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/

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