Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome RVA to Inspire AI, where we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of artificial intelligence. I'm Jason McGinty from AI Ready RVA. At AI Ready RVA, our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the greater Richmond region through awareness, community engagement, education and advocacy. Today's episode is made possible by Modern Ancients driving innovation with purpose. Modern Ancients uses AI and strategic insight to help businesses create lasting, positive change with their unique journey consulting practice. Find out more about how your business can grow at modernagentscom. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in today. If you or your company would like to be featured in the Inspire AI Richmond episode, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content and stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA. All right, welcome back to Inspire AI.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Today we have a special guest and a special program. Vic Rogers is treating us today with a new script. With a little imagination, we're going to walk our audience through discussion about personal finance and AI. We're going to call it Money Meets Machine, where your financial freedom through AI can be explored. So here we're going to do something interesting. Usually I interview guests, but today I'd like Vic to host this session, and we'll see where this goes. So, vic, welcome to Inspire AI.

Speaker 2: 1:53

Hey, I'm glad to be back, love talking money, looking forward to the conversation. I did a little research just so I can make sure that the audience is aware of some of the tools that are out there. We'll go over a couple, talk about demoing and takeaways, things of that nature and, as you see fit, if you feel that there's some insight or some other tools, I'd love your feedback on them. Absolutely Awesome, awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:18

So one of the things that I think when you think of personal finance it comes up a lot of times is like budgeting and expense tracking. Right? So there's a tool that I researched called Roli. It's an AI money tracker and what it does is it automatically syncs and categorizes your transactions. So like, say, for example, I got a coffee and chat with Jason and we want to go to a local establishment here in Richmond Best coffee spot in the city, probably. Oh, captain Buzzy's used to be a spot in Churchill, but it's not open anymore. But let's just say Captain Buzzy's, right. This tool will track the transactions through multiple wallets that offer real-time insights and allow for you to understand where your money's going. So that's a great tool for budgeting. Like when you hear that, like what are your thoughts on like having that as a as a tool.

Speaker 1: 3:09

So, yeah, personally, I'd never heard of Roli. However, the thing about it is, being able to see where your money is going is super critical to being able to manage your budget. I think about some of the earliest lessons I had to learn about money management was managing it to a granular point where I actually felt like I was in control. Something my wife likes to say is tell your money where to go. If you take that mindset and you develop whatever practice it is, using whatever tool you want, you can essentially develop a practice of seeing the funds where they are, where you are spending them monthly to whatever level. You can get granular, categorized, whatever, and then you can make quality quantifiable choices.

Speaker 1: 4:01

If you don't have an aggregator, something that is going to tell you what you've spent your money on, you might as well be just tossing money out the window, right? How do you know that you're spending them on the right things? And, to my wife's point, it's like tell your money where to go so that you can control it. I like to think about give myself goals, right? So if I see my money moving in the wrong direction, I get a chance to readjust. But I wouldn't have that if I didn't have a tool that would allow me to assess it, so I've personally used Mint in the past, but we know that you know it's no longer with us you know, rest in peace.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Yeah right, lately I've been using personal capital. Now, personal capital is definitely an aggregator. It pulls account access from everywhere that you want to provide it and it shows you how well you're doing across all the spectrums all of your cash, all of your investments, all of your credits and debits. And so if you can pull that up on a mini dashboard on your phone at any given time and see pretty much real-time data and make decisions based on that whether or not you want to dial back your monthly expenses on frivolous things or you want to look at leveraging your merit raise from your company in a better way, like investing in something new which is I highly recommend this app will do that for you. So you know, don't take my word for it you can. You can try it out. You can try out any number of applications. I'm a big believer in being able to see where your money has gone and telling your money where it should go. So there you go, vic.

Speaker 2: 5:42

No, 100 percent.

Speaker 2: 5:43

And then, like you know, another thing that was really cool, like a feature about this tool is that you can have it take on personas, so, like on here, references like the nagging mom, the trusted friend, the wise mentor.

