Why Plugging AI Tools Into Your Business Isn't Working ft. Jordan Fleming

Jordan Samuel Fleming is the founder and chairman of smrtPhone, a real estate technology company he scaled from three co-founders to roughly $10 million in annual revenue and 60 employees over eight years. He stepped out of the CEO seat in March 2025 and spent the following year building the AI Labor Architecture Framework, now the foundation of his new book, *The AI Workforce: How to Redesign and Scale Your Business with Artificial Intelligence*. In this solo episode, Jordan lays out why plugging AI tools into your existing processes misses the real leverage, and walks through the three-part framework he built to redesign a business around agentic workers. If you're a business owner wondering whether AI makes your company obsolete or whether your processes are even ready for AI employees, this episode reframes the question entirely. **Timeline Summary** \[0:25] – Jordan opens a special solo episode about his new book on AI and business redesign \[1:36] – Why "redesign" is the most important word in *The AI Workforce* title \[2:14] – Scaling smrtPhone from three co-founders to 60 employees and $10 million in revenue \[3:36] – The distinct levels every business hits at 10, 20, 40, and 60 people \[5:10] – Stepping down as CEO in March 2025 to become chairman and what that freed up \[6:53] – How leaving day to day operations broadened his thinking beyond the C-suite \[7:15] – Early conversations with Stephanie Betters and the shift toward voice AI agents \[9:12] – The question nobody was asking: how do agents actually work inside a company \[10:08] – Treating AI agents as real employees, not just fast 24/7 capabilities \[15:26] – The assumption every business runs on that is no longer valid \[16:43] – Why CRMs and automation accelerate but never actually make decisions \[18:17] – Introducing the AI Labor Architecture Framework built over months of testing \[19:46] – Part one, work architecture: unbundling work, role, and execution from the human \[22:02] – Part two, bounded responsibility: why fuzzy processes propped up by Jim break AI \[24:12] – Part three, infrastructure: an agent making 10,000 calls creates chaos without flow \[31:25] – Why agentic AI is as drastic a shift as the internet itself **5 Key Takeaways** 1. **Stop Bundling Work Into People** — We've always packaged work, role, and execution into a single human job. Work architecture separates those three things so you can see what actually needs to get done rather than who does it. 2. **Automation Never Made Decisions** — CRMs and automation tools run on if-this-then-that logic. Agentic workers analyze new situations in context and take action, which is why treating them like accelerants misses the entire point. 3. **Fuzzy Processes Break AI** — If your documented process quietly depends on Jim knowing when to deviate, that isn't a process. AI can't follow judgment calls, so bounded responsibility means defining context, limits, and escalation paths explicitly. 4. **Leverage Dies At The Handoff** — An agent that makes 10,000 calls a week creates chaos, not leverage, if a human has to hunt down the outputs and decide next steps. Infrastructure is about work moving seamlessly between people, AI, and systems. 5. **Redesign Instead Of Downsizing** — Redesigning processes around AI workers usually frees a team to handle ten times the volume rather than cutting headcount. The output is higher growth capacity, not a smaller payroll. **Links & Resources** - That Real Estate Tech Guy — https://thatrealestatetechguy.com - The Future Workforce AI (free book registration and framework system) — https://thefutureworkforce.ai - smrtPhone — https://smrtphone.io - REI Tech Unlocked, September 19 to 21, Dallas TX — use the coupon code in the episode description for 50% off through August 4, 2026 - Left Main REI (Stephanie Betters) — https://leftmainrei.com - Objection Proof AI (Steve Trang) — https://objectionproof.ai **Enjoyed This Episode?** If the line about your process being propped up by Jim making judgment calls landed a little too close to home, you already know where your business isn't ready for AI workers yet. Send this to an operator who keeps buying AI tools and wondering why nothing compounds, because the fix is in the redesign, not the tool. Follow That Real Estate Tech Guy, and leave a rating and review so more business owners can find these conversations.