Answer Engines: How Brands Build the AI Advantage

Discover the real business value of AI. Learn how AI boosts ROI, saves time, and scales workflows for small businesses and beginners.

Show Notes

In this episode of Answer Engines: How Brands Build the AI Advantage by Advantage Labs, we discover the real business value of AI. Learn how AI boosts ROI, saves time, and scales workflows for small businesses and beginners.
---
About the Show
Answer Engines: How Brands Build the AI Advantage is a podcast by Advantage Labs exploring how brands earn visibility, trust, and recommendations in the age of AI-driven search. Through conversations with business leaders, founders, and technologists, the show examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping discovery, authority, and decision-making across systems like ChatGPT, Google’s AI-powered search experiences, and other emerging answer engines.
---
Host:
Sheridan Wendt
Visionary technology leader with 15+ years of experience driving transformative change, delivering $4B+ in global infrastructure projects, and leading AI implementations that improve efficiency and revenue across Fortune 500 organizations.

Guest:
Jonathan Foster
Cyber Security Engineer & Analyst with extensive experience in network systems and electronics. Jonathan has worked with KBR, Inc., VT Group, Serco, and the US Navy, specializing in system installations, technical support, and military-grade network security. His background includes managing shipboard systems, ensuring compliance with strict security standards, and training personnel on system maintenance and troubleshooting.
---
Chapter Markers:
00:00 - Introduction
00:38 - Meet Jon and Set the Stage
01:32 - AI Hype vs. Reality
02:49 - Choosing AI Based on Problems
03:56 - Where AI Can Save Time
04:54 - Example: Real Estate Listing Automation
06:04 - Time as ROI
07:00 - Scalability and Microscaling
09:24 - Food Truck AI Use Case
11:19 - Customer Engagement Possibilities
13:01 - Improving Customer Experience with AI
16:34 - Understanding LLMs and Vector Databases
18:01 - Avoiding AI Overhype
19:55 - How to Measure AI ROI
22:45 - Your AI Challenge & Episode Wrap-Up
---
Learn more about Advantage Labs:
https://advantagelabs.ai
---
Watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@AdvantageLabsAI
---
Listen on more platforms:
https://podcast.AdvantageLabs.ai
---
Donate
Support the Show
★ Support this podcast ★

Creators and Guests

Host
Sheridan Wendt
Visionary technology leader with 15+ years of success driving transformative change while building secure, scalable infrastructure for global organizations. A decorated US Navy veteran and technology strategist who bridges the gap between technology and business needs, aligning technology with strategic goals and guiding executives on emerging technologies.
Guest
Jonathan Foster
A seasoned Cyber Security Engineer/Analyst with a diverse background in network systems and electronics. Over his career, Jonathan has worked with KBR, Inc., VT Group, Serco, and the US Navy. His expertise includes leading system installations, technical support, and network security for military-grade operations. Notably, he has managed shipboard network systems, ensured compliance with military standards, and trained personnel on system maintenance and troubleshooting. Jonathan's experience also spans handling classified material, optimizing network uptime, and auditing security policies.

What is Answer Engines: How Brands Build the AI Advantage ?

Answer Engines: How Brands Build the AI Advantage
by Advantage Labs

Answer Engines: How Brands Build the AI Advantage is a podcast by Advantage Labs exploring how brands earn visibility, trust, and recommendations in the age of AI-driven search. Through conversations with business leaders, founders, and technologists, the show breaks down how artificial intelligence is reshaping discovery, authority, and decision-making across systems like ChatGPT, Google’s AI-powered search experiences, and other emerging answer engines.

Each episode goes beyond hype to unpack what’s actually working, what’s changing, and how companies can build lasting authority as search shifts from links to answers.

You’ll hear practical insights on:
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and AI search visibility
• How AI systems evaluate authority, trust, and relevance
• Real-world applications of AI in marketing, operations, and growth
• What it takes to be recommended—not just ranked—in AI-driven experiences
• The future of discovery, buyer behavior, and digital trust

Whether you’re a founder, marketer, operator, or technology leader, Answer Engines helps you understand how AI is reshaping search—and how to position your brand to win in this new landscape.