Speaker 2: 5:55

So, if you need that extra incentive to check out this tool, raleigh, r-o-l-l-y, that might get you interested. And then, also, like, a good use case is when you're planning, like, a weekend getaway. There's a function where you can have a group trip wallet and everyone logs in their expenses and, honestly, that sounds really good for business owners. So, like, if you're needing to track your expenses and your receipts and whatnot, like small business owners, that might be a good use case. So, again, good opportunity for you to leverage artificial intelligence to think a little smarter, not harder, and that tool is a good use case. Now let's talk about something that's always near and dear to my heart. We'll talk about robo-investing and automated portfolio management, so we'll talk about a couple of tools here, but, like, when you hear that, though, like, what are your thoughts on? Like, using ai for for those use cases, jason?

Speaker 1: 6:49

well, I think, as long as the tool that you're using has good reviews and is backed by a strong financial company, it's probably fine to try out. I've used robo advisors in segments of my portfolio so that I can, you know, try it out and give the market, give the algorithms, a little autonomy to go in and see what it does. You know, I've seen some decent results. What I haven't really done is dial up the risk factors or dial them down. You know it's like something you kind of set and forget because it's a fully managed service, right?

Speaker 1: 7:29

And I personally, over the last 10, 15 years, have taken my personal finances very seriously, even though my wife coined the term tell your money where to go.

Speaker 1: 7:38

I've been doing that for over a decade or more and find that by paying attention to the market and moving money around accordingly, rebalancing my portfolio appropriately and investing as heavily as possible whenever possible, that's my secret sauce. And to give all of that control over to a robo advisor I've I'm not quite comfortable with much like I don't like a financial advisor who, on top of dozens of other clients, is barely paying attention to mine, right Like I don't mind having a conversation with a financial advisor from time to time, but I'm not the type of person that's going to give over control to that person and even though I know that you know they're certified and they have, you know my interests at stake, because otherwise they wouldn't have a job. I kind of feel like the robo advisors the same thing but I personally like to be able to push the buttons and and have a little bit more access to what happens with the ins and outs.

Speaker 2: 8:39

I got a great story about that right, and I listened to a podcast called the money guy finance. I think that's the I think that's the name of it and we will be considered a financial mutants because you and I both kind of approach, invest in the same way. But it took me some time to get there. I know, when I first came into a little bit of money, I had a buddy of mine who was a fiduciary planner, right, well, fiduciary financial planners. So, like you know, those are the people who they're not trying to push those mutual funds on you that have high expense ratios or fees or whatnot. You know they're trying to look out for you because if you win, they win Right. And what happened with me was I gave them about five thousand dollars and I started to look to see where the money was and I noticed that it hadn't grown. So, you know, once I got comfortable and I was like, well, if I just take this 5K out and just throw it in Vanguard's S&P 500, if I would have done that a couple of years ago, like I would have had a better ROI, right, but I had to get the comfort and the confidence to do that Right. So, like. I think that for individuals who are interested in having their own hands on the money, we can talk about a couple of different use cases about using prompts to identify the right times to enter the market things of that nature right.

Speaker 2: 9:50

But if you're like a gig economy worker or if you're a person who doesn't have, like, a 401k, things of that nature this tool Wealthfront, is a pretty cool tool because what it'll do is it offers people the ability to, like, invest in IRAs. I always tell people if you can max out your Roth IRA every year, because if you don't have a 401k, definitely do that. Or if you have kids and you want to get their college savings plans up to date, you can do a 529. That's a good use case, right. So this tool Wealthfront what it does is it builds a diversified investment portfolio based on your risk profile. So you tell it what your risk profile is and then it'll automatically rebalance and what it makes sure is that harvest tax losses to optimize your returns, right. So like when you speak to wanting to control some people who are interested in that, right. And like I can't just listen to Kramer all day, or you know a lot of these guys.

