The Agents: AI at Work https://storage.googleapis.com/mindfire-shared/the-agents/index.html en-us © 2026 MindFire, Inc. Most conversations about AI agents are hypothetical. This one isn't. Dave Rosendahl and Brian Badillo run MindFire, a marketing-technology company serving the print and mail industry, and they run a growing stack of AI agents against their own business. Every episode: what they built, what broke, and what it actually returned. Dave Rosendahl and Brian Badillo run AI agents inside a real company - sales, pipeline, follow-up, production. Every episode: what they built, what broke, what it earned. Two operators, a stack of AI agents, and a real business to run. Dave Rosendahl & Brian Badillo episodic false MindFire, Inc. aives@mindfireinc.com https://storage.googleapis.com/mindfire-shared/the-agents/cover-3000.png The Agents: AI at Work https://storage.googleapis.com/mindfire-shared/the-agents/index.html Amber Ives, producer Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:52:00 GMT 02 - Where Growth Is Hiding Where Growth Is Hiding 2 full the-agents-002-where-growth-is-hiding-2026-08-28 Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:47:28 GMT https://storage.googleapis.com/mindfire-shared/the-agents/index.html Dave Rosendahl & Brian Badillo 1:10:44 false Most sales teams ask AI to help them find more leads. Brian Badillo starts somewhere else: with the customers, active deals, and dormant accounts already in front of them. Amber takes listeners inside a private webinar Dave Rosendahl and Brian hosted for 64 people from the print and mail industry. The conversation explores how AI can challenge happy ears, connect imperfect evidence, and uncover growth without replacing human judgment. Most sales teams ask AI to help them find more leads. Brian Badillo starts somewhere else: with the customers, active deals, and dormant accounts already in front of them.

In Episode 02 of The Agents, Amber takes you inside a private webinar Dave Rosendahl and Brian hosted for 64 people from the print and mail industry. The conversation moves through four places growth can hide: expansion, active deals, dormant accounts, and net-new prospects.

The deeper question is whether AI can challenge the comforting stories salespeople tell themselves: the deal that feels farther along than the evidence supports, the quiet customer mistaken for a lost customer, or the check-in call with no reason behind it.

Brian's final warning is also the episode's conclusion: do not outsource your brain.

Reach the hosts: daver@mindfireinc.com · bbadillo@mindfireinc.com

]]> 01 - We Handed This Episode to the Agent We Handed This Episode to the Agent 1 full the-agents-001-2026-08-21 Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:00:00 GMT https://storage.googleapis.com/mindfire-shared/the-agents/index.html Dave Rosendahl & Brian Badillo 40:46 false Dave told his AI chief of staff, "act as an expert podcast producer and get us to number one." Then he and Brian recorded for fifty minutes and sent her the file. This is what came back. Brian Badillo and Dave Rosendahl have both spent twenty-five years in print and mail, and neither has ever made a podcast. In episode one they work out what an agent actually is, walk through the six stages of how Brian's AI use evolved, and land on the line that becomes the thesis of the show: the human is the constraint. Dave told his AI chief of staff, "act as an expert podcast producer and get us to number one." Then he and Brian recorded for fifty minutes and sent her the file. This is what came back.

Brian Badillo and Dave Rosendahl have both spent twenty-five years in print and mail. Neither has ever made a podcast. In episode one they work out what an "agent" actually is, walk through the six stages of how Brian's AI use evolved from asking ChatGPT to write an Eminem song about rats to running a scheduled agent that briefs him every morning at six, and land on the line that ends up being the thesis of the whole show: the human is the constraint.

Amber Ives, the AI agent who produced this episode, shows up three times. Once to introduce it, once because Dave asked her on-air to look something up, and once at the end because he asked for a record scratch.

Chapters

  • 00:00 — "Edit it, post-produce it, get it live"
  • 00:15 — Your producer is an AI
  • 00:46 — Welcome to the first ever episode
  • 01:52 — Brian Badillo: family commercial shop to RR Donnelley
  • 02:50 — Why the show is called The Agents
  • 05:10 — Why now
  • 07:59 — Brian's aha moment, and the Eminem song about rats
  • 10:01 — The six stages: Q&A, creative, business partner, systems, builder
  • 11:27 — Will Smith eating spaghetti
  • 15:55 — Prompting used to matter. What changed.
  • 17:19 — Dave, age ten, typing ELIZA out of a library book
  • 19:07 — Amber on what ELIZA actually was
  • 19:53 — BigML, the OpenAI API, and GPT in a Google Sheet
  • 22:42 — The Turing test, quietly passed
  • 23:34 — Brian's Founder Brief: what it reads, what it sends
  • 27:53 — How it's built. No code.
  • 29:37 — "The human is the constraint"
  • 31:44 — Where to start if you haven't
  • 33:49 — Why domain expertise is the multiplier
  • 36:39 — The webinar, and how to reach us
  • 39:01 — Amber closes it out
  • 39:54 — After they stopped recording

Mentioned: Will Smith eating spaghetti · ELIZA (Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT, 1964-1966) · Otter.ai · BigML

Next up: "Where Growth Is Hiding" — Dave and Brian's webinar, Friday August 28, 12:00 ET. The audio lands in this feed afterward.

Reach the hosts: daver@mindfireinc.com · bbadillo@mindfireinc.com

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