Latest / The Kelly Jedele Show / Implementing AI with TechCrunch Top 200 Alisha Esmail
Transcript
- Alisha Esmail: I have a lot of compassion and empathy for all business owners because this is really gonna shake up the way the world works. And if if you haven't started implementing it, you're already behind. Kelly: Welcome to the Kelly Jedele Show. I'm Kelly. 17 years of building businesses and zero interest in hustling myself into the ground. If you want the business and the life, you're home. Let's get into it. Kelly Jedele: Hey, and welcome back to the Kelly Jedele Show. I am so excited today to have Alisha Esmail as my guest. So excited. Alisha is a founder, AI implementation strategist, and the creator of the Five Tanks Framework. She built and sold an AI company, acquired in tw 2026, announced at TechCrunch Disrupt just a couple weeks ago, and has worked with over 500 businesses on integrating AI into their operations. She now helps service-based businesses and their teams implement AI that drives real efficiency and profit, not just more tools nobody needs uses. Alisha also founded Road Coffee Company, a nationally recognized specialty coffee brand with a social impact mission, and is the host of In the Pocket. She is also a friend of mine and an all-around badass person. Alisha, welcome to the show! Alisha Esmail: Thanks for having me. I'm so stoked to be here. Kelly Jedele: my gosh, we talk so often. And so it's fun to have you here. So we can just talk about what your world is and what's going on with you and all of the things. You have so many things that are exciting that are going on right now. I just love hearing about it. Yeah, awesome. So Alisha Esmail: Thank you. Yeah, it's life's a journey. Kelly Jedele: it is. It's so crazy, right? You went from sitting with coffee farmers to selling an AI company, and you say coffee to code wasn't a pivot, it was a continuation. But behind Road Coffee, you were working 80-hour work weeks and skipping meals, then your biggest client, people you called friends, sent you one email. We've decided to go in a different direction. What did you miss and how did that turn into latch? Alisha Esmail: that moment I I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting at the dinner table with my family and and that email came in. I was still checking my phone at the dinner table at that time. And Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: that email came in and I I remember my stomach dropping. They they actually weren't just our biggest client, Kelly. They were like fifty percent bigger than any of our other clients. And Kelly Jedele: my gosh. Alisha Esmail: at that point, like we had already grown a f a good amount, like we'd already won some awards. We we were growing, like we had lots of traction. So that was like a huge gut punch moment for me. But it's also the moment when I realized if I wanted to build a successful company in coffee, which is one of the most saturated markets in the world, I had only one option, and that was to become a retention expert. And so that's that's exactly what I did. I I started reading the books, listening to the podcasts, and hiring coaches. And we ended up triple tripling our revenue that coming year. And Kelly Jedele: Amazing. Alisha Esmail: that company continues to grow today, which is pretty exciting. Yeah. Kelly Jedele: Really? Yeah, you still have it with all that you have going. That's amazing. That is amazing. Latch was built to catch the quiet signals like you're talking about. Slower replies, changes in tone, clients drifting away. You call retention the moat, not the afterthought. So call us out. What quiet signal are small business owners ignoring right now? And what's one move that that saves the client? Alisha Esmail: Well I'll I'll rewind a sec. I think the biggest problem is businesses aren't even paying attention to signals because they don't prioritize it. Right. Kelly Jedele: Fair, fair. Alisha Esmail: So the signals aren't necessarily, you know, these super secret things that we're like we need like our our detective spy glasses on for. They're they're just not being paying attention to, right? Because most founders, and y I I know I've made this mistake, we focus on top of funnel sales and then delivery, like Getting our clients what we promise them, Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Alisha Esmail: and retention gets five minutes of airtime. Right? It's like Kelly Jedele: Maybe. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: it's like this unsexy problem that people ignore. And then what I call the the revenue treadmill, they're on this revenue treadmill, just trying to replace the clients. And instead of compounding their growth, they end up just growing flat and they're barely growing. Or they're growing, but they they could be, three, four, ten X where they already are if they were keeping their clients as they as they move forward. So I I'd say it actually starts with paying attention to the problem, which sounds Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Alisha Esmail: simple. