Artificial Reality

About Artificial Reality

Everyone is talking about what AI can do. Few are talking about what people actually need it to do. Artificial Reality is a podcast about the reality behind AI adoption. Hosted by Galina Fendikevich, the show explores how AI is actually being used across industries like manufacturing, construction, logistics, healthcare, finance, hospitality, and beyond. Each episode brings together operators, executives, founders, and industry experts to answer three questions: • What's working? • What's broken? • What still needs to be built? While much of the AI conversation focuses on models, funding, and product launches, Artificial Reality focuses on the people expected to use these tools every day. How are businesses actually adopting AI? Where does implementation break down? What problems still haven't been solved? And what should builders create next? The future of AI shouldn't be shaped only by the people building it. It should also be shaped by the people using it. Artificial Reality is where those conversations happen. Follow along here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/)

Publisher

Galina Fendikevich

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

16 Jun 2026

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

14 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   How Wall Street’s Top Producer Automates High-Stakes Work

   Net Road Show’s Robb Lillie breaks down how ElevenLabs replaced 3AM banker recording sessions, why Microsoft Copilot drove employees to use unsanctioned AI tools, and the EU AI Act compliance gap he calls “fast car, no seat belt.” Robb Lillie has spent 22 years at Net Road Show, the platform behind investor communications for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. He joined when the company was part of broadcast.com before Yahoo’s $5.7 billion acquisition, and now leads AI adoption across text-to-speech, proof-of-concept building, and training for a team that powers IPO roadshow and M&A deal workflows worldwide. In this episode, Galina Fendikevich and Robb cover what’s working, what’s broken, and what still needs to be built in AI adoption for financial services infrastructure: How ElevenLabs text-to-speech eliminated overnight recording sessions for international bankers, including a Korean banker in tears at 3AM trying to get through an English script Why Microsoft Copilot is so weak inside enterprise environments that employees go around IT to use ChatGPT and Claude, creating a shadow AI problem that governance and compliance teams cannot track Robb’s framework for evaluating where AI belongs in enterprise workflows: “Coordination collapses, but the context doesn’t.” AI handles logistics, but judgment and creativity stay human. A wish list for AI builders: unified search across seven enterprise systems, compliance tooling for AI-generated video under the EU AI Act, and a correction memory layer for translated audio How Robb discovered his company’s best AI use cases by polling his team on their biggest pain points instead of asking what AI could do for them This episode is for anyone working in financial services, capital markets, or regulated industries who wants to see how a 22-year deal event production company is adopting AI tools like ElevenLabs, Lovable, and Synthesia without cutting corners on compliance. It’s also for business leaders evaluating enterprise AI who need a practical framework for deciding what to automate and what to leave alone. And if you’re a builder or developer, Robb names specific unsolved problems in enterprise AI, from search layers across legacy systems to compliance verification for AI-generated video to audio correction memory that learns business terminology. Follow Robb Lillie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robblillie/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/robblillie/) Website: netroadshow.com (http://netroadshow.com) Email: sales@netroadshow.com (mailto:sales@netroadshow.com) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

2. 

   29 Sept 2026

   How to Get Ahead of 99% of Speakers (with AI)

