I think that AI is never gonna replace the need for someone to have guts, right?

So let's just imagine that you wanna go after someone that has decision making abilities at a really big organization. So a lot of my clients are like, oh, I wanna talk to the head honcho 'cause I wanna strike a business deal, and here's where AI is gonna like just stop you dead in your tracks. So you might.

Think that you could almost desensitize yourself and use AI chat GBT or maybe Gemini to come up with some like slick copy, right? That's gonna really get the attention of this like human on the other side of the email. And Jonathan, just right now, right as podcasters, like we know that's like not working on us.

It actually feels like icky and. Pretty gross when we are on the receiving end. And so what I'm saying here is that AI is, it's really like an accelerator. And I've heard you say that in this podcast before, and this is what I tell my clients. I'm just like, it's not a replacement for personality. It's not a replacement for guts either.

So I'll give you a very specific example. Let's just imagine that you wanna approach someone and they're the decision maker. What's gonna get you to actually hit send? So like AI might have that language for you, but at the end of the day, you, yourself, deep inside, you're going to know that it wasn't even your words.

So are you gonna keep up that play that we have out there? You're not, and that's what then makes you more nervous, more hesitant, feeling like it's awkward and feeling like it's sleazy and all of the above. 

[00:04:15] Jonathan Green 2024: You've dialed into something that's very interesting to me, and I wanna laser focus in on that, which is, let's say that you write the perfect email with ai, it gets through, the person calls you up immediately, and then now you have to be whoever wrote that email.

Okay. That's interesting. That's a challenge people aren't even thinking about is what if it works and they call you up and now you have to pretend to be that other person. 

[00:04:40] Melissa Llarena: Oh my goodness. So Jonathan, this is the thing, right? So it's same concept when it comes to dating and let's just be honest, I met my husband in 97 and we're still together.

So I'm not the expert in dating, but what I do know is the following that, if you pretend to like. I don't know, football, American football or global football. You're gonna need to then back it up when you're in front of that person. And chances are deals are not gonna be made exclusively, at least not big ones, over an email, right?

You're not gonna send this sales page that's for I don't even know, a $50,000 offer. You're gonna have to get on the phone. You might even have to show up physically into a room. So it's gonna be a hard act to follow and continue Keep up. 

[00:05:24] Jonathan Green 2024: I like you brought up the football thing because I know a lot of women who on a first or second date go, oh yeah, I love football, and now they're stuck in a season ticket situation going to a game a week, half of the year that they don't like that.

I know so many women this has happened to where like you should have just said early on, go to the game with your buddies. Don't waste a season ticket on me. But now you end up going to all of these games and you have to wear the gear and you don't even like it. So the same thing happens to guys who say they like the ballet to show that they're cultured and they don't actually like it.

You're stuck. So it's exactly that you can get stuck. And even worse is if you don't read the initial email. There's also this danger that you write an email, you didn't really read it, and they ask you a question about something in it that, and you're stuck now pretending to be something you're not.

Or in that situation and. I think this is really, there's a misperception that success from networking comes from volume, and I think that's one of the core problems like a lot of people I get and so many, I was actually grabbing screenshots of all of the bad podcast requests I've gotten via email and LinkedIn in the last few months, and one came in right before the show and they all have the same format.

The biggest thing, and I was just thinking about this, is that they always have bullet points. I've never written an email. With bullet points, unless it's a work email, never person to person, never a real email to my friend. I've never messaged my wife a set of bullet points. You just, you don't talk that way.

It's so unnatural. But because some of these networking things are out there, and artificial intelligence, which you mentioned is an accelerator, just like alcohol enhances your personality. If you have a bad personality, it just makes it louder. It doesn't make it better. So whoever you are, you just become a bigger version of that and even it's not a solution to bad in-person networking.

A lot of people, when I went to networking events way back in 2010, the dark ages, I would, I. Pay attention to all the people that I didn't like. And I would say, what did they do that I didn't like? And there were certain things people would do, and the biggest one is the shock and approach. We'd go to an event and someone had gone early and put their business card on every single table, and that told me that their business card was worthless.