Speaker 2: 10:46

That's a decent tool, it's a self-driving money tool and some of the, you know, key takeaways that I've seen is that a lot of times the allocations are dynamically tied to like what you tell it versus like you know. You tell it that, hey, I want to invest 10 bucks and I want that 10 bucks to grow to 10,000. Right, so like, well, not even reverse, but like that's kind of it's going to, it's going to go as you, as you see fit, but watch it though. You know, always watch your money. I think I think you've been kind of speaking to that a lot of times like, don't automatically trust everything. Like you could use this tool and then, once you get comfortable, start, you know, open a brokerage account and start, you know, investing individually Right, but like, again, you know, wealthfront pretty pretty good tool and I like the fact that it pushes people into like IRAs and these, these accounts like that, to make sure that you know there's a little bit of stability and savings there.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Cause like, honestly, if you can get a Roth IRA, you max that out every year, pre-tax, right, definitely do that. So when you retire, um, you know, you don't have to worry about um, a lot of, a lot of issues, but, um, you know it's another tool outside of that I'll speak to. But, like when you hear that, though, like for folks who are like scared of money, like I think ai might help you feel more comfortable about it. Like with me, it was just one day I started listening to a lot of financial podcasts. I always talk about earn your leisure. You know those are guys who really got me on this, on this journey, and then I just took it was a good buddy of mine. He got married to me. You know I took the money out of where he had it at and I put it in Fidelity, and you know it's been to the moon since.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Yeah, no, that's a great story. I think about personal journeys. One thing I would say about robo advisors is it does take the complicated factors out of the situation. So if you find one you can trust right and you have some money to put into it, you don't mind leaving it there for the long haul. You don't want to react to these crazy markets and say, oh my God, I'm losing, you know, 20% today. I got to get it out of the market. Like, if you do something like that, then you probably shouldn't be paying close attention to it.

Speaker 1: 12:49

I do want to say we're not financial advisors, so take this for what it's worth. We're just a couple of guys running a podcast and talking about AI here, essentially, so this is not financial advice by any means. However, the personal journey and experience, as well as how you feel in doing anything with your money like that's all a very personal thing. So, whether or not you're willing to go and become a student of finances personal finances and go and take real control of your financial life, or you want to set it and forget it like a 401k or whatever, like you do that right and we're just offering some ideas about you know what tools exist out there that you might want to go and dabble with.

Speaker 2: 13:41

And you know, because you mentioned it, you know we're going to date the podcast, but you know, when the current administration issued the tariffs back at the top of April, april was a bloody month. You know I, every day I kept seeing comparisons to the 87 or Black Monday. I think it was 87 or 88. Forgive me if I'm off on the year. I know it was in the 80s. I was born in 85. So you know, give me some grace on that.

Speaker 2: 14:09

But 08, market crash. You know, every day I kept hearing that this is the worst thing ever and if you would see that and you would panic and you would want to take your money out, then individually managing your account probably isn't the best bet. You know, using one of these tools is. But like I don't know about you, but when I saw that, I got excited Like I needed to have dry powder, which for those who aren't initiated, that's just like excess capital to invest, right, like I had so much dry powder built up for like years. I was like I years, I was just waiting for that opportunity and when it hit, I was there and one thing I'll tell you is I didn't buy anything, thinking that I'm going to spend the money now and I'm going to take it out in a couple of months. I'm investing for when me and my wife are posted up on somebody's island somewhere when we're 50 or 60. This is long-term investing, right. So, like, when you're investing, like you have to have a plan and if your plan is that this money is going to go to retirement, cool. If you want to do short-term investing, like options and stuff like that, that's a good. That's a good play.

Speaker 2: 15:18

But, um, not going to talk about that on this on the show. But to that end, though, I speak to what happened in april as, like, the market was just terrible. Bitcoin was down, everything was down, right, but now we're closer to the end of may, everything has pretty much got back to where it was prior to um, you know the tariffs coming in now. Um, if you're a person who follows politics or follows the market, like, one of the things that I I initially um hypothesized was that this administration was going to have situations like that. So I was waiting and I was hoping that there was going to be volatility. There's going to be more volatility. So, just like um, one if not the best, one of the greatest um duos ever charlie munger and warren buffett. You know their mantras was always buy when the buy when those are. Well, what's the term it's like?

