The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

The Playbook for Founders Using AI Agents (Without Losing Human Touch) with Maritza Tobon

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Season 2 • Episode 19

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How do you use AI agents to scale faster without turning your business into something you don’t recognize?

AI is no longer a future trend. It is actively reshaping how founders, agencies, and SMBs operate right now. Yet most leaders are either overwhelmed by AI hype or stuck chasing tools without a clear strategy.

In this episode, we sit down with Maritza Tobon, Co-Founder and CTO of Maison, to unpack how AI agents actually work and how founders should be thinking about AI going into 2026. This conversation focuses on AI for founders, agentic AI, and how teams can leverage AI in smart and unconventional ways without sacrificing trust, culture, or human connection.

If you are building a service business, agency, or community-led brand and want to stay competitive in the AI era, this is a must-listen.

Timestamps:

  • 00:17 Why AI is now a leadership decision for founders
  • 02:05 Maritza’s path from enterprise tech to AI-first startup founder
  • 06:37 How founders should start using AI without overcomplicating it
  • 09:42 Why prompt engineering is overrated for most businesses
  • 17:39 What AI agents are and how they differ from automation
  • 27:31 Why people plus AI will outperform service-only businesses

Connect with Maritza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maritzatobon/

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:

About PEMA.io:

  • Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover


00:06

Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate your market.  Let's get winning.


00:17

Welcome back to The Takeover. Ladies and gents, this episode  is a look at where AI is headed  and how leaders like yourself should be thinking about it right  now. So listen, whether you have barely scratched the surface or you are already using AI across your business, you do not want to miss this episode. If you are feeling that pull towards AI, but you are unsure where to start,


00:45

Or even if you are looking for smarter ways to expand how you are using it, you are in the right place. Today we have special guest Maritza Tobon, a technologist who has been building with AI long before it went mainstream. She has spent nearly two decades across enterprise tech, startups, and even meta, and was very early to tools like chat GPT. When I tell you she lays out so many juicy nuggets,


01:15

and tips and practical applications. It is one of my favorite episodes by far. So we go really deep with this conversation, but we also keep it highly practical. So I'm excited for you to listen in on this conversation. Make sure to connect with Maritza after the show and let's get into it. Welcome to the takeover Maritza Toban. Hello everyone. I'm so happy to be here with you, Cindy.


01:39

I have been wanting to get Maritza on the show to nerd out about all things AI. So I'm so, so glad that you are here. Before we take our listeners down the AI like a rabbit hole, and we're going to go deep in this episode. So lock in. Maritza, I want to know how you got started. You kind of started your career in tech. You are a Latina founder, female entrepreneur.


02:05

Take us back to the beginning. How did you get started and how did you get to where you are today? Oh my goodness. So I was very fortunate to start my career in technology back when it was not the cool thing to be in.  And so I started in enterprise tech, working in tech support for a really large company in South Florida.  And I would have to take technical documentation and create


02:33

content around it that our customers were going to be able to understand. And so that's how I got really good at just translating really difficult concepts and  using that  and speaking to them in a way that like the normal average human being could take action on.  so from there, my career took me to other enterprise companies. It took me to startups. I had a stint at Metta  and all in all, I've been in tech almost 20 years.


03:03

And over the last three years, I have  now founded my own tech company, which is a platform and also a private network for other seven to nine figure female founders. And that's really the most concise way that I can go through my journey because it's been a really long and exciting one. So good. So good. think so much of


03:27

Like leveraging AI and what you do is understanding like the very technical side and how you translate that into like a regular business speak that the average person like me can understand.  I appreciate that you have both perspectives.  What sparked your interest or your passion to get into like AI specifically?  Yes. So when I was at Metta, as you can imagine,  all things


03:52

AI and the metaverse and virtual reality, all of that was already going on and the company was very active in moving in that direction. This was in 2022. mean, AI has been a part of my conversation in my world for a really long time, just in a different context that then we all see AI today, right? Like AI is very accessible. We all have, you know, chat GPT. We all have some kind of


04:20

experience with AI right now. But I've been in this world for a really long time and have seen, you know, just the back end and how businesses have been using AI. so when I back to 2022, when I was at Meta and I saw how it was going to be becoming something more forward facing and for the consumer, I started to take note. And at the time, I also had my own digital marketing agency. And I was like, OK, I really feel like there's a shift.


