Episode 30

full
Published on:

1st Oct 2025

Your Story, Your Superpower: Sid Hargro on Creative Confidence in the Age of AI

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Hosts Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy talk with Sid Hargro about how personal stories connect with AI tools in fresh ways. From revisiting childhood writing to creating original art for his walls, Sid shows how curiosity and reflection can spark entirely new forms of creativity.

The conversation highlights the role of storytelling in self-discovery, the responsibilities of sharing othersโ€™ experiences with care, and why this moment is an invitation to explore skills you once thought were out of reach.


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โ€ข Why the creative process starts with your own ideas before AI enters the picture

โ€ข How storytelling helped Sid reconnect with purpose and direction

โ€ข Simple ways to bring back old projects and breathe new life into them with AI

โ€ข Approaches to telling community stories without exploitation

โ€ข Why centering your full identity is the strongest readiness strategy


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Sid Hargro is a social impact strategist turned AI storyteller, blending engineering roots with decades of nonprofit leadership. His โ€œ30 Days of Storiesโ€ series on TikTok shares personal moments that reveal how identity and creativity evolve over time.


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๐˜›๐˜ฉ๐˜ฆ ๐˜ˆ๐˜ ๐˜™๐˜ฆ๐˜ข๐˜ฅ๐˜ช๐˜ฏ๐˜ฆ๐˜ด๐˜ด ๐˜—๐˜ณ๐˜ฐ๐˜ซ๐˜ฆ๐˜ค๐˜ต airs every Wednesday at 3pm Pacific, hosted by Anne Murphy of She Leads AI and Kyle Shannon of The AI Salon. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and join the conversation helping people prepare for whatโ€™s next.

Transcript

โ€ŠForget trying to keep up with ai. It's moving too fast. It's time to think differently about it. Welcome to the AI Readiness Project posted by Kyle Shaman and Anne Murphy. They're here to help you build the mindset to thrive in an AI driven world and prepare for what's next.

We got our bop going. Hey, Anne Murphy. This is a bop. Hi. How you doing? I just, it just hit me how color coordinated we are. Look, we are color coordinator. We've gone vibrant. I've gone a little more muted. Yep. And you know, I think you should tell the nice people that you have new, um, hardware that we're working with today, because they are hearing your voice differently than they've heard it before.

Yes. And I, I know that everyone is tracking how my voice sounds in, in recorded, uh, media. Yes. And so it's gonna sound different, maybe better, maybe worse. But I, this is a, an actual, that's not just a piece of foam I have on a stick. It's an actual microphone I'm talking into. And you, you know, you wouldn't put it past me to just put a piece of foam on a stick to make it look like I have a professional setup.

Right? A hundred percent. Wouldn't put it past you. I mean, the box metaphor shtick, say no more. For those who don't know, Kyle is on, on the, on the interwebs, on the LinkedIn and the YouTube every single night talking about ai. And he often uses inanimate objects to teach us Very, very complicated, um, uh, concepts like, yeah.

Uh, a box. If you really, if you really think about it, a box is kind of like a large language model in a way. Oh, there we go. We've got them. This is the box. This is the box. We've got the box. That is also a large language model. That's right. I can, I can explain how large language models work with a box. So with a box.

But I, I've done it before. I'll do it again. We, we, the a I wanna tell you, I also, I have another piece of information for the nice people, which, oh, good. Given that our, our episodes come out a little bit out of order. This, this will have maybe old news. It's 'cause it's obviously gonna be household news. We have recorded 25 episodes of the AI readiness Project.

Amazing. Real. That's real. That's actually a big deal. That's a big, big deal. Most, I think most people don't get past nine. Yeah. Nine is sort of flame out number. Nine, nine is the flame out number. We're well beyond that. Um, folks may not know that they are currently, um, appreciating, uh, season Zero. We will be moving into season one this fall and, and informed me that we, we are now in seasons and we're, we're, we haven't even begun yet, so that's awesome.

We haven't even really, can you imagine? We haven't even gotten started, everybody. I just have not I bet. I bet they're probably like, Hey, I have an idea. Anne, why don't you start this actual episode. Why don't we talk about ai? Yeah. Why, why don't for so, so here's a question and I, we always, we never know who's gonna go first on this one.

I will dub you going first on this one. This one. Yay. How? Okay. How ready for AI are you this week? Well, I'm in that uncomfortable space of rethinking. Some of my points of view that I thought I had already figured out. Thank you very much. Hmm. And now I'm having to look at them again. And so that's been a little bit uncomfortable.

And one I'm gonna blame on you because due to the LinkedIn or the, uh, TikTok algorithm, you reposted a, a video and that actually sent the original video to me. Oh. So I got this video of the singer songwriter, um, producer who you posted because he was talking about Suno and how Suno had made another version of his song in 10 seconds.

But the reason why hi, his, um, kind of share really made me think again about my. Take on original art versus AI art is because he walked us like moment by moment through pl playing his own song, singing his own song. Right. Live with us there. Then he had Suno do a riff on it, and then he had Suno do another riff.

Do a production on it. Yeah. A production on it. Yes. And then and without, even the Suno had not even heard the whole song. Yeah. It only heard like 15, 20 seconds of it. And to watch his experience, his experience that was that both and Right. It was, AI is coming for my job. That's what he started off the video with.

He started it out, I, I'm making this. He goes, this may be the most important video I've ever made. 'cause AI is coming for my job. And like, because AI is coming from my job, you just know he's gonna go into like this negative rant about it. Negative. But then he comes, he doesn't, he comes around to this. Is astounding.

This is remarkable how, like kudos to the people at Suno. So he, if he can live in both places of Yes, this organic right music that I make myself from my brain and my lungs and all that kinda stuff. And there's also this synthetic version that is also amazing. It, it made me rethink kind of my hardheartedness at times about people just suck it up.

AI is here. Just adjust, just flip the switch and adjust. Yeah. And I started to think about how I actually can admit to myself that music that is, that if I know it's made by a human, only a human. I am likely to appreciate it in a way that makes it actually better. It goes up a little notch. Yeah. Yeah. It goes up a little.