   Keynote speaker James Taylor breaks down how he runs his speaking business on Claude, why cheap AI pricing won't last, and how 1,000 people made a Taylor Swift reggae theme song with AI in about 15 minutes. On Artificial Reality, I ask business owners what's working with AI, what's broken, and what still needs to be built. This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world's busiest keynote speakers uses AI across sales, marketing, speech writing and delivery. James Taylor is an international keynote speaker on creativity, artificial intelligence and innovation, and the author of SuperCreativity: Augmenting Human Creativity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. He started his career managing rock stars, moved into tech in Silicon Valley, and now gives 50 to 100 keynotes a year in 25+ countries for clients including Apple, Deloitte, Visa and McDonald's. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In this episode, I ask James what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built with AI in his speaking business: ● How a keynote speaker uses AI day to day: James has an AI chief of staff built on Claude that briefs him every morning and, 24 hours before a sales call, sends psychometric profiles of everyone joining. A Claude "story bank" of every story, framework and quote he has used drafts the first version of each keynote. He then rewrites it himself. How to get recommended by ChatGPT and Claude: his team builds thousands of highly specific landing pages optimized for AI answer engines, using Claude for research, Perplexity to create pages at scale and Gemini for quality checks. James says chatbots now name him a top AI keynote speaker in Amsterdam, a city he has never lived in. Why cheap AI won't last: James argues today's AI prices are subsidized by venture capital, like early Uber, and that businesses should plan for higher rates by matching cheaper models to simpler tasks. He also sees low-cost Chinese models putting pressure on US AI companies. Is AI replacing jobs: his own team shrank, including a video editor role, while a customer service hire was retrained in SEO, AEO and GEO. James believes efficiency is only phase one of AI. The bigger opportunity is creating things that don't exist yet. What Silicon Valley should build next: James wants an AI coach that reviews presentation videos across 100 factors, plus live translation so non-native English speakers can ask questions. I share why nearly every guest I've interviewed wants better voice AI. This episode is for you if you're a speaker, consultant or creator who wants AI to handle the business side of your expertise, or a business owner figuring out where AI actually saves time and where it still falls short. It's also for founders and developers building AI tools who want to hear what a power user running five AIs at once still can't find on the market. Follow James Taylor: jamestaylor.me youtube.com/@JamesTaylorMe linkedin.com/in/jameskirktaylor instagram.com/jamestaylordotme SuperCreativity: geni.us/QiDBu Artificial Reality: artificialrealitymedia.com instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media luma.com/artificialreality Hosted by Galina Fendikevich

3. 

   16 Sept 2026

   The Man Who Sold His Company to Adobe, Built for NASA & NATO, Then Replaced His Back Office With AI

   Steven Webster sold his company to Adobe, consulted for NASA, NATO, and Nike, and built a full AI operating system for his next company. Here's how. Steven Webster is the founder and CEO of Asensei, the movement recognition company that does for physical movement what speech recognition did for voice. Before Asensei, he sold his first company to Adobe, built their worldwide design consulting practice, and opened an innovation studio for Microsoft. He was also the UK's youngest junior jiu-jitsu black belt and coached Edinburgh University's Karate Club to 10 consecutive national championships. In this episode of Artificial Reality, I ask Steven what's working with AI, what's broken, and what still needs to be built for CEOs running real companies: How 5 martial arts principles (Shoshin, Keiko, Mushin, Sensen no sen, and teaching others) became a white belt to black belt AI adoption framework that any business leader can follow step by step How Steven built an "agentic office of the CEO" with AI agents running sales, contracts, RevOps, product insights, and a Friday performance coaching session with an agent named Wendy, modeled after Wendy Rhodes from Billions Why he compares AI adoption to driving a Model T Ford. Users are still stuck managing context windows and model selection when they shouldn't have to be. His prediction: AI tools will go from manual to automatic The moment he caught himself saying "you're using it wrong" and stopped. His design thinking background at Adobe taught him to never blame the user, always fix the product His vision for "multiplayer mode" where AI agents join meetings as participants, teams share versioned skills across departments, and memory travels with you across different AI models instead of being locked inside one This episode is for you if you're a CEO or founder looking for a concrete AI adoption framework from someone who already built one, if you want to understand how to go from basic AI chat to a full agentic operating system across your company, or if you're a builder trying to understand why business leaders struggle with AI tools and what needs to change. Follow Steven Webster: Asensei: asensei.ai LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevenwebster Five Principles for AI Leadership: webstersensei.substack.com/p/five-principles-for-ai-leadership AI Leadership and Agentic Office of the CEO: webstersensei.ai Substack: webstersensei.substack.com (http://webstersensei.substack.com) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality Host: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

4. 