Produced by Advantage Labs, an AI solutions and implementation firm helping brands build visibility, authority, and scalable advantage through answer engine optimization, agentic workflows, and AI-driven systems.

Learn more about AEO implementation:
https://advantagelabs.ai

Jon Foster:

When you talked about time, it's a finite resource. I definitely agree to that. That's probably the aspect of this that's making more sense to me is because you only everybody gets the same amount of time. We get twenty four hours in a day.

Sheridan Wendt:

Welcome to the AI Advantage podcast. I'm your host, Sheridan Wint, and today we're gonna dive into the real business value of AI. Now I've got my longtime friend, John Foster, here so he can ask the questions that I might not even think about because he's kinda new to AI. Right? John, can you tell them a little bit about yourself in case they missed the last episode?

Jon Foster:

Well, in case you missed the last episode, I have a prior military background. I was in the US Navy. I am currently in GovTech. Pretty much cybersecurity is my main focus in life. Cyber guys tend to to always be advancing, and the one area that I haven't is AI.

Jon Foster:

And, I'm hoping that Sheridan can kinda shed some more light on that subject for me, and that way I'm less scared.

Sheridan Wendt:

Alright. Alright. The other thing John focuses on is Bigfoot, Inside joke

Jon Foster:

Yeah. Sometimes.

Sheridan Wendt:

From episode one. Sometimes. Time, we unpacked what AI is and what it isn't. Today, we're going be talking about where AI actually delivers value. And to navigate that, I'm going to have John here help us try to sort through what is hype and what is actually real world ROI.

Sheridan Wendt:

Let's dive in. A lot of businesses hear stories and narratives like AI is either too complex and expensive, or it's some magic solution for everything that doesn't actually fix everything. Right? John, have you heard anything like that?

Jon Foster:

Yeah. I've seen things all the time that are being, like, recently, like, companies coming out with, AI generated or, you know what I mean? Ran by AI or all this stuff. You know what mean? Seems like a lot of marketing ploy.

Jon Foster:

You know?

Sheridan Wendt:

Yeah. Yeah. There is a lot of hype. There's a lot of hype. There's a lot of marketing, you know, sprinkles going on.

Sheridan Wendt:

And the truth kind of lies somewhere in the middle. AI does have like a practical, measurable business value when it's applied strategically, and sometimes, when it's not, it doesn't. It's not worth the paper that it's printed on, as they say. A common early mistake is kind of chasing tools without defining the problem first. Like going and seeing, Oh, this tool does this, and this tool does that.

Sheridan Wendt:

Okay, but what problem are we trying to solve? Let's figure that out first. So, the real question isn't, What AI tool should I use? But instead, what's slowing me down? What's limiting my growth?

Sheridan Wendt:

How can AI help? Does that make sense?

Jon Foster:

Yeah, it makes sense. Well, how do you use AI?

Sheridan Wendt:

Well, the way that I like to use AI is to help other businesses implement it in their business. I use AI right now for this podcast, for editing it, for removing filler words, for creating short clips, micro content based off the long form content. Right? So just a few examples. But something that I always encourage businesses to think about is getting very specific, instead of being so vague.

Sheridan Wendt:

Instead of saying, we should be using AI, okay, thinking more along the lines of, we spend ten hours a week writing listings. How can AI help us automate that part of our business? Right? So, have you noticed anything from businesses that they seem excited about AI, but they don't really know how to connect it to their actual work? Have you seen that at work at all?

Jon Foster:

Yeah. My recent employer started asking me a lot of things about if I can create and set up an AI infrastructure and stuff like that. That's why I'm here. I want to learn a little bit more. And how to utilize that, integrating that into the process of Navy recruiting, things like that.

Jon Foster:

Probably lead generation, like you mentioned in the first episode and, you know?