It's he, he followed up that video, so, so there's a couple of things about that video. The song that he plays is called, I think it's called La Moon or something like that. Yeah. And, and it's, um, it, it's, he's already had his Kevin McAllister moment off, off screen, right? Mm-hmm. He heard that he couldn't do this, he did it.

And so this is just post, you know, his Kevin McAllister moment of awe, and he plays the song and he is kind of testing suno and he, he used the words, I'm. I'm as offended as I am. Impressed. Yes. I'm as offended as I impressed. And then, and then his follow-up videos are different genres of songs that he's written.

Like one that he does is like his most complicated song, and he sees if Suno can do that. And one is a song, a little guitar riff song that he wrote for music teacher when he was 17. And he said, I've always wanted to hear this as a string quartet. And that it's, it's, it's, it's moving me because he, he like plays this little diddy that he, that he wrote when he was 17 for his music teacher.

And he just instantly hears it as this four string quartet. And you can just see the wonder and fear like coexisting in him at the same time. And that's in the, in the, uh. The five stages of AI adoption that we talk about in the AI salon. Yeah. Stage three is wonder and fear simultaneously. Mm-hmm. And he's right in the middle of it.

And it is funny, he, you know, some of the other things that he talked about is he got a lot of hate for that video that people were like, oh, you're out here, you know, hawking ai and this and that, and he got a lot of hate. And he said, oh, he, in, in the later videos, he said, listen, you know, you can hate me all you want, but he goes, this stuff's here.

And it's remarkable. And it doesn't mean I'm not gonna write songs. It just means Right. Things are changing and, and he's learning and, and it's just, it was, it was, uh, his name's Fernando. I forget his last name, but maybe we can put it in the show notes. Yeah, let's put in the show notes. Um, it's the kind of thing where it, it was, it, it felt to me and like an important, an important video because it, it was someone who was thrust into.

AI awareness was thrust into ai. Like someone said, oh, you know, you could put your, your own song into this thing and it'll just re, you know, it'll produce it for you. And he tried it and was blown away. But rather than just running and hiding, he said, Hey, I'm gonna play with this thing. I'm gonna play with that out loud.

I'm gonna let you experience it while I experience it. So I thought it was quite important. Really. Really. Yeah. And it definitely just kind of like opened the, opened the book back up for me to, to think differently about this notion of, well, it's here so buck up. Right. It's like, no, it's, it's, it's more nuanced than that, for sure.

Well, one of the other things that strikes me about someone like him is, this is a guy, he is been writing songs for 30 or 40 years. Right. He's, you know, he's, he's, he's established in the industry. He's a, he's a produced songwriter, um, you know, makes his living off it likely. If he embraces Suno, what I can promise you is that he's gonna use Suno in a very different way than someone who's never written a song before.

Mm-hmm. And he'll be able to leverage and amplify his talent in ways that might even surprise him, where he might be able to take fragments of old songs he never finished or things like that, and really bring them to life in, in, uh, in compelling ways. Um, and, and it doesn't mean that it's not gonna be sad and it's, it's not gonna affect his employment.

And it's, there are things to process and it's just things are changing. Right. And, and I think. What was so remarkable about his video is we get to witness in, in real time. In real time, someone processing this. Um, but I think to a great degree, everyone's gonna have to process this. You either choose to be in it, right?

What the AI readiness, um, project is about is, hey, you, it's coming whether you want it or not. So you might as well step in and figure out what it means to you and what it makes possible. Yeah. But even if you don't choose that at some point, you're gonna, you're gonna be in the situation he was where it's like, uh, I had no idea.

I had no idea. And don't you, you can just see watching him that he's better positioned to do something like exquisite Now. Than any of the people who are accusing him of being a, you know, like a shill for like big AI or something. He, he, he's appreciating the whole spectrum of it, and he's gonna be able to do some stuff that's super magical, like playing, being able to see this piece played as a, as an orchestra that he's been thinking about his whole life.

Imagine what's next. He's just did hitting the top of the iceberg right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. How about you? How AI ready are you? Um, I, I had a, I had a good epiphany this week. Um, epiphanies are always good. Mm-hmm. And, and, you know, there's so much going on with ai, you, you know, so much of the time. I think that video with, with Fernando, um, maybe informed this.

Um, but I, I was having a conversation with Cindy Kon who's taking this big. Ai, AI consultant certification. It's this big multi-month certification program that she paid for and she's doing, and you know, she said it's really good. There's nothing remarkable in it. It's just, it's basic, like, you know, it's basically like, here's how to be a consultant with ai.

Right. You know, it's, mm-hmm. It's, it's a relatively straightforward course, but what she, what she told me she realized was that the most important thing for her consulting practice is who she authentically is. Yeah. That it's that, that she, she said to me, I spend a lot of times trying to fit who I am into these different buckets for different people.

Right. And she realized that her genius is her wacky, you know? Mm-hmm. You know, wacky, crazy, brilliant self, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and as the words were coming out of her mouth, like I was immediately going, well wait, what's my authentic self? What, what, what am I doing? Because I feel like with this AI stuff, I have been kind of trying to shapeshift when I'm in different audiences, I may be shapeshift a bit or try to, you know, not be as weird and, you know, but with both Cindy and I, you know, individually and collectively we're weirdos, you can't hide the weirdness.

Right. It just is what it is. Um, and. So I started thinking about it and just, it, it immediately came to me that for me, the thing that I have, that my career has always been some version of is the intersection of, you know, the latest technology and self-expression. Yeah. And, and that, and that, that's the thing that actually really excites me about ai.

It's what, it's what my book Feed Your Prompt is about. It's about feeding it you so the AI amplifies you and your ideas. Well, what's that about? That's about self-expression. And, and I think, I think as humans, we wanna make meaning we wanna impact other people. And, and how do you do that? Well, by being your authentic self and by saying who you are and putting it out there, it's, it's a, it's, it's a simple but not easy lesson that I keep learning over and over and over again.

