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Hi, and welcome to Try AI for Growth, a podcast out of Make Space for Growth.
Here, I share short and sometimes surprising stories of how I’ve used AI to tackle everyday challenges — at work, at home, and in business.
I’m your host, Sara Vicente Barreto, and today I want to talk about something very simple… but very real. What happens after a networking event? Because if you’re anything like me, you leave with great conversations, interesting people, amazing… and then life happens.#
And somehow, all that potential… fades. That means I create more resistance to attending events. Because I feel overwhelmed by the follow-up process.
This time, I tried something different. And you guessed right, it involved AI!
The Situation: The Drive Home
I had just left a women’s networking event. The event was a good one. It had meaningful conversations, new connections, a few familiar faces, and there were quite a few ideas floating around in my head.
I was driving back to pick up my daughter, for the 3rd time in the day, on the Cascais-Lisbon highway. After a full day, I feared my brain was not going to be able to cope with all that I was keeping inside. Overwhelm was kicking in.
Different people. Different follow-ups. Different levels of urgency.
And I knew exactly what would happen next:
- I would get home
- I would get distracted
- And by the next day… the clarity would be gone.
And nothing really happens. Not because the intent isn’t there, but because the structure isn’t.
I wish I had a secretary, an easy way to offload what was in my head.
But didn’t I have one? Instead of wishing, I opened ChatGPT. Not to write anything. But to listen to me.
The Experiment: AI as my Personal Secretary
This whole interaction happened on voice, while I was driving. I promise I kept it hands-free and safe. No notes. No typing. Just thinking out loud.
I explained what I was trying to do in order to debrief the event and not let it all in my mind. I provided context. It was so much that I started with a simple question.
“How should I even structure this?”
So AI suggested that I clarify for each person whether they were new or old contacts, what the conversation highlights were and where I wanted to take it next. AI promised to take note of everything as I said it, unstructured and a bit messy, and then we could think of an output together.
Suddenly, what felt messy… became structured. The mental blur made sense.
From Conversations to Opportunities
From there, I started going through each person I had spoken to. AI acted like a personal secretary:
- Capturing what I said
- Organising it
- Turning it into something usable for future records
But here’s the key difference. A normal note-taking tool would just store information. AI started to interpret it. At the end of each person’s description, I outlined a few highlights, and I asked for feedback, based on my range of work, on potential follow-up topics.
As I spoke, AI didn’t just accept everything at face value. It highlighted follow-up opportunities, and it suggested priorities and next steps. It was limited by not being able to search while in Voice mode, but I still had enough that I could work with.
Not only was I able to download my thoughts, but I was also interacting and reflecting on them right after the event, at a moment when technically, I was still in that “flow”. Indeed, the fact that I had a way to do this almost “live” was very powerful. Not afterwards, when the energy is gone, but instead in the moment where you remember nuances, you feel the importance, and you can have the best ideas.
With AI providing structure, without me having to say it, it was categorising the conversations, turning my ideas into action lists and intentions into calendar tasks I just had to paste in when I got home. (yes, in the future that will happen to!).
A full debrief
At the end of the interaction, I asked AI to pull everything together. And what I got wasn’t a transcript. It was:
- a structured plan
- clear follow-ups
- prioritised actions
Something I could actually use. Upload into a CRM. Turn into tasks. Or simply act on the next day.
The real shift here was this: AI didn’t just help me remember (which on its own was already very powerful for me!). It helped me take action. And that’s a big difference. Because most of the value in moments like this is not in the information. It’s in what you do with it.
Lessons for Today
Here are a few takeaways:
1. Timing matters: The quicker you debrief events, the fresher they will be in your mind. Make use of available tools to offload unstructured thoughts. And do it as soon as you can after the event. That’s when the detail — and the energy — is still there.
2. Voice changes everything: This worked because it was frictionless. No typing. No system. Just thinking out loud. With an engine that could understand unstructured thoughts.
3. Don’t aim for notes — aim for action: The goal isn’t just to remember what happened. It’s to decide what to do with it.
4. Use AI to close the gap: Most people are actually quite good at starting conversations. But not as good at following through. AI helps bridge that gap.
How to Use AI Like This
When I looked back at the whole interaction, I realised this wasn’t just note-taking. AI played four roles at the same time:
- A memory extension
- A structuring engine
- A strategic filter
- And an accountability partner
And the combination of those four… is what made the difference. If you want to try this yourself, here’s a simple way to think about it:
- Start with context – explain your event or meeting and what you need the outcome to be, before you start offloading thoughts
- Speak – processing your thoughts out loud can be much less definitive, as you are not trying to achieve a perfect result. That allows for ideas to flourish. It removes friction and makes the interaction feel natural. Just like people would do with their secretaries in the “olden” days
- Ask for feedback – use AI as a smart personal secretary. Don’t just tell it things. What am I missing? What are the best next steps in this context? How can I categorise this? Push AI beyond note-taking.
What I liked most about this experiment is how simple it was. And honestly, the weight was taken off my shoulders. No system. No preparation. Just a conversation. With the right prompts, that conversation became:
- structured
- actionable
- and surprisingly strategic
So if you’re coming out of a meeting, an event, or even just a busy day, try this. Use AI not just to capture what happened… but to help you decide what to do next. For me, what would normally stay as scattered thoughts became a clear, actionable plan.
The real value of these events isn’t in the event itself… it’s in what you do after.
Thanks for joining me on this episode of Try AI for Growth. If you try something similar, I’d genuinely love to hear how it goes.
If you can, share this episode with someone who struggles with this too. The more you share, the more we will all learn!
Until next time—keep experimenting and keep having fun.
Photo by 0xd1ma – Pexels