Sheridan Wendt:

Okay. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. So the areas that AI tends to help the most are generating revenue, cutting costs, or analyzing data. Let's kind of break it down into when it comes to generating revenue or cutting costs, let's let's just talk about saving time and reducing repetition.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? Because AI can automate routine tasks, low value tasks, data entry, scheduling, reporting, customer emails, transcribing audio, right, those types of things. So, for example, a real estate team might bring on a new client who wants to list their property, and they may be able to just enter into their CRM the client's name and address, and the CRM could pass that information along to a workflow where an AI does some research around that property and the neighborhood, and it drafts an entire listing around that property just from those two data points, the name and the address. So that could save them a lot of time.

Jon Foster:

Okay, so you said workflow, and I know we talked about it, but in case they're just tuning in, what is a workflow again?

Sheridan Wendt:

Just a series of steps. It could be two or three, four tasks in a row to accomplish a specific objective. But one thing I think people don't think about sometimes when they think about ROI, right? A lot of times you'll hear, Well, what's the ROI? What's the return on my investment?

Sheridan Wendt:

And people like to talk in terms of dollars, but don't always think about it in terms of time. Even if you save ten minutes per task, that can really stack up to hundreds, maybe thousands of hours a year, depending on how many times you perform that task. So, that's something that I like to remind people is, start small, you can snowball into something bigger, like we talked about a little bit on the last episode. Are there any repetitive tasks that you see at work or in the teams that you work on that you can think of?

Jon Foster:

Yeah, I can definitely talk about that. But let's go back a little bit when you talked about time. It's a finite resource. You know what I mean? And I definitely agree to that.

Jon Foster:

And that's probably the aspect of this, of this is making more sense to me is because you only, everybody gets the same amount of time. We get twenty four hours in a day. It's not renewable. So, but yeah, an example, with me, like most of the time, just keeping track of meeting minutes and stuff like that, what's said and what's going on. I trust a short pencil over a long memory any day.

Jon Foster:

That's one of my sayings. That's maybe maybe like some email stuff. You know I mean?

Sheridan Wendt:

Right. Okay. Alright. I think that's a good stopping point for us to hear a message from our friends and sponsors. We'll be right back after this message.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right now, AI is deciding who your next customer trusts, and it might not be you. You might not realize it yet, but ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, all of these models are already deciding who they choose to recommend in industries like yours. And they don't always list options either. Sometimes they give one answer. And if that answer isn't you, then AI just referred your ideal customer to your competitor.

Sheridan Wendt:

That's why we created the free AI visibility review. It's a short live session where we will sit down with you and show you what AI thinks of you and your brand and your company, who it thinks is an authority, and what you can do to become the authority that it starts to recommend. Don't just guess where you stand. Find out. Schedule your free AI visibility review today at advantagelabs.ai, and see if AI knows that your business exists.

Sheridan Wendt:

Imagine what it would do for your business if ChatGPT was actually referring people to you. Advantagelabs.ai. Your AI advantage. Alright. So I wanna move on to another area that we that we talked about, which is scalability.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? Doing more work, getting more done without adding more people. So AI can help teams expand their output without expanding the headcount. So a couple examples might be a marketing team using AI to repurpose content across multiple channels, or customer support using AI to respond to customers using the frequently asked questions or the knowledge base that they have, to look that up when a customer asks a question, find that information, kind of summarize it, provide it to the customer, and even give them a link back to the original source. Right?

Sheridan Wendt:

Another thing might be microscaling. Right? Some small businesses use AI just to act like a much larger business.

Jon Foster:

So,

Sheridan Wendt:

if you can get more done without having to hire more people, you can stay a relatively small business, and still kind of compete with larger ones. That is why Advantage Labs in particular has branded around that, because you can help a small business and give them their AI advantage. I'd be curious, like, what industries you think could benefit from AI? Like, using it to scale, using it to talk to clients, using it for content? Like, what industries pop in pop in your mind?

Jon Foster:

Well, actually, it's it's funny you actually asked that because I was literally just going off in my own head because one of my things and one of my dreams that I want to do is I want to, you know, for funsies, you know, have like a family business of like food trucks. You know what I mean? Selling grilled cheese. I know it's weird, you know, but you know, just tracking inventory, you know, seeing what's sold, you know, tracking metrics, things like that. And that that's all that takes a long time.