04:49

that's going to be happening. was like the signal that I saw that was going to be entering the market. And then I got invited into the chat GPT beta, which came along with- Girl, you went early. Oh my gosh. was, like, when I tell you, I to age myself, but I am pretty much a dinosaur, which is fine. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it. But yeah, I was super early and I was in that beta and I was in the chat GPT discord.


05:15

And of course, everyone in the very beginning of AI was all about, okay, how can we do more with AI? How can we create more content? How can we write better emails? Like, what does that look like? And right away I was like,  no, no, no, no, no. We need to be thinking about AI as like, how do we now create new categories in our markets for ourselves with AI because we finally have access to it. It's not just for the multi-billion dollar companies.


05:44

And so I wanted to understand and dive into how to help people build with AI. just, I literally just dove in. Once I got into that beta, I came out the next day and I reached out to five founders and I was like, Hey, I have an incredible idea on how you can integrate AI in your business and build a product. I want to be the co-founder. had five different ideas.


06:08

And the one that was like, have no idea what the hell you're talking about, but I'm game was Hannah. And here we are. And Hannah is your co-founder now leading Maison.  is my tech co-founder. The journey is crazy. I had no idea you were in it so early, but also it makes sense. You are brilliant at what you do. And I'm excited to extract some of that information for our listeners today. But Maritza, there's so many people that feel overwhelmed by like this AI hype.


06:37

So what's one of the simplest ways that they can start integrating AI into their business, into their role? I mean, we have early stage founders that listen to the show all the way up until, you know, really successful seven, eight, nine figure entrepreneurs and everything in between. How should they start getting started with AI? Absolutely. My favorite way to tell anyone to get started is to leverage chat GPT.


07:03

And a lot of the tools too that we hear about, like there's a new tool that launches every single week. So it can be really overwhelming to even discern, you know, like what tool makes sense for me and my business and should I be on this tool? The majority of all of this technology is already built off of the backend of chat GPT, right? Everyone's leveraging open AI anyways to create their tools.


07:28

We all already have access to that same technology with chat GPT. So I'm all about like until you have like super maximized your usage of chat GPT, you really don't need to dive into anything else. And so I like to tell people to understand how they can amplify what they have already been doing with AI through chat GPT. So whether that's via your resume,


07:57

which you can take your resume or your LinkedIn and upload it into chat GPT or just talking to chatty  and giving it your whole entire background and what you do, what you're interested in, who you serve, like all of your curiosities.  And then having chat GPT recommend to you all the ways that you can amplify what you do or what you're passionate about.


08:24

with AI and literally just ask it, how could I leverage open AI to create my own AI tool or app, or how can I amplify my business with AI? Like just go to the source, the source, like everything is at our hands. We really don't need to ask anyone except chat GPT what the best way to leverage AI would be for our businesses. That's so smart. It's like asking chat.


08:50

How can I use you? That's so good.  That's so good. Asking with souls. I'm all about like keep it simple, stupid.  And it's so easy in our industry, you know, to think that,  there has to be some secret sauce. Like this person must know something that I don't know, or they must have access to something that I don't. But that is not the case with AI. Like everything that you ever need is already like at your fingertips.  I'm very often, right, we hear that


09:18

like prompt engineering is a skill that people need to learn.  And partly I agree with that. think that is important, but I want to hear your perspective because you're also saying that we could essentially utilize chat.gbt to learn what prompts to output, right? So do you feel like prompt engineering is still a skill that people need to sharpen? Yeah, I have a spicy take on this and this gets


09:42

me in trouble. Drop a girl. Not the spicy. You know what rooms I am in. But the only people that need to know proper prompt engineering are the people that are building actual large language models. If you are not building a large language model and you're not operating on the back end of this technology, prompt engineering, understanding the concepts and the principles will serve you well. But that's about all that you're going to need to utilize it for. Right. It's like


10:11

We all need to operate in our own zone of genius and knowing the hierarchy and the architecture of a prompt is not what's going to unlock, you know, someone's secret version of chat GPT. That's again, that's like for the engineers that are working  on the tech. What we need to know how to do properly is how to have a human to human conversation with a robot.


10:37

That's really what it's about because the more context that we give to a tool like chat GPT or any other AI out there really, because they thrive off of context, they need the data. So the more that we give it information, talk to it, express ourselves, like really speak openly, then the more it's going to not need to be prompted.