Speaker 1: 16:08

it's about the fear and greed index. But it's something to the effect of like be fearful when others are greedy, which means you know, don't buy in like 100 percent when the when the greed index is high, 100% when the greed index is high, and then when the fear index is in the other direction, where there's a lot of fear in the market and people are selling off, that's what you want to buy 100%.

Speaker 2: 16:34

That's like with Bitcoin. Right now, bitcoin is up to like 110. When it was down to like 20,000, I think, like 22, nobody wanted to buy it. That's the time to buy Again to avoid all of that. If you aren't trying to follow the market. Just dollar cost average every month.

Speaker 1: 16:52

We are definitely getting into a financial podcast here.

Speaker 2: 16:56

No, I mean like and this is not financial literacy y'all, this is just two guys into it but like, dollar cost average is a real thing, man, and these tools can help you with that.

Speaker 2: 17:05

It's magic, a hundred percent. Yeah, just just ride away, yeah. So the other tool that we'll kind of highlight and go over and then we'll get into another section, it's called Betterment, and what Betterment does is it uses algorithms to maintain your optimal portfolio allocation as the market changes, kind of like what we were speaking to. Like you don't have to worry about, you know, riding the ship when the market's up and down, right, like tools like this can help. Some of the things that they mentioned were like they offered lower fees on here compared to traditional advisors, and you know, a good example was you know a user might want to invest like 100K with Betterment and pay like a $200 annual fee, versus a person who invests like $2,000 with a traditional advisor and potentially saving like thousands of dollars because that, you know, traditional advisor might charge a little bit more. The key feature with Betterment is just this automatic portfolio reallocation at lower cost structure. So, like both of those tools can help you if you're not glued in a Bloomberg every day.

Speaker 2: 18:07

But for those who wants to get a little bit handsy, you know we might we might spend a little bit more time a little bit later on in the show and we transition to the, the next topic that I can really help you with. I think it's important that you have something that can track your credit and monitoring protection Right. I think it's important that you have something that can track your credit and monitoring protection right. So I think credit karma has been around forever. When you think about using AI to track credit monitoring and protection and things of that nature, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 1: 18:37

Yeah, I love credit karma. I've been watching my FICO score for years. In the world of credit, that gives you buying power, right. I think it's super important that you do track it. Before these applications came along like Credit Karma, some advice my parents gave me was to check with the credit bureaus on an annual basis and because there's a maybe it's a well-known fact by now, but you're allowed to pull your credit report free from each credit bureau annually. So if you pay close attention to the credit bureau monitoring systems, you'll be able to see and ensure that your credit is in control, based on what you expect us to have Like.

Speaker 1: 19:22

It'll tell you all of your credit lines, all of your. You know whether you have a mortgage open or car loans, even every credit card that you've ever had, and by monitoring that and making sure that you know there's nothing that's been open in your name that shouldn't be like that was the whole premise behind that. Now they have like these tools I would say Experian is probably one that pops out, pops into mind, because they've lost my data to hackers. They give they give access to free, free credit monitoring now and allow you to lock down your credit, which is great, you know I think it's it can become kind of annoying if you forget that your credit is frozen and then you try to go and open a credit card at a, you know at the checkout at Dillard's or whatever, and and they're like, oh, you've been denied. And then you're like why? You know you got a pretty good FICO score here and and they're like I don't know why, go, you know, take a hike, and then you realize like your credits frozen, like that that's kind of annoying, but it is.

Speaker 1: 20:34

It is great in service of of ensuring that no one is going to come and steal your, your credit history and do something nefarious with it. I've been tracking the number and seeing how high I can get it. You know, when I saw it reach up into the 800s, I was like I made it. You know, I'm like I've arrived and it's a great feeling because you know that you can just basically do what you need and you don't have to worry about, um, whether or not the credit agencies are are going to offer you one thing or another and you just you ask for it and you basically get it right 100 and you know, but yeah that's how it works.

