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

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

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 https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.

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/
Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeallton/

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 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:

00:00 Top Rep Pain Points

00:59 Podcast Theme Intro

02:08 Show Mission Setup

03:15 Guest Vernon Ross

05:11 Sales Enablement Gap

07:34 AI Adoption That Sticks

10:58 AI Hosted Training Podcasts

13:46 NotebookLM And Voice Clones

16:28 MEDDPICC With AI

18:52 Onboarding Without Teaching Jail

21:25 Shadow AI Sponsor Break

22:33 Measuring Podcast ROI

28:38 Fast Time To Value

30:37 Compliance And Risk

33:48 First Automation To Build

36:34 Where To Find Vernon

37:18 Final Wrap Up

Resources:

Vernon Ross: linkedin.com/in/vernonross | vernonross.com | enterprisepodcaster.com | aiplanner.com

Mentioned in this episode: Wondercraft.ai, Google NotebookLM, Wispr Flow, ZoomInfo, Apollo, HubSpot, Otter.ai, Claude Code, Gemini, Supporting Cast, MEDDPICC

Connect with Mike Allton: linkedin.com/in/mikeallton | Newsletter theaihat.com/newsletter | Podcast theaihat.com/podcast

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.