10:59

And it's going to be a little bit more predictive too, right? Like based on any of our inputs, it's going to know kind of what we're trying to get at, even if we don't fully lay it out and say it, but it's going to work best if we just have a conversation and versus if we're like, okay, I need you to think as a tree of thought and give me this branch and this branch. No, really uses that again.


11:25

I'm sorry to all the analysts out there because I'm sure if you're in a very analytical role, like that may not apply to you, but if you're a marketer or sales, you know, and your job is really human to human behavior, then you need to have a human to human conversation. love the spicy take and I agree with it.  I think one thing that stands out is like, it's the data that you input on the front end, right? So if you are doing a prompt or asking questions, what have you inputted into ChachiBTO or any other LLM?


11:53

because that's going to determine the output, right? So I think taking the time to train it on your voice, how you speak, like the input of information, garbage in, garbage out. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, depending too on how comfortable you are with the data that you share with AI, then even your frameworks and how you drive results for your clients and your customers are all great information for ChatGPT to have.


12:21

so that it can provide better outputs for you and it can just be smarter over time. It could then use its own relevant data that it's been trained on, you know, to give you patterns and things that you otherwise like wouldn't have had access to. And so I'm all for the more context that you provide the better and the less worrying about what prompts you need. Like every time I see...


12:46

a prompt pack to being sold. again, like, sorry, people have made businesses  over the listeners. But every time I see one, I'm like, oh, gosh, please know, like, they more power to you. But it's just not a thing that you need. I find these things to be a distraction that kind of keep you from getting started and really just diving in in your own natural way.


13:13

so that you can leverage the power of the product in a very unique way. Because that's what it's intended to do. I love that. Right. You don't need the perfect prompt to get started. Just get started. That's a key. Let's get started. uh Right. Action, take action. What are some unconventional, cool, funny  ways that utilize Chatchabee Tea in business or personally?


13:35

I love this question and this is so embarrassing. Anybody that knows me or follows me knows that I legitimately use ChatTPT for everything. I call it, I call my chatty chatty girl. Yeah, me and chatty girl, we go way back. And I think because we have been through a journey, I mean, it's, three years in, right? I know so many different things about me. So in business, just so everyone knows, I'm the CTO of our company.


14:01

And so I lead our product development and all of feature improvements, enhancements, everything that has to do with products. So I'm living and breathing AI at all times.  I am using AI in a very technical way in terms of how it's synthesizing data within our network. It's predicting signals for us  of user behavior. It's matching our members to certain interest groups and things like that. So I'm using it in a very, again, like


14:30

in very technical ways as well. But for fun, for fun, I will literally screenshot, like I'll take a picture of my refrigerator and I'll just be like, what can I like make quickly with whatever is going on here? And it'll give me, you know, great recipe ideas. I'm also a mom of three. I have a 15 year old, a 12 year old and a seven year old. I am a first time mom to a 15 year old. I have no idea what the hell to do with a teenager.


14:59

So I am constantly like asking for parenting advice and just being like, okay, my teenager just did this. Like, what am I supposed to do? Cause I  seriously have zero clue. I don't know. So many different things. Just a couple of days ago, I just turned 39. And so I had my chat GPT redo my entire skincare routine. And it went like,  it did some deep research on a bunch of ingredients and products and it recommended


15:27

three products for me that I should add to my routine. And I literally went out and bought those. And so I'm like using it across the gamut, like literally from the simplest, dumbest possible things that you can think of to  all the way of like, how can we  analyze all of this user behavior to predict what our members are going to purchase next? it's wild. It's literally the gamuts. Starts it I love that. It's so good. I think what's


15:56

Great about what you just shared is there's so many use cases, right? And I think the more comfortable you get with even like the small questions that you ask it, it just helps you overall, right? Because you build that like confidence and then Chachi Beauty gets to know you as well. So I love that. Absolutely. Absolutely. If I ask it certain things, it will literally say like,


16:16

OK, is this because you're nervous about this thing that happened with Noah? It  will reference things. And to some people, that may be scary.  And I totally understand and respect that. I'm in the industry. And so for me, it's very important for me to be a first adopter, for me to know how far I can push something. And so I'm already at a place where I'm  comfortable with, OK, maybe that's


16:45

so much information that I have from me, but also it's like I air my own dirty laundry. I'm, you know, I'm not like, yeah, I'm not worried about that. And I'm so far ahead too, in terms of where I even see my vision in my company. And that's so unique to me, but I'm not even worried of like, Oh, what if, you know, a competitor gets access to my data? It's like, okay, there'll be, you know, three years behind. what is it to me?