Like the message to me is, if you give everyone your business card, then it doesn't mean anything to you. It's not special. And I don't want you to gimme something that's not special. If you only give one person your business card, then I'm gonna call it, it increases the likelihood. So that's one of the early lessons I learned.

And there's this approach that's very formulaic. I mostly get this, I get this a little bit about my website. Oh, we have a really great idea for someone who would give value. Let us advertise our product on your website. I'm like, how would that help me or my customers? And the other one is, but way more often, I get it about the podcast and it's always.

We want to be on your show because your listeners will love our story or, and they always have. It's always filled with the same lies, which is, oh, I listed your podcast. My favorite episode is whichever episode you released this week. It's always the most recent episode. Every once in a while someone will write last week's episode, but it's never been more than that or, and then they'll say.

The worst is when they copy and paste like job title from LinkedIn, which is always too long. So it's not accurate. It's not how anyone talks. And then they say, oh, I just thought who would be the perfect guest for your show? And I realized it's my boss. Nobody has ever listened to their boss on a podcast unless they have to. Nobody does that outside of work hours. You go home and you wanna hear your boss's voice more. I can't imagine that. I can't think of anything worse. Yeah. You know what I miss when I get home from work, it's more of my boss's voice. It's literally the thing that everyone wants to hear less of.

I'm, that's true. If one of my employees told me they were listening to my podcast, I'd be like, something's going on here. Someone's, it's if you're not asking for a raise at the end of this conversation, I don't know where this is going because that's the only reason is to butter me up and it's still, you don't need to do that.

But I always get these messages and it's a mass production now. There is a value with ai. The good use of AI is that you can cra take your email and say, make this interesting, make this better. But the core mistake, if you're writing a message that doesn't work, sending the a bad message to more people or a louder message to people is counterintuitive.

It burns that bridge where the person now has a negative opinion of you. Yeah. So the most important thing to me. It's really simple. Like I have a bunch of policies as a podcast host that no one ever pays attention to. I don't take bookings through agencies. I never take people who don't reach out themselves and I reach out to most of my people.

You didn't reach out to me. I reached out to you 'cause I had an idea. I said, oh, this lady has a very specific perspective that I, I'm looking for. Most people who reach out to me are not. They don't fit any of my best guests. They're not in that spectrum. A lot of people that don't have any perspective on ai, they don't use ai, or they have, and they haven't paid any attention.

They're just mass shooting and it's then my audience isn't a good benefit for, it's not just that it's a bad episode for me, it's also not gonna benefit you because you're gonna get a bunch of people who are only interested in artificial intelligence, which is not your area of expertise. So you've wasted an hour or 30 minutes of your time pinning which show you're on.

So this whole process. If you have the wrong person, it doesn't matter if AI writes a really good message and the core that works, it's that thing that this is the approach I always use. If I want someone in my show, I say, Hey, I wanna share your message with my audience. That's interesting to you. If I just say, Hey, I want a free hour of your time, that's no longer interesting.

'cause that's taking instead of giving. So the core secret here is to. Give someone a reason to have you on their show. That's a value. Let me ask you a question. 'cause you work with a lot of people, helping them with networking. Every single person tells me the same lie, and I wonder if this one's familiar to you.

They always say, I'm gonna promote your show on my social media platform. Every single guest says that to me and I say, no, you don't have to say that. I've seen your Instagram. You've never promoted a show before. This is not when you're suddenly gonna do it. Nobody does it because it would be so boring if it just 50 pictures of you in a Zoom screen on different podcasts that would kill your feet.

That's, no, no one does that, and that's fine. You don't have to say that, right? But people always feel the need to say that as a way to get on the show, but then they never do it. So I always wonder what are, what's a better way from your experience, what's a better approach to take where you can. Say what?

You can just say what you'll actually do instead of what you think I wanna hear. 

[00:12:05] Melissa Llarena: That's a wonderful question, Jonathan. 'cause I was just talking to my 13-year-old son about the values in my company. And so one is integrity. And so when I think about the promises that we put out there, so when I think about my clients, for example, and let's say they say, okay, if you partner with me, then I'm gonna talk about you during every single press meetup.

