Earlier this year, Thrive Market gave all 300 of its corporate employees Claude with no usage limits and told them to experiment. A food safety lead used it to build the tool her whole team now relies on to vet every new product. A self-described skeptic built an RFP tool and won Thriver of the Week for it.

April Lane is the chief merchandising officer at Thrive Market, an online grocer with 1.7 million members and more than 1,000 banned ingredients. She walks Noah Levin through how Thrive paired non-technical builders with engineers, and what has to be true before a company can open AI up to everyone without regretting it.

Topics covered

• The AI Dojo: two days pairing a business-team builder with an AI engineer, then a company science fair to show off what got built.
• Build vs. buy: why Thrive still pays for its product catalog system while building its own workflow tools.
• The hard part: why a prototype running on your laptop is a long way from a tool your team or your vendors can use.

Chapters
(00:00) What Happens When Everyone Gets Unfiltered Access

(01:09) Building Tools Without a Computer Science Degree

(02:11) Is an Online Grocer a Tech Company?

(02:53) Giving 300 Employees Claude With No Usage Limits

(05:16) The Six-Month Bottleneck Behind Every New Product

(10:37) Why Thrive Still Buys Some Software

(12:58) The AI Dojo: Pairing Business Teams With Engineers

(19:37) What Outside AI Training Is Good For

(20:50) Why the Person Doing the Work Should Build the Tool

(25:47) Inside the Ingredient Vetting Portal

(32:27) Teaching Claude How Your Business Works

(34:38) Where Prototypes Hit a Wall

(37:20) What She’d Do Differently

Links
Connect with April on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/april-lane-1876b1/
Thrive Market website: https://thrivemarket.com

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/
Noah’s Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/
Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

• (00:00) - What Happens When Everyone Gets Unfiltered Access
• (01:09) - Building Tools Without a Computer Science Degree
• (02:11) - Is an Online Grocer a Tech Company?
• (02:53) - Giving 300 Employees Claude With No Usage Limits
• (05:16) - The Six-Month Bottleneck Behind Every New Product
• (10:37) - Why Thrive Still Buys Some Software
• (12:58) - The AI Dojo: Pairing Business Teams With Engineers
• (19:37) - What Outside AI Training Is Good For
• (20:50) - Why the Person Doing the Work Should Build the Tool
• (25:47) - Inside the Ingredient Vetting Portal
• (32:27) - Teaching Claude How Your Business Works
• (34:38) - Where Prototypes Hit a Wall
• (37:20) - What She’d Do Differently

Sally Slater keeps a list of more than 600 words and phrases that AI leans on too often. She considers that list the easy part. The harder problem is the sentence that sounds profound and says nothing, which no word list will catch.

Sally is the co-founder and managing partner of InnovAItion Partners, where she helps PR, marketing, and advertising agencies use AI without turning themselves into a commodity. She also built SlopSentry, a tool that edits the slop out of AI writing. In this episode, she walks Noah Levin through the writing system she builds for clients, using Noah's own podcast and newsletter as the test case.

Topics covered:

• Why every AI writing workflow needs human input, whether that's a transcript, a voice memo, or data only you have
• Writing in layers: how you want to sound, what you actually have to say, and a separate agent that strips out the slop
• Building a company brain in the folders your team already uses, with AI doing the filing

Chapters
(00:00) Introduction

(02:13) Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal

(07:52) What's Safe to Fully Automate

(09:43) Building the Weekly Newsletter

(16:36) Data Nobody Else Has

(18:54) The Hamburger Method

(23:28) Word Slop vs. Substance Slop

(25:53) Killing LinkedIn Broetry

(29:03) Building a Company Brain

(33:33) Keeping the Brain Current

(40:20) What Actually Works on LinkedIn

(44:04) Teaching AI From Your Edits

Resources
Connect with Sally on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyrslater

