AI Visibility Podcast with Jason T Wade of BackTier

What happens when you design a small-business website not just for humans, but for AI agents?

For the Lovable Built It for Small Business Challenge, I created Halden Detail Co., a fictional mobile detailing company in Scottsdale built around one problem: eliminate the manual work between a customer asking, “Can I book?” and receiving a confirmed appointment.

Customers can choose a vehicle, select a detailing package, see the exact price and duration, view available appointment slots, pay a deposit, and complete the booking without waiting for the owner to respond.

The system also handles the operational side: cancellations, waitlist recovery, scheduling, customer communication, and an owner dashboard.

But the core experiment goes further.

Halden is designed for agentic commerce.

Instead of requiring an AI assistant to read a website and guess what is available, the business exposes structured capabilities for service discovery, quoting, availability, booking, and booking status.

That means a customer can eventually tell an AI assistant:

“Book my Escalade for a detail Friday afternoon.”

The assistant can retrieve the real service, real price, real availability, and create the booking directly.

One business. One pricing system. One calendar.

Two interfaces: human and machine.

This prototype was created in Lovable for the Lovable Built It for Small Business Challenge.

The challenge brief was to redesign the moment an inbound customer inquiry becomes a confirmed booking while reducing as much manual work for the business owner as possible.

Halden addresses both sides:

Front door: customers can quote, schedule, and book without back-and-forth.

Follow-through: deposits, scheduling, cancellation recovery, customer status, and owner operations are handled inside the system.

The additional experiment is making those same capabilities accessible to AI assistants so the booking experience can evolve from traditional checkout toward agentic commerce.

#LovableChallenge · @Lovable

Jason T Wade is an AI Visibility Architect and founder of BackTier. He works on AI discovery, entity architecture, Generative Engine Optimization, Answer Engine Optimization, and the infrastructure that allows AI systems to accurately discover, understand, cite, recommend, and increasingly transact with businesses.

His work focuses on the transition from websites built primarily for human search and browsing toward systems that also expose structured information and capabilities directly to AI agents.

Halden
https://id-preview--c3d214a4-07cd-4ac6-9ada-8c56c2d864bc.lovable.app/

Customer Booking
https://id-preview--c3d214a4-07cd-4ac6-9ada-8c56c2d864bc.lovable.app/book

Text Booking
https://id-preview--c3d214a4-07cd-4ac6-9ada-8c56c2d864bc.lovable.app/text

Autopilot
https://id-preview--c3d214a4-07cd-4ac6-9ada-8c56c2d864bc.lovable.app/autopilot

Owner / Admin
https://id-preview--c3d214a4-07cd-4ac6-9ada-8c56c2d864bc.lovable.app/admin

The One
https://id-preview--c3d214a4-07cd-4ac6-9ada-8c56c2d864bc.lovable.app/one-of-one

Lovable
https://lovable.dev

BackTier
https://backtier.com

Jason T Wade
https://jasontwade.com

For the contest submission itself, I’d use “From ‘Can I Book?’ to ‘You’re Booked’ — With AI Agents” because it mirrors their brief while immediately exposing your differentiator.

Jack Oujo — From Minor League Baseball to Financial Peace of Mind

Complete show notes from the transcript, including the episode description, chapters, takeaways, quotes, clip ideas, and follow-ups. Timestamps are approximate and should be checked against the final edit.

Episode description

What happens when the career you built your identity around ends at 30—with no money and a baby on the way?

Jack Oujo joins Jason Wade on BackTier to discuss his transition from professional baseball umpire to building a tax-focused wealth management business, which he later sold to two employees. His story connects career reinvention, a supportive marriage, calculated risk, and the question he says sits behind almost every retirement conversation: “Am I gonna be okay?”

Jack explains why financial advice is fundamentally coaching, why a useful plan considers difficult markets, and why success involves more than accumulating money. The conversation also covers his daily use of AI to develop speaking material from his memoir, the limits of automated podcast editing, and how technology can free people to pursue more meaningful work.