Be your authentic self. Say the things that need to be said, if you have an idea, get it in the world. All that sort of stuff. Yep, yep. And so and so for me, that was the, the, the epiphany had nothing to do with ai, but everything to do with ai because AI is just this magnificent humanity amplifier. Yes. So if you feed it your humanity, you get rewarded with, oh, that idea was that, that's, that's actually a really good idea.

You get to, you get to take joy in. Like, like Fernando, when he played that song he wrote when he was 17 and it just started playing this string quartet. He'd always wanted to hear it in his head that way, but never did it. And now just there it was. And you just, you just see him kind of take pride in it.

And he was talking about his teacher from back then and, and what the song meant to him when he wrote it and what it means now. And you know, it's just like that, those are magical moments in life. And so for me that, that was a big breakthrough just personally and, uh, yeah, gimme some clarity on a bunch of my projects.

Yeah, makes so much sense. Well, c when, let's see, our next conversation that we're having to today, even 'cause sometimes for the, for the nice people out there, sometimes we record multiple episodes on Sundays because we're not always live on Wednesdays. Um, our, our guest is a member of the ai, the Daily AI show, and I always use them as the perfect example of.

In AI as consultants, it's not gonna be about what our knowledge base is. I mean, yes, as far as a blunt instrument, you know, are you really tech? Are you non-tech? Are you in this niche? Are you in that, that niche? But there's good, there's lots of us who are, in some ways, like our technical background and stuff, our ability to do the consulting is even, even Steven.

Mm-hmm. But you look at these, you know, six people on squares on your screen and you know who you're drawn to. Just like Cindy's client, Cindy is a time traveling, you know, cookie weirdo genius, and people who want that want that and they're gonna know her. Same with you, same with me. Mm-hmm. So the piece about self-expression though, that I think is important and super relevant right now is that as we are trying very hard to get our real selves, sometimes the most palatable version of ourselves, but our real selves out there into the world, this is why we need to have that AI intuition.

The overall like court sense of AI is because when Che GT four became Che GT five, the way five is gonna express us is different in the way it's different the way four did. And so that's where now we take all of the AI readiness that we have, right? Thank goodness we have it. Uh, not everybody does. Some people are growing it like through our program.

Yep. And you take all of that and now you double down on it and you go, wait a second. The first and foremost thing is me. Yeah, it's me. I'm putting me into it. What does the mean on the other side of it look like? Yeah. And is that really true to me? And if it's not, what do I need to do to fix it? Not boohoo, Sam Altman took my machine away.

I, yeah, exactly. That's, you spend your time on, spend your time on figuring out how you're gonna use this tool to do what you want it to do. And that's the piece of like where self-expression comes, you know, intersects, I think with some of the drama that we're having with the new models. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think it's huge. I think it's huge. I think you also, you use the term court sense, which I'm pretty sure is a basketball term and it's a basketball term. You're talking with someone who probably would get kicked out of the stands of a basketball game, much less the court. But, you know, we'll let that slide, uh, we'll let that slide.

No, I think what you're talking about's absolutely critical. I think. The, one of the biggest challenges with AI right now is that it is so capable that it's really easy to not, not put your point of view and yourself in the center of it. You can sort of treat it as this thing off to the side, oh, it's gonna be my genius, it's gonna write great poetry for me.

It's gonna great. Write a great business plan for me. No, no, no. You're still gonna do that, right? Because you know what's good, you know who you are, what you're trying to express. Um, so, so let me take us into, um, a thing to pay attention to this week. And I, this is, this is almost like an exercise this week.

I'm, I'm kind of excited about it. So, so I'm gonna see if, if, Anne, if you can think of one of these. So what, what I think would be a very good exercise to do for the following week. Is go back in your personal archives, go back to your notebooks from high school, your little poetry notebooks, or your sketchbooks or, or think of if you've got a, a thing of business ideas that you've never gotten around to.

We all have some archive of those things that we'll get around to at some point that we never have. And, and as you get older, you start to resign yourself to, well, maybe that's never gonna happen. And I remember when I did, um, when I was first learning about Custom GPTs, I, I went and I found one of my old screenplays, a 30-year-old screenplay, and I created a storyboarding, uh, like a what?

It was like a companion. I uploaded the screenplay as the knowledge source for this custom GPT. And you could ask about the plot and the characters, but you could also say, give me, um, uh, uh, like a screenshot of a scene of the, of the film. And it made these scenes of the film. And what was fascinating, just like moving to me, was it, um, it.

It brought it, it brought it all back to me as if I was still writing it. So there's something about those ideas that are old that you haven't done anything with. There's still something in there. And if you can use ai and then, so, so go find them, go find an interesting one and then put it in chat, GPT or put it in Midjourney or put it in Suno.

If you've got a fragment of a song that you started but never finished, go put it in Suno. So that's, that's my thing to pay attention to this week, is like, just go find a fragment of your self-expression and defragment it. Like get it out of, out of your head into the world, out of that notebook, into chat, GBT.

See what it turns into for you. Because what, what I've experienced is that, is that there's some very deep joy, um mm-hmm. When you find those things that you were super passionate about but abandoned at some point and you kind of bring them back in and let AI amplify it for you, there's something, something there.

Hmm. I have this story that I wrote in fifth grade that, um, good. Actually, I won an award. I won a a, it was like a young writers Wrong. Yeah. Young Authors Award. And it's about this place where we go on vacation every summer. And I've been going there since I was in, since I was like. Seven years old. Wow.

Now, if we'd had AI a while ago, I could have made my children their, you know, children's books based on my story, and I could have made a movie out of it or something. But I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make it for myself and then, um, have it digitized for the first, uh, for number one. It'll actually be digitized then because it's like it was written on a typewriter.

Right. Yeah. Beautiful. And, and, and who knows what I'll be able to make with it by the time I have grandkids, but at least it'll be digitized and I'll be able to then Yeah. That's so, that's so awesome. There, there was, um, uh, a good friend of mine, Kevin Clark, who I wrote, uh, collective Intelligence with, you know, Kevin.

