After the Demo

In one outplacement firm's count of announced U.S. job cuts, AI is the reason companies have cited most this year, and California signed a law at the end of September that will make some employers say so on the layoff notice. John Arndt and Kate check a viral "forty percent of all jobs" headline against the actual count, read one company's layoff memo two ways, and walk through what California's notice will have to say and who it covers. Then the real fight: when a company you sell to posts a layoff, should your sales team email them? Kate wins that one, and they try to name one new job AI is supposed to create.

**Sponsor:** This episode is sponsored by Intakra (intakra.com). Intakra watches public sources for the companies a B2B sales team sells to (job posts, SEC filings, government contracts, state layoff notices and company websites) and emails the team the proof when one of them starts a project it could help with. It works with companies, not people, and it's low volume on purpose: a few heads-ups a week, not a feed. Plans start at USD 199 per month for 300 accounts, and there's a 14-day trial on 150 accounts, no card needed.

Nothing in this episode is legal advice. For questions about your own notices, talk to your lawyer.

Personal AI agents have started phoning businesses to book appointments for people, and since October 1 Google charges Local Services Ads advertisers for some calls nobody answered. John Arndt and Kate work out whether that caller is a customer, what a missed call now costs, which calls a bot should take and which need a person, and how a phone line can go quiet without anyone noticing. Then they land on the one test call to make this week.

**Sponsor:** This episode is sponsored by Mentioned On (mentioned-on.com). Mentioned On tracks what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and Copilot, plus Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, say when people ask for the best business near them, and whether yours is in the answer. It's built for local service businesses, from plumbers and HVAC companies to dentists and law firms, and for hospitality businesses like hotels, inns and restaurants. The instant scan of the six chat assistants is free with no signup, the Agent Ready Checker is free and reads your public pages to see whether personal AI agents like Meta Muse, OpenAI Dots and Siri could call, email or book you, and paid monitoring starts at $99/month for one business.

Your customers are already asking AI assistants which business to call, and your web analytics can't see most of it. John Arndt and Kate walk through who's asking, why your dashboard says zero, what the assistants actually say about local businesses and credit unions, and the ten-minute check to run this week.