Let's just imagine that's like a promise you put out there, right? If you don't actually make good on your promises, then there's consequences that are not just related to that one person. You're gonna develop a reputation. Here's the other idea, as a podcaster myself, to answer directly your question, when I think about, whether someone is going to help me in some way by sharing a podcast episode, by sharing their testimonial on my website, for example, you know what's really important is that.

It's the intention and I love this concept because a lot of what we're talking about to this point is about getting someone's attention, and the reality is when it comes to networking from a genuine perspective, a hundred percent, if you're trying to network with any organization that is led by a.

Female for sure. It's the intention, like we can sniff bs like no one's business, right? From a female perspective, I speak on my own behalf, but at the end of the day, if you authentically are interviewing someone, you're sharing their story on your platform and. The intention in terms of the way that you got that guest and the way that you're, letting them shine on your podcast and the way that you yourself intend to share the podcast episode with your newsletter.

That intention, at least for me, has worked. Like a hundred percent hit rate. What does that mean? So when I've been on podcasts as an example, mom Shine was a podcast I was on recently. I had the podcast interview and she gave me the creative assets as an example, and here I am, the guest. And for me, like from the.

From 0.1, right? So I didn't use AI to get the attention of that podcast host, like I used my personality, which I don't think AI really gets just right. I've even argued with ai, I'm like, keep my tone. But at the end of the day, it's if the entire experience, all those touch points, if they each have the right clean and clear intention that this is a bilateral.

Value exchange. Then for the most part, my guests have shared their episodes. I certainly do that. So for me it's okay, what's my personal value? It's integrity. It's actually written on my business wall. But then on top of that, it's like, how did I actually interact with that person? What. Were my intentions clean?

Do I really wanna share their story, their insights with my listeners on Mom, founder Imagination Hub? Or is it just, because they're a fancy person and I've had a lot of fancy people on my podcast, and every single person, whether it was Gary Vaynerchuk, Beth Comstock, every single person, my intention was clean and clear.

And that's the reason why, and this was before ai as far as my usage of it. My intention was clear and it distinguished me from all those like copy and paste, generic, just like whatever sort of messages that now exist in LinkedIn inboxes.

[00:15:30] Jonathan Green 2024: So I think this is really good. We've talked a lot about the ways people are misusing ai, but I also want to give them positive advice about some of the good ways to use it. One of the ways that I use it is. I'll use it for research. So if there's a particular person that I want on a show, I can use AI and say, find all the different podcasts this person's been on, especially if the episodes are on YouTube, which they usually are.

The AI can then grab the transcripts of all of those and I'll say, oh, show me all the questions that get asked all the time. That this person's already answered because I wanna ask something they haven't been asked before. And if there's ever a question where they got really mad and walked off a show, I wanna know that too.

So I don't ask that. We've all seen, there's certain actors don't ask about a certain movie. I don't wanna make that mistake. Mess up the show. All of that is where it's really useful. And what you can also do is practice conversations. So if you're reaching out to someone and you haven't talked to them before, oh, I've never talked before, you can do practice conversations or practice questions so that you get a little bit warmed up.

There's some really good uses there so that in the preparation phase, it could be absolutely useful. So I certainly do that. If I have a guest on the show and they send me a copy of their book, I'll have the AI read the book and then find. Give me 10 to 20 potential questions and I'll look at those and see which one is the most interesting.

So it those late night shows, some of them have 300 people in the backend that are like pre-interviewing guests, reading books, and giving the host those questions. So the AI fills in that role for me, which allows me to give the guest a better experience because. The same thing for me when I'm a guest.

I think what experience do I want? I want to tell an original story. I don't wanna say the same. Every guest, unfortunately, most podcasts now always say to me, oh, it's a casual structure. It's a conversation. First, I'll ask you about your background. Then I'll ask you for your favorite AI tip. It's really hard for me to be interesting because everyone asks the same questions, and that's a challenge for me.

