72 | Pietro Montaldo on Thinking Like an AI Operator

AI won't replace great operators—but great AI operators will outperform everyone else.

In this episode, Audrey Chia speaks with AI educator and entrepreneur Pietro Montaldo about what separates casual AI users from true AI operators. Drawing from his experience coaching more than 100 business teams and scaling a startup to $1 million in under nine months, Pietro shares a practical framework for helping non-technical professionals use AI to eliminate repetitive work, build scalable workflows, and reclaim valuable time. He explains why mastering one AI ecosystem beats chasing every new tool, how leaders can foster AI adoption across teams, and why the future belongs to people who learn to delegate work—not just ask better questions. 

Course: https://maven.com/pietro-montaldo/claudefornontech
Free sessions: https://maven.com/pietro-montaldo#lightning-lessons

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Transcript

Audrey Chia 0:00

And welcome back to the AI Market Display Booth, where we cover actionable frameworks to help you leverage AI and marketing strategies in your business. I'm Audrey Chia, your host, and today I have with me Pietro. Now, Pietro teaches non-technical professionals how to use AI in a practical, effective way. He is also a lecturer in applied AI and has coached more than 100 business teams, including teams from Gartner, Sage, and Superhuman. Now, before becoming an AI educator, Pietro scaled a software company from zero to one mil in under nine months. He is also the founder of NForce AI, an orchestration layer for AI agents, and is currently building Not Linear, an AI training platform for non-technical teams. So Pietro, super excited to have this conversation with you. Welcome to the show.

Pietro Montaldo 0:49

Thank you so much, Audrey. I'm really glad to be here, and thank you for the very nice introduction.

Audrey Chia 0:54

Awesome. Now, Pietro, before perhaps teaching AI, you talked about scaling a software company from zero to one million in under nine months. Super impressive. I'm curious to know what was that experience like and what it, did it teach you about building systems?

Pietro Montaldo 1:11

Uh, that's a great question. Uh, honestly, when I started that experience, I was, uh, I was very inexperienced, right? It was my second job. I have moved around a bit. I, I also, uh, studied in Singapore, by the way, um, NTU. And then after I finished there, I moved to Berlin to work in a venture capital fund. And then I was like, "Hey, I want to live the full experience. I want to, uh, be, be immersed in the operation and to see the results of what, uh, what I'm building, what I'm doing." So I joined this company. It was the, I think, the second hire. Uh, and it was pre-product. We had raised, uh, over 6 million, uh, back then, and we were just building the product with two very experienced and successful founders. And as soon as we pushed out the product, they, they basically gave me the responsibility to find the first clients, and then basically everything evolved from there. And it was, it was super challenging experience, but I think the, the, the cur- the learning curve was super steep, and, and it basically helped me in every other subsequent step of my journey to creating my first company, because I really saw the, the process from, hey, we have nothing to, we have a product and it's generating revenue, recurring revenue, which consistent recurring revenue, let's say, which was an incredible experience, to be honest.

Audrey Chia 2:32

Wow. And I always think, right, it's really a journey to birth something to life, right? Especially when it's a startup. Absolutely. There's so much pain, but so much joy as well. And I too love working with startup founders. So, Pietro, then what made you decide to move into teaching AI? 'Cause that's completely different from what- Yeah you have been doing.

Pietro Montaldo 2:50

Uh, that was absolutely unplanned in the sense I, at no point I thought that would ever be my, my calling and my journey. Um, when, when I... It was, I think, two years and a half ago, I left, uh, I left the company that w- when we, after we reached the milestone of a million, which was something I was very happy about, and I thought it was time to start something of my own. So with a, with a co-founder, we created N- Enforce, which is the first company I ever created, incorporated, which was a orchestration layer for AI agents, which was basically working like an agency. We were developing a solution for our customer on our platform, okay? And, and while it was a super, uh, super, like an incredible learning journey, it was also, and still is, a successful working company. Uh, it wasn't, uh, I di- I never felt it was my calling and what I wanted to do. It was a lot of, uh, customer support, mostly about, you know, keeping the customer happy well after we closed it, which is, I mean, I don't think it's anybody, uh, really vocation, you know? Especially for me, it wasn't what I wanted to do. And, and while I was, uh, working for Enforce, and I was mostly focused on the commercial side of things- I started creating a lot of content and doing a lot of workshop, interacting a lot with people, and I had a great time and I thought it was-- like it was giving me more, like as a person, as a human being, to teach other people how to do these things 'cause I really enjoy the interaction with them and the experience of, you know, having a group of people and bringing them from, "Hey, I don't know how to do this," to, "Hey, I have this set up in a couple of hours or maybe over the time span of two weeks." And eventually, that led me to launch first course together with, um, with a, with another person, a very successful founder, uh, the founder of Relayapp, which is an orchestration tool, another tool for, uh, um, for, uh, to build their workflow and agents. And eventually, that worked really well and it, it gave me the signal I needed to say, "Hey, maybe I'm gonna invest more time into trainings instead of, uh, actual deployment."