Jon Foster:

But if I can integrate AI into whatever POS system or inventory system that I have, I could potentially save all that boring basic, stuff that I would have to do in the office after I'm done. I think that would be how I think it could be incorporated in that business.

Sheridan Wendt:

Okay. I want to dive into that. Let's take a look closer at that because I I want to clarify, like, the difference of the systems, the tools that you might use, versus where the AI might come in. Right?

Jon Foster:

Okay.

Sheridan Wendt:

So doing the actual inventory, like having a point of sale system, that's what POS stands for, not piece of shit. Right?

Jon Foster:

Mhmm. Yeah. Right?

Sheridan Wendt:

Having a you know, I think you said what was the other thing? Point of sale system and an inventory system sometimes can be the same system. Yeah. So you sell a sandwich you sell your sandwich, and your point of sale system records the sale, and then removes from your inventory two slices of bread and one slice of cheese. Right?

Jon Foster:

I don't know.

Sheridan Wendt:

Just to keep

Jon Foster:

things two. Always two slices of cheese.

Sheridan Wendt:

Two of each then to keep things simple. And now there's no AI involved in any of that, right, just to be clear. But you might use AI to generate reports or summarize your business volume for the for the month or give you ideas on how you could improve your profitability or reduce some costs. Right? I'm trying to think where else you might be able to incorporate it, possibly, like customer engagement, follow ups, that type of stuff.

Sheridan Wendt:

But if it's a food truck, you're not usually capturing lead information. Right?

Jon Foster:

I I I mean, kinda. You really because it's a mobile thing. You know what mean? You can see and have a track on maybe I mean, I don't know if it has the capability of doing it on, like, location based where you have it hooked up to GPS and then seeing what days of the week have the highest sale rates and then putting that on a map. You know, kind of like making it simplify.

Jon Foster:

Literally anybody can literally hop in that truck and do the most productive route, you know, that could be done.

Sheridan Wendt:

I think you just came up with a great software as a service. Right?

Jon Foster:

Yeah. I I think I did. Yeah.

Sheridan Wendt:

If you're a if you're a food truck operator, just use our app, and we will crawl the Internet. And you could just give us a ZIP code, and we will tell you about all the events going on in your area and where you need to be parking your food truck on which days at which times. Oh, good stuff, man.

Jon Foster:

Or even even where AI can look up the information. Like, let's say certain things need licensing or something like that. It could probably search out what district that is. Does it require licensing or not to to have a foods a food truck in that area? And then provide you with the information even.

Sheridan Wendt:

I like where your head's at, man. I like it. Another area, right? A third area could be experience, like the customer interactions, customer experience, making them smarter, making them more personalized based on conversation history, based on where they're at, maybe in your deal flow pipeline. AI can see what they've done, and what steps they've already taken, maybe conversations you've already had with them, so that you're not reaching out and saying the same thing, or asking them for the same information again.

Sheridan Wendt:

How many times have you called your internet service provider and gotten transferred around to five different people, and every time you have to authenticate, and tell them your name, and your address, and a million other data points about you, and this could really help, I think, personalize those experiences and make them a whole lot smarter.

Jon Foster:

Yeah. Nobody likes calling, calling, let alone a computer, let alone a person. You know? Getting the wild goose chase on the phone is probably my least favorite pastime.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right. Right. I can definitely think of several times I've called my ISP, spent an hour on the phone, and got absolutely nothing done.

Jon Foster:

Right.

Sheridan Wendt:

An hour I'll never get back. Alright. So we talked about maybe chatbots, you know, providing answers instantly to, or maybe tailor recommendations to customers, but I wanna definitely zoom in on that AI is not replacing relationships. Right? It's kinda helping take off the mental workload of some of the repetitive tasks so you can show up more and be more personable.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? We have it's not out yet, but we have released an an or we have recorded an episode with a real estate professional that I'm excited to to share with everyone, and it's on how AI is enhancing the human touch in the real estate industry. Right? So I'm excited to drop that. That's coming later.