Kevin. Um. At, at one point he had audio recordings of both his father and his aunt, his father's sister. And they grow, grew up on the railroad. Um, the building, the railroad between Texas and Chicago. Um, their, their dad worked for the railroad and they lived in railroad cars as the tracks were being built.

And so he had these, these audio recordings of their time, you know, their, their, their time doing that. And so we took the transcripts and we put them into a GPT and we, we were building something for Kevin to be able to work on this book. And he had, he had always wanted to write this as a, as a book, as a kind of story of his father.

And as we're writing it, I'm realizing that, that, oh my God, this would make a good children's book of, of like this girl living on the train with her brother. And, and you know what I mean? It was just, there was just something about it, kind of this magical thing. And Kevin had never considered. It being a children's book.

And two days later he goes, Kyle, here's the children's book. He, he went and he turned it into a children's book. He made all of the images. And so again, it was this thing. He had these recordings. His father died, I don't know, four or five years ago. He'd had these recordings for years, and just all of a sudden they went into chat, GBT, they came alive because I saw it.

I was like, oh, it could be this. And then two days later, he now has this children's book of this really remarkable story. Right? And so, so that just seems to me that that is, is a, if you're feeling down or overwhelmed with all the tech and things like that, just go find a seed of an idea from Yeah. From another era in your life.

And yeah, just watch what you can do with it when you start to play across these different tools. Yeah. Maybe as a reward when you're starting to like. Organize your digital files because we need to, we need to clean up our digital files. Everybody. So what? I know he feels called out. Yeah, I know. He's, he's crawling under his desk right now.

I know. It's like the worst. It's so bad. Maybe your reward is, you know, every few hours you get to take a little Easter egg out of there and turn it, turn it into an image or something, you know? Yeah. Something to get, yeah. It doesn't need to all be so serious, like, AI is so serious and it's copyright and it's this and it's that, and it's, the robots are gonna kill us.

I don't know. Maybe just tell a cool story.

Maybe make a picture of something. I don't know. Maybe just make a picture that gives someone some joy, you know? You know, be wacky. Yeah. It doesn't have to be that serious all the time, I guess. Right? It doesn't have to be all the time. It doesn't. It doesn't. Well, why don't we jump in? Why don't you tell the good folks about, she leads ai and then, uh, I'll talk about the, uh, the AI salon.

I, I really want to get, uh, Sid up here. I'm really excited. Me too. For our guest this week. So I wanted to share one of the things we're up to, and she leads AI right now because I think that, um, Sid will be interested as well. So inside she leads ai, which is an organization that unites accomplished women to advance AI for global prosperity.

Inside our organization, we have, she Leads reads. So it's a book club. Um, we we're on our fourth book right now, and this one is Unmasking ai, my Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. And it's by joy. And she is, um, I've only listened to like the first 30 minutes. I mean, she starts off with a banger of a story.

And, and I learned, I've learned, I'm learning immediately through her storytelling. But it's a, it's a, it really surfaces a lot of the social justice questions that we have. And I learned already about something called, um, the coded gaze. So there's the male gaze and how our world is structured around the male gaze.

The coded gaze is how everything is structured for how it can be perceived by machine. Oh, code us into, right. So. That's an example. So if you're looking for a place where you can read books or by the way, our book club, you don't even have to read it. We don't care. We just wanna hear your ideas. So if you're looking for a place where you can come talk about ideas, what's going on in ai, the ethics, the companies, your own personal work, or you wanna be in a membership community where we do peer mentorship, or you want to come to events or you want to, um, attend social Saturday or be part of our ai, um, academy.

, it's free. We're there from:

You know what's funny about She leads AI is, is every, every time I'm on a, on a call where you talk about it and there's men on the call, the men are like, can I join? And you're like, no, it's our little space. We're good. But thanks. But it's, it's just, it says something to me that, that there, there's something powerful enough about this organization.

Like people want to join it. Right. You know, it's, I love it. It's really good. We're like, no, no, this is a mansplaining free zone. We're good. Thanks. We splain each other. Don't get me wrong. All genders can mansplain. Exactly. Exactly. But it's, it's in a different, different spirit. Yeah, exactly. Um, so, so with the AI salon, I'll, I'll, I'll share a similar sort of thing.

So, so this past week, um, Suzanne Weer Jergens and Cindy Coon put on what we call a, a Learn Out Loud. And a learn out Loud is basically an hour long session to learn something. And they did it on, um, making merch. Um, using AI to make merch and how do you make stickers and t-shirts and things like that.

Right. Real, really successful thing. And it was also a kickoff for, um, Cindy is heading up the prototyping, uh, club within the AI Salon Mastermind. So within the AI salon. So the AI Salon is a free community, but within it, there's this thing called the Mastermind. And the Mastermind is a subscription area of the salon and we've got clubs and hubs and, and people can develop deeper relationships and, and do things like prototyping sprints, where over a course of weeks you can build things together.

the Salon is just, you know,:

Um, and for getting up to speed on AI because no one's got their head around it yet. So you might as well hang out with some folks that. You know, we're trying to figure it out too, right? Yeah. No one else wants to talk to you anyway, so we True. Great. And why don't you tell the folks about, uh, the AI readiness Training Program, which we are now live.

We are officially launched. We are live and launched with the AI Readiness Program Training Program, which one of the, one of the neat things about this is that it is connected to communities. It is connected to social proof, and there's a certificate and you get to show the world that like I'm not just out here on my island.

Right. I'm learning from people who are totally relatable. Like other people, they're not, you know, celebrities, they're not like Tech Bros. They're really literally people just like us. And, um, we cover business, we cover creativity, we cover ethics, we cover, you know, AI leadership in your community. And all of it is based on more general, it's not based on the tech or the tools.

Yeah. It's like how do you bring yourself to the equation and when you get this kind of a general. Um, education, I think you become like very, very highly sought after as a, your skill sets are highly sought after because most of us Gen Xers have grown up with a couple of different zones of genius, right?