Audrey Chia 4:56

Wow. It's also interesting you mentioned that there's something within you that's a calling, right? I think a lot of folks, um, we wander through life not knowing what our calling is, and sometimes you just, you know, get sucked up in the nine to five. You don't even realize that you're just a, a cog in a machine. Um, but like what you say, you seem to have such a deep interest in teaching and coaching people. I'm curious to know, this is a side question. Yeah. What makes you excited about teaching people?

Pietro Montaldo 5:24

Honestly, I don't know, right? I mean, if you ask me even a year ago or two years ago or, or even before, I would have told you, "No, there's no way I'm ever gonna teach," because I never had a particular patience for o- like, you know, to wait for other people to understand things. You know, I always consider myself someone pretty fast. I have a, a, a strong ADHD, uh, so attention deficit when I have to do multiple times. And eventually, as I was learning this topic, because I mean, it's a journey also for me of learning more, getting better, understanding more tools as, as Claude publishes update, as ChatGPT publishes update, I have to train myself, you know? And after I learn those things, I went through the process of creating a mental shape to understand them, and I make them fit in my work as a, as a growth operator, as a marketer, as a founder, even though in this case I'm, I'm operating as, as the three of them at the same time. And then I'm in the best possible position to explain it to other people, you know? And the part that makes the difference for me and that really makes me happy is selfishly when people ask me questions. You know, I really like to respond to question. I really like when people find the initial bit, which is, uh, interesting, and then when they want to know more about it. And I think, I don't know, I have this talent of answering questions, especially technical and training questions about a specific tool, about how to do something, which leaves people happier than before they ask the question, you know? Mm. And seeing their... Also seeing, again, this is probably selfish, but seeing their gratefulness after they have learned something, it, uh, it's, it's a big payoff. You know, when you develop a complex AI solution and you deploy it for them, or in every role I had before, the product was always something complex and the, the person to see the result, the customer to see the results would need to wait some time. In this case, the customer would see the results immediately, right? Mm. And he would be happy immediately, 'cause, you know, what I'm telling you is I can, I can teach you something. If at the end you are happy with what I taught you, will be happy and you eventually leave me a good review and, you know, create a nice flywheel. Uh, and in this case, it, it's immediate, which is something which I, which I really enjoy.

Audrey Chia 7:36

Yeah. And I also realized that you have coached so many, right, uh, non-technical professionals. I think that's the unique thing about what you do. So can you tell me more, right, what do you think non-technical professionals struggle with most when they try to use or master AI?

Pietro Montaldo 7:52

Yeah. So, so there's two type of non-technical people. The non-technical people who love AI, okay? And those people invest, I don't know, maybe fifty percent on top of their normal day job, uh, uh, into investigating what's new in AI, learning, uh, new things, using Claude code and, you know, doing things by themself and learning by themself. This is maybe the one percent, okay? And if tho- those people don't need training, you know. They do things by themself. They are always the early adopter of everything, which is really cool, but you have to realize to be in that one percent, you have to, you know, have another job on top of your day job, right? Keeping up with AI, really understanding how it works, it's really a job, okay? Uh, in a sense there's so much being published. So this... Apart from this one percent, which is the one you see mostly on LinkedIn, right? And it's the most, uh, advanced people, let's say, everybody else, the ninety-nine percent has a daytim- uh, a full-time day job, you know. Uh, I'm talking about sales operator, marketers, uh, any growth operator or person in, in, in operations. They have a day job, you know. They have a company to run, a department in a company to run, their own tasks to do on a day-to-day. So they don't have time, and they don't want to invest the other fifty percent or on top additional twenty, thirty hours per week keeping up with AI and learning AI from scratches. And these people, uh, feel very overwhelmed in terms of, you know, like they see the difference as compared to the one percent. It's like, "Hey, I should be there. I don't want to lose my job. I don't want to fall behind." These people struggle the most to understand what they have to learn and making a simple, uh, uh... And basically understanding what makes the highest impact in their job, so what's most important for them to understand. So how I see it is if you just give them, uh, one tool and an easy path to, "Hey, I'm doing this manually," to, "I, I can do it with, let's say, a Claude skill or a ChatGPT skill," regardless, but a simple workflow replacement. That specific process of, "Hey, I'm just gonna give you one simple tool, one framework. I'm gonna tell you just learn this, and you will be, uh, uh, you'll be, I don't know, you'll, you'll free up twenty percent of your time," 'cause the reality is just by using one instrument, which is Claude skills, you can really do that. It's gonna be so much better, right? So I think the, the... What they struggle-- To close, I think what they struggle with the most is really understanding what's important to learn and, uh, and making it very practical. Don't just like get lost in, "Hey, I'm gonna learn the theory behind it. I'm gonna learn, uh, everything possible around it before I get into practical." Everything should be practical and apply to your day-to-day

Audrey Chia 10:36

Yeah. I also think that from what I've observed, right, a lot of folks who want to achieve a certain outcome may not necessarily put in all the work to get there. So like for yourself, right, I'm sure you have spent hundreds of hours keeping yourself up to date even before you can teach or train someone else.