   8 Sept 2026

   The Man Behind All In's Viral Clips Says AI Will Never Replace His Editors

   Chris Madden's agency hit 1 billion views in 3 years. He breaks down why AI clipping tools still fail at the most important part of short-form video, how he cloned his voice and now ships content daily without recording himself, and why he believes social media matters more than AI. Chris Madden is the founder of Good Future Media, a podcast editing agency whose clients include All In, This Week in Startups, Pirate Wires, and Solana, and Clipstastic, an AI voice cloning content agency. He spent 10 years teaching English across Thailand, France, Korea, and China before building an unofficial TikTok fan account for the All In podcast that hit 30,000 followers in a month and landed him the role of Head of Content at Twenty VC. He also hosts the Imagine AI podcast with over 150 episodes. Galina Fendikevich asks what's working with AI, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in podcast editing, AI voice cloning, and content production at scale: How ElevenLabs voice cloning lets founders and thought leaders post daily content in their own cloned voice without recording themselves. Chris calls your voice "an extension of your brand" that can now exist across six platforms at once Why AI clipping tools like Opus Clip, Riverside, and Descript still cannot write hooks, add context, or give viewers a reason to stay past the first three seconds. His agency builds every clip by hand in Premiere Pro and CapCut because the human judgment gap has not closed The origin story: how an unofficial TikTok fan account for the All In podcast launched a career at Twenty VC and became a billion-view content agency in three years. Jason Calacanis, the inspiration behind the business, is still hiring human clippers because AI cannot do it either Why Chris wants an "AI brain of your business" that holds full company context in one place. The current friction: you make a decision, change it three minutes later, and your AI still thinks the old goal is active. Memory and context management remain the biggest barriers to using Claude and ChatGPT as real business tools Chris's closing argument that social media distribution is just as important as AI itself. His framework: posting across multiple platforms "increases your surface area for success," and without that distribution layer, no AI tool delivers results This episode is for you if you run a content agency, podcast, or video production company and want a clear breakdown of where AI saves time and where human editors still outperform every tool on the market. It is also for founders, thought leaders, and business owners who want to build a social media presence and post consistently without recording themselves on camera, and for anyone building AI tools for content clipping, voice cloning, lead generation, or recruiting who wants to hear exactly what is failing from someone producing 140 videos a week for the biggest shows in tech. Follow Chris Madden: youtube.com/@ChrisMadden_ instagram.com/chrismadden365 linkedin.com/in/chrismadden365 (http://linkedin.com/in/chrismadden365) Work with Chris: https://www.cliptastic.ai/ (https://www.cliptastic.ai/) https://goodfuturemedia.com/ (https://goodfuturemedia.com/) Artificial Reality: Website: https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/ (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/) In-person events: https://luma.com/artificialreality (https://luma.com/artificialreality) Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/)

5. 

   1 Sept 2026

   The Secret AI Strategy This Small NYC Business Uses to Save Thousands

   NYC store co-owners Sara Rojas and Luisa Ramirez break down how a $37 AI tool replaced $1,000 marketing agencies, how ChatGPT cut their email time from ten minutes to under one minute, and the AI failures that still cost them days of work every week. Sara and Luisa are co-owners of char-CUTE-rie by Bohemian Picnics NYC, a store steps from Central Park where customers build their own charcuterie boards and rent picnic baskets for the park. Sara handles creative direction and all finances for both the store and their sister event planning business, Bohemian Picnics. Luisa is the executive chef behind the menu and runs all marketing and social media. Here is what is working with AI, what is broken, and what still needs to be built for small business owners running a store and catering company: How Sara uses ChatGPT to plan flower arrangements by screenshot. She sends a photo of what she wants and it breaks down quantities, seasonal availability, and cost per bouquet, replacing hours at the wholesale market. Why AI-generated marketing flyers still come out with garbled text and wrong spelling, and why the tools keep forgetting basic business information like the store address and logo after months of use. Luisa's discovery that being firm with AI gets better results than being polite. Her approach: "What are you doing? This is not it." She says it corrects faster when you push back. Why Sara still spends two to three days building each event proposal by hand, and what a tool that knows rental prices, food costs, and labor hours would mean for every event planner losing time on quotes. The gap Galina names on air: the people building AI have never opened a store, never run a catering company, and never had to manage a business like this. That disconnect shapes what gets built and what gets ignored. This episode is for you if you run a small business in food service, catering, event planning, or retail and want to see exactly how two non-technical owners use AI to handle emails, marketing, finances, and vendor planning. It is also for business owners who have tried AI but get frustrated when the tools lose context or produce unusable output, and for builders and developers who want to hear from operators about what saves them time, what breaks on them daily, and what they would pay for tomorrow. char-CUTE-rie by Bohemian Picnics NYC: https://www.instagram.com/char_cute_rienyc/ (https://www.instagram.com/char_cute_rienyc/) Artificial Reality: Website: https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/ (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/) In-person events: https://luma.com/artificialreality (https://luma.com/artificialreality) Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/)