At most. Because we're supposed to pick up, pick up one thing and do that for the rest of our life. And run it. Yeah. And run it. So here we are. We're now stuck with a couple of these, like deep seated, you know, skill sets. But now with AI, just inherently, we can also be a generalist. But the ability, if we're able to learn from all these relatable people across a whole bunch of different kind of themes, now we come out of there and we're both a generalist and a specialist in our areas, which is the superpower.

Yeah. You want to take your specialization, add a understanding of ai, you need to be able to see around the corner. And that's what this gives you. It gives you the opportunity to see around the corner. And, um, people should definitely take it. It won't be, um, you know, out of date anytime soon because it's evergreen type of content.

It's universal. This is about, this is about AI mindset. It's about, mm-hmm. It's about flipping your mindset into being adaptable and curious and all those sort of things. Thinking, thinking critically about how you use ai. And those are skills that are gonna persist no matter how the technology changes.

So it's a self-paced course. It'll take you, you know, a handful of hours. You can pick and choose what to do first, second, fourth, whatever. And, uh, it's available on, are you ready for ai.com, which is the R and the U, and then ready, and then the number four, and then the number four then, and then two letters.

And then an A i a A. You can remember it's the first letter, and then I is sometime after that. Let's, uh, let's, let's move on. Let's get our special guest up here. Let's put, put people outta their misery. Well, why don't you, why don't you, why don't you tell good people about Sid? I'm so excited about, about Sid and bringing him up here.

Well, Sid is one of the. One of the pieces of proof I would give anybody who says, you know, TikTok is dumb, or it's just for dancing, or it's just for kids, or whatever. Like, I found Sid, just the algorithm delivered Sid to my feed. And that's, that's awesome. You know, and we had just like, just gotten first, we just like got to know each other through each other's content, and then we kinda like unpeeled the onion.

And he learned a little bit about my background. I learned a little bit about his background. We got together, da, da, da. We could probably go and move mountains together any day. And I would've never known him if it weren't for TikTok. And I'm so excited for the nice people to meet Sid, too. Sid, welcome.

Welcome, welcome. Welcome to you as a thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here. I've enjoyed, uh, the first part of your session and I, I haven't yet mentioned, and we'll hopefully weave this in, but we have a mutual friend, all three of us are also huge fans of Kimberly offered who? Sid. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. So, yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. I, Kim was, has been a significant part of this journey of mine and she still does. That's awesome. Absolutely. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, Sid, why don't you, uh, introduce yourself, tell the, tell the good folks, um, what you're up to, what you want 'em to know about you, what's going on and, and, uh, where your head is these days.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, the, the journey story for me is that, is I've always been, uh, I think I was kind of born a tech nerd, right? So I, I actually started as an engineer, a design engineer, and then just that, and as you said, this idea of digging deeper, this gen, gen X period of focusing on one area. I transitioned to the social impact space and so forth.

Most of my time had been in and around social impact and, uh, both leading organizations and consulting and advising. But you know, the tech part of me, the innovation part, it's not really tech, it's really this innovation, continuous improvement side of me. Um, just kept, you know, stayed with me the whole time.

And, um, so with this introduction of AI a couple of years ago, to me it's just opened up an entirely new world. Um, and it's given me an opportunity to not only look at it from the, from the, uh, perspective of how it might, uh, make some of the things that I do more efficient or help me brainstorm and all of that, to actually using it also with my creative side.

Mm-hmm. Which has been really, really exciting.

Go for it. Oh, Kyle, were you gonna ask a question? Okay. No, no, no. Go ahead. I was, no, go ahead. Okay. Okay. So on TikTok right now, you are in the midst of 30 days of stories, right? A story a day for 30 days. What have you learned about yourself through that? I mean, I've been learning about you and I've really thoroughly enjoyed it.

What have you learned about yourself through telling these stories? Such a great question. One of the, I would say the main thing that I've learned about myself through that process has been that my story actually matters. That sharing it matters, and that sitting on it is like sitting on, um, uh, opportunity for others as well.

Right? And so, um, I, the whole idea of it came along because I, you know, um, you know, probably over a month ago started to really get the sense that I needed to share my voice. I need to share my voice both through imagery, through stories, et cetera. So, you know what, why not use TikTok for that? Um, there's a audience of some sort, right, of some size.

And I was like, you know, August is a good day. It's a good time, right? It, it was right around August one. It's like, I'm gonna do 31 days to see if I can actually come up with 31 stories. Wow. That's amazing. Um, and these, these are, these are all stories from your life, from my life. These are real true stories from childhood all the way through to as recently as weeks ago.

Um, wow. And, uh, a lot of them, you know, were in early childhood. There were some through college postgraduate space and then also, uh, in more recent years. Um, and so it's been really, really exciting. I had no idea that I had 31 stories in me. That was the funny part, right? That was like, yeah, I actually have these stories.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we have way more than, than we think. And how are you, what's the, what's been the relationship with AI and getting the stories out and, you know, there, there's a, I hear a lot of things about, people talk about AI can't be creative and things like that, and I, I experience other, I experience it other ways.

I'm curious what your relationship with it is as you're telling such personal, personal tales. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, although I have not. Um, other than structure, I have not really used it a lot in the stories, but it actually came about as also as a part of, of, um, my understanding of how AI can be used to tell stories, right?

Mm-hmm. And used to tell stories with imagery. So in my mind, I think in images. That's the way my, my brain operates. And so as I'm telling the story, you know, some people will go directly to writing it. Mm-hmm. And, and I try to write almost as if they're no, like it's a silent movie. Like what is the experience of this moment?

Oh, that's great. What is the experience of this story as it felt, you know, for me while I was going through it, and then I start to tell the story. That's great. Well, it's the same thing. That's the same concept that I use in kind of AI film, uh, or ai real making or telling other stories through AI is like, I try to get to the experience of what I'm trying to project as opposed to the details of what the actual words are.

storytelling through, uh, the:

Um, and Kimberly offered, I've been really using it as an opportunity to say, okay, what is my experience like and how do I create, uh, you know, very, very short video around that. So I have like two or three different projects that are about my experience. I haven't just directly connected to one of the stories yet.