Pietro Montaldo 10:53

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I mean, for me it's different, right? That's my, that's my full-time job, so I have to do it, right? Uh, but I understand, and I think, uh, every course I develop is taught with that mentality. Understand I'm dealing with pe- with busy people. You know, these people have a job. I need to condense a lot of knowledge in a very short amount of time, and I have to make it in a way that it's, uh- Practical enough that if a person just come to one session and see, it's like, "Okay, this is very dense. After I leave, I'm gonna be able to do this, this, and that." Okay? It's not I'm teaching you the theory behind the AI or LLM works. You know, it's, it's nice to know if you have time and if you're interested, but the reality practically it just, uh, it won't help you, you know, get more customer, close more revenue or, you know, make your company a better company.

Audrey Chia 11:42

Can you give us an example, right, of somebody who attended your class? So let's say a business owner, right? What- Mm-hmm what type of changes would they make to then see that growth in their business?

Pietro Montaldo 11:52

The idea I want to... Like I always say, the courses are all for non-technical, right? And in general, I always say, "Hey, I'm bringing you from I know how to use chat, so I know how to do the back and forth with AI, where I ask a question, I receive the response, and the value is in the conversation." Okay? So the value is in the back and forth with AI, where you get smarter by talking more with AI. You know more by talking with AI from a point where you use AI to substitute yourself in tasks, right? So instead of, "Hey, uh, Claude, can you help me rewrite this, uh, this email? Can you help me redo this? Can you tell me this specific fact?" You ask Claude, "Hey, Claude, can you gen-generate a presentation for a customer based on, um, uh, a customer call which I had before? And here is where you can find the transcript." Or, "Hey, Claude, generate this PowerPoint presentation for me." So you assign Claude a task, and Claude does it for you. So the value is not anymore in the conversation. The value is in, uh, the task assigned to the AI and how it performs the, the task. If it does the task well, you're gonna be happy, and you're gonna consider, you know, the AI had done a good job, and it's not in the response it gives you. Okay? So you still talk with it, but just for assigning a task and for the task to be done. So I want to bring people from, "Hey, I, I know how to use a chat," but to, "Hey, I master a full ecosystem," in this case Claude or, or OpenAI, "and I can really substitute myself in task and hence save a lot of time for myself." Hmm. I think also it's like that big picture thinking, right? Somebody who

Audrey Chia 13:21

goes from just a back-and-forth conversation to like- Mm-hmm mapping out something that's a bit bigger. Yeah. Can you give us even a more specific example? So let's say a business owner or, like, someone who is in go-to-market or ops, what can they actually do right now that most people aren't quite yet doing? Mm-hmm. Uh-

Pietro Montaldo 13:44

So I'm, uh, I'm, I'm gonna talk about this 'cause I, I use it a lot myself, and I did, uh, also a, a podcast on this with, uh, with another host, uh, a couple of weeks ago, and, and people really enjoyed it. And, and basically, I run workshops myself, you know. It's mostly to show people how I teach, okay? So this workshop, this, uh, this live session I run, uh, are two or three time a month, and it's really important that a lot of people come to this session 'cause it's my best shot of getting, uh, getting people to know me better, getting people to understand my style, if they vibe with how I teach these things, right? So there has to be a lot of this event per month, and I have to drive a lot of traffic there. The important thing is he- he- here is how do I drive consistent traffic to them? And something I do, and it's worked for a workshop, but it would work also to drive people to your product or to a lead magnet you have created in general to drive traffic is I find, uh, other people, other creator or my competitors' posts that have worked really well on social media, and I have created an agent skill that, uh, extract the people who engage with this post, so put a like or a comment on this post, and then qualifies them against my ICP, my ideal customer profile, okay? So I've given-- I created a description of the customer profile. I give an example of hundreds of people who have taken my courses. And based on that, I ask, uh, I ask in this case, I use Claude, but you can replicate this with any, uh, with any LLM. And I ask Claude, "Hey, extract the, uh, the commenters from this post, all of the link, all of the profile, and reach them. Find out what their job role. Match them against my, uh, ideal customer profile. And then for those one who are a fit for my courses, craft a small messages sending them to this workshop." So, for example, if I'm doing a workshop on, uh, Claude skills, let's say next week, and I see that there's like a few people who have made post about skills and other people have commented or engaged, they probably are interested, so they have showed intent. I just give the URL to Claude, and Claude will return me a list of the people, uh, that have engaged with that post who are in my fit, in my ideal customer profile description. And then he will also give me a DM, a quick messages to send them, "Hey, I saw you engaged with the post talking about skills. I'm running a session on the skills, a free session, in this case it's free, so it's a very soft CTA. Would you like to come?" And that drives a lot of traffic and has a super high conversion rate

Audrey Chia 16:13

Wow. And I-- it's really interesting 'cause you're looking for intent and you're looking for signals. Yeah. And I think to build out a workflow like this, you're not just asking Claude, "Hey, help me to find X number of people." You are giving it your way of prospecting- Exactly um, then using AI to make that process so much faster, right?