6. 

   25 Aug 2026

   AI Should Have Killed His Career. He's Making $1M/Year Instead.

   SwipeFile owner Neville Medhora breaks down how AI destroyed his copywriting business and built him a better one, why AI-written newsletters are losing their audiences, and how he runs a million-dollar solo operation on $20 a month. Neville Medhora is the owner of SwipeFile and founder of Copywriting Course. He started selling glow sticks online, ran the emails at AppSumo until he hit 750,000 users, and has put his writing in front of over 280 million people. Noah Kagan featured him as one of the entrepreneurs doing over a million dollars a year with zero employees. What's working with AI, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in copywriting, content, and the one-person AI business: How AI automated every operational task at SwipeFile, from titling to image generation to categorization, freeing Neville to focus on human curation, the one part AI can't replicate Why his consulting clients went full AI on their email newsletters and watched readership quietly collapse, and what that signals for every creator automating content right now How his brain couldn't process 100 AI-generated ad variations at once, leading him to build SwipeFile Remix: one curated marketing idea per day, $200 a year, no login required How Kit (formerly ConvertKit) built an AI connector nobody used, then discovered the real product: showing creators their most influential subscribers with one button, no jargon required Why he predicted prompt engineering would die a year before it did, why he thinks AI agents will fade next, and why vibe coding doesn't just work the way people claim This episode is for you if you're a copywriter, content creator, or newsletter operator trying to understand what AI actually changes about your craft. It's equally valuable if you run a business and want to see how one person built a million-dollar operation by using AI for everything except the judgment that matters most, or if you're building AI tools and need to hear why your users don't know what to ask and why invisible features outperform flashy ones. Follow Neville Medhora: SwipeFile: https://swipefile.com (https://swipefile.com) Newsletter: https://swipefile.com/newsletter (https://swipefile.com/newsletter) Kopywriting Course: https://kopywriting.com (https://kopywriting.com) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neville-medhora-654749/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neville-medhora-654749/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neville_medhora/ (https://www.instagram.com/neville_medhora/) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kopywriting/videos (https://www.youtube.com/@kopywriting/videos) Artificial Reality: Website: https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/ (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/) In-person events: https://luma.com/artificialreality (https://luma.com/artificialreality) Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/)

7. 

   6 Aug 2026

   Why 99% of AI Products Fail: The Gap Between Builders and Buyers Is Bigger Than You Think.

