The AI Hat Podcast

Someone on your team is already using an AI tool nobody approved. And the next vendor demo you sit through will look great whether or not the product holds up on your data.

Stella Liu, Head of AI Applied Science and Lead Data Scientist in ASU's AI Acceleration group, joins Mike Allton to explain why traditional software testing leaves gaps with generative AI. The same prompt can give a different answer every time, so a product that passed a builder's quick check can miss the edge cases real users hit on day one.

In this episode:

• The three things Stella evaluates: performance, quality and safety
• Why a polished demo tells you little about real use
• The vendor who never asks about your data, and other red flags
• The first question to put to any AI vendor
• What to add to your procurement checklist
• Personal vs enterprise AI accounts, and where your team's data can end up

Connect with Stella
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wenxingl/
Data Science x AI newsletter: https://datasciencexai.substack.com
AI Evals and Analytics course on Maven: https://maven.com/ai-evals-and-analytics/ai-evals-analytics-playbook

Mentioned: Shadow AI - https://theaihat.com/shadow-ai

Take the AI Opportunity Score: https://theaihat.com/ai-opportunity-score/

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0cKSJOtBASs

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

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Count the tabs it takes to move one renewal. Management system, carrier portal, the other carrier portal, quoting platform, email, Teams, back to the CRM, then a spreadsheet. That is eight, and not one of them is the conversation with the client.

Nobody designed it that way. Nobody approved it. And you are paying your most expensive person to do it.

In this solo episode, Mike Allton makes the case that the most expensive piece of integration software in your agency is a licensed producer, and that the AI you bought last year did not shorten that list. It lengthened it, and the new switches cost more than the old ones, because every one of them makes you rebuild your context out loud.

Then he gives you the fix, in three steps you can run Monday morning without spending a dollar: Count, Name, Seat. Count the switches in one recurring job. Name the one where the most context has to get rebuilt from nothing, which is almost never the one that annoys you. Then give that context a seat to live in, using the three shapes of a Digital Crew: Scout, Scribe, and Coach.

Also in this episode: why memory features do not solve this, the switchboard operator who kept getting better boards instead of a better question, how one benefits manager in Utah stopped being the cable between his carriers, the three rails to set before any client data goes near an AI tool, and the four objections Mike hears in every room.

The wedge is the same as always. Redesign the work before you deploy AI.

Take the AI Adoption Reality Check: https://theaihat.com/reality-check/

Read the companion piece on the Toggle Tax: https://theaihat.com/what-is-the-toggle-tax/

Show notes: https://theaihat.com/how-to-increase-insurance-agent-productivity-without-buying-another-tool/

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

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Your best people are losing most of the week to work they were never hired to do - and the fix isn't another tool.

In this solo episode, Mike Allton opens with a confession: there was a stretch of his career when a guest canceling on his own podcast felt like relief. Two of his shows died at exactly twelve episodes each, and between those funerals he changed everything - the tools, the format, the frequency, the topic - except the one variable that killed them both.

That story turns out not to be a podcasting story at all. It's the same reason 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail: companies make a software purchase when the situation calls for a staffing decision. Nobody writes the role. Nobody defines what the AI is responsible for, who it reports to, or how anyone would know it's doing a good job.

So Mike makes the argument he's building his entire business around: AI belongs on your org chart, not your tech stack. Not to replace the people you have - to finally staff the work no one was ever hired to do.

You'll hear:

- Why every business runs on two org charts - the official one, and the real one hiding in your team's calendars

- The job description that took interview prep from two-plus hours to twenty minutes, and took the show past 120 episodes

- The Apollo answer to "this is how the replacement starts"

- Why an off-the-shelf AI employee is still a software purchase wearing a name tag

- A ten-minute homework assignment: find the seat that's been empty the longest

Read the full manifesto at theaihat.com: https://theaihat.com/ai-belongs-on-your-org-chart-not-your-tech-stack/

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If your top reps are stuck training new hires instead of closing deals, this AI sales enablement playbook will help. Enterprise seller Vernon Ross joins Mike Allton to show how to scale your best performers' knowledge without stealing their selling time, and why that "teaching jail" is quietly costing you around $30K a month per rep.

Vernon has carried quota, closed enterprise deals, and built the AI training tools that make other sellers faster. Inside, he shares the one diagnostic question that finds your highest-ROI automation, why AI pilots die the moment they add friction instead of removing it, and how he uses NotebookLM, private podcasts, and voice cloning to cut top-rep onboarding from 30 hours down to 10. He and Mike also get tactical on where AI belongs inside a MEDDPICC deal, how to tie content consumption to real revenue, and the one automation any team can build this quarter without a six-figure budget.