Speaker 2: 21:15

I think, uh, we have something in common like so, like right now and let's talk about credit comment, come a little bit so, like, I got it open and it has my TransUnion score and it has my Equifax score, right. But then it also has a history of every account that I've opened and closed and it has my equity in my home, things of that nature, right. So just being able to look at that stuff Absolutely amazing. So even it gives you suggestions. Right right now it's saying, um, the chase, sapphire, uh, preferred credit card is a card that they would suggest I would, I would open not, not really take it with a grain of salt.

Speaker 1: 21:54

They're advertising that, you know 100.

Speaker 2: 21:56

That's what I say like, not really like wanting to open any more credit cards. You know, I think the next card I'm gonna probably get uh, it's like one of those airman american express platinum cards, just so I can get into the to the lounges with me and the wife go oh yeah, everybody loves a good lounge yeah, you know, and this, this tool, though, can help you pay attention to that, because if you're not aware of your credit score, some bad stuff can happen.

Speaker 2: 22:16

You know, like, unfortunately with me, like you said, like the 800, like I had an 800 credit score for like so long in my life, but I never knew what to do with it. Right, and it was one of those things where it's like, you know, um, pandemic hit and I don't know why me and my wife was like, let's buy our first home. But you know, we was like, okay, let's, there's opportunity, let's go and do it. And, um, when I bought the house, when we bought the house, we were able to get like a two, three interest rate on the home, and I felt confident and comfortable in my ability to demand that kind of interest rate, specifically because I've been tracking my credit score for a very, very, very long time, you know. So like just being able to have that kind of confidence in yourself when you go into like banks, like look, if you don't want to like Wells Fargo, if you don't want to give me a home loan.

Speaker 1: 23:02

We're really name dropping the day, aren't we?

Speaker 2: 23:07

yeah, I mean, I don't know man, uh, but like or or capital, not capital bank of america, right, you know any of these places?

Speaker 1: 23:12

what do you mean?

Speaker 2: 23:13

not capital one well, you know, we can talk about capital one too, but you know, uh, I I don't know, do they do capital?

Speaker 1: 23:20

one. Yes, you do, yes, they do they do um home.

Speaker 2: 23:24

They do home loans too, right, no, no, you do. They do home loans too, right, no, no.

Speaker 1: 23:27

They got out of the business several years back.

Speaker 2: 23:30

Okay, so companies no, I didn't mean to interrupt you, you're good. No, no, it's all good Companies who are buying for people's talent. They already know your credit score. So having that confidence to know that you can compete when you go in there and not just take the first offer is a good idea. Even when I got my initial home loan, I just took the first one and I didn't even know if that was a good number. And to date, the podcast. Now, interest rates on homes are so good, oh, my God, yeah, yeah, changed overnight basically.

Speaker 2: 24:07

Yeah, rates on homes like, oh my god, yeah, yeah, changed overnight, basically, yeah, so like again, you know and I'll give a quick overview again on you know what credit karma is. Use that, because it's going to help when you want to buy, even if it's not a home with a car, if it's something, um, a business loan, things of that nature. Like your credit score is the first thing people are going to look at. So, like, make sure, and if it's bad, then you know that you can look at credit karma to be like okay, let me tax this off, let me, and let me, um, let me get this situated. Let me get this situated. So, like, not only does it help you when it comes to trying to make sure that you're not getting scammed, because I mean, golly, that's such a prevalent thing around nature it could give you confidence, like, okay, over time, like it might go from the sixes to the sevens and and then you know if you can get up to the eights. You know, that's cool. I was told that you know, once you get up to the eights, it's just kind of like all right, man, you know you don't need to do anything else. But it was like a game though. So I know what you mean. Like, once you get up there, you feel kind of kind of hip, you know, and then, just just from a high level, flag suspicious activity and simulate how you know final financial decisions, like getting a credit card, will impact your credit score, which is important because, like, if you know that something is going to have an impact on your credit before you do it, then it might give you an indication on if you want to take that, make that decision or not. Um, so, so, so we've gone over a couple of different tools sprinkled in our own personal thought processes around personal finances and ai uh.