17:13

So good. You're already moving forward. So I love that. Right. agents. Let's talk AI agents. Give us the definition for those that don't know what an agent is.  Break it down to us like really simply. Subscribing is the easiest way to support the podcast.  Plus, you'll never miss an episode.  Hit that subscribe button on iTunes, Spotify, Google or wherever you're listening so that you don't miss a beat.


17:39

Yes. Oh, I love this. So, agentic AI, right, which is what AI agents are coming from. So, here's what I want everyone to understand. What makes agentic AI different than, let's say, an automation that you would create with Zapier or make, right? Automations are very yes-no processes, right? It's like, gather data from here and then put it in here, and if it matches this filter, then do this one thing, right? It's very if this, then that.


18:09

Agentic AI works almost as a mini large language model. What that means is that you can create a brain, right? So it has a brain, you have to train it with some sort of context. And then it's going to leverage that context to make decisions on its own. So an agent can literally come in  and decide what the next step in a workflow should be based on the


18:38

context that you have given it. can make those decisions  on its own. And that's why agentic AI, you know, it's like that, that like hot topic and thing that like that next best thing when it comes to AI,  I will say we're still not quite there yet with the technology where it could, you know, exist totally  autonomous.


19:02

Right? Like autonomous AI and agentic AI, they kind of like live side to side, but we're not quite in an autonomous world where you could just, you know, come like tied to something and say, Hey, this is what I'm thinking about. What do you think? And then that tool is going to go and create all these agents for you. And then they're all going to exist in this like fantasy world on their own. Like we're getting there, but we're not quite there yet. And so what that means to you.


19:30

is that you still need to spend time, you know, collecting your data. So what do you want this agent to  do exactly? Let's say you work with a lot of clients, you're a coach, and you have some framework that you take your clients through. You could literally create an agent that has all of your frameworks, how you get your clients a transformation or a result, their expected behaviors, et cetera. You would take all of that data set.


19:56

and you would either use, you know, chat GPT agents or a tool like Relevance AI, and you would feed all that context. Then you would create something that would be user facing, right? It could be a form. It could be, you know, anything along those lines. And then you can guide your clients to like submit their weekly progress based on your course or your program or your framework. And then the agent will use the context that you have given.


20:24

to give that student individual personalized feedback, but it will be making those decisions on its own, right? Based on the context that you have provided. So I would say like use cases like that for agents are, they blow my mind all the time. And I think that they're amazing, especially for people that are transitioning, you know, from services and they're wanting to like exponentially scale what they've always been doing. Agents are a great like next step.


20:52

And so, yeah, I hope that that answers that question. my best way to describe, you know, agentic AI and the difference, you know, from what we know as like autonomous AI and what we've always known as automation. Right. It's like that step in between regular chat GPT. And as you mentioned that like next level autonomous, it's that amazing in the middle that I think so many processes need to be leveraging right now. Right.


21:20

We found that like the Zapiers and the makes that those helped our workflows so much when you start tapping into things like innate in and these other like no code type tools that will create agents for you. is  next level powerful for productivity out person. I mean, it's insane. you're probably seeing so slowly on your end.  my gosh. Yeah. And I mean, my whole thing  is helping people take their IP and turning that IP into.


21:48

a tool or a sense or some kind of app. Right.  And so  my favorite like activity that I always tell clients or anyone that's looking to, you know, see what this can do in your life is again, start with that practice that we talked about earlier on of taking your resume or your whatever, and then asking chat GPT to give you some AI ideas, but to be more specific, a tool that I absolutely love is called lovable.dev.


22:18

And it's a no code, it's by coding. So you can take an output from chat GPT that Chatty has given you based on, you know, what we talked about earlier. So if Chatty says, Hey, I really think that you can build, you know, your own coach just to keep things simple. Like pick Maritza's brain AI. I can then tell Chatty, Hey Chatty, I want to build this inside of lovable.dev. So can you give me, you know, the steps that I would.


22:46

put inside of lovable so that I can vibe code this. And Chat GPT will give you literally everything that you need. You just copy and paste that right into lovable and you can see like an  app or a tool come to life within seconds right before your apps. It's so crazy. And so it just goes to show you to me, the next like best amazing thing with AI  is more so like people and AI.


