Tension-first. Functions as a trailer. The listener must hear the episode to get the answers. Jess Loseke spent 16 hours last weekend on her employee handbook. With AI. Your first question is probably the same as ours: why would that take 16 hours with AI? That is the wrong question. The right one is harder to sit with.

"What is a pain to me are the things that are not getting done in my business because I cannot afford to hire for them. Those are the things that are killing the growth of my business right now." Jess Loseke, Co-founder, Midwest Barrel Company

Jess co-founded Midwest Barrel Company, the first company to put a barrel (think Bourbon or Whiskey) on the internet. She runs lean, she's tech-forward, and she's ignoring the most common piece of AI advice right now. She's not starting with her most repetitive tasks. She's starting somewhere that, on the surface, sounds like the wrong place. Her business partner has a PhD. He's the best salesperson she's ever met. He sat down in a meeting and said, "I'm failing to see how I'm going to use this in sales." If a co-founder at an AI-forward company is saying that, what does it mean for the rest of us? Jess has an answer. It starts with a number: 75%. And it changes the math on what "good enough" means when the alternative is zero. This conversation with host Erik Martinez goes somewhere most AI conversations don't.