   After interviewing 6 operators across 7 industries about AI adoption, Galina Fendikevich found 3 patterns nobody could see from inside their own corner. Galina Fendikevich is the creator and host of Artificial Reality. She did machine learning on Wall Street, was on a team that exited to a $9 billion company, and ran US go-to-market for one of the first generative AI unicorns. She spent Season 1 asking executives across construction, yacht charter, luxury hospitality, deep tech PR, M&A, restaurants, and health coaching the same 3 questions: what's working with AI, what's broken, and what they'd pay someone to build next. In this episode, she covers what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built across 7 industries: A yacht client screenshotted ChatGPT saying it was safe to anchor in 25-knot winds, circled it in pen, and argued with the captain. An M&A client walked in with an AI-generated $5 million valuation on $125,000 of net profit. Claude had counted expenses as assets. Every real failure this season was public. Every real win was invisible. A restaurant founder handed her 45-page lease to ChatGPT and saved $1,000 in 3 minutes. An M&A broker cut her payroll by 83% and prices what Claude does at roughly $40,000 a month of labor for a $100 subscription. 6 executives across different industries all described the same missing product without knowing the others asked for it. A private, structured memory layer for client profiles in high-trust businesses. The yacht broker wants it to remember which wine a guest drank. The hospitality CEO wants scattered guest intelligence made usable. Way beyond a CRM. Nobody has built it. AI adoption isn't stalling because of interest. The demand is desperate. A yacht broker tried building her own intake tool and described it as jumping through 500 hoops. An M&A adviser is duct-taping her own deal room. A health coach hired a developer to wire her backend. The translation layer between what operators need and what exists is missing. All 7 episodes are packaged into 2 free reports. One for operators. One for AI builders. Both linked below. This episode is for you if you run a business and want to know what your peers are doing with AI before you spend a dollar finding out yourself, if you need a filter for serious AI vendors versus tourists, or if you build AI products and want customer discovery from 7 industries for free. Download the Free Reports: https://arc.net/l/quote/lnabmwxw (https://arc.net/l/quote/lnabmwxw) The Dream 100 List: https://arc.net/l/quote/nbvswfzr (https://arc.net/l/quote/nbvswfzr) https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/ (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/) https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/partnership (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/partnership) https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/speaking (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/speaking) https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) https://luma.com/artificialreality (https://luma.com/artificialreality) https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/)

8. 

   18 Jul 2026

   How a Non-Tech Founder Built a 15-Agent AI Health & Wellness Business on Claude

   Dr. Nikki Siso built 15 Claude skills to assess your toxic load. One client's root belief surfaced in just 3 questions. The holistic health practitioner and Conscious Kitchen founder breaks down how her TALKS assessment cut client intake from hours to 45 minutes with a 10-page report, why she banned all FDA and EPA-approved sources from her AI, and how a client reached the root of a lifelong belief system in 3 questions after years of therapy never got there. Dr. Nikki Siso is a certified holistic health practitioner and the founder of Conscious Kitchen in Westlake Hills, Austin, Texas. She developed Type 1 diabetes at 29 despite being vegan since 15, which launched a quest through a Harvard master's in sustainability, a PhD in holistic health, shamanic work, and every biohacking tool she could find. She now runs TALKS, a total toxic load assessment powered by Claude. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in holistic health coaching: Nikki's TALKS assessment walks clients through 15 body systems, then hunts through their bathroom, kitchen, and thought patterns for toxins. It generates a 10-page report in minutes. Before AI, the same process took hours and was never as thorough. She trained Claude across 15 disciplines and directed it where not to look. No FDA, EPA, or pharmaceutical-approved sources. The EPA approved 86,000 chemicals by letting companies self-certify safety. A client who worked with therapists for years said the assessment reached the root of her lifelong belief system in just 3 questions. The assessment took hundreds of hours to build. The 10-page report crashed the chat when it exceeded token limits. The team had to move report generation to the backend and deliver it by email. Nikki wants real-time voice conversations in her cloned voice so clients can walk through their home during the assessment. The current 5-8 second delay makes the experience too jerky. This episode is for you if you're a health practitioner or coach looking to scale without losing your personal approach, if you're a business owner curious about what it actually takes to build an AI product from scratch, or if you're building tools for practitioners and want to hear what's missing in deployment, voice, and backend orchestration. Follow Dr. Nikki Siso: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nikkisiso (http://linkedin.com/in/nikkisiso) Conscious Kitchen: consciouskitchenatx.com (http://consciouskitchenatx.com) TALKS Assessment: consciouskitchenatx.com/talks (http://consciouskitchenatx.com/talks) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com (http://artificialrealitymedia.com) Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (http://instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media (http://linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media) In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality (http://luma.com/artificialreality) Hosted by Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi (http://linkedin.com/in/gfendi)

9. 