Yeah. Um, uh, so for example, no pressure, just, it just seemed exciting, especially because you Great. So visually. I mean, one of the, one of the stories that I am try working on is, you know, at the start of the pandemic, one of the things that, that we all experienced when we were shut in is we real, we started to actually get to know ourselves.

Mm-hmm. And when we started to get to know ourselves, we started to realize that there was a mask. Oh yeah. Right. That we were wearing all this time to basically help others kind of feel a certain kind of way or to fit in a certain, um, context. But, and so there's like one, um, uh, the, uh, actual story that I'm working on that is about taking off that mask.

And what was the experience like of first realizing that you had it on, and then the process of taking it off? Right. Damn. Yeah. That's a, that's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a common story. I mean, I think as I talk to others like, well, what was, you know, what did you really learn from being shut?

And I was like, yeah, I kind of got to know myself. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't get, I didn't have anybody to talk to. I didn't, I couldn't go to, you know, I was seeing anyone. And so this opportunity of getting to know, and that the part of transformation that happens when you first get to know yourself and then you realize you actually kind of like yourself a little bit.

Mm-hmm. And then you try to do that, that moves along. It's like, well, wait a minute, I wanna share this part of me. Right. Yeah. And AI gives, is an opportunity to do that in such widespread fashion, um, that I have not experienced before, certainly in my lifetime. Hmm. Um, do you use, so if you were to like sit down, if you were like, today's the day that I am going to really see.

How I can use AI in my storytelling. Like I'm gonna spend a whole day playing around with it, trying to make something. What would be your, like first couple of moves? How would you set up a project on that? That, that's good. That's such a great, great question. I would start with simply, you know, outside of the platforms mm-hmm.

Jotting down, brain dump, doing a brain dump, right? Ah, brain dump. Okay. Of whatever, whatever concept. Right. And then taking that con, that brain dump over to chat GPT or some other kind of platform to see, to really brainstorm around how to structure it. Mm-hmm. For a certain audience, for a certain amount of time.

So if I'm trying to tell a story in 90 seconds that's different than three minutes. Yeah. And so that's something that it would take me hours to try to figure out how does this story change based upon the length of time? How does it change based upon the audience? Right? Yeah. It's the same story, but what's the nuance?

And so I would use it to, to actually help me brainstorm around that. Mm-hmm. And then if it was, if it was moving to, um, you know, kind of a short story or short film or that type of structure, I would also then use it to brainstorm around, um, uh, storyboarding. Okay, what are the storyboards, what are the shots?

Right? What are the main shots? Um, what, you know, what shots need to be closeups versus, um, setting shots where you, where you're far away, which shots need to be aerial, right. Looking down. And so those are things that, you know, I'm not trained as a filmmaker, right? So I may not, I don't know all of that, but I'm learning through the process of these suggestions, how to actually do that.

Mm-hmm. I, I really love, I, I wanna, I wanna emphasize for the good people, but just acknowledge for you that, that step one was not chat, GBT, that step one was Correct. Let me check in with myself. Right. Let me, let me get some ideas out of my head. Right? Whether it's a whiteboard or a notepad, or just, just even closing your eyes and taking a breath.

That, to me, feels if there, if there's a superpower in using ai. Because it's so fast. Mm-hmm. If we can have the discipline to take a moment before to, to say, well, wait, what do I actually want here? Right. To your point, who's the audience? How do I wanna affect that? What's the timeframe? I just wanna reinforce that.

'cause that to me feels so, so important. It, it's not only important, I really feel like it's essential to actually moving along in readiness. Right. This idea of, okay, if I move away from it as this thing that is taking everything away and look at it as this opportunity to figure out how to dig deeper into my skill, deeper into my gifts, deeper into my own story.

Then do help me with the things that I don't know about, uh, sharing that with the world. Right. I, I don't know. I, I didn't go, I would love to have gone to film school, but I did it. Right? Right. Um, so how do I take this story, which is, which is something that I design and I wrote, or I, I came up with, and then, but put it in a structure that is, is digestible, right?

And so that gives me a chance to use it as a tool that knows things that I don't know and can help me then leverage it. It's about leveraging AI for, with, with my own gifts and gills and talents, et cetera. Yeah. How about in telling other people's stories? So you and I are both in social impact and we have so many stories to tell, right?

Mm-hmm. And you know, we're aware that we. That the stories of our clients or our beneficiaries, or the people who we serve, it's their story. It's not my story. Right? And it's not Chad GP T's story either. That's right. But here we are right now. We have chat, GBT Open, we have this person's story. We have some documents about their thing.

What, how would you recommend using AI for ethical storytelling about beneficiaries in the social impact sector so that you're not exploiting them? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I, that's a, a great question. Something that I haven't thought about, but I do have some ideas because I do believe that, that one of the greatest challenges that we, we face certainly today, but have always faced, right, is how do you get the story of those who are on the ground having the greatest impact, but no one knows, right?

Mm-hmm. Because they may not be the organization that is of a certain size that, uh, a larger foundation would either be aware of them or even care about them, but how do you get those stories from, from the ground that they are actually inch per inch, pound per pound have a greater impact sometimes than larger organizations, right?

Yeah. And so you start kind of just without, you know, similar to what I said before, I was, I would assume that I would start with. You tell the story first. Yeah. It's your story. Yeah. Right. I'm going to, we're gonna listen, we're going to capture that story, and now let's use, you know, later, let's use a tool to say what are the different ways and the different places and the different vehicles through which you can have that story distributed.

Yes. Um, if we're going to do, put video to it, what is the, again, what are the, even if we're using a real kind of video, you know, iPhone or, or some other, uh, uh, tool, what are the angles to get this story in a most compelling way out to the audience that needs to hear it? Yeah. Right. Um, so, so there's, so you still start with the human, you start with the human story.