Sally’s website: https://www.sallyslater.com

InnovAItion Partners website: https://www.innovaitionpartners.com

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/
Noah's Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/
Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:13) - Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal
• (07:52) - What's Safe to Fully Automate
• (09:43) - Building the Weekly Newsletter
• (16:36) - Data Nobody Else Has
• (18:54) - The Hamburger Method
• (23:28) - Word Slop vs. Substance Slop
• (25:53) - Killing LinkedIn Broetry
• (29:03) - Building a Company Brain
• (33:33) - Keeping the Brain Current
• (40:20) - What Actually Works on LinkedIn
• (44:04) - Teaching AI From Your Edits

Scott Patterson changed the price on his website by talking for a few minutes. The agent did the rest, then reported back on how the new price was performing before he thought to ask.

Scott is the founder and CEO of Core Fiber, a prebiotic fiber brand sold on Amazon, TikTok Shop and its own site. He built it to be a large company with a small headcount, with an agent working in nearly every function, from supply chain to finance. In this episode he walks Noah Levin through the system that runs the business and what an operator without a technical team can take from it.

Topics covered:

• Building a company brain the agent maintains, so you never have to open it yourself
• Handing off whole projects, from a price change to the month-end close, and getting back only the human tasks
• Where to start: one real problem, one long dictation, and knowing when to stop optimizing

Chapters
(00:00) Introduction
(01:11) Agents Instead of Headcount
(05:43) Half the Day in ChatGPT
(07:45) Where the Company Brain Lives
(12:08) A Data Warehouse in Sheets
(16:30) The Brief That Nags You
(18:34) The Price Change He Dodged
(23:01) An R&D Team on Demand
(26:54) Hiring an AI CFO
(30:36) A Product Launch, Dictated
(32:29) Start With a Real Problem
(36:03) Stop Optimizing. Touch Grass.

Resources
Valet — Episode Sponsor
Valet is the founding sponsor of the Serious People Podcast.
AI is getting very good at making useful things: dashboards, analyses, internal websites, and small tools. Making those things available to the rest of a team is a separate problem.
Valet lets you publish AI-created artifacts to a stable URL. New sites are private by default, and members of your organization can access them after signing in.

Try Valet at https://valet.dev
And https://serious-people.valet.run/spp-scott-patterson-operator-field-guide

Connect with Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-patterson1/
Core Fiber Website: https://corefiber.co/

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/
Noah's Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/
Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

Jon Harmeling automated 13 of his restaurant's 15 onboarding steps and freed up ten hours a week doing it. He owns and operates a Chick-fil-A in Miami Shores with about 90 people on his team, where only four or five of them ever touch a laptop, and that ten hours became a test case for a different question: what does freed-up time actually owe you?

In this conversation, Noah and Jon get into how a business built on shift work and thin margins decides what to automate first, the difference between using AI for management versus using it for leadership, and why the hardest part isn't building the tool. It's deciding, on purpose, where the time it saves actually goes.

Topics covered:

• Automating the repetitive admin work that eats a frontline operator's week
• Using AI to surface leadership moments, not replace them.
• Where AI hits its limits: why scheduling a team well requires human context no model has been able to replicate

Chapter List
(00:00) What do you do with the time AI gives back?
(01:07) Using AI when your team doesn't sit at a desk
(02:23) From West Point systems engineering to running a Chick-fil-A
(07:40) The first win: AI takes over 13 of 15 onboarding steps
(13:26) What not to feed AI, and how much to trust it
(17:07) Catching bad reviews while you can still fix them
(19:03) The setup: one laptop, no servers, one step at a time
(23:45) From management to leadership: AI that finds who's being overlooked
(28:09) Keeping AI-prompted moments genuine
(32:53) Where AI failed: scheduling needs human context
(36:36) Humans caring for humans: the retention flywheel
(40:44) Jon's book, "Frontline AI Leadership," and where to find him

Resources
Valet — Episode Sponsor
Valet is the founding sponsor of the Serious People Podcast.

AI is getting very good at making useful things: dashboards, analyses, internal websites, and small tools. Making those things available to the rest of a team is a separate problem.