Speaker 2: 25:26

But the big picture, uh, is democratizing. Wealth management is something that artificial intelligence can really help you with. So, whether that's roll uh, rolly um, wealthfront, credit karma, betterment, you all those sophisticated financial management tools can be in your hand and you don't need a financial degree. You know it's like something where it makes the barrier to entry a lot easier. Like our parents, you know it might have been harder for them to have this kind of information, you know. But, like, take advantage of the technology right now. You know the level. The leveling of the playing field is extraordinarily efficient.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Now, and another use case that I referenced earlier was just like if you're an Uber driver and you want to automate savings, when you're an Uber driver, you don't have a 401k. You don't have business Excuse me you don't have a 401k. You don't have medical benefits and things of that nature. One thing you can have, though, is some financial security. You can have your money be stashed away for an emergency fund. I always hear these statistics about how a lot of Americans don't have a very like a little bit of money and a little bit is relative but they don't have X amount of dollars for something crazy happening. Right? Use AI to help you get into situations, because life comes at you quick, and when it comes at you quick, you got to be able to pivot, and you got to be able to react fastly, right? What are your thoughts?

Speaker 1: 26:54

though.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Well, I think there's some rule out there.

Speaker 1: 27:06

I don't know how it's evolved over the years, but they do say have a savings that's built up so that you can manage through a few months of loss of job.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Or one of the biggest lessons I learned over the years was when stuff hits like tires are needed for a car, or maybe even just planning to buy a car in the next couple of years, like you know, your car's getting up there in age and you're spending more on maintenance than you really want to, and maybe more than you would if you had, you know, just a new car payment, like things like that are definitely predictable, right?

Speaker 1: 27:36

So if you pay attention, like I said earlier, to your money where it's going and you think about the future just enough so that you can kind of identify what's coming around the corner for the next six to 12 months, then putting money aside is absolutely a life changer, right? Because, like I was saying, when the tires needed to be replaced or the summer hit and the sprinkler system was going to go off and start billing me at 300 bucks a month for water, right, it's like I saw that hitting the accounts and I'm like man that hurts, right, but playing in the head and and moving a little bit of money in preparation for those things again is a game changer and I say, if you can let AI do that for you, then absolutely 100%.

Speaker 2: 28:32

So we're wrapping up. You know, wrap up everything in a crescendo. Start small, automate. One task, one category. Don't use all these tools at once because you don't want to overwhelm yourself.

Speaker 2: 28:43

So if you're using a budget tool to track grocery spending, or if you're using Credit Karma to prepare for something that you're going to and again dating the podcast, if the tariff situation enhances, it's been suggested that iphones are going to go through the moon soon, right? So if you want to buy an iphone which is crazy to say because I know me, you come from the old school where phones wasn't as much as like a thousand dollars, for iphones, nothing that's going to jump up to like 2k. But if you want to buy an iphone, or if you want to buy something bigger, like in september, like start tracking your, your credit score and get your stuff situated, so like if you need to borrow some money or take out a loan, like I'm not suggesting taking out a loan for an iPhone, but you could take out a loan for a bunch of iPhones for a business. Either way you go, one of the first things you should probably look at is making sure that you understand what your credit power is and spend like five minutes a week just reviewing best practices and throw it in the chat GPT. This is actually one of the first times I think we hadn't even really spoke to like chat GPT or like LLMs on this show. But you can ask those LLMs to tell me about, hey, what are the best practices with X, y and Z. Teach me a new tool every day.

Speaker 2: 30:02

And, just like research it, go to YouTube Academy. Youtube Academy is the best free academy out there. And just over time, just once you get comfortable, share it with your network. I think that's one of the key takeaways I like to tell people. Share it with your network. And once you have community because I love talking to this guy, jason man once you have community because, like, I love talking to this guy, jason man, you know, because, like, when you have community of people that are like minded, you make it makes it easier to do, you make you make you more comfortable and you know it makes it easier to you know, get out there and I'm doing a podcast on AI and finance. That's wild, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Yeah, I'd be interested to see what Jack O'Gorman thinks about this episode because he's big into finances and investing and all the coins out there and he could probably share a lot of his experience with the audience. But yeah, I love the direction of this discussion today. I personally feel like wealth. You know democratizing wealth management is going to. It can change people's worlds and they have to allow it, they have to try it. You know it's like any other thing out there that's available for people to use. If you're not exposed to it and you don't give it a shot, you don't do your homework and try to figure it out, then you're not going to be able to take advantage of it and you know that's going to leave a lot of people behind.