23:14

not just like what the technology can do, but it's what we as human beings are going to be able to accomplish and what we've yet to create, you know, because of AI. Because think about it, just last year, there wasn't a thing as like, oh, what's Cindy plus AI? You know, what does that look like? That didn't exist. But now you know what Cindy powered by AI can do, right? It's like now you've amplified, you know, your own work.


23:44

your own processes, your own IP, and you essentially are creating a new category in your industry that didn't exist before. And we  all have that opportunity because AI is still so new. It's still not even wildly adopted yet. It might seem like that in our pockets and in our bubble, but the reality is that it hasn't been adopted by everyone yet. And so we all, by like amplifying what we do with AI,


24:12

We are all literally creating new categories, new ways of working, new ways of being, new ways of communicating with each other, new ways of doing things with AI. And that's like where I'm like, I could talk about that all day long. It's so exciting to me. I love it. I can see how just like lit up you all and I'm loving this conversation. So you and I might need to talk about this all day. It's my absolute favorite thing. People plus AI. Like that's the future. So powerful. I want to pin.


24:41

the no code, low code type tools. I think they are next level. I created an app on school base 44. So it's very similar to notable and it's like an expense tracking app. I'm very meticulous on like business expenses and all the things. And before was a very manual process, like going through every single line item. So on base 44, I pumped it. It created this phenomenal expense tracking app that analyzes it the way that I would analyze with like my decision making processes.


25:10

And every week I get this output phenomenal, like in an instant. So it is so wild. The  use cases, the potential of what you can build with these  no code tools. So absolutely, if you're listening, check those out. I love what you mentioned Maritza, which is like ask Chachi BT, what are things that you could build? What are apps you could build? What specific agents that you could leverage to make your life more efficient and easier? And on that topic of making things more efficient and easier, I have this


25:39

thought and I stand by this, is like the hell I will die on. It is to a certain extent, service providers will not exist. Meaning if you are not transitioning your business to leveraging AI, to leveraging apps and these tools that we're talking about, in a few years, you won't be able to compete with the agencies, the companies that are embedding AI, right? Company plus AI, like you're mentioning, or person plus AI. You just won't be able to compete. Service providers just won't exist.


26:09

What are your thoughts on that? And kind of give us the behind themes on how you kind of think about where the industries are going to look like or how they're going to shift in the next few years. Yeah, I could not agree more, you know, and I don't mean to say that because there's people that are, you know, using that to build fear on others and to like push their products and services. But the reality is that if you don't figure out how AI fits,


26:37

into your world and what you do. Even if you don't become a builder, right? Even if you're like, well, I don't want to become a tech founder. Like that doesn't appeal to me. Just simply understanding what a you of today plus AI looks like. You're not going to be able to know how your role is changing. The day to day of your life, you know, is transforming. You're going to be in the dark about so many things that you could have uncovered for yourself. So.


27:04

Instead of you getting to decide what it looks like, somebody else is going to come in and do that for you. And they're going to be telling you how you need to operate now. And to your point, you would have been left behind in the sense of how are you going to compete with somebody that's already  three, four, five years in in their journey because they weren't afraid to get started. You're going to be three, four, five years behind. So I totally agree with you on that.


27:31

I want you to speak to like woman founders specifically. I know there's a lot that listen to this show and I think as women, we can sometimes have a tendency to be like the last ones to want to adopt the tech or we feel like sometimes it's outside of our capabilities or you you're a CTO, you're all things tech. So I love that about you. What would you say to that female founder that is still on like the fence of taking the jump and really starting to leverage AI in her business? Yeah, so ladies hear me out.


27:59

Okay, because there is one thing that we are absolutely fabulous at and we do this at home and it's delegating, right? We delegate getting our hair done. We delegate getting our nails done. We delegate sometimes cleaning our homes, right? We delegate care for our children. We are masters at like articulating the most incredible teams to get the things done that we need in our lives. Apply that same extent thinking to tech.