So I always tell a different part of my backstory. So if someone listens to me on 10 different shows, they get 10 different things. Otherwise, it's just playing a recording of yourself and then the show doesn't get any value from me. Like I need to at least be unique and interesting. So if my audience comes and watches that episode, they'll stay, they won't leave after 10 seconds because they go, I've already heard all these stories.

And that's where either side of the network you can do research to figure out things to ask about. Like one of my greatest successes ever came from that came from long time ago. There was a nightclub that was really hard to get into. The bouncer was. Very rough. Like you, he wasn't bribing, wasn't working and couldn't get, I was like, how do I get into this place?

So it's, I lived in a small town where there was only one nightclub that was open at this time, and I met this girl who was his ex-girlfriend, and she said, I said, how do I, and she goes, here's what you do. She goes, walk up with a Wendy's chicken sandwich in a bag and walk up to him and say, oh, I'm too full.

Do you want this? 

[00:18:22] Melissa Llarena: Okay. Bribery by other means. Got it. 

[00:18:26] Jonathan Green 2024: It's the most successful thing I've ever done in my life. I never, I always got pushed to the front of the line. Eventually through him, I eventually met everyone who worked there, and then the boss, the owner of the club, used to let me in the back if they were full anyways, so all because I figured out what's valuable to that person.

And that's the other way that AI can help you, is to look at someone and figure out what's important to them. So a lot of people. Will miss the boat because they're not paying enough attention. But you wanna look at, is someone married? Do they have kids? How old are their kids? That's immediately, if you ask me, talk to me about kids or talk about homeschooling, you're gonna get a lot more of my attention than if you talk about business.

So the big secret for networking for me has always been to talk to someone about where they're not strong. So I don't wanna talk to someone who's more successful in business than me, right out the gate about business. 'cause that's asking value. But if I walk up to someone and. I know they're looking for a new school for their kids or they're doing, oh, here's a school it's my kids go to and now you're having a normal conversation and that's really the way to bypass the awkwardness of where you feel like someone's really high and you're really low is start somewhere else.

Yeah. Always avoid that part of it and that allow that re you can find that research. 'cause sometimes it's overwhelming too. Do that part. You go, oh, let me look at this person. See what's important to them. What do they talk about all the time? That's not their main thing. Does this person play golf or knock off?

One of the biggest deals I ever did was someone who used to talk about, he got married at 18 and he was like, at 20, they didn't have any kids yet. He's what is wrong with us? Why don't we have kids yet? That's not someone you walk up to and talk to about drinking shots of tequila. That's someone you talk to about their kids and your kids because.

He was at 20. He's like, why don't I have kids? And I was like, man, most people at 20 are not thinking that. But that's like very much his focus. And that led to one of the biggest projects ever worked on. 

[00:20:12] Melissa Llarena: Jonathan, that is the biggest core competency in terms of a lot of my clients. So when I think about a mom founder as an example, a lot of the individuals that I've worked with, they felt like they were irrelevant when it came to like business successes.

But I'll tell you right now, if you ask any of us. Is there a sale at a particular store? Like we will give you the insider one-on-one information? Or do we, think a certain school district is right for your kids? Or is there a particular website you could peruse for homeschooling? We are experts there and what I think a lot of people don't realize is that you can pull from different categories of your life to add value and not feel so insecure that when you're networking you don't have enough to give.

[00:20:54] Jonathan Green 2024: So this I think is really good. So large percentage of my audience is women founders as well. The majority of my audience, and this is I think really important and a good place to end on. It's that. The last thing I like to talk about is work. When I'm not at work, I don't talk at work. I don't like to talk about work when I'm hanging out with other parents from my kids' school.

It's not what I like to talk about. It's my wife and I don't talk about work. I already talked about work all day. Why would I wanna do more? So when I'm not working, we talk about other stuff. We do other stuff. We talk about the kids. So the things that are important to people, like we've just, we're doing a massive remodel in the kitchen and it's a nightmare.