Pietro Montaldo 16:31

Exactly. Exactly. That's absolutely correct.

Audrey Chia 16:35

So interesting. And what do you see, like, what do you think is the difference between somebody who casually uses AI versus somebody who is a strong operator? Is it a mindset thing, a skill set thing?

Pietro Montaldo 16:46

It's both, right? In, in the sense that you can't be a professional operator if you don't have both, both the skill and the mindset, okay? If you just have the skillset and if you don't put them in practice, they will be outdated tomorrow. If you just have the mindset but then you don't have the skills, you'll end up only using chat. You know, "Hey, I want to use AI, but I only know how to use chat proficiently." So you will end up only using chats, right? So I think, uh, if you don't have the mindset, uh, it's hard to get it, right? It's-- we will need a lot of motivation from you or someone imposing you to do that, or society at one point imposing you to do that to find the skills. If you have the mindset, it's worth investing in a, in a basic training, in a basic, uh... And it doesn't need to be with me, right? It seems like partial now because obviously I do training, but even if those trainings are just, "Hey, I'm gonna invest, you know, two or three days on YouTube just to learn how, how to master Claude or OpenAI and not pass the chat," I think that's an investment that compounds super quickly, right? And it's a return on that specific investment is, uh- Mm-hmm really, really big in the sense that, you know, I consider myself with AI, I can run basically two times the task I would've, I would have run before or even more, right? So I'm 100% more productive. What would you pay to duplicate yourself? You know, probably a very large amount of money.

Audrey Chia 18:06

Yes. And I also think it's, uh, the implementation is key, right? 'Cause if you learn everything from one course but you don't implement it, I'm very sure the retention in your brain- 100% isn't going to click. You really need to do it. And I think also thinking about how you would specifically apply whatever you've learned in your business and contextualize it, 'cause then, uh, your neurons start to fire up and be like, "Oh, okay, this is something I can try here. Great." Um, and then you start making sense of it all. So maybe, Pietro, one question on my end. Now, you talked about people using AI like a, either like a chatbot or a search engine versus people who think about systems, right? So how does someone start thinking about a system? Like, what is that higher level thinking?

Pietro Montaldo 18:52

I do- I don't think especially for, for most of the people, there should be too much higher level thinking. I think, uh, the way in which you make this sustainable and, and as you said, you start applying and you start to join the application is not by saying, "Hey, I'm gonna replace everything today. I'm gonna take a week to replace everything." But it's mostly having a recurring mindset, as we were talking about before, uh, that you can apply and that it's, uh, sustainable, right? The keyword here is sustainability. So like, like what I always recommend to people is start from the smaller tasks and then grow from there, right? If you have a couple of things which you already do that would be good to be substituted, you start from the small unit, uh, that small task, and you substitute yourself in that small task. And then as you gain confidence in the AI, you can expand and instead of only having two steps of the final task you will do, you will have four, five and six, right? So I always, I always tell them, instead of thinking the system before, okay, think about the things you do the most and where AI could save you the most time, and start from there. But don't make it over complicated. Start with a simple solution which you can test and build quick, and then, uh, develop that specific solution over time on a day-to-day basis. As you work, AI will also get better with you, okay? So just always remember to keep updating that, right? So instead of, you know, taking a Canva and saying, "This is everything I want to automate," start from something, a couple of things that have high value, see the result in those, uh, in those little things, and then keep improving from there. And that will give you the motivation you need, as you were also saying before, to keep going and keep, uh, keep finding additional, uh, additional solutions. There are specific niches and specific areas where building a system can make sense, right? In orchestrating a system. But in general, I think that's a role of the people who build the product, okay? Or, or, or really are more in the like, like more, uh, more high level. Mostly, I think it's important for people to first understand, first understand in their day-to-day how it works, and then once you have that, you will also have a much better frame in your mind to think, "Hey, if I want to build something larger," maybe for your team, if you lead a team, this is how I would approach it, 'cause I already have done it and already have used it myself in my day-to-day and master it for my personal self. I would think every leader would need to master it before teaching other people and bringing other people on board.

Audrey Chia 21:19

Mm. Got it. And for let's say like a business owner, right, a small business owner, it's like, okay, I get that I need to implement. I also understand some concepts and theory, but then they need to think about their business in general, and there are so many ways and aspects you can use A- AI, right? Whether it's like HR or whether it's like marketing, um, sales. Where, where do they begin? Like how, how do they even get started if they really want to do something?