   17 Jul 2026

   I Trusted AI To Build My Restaurant, It Cost Me $30,000

   Dr. Nikki Siso used AI to open a raw restaurant. Some tools saved thousands. Others cost her $30,000 and a full month. The Conscious Kitchen founder breaks down how ChatGPT caught 8 harmful clauses in a 45-page lease in 3 minutes, why AI completely missed the local permitting steps needed to pass health inspection, and how she built 15 custom skills in Claude to assess toxic load across food, homes, and thought patterns. Dr. Nikki Siso is a certified holistic health practitioner and the founder of Conscious Kitchen, a raw, organic, plant-based, gluten-free restaurant in Westlake Hills just outside Austin, Texas. She holds a PhD in holistic health and nutrition with a specialty in peak performance and co-founded the restaurant with her mother, a master chef of 30 years. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in holistic food and restaurant startups: Nikki told ChatGPT to "act like a commercial real estate agent" and review her 45-page lease. It flagged 8 risky clauses and drafted a letter to the landlord. An attorney reviewed the letter for free instead of his usual $1,000 fee. AI had zero structured guidance on restaurant permitting. It didn't know that hiring an MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) engineer should be step one. That gap cost a month of delays and $30,000 on an unnecessary contractor. The opening budget was $30,000. The final cost was $85,000. Nikki was on Facebook Marketplace buying chandeliers for $50 and driving to Dripping Springs to pick them up. She wishes someone would build an AI tool that pairs your blood work and dietary restrictions with a restaurant menu and tells you what you can safely order. AI-generated label designs came back looking generic. A human designer made microscopic adjustments that gave her brand a sophistication AI could not replicate. This episode is for you if you're opening a restaurant or food business and want to know which AI tools save real time, if you're exploring AI for the first time and want honest stories instead of hype, or if you're building AI products and want to hear what's missing in local permitting, budgeting, and personalized nutrition. Follow Dr. Nikki Siso: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nikkisiso (http://linkedin.com/in/nikkisiso) Conscious Kitchen: consciouskitchenatx.com (http://consciouskitchenatx.com) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com (http://artificialrealitymedia.com) Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (http://instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media (http://linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media) In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality (http://luma.com/artificialreality) Hosted by Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi (http://linkedin.com/in/gfendi)

10. 

    15 Jul 2026

    How She Cut Her Payroll by 83% Using This One AI Agent

    M&A adviser Christine McDannell says her $100/month Claude subscription does the work of $40,000 in monthly payroll. She breaks down how she trained Claude to draft every client email in five days, why a seller walked into a meeting with a $5 million AI valuation on $125,000 in net profit, and what Claude told her after analyzing 18 months of her Slack messages. Christine is the founder of The Magnolia Firm, a boutique M&A brokerage specializing in selling profitable tech companies. She built and sold multiple companies of her own before launching the firm five years ago, running her own exits and deal processes from start to finish. She also runs an AI implementation club in Austin. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in mergers and acquisitions: How Christine trained Claude to draft all her client emails. It checks every 30 minutes, writes meeting briefs from her calendar, and got so good that she and her team couldn't tell who wrote them. The $5 million valuation disaster. A husband and wife team used Claude to value their business and it counted every department's payroll as an asset instead of an expense. The real number was a 3 to 4x multiple on $125,000. She exported 18 months of Slack messages and every Trello task, then told Claude not to hold back on leadership feedback. It pointed out she said "sorry" 148 times compared to her team member's 14. Why she built an AI voice phone agent but hasn't fully deployed it. The latency creates awkward pauses that make callers want to hit zero for a human. She is waiting for the tech to catch up. Her pitch to Silicon Valley: build one end-to-end marketing tool. Right now it takes five separate tools for keywords, captions, branding, and posting. She is still the bottleneck at every micro step. This episode is for you if you work in M&A, business brokerage, or professional services and want to see how one adviser automated nearly her entire workflow. It's also for business owners testing AI tools who want real examples of what saves money versus what still falls short. And if you build AI products, you will hear exactly where the tooling gaps are from someone deep in the workflow every single day. Follow Christine McDannell: Website: https://www.christinemcdannell.com/ (https://www.christinemcdannell.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinemcdannell/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinemcdannell/) Artificial Reality: Website: https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/ (https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/) In-person events: https://luma.com/artificialreality (https://luma.com/artificialreality) Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/)

11. 