Sheridan Wendt:

Just a quick teaser there. But, yeah, for the way that that kind of you know, the one of the takeaways there is that AI can bring a more human touch to customer support at scale, like, a large scale. Have you seen anybody actually improve their customer experiences with AI or maybe make them worse because they're using AI or automation?

Jon Foster:

I haven't really seen too much. I think maybe like, you know, when you get the chatbots, they're a little bit better. I've seen that a little bit of improvement there, but you know, like, you know, kind of, kind of a newbie, kind of a newbie on this subject.

Sheridan Wendt:

Yeah. Well, I like that you said that the chatbots are getting better because some of like, used to, you go to a chatbot, and you'd maybe click two or three options on a menu, and you kinda had this, like, predefined little tree that you would get routed through. And if you didn't if you're you know, if what you were trying to resolve didn't match any of the two or three little buttons, then you're kinda stuck. Right? And now, you can just type a question in directly, and with an LLM on the other side, it can help navigate a whole lot more effectively than you trying to click and navigate your way through their little customer support tree, if that makes sense.

Jon Foster:

So you you meant I don't I don't can't remember if you mentioned and explained it in the first episode, but LMN, can we or l l what what is it again?

Sheridan Wendt:

Yeah. LLM. It it stands for large language model, and it's essentially a it's what's behind ChatGPT. When you are interacting with ChatGPT, for example, or Claude, or DeepSeq, or any of these models, on the other side of that is a model. It's a a large language model, which is essentially just a file that has been trained on a lot of data, including a lot of data from the Internet, and it's all just compressed data into this file that you can download that's anywhere from maybe a gigabyte to, I think I've seen some over a 100 gigabytes.

Jon Foster:

Oh, wow.

Sheridan Wendt:

So but it's just a single file that has a lot of data compressed into it, and that's what you're interacting with when you use AI a lot of the times.

Jon Foster:

Yeah. And does it add on itself over time? Like, if I use, like, certain chatbot and it's got access to this LLM, when I ask it a question, can it update and, like, expand upon that further or no?

Sheridan Wendt:

That's a great question. So sort of. It depends is the answer. The short answer is no. Right?

Sheridan Wendt:

The short answer is that file itself is a, is like a static file, it's a, is what it is. But, when you connect that file to a memory source, like a vector database, that's how it gets to be self improving, or to learn about the person it's interacting with. Right?

Jon Foster:

For What's example, if you what's a vector database?

Sheridan Wendt:

A vector database is essentially a three d database. Okay. Most databases are in two two dimensions, right? Have tables with rows and columns. A vector database instead is in three d, has rows and columns and probably something else.

Sheridan Wendt:

I don't know what

Jon Foster:

it is. Well, looks like a cube.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right. Instead of a square yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of a square table, it's it looks like a cube.

Sheridan Wendt:

Okay. And it's just more efficient to to store the the data in that way. And what's stored in there usually is actually numbers. When you interact with ChatGPT, you get numbers. Right?

Sheridan Wendt:

Now before now before we get too off on a tangent, I wanna come back to AI and its value in business, and specifically, where is AI overhyped, right, and things to look out for. Because I want to mention, not every problem needs AI. Yeah. Right? Sometimes there are better systems out there, or better habits that solve more than just using AI for it.

Sheridan Wendt:

So, some areas that I think are probably overhyped are AI is going to replace everybody in marketing, or everybody who's a designer, right?

Jon Foster:

Virtual assistants.

Sheridan Wendt:

Well, mean, I just I think it's a little oversimplified. Right? Virtual assistants are have various skills. Right? They're not all created equally.

Sheridan Wendt:

Yeah. AI tools will make you go viral instantly. Right? Like, that's an unrealistic expectation. You need AI for everything.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? You might have heard of that. You might have heard of something like that. Right? But no.

Sheridan Wendt:

You you gotta clarify what actually matters. You gotta clarify the objective, the result that you're looking for. Right? You don't need AI for everything. Also wanna share some reality checks.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? Does it So on that note, first things that are overhyped, if you're trying to figure out if it's overhyped or not, right, here's a reality check framework that you can use, right, if you're trying to figure this out. Does it actually save time to reach my objective? Does it increase accuracy or consistency? And then does it improve customer experience?