Valet lets you publish AI-created artifacts to a stable URL. New sites are private by default, and members of your organization can access them after signing in.

Try Valet at https://valet.dev

Connect with Jon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonharmeling
For more info on Frontline AI Leadership: https://www.jonharmeling.com/book/
Get Jon's book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HNDTHR36

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/
Noah's Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/
Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

• (00:00) - What do you do with the time AI gives back?
• (01:07) - Using AI when your team doesn't sit at a desk
• (02:23) - From West Point systems engineering to running a Chick-fil-A
• (07:40) - The first win: AI takes over 13 of 15 onboarding steps
• (13:26) - What not to feed AI, and how much to trust it
• (17:07) - Catching bad reviews while you can still fix them
• (19:03) - The setup: one laptop, no servers, one step at a time
• (23:45) - From management to leadership: AI that finds who's being overlooked
• (28:09) - Keeping AI-prompted moments genuine
• (32:53) - Where AI failed: scheduling needs human context
• (36:36) - Humans caring for humans: the retention flywheel
• (40:44) - Jon's book, "Frontline AI Leadership," and where to find him

Christina Johnson has been shown a 33x return on ad spend and kept a straight face. She has sat with a retail media network selling hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising whose own sales team couldn't explain to buyers whether the money had worked. And she can point to a supplier that ran a flawless campaign in cities where the retailer has no stores.

Christina Johnson spent years inside Walmart's retail media business before founding Advisar, an intelligence tool for retail media buyers. In this conversation, she and Noah break down why so many brands are flying blind on their ad spend, why a metric like ROAS can look great while sales go nowhere, and what happens when AI gives you a confident, completely wrong answer.

If your business runs any kind of performance marketing, this episode will change how you look at your own numbers.

You'll hear:

• Why more ad spend rarely means better marketing
• How a "perfect" campaign can drive zero real sales
• What questions to ask before trusting a marketing metric
• Why AI can be confidently wrong, and how to catch it

Timestamps:
(00:00) More ad spend doesn't mean better marketing

(00:34) Meet Christina Johnson, founder of Advisar

(03:08) Why retail media is "wildly backwards"

(08:37) The meeting where the sales team couldn't explain their own numbers

(10:18) The question every retail marketer should ask

(11:49) The auto-bid campaign that spent $0 and sold nothing

(13:26) Why Christina built Advisar

(15:18) The "33x ROAS" that wasn't real

(18:11) ROAS explained, and why it can lie to you

(19:09) Using Claude for analysis, and where it breaks

(33:20) The AI mistake that changed how she builds

(39:31) One thing to do tomorrow with your ad spend data

Resources:

Valet — Episode Sponsor

Valet is the founding sponsor of the Serious People Podcast.

AI is getting very good at making useful things: dashboards, analyses, internal websites, and small tools. Making those things available to the rest of a team is a separate problem.

Valet lets you publish AI-created artifacts to a stable URL. New sites are private by default, and members of your organization can access them after signing in.

Try Valet at https://valet.dev

Christina Johnson operator field guide: https://seriouspeople.valet.run/spp-christina-operator-field-guide

Connect with Christina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-w-johnson

Advisars Website: https://www.advisar.io/

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/

Noah’s Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/

Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

• (00:00) - More ad spend doesn't mean better marketing
• (00:34) - Meet Christina Johnson, founder of Advisar
• (03:08) - Why retail media is "wildly backwards"
• (08:37) - The meeting where the sales team couldn't explain their own numbers
• (10:18) - The question every retail marketer should ask
• (11:49) - The auto-bid campaign that spent $0 and sold nothing
• (13:26) - Why Christina built Advisar
• (15:18) - The "33x ROAS" that wasn't real
• (18:11) - ROAS explained, and why it can lie to you
• (19:09) - Using Claude for analysis, and where it breaks
• (33:20) - The AI mistake that changed how she builds
• (39:31) - One thing to do tomorrow with your ad spend data

Rebekah Stevens once spent months competing against an algorithm named Octopus, running weekly throwdowns to see who could staff a home care market better: her, with a spreadsheet and years of operating instinct, or a model built by her own data science team. She now leads Care Transformation at Honor, the senior home care platform, where that early contest became the blueprint for how the company decides what AI should touch, and what it shouldn't.