    18 Jun 2026

    He Runs PR for Deep Tech Startups. If Your Agency Isn't Using AI, They're Robbing You.

    PR strategist Sam Polstein breaks down why AI makes everyone an average comms person, why LLMs cannot build media lists, and why AI copy has zero emotional resonance. Sam leads communications and content at House, a creative shop focused on deep tech startups. He started on political campaigns across the Midwest before moving into corporate comms and eventually narrowing his focus to hardware and deep tech companies building complex products. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in deep tech communications: Sam runs his entire workflow on Claude paired with Obsidian, storing client strategy, call transcripts, and writing standards as plain markdown files. If he ever needs to switch LLMs, the context is portable because it belongs to him, not the model. The PR job has fundamentally changed. Sam no longer writes press releases sentence by sentence. He pulls insights from client conversations like an investigative reporter, and AI handles the drafting. The real work is in finding the angle. LLMs are surprisingly bad at building journalist media lists. Predicting what a reporter will write next requires tangential thinking and fresh data. When there is even a three-week lag in the model's information, it is basically useless for this task. Sam keeps a context folder called "good writing" with examples and a trope checklist. He has Claude edit its own drafts against that folder. Even so, every LLM has a recognizable tone that makes everything sound the same. His top wish is a journalist intelligence tool he can debate like a colleague. He wants to ask "Will this reporter cover my client?" and have it argue back using that reporter's most recent articles and beat direction. This episode is for you if: → You work in communications, PR, or content marketing for technical companies and want to see how a working AI workflow actually looks. → You are a founder or business owner trying to figure out whether AI can replace your comms team or just make them faster. → You are building AI tools and want to understand what PR professionals actually need that nobody has built yet. Follow Sam Polstein: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sampolstein (http://linkedin.com/in/sampolstein) Website: deeptech.agency (http://deeptech.agency) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com (http://artificialrealitymedia.com) Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (http://instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media (http://linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media) In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality (http://luma.com/artificialreality) Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi (http://linkedin.com/in/gfendi)

12. 

    18 Jun 2026

    Why AI Keeps Failing in Luxury Hospitality (And the $Billion Opportunity Behind the Scenes)

    Sofiane Ghorbel has spent 25 years in luxury hospitality. His take: AI's biggest opportunity isn't at the front desk. Luxury hospitality executive Sofiane Ghorbel breaks down how AI lets small teams operate like large organizations, why luxury clients are the least willing to share the data AI needs most, and why the real value of AI in hospitality lives behind the scenes. Sofiane Ghorbel is the Founder and CEO of AL Hospitality Group, a firm focused on luxury hotel investment, repositioning, management, and strategic advisory. With over 25 years serving luxury travelers, family offices, and institutional clients, he's seen hospitality from the guest, operator, owner, and investor perspective. This fall, he's launching AI and luxury roundtables in New Canaan, Connecticut to connect AI innovators with hospitality leaders. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in luxury hospitality: AI is already a force multiplier for small luxury teams. Destination research, hotel comparisons, itinerary creation, and proposal prep now happen in a fraction of the time. Marriott deployed an AI concierge chatbot and a reporter found it couldn't even recommend local restaurants. They pivoted to backend operations, where it actually delivered. "We don't sell rooms. We don't sell cruises. We don't sell flights. We sell trust." One wrong AI recommendation can destroy a client relationship that took years to build. Sofiane wants an AI tool that manages the follow-up process after booking. His team manually calls every hotel concierge and provider to check on welcome envelopes, restaurant options, and local safety conditions. The real AI value is behind the scenes. Investors and hotel owners who use AI to analyze markets and move faster will win the deal. The ones who wait will lose it. This episode is for you if you work in luxury hospitality, travel advisory, or hotel investment and want to know where AI fits your workflow today. It's also for business owners exploring AI adoption who want a real look at what delivers and what falls flat. And if you're building AI products, this is a front-row seat into what practitioners actually need, from privacy-safe personalization to workflow-specific tools. Follow Sofiane Ghorbel: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sofianeghorbel (http://linkedin.com/in/sofianeghorbel) Website: alhospitalitygroup.com (http://alhospitalitygroup.com) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com (http://artificialrealitymedia.com) Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (http://instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media (http://linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media) Events: luma.com/artificialreality (http://luma.com/artificialreality) Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi (http://linkedin.com/in/gfendi)

13. 