Speaker 1: 31:27

So I think, in the spirit of this show, in the spirit of our organization, ai Ready RVA, we can't preach enough about doing that and we want this community to thrive. We don't want to see anybody in this community left behind. You know, regardless of your background or where you're from, of course, and how much money you have. Like the world is changing and the playing field is, like you say, leveling. It's only going to make it easier for those that have to have more and those that don't have to get and those that don't have to get right.

Speaker 1: 32:03

And you know, you just got to use the concepts and build on them and diversify your thinking beyond what you may have thought the world was about in the past, because it's not about that anymore, right, it's about knowledge. It's about tools and access to technology, and anybody can get with that program. So join us at AI Ready RVA. Any upcoming event is better than no upcoming event, right? So find a niche that will help you explore this space better. Join a cohort, become a member of AI Ready RVA and get access to this stuff today, because the future, your future, will depend on it. Am I right, vic?

Speaker 2: 32:47

Oh, a thousand percent. You know what? Because you just so eloquently mentioned events, can I share the next AI Ready event and our personal event coming up in June? So AI Ready presents Money and Finance Cohort Summer Session sponsored by EEPON. We're going to have a gentleman I'm not going to butcher his name, but he's the senior vice president of data management at Bank of America Come in and talk about how machine learning can address regulatory and compliance risks compliance risks go over real world data science techniques used in enterprise scaling and then discuss the journey from identifying risk to building patent worthy solutions. I think that this is going to be a great session when it comes to like businesses looking to discuss artificial intelligence Non-members 15.

Speaker 2: 33:40

But if you get your membership and you join a cohort, it's free. So that's 15 a month. So make sure you become an ai ready rva subscriber member and we're always looking for founding funders. So if you want to become a founding funder or a corporate member, we have price structures on there. And again, that event is june 11th, from 5, 30 to 7, and it's going to be at the epont technology location and it's going to be at the epont technology um location and it's going to be at 34 31 west lee street in richmond virginia. And if you forgot everything I said, just go to ai ready dot com.

Speaker 2: 34:12

You'll see the events and then rvacom no, I messed that up a couple times when I'm on board. I need to be better at that, will. Both the wills. Don't kill me for that, guys. And then, uh, not too far after that, I got one of my first summer ai workshops coming up. Um, it's going to be uh ai sales tactics, where you can learn how to boost leads, pinpoint audiences and win deals. It's going to be sponsored by score, the metropolitan business league and the central virginia african-american chamber of commerce. That's going to be on june 20th at the 1717 downtown um location. Uh, the uh the innovation center. It's going to be on the rooftop from two to four, one of the uh first events that uh I'm getting to do with. Uh score, we got three-part series and uh shout out to the nbl. Metropolitan business league is a great organization if you're interested in them. Um, they're sponsoring the event as well as the Central Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce. That's going to be on.

Speaker 1: 35:07

June 20th again. Is that with your business? Sustainable Growth, creative, yes, yes, with.

Speaker 2: 35:12

SGC. So we're going to be out here doing AI workshops all summer. We got another one coming up in July and hopefully I'll be on another podcast by then. We'll talk about that. July is a little far from now, but you know the June 20th SGC's first three-part score summer AI sessions is going to happen and I'm super excited about it. So yeah, check your boy out.

Speaker 1: 35:32

Excellent. Thanks for the plugs there, vic. I know our audience will appreciate it and hopefully we see them out there hitting the pavement, working the network magic and exploring what AI can do for them. It's been great, vic. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful rest of your weekend and I'll talk to you soon. Later, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in today. If you or your company would like to be featured on an Inspire AI episode, please drop us a message. Featured on an Inspire AI episode? Please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share and follow our content to stay updated on the latest news and events from AI Ready RBA. Thank you again and see you next time.