In this conversation, Noah and Rebekah get into how a business built entirely on trust and vulnerable moments decides where to let AI in. They cover why unstructured data doesn't automatically mean you need a language model, what it actually takes to turn a fuzzy client complaint into a precise, AI-ready metric, and why the hardest part of deploying AI is writing the goal correctly, not building the model.

You'll hear:

• How Honor defined the outcome before automating staffing decisions
• The real story behind Rebekah vs. Octopus, the human-versus-algorithm contest that built the system running Honor's staffing today
• How her team decided a language model was the wrong tool for a problem everyone assumed needed one
• Where Honor draws the line between AI working in the background and AI on the phone with a client

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction
(02:05) Inside Honor: senior care built like a tech platform
(10:06) Turning client churn into a math problem
(16:38) Rebekah vs. Octopus: human vs. algorithm
(23:53) Where large language models actually showed up in the product
(26:59) When not to use an LLM
(30:10) What's blowing her mind about agentic AI right now
(33:01) Directed Work: letting the system decide who does what
(45:01) How AI will reshape product teams next year

Resources:

Valet — Episode Sponsor

Valet is the founding sponsor of the Serious People Podcast.

AI is getting very good at making useful things: dashboards, analyses, internal websites, and small tools. Making those things available to the rest of a team is a separate problem.

Valet lets you publish AI-created artifacts to a stable URL. New sites are private by default, and members of your organization can access them after signing in.

Try Valet at https://valet.dev

Rebekah Stevens operator field guide: https://seriouspeople.valet.run/spp-rebekah-operator-field-guide/

Connect with Rebekah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebekah-stevens-6751b41a/

Honor’s Website: https://www.honorcare.com/

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/

Noah’s Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/

Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:05) - Inside Honor: senior care built like a tech platform
• (10:06) - Turning client churn into a math problem
• (16:38) - Rebekah vs. Octopus: human vs. algorithm
• (23:53) - Where large language models actually showed up in the product
• (26:59) - When not to use an LLM
• (30:10) - What's blowing her mind about agentic AI right now
• (33:01) - Directed Work: letting the system decide who does what
• (45:01) - How AI will reshape product teams next year

Nisha Balwani took over RCI Technologies, the government IT staffing and services firm her parents founded in the 1980s, and is now figuring out where AI actually fits inside a business built on decades-long contracts and highly regulated clients. Noah and Nisha get into what it took to get a skeptical team on board, how one employee's irreplaceable process got turned into an AI-assisted workflow without losing the human check, and why government adoption of AI looks nothing like the private sector. Nisha also shares how her internal experiments turned into a side consulting practice helping other small and mid-size businesses figure out where to start.

Topics covered:

• Turning a change-management standoff into team buy-in
• Encoding one employee's institutional knowledge into an AI workflow
• How government and regulated clients approach AI adoption differently
• Building a consulting practice out of solving your own AI problem first

Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:40) Will AI disrupt the staffing model itself?
(03:53) Why relationships beat RFPs — and the AI-pilled 60-something salesperson
(06:48) Finding your real bottleneck, and the candidate caught using AI mid-interview
(09:14) How to be an AI-pilled CEO without alienating your team
(11:22) Change management, inside champions, and clients who can't keep up
(16:09) Nisha's personal AI stack: Claude Enterprise and MCP connectors
(18:22) Killing busywork: automating the CRM and ditching the "Beautiful Mind" spreadsheet
(27:11) The invoicing build: from bus-factor-of-one to a working system
(34:02) How to actually start building your own AI tool
(40:29) Launching an AI consulting line: origin story and pricing
(45:39) Lightning round: strategy decks, dumbest AI moments, and where to find Nisha

Resources:

Valet — Episode Sponsor

Valet is the founding sponsor of the Serious People Podcast.