The episode closes with personal observations about entrepreneurship, travel, and economic opportunity.

Guest background

As described by Jack in the conversation:

• Spent eight years in professional baseball as an umpire before being released at 30.
• Started a business with a partner using credit cards for financing.
• Built an accounting practice that evolved into tax-focused wealth management.
• Eventually focused on clients who used the firm for wealth management.
• Sold the business to two employees, effective January 1; the year is not specified in the transcript.
• Wrote a memoir and began appearing on podcasts to promote it.
• Is developing corporate speaking engagements around reinvention, resilience, and lessons from his career.
• Uses AI daily, including to extract stories and lessons from his book.
• Says he is 68 and lives in Fort Lauderdale.

His book title, business name, website, and preferred contact links are not supplied in the transcript.

In this solo episode of the AI Visibility Podcast, Jason T Wade looks at a more practical use case: using AI as infrastructure for community organizing.The idea came from preparing for an upcoming event and from a local cemetery issue that affected Jason’s family. Instead of stopping at complaints, he used AI to pull together city budgets, reports, state information, and other public records, then combined that research with old-fashioned fieldwork: visiting the cemetery and talking directly with the people involved.Jason then walks through a simple toolkit for civic and community projects: research with Perplexity, analysis and presentations with Claude and Gamma, rapid websites and forms with Lovable or Base44, drafting press materials with ChatGPT or Claude, and organizing public events or petitions through platforms such as Meetup, Eventbrite, and Change.org. Topics- AI for community organizing- Researching public records and local issues- Combining AI research with in-person fact finding- Using agents for rapid research and communications- Building forms and civic tools without traditional development- Creating presentations and public information- Press releases and outreach- Organizing events and petitions- Turning complaints into documented action- Why AI should augment—not replace—real community engagementAbout Jason T WadeJason T Wade is an AI Visibility Architect and founder of BackTier.His work focuses on how AI systems discover, understand, classify, cite, include, and recommend people, companies, products, and ideas.Jason hosts the AI Visibility Podcast where he explores AI search, agents, emerging interfaces, and practical ways people and organizations can use AI systems.LinksJason Wadehttps://jasonwade.comBackTierhttps://backtier.comPerplexity — research and cited web answers https://www.perplexity.aiClaude — research, writing, analysis and creationhttps://claude.comGammahttps://gamma.appLovablehttps://lovable.devBase44 — AI application builder https://base44.comMeetuphttps://www.meetup.comEventbritehttps://www.eventbrite.comChange.org — petition and community-action platform https://www.change.org#backtier

AI agents sound complicated until you realize what they actually do: they take the next step for you.

In this episode of the AI Visibility Podcast, Jason T Wade breaks down why 2026 is becoming the year agents move from interesting experiments into practical everyday tools. From Meta’s Muse and Grok to Base44, Lovable, Cursor, Alexa+, and Copilot, the major platforms are rapidly expanding what autonomous AI systems can accomplish.

Jason explains the simplest way he has found to start using agents: whenever you catch yourself doing something in ChatGPT and thinking, “I never want to do this manually again,” turn that workflow into an agent prompt.

He also discusses why now is an unusually good time to experiment. New AI products are frequently being offered free or heavily subsidized while companies learn how people use them, making this a window to test multiple systems against the same task and understand where each one performs differently.

The conversation also moves into agentic commerce. Amazon Alexa+ is emerging as an important interface for AI-driven shopping, where consumers can increasingly describe what they want conversationally instead of searching through product listings manually.

The larger point is simple: agents are no longer just developer tools. They can work across inboxes, connectors, research, lead generation, data gathering, shopping, and repetitive workflows. The best way to understand them is not to study them endlessly. Give them real work.

