Answer Engine Optimization Comes to the 2026 Miami Lakes Small Business Bootcamp

Most small business owners in South Florida are still optimizing for a search behavior their customers have already abandoned.

That is the argument I am bringing to Miami Lakes Town Hall on September 25.

The Town of Miami Lakes Economic Development Committee is hosting its 2026 Small Business Bootcamp, and I am presenting a session on Answer Engine Optimization: how to make AI systems talk about your business accurately, and how to get recommended when someone asks ChatGPT for a plumber, a med spa, a law firm, or an AI consultant in your area.

What the bootcamp is

The Small Business Bootcamp is a half-day working session for new and established business owners in and around Miami Lakes. It is organized by the Town's Economic Development Committee, chaired by Matthew Casamayor, with Romy Pego Remior chairing the bootcamp itself.

Date: Friday, September 25, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM
Location: Miami Lakes Town Hall, 6601 Main Street, Miami Lakes, FL 33014
Registration: Eventbrite
After: Networking happy hour at Chela's, 15301 NW 67th Ave

Registration and breakfast open at 9:00 AM, sponsored by the Town of Miami Lakes Chamber of Commerce, BNI Miami Lakes, and BNI Lakes Connects. At 11:00 AM the Best of Miami Lakes finalists get revealed live, which is reason enough to be in the room if you nominated your business or a neighbor's. The official Town of Miami Lakes event page has the full agenda.

The session: how to make AI talk about your business

My slot is at 10:50 AM.

Here is the short version of what I will cover. When a customer asks an AI assistant to recommend a business, the assistant is not showing them a ranked list of ten blue links. It gives one answer, sometimes three. Your business is either in that answer or it does not exist for that customer.

That is a structural change, not a channel change. Answer Engine Optimization is the work of making your content readable, quotable, and verifiable to the systems producing those answers. It means structured data, clean entity information, self-contained answers to the questions your customers actually ask, and content architecture that an AI can parse without guessing.

Traditional SEO chases position on a results page. AEO chases inclusion in a generated answer. The tactics overlap in places, but the goal is different, and treating one as a rebrand of the other is how businesses waste a year.

I will spend most of the session on what a small business can do without hiring anyone: the specific pages to fix first, the questions to answer on your own site, and how to check whether AI systems currently describe your business correctly. That last one surprises people. A lot of businesses find out their hours, service area, or core offering is being reported wrong.

Why I can make this argument with a straight face

Elevate AI Consulting shows up as a top recommendation in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for AI consulting in Miami. That is not an accident and it is not paid placement. It is the same work I teach.

The clearest client example is GrahamComm. After an AEO engagement that included JSON-LD structured data, structured FAQs, and content architecture across more than 20 pages, the firm generated 15-plus inbound leads from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in under 90 days. Everything in that engagement was owned content on their own site. No PR outreach, no third-party placements, no link buying. The full write-up is in our GrahamComm AEO case study.

Results vary by industry and starting point, and I do not promise numbers to anyone. But the mechanism is repeatable, and it works at small business scale.

The rest of the lineup

The bootcamp is not an AI conference, and that is a good thing. The agenda is built around what actually moves a small business forward:

• Drew Vidaurrazaga, Owner and CEO of Vida Custom Designs, on demystifying AI for small business
• Roxana Miranda, Founder and President of Vellu Laser, on building a social media brand that sells
• Mylo Gonzalez, Owner of NQC "No Quiero Cocinar," on universal recipes for business growth
• Open Q&A moderated by Romy Pego Remior

Four operators talking about what worked in their own businesses. That format beats a keynote almost every time.

Why local events like this matter

Miami's AI conversation is dominated by startups, venture capital, and enterprise pilots. Meanwhile the businesses that make up the actual economy of towns like Miami Lakes are getting almost none of the practical guidance.

That gap is why I say yes to municipal and chamber events. A room of 100 owners who leave with three things they can do on Monday creates more real AI adoption than another panel about the future of work.

It also fits the way Elevate AI works. Human Intelligence First. You bring the intelligence, AI is just the tool. We do not help companies cut headcount, and we do not sell AI as a replacement for judgment. The bootcamp audience gets that instinctively, because when you run a 12-person business you already know the people are the business.

Register

Seats go through Eventbrite and the room has a cap.

Register for the 2026 Small Business Bootcamp

If you want to go deeper than a 20-minute session, book a discovery call and we will look at how AI systems currently describe your business. If you are organizing an event and want this session for your own audience, our speaking and events page has details, or reach out directly at thiago@elevateaiconsulting.com.

More on the discipline itself: Answer Engine Optimization services. For teams that want the full working session rather than a talk, see our Corporate AI Training Bootcamp.