28:27

You don't need to know how the soup is made. You don't need to be the one coding. You don't need to be the one, you know, developing. You actually just need to be the orchestrator behind this technology. Like literally for the first time ever exists the opportunity for women to simply exist, to be in our power, to know the things that we know and to have, you know, somebody else that's skilled in those things create incredible


28:57

tools and products for our audiences based off of our expertise, to simply being able to orchestrate how their expertise now gets translated into technology. We've never had this opportunity before, right? And so I think I  am all about encouraging women to figure out how they can take their ITs, their current processes, their systems, their workflows. We're queens of spreadsheets, we're queens of to-do lists. All of those things literally can become


29:27

a piece of technology. And no offense for the men, but this is just biologically true. Women are naturally more intuitive. Like we are also connected to our emotions and that makes us incredible product builders because we can create, you know, user experiences and a user flow in a way that's like naturally intuitive. That's naturally thinking about how the person is going to feel, you know, how


29:55

things are gonna look. And so we are able to create beautiful, wonderful products and all of us because the  us plus AI is literally a new opportunity that we all currently have. We have the ability to create something new. We have the ability to disrupt our markets. We really can be one of  one. And I think it's beautiful. And so I want to see more women in tech, especially with by coding like we were talking about.


30:24

we can create products just by typing exactly how we speak, you know, and again, like using chat GPT as your co-pilot to help articulate your ideas. Like to your point with the budget tracker, like what I loved about that example is that how many of us don't have our own little spreadsheets and things that we use. Literally plug that into chat GPT, be like, Hey Chatty, I use this freaking spreadsheet all the time with my clients. How can I turn that into a tool?


30:51

And it's going to tell you exactly how to do it step by step. And who is better at following a to-do list or a task list better than us. Right? So let's go ladies. Let's go. Get in the kitchen. Get in the kitchen ladies. Yes, I'm all for it. I am like all things AI. So preach. I think about so many things. One of them is there's so many industries that listen to the show as well. So I would encourage the listeners.


31:18

not just the industries that we've given examples to, whether you're in health and wellness, whether you're in healthcare, they are use cases for whatever industry you find yourself in to leverage AI. So  ask the question, and this is like my favorite word is like, how can I? How can I? Right? And when you ask that, it's like, it opens you up to so much. So ask the question, how can I, when you're thinking about AI. So Maritza, you run Maison with.


31:44

Hannah, tell us a little bit more about your network, what you will have created, and you are the CTO, how you all are leveraging AI within that space as well. When we started Mazon, I was very adamant that I wanted it to be its own proprietary platform. And Hannah was one of those people that I had reached out to with this idea of the platform because she already had created these incredible masterminds in group.


32:12

programs and I was like, this is where I see this going. Right.  And I myself also had  a group program at the time  and it was just a beautiful like marriage of both worlds and where we saw kind of community headed in this world of AI. Right. And so I wanted a platform. I wanted a place where women could have access to each other, access to the resources that they needed.


32:41

And I wanted it to feel like it was going to be growing and transforming with them over time, which is something that you can't do in a circle. It's something you can't do in a pajama. Right. It's like, once you set up your environment there, what you see is kind of what you get. It's not going to mold with your user. Right. platforms weren't creating AI first. So that's the advantage, you know, that we had with Mazon is that Mazon is AI first and it's AI forward.


33:10

And so within the platform, we're leveraging AI first in its most powerful form, which is in the data, right? And it's in user behavior and analysis of that user behavior so that we can make better informed decisions. And so with the data that we're able to synthesize within the platform, we're able to make better decisions for our members that feel really curated and really intimate and also very timely to them.


33:39

And so our AI also matches members to each other and it uses qualitative and quantitative data to make those matches and those introductions. And it's only going to get better over time. That's what I really want people to understand about building with AI. Like what the big difference is, is that AI gets better over time and it's able to make smarter recommendations in your product.


34:06

based on the data and the behavior that it has been studying, again, over a certain period of time. And so we're using those signals to inform our programming, to inform how we structure events. Everything is very intentional because of the data. But then the beauty is that Maison is a platform and a network. And so the things, as much as we're leveraging data and leveraging AI, everything gets executed in a very human-to-human form.


34:36

So I want to encourage all of you that are like, well, I don't want to lose  my human  abilities or  my humanity to, and then make everything just like AI. You don't have to.  We use a lot of AI on the back end of our product and our business. Our members, outside of  the matching that they get to take a part of, they would never know or be affected by all  the ways that we're using AI.


35:06

Everything else is like  one-to-one, high touch, concierge, you know, and what AI has allowed us to do is that it has freed up our time so that we can be more hands-on and one-to-one with our members. So if you use AI strategically, you're actually able to create a new role for yourself, you know, create a new way of working. And so that is what Maison is. It's a platform, it's equal parts platform. We have an app on the App Store as well.