Pietro Montaldo 21:48

For everybody it's different, right? There's no, there's no right or wrong answer. Like, my recommendation is always to, to delegate it to the people who are in those departments. Okay? As a leader, you can just promote a culture that promotes AI. You can give them access to tools, you can give them a budget, you can set targets for them in terms of, hey, this is what you need to achieve. You need to achieve, I don't know, time savings, or you need to achieve, uh, automation. Uh, but it's mostly about setting the goals, but the actual implementation and turning these and understanding exactly, you know, which process to automate first, it needs to start from someone who really understands that process and lives it in their day-to-day. 'Cause eventually, he's gonna be the only one who can actually automate it, right? Because it's not just about, hey, I want this automated. It's about, you know, knowing the entire process and teaching an AI how to do that specific process so that it can repeat how- however you want that process to be done. Okay? So as a leader, you would mostly focus on, uh, fostering a culture that promotes that and, and enabling people to do it. At times this is, "Hey, I'm gonna do-- I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a training. I'm gonna give a training to all of the people so that they learn how to do it." At times- Mm-hmm it's just giving demonstration. At time it's just organizing cross-pollination event within, uh, within the company. "Hey, this team is gonna show you what they did so that you can have a good idea. You guys are falling behind." Right? So I think as a leader, it's mostly fostering that culture, and as a leader of an individual department, it's different, right? When you know, uh, in and out everything that happens, you can start saying, "Hey, this is where we spend most of the manual time." Manual time is always the, the core differential, right? Indivi- like in identifying, hey, we're spending a lot of time here doing things which are repetitive and manual should be the start point, uh, uh, of, of, hey, this is where we're starting from. Yeah. I, I also

Audrey Chia 23:48

think for any, um, business that's thinking about implementing AI, perhaps also starting with the end in mind helps. Uh, so instead of going on a big massive company, let's, let's do this, perhaps it's also understanding for each department, right? What are the basic or the main challenges that each department face, right? Mm-hmm. And maybe from there, figuring out this is something I would like to prioritize right now as a pilot project, um, and then scale that up. So really, like, I think what Pietro, you said, being able to combine the mindset and skill set, but also getting the buy-in from everyone, uh, so that we can move together, I think that is always important. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I, I also wanted to ask, right, so I think we mentioned this, uh, uh, term called the AI operator, you know, or like the gen or AI operator.

Pietro Montaldo 24:33

Mm-hmm.

Audrey Chia 24:33

What do you think that means? How would you define that? And what role does this operator play in, you know, today's world?

Pietro Montaldo 24:40

For me, an operator is someone who grows a company. Okay? I, like my, I ne- I started my career in venture capital, so the opposition was always, hey, I'm an investor, okay? So I invest in company and finance company so that they can grow. Two, I am an operator, so I am on the other side where I am growing a company. So anybody who works, uh, in a company, uh, in a startup or in a larger company and has an operational role, okay, which means marketing, sales, uh, operation, customer success, all of the, let's say, mon- more non-technical roles, because we are talking about non-technical operators, are on the operator side. So basically for me, and I'm sure other people will have different definition, it's just, uh, as a, as a duality on the, on the opposite side of an investor. I invest in company, I operate company, and I try to grow the company myself. So that would be an operator. Non-technical is basically every department which is not IT and development.

Audrey Chia 25:41

Hmm. And how, how do you-- do you think that everybody needs to become an operator, or do you think that there's gonna be like one main operator that helps to drive all these initiatives?

Pietro Montaldo 25:52

So if we talk about the, the, the person who promotes AI... Uh, sorry. So maybe I mis- misunderstood your previous question. Like you were talking about the GenAI operator. Uh, in general, I think every, every person who works inside a company, uh, in a non-technical role should, should become, uh, an op- uh, like a GenAI operator, at least to a point where he has literacy he uses for his personal activities. Okay? Mm. So in this case, I could differentiate what's personal of use. Okay? So, um, augmenting yourself and being a better individual contributor to, uh, creating systems that everybody uses within a team. I think everybody should be an AI-enabled individual contributor and an AI, AI-enabled operator, but only there should be people who are charged with the task of promoting larger system and larger, uh, larger products, and also have accountability for those. Whenever something doesn't only touch one person but multiple, there should be someone who is accountable to bring that project forward. And to be honest, this is not something which is only related to AI, but in general it's, it's the same for any project pre-AI, right? To give someone accountability so it can drive the project forward. And I think the differentiation here is, is it an individual task you're trying to do, or is it something that touches multiple people across the company?

Audrey Chia 27:22

Yeah. Curious question. So, so everyone has a different level of, uh, AI expertise, right? So let's say somebody may feel like, you know, I think this level is good enough, and somebody may feel like I'm not learning enough. For you, when you tell your students, right, how, how do they know whether what they're learning is enough or whether they need to, like, pick up pace? Because AI is moving so quickly, it can feel very overwhelming, um, for most people. And I find that when that happens, people tend to just switch off and feel like, "Oh, it's too much. Uh, let me just stick to what I know." So how do you overcome that internal blocker when it comes to AI overwhelm and whether people are actually doing enough?