    17 Jun 2026

    How a Luxury Yacht Company Is Using AI Without Losing the Personal Touch

    Luxury yacht broker Jennifer Kerum breaks down why 80% of her clients have no idea what they actually want, the time a client used ChatGPT to overrule his own captain, and why Silicon Valley has no idea what the yacht charter industry needs. Jennifer Kerum is the founder of Anchor Croatia and the upcoming Luxury Yacht Rentals. She built a yacht charter business from scratch with zero industry background, grew it through social media in an industry dominated by companies that have been around since the 1950s, and is now expanding globally with AI at the center of her new platform. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in the luxury yacht rental industry: ● How AI translation is helping her serve international clients across languages that Google Translate used to butcher ● Why a client screenshotted ChatGPT's answer about anchoring in 25 knots of wind and called her furious when it was wrong ● The "what's your vibe" onboarding idea that could replace a month and a half of back-and-forth with first-time yacht renters ● Why she wants AI to remember what wine her clients drank, what islands they visited, and their kids' birthdays ● Why charter companies keep getting ignored by AI builders who would rather do hackathons than get on a boat This episode is for you if you run or work in luxury travel, hospitality, or charter services. If you're a business owner exploring AI but don't know where to start. Or if you build AI tools and want to understand what real operators actually need. Follow Jennifer Kerum: Instagram: instagram.com/theanchorcroatia (http://instagram.com/theanchorcroatia) Website: anchorcroatia.com (http://anchorcroatia.com) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com (http://artificialrealitymedia.com) Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (http://instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media (http://linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media) In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality (http://luma.com/artificialreality) Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/)

14. 

    16 Jun 2026

    They Do $20M a Year on Sticky Notes. Why Your AI Still Can't Close Them.

    Legacy industry adviser Annija Eizenarma breaks down why $20M businesses still run on sticky notes, why operators reject AI for AI, and how one design partner can unlock 100 doors. Annija Eizenarma is a founder, investor, and adviser who helps technology companies sell into legacy industries like construction, manufacturing, and logistics. She started her first business at 17 in Latvia, built and exited a smart home and building automation company, and has since guided hundreds of startups through selling to physical-world businesses. In this episode, I cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in legacy industries: The AI companies that succeed in legacy industries start by solving one narrow pain point, proving they can deliver, and expanding from there. Full platforms with dozens of features overwhelm buyers who've run profitable businesses for decades without them. Many AI founders build ideas by asking ChatGPT for the biggest market opportunity instead of visiting job sites and sitting with operators. After months coding in their apartments, they hit the real world and discover friction they never planned for. Annija has seen $20M-a-year businesses run entirely on sticky notes. Some legacy operators will tell you point blank: "I'm exactly where I want to be. Never call me again." The number one thing legacy industries need before any AI adoption is organized data. Fragmented systems, scattered financials, and messy records can add months of onboarding friction before a single feature goes live. Legacy industries run on trusted referrals and closed communities. One well-chosen design partner can open 15 doors, which can open 100. You earn your way in one relationship at a time. This episode is for you if you run or operate a business in construction, manufacturing, logistics, or any physical-world industry and you're trying to figure out where AI actually fits. It's also for business owners exploring AI tools who don't want to be sold a platform they'll never full use, and for builders and developers who need to understand why their sales cycle keeps stalling in traditional industries. Follow Annija Eizenarma: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annijaeizenarma (http://linkedin.com/in/annijaeizenarma) Website: aebridges.co (http://aebridges.co) Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com (http://artificialrealitymedia.com) Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia (http://instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia) LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media (http://linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media) In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality (http://luma.com/artificialreality) Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi (http://linkedin.com/in/gfendi)

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