35:36

and also a private network and community for seven to nine figure founders. And we're supporting our members with life and professional development.  And truly we're in the business of belonging, more in the business of building really deep and meaningful connections. And we're leveraging AI and data in order to create that thread of connection within our network. So good. So good. We're going to leave some more details about Maison and how you can get in touch with Maritza.


36:05

In the show notes, one thing I want to highlight that you mentioned is data. If you are maybe just getting started or you haven't fully leveraged AI, I think one of the things we underestimate is how much data we actually have in our businesses and how much that can be leveraged inside of AI. At Pima, when we first got started in building our own software and integrating AI,


36:30

We had over 150 million data points that we had collected over seven years of doing direct outreach. That is a lot of data. And that allowed us to really like accelerate how we created our AI and how it's able to learn over time. You may not have that much data and that's completely okay. But I think also think about how much data you have at the points in the business that you are right now, right? You have customer insights, you have data on how you communicate with your customers. I mean, so much.


36:59

So I wanted to pinpoint, wherever you are in business, don't underestimate how much data you have at that point and how that can be leveraged in AI tools and in how you actually deliver your product or service. Yeah, well, that's such a good call out because that is one of the things that we often overlook. We're like, well, what is data? It's not just a person's name and their demographics. It's literally every interaction that you've ever had.


37:26

with a client is considered a data point. Even like they clicked here and emailed me like that's a data point. Cause like at one point of the journey, you know, did they go and email you? That's like a valuable piece of data. So don't overlook the things that you've already done. This was probably one of my favorite conversations. So I am so thankful that you worked here. Two last questions for you. One, where do you see the industry headed? Give us something 2026.


37:54

Predictions, all things AI. Yes. What are you excited about?  Like I said earlier, what I'm really excited about are the new categories that are being created because of so many people amplifying what they've always done through AI. So I'm really more excited about our own human evolution versus where the technology in and of itself is going. Because when I stop to think about where AI is going, I start thinking about like,


38:22

Oh my gosh, like  3D printing and all these like other really crazy nerdy things that are very much in our near future that AI is going to be able to like take to a whole other level that we haven't even seen yet guys. And so  it like excites me and scares me at the same time. Like voice generation with AI is one thing that I'm really excited about and also absolutely mortified about where voice generation is going.


38:49

But all in all, in 2026, I do see more people finally having integrated AI into their existing businesses and their ways of living.  And I see a lot of new things being born from those integrations and the things that people are going to start to build. It's all going to be new. It's like new categories. That's it. So exciting.


39:15

We always ask our guests this at the end of the show. So Maritza, what does winning mean to you? Winning for me is all about impact. Like the more impact that you have and that you can make, the more that you trust yourself and the gifts that you've been given  and you share that with the world, the better we all are for it. I really do believe that we all are uniquely blessed.


39:40

with gifts and they're given to us for a reason. And the more we trust in that and put ourselves out there and create more impact, then the more lives we can change. And that to me is the true definition of winning is like societal change as a collective. And yeah, that's what gets me excited. That's what keeps me going. I love it. This was again, one of my favorite conversations. So thank you for allowing me to nerd out about all things AI. I'm sure you could have gone.


40:10

way deeper, but you kept it at a level  that I could do. Oh my gosh, I literally like have to stop myself in going on kingdoms because I can talk about this all day. And I was telling Cindy earlier that usually, you know, no one invites the nerd on the podcast. And so I was so excited to get to have, you know, a nerdy conversation about something that's such a big part of my life because it doesn't happen often. So thank you for having me. And I'm so glad that your audience is interested.


40:38

in this topic and hey, I feel free to DM me if you have any questions or you want more clarity on something that I said, I am an open book. Yes, she's probably one of the best people to follow on Instagram for all things AI. So Maritza, again, drop your and how can people get in touch with you? Yes, so I  am underscore Maritza Toban on Instagram. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Maritza Toban. And for Maison, you can connect with us and join Maison pretty much everywhere.


41:08

And yeah, I am the one in my DM, so feel free to reach out. Awesome. It was so great having you on the show. Thanks, Maritza. There you have it. That wraps up another episode of The Takeover. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.  Make sure that you connect with Maritza on all social platforms. As I mentioned, she's one of the best people to follow around AI application, day-to-day use of AI.


41:35

so connect with her on Instagram and learn more about Maison as well.  Make sure you are subscribed to the show wherever you are listening and we'll talk soon. Remember, domination is not a destination, it's a way of life, stay winning.