Pietro Montaldo 28:02

I think it's always good to take a step back and realize that people who are even literate and proficient with AI are already a minority, okay? So there's a-- approximately, I was seeing a graph the other day, which I also published it on LinkedIn. It was, uh, it, it was showing that approximately 1% of the population know how to use, uh, um, according scaffold, know how to use Claude Cowork or more, let's say, more sophisticated, uh, AI tools, okay? So there's a, there's a very, very small minority of people who are proficient and a, a bunch of people who just use it on their day-to-day, and then most of the people who really just don't use it at all yet, okay? So it's good to take a step back and realize, okay, if you are making the effort of learning even just the basic concepts, you're already in the top, uh, in the top tier of AI, AI user, okay? It's never good to compare yourself to who's doing less, right? You should always aim for more. That's, uh, that's, that's, uh, that's my philosophy. So- You have to get to a point where you are comfortable using AI in your day-to-day, okay? And you don't keep looking for a better solution. What I always recommend is if you learn how to use one, um, AI environment, be it Gemini, be it ChatGPT, or be it Claude, whatever fits, whatever you have available in your department. If you learn how to use all of the functionality of one ecosystem proficiently, and you keep evolving with that ecosystem, okay? You will be proficient, and you, and you are gonna be top, uh, top edge, okay? So if you just know how to do that, you're gonna be better than, uh, basically ninety-nine percent of the people, okay? So just by doing that and investing in one ecosystem, which is also easier 'cause you cut a lot of the FOMO outside of what do I do? What do I use? That will already put you in a position where you should be in, in the best possible spot as compared to other people on the journey, okay? And it also cuts out a lot of the FOMO. You know, you don't want to keep trying new things, keep, uh, keep updating yourself unless that's your job. For me, it's different, right? It's my job to keep up with the pace. For other people, I tell them, "Just, just forget about that. Invest time into getting proficient into the one tool which you use on your day-to-day, which becomes your copilot in everything you do." If you do that, and you keep having one assistant, one, uh, ecosystem which assists you in your day-to-day, and you really know how to use all of the parts of it You should be good, okay? And, and past that, it's also very subjective, right? Do you want AI to be your future? You wanna become a AI consultant, you wanna start your, uh, AI business, then you're gonna have to go much more, much more than that. But in your... in the day-to-day, being that you want to keep fo- keep, uh, uh, keep, uh, developing a career which you have already started, by just doing this, you should be able to accelerate that specific process. I

Audrey Chia 31:06

love that. I also think it's, um, the mindset of being able to, to learn, but not being afraid to fail in the process, 'cause- Of course it's a new skill set, right? Um, I'm sure it can be intimidating for some people.

Pietro Montaldo 31:20

Absolutely. 100%, I completely agree.

Audrey Chia 31:24

Yeah. So I think also if you are listening to this, you probably are on the journey of learning. If you are listening to this, you probably are one of those folks who are interested enough to learn, so that's great already. So it's really figuring out, okay, now I'm gonna learn this. How can I have maybe one clear, one key takeaway from this conversation, right, with Pietro, and then try implementing it. That could already help you to move one step forward. So speaking of that one key takeaway, I think, Pietro, if you have any kind of hands-on demo that you can show us, I think our audience would really benefit to see what you actually mean by building out workflows and what does that look like.

Pietro Montaldo 32:02

Absolutely. So, uh, s- just because I mentioned it before, I'm gonna show you the, the same workflow I used to find intent and extract intent, right? And I wanna show you the process I use to run it and then also turn it into something recurring I can do in my day-to-day. I'm trying to share my screen. Let's see if I can find it. Here