Topics include:

AI agents and autonomous workflows

Meta Muse, Grok, Base44, Lovable and Cursor

Turning repetitive ChatGPT work into agent prompts

Testing the same task across multiple AI engines

Why new AI platforms are temporarily giving away significant capability

Alexa+ and the rise of agentic shopping

Copilot and Amazon’s position in AI commerce

Email, connectors, lead research and data gathering

Why agents are easier to use than most people assume

The transition from chatting with AI to delegating work to AI

Jason T Wade is an AI Visibility Architect and founder of NinjaAI and BackTier. He works at the intersection of search, generative AI, entity architecture, AI SEO, Generative Engine Optimization and Answer Engine Optimization.

His work focuses on how AI systems discover, understand, classify, cite, include and recommend people, companies, products and ideas.

Jason also hosts the AI Visibility Podcast, where he examines how AI search, recommendation systems, autonomous agents and emerging interfaces are changing discovery, commerce and the web.

Jason T Wade
jasonwade.com

NinjaAI
ninjaai.com

BackTier
backtier.com

AI Visibility Podcast
Available on Spotify and major podcast platforms

Jason T Wade BioLinks

Eighty-two percent of this show's audience is 45 or older — so this one is for you, and for everyone who loves someone in that group.

There's a moment that repeats in millions of households. A login fails. An update moves a button. And within ninety seconds it stops being a technology problem and becomes a fight.

This episode makes one argument: that escalation isn't evidence of low technology ability. It's a stress response. And once you treat it as one, it mostly stops happening.

What's covered:

• Why usage and confidence are two different things — 34% of older internet users report little or no confidence with electronic devices (Pew)
• Why needing setup help is the median experience, not a deficiency — 48% of seniors say they usually need someone to show them a new device (Pew)
• The study of 630 adults ages 18–68 that found anger, resignation, and venting across the entire adult range (Heliyon) — this isn't generational
• Digital stress as a measurable, rising condition: 9% to 20% of employees over one study period (JMIR)
• Why more instructions make it worse: working memory narrows under stress, so the first job is never the screen
• The STOP–BREATHE–LOOK reset, step by step
• The two-sentence family rule: I will help. I will not be yelled at. — and what each side actually commits to
• The line that ends the episode: the goal is not zero frustration, the goal is zero abuse during frustration

Sources: Pew Research Center, Tech Adoption Climbs Among Older Adults; Heliyon, end-user frustrations and failures in digital technology; Journal of Medical Internet Research, impact of digital stress on negative emotions and physical complaints.

Note: statistics provide context. They don't diagnose anyone, and they don't excuse yelling. If there's chest pain, severe shortness of breath, or you feel medically unwell — that's not technology stress. Address the health concern first.

Bio

Jason T Wade is an AI Visibility architect and the founder of BackTier, where he works on how AI systems discover, classify, cite, and recommend people and organizations. He's the author of AI Visibility: How to Win in the Age of Search, Chat & Smart Customers and the host of the AI Visibility Podcast. He's based in Lake Wales, FL and Orlando, Florida.

What happens when AI knows your name—but doesn't actually know who you are?

In this roundtable episode of the AI Visibility Podcast, Jason T Wade is joined by Jason Barnard, Jodi Koch, and Su Belagodu for a wide-ranging conversation about identity, ambiguity, trust, human judgment, and the growing influence of AI recommendations.

Jason Barnard starts with one of the fundamental problems of AI visibility: entity ambiguity. People share names, companies have inconsistent descriptions, and AI systems have to decide which facts belong to which entity. Su shares her own example of AI incorrectly attributing a Dubai speaking appearance to her because it confused her with another person working in AI governance. Roundtable on AI, Identity, and Ambiguity.docxDOCX Roundtable on AI, Identity, and Ambiguity.docxDOCX

The discussion moves into a larger question: if Google once gave users ten links to evaluate, what changes when an AI system increasingly makes the recommendation itself?

Jason Barnard argues that businesses need to deliberately educate AI systems about who they are, what they do, and who they serve. Su adds an important counterpoint: AI outputs remain probabilistic, and human judgment still matters—especially when agents and automated systems begin making decisions at scale. Roundtable on AI, Identity, and Ambiguity.docxDOCX

Jodi brings the conversation into the physical world. As an interior designer with more than two decades of experience, she uses AI to rapidly visualize ideas with clients—but points out that an AI-generated room can still ignore structural reality. The technology can accelerate the process, but it does not replace the experience required to know whether the proposed design actually works. Roundtable on AI, Identity, and Ambiguity.docxDOCX

A recurring theme emerges: AI visibility begins with being correctly understood. If a machine cannot reliably resolve who you are, it cannot reliably evaluate, recommend, or select you.

