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/

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