Oh gosh. All the different parts and we, I mean, it's not an optional thing, like the kitchen was rotting away. But that's something that I'll talk about that all day long. I'll talk about the nightmare of workers and what's going on here with this. That's the thing that's happened. 'cause everyone deals with that.

Everyone deals with kids or bullying or homeschool or what to do if a kid's having problem school. Those are things that, that everyone can talk about. So the idea that the only thing. That's interesting to someone is work big misconception. So you're exactly right. Knowing where there's sale and knowing where there's a place to get the right thing, knowing the right way to get places has gotten me so much further.

So that's where I think you can do the research to figure out. What is, because reading all the articles on someone can feel like a bit much, but having an AI do that, say, read all these articles and tell me some of the key points about this. What are things that this person like brings up all the time?

That's not their main focus. If someone brings up golf all the time or they always tell golf metaphors now you know, they're really into golf. If someone only talks about horses, oh they're like horses and that can get you in the door by talking about what they're interested in rather than what their job is.

A lot of people. Love their jobs, but they love something else more. In fact, most people, I love my job, but when I'm not at work, I'm doing other things, so I get it. I think this is really powerful for people to think about that you can use AI with your networking, but it's to use it in the research phase, in the preparation phase, in the practice phase, rather than in the messaging phase.

Even if you're. Tweaking your messaging. It's okay, but you wanna make sure it's something you would actually say so that you can live up to it when you actually meet the person. Because golly, if I sent someone a message talking about their favorite football team, in fact, this just happened to me. I introduced two friends of mine for a massive project.

They're gonna do a. Budget together. They both like soccer teams, or as you call it, world football or real football with Red Jerseys from England. But I wasn't a hundred percent sure they liked the same team. Oh, wow. So I didn't bring it up because what if I go, oh, he likes the same team as you, but then they like a rivalry team.

So I didn't go outside of my knowledge. Because they have the jerseys up. It only shows the back. I don't know the players of every team well enough to do that. So you don't need to go outside of what you actually know 'cause it's only gonna get, yeah, it'll get you a little further, but then you're gonna step on your a landmine you created.

So this is a great episode. I thank you so much for giving me your time. I really think this, people find this very interesting 'cause it's a unique perspective on an effective way to use AI versus an ineffective way to use ai. Where can people connect with you more, see more about what you're doing and see if maybe.

What you're teaching is the right fit for them, or even they'll start listening to your podcast, hopefully. 

[00:24:09] Melissa Llarena: Yeah. The mom, imagine the Mom Founder Imagination Hub is my podcast. And on the podcast and also on my website, I really share a lot of genuine networking insights and tips. And you know what, for anyone on this episode who listens in, I actually have some 10 best practices as far as those AI prompts for networking, and I would love to give it to anyone who reaches out to me on Instagram at Melissa Arena.

For free those insights. So if you're listening, definitely reach out on Instagram at Melissa Laina and I will share with you my 10 tips, the best practices for using AI for networking just for this podcast. Have it right here and I'm ready to give it to you guys. Otherwise vertical ideas.com.

There's a free playbook there. Exclusive to mom entrepreneurs. So I just wanna give a big shout out there 'cause we have different time constraints and obligations and ways we can network. IE say no to happy hours, so you can have the playbook there, fertile ideas.com. It is free for now, rush to it or full price later.

So be sure you go to fertile ideas.com and grab the networking playbook right now. 

[00:25:16] Jonathan Green 2024: Amazing. We'll put all that in the show notes and below the video on YouTube. Thank you so much for being here, Melissa, for another amazing and unique episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. I. 

[00:25:27] Melissa Llarena: Thank you, Jonathan.

This was amazing. Let me know how else I could support you.

[00:25:30] Jonathan Green 2024: Thanks for listening to today's episode. Starting with AI Can Be Scary. ChatGPT Profits is not only a bestseller, but also the Missing Instruction Manual to make Mastering Chat GBTA Breeze bypass the hard stuff and get straight to success with chat g profits. As always, I would love for you to support the show by paying full price on Amazon.

We can get it absolutely free for a limited time@artificialintelligencepod.com slash gift.

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