Yeah. Yeah. You start with the actual impact and you start with the intent. Right. Of amplifying what's already there. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. That's it. Boom. Beautiful. Love it. Um, so good. It's so good. It, it, there's, there's so much to talk about here, and it's what I, what I love about the conversation so far is that in a lot of ways it's, it's had nothing to do with ai and that to some degree feels very right to me.

Right. That, that mm-hmm. This is about us as people, and it's about, you know, as, as meaning making machines that we are, that storytelling is everything. And, and that, you know, just, just finding, finding that relevance as the core of what you do, independent of the tool feels very right to me. So, so I'm, I'm excited about that now with that.

Mm-hmm. We, we ask our, our guests the same three questions. It's the AI readiness, um, project question number one for you Yeah. That we asked. Yeah. Question one of, of what we ask our guests. What was the tipping point for you where you knew you had to go all in on AI and, and what's it been like since? Uh, e excellent question again.

very start. Um, and I say in:

Yeah. 23 and then 24. Yeah. Um, but I went with just curiosity. That's all I had. I, I hadn't used it. Um, but I was like, wait a minute. People are coming together to talk about this for an entire weekend, giving their time. And it's like a lot of right

I'll try it. Wow. And then in:

Where I went, took, went from just. Using it to actually being an advocate and figuring out ways for me to dive in and put myself into it in a way that allowed me to create more. Um, it's, that's when I met Kimberly offered. That's, and you know, in less than a month later, I was creating my first three minute short film.

Wow. Wow. That's so amazing. I don't even know anything about a short fiance, but I have stories and how, how do I tell these stories? Um, and she was like, yeah, come on the board. And guess what? We haven a a, a short film contest. In March. I was like, okay, so I've gotta learn. So you, you have from nothing to entering a contest in March?

That was, yeah, that was what, December? The end of December? Yeah. Oh my goodness. January. Yeah. And by March I was in, I was entering the contest. You were a filmmaker. That's, you know, it's funny, joy. I asked Joy Purdy about her filmmaking 'cause she was really good right out of the gate. And I asked her, and, and she said, she said, I, no, I never knew anything about film, but I've always had these stories I've wanted to tell.

I like, I've always wanted to be able to tell stories this way. Totally. And now I can. And it's, it's that, just to hear that from you is so, it's so powerful. Right? Because again, it's powerful. It comes back to like, what, you know, what are you up to in the world? What are you, what are you wanting to put in the world?

Right. That's right. Yeah. The stories were already there. Yeah. The, the interest and the, the passion to share them was already there, but now you actually have a, a, another medium by which to, to not only do it, but to do it in a way, again, for different audiences, different period of time. 32nd, 92nd, three minutes or more.

Right. Ah, that changed everything for me. And, and then I went, and the other piece of it then, even though that was my on-ramp, in order to actually go through that process, you all of a sudden are finding out how to use these other tools mm-hmm. With other use cases, right? Yep. Yep. And so you, so you enter through the creativity door, but you're starting to use it.

Organizationally, you're trying to, starting to use it for how you organize your day, your week, and how you spend your time, and how do you do it with a, with kind of a neurodivergent mind, like mind, right? And so you get, you all, you get to structure things differently, all but based on going through initially that creativity door.

But now I can talk to other organizations or other creators, or other artists or other people. It's like, yeah, this, can, this actually help me structure my day? Beautiful. Wow. Love it. Oh my gosh. Well, if we, if Kyle, I know I'll speak for Kyle too. Like if we have any, any tiny, tiny, tiny part of more Sid stories getting out into the world than we're winning.

Exactly. That was worth it. Um, okay, now we love this next question with our multi, particularly with our multi-passionate. Yeah. What trends in AI are you paying attention to right now? Yeah, I, I would say that the top trend most recently that I've really started to see emerge, even though I'm sure it was already kind of popping up, it's just that it came to my awareness.

Mm-hmm. And that is, there's so many different groups Mm. That are forming to share with each other from within different spaces. Right. Yeah. So there are, there are groups within the nonprofit space. There's groups within the small business space. Yeah. There's groups within the creative space. Mm-hmm. And there's so many that you can find a space, because I really believe that that not just with, you know, well certainly with ai, but I would say in general, we're in the moment where the collective matters.

Yes. We're in a moment where you cannot go, anything go, go it alone on anything. Nope. And so the opportunity is. Hey, there are all of these different groups where you can just casually become a part of, start to get engaged in however you, you know, based on wherever you are. And they don't really care whether you just started yesterday or you've been doing it for three years mm-hmm.

Or two years or wherever. Um, so I think that's really the number one trend. Mm-hmm. And then the, the other piece is one that I've actually stumbled upon because this white, uh, wall behind me is a part of my own kind of creation of like, what does it look like to use creativity, um, and AI in different ways.

And that is this, this space of kind of interior decor. Mm-hmm. Decorating and image development for the score for individual spaces. And so I've been experimenting with developing images that matter to me. Yeah. That will, that will eventually, very shortly. Up being on this wall behind me and being a part of this, this office re rebate.

Oh, wow. So those images that, the images that you had people voting on, you made those Yes. On your TikTok. Oh God. The woman with the, the blue woman, the jazz singer, uh, obsessed. So good. So good. Yeah. I love this. Are you gonna, are you gonna work with other people to help them re redesign their spaces? Maybe.

I, it's, it's really interesting. They'll know, right? That that one post got around like, well wait a minute. So wait a minute, where did these come from? Wow. And like, there's an opportunity to decorate your space that based on images that make you feel a certain way. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And you don't, and you don't have to.

Simply, you know, so good. Go to TJ Maxx and try to hope that there's something there. Right? No, no, no. You get to, you can create it, you get to design it. You get to create it. You can design it. Yeah. Based on what you have. Yeah. The the other thing I would say about, about communities and being in groups like that is that I, I think that one of the perceptions is that to, to, to be able to be good at ai, you have to be technical, you have to be a mathematician, you have to be an engineer, and, and it's just not true.

But I think what, what you also discover is, is what you just did. That I, I am consistently seeing people. Essentially forest gumming their way, like stumbling into new careers just because there's a new capability there. Like, like this thing you just described could totally end up being like a whole career direction for you, right?