Vernon Ross drove 75 to 85% increases in new client acquisition at a 32% conversion rate, closed deals with Procter & Gamble, GE, and AT&T, and has generated over $500,000 in enterprise SaaS sales. As president of Vernon Ross Consulting and an enterprise podcaster, he now advises Fortune 1000 companies on AI-driven learning.

The hard truth: you cannot clone your top performers. So you stay stuck in an endless loop of manual knowledge transfer while your competitors build AI-powered learning engines that run around the clock. This episode is how you break the loop.

Still letting shadow AI run unmanaged on your sales floor? Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI at theaihat.com/shadow-ai.

Chapters:

Resources:

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your revenue team doesn't have a tools problem. It has a process problem.

Dan Knowlton, co-founder of UK-based Knowlton Marketing, joins Mike Allton for an honest, boots-on-the-ground conversation about what's actually working in AI implementation - and what isn't. No polished frameworks. No hype. Just real lessons from an agency owner who is figuring this out in real time while growing a business.

In this episode, Dan shares how his team recently won a pitch with one of Europe's largest health and wellness brands - not because they were the most creative, but because AI caught every objection the prospect raised in the discovery call. Objections that would have been missed with manual notes.

You'll learn how to stop chasing shiny AI tools and start asking the one question that separates useful technology from expensive distraction. Dan also breaks down how to identify which workflows should be handed to AI, where human experience is irreplaceable, and how to run a simple calendar audit that surfaces hours of recoverable time in your team's week.

If your AI pilots keep stalling, this episode will show you why - and where to start instead.

🎁 Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI: https://theaihat.com/shadow-ai

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Manual Sales Discovery

01:00 Podcast Theme Intro

02:31 Why AI Pilots Fail

03:46 Shiny Tool Syndrome

05:29 Problem First Approach

06:05 AI-Powered Pitching

07:24 Transcripts Close Deals

10:05 Where AI Shouldn't Pretend

13:59 Humans Plus AI Creativity

16:47 Overcoming Team Pushback

19:42 Shadow AI Governance Ad

20:56 Tool Stack and Evaluation

27:06 Making Time for AI Learning

29:25 Workflow Audit to Start

32:19 Wrap Up and Where to Connect

33:18 Final Outro

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If your revenue team is hitting a ceiling despite adding headcount and new tools, the problem isn't your people - it's your architecture.

In this episode, Mike Allton sits down with Amanda Rubin, SVP of Revenue at Frameplay and former EVP of Growth at Enthusiast Gaming, where she drove four consecutive years of revenue growth. Amanda unpacks what she calls the "architect's mindset" - the long-view, systems-first approach that separates true Revenue Leaders from sales managers who are simply trying to hit this quarter's number.

You'll hear how Amanda built scalable GTM frameworks from the ground up - first with nothing but a color-coded Google Sheet, and now with an AI-powered tech stack that eliminates admin drag and gives sellers back the time they need to actually sell. She breaks down exactly how she structures account lists, ladders sales teams, and deploys tools like We Flow, Fyxer AI, and Apollo to create a revenue engine that scales without breaking.

What you'll walk away with:

Why the difference between a Sales Leader and a Revenue Leader changes everything about how you build your org

How to structure account tiers so no opportunity falls through the cracks

The AI tech stack Amanda is architecting right now at Frameplay - and the honest truth about what it takes to implement it

Connect with Amanda Rubin: LinkedIn

Resources mentioned:

We Flow - AI-powered activity tracking and pipeline intelligence

Fyxer AI - AI email organization and post-meeting draft automation

Apollo - Sales sequencing and outreach automation

Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI: theaihat.com/shadow-ai

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Meeting Follow Up Basics

00:23 Podcast Intro Theme

01:32 Welcome and Mission

01:56 Scaling Chaos Problem

02:33 Meet Amanda Rubin

04:05 Sales vs Revenue Leadership

05:53 Revenue Architect Mindset

07:07 GTM Narrative and Positioning

08:01 Designing the Sales Org

10:21 Frameworks That Break

11:14 Account Lists and CRM Discipline

12:44 Tiering and Activity Tracking

13:36 People Roles and Incentives

15:18 Enthusiast Gaming Playbook

17:29 Packaging and Storytelling

19:41 Building Seller Pods

22:07 Diagnosing Capacity Leaks

23:27 Support vs Sales Spend

24:29 AI for Spec Sheets

24:52 Wildfire GPT Brain

25:59 Shadow AI Governance

27:15 Fix Workflows First

27:42 WeFlow Setup and CRM

30:51 Conference Intelligence Dashboards

33:33 Fyxer Inbox and Followups

35:09 Apollo Sequences and Outreach

36:37 Frameplay Pitch and Audience

39:06 WeFlow Activity Warnings

41:25 Fail Fast Tool Decisions

42:56 Story Before Headcount

44:01 Connect on LinkedIn

44:42 Final Shadow AI Reminder

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your prospects stopped Googling. They're asking ChatGPT which CRM to buy, asking Perplexity which marketing automation platform solves their problem, asking Gemini to compare your category - and AI is recommending your competitors, not you. This isn't a "future of search" problem. This is a pipeline problem. Right now.

Kevin White, Head of Marketing at Scrunch (and formerly leading growth at Twilio Segment, Retool, and Common Room), saw this crisis coming and built the measurement infrastructure to fix it. His clients are seeing 100% to 260% visibility gains in AI search in just 60 days - and tracking customers who convert specifically because they appeared in ChatGPT answers.

In this episode, Kevin deconstructs the "Citation Economy" - why chasing Reddit mentions is a trap, which citation sources actually drive AI recommendations in your vertical, and the exact workflow his team uses to go from "invisible in AI" to "recommended by LLMs" in under two months.

You'll learn the diagnostic every Revenue Leader should run Monday morning to find out if your brand exists when prospects ask AI for solutions. You'll discover why the "long, long tail" of AI search (20+ word prompts vs. 5-7 word Google queries) creates greenfield opportunities for brands willing to architect intent-driven content. And you'll hear how Scrunch's Agent Experience Platform delivers AI-optimized content to LLM crawlers without breaking the human website experience.

This is not theory. Kevin walks through Scrunch's own dogfooding - how they use their product to track competitive intelligence, diagnose content gaps, and systematically close citation opportunities. He shares the specific technical optimizations that actually move the needle (spoiler: it's not just adding FAQs). And he reveals how agentic workflows - using Claude Code to build marketing apps, automate spreadsheet enrichment, and analyze customer calls - are reclaiming hours his team used to lose to manual synthesis.

If your marketing team thinks they're winning because they rank on Page 1 of Google while your pipeline bleeds invisible in ChatGPT, this episode is your wake-up call. Kevin delivers the audit, the workflow, and the hard truth: you can't optimize what you don't measure.

Run the diagnostic. Close the gaps. Win the prompts that matter.

Show Notes & Transcript: https://theaihat.com/your-prospects-arent-googling-anymore-scrunchs-kevin-white-on-the-ai-visibility-crisis/

CHAPTERS

00:00 LLM SEO Lore

00:36 Podcast Intro Theme

01:45 AI Hat Welcome

02:10 Why Google Rankings Fail

02:53 Kevin White Joins

04:14 Wake Up Call Moment

07:15 Measuring AI Visibility

10:34 Citation Myths Debunked

13:57 Long Long Tail Search

16:45 Three Citation Buckets

19:07 Workflow To 260% Gains

24:15 Shadow AI Ad Break

25:25 Making Sites AI Readable

29:57 Dogfooding Scrunch Tactics

32:19 Top Priorities This Quarter

35:33 One Prompt Audit Trick

37:16 Where To Connect

38:40 Final Wrap Up

Kevin White on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevbosaurus/Scrunch: https://scrunch.com/

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you're a VP of Sales watching your revenue team paste customer data into ChatGPT, you don't have an adoption problem - you have a governance crisis. Your best people are uploading signed NDAs to Claude and feeding pipeline data into Perplexity because 70% of their day is admin drag, and AI is the only thing fast enough to keep them above water.

Financial services tried to ban AI. It failed spectacularly. So they built governance frameworks that let teams move faster and sleep at night.

Dr. Angela Murphy - known as Payments Elsa - reveals the "Amnesty and Orchestration" playbook she architected for banks navigating the GENESIS Executive Order. She's a PhD strategist, 2024 PayTech Women Emerging Trendsetter, and advisor to financial institutions on AI governance and ethical AI mandates.

You'll learn the three-step governance audit every Revenue Leader should run this quarter - before Legal does. Angela shares real stories of teams using ChatGPT for payment disputes and compliance workflows, creating massive liability. She reveals the conversation framework to surface Shadow AI without triggering panic, the three policies you can implement in 30 days, and why explainability isn't compliance theater - it's revenue protection.

This isn't a "fire your team and replace them with bots" episode. Angela proves ethical AI can surface hidden revenue channels, identify products to sunset, and reveal sales cycle biases costing you deals.