AI is getting very good at making useful things: dashboards, analyses, internal websites, and small tools. Making those things available to the rest of a team is a separate problem.

Valet lets you publish AI-created artifacts to a stable URL. New sites are private by default, and members of your organization can access them after signing in.

Try Valet at https://valet.dev

Connect with Nisha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishabalwani/

Follow RCI on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rci-technologies-inc./

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/

Noah’s Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/

Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:40) - Will AI disrupt the staffing model itself?
• (03:53) - Why relationships beat RFPs — and the AI-pilled 60-something salesperson
• (06:48) - Finding your real bottleneck, and the candidate caught using AI mid-interview
• (09:14) - How to be an AI-pilled CEO without alienating your team
• (11:22) - Change management, inside champions, and clients who can't keep up
• (16:09) - Nisha's personal AI stack: Claude Enterprise and MCP connectors
• (18:22) - Killing busywork: automating the CRM and ditching the "Beautiful Mind" spreadsheet
• (27:11) - The invoicing build: from bus-factor-of-one to a working system
• (34:02) - How to actually start building your own AI tool
• (40:29) - Launching an AI consulting line: origin story and pricing
• (45:39) - Lightning round: strategy decks, dumbest AI moments, and where to find Nisha

For the office manager at your doctor’s office, it’s not about having an "AI strategy." It’s about answering the phone during the 8am rush, or patients hanging up before anyone picks up.

Alex Cohen used to run product at Carbon Health, where he first tried to solve that problem with call-center software. Now he's co-founder of Hello Patient, where AI agents answer the phone, book appointments, and handle insurance and billing calls for healthcare clinics.

On this episode, he lays out the three rules his team won't break when they put AI in front of a patient. He also explains why the hardest part of any AI rollout isn't the AI; it's the 20% of the work that every clinic does differently. And he gives a direct answer to the question every operator actually has: what do I need to check before AI can touch my own systems?

No strategy decks. No jargon. Just what it takes to run AI inside a business that can't afford to get it wrong.

Topics covered:

• What Hello Patient's AI agents actually do inside a healthcare clinic
• The three non-negotiable rules for deploying AI in a clinical setting
• How to actually get AI-ready (EMR access, APIs, compliance)

Chapters:

• (00:00) Introduction
• (01:00) Alex Cohen: From Carbon Health to Hello Patient's Origin Story
• (06:03) Finding the Pattern: Building the First Voice AI
• (08:05) From Manual IVRs to Agentic AI
• (12:14) What Hello Patient Actually Does
• (14:15) Rule #1 — No Clinical AI Without a Human in the Loop
• (20:49) Rule #2 — Never Let AI Pretend to Be Human
• (27:01) Rule #3 — Don't Try to Automate 100% of Calls
• (29:44) The Last-Mile Problem: Why the Final 20% Is 90% of the Work
• (33:25) Why EMRs Aren't Commoditized Like Your CRM
• (34:58) How to Actually Get AI-Ready
• (37:08) Why Some Systems Won't Give You API Access
• (38:33) HIPAA, Compliance, and Where AI Actually Helps
• (40:57) Where to Find Alex & Hello Patient

Resources:

Valet — Episode Sponsor

Valet is the founding sponsor of the Serious People Podcast.

AI is getting very good at making useful things: dashboards, analyses, internal websites, and small tools. Making those things available to the rest of a team is a separate problem.

Valet lets you publish AI-created artifacts to a stable URL. New sites are private by default, and members of your organization can access them after signing in.

Try Valet at https://valet.dev

Connect with Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-cohen/

Follow Hello Patient on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hello-patient/

Connect with Noah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahlevin/

Noah’s Website: https://www.noahlevin.com/

Serious People Website: https://seriouspeople.ai/