Like you might become an interior designer, who knows, but, but just you get inspired. You see someone else do something where they're just like, oh, I can now make my own images. Wait, I'm gonna redo my space in that. And that you never know where that's gonna lead or who that's gonna inspire to do something else.

Right? So for me, that idea of Yeah, yeah, kind getting the juice of other people kind of rediscovering, you know, their, their humanity is what it's all about. Beautiful. That is absolutely. Okay. Third question. And this is, this is, this is the most self-serving, admittedly, but, but I also love this question, what does AI readiness mean to you?

And then what would you say to someone who was, where you were in 23, like, uh, I guess I need to deal with this now. Right? Someone just getting started. So what does AI readiness mean to you, and what would you say to someone? Yeah. It, it's gonna sound like the same story all over, but you know, I am, I am at my core, an educator.

So I think about the readiness for, from the standpoint of 1 0 1, 2 0 1, and 3 0 1, right? And that is not levels of knowledge, it's really just your readiness to, to, to, to different, different depths of, of, of the work. So I would say initially it is, do you have the curiosity to, to investigate. Oh, that's, that's readiness 1 0 1.

stigating. And that was me in:

And uncovering that there's some degree of consistency of, of, of digging, if you will. And then 3 0 1, which is again, as, as someone who has kind of a, a, a creator builder mindset. Um, and that is, is when you get to the point where you realize that the speed of innovation and obsolescence is an opportunity.

Mm. Right. There's a, there's, there's, there's actually an opportunity because this is not about all the experts are out there doing X, Y, z. The question is how do you start from where you are and what you have to offer and what your gifts and skills are and realize that that, that things are changing at such a fast pace that this idea of old where you had to be an expert at that, like it's not there.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then the other, the other thing that's obsolete is this idea that you have to pursue everything based on what you know, right? Yes. We're in a moment now where it is about pursuing experimentation, leaning into what you don't know. That's so good. That's what building the future is about.

So that 3 0 1 space is where you really get to kinda stretch out and say, okay, yeah, well good. Like what can I create today? Wow, that's so good. Syd. You know, one of the things that I used to think about, and I feel like it was like in the zeitgeist for a while, and then maybe we stopped talking about it or something, but you know, there was a long period of my life where I believed that what we're best at isn't necessarily what our mission is.

Right? It just because we're good at it doesn't mean that. Yes. Right. It doesn't mean that that's the thing that we were really brought here to do. We just, we were good at it and that we were good at it. So people started paying us to do it, and then we got a little better at it, and finally, now this is this track and we are Gen X, but what if this is our very, very, very moment to go.

What do I not know how to do? Oh, uh, interior design. Right. I'm gonna go learn how to be an interior design. Even if you gave yourself that exercise on Saturday for two hours, I'm gonna pretend I have an entirely different career. Oh, that's so great. That's freaking go for Maybe that's what you were put here for.

Yeah. So great. It's so good. I, I've always said that just because you can doesn't mean you should. Yeah. That's great. Two totally different things, right? Yeah. The should is closer to purpose. It's closer to who you are. The can has a lot to do with a lot of what other folks have, has kind of guide you, guided you toward Yeah.

Or said that you're great at. Yeah. Right. And, and there's a, this is a moment where we're imagining the future is really about leaning into the should. The should, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and knowing that you can do that. Yeah, let's just do some stuff we don't know how to do. Yeah. Well, it, you know what, maybe, maybe even take it a step further.

Try stuff that you've convinced yourself that you can't do. No. That you can't do. Oh, God. Right. The, the thing that, you know, when step daddy told you when you were seven, you couldn't do that thing and you believed him. Maybe, maybe that's the thing to lean into next. Oh yeah. It's Josh Houston would tell us, he's our, he's our, our Gen Z mentor.

He would tell us that sometimes you need a little bit of spite to do something new. So you think about that person who told you you couldn't do X, Y, Z thing, Jazz's. How you decide what you're gonna do. Totally. Think of the thing that somebody told you you couldn't do and go do it and dare you. And, and even, and look at the use case of where we are in this moment.

Like the world has changed so much since December. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There, there are things that people thought could not happen. 57, that, that's not even a year. Right. And then you go back to like 28, 20 19 before the, before the pandemic. Look at how much has changed. Right. You, this is an, this is an opportunity to do exactly what you all are talking about, saying there's nothing that is impossible here.

Exactly. There's not, there's not. Go do it. There's not. It'll be great. Sid, this has been awesome, Sid. So there's Sid's TikTok, please go subscribe to Sid's TikTok. I know you've got a bunch of stuff going on, so I'm sure you'll tell the good people on your TikTok. They can at least find you there. I assume they can put you on LinkedIn and things like that.

Um, thank you so much for just being such a, a beautiful human being and such a, a source of inspiration today. Yeah. Thank you both. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you both. And I, I appreciate you. Appreciate you very much, very much. All right. See you later. Thanks. Bye everybody. Take care all.

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About the Podcast

AI Readiness Project
Forget trying to keep up with AI, it's moving too fast. It's time to think differently about it.
The AI Readiness Project is a weekly show co-hosted by Anne Murphy of She Leads AI and Kyle Shannon of The AI Salon, exploring how individuals and organizations are implementing AI in their business, community, and personal life.

Each episode offers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at how real people are experimenting with artificial intelligenceโ€”whatโ€™s actually working, whatโ€™s not, and whatโ€™s changing fast.

Youโ€™ll hear from nonprofit leaders, small business owners, educators, creatives, and technologistsโ€”people building AI into their day-to-day decisions, not just dreaming about the future.

If you're figuring out how to bring AI into your own work or team, this show gives you real examples, lessons learned, and thoughtful conversations that meet you where you are.

โ€ข Conversations grounded in practice, not just theory
โ€ข Lessons from people leading AI projects across sectors
โ€ข Honest talk about risks, routines, wins, and surprises

New episodes every week.

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Anne Murphy