Audrey Chia 32:30

Okay, perfect. We can see

Pietro Montaldo 32:32

it Fantastic. Okay, so I'm gonna show you the process of creating the fir- this, uh, this, this workflow, this agent skill. So this, uh, this specific process which I'm teaching the agent to do, and as we said before, just as a reminder, is what I'm trying to do here, what I'm trying to achieve is I found a LinkedIn profile which speaks about, uh, something which is, uh, something which I, which I teach, okay? Something related to one of my courses or one of my free session, and I ha- I want to invite people to come to my free session, um, uh, and, and basically, and basically send a message to people who are in my ICP, in my ideal customer profile. Okay? So in this case, I'm gonna tell Claude, I open the Claude interface here using Claude Cowork. "Hey, I found a LinkedIn post that speaks to my audience. I want to extract all of the people who commented on that post, including, uh, what they have commented on their LinkedIn profile." I'm telling Claude, uh, what to use. Okay? I'm teaching Claude how I would like this task to be done, how I would do it myself if I had to do it manually. I'm telling them to extract the information from the post. You can use this tool, which is called Apify. I want you to generate a list, a, a list with all of the information you find. And then I post the l- the LinkedIn post URL. What Claude will do is will, will understand my instruction, will follow the process of going through all of the steps. So making it simple now, he's using Apify. You can read here what it does. You can see here what he has planned to do. Find best Apify actor for LinkedIn, run actor on the LinkedIn post, generate commenter list and deliverable, so he plans ahead what he wants to do. And then I can see here it goes through the process of finding those leads, and at the end, it just gave me a summary. "Hey, this is the actor I used, uh, how I used Apify," so it describe how he used it. If you're not familiar with Apify, it's a tool to extract, um, information from social media. You can use it on LinkedIn, on X or another platform. And then it tells me, "Hey, what I found using that specific tool is eighty-one records, sixty-eight individual people who commented on this post." These are the people I'm gonna be scrutinize to find if they are in my ICP. And then I tell him, "Hey, I also want to enrich this, uh, this, this specific list of people." Uh, and I tell him I wanted to use Apollo. Okay? Apollo is another tool. I use that to find additional information, their role, their email. I can just use it to find additional, uh, data points over those people. Apollo is just a database that includes a lot of information about a lot of people, especially in the B2B sector. So I- uh, using that, y- I will basically tell him, "Okay, fine." Now he returns a list of the people he has extracted, and then he, uh... Later on in the conversation, he will, uh... Let me show you here what he returns. Okay. So this is, uh, the name of the person, the type of, uh, the type of profile they have, the headline they have, the LinkedIn profile, and the comment they last, they left on this very specific post. And then after that, I tell him, "Okay, you can go ahead with the enrichment." Here he asked me, "Hey, I want to use Apollo to, uh, to use... to enrich and add information. Do you allow me to use it? It's gonna use credits out of my account." So I always ask for permission. So I'm telling, "Yes, go ahead." It goes ahead and he returns me basically the same list, but this time it's gonna be enriched. Okay? So as you can see here, it's all the same information we had before, but we also have the title, the company, the location, uh, the email status, whether it could find the email. In this case, for this person, he has found the email, for this person, he has found the email, and so on. And it goes and continues with also the LinkedIn profile, et cetera, and the comment here. So at this point, I have basically a list of people enriched with all the information, and I want to tell Claude, "Hey, you... This is my ICP." I give Claude a description of my ICP, my ideal customer profile. I give him the product I'm trying to sell, which is my course. Okay? So I link my course here. I wanna tell him, "Hey, this is also where you can find the list of all of my past customer." I tell Claude, "You can browse to this page," which is a live page on, uh, on the, the, the tool I use to run the courses, where you can find all of the information about those specific, uh, leads and those specific people who already taken part in my courses. So you can create a nice profile of a persona of the, of the customer to replicate it. And then I want to basically return the same list, but ranked from zero to five based on how much they fit with my ICP. He goes through the process of doing that, and he will find, hey, across 81 people, 2 were in perfect fit, o- 12 were in a very high fit. Okay? So fit 4 and fit 5, and then the remaining 1 weren't particular fit. gives me the very same list, but this time there's also the fit table, okay? So it tells me how much in fit they are. And at the, as the last step here, I want to tell him, "Hey, I want to craft a DM for these people inviting them to, uh, my workshop," okay? So I linked, uh, my workshop. He goes browse, understand what the workshop is about, create a connection between the workshop and the comment they left on the post, and then based on that, he wants-- I want him to create a short DM I can send them, okay? And I on- only want him to do this for the fit four and fit five, so for the highest fit. And here, basically what it does, it returns, "Hey, this is, uh, Jonathan Parson. This is La- the, uh, Lady Pabular." And then this is the message: "Hey, I saw your comment on Robert Rashid post about needing a repeatable starting point. Um, um, that's exactly the point of a free session I'm running this Wednesday with Be The Reusable Go-To-Market Agent in Claude CoWork." And then I left the link. Okay? Super soft call to action, a relevant message 'cause they commented there, and I can... Most of the time I can just copy and paste it. If you don't like the style, you can go back and tell him, "Hey, see these are three example of good messages which, uh, which I sent in the past. Why don't you create similar version?" And the last step here is once you finish the process, you have taught Claude how to do it step by step. I'm gonna tell him, "Hey, I want to, I want to reuse it in the future. Can you turn this into a skill?" Claude takes all of the content of that conversation and repackages into a skill, okay? And then the next time you want to use it, you will just be able to tell, "Hey, use the skill," and then you send the link. Instead of going through the step-by-step approach, once I give him the link, he will return me the list of people and the messages. So next time, instead of, you know, investing whatever, uh, an hour, an hour and a half it took to do this, 'cause obviously it's long back and forth, which, you know, like Claude needs to think a lot. It will take me, uh, what? Uh, five to 15 minutes. I give him a prompt, I receive an answer.

Audrey Chia 39:27

Wow. So what you do is you actually then go through this entire flow to make sure that it's what you're looking for, turn it into a skill so that then n- now you-- Claude knows exactly the steps it needs to go through. But you need to first force it through this system so that you know- Of course that it's in con- you are in control and it's following your step set step by step, right?

Pietro Montaldo 39:46

Exactly. Exactly. It's like when you hire someone in your team and you teach him how to do something, first you show him step by step, then he does it once, you give him feedback, uh, you, you make it better, and then after a couple of times, he will be able to do it entirely by himself.

Audrey Chia 40:01

Awesome. Awesome. I, I think this is a super cool, um, real demonstration that if you are listening to, you can also think about how you would break your, your own step-by-step process, right? And get Claude to go through that process with you before then turning it into a skill. So, um- Mm-hmm Pietro, I would love to also know from you, right, w- how do you think the future of work is gonna change for, for everyone? I know it's such a big question, right? But for people who are non-technical-

Pietro Montaldo 40:29

Yeah

Audrey Chia 40:30

how do you think work is gonna change, and where does the humans still come in?

