AI has, to put it mildly, been in the news lately. But for small business owners, it’s not just an existential global issue – it and other new technologies are also something that can affect their business in various practical ways every day.
The annual Miami Lakes Business Bootcamp presented by the Economic Development Committee focused on harnessing technology for small business owners. Attendees heard from four local business owners on how to use artificial intelligence, social media and even making a human connection to help their businesses.
“What we’re really going to focus on today is technology it’s going to be a lot of focus on AI a lot of focus on social media” EDC Chair Matthew Casamayor said.
Casamayor said he hoped business owners learned how to use these tools to help grow and improve their businesses.
“The big thing I want people to take out of today is practicality,” Casamayor said.
The first speaker was Drew Vidaurrazaga, owner and CEO of Vida Custom Designs and Imperial Tech Shop.
Vidaurrazaga spoke about using AI to streamline business processes.
“We use it to help us with workflow … we use it to find ways to improve our time or save time,” Vidaurrazaga said. “You are able to use that to clear that queue and help those people out.”
One of the ways he also said it can be used is for communication to help craft answers for people who may reach out to the business.
“Sometimes … the tone may not come off correctly if we try to write to them,” Vidaurrazaga said.
Using it to help answer an upset client makes it easier for owners to help smooth over those interactions.
Reaching clients and customers was another subject during the morning, with Roxana Miranda covering social media reach.
Miranda, who is the founder and president of Vellu Laser, talked about crafting a social media brand that sells.
Miranda spoke about using consistent branding across Instagram to help make a brand recognizable from using a similar color palette to using words that people can associate with the business.
“A memorable brand repeats the same thing over and over, consistency doesn’t have to be boring,” Miranda said.
Miranda said that people don’t need to post logos all the time or advertise sales but find something consistent to post that makes the brand recognizable.
One-way businesses can do that is to also make sure they have a handle that that is short and easy.
“It has to be related,” Miranda said.
Miranda also suggested that the responses given on social media are engaging and allow for the conversation to keep going to help promote the business.
Interactions like that are helping with answer engine optimization, where the AI scans the web and having interactions like that help the AI find what users are looking for
It is now the new way to search for answers, according to Thiago Ferreira.
Ferreira, the founder and CEO of Elevate AI Consulting and a professor at the University of Miami spoke about how AI is changing how people search.
“What that really means is AI search, people have made from looking things up on Google to looking things up on Chat GPT,” Ferreira said.
This means that people instead are asking the AI and to help push a business page to the top of the search done by the AI.
“The purpose is to optimize your content so that these AI powered tools can talk about you and your business,” Ferreira said.
Ferreira said it is an evolution from the search engine optimization, and the success is now measured how often the AI is talking about the business and pulling content from the website.
“Clients are no longer using Google how we were used to … now everyone just goes to ChatGPT and gets all the information all at once,” Ferreira said.
Google is now considering the user who is asking the question and tailoring the results to show a handful of links that it considers the best one.
While the focus was on AI and technology, Mylo Gonzalez owner of NQC or No Quiero Concinar, spoke about the human connection.
“We’re really engaged with our customers, it starts with what our goal is hospitality,” Gonzalez said.
He also spoke about creativity to get ahead of things like rising costs in the restaurant industry. He said people cannot rely on just technology to do things in their business.
The day wrapped up with a question-and-answer session followed by a networking happy hour at Chela’s Miami.
The 2026 business bootcamp was sponsored by First Origin Mortgage Lenders; BNI Miami Lakes; BNI Lakes Connect; Chef Veronica; Drip Health & Medspa; AC Graphics Digital; Torres Insurance Agency; Hiveworks Business Solution; Chela’s Cocterleria; and Bon Vivant Charcuterie & Gourmet Market.