Chicken Fried Growth

In this episode of Chicken Fried Growth, hosts David York and Sara Moseley dive into the comforting, controversial, and sometimes sweet world of a true Southern staple: grits. The hosts debate the proper way to dress this classic dish, from Sara’s beloved cheese and "dirty" grits to the scandalous revelation that David's Northern wife eats hers with sugar. After a detour into the shockingly decadent world of Southern chocolate gravy, the conversation shifts to a critical issue facing business leaders today: why your AI adoption metrics are probably garbage.

Drawing on recent insights from the Harvard Business Review, David explains why simply tracking how many employees log into an AI tool tells you nothing about actual business transformation. The hosts unpack a counterintuitive finding: the employees who use AI the most often also harbor the highest levels of anxiety and resistance to it. Tune in to learn why creating psychological safety and transparent expectations is vastly more effective than policing AI usage.

In this episode of Chicken Fried Growth, hosts David York and Sara Moseley serve up a rich blend of Southern comfort food and cutting-edge marketing strategy. First, they dish out the closely guarded secrets of David’s Aunt Ruby’s legendary Macaroni and Cheese—a recipe so decadent and artery-clogging that it’s strictly reserved for quarterly consumption.

Diving into the Martech for 2026 report, David breaks down the number one challenge facing marketers today: AI integration friction. The hosts explore why SMBs are successfully navigating this hurdle, while large enterprises are getting bogged down by bureaucracy and rigid platform solutions. Tune in to learn why your marketing tech stack might be missing a crucial tool, and how to borrow the nimble strategies of SMBs to power your own agentic AI adoption.

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Show Notes

[00:00] Intro & The Southern Love for Hand-Me-Down Recipes

• David and Sara discuss the Southern tradition of passing down multi-generational family and church recipes.

[02:00] Aunt Ruby’s Legendary Mac & Cheese

• David reveals the five main ingredients of his Aunt Ruby's famous recipe.

[08:00] The Friendsgiving Mishap

[17:00] The Importance of the Right Tools

• Sara notes that just like baking requires the right attachments to get a fluffy cake, marketing requires the right tech stack.

[19:45] The Big AI Challenge: Integration Friction

• The report reveals a massive 27% gap between enterprises and SMBs when it comes to AI integration friction.

• 68% of enterprise marketers report struggling with integration, compared to only 41% of SMBs.

[21:30] SMB vs. Enterprise: Why the Gap Exists

• Location of Agents: Enterprises rely heavily on platform-embedded or commercial solutions (like Microsoft Copilot), while SMBs successfully utilize low-code/no-code workflow automation platforms.

• Use Cases: Enterprises use AI to optimize existing use cases, whereas SMBs are experimenting with entirely new, innovative use cases to do more with less.

• Red Tape: Enterprises face more bureaucracy and IT friction when trying to adopt new, agile technologies.

[29:00] Key Takeaways & Actionable Advice

• To overcome integration friction, organizations need to incorporate integration and workflow automation tools (like Zapier, Make, n8n for SMBs, or Workato for Enterprises) into their tech stacks.

In this episode, David and Sara dive into the fanatical world of SEC football to uncover why it’s the ultimate masterclass in community marketing.

From "house divided" license plates to the high-stakes pageantry of Southern tailgating, we explore how sports identity in the Deep South creates an instant, unbreakable human connection. As the world over-indexes on "artificial" AI-generated content, David and Sara discuss why authenticity is the new premium and how brands can build loyalty.

In this episode, we tackle:

• Why college loyalty runs deeper than the pros in the South.

• The psychology behind why the human brain disconnects from AI-generated content in a heartbeat.

• Why investing in uniquely human experiences—like small, intimate events—is the winning strategy for 2026.

• How a simple "Roll Tide" or "Boomer Sooner" shouted across a theme park creates a 30-minute conversation between total strangers.

Get to know the "Art and Science" duo behind the drawl. In this special introductory episode, David and Sara pull back the curtain on their Southern roots and decades of industry experience.

Sara Moseley shares her journey from the "hub of civilization" in Florence, Alabama, to becoming a veteran creative director and screenwriter. Meanwhile, David York recounts 30 years in the marketing trenches, moving from the early days of web design to running an AI adoption consultancy.

Topics covered:

• Southern Bona Fides: From picking pecans in Waco to being 90 minutes from Elvis's birthplace.

• Creative Atrophy: Why Sara worries that "phoning it in" with AI is weakening the industry’s creative muscles.

• The Art & Science of GTM: How David’s technical, data-driven background meshes with Sara’s "left-brain" creative perspective to offer a holistic view of modern marketing.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. In this inaugural episode, David York and Sara Moseley explore the high-stakes collision of Go-To-Market strategy, AI, and the Deep South.

From the "six pages of fried foods" at the Texas State Fair, David and Sara use the South’s obsession with the deep fryer as a metaphor for modern business. Is AI the "fry daddy" of marketing? We discuss why applying AI to every single business process is a recipe for disaster and how to distinguish between deterministic workflows (reliable, repeatable outcomes) and probabilistic ones (creative, predictive possibilities).

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The "Piggly Wiggly" Metric: Why our episodes are timed for a quick grocery run.

• The Limits of the Deep Fryer: Why AI isn't a "fix-all" and when good old-fashioned automation or better creative strategy is the real answer.

• Probabilistic vs. Deterministic: A copywriter’s guide to understanding how LLMs actually "think" and where they fit in your lead routing and sales workflows.