Podcast
Try AI for Growth
Hosted by Sara Vicente Barreto · EN
Try AI for Growth is a podcast that explores fun, practical, and surprising ways to integrate artificial intelligence into your everyday life and work. Hosted by Sara Vicente Barreto, the show features bite-sized episodes sharing real experiments and user-friendly tips to help you embrace AI as a tool for personal growth, professional productivity, and creative exploration. Whether you're curious about leveraging AI for business, home, or just for fun, this podcast inspires you to start experimenting today. Let's demystify AI—one idea at a time!
11episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Building an Investment Guide for My 9-Year-Old
1w ago00:10:36Tap to summarizeWhen my nine-year-old son received a cash gift to buy his first shares, I thought the challenge would be choosing the right company. Instead, it became an unexpected AI experiment in designing a learning experience. Rather than telling him what to invest in, I wanted to help him understand how businesses work and how investors think. In this episode of Try AI for Growth, I share how a simple ChatGPT conversation evolved into a printable investing guide, a company rating framework and a series of child-friendly company profiles—all through continuous iteration. Along the way, I explore why AI is at its best when it helps us refine ideas, build reusable systems and think more deeply about the problems we're trying to solve. Whether you're creating learning materials, developing a business framework or simply looking for a better way to brainstorm, this episode is a reminder that AI can amplify your thinking, not replace it.
Transcribe →The Best Reports Start as Messy Notes
Jun 2600:08:30Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto explores how Claude for Word transformed a routine client reporting process into a repeatable workflow. Starting with nothing more than a project mandate and a collection of rough working notes, she used AI to create a structured, professional report in minutes, while keeping complete control over the content and judgment behind it. Rather than replacing expertise, this experiment shows how AI can remove the friction from documentation, helping leaders focus on thinking instead of formatting. Sara shares practical lessons on capturing good notes, creating repeatable workflows, and using AI to produce polished reports that save time without sacrificing quality.
Transcribe →Building an AI Agent for Real Team Work
May 2200:11:26Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares how she built an AI Grant Scout agent for her charity, Um Pequeno Gesto — a structured workflow designed to identify, assess and prioritise funding opportunities more strategically. A tool with real commercial applications. Rather than treating AI as a chatbot experiment, Sara explores what happens when you build an agent around a real operational workflow: defining rules, creating scoring systems, developing reference documents, and onboarding a team member to use it effectively. Along the way, she reflects honestly on what worked, what still feels frustrating, and why the real value of AI often lies in the thinking and structure behind the build.
Transcribe →What Happens When You Let Claude Loose on Your Pitch Deck
May 1500:09:16Tap to summarizeSara Vicente Barreto set out to fix one cluttered slide. What followed was an accidental full redesign of a charity pitch deck — and a new way of thinking about strategic presentation work. In this episode, Sara shares what happened when she gave Claude for PowerPoint a real brief: a side-by-side comparison, a vague positioning concept, and a five-year-old intro slide that no longer reflected how the organisation thinks. The results were better than expected. The rabbit hole was deeper than planned. She also explores what made this experiment different — working through it live with a colleague, and discovering that the real value wasn't just in the slides Claude produced, but in the strategic conversations it accelerated.
Transcribe →From Blank to App: My First Lovable Experiment
May 800:13:27Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares her first experience building apps with Lovable — starting from a moment of complete creative paralysis during a hands-on workshop and ending with multiple working apps built in under ten minutes. What began as an experiment in AI-powered app creation quickly became a broader reflection on workflows, creativity, and how non-coders can now prototype ideas faster than ever before. From redesigning field data collection processes at the charity to building spelling and football apps with her son at the kitchen table, Sara explores how tools like Lovable are changing the relationship between ideas and execution. Along the way, she shares lessons about process redesign, prompting, experimentation, and why simple apps can sometimes create the biggest mindset shifts. Whether you are curious about AI tools, overwhelmed with ideas, or convinced app-building is only for developers, this episode may change how you think about creating with technology.
Transcribe →Claude for Excel: The AI That Made Me Rethink My First Job
May 100:12:43Tap to summarizen this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares how one AI tool—Claude for Excel—made her rethink what her first job would look like today. By bringing AI directly into spreadsheets, Claude doesn't just assist with analysis—it can fix formulas, rebuild models, validate data, and even create full dashboards from scratch. Through real examples, from debugging complex files to building a 2026 reporting dashboard, Sara explores how tasks that once defined entry-level analyst roles can now be done in minutes. But beyond productivity, this raises a bigger question: if AI can do the work that used to teach us how to think, analyse, and problem-solve… how do people develop those skills in the first place? A practical and thought-provoking episode for anyone working with data, managing teams, or thinking about the future of work.
Transcribe →From Overwhelm to Focus: How AI Is Changing the Way We Learn
Apr 300:08:23Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto explores how a simple shift in using AI transformed a moment of overwhelm into real learning. What started as a frustrating biology revision session became a powerful experiment in focus, using Google Notebook LLM to ground AI in specific materials. The result? Greater clarity, confidence, and a completely different learning experience. This episode unpacks why AI often creates noise instead of value—and how narrowing its scope can turn it into a true learning partner, both at home and in business.
Transcribe →Most Networking Is Wasted — Let AI Turn It Into Action
Mar 2700:08:42Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto explores what really happens after a networking event, and why so much potential gets lost in the follow-up. Using AI as a personal secretary, she shares how a simple voice interaction turned scattered thoughts into structured, actionable next steps. From capturing conversations in real time to identifying opportunities and prioritising actions, this episode shows how AI can go beyond note-taking to become a true thinking partner. If you've ever left an event feeling energised but overwhelmed, this practical experiment will show you how to turn conversations into meaningful outcomes.
Transcribe →AI-Driven Accounting Automation: How I Failed Before I Got It Working
Mar 2000:09:07Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara shares how she used AI to automate a monthly accounting process—and why it completely failed the first time. What started as a straightforward automation attempt quickly turned into a deeper exercise in structuring data, defining rules, and debugging with AI. Using Claude, Sara didn't just build a macro—she uncovered hidden issues, refined her system, and improved the accuracy of the process. This episode is a candid look at what using AI in real life actually involves: iteration, failure, and small technical details that make all the difference.
Transcribe →Writing a Blog Post… from the Car: A Simple Voice-to-Draft Workflow with Descript and ChatGP
Mar 1400:08:21Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Try AI for Growth, Sara Vicente Barreto shares a simple workflow that helped her capture a blog idea while driving and turn it into a usable draft. Starting with a quick voice note recorded in the car, she used Descript to generate a transcript and ChatGPT to clean it up into a structured first version. The result? A low-friction way to capture ideas anywhere and turn messy thoughts into something ready to build on. If you've ever struggled to find time to write or wished you could capture ideas on the go, this experiment shows how combining a few AI tools can make the process much easier.
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