206 RGV Business Owners Show Up for Free AI Masterclass. Here's What That Tells Us.
206 Rio Grande Valley business owners registered for AI That Works, a free four-hour masterclass held May 14 at the McAllen Public Library Auditorium in McAllen. Presented by Evermore Digital in partnership with the RGV Women's Chamber of Commerce, the session drew 78 in-person attendees who stayed for the full program.
The number is worth sitting with. A free event, on a weekday, for four hours — and 206 people registered. That level of response says something specific about the RGV market: there is real demand for practical AI education here, and it is not being met.
Most AI training is built for markets with more resources, more staff, and more time. RGV business owners are largely running operations themselves — making decisions, handling clients, managing every function. They are not looking for an overview of what AI might eventually do. They need to know what it can do in their business, next Monday, without a tech team.
That is what the session was designed to address. Three frameworks anchored the morning. The 5 P's Prompting System gave attendees a structured method for communicating with AI tools — rooted in the same logic as the journalistic 5 W's and applied to business prompts. The AI Employee Spectrum mapped five levels of AI integration, from a single automated task to a full system of AI employees with defined roles, showing business owners a clear path from where they are to where they want to be. The Five Gaps diagnostic identified the five most common places local businesses lose revenue without realizing it: missed calls, slow lead response, review gaps, absent follow-up sequences, and unused SMS channels.
"She did not gatekeep anything," said Elizabeth Ramirez, business coach and founder of The Lifestyle Biz. "It gave us so much information and it was easy to understand and digestible. AI can feel a little scary sometimes but this was absolutely a wonderful experience."
Eight local and regional sponsors made the event possible. Their contributions benefited the RGV Women's Chamber of Commerce directly. Sponsors included Piedre Y Gana 2026, Willow Hospice Care LLC, ZDM Fire and Safety, Emuna, New York Life, Rudhira Heart and Vascular Institute, CenterWell Senior Primary Care, and Women in Technology.
"Not a survey of what AI might do someday. What it can do Monday morning," said Cassandra Aguillon, founder of Evermore Digital.
Aguillon holds AI certifications from Google, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, IBM, and Anthropic, and is a CPD Accredited AI Consultant through AI InnoVision. AI That Works marks the beginning of an ongoing AI fluency initiative from Evermore Digital for the Rio Grande Valley business community. Additional programming is currently underway. For more information visit evermoredigital.com.