The regulatory hammer is coming. Financial services just got hit first. Will you architect governance now, or audit the damage later?

Download the Executive Guide to Shadow AI at theaihat.com/shadow-ai.

Subscribe to AI for Revenue Leaders: The AI Hat Podcast and stop being a Pilot Purgatory statistic.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Ethical AI = Revenue Growth: Find Gaps, Biases & New Channels

01:24 Show Intro & Theme Song: Welcome to The AI Hat Podcast

02:56 The Shadow AI Compliance Time Bomb (Real-World Examples)

03:43 Meet Dr. Angela Murphy (Payments Elsa) + Why Banks Try to Ban AI

07:41 Shadow AI in the Back Office: Spreadsheets, PII, and Manual Ops Risks

11:04 Why Revenue Leaders Should Watch FinTech: Payments Rails & Stablecoins

13:04 Genesis Executive Order Explained: “Suggestulation” and What’s Coming

16:24 From Fear to Frameworks: Finding Low-Hanging AI Wins with Guardrails

19:24 Resource Break: Executive Guide to Shadow AI

20:33 Orchestration 101: Tool Inventory, Training, and Policy from Existing Governance

23:33 Explainable AI: Decisions You Can Defend (Underwriting Example)

27:51 Ethics, Bias & Revenue Outcomes: Avoid Lawsuits and Unlock Better Decisions

31:19 Biggest Misconceptions: You Can’t Ban AI—and Education Isn’t Optional

37:30 Monday Morning Action Plan: Start the AI Policy, Audit Tools, Target Pain Points

40:46 Where to Find Angela + Final Wrap and Next Steps

Show Notes & Full Transcript: https://theaihat.com/why-your-sales-teams-shadow-ai-is-a-lawsuit-waiting-to-happen-a-fintech-cros-governance-playbook/

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your sales team spends 70% of their time on admin work - not selling. Do the math: if your top AE makes $120K and only spends 30% of their time on revenue activities, you're paying $84,000 for data entry and CRM updates. That's the Admin Drag tax killing your pipeline velocity in 2026.

But here's the real problem: you bought AI six months ago (Gemini, ChatGPT, Einstein), rolled it out with a 45-minute webinar, and… crickets. Adoption is at 14%. Your VP is asking what you're paying for.

This isn't a technology problem. It's a leadership problem. You installed software when you needed to redesign the workflow.

In this episode, Mike Allton (Director of Partner-Led Growth at Agorapulse) deconstructs the 95% AI pilot failure rate and shows you exactly what Revenue Architecture looks like in practice. You'll discover:

• The real cost of manual meeting prep (90 minutes vs. 8 minutes with Gemini's Scheduler)
• How to build a "Digital Crew" that automates research, briefing docs, and objection prep
• Why Gemini's 2 million token context window changes everything for sales intelligence
• The 3-day audit that reveals where your team is hemorrhaging time
• How to move from "Human-in-the-Loop" to "Human-on-the-Loop" automation

Stop installing tools your team won't use. Start architecting workflows that reclaim 25-30 hours per rep, per week.

Resources: TheAIHat.com/speaking

CHAPTERS

00:00:00 - Introduction: The $600K Call She's Unprepared For

00:02:20 - The $84,000 Admin Drag Tax (Do the Math)

00:03:41 - Why 95% of AI Pilots Fail (It's Not the Technology)

00:04:05 - The Da Vinci Workshop: Building a Digital Crew

00:05:17 - Pilot Purgatory: The 6-Month Failure Timeline

00:07:06 - The Old Way: 90 Minutes of Manual Meeting Prep

00:08:48 - The Digital Crew Way: Gemini Scheduler in Action

00:11:48 - Why Gemini Is Structurally Different

00:12:16 - Native Workspace Integration (Friction Removal)

00:12:36 - The 2 Million Token Context Window

00:13:20 - Multimodal Native (Not Franken-Botted)

00:14:23 - Grounding with Google Search (The Accuracy Engine)

00:14:43 - The Scheduler: The Agentic Unlock

00:15:36 - Your Homework: The 3-Day Time Tracking Audit

00:17:01 - How to Architect Your Digital Crew (Workshop Info)

00:17:45 - Closing: Stop Installing Software, Start Architecting Systems

Show Notes & Transcript: https://theaihat.com/geminis-scheduler-just-fixed-sales-meeting-prep-and-killed-the-90-minute-research-grind/

Find out where your team’s week goes: take the free AI Opportunity Score at TheAIHat.com/ai-opportunity-score
Connect with Mike, AI Keynote Speaker & Trainer: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.