Sheridan Wendt:

And if it doesn't do those things, it's probably just shiny object syndrome.

Jon Foster:

Okay. Do have an example of that? Like, that you've seen personally?

Sheridan Wendt:

Something I've seen that's a shiny object? Yeah. Let's see. Alright. I got an example for you.

Sheridan Wendt:

So content generation. Right? It it really comes down to not every content generation system is created equally. Because some people think, well, well, content generation's gonna replace human human content, like, entirely. Right?

Sheridan Wendt:

And that's that I would say, like, you probably have seen some pretty horrible AI content, right, that that didn't go that didn't, like, go anywhere. Another example I would give is AI replacing support, like a chatbot completely replacing human support. Right? It can't do everything. It can't, right now, at least, we're probably not gonna allow a chatbot to issue you a refund without a human taking a look at it.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? Probably not gonna allow a chatbot to make big decisions about your account or send you an invoice, right, just based off of, like, a a limited interaction, right, without context. So definitely some examples where it doesn't save time because then you might just run around in circles.

Jon Foster:

Yeah. Like, that's like the high-tech versus high touch. You know what I mean? Just imagine if they replaced AI HR, excuse me, and you got fired by, like, chatbot. You know?

Jon Foster:

I that's I don't think that's gonna go over really well.

Sheridan Wendt:

Oh, your example is way better than mine. I love it. Alright. Alright. So let's talk about measuring real ROI.

Sheridan Wendt:

You can't manage what you don't measure, even with AI. So I like to encourage people to do small experiments, you know, to pick a pick a process, automate one part of it, track the results, see if it's saving you time, see if it's saving you money, see if it's making you money. Right? So, a good example is, maybe you write movies. Right?

Sheridan Wendt:

Maybe you write a script. Screenwriter? Yeah. You're a screenwriter. How long is it gonna take you to write a scene?

Sheridan Wendt:

You know, maybe it takes you a couple hours before, and now you use AI and it helps you out, and it takes you twenty minutes now. Right? So, that's not a big, long process or workflow, right? But that's just an easy way to see time savings there. But if you're doing something like customer outreach or customer support, or you're using a chatbot for customer support, what can you measure?

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? You can measure how many tickets did we get last month? How was our average time to resolve those tickets? What was our average customer satisfaction? And then after you implement AI into your chatbot, not just an old school menu, but actually having LLM behind your chatbot.

Sheridan Wendt:

Mhmm. You know? Then you look at those same metrics and see what got better, what improved, and what maybe did not improve. Definitely make sure that we're measuring the ROI in that way. So I want so I want people to if you you know, if you're a business owner, you're a business leader out there, you wanna think about creating space for your team.

Sheridan Wendt:

Right? AI should create space for your team to do more with less. It should not add stress for your team.

Jon Foster:

For sure. For sure.

Sheridan Wendt:

Alright. So, with that, we're gonna kinda wrap up a little bit. A key takeaway, couple key takeaways from from today's episode. The real value of AI is in solving real problems, right? Not chasing tools, not trying to figure out which tool should I use.

Sheridan Wendt:

Different tools are good at different things. Now, I wanna emphasize, like, three pillars when it comes to deciding about using AI in your business, and that's efficiency, scalability, and experience. You know, is it going to be more efficient for your team? Is it going to help you scale more? Is it going to make this experience better?

Sheridan Wendt:

Next thing is, I would like to challenge all of our listeners to take one task, think about one task in your business that feels repetitive, or manual, or frustrating, and test an AI tool that you think might help you with that. Right? Try that out in the next week or so. And the next time that John and I hop on together, we're gonna roll up our sleeves, and we are gonna in episode three of the AI for Beginners series, we're gonna be talking about getting started with your first AI workflow. I hope we'll see you there.

Sheridan Wendt:

I've had a lot of fun. John, thanks for hopping on.

Jon Foster:

Thank you, Sheridan.

Sheridan Wendt:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody, this is your host, Sheridan, and we are signing off.