• Name and entity ambiguity
• What AI gets right—and wrong—about people
• Correcting machine-generated identity errors
• Digital consistency and corroborating sources
• AI as recommender instead of search engine
• Probabilistic AI outputs
• Human-in-the-loop systems
• AI agents and automation
• Using AI in interior design
• Trusting versus verifying AI output
• Personal brands and company brands
• Controlling how AI understands an entity
• Why human expertise becomes more important alongside AI

Jason Barnard is founder and CEO of Kalicube, a digital brand engineering company focused on helping people and companies control how Google and AI systems understand and represent them. His work spans entity identity, Knowledge Panels, digital brand intelligence, and AI-era recommendation systems. Kalicube - Digital Brand Engineers

Jodi Koch is the founder of Elizabeth Erin Designs and host of the Designing in 5D podcast. A nationally recognized interior designer with more than two decades of experience, she works with homeowners, investors, and hospitality clients using her Designing in 5D process. Elizabeth Erin Designs

Su Belagodu is an AI adoption and executive advisor and creator of the HITL Maturity Model™. Her work focuses on designing AI systems with meaningful human oversight, helping organizations move AI projects into production, and determining where humans need to remain in the loop. Sublagodu

Jason T Wade is an AI Visibility Architect and founder of BackTier. His work focuses on how AI systems discover, resolve, understand, cite, include, and recommend people, companies, products, and ideas. He is the host of the AI Visibility Podcast. Jason AI Wade

Jason Barnard / Kalicube
Kalicube.com
Jason Barnard Bio

Jodi Koch / Elizabeth Erin Designs
Elizabeth Erin Designs
Designing in 5D Podcast

Su Belagodu
SuBelagodu.me
Su Belagodu on LinkedIn

Jason T Wade
JasonWade.com
BackTier

The Knowledge Graph

What happens when AI makes scattered public records easy to connect?

Dan Barkhuff—a former Navy SEAL, emergency physician and founder of Civly—joins Jason AI Wade to discuss how AI is changing research, reputation and access to information.

Dan shares how Civly began as an attempt to automate political compliance, then expanded into opposition research and applications beyond politics. The conversation explores public data, what AI assistants say about people and organizations, the boundaries of reputation management, and whether cheaper research could lower the cost of political participation.

It’s an open conversation about what becomes possible when information that once took weeks to assemble can be researched much faster—and the questions that come with that access.

In this episode:

• Dan’s path from the Naval Academy and SEAL teams to medicine and entrepreneurship.

• Why compliance automation led Civly into political research.

• Connecting financial filings, public records and social history.

• Applications beyond politics, including business research and athlete vetting.

• AI visibility and the line between accurate representation and manipulation.

• Donor data, fundraising calls and the economics of campaigning.

• Dan’s argument that practical AI implementation could make participation more affordable.

Daniel “Dan” Barkhuff is the founder and CEO of Civly, an AI-powered research and intelligence company serving politics, business, athletics and nonprofits. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Navy SEAL, he earned his medical degree at Harvard and trained in emergency medicine. He practices in Vermont and also founded Veterans for Responsible Leadership.

Jason AI Wade is the host of the AI Visibility Podcast and is with BackTier. His work explores how AI systems discover, describe and recommend people and businesses, alongside the practical use of AI agents.

• Civly

• Dan Barkhuff and the Civly team

• AI Narratives

• Research Books

• Data Coverage

• Civly Business

• Client Case Studies

• Contact Civly

1% Taxes? Income and AI and touching on property taxes and Government management and revenue

How AI Decides YOU - infrrence and LLM resolution and choices - external evidence - Jason T AI WADE