Pietro Montaldo 40:34

I, like I have no idea, right? Let's start by saying that. I, I'm a very practical person, you know. I try to focus on, uh, on daily practical application rather than big picture. I think, you know, there are much better people that's more suited to give you a better answer. My two cents on the topic is I think the big change that is coming in the next, let's say, two to five years is, uh, everybody will need to turn, uh, and develop their managing skills, okay? Even individual contributor will stop being just individual contributors 'cause they eventually, they're not just managing their own time, they are managing their own time and the credits and the time of the AI, right? So instead of doing everything themselves, now I'm assigning a Claude to do this task, which we just saw on the screen, and I'm assigning another agent to do something different. So instead of, like, uh, using my own time, I'm just orchestrating what effectively are teammates or what, what performs as teammates, right? So this meant that we should be, I'm not gonna consider myself just an individual contributor anymore, but I will consider myself as an orchestrator and as a manager of resources, okay? When you mean resources, you can manage people and AI or both of them together, okay? So everybody should invest more in their managing skills and their understanding how to manage AI so that he can actually multiplicate and live in this more, let's say, more fast-paced work, right? So I think that the only change which I really see clear that needs to happen and, and it also gives an idea of the type of skill

Audrey Chia 42:16

you need to develop. I love that. Um, one additional thing that I perhaps would add is we may not know what's gonna happen in the future, but I think learning how to have clarity in your thought processes- Yeah uh, learning how to learn fast, I think these two things are very important

Pietro Montaldo 42:33

in the work of AI. Absolutely. With AI or without AI. You know, they were important before, and they are just even more important now.

Audrey Chia 42:38

Absolutely. So, Pietro, thank you so much for hopping on the show. Before we wrap up, I have a few rapid-fire questions for you. Okay. Are you ready for that?

Pietro Montaldo 42:46

Yes.

Audrey Chia 42:47

Let's

Pietro Montaldo 42:47

go.

Audrey Chia 42:47

All right. Firstly, what is one AI tool you use almost every day?

Pietro Montaldo 42:51

Claude.

Audrey Chia 42:53

What is one task people should stop doing manually?

Pietro Montaldo 42:58

Oh, wow. Uh, there's so many, you know. This, this one is a, it's a simple yet hard question. I know it's a... It should be hard, but nothing straight comes to my mind. Um, I think preparing presentations. You know, Claude Design is really great. I would tell people, "Hey, learn how to use Claude Design, and that will give you, like, a real big edge."

Audrey Chia 43:22

Interesting. I agree on that. And if you are a marketer, you have to learn how to use it. Yeah, agreed. So question number three: What is you think the most underrated AI skill?

Pietro Montaldo 43:35

I think the simplest one would be building and developing skills. Okay? It just-- It has the largest possible impact what we have just seen. It might sound simple, but then people don't do it in their day-to-day. Just learning how to apply those in your day-to-day will give you the highest return on, on, on, on your time investment, uh, you could possibly have ever, I think.

Audrey Chia 43:58

What is the best agent for a non-technical founder to build? If there is one agent that you can tell a non-technical founder to build, what would that be?

Pietro Montaldo 44:09

No, th-this, this one, this one I can't answer. I would, I would, uh... There just-- There's no one. It depends on what type of company they need to have. You know, a-anything, anything that deals with lead finding and lead enrichment, I think it's the highest leverage one if you are in anything like all things similar to what we have seen. I think it's just a waste of, of leads and eventual money not to, not to use these kind of tools.

Audrey Chia 44:37

Finally, what is one piece of advice you would give a non-technical professional trying to navigate the world of AI?

Pietro Montaldo 44:44

I would, I would, uh, go back to what we said before. S-uh, screen out all of the noise, focus on one ecosystem, get really proficient into that. Be it Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, one of the top three, I would focus on those. Be really good with it, and really use it in your day-to-day, and get used to managing not only your time, but also the time of Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT, and that will make you a much better operator already and give you a higher compounding effect than looking around and trying to do everything.

Audrey Chia 45:13

I love that. So thank you so much for joining us, Pietro. Now, who should reach out to you, and where can they find you?

Pietro Montaldo 45:20

Absolutely. Um, everybody who wants to learn, even if it's just from free resources or free session, I run many of them. You can find me on LinkedIn, it's my main channel, on Substack, and, uh, you can find all of my courses and live free session on Maven, which is a training platform I use. I will also send you, Audrey, all of the links so people can directly, uh, use those links. Definitely. So we'll be

Audrey Chia 45:45

linking the Maven links in the comments as well as Pietro's handle. So do make sure you check out his content. He is such a talented individual who has a knack for explaining very complicated concepts in simple terms, and I'm sure that you will also find as much value as I do. So thank you folks for tuning in, and don't forget to hit the bell for more AI and marketing insights. We will see you next week. Take care.