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Right. But it's not you're spending so much time getting clients and delivering that the there are moments left in li very few moments left. It's just rare. So yeah, good cow good call. I I agree with you a hundred percent on that. The time needs to be spent there. Cause if we we kind of spread that time out, we're gonna we're gonna get more bang for our buck with the clients and they're gonna get a better delivery. They're gonna be they're gonna get Alisha Esmail: Yeah, absolutely. And Kelly Jedele: taken care of better. Alisha Esmail: retention at the end of the day is is relationships, right? It's making people feel seen and heard and driving more value. And when people get a ton of value, then they wanna stay with you, they wanna continue working with you. Kelly Jedele: Absolutely. Yeah, they're they want to spend their money. They they want to be taken care of and whatever. Yeah, it's so fantastic. So a few weeks ago, you were TechCrunch, top one of the top 200 in the world, Alisha. You're it's amazing, amazing to be called out for that. And so your company, Latch, give us the version that's not in the press release. Like, what was that TechCrunch stage like? What was that experience? Tell us about that. Alisha Esmail: Yeah, it w it was a lot of fun. making making TechCrunch Top 200 was pretty cool. there were some incredible, incredible companies this year. the company that actually took home the prize money, they they gift a hundred K to the top company. And w I just gotta give them a shout out because what they do is so incredible. They they make small organs. for for testing and for medical reasons. And so they can develop that and you it's used in studies to speed up the process and and really help move things forward in a meaningful way in in the healthcare industry. Kelly Jedele: Yeah, that's that's mind blow and females, right? Yeah. Woo hoo. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: And females, female founders. Yeah. Yeah, super cool. So the they they did say this year was the the year that they had the most applications from around the world. so thousands and thousands of people apply. and it was fun. It was really fun to be part of that group, part of that cohort. they give a lot of value to the companies applying. So there was a whole program leading up to it, which was awesome and and just connecting with some of the other companies was cool. But Being there in person was was fantastic. I had actually never been to San Francisco was also my first time, believe it or not, in in San Francisco, which a lot of people, Kelly Jedele: Yeah. It's a great city. Alisha Esmail: I've always been a tech founder at heart, so a lot of people are like, Have you never made it down there? But it was it was a riot. Like I remember landing and you know, events like this. There's there's all these like other events and side events every single day. So it's kinda go, go, go. But I was I was pretty nervous leading up to the pitch and and getting on stage and making the announcement and especially because I was supposed to go up there and talk about Latch. And then I got up there and you know shared shared the announcement about the acquisition and and made it about our customers because at the end of the day, like that's what's really important. And then we talked about how Gemma and the Latch can better serve customers together. So it was really it was really cool and and we kept the main thing the main thing, which is is always our customers at the end of the day. Kelly Jedele: So so walk me through this. You started latch when Alisha Esmail: just under a year ago. Just about a year ago. I to be fair though, I built it out for Road first. So built it out for Road, figured out that other other companies could use what we were doing, that retention was like a, you know, a global problem. and then tr spun it into a a different company. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Still just I'm so impressed with you. Just building this company up, female founder, AI, just the the tech part of it, all of that. You're managing all of the pieces and the bits and then to get acquired, just it's it's just really just amazing to me. Like just so phenomenal. I'm just so impressed. Constantly, constantly Alisha Esmail: Appreciate that. Thank you. Kelly Jedele: proud proud. so you coined the phrase shadow burnout, where everything looks fine on the outside, but you're running on fumes. you even built an AI agent that interviews and and you you define where you're hiding. In this next chapter, which of your five tanks runs dry first? How do you keep fear, courage, and vulnerability in the same room? Alisha Esmail: Yeah, that's a packed question, Kelly. that's a loaded that's a loaded question. Kelly Jedele: Yeah, it's like multiple levels. Yeah. Pick any part. Alisha Esmail: yeah, I'd say like which tank so the five tanks mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, physical. We all have them. How we fill them up is different. And and when they're empty is usually when we're spiraling and blowing up our relationships unnecessarily. I'd say I probably didn't Not probably, if I'm being honest. I know I didn't keep that at the center of what I was doing this last year. It was it was an all in season and and pretty intense and and I probably should have. I I definitely think I stayed on top of the physical tank the best. And I think the one that probably got the least attention this last season was my emotional tank. and just ignoring, ignoring how I was feeling. And just kept pushing forward. And I think I learned a lot through that where if if you're disconnected from your emotions and you're not it it affects everything else, right? Like it affects your sharpness, it affects how you interact with others, and it really affects how you feel. Like I think I think one thing as business owners and I think especially female business owners and founders, we we don't celebrate the wins. enough, we just go to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing instead of Kelly Jedele: No. Yeah. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: stopping and, congratulating ourselves and we're we're better at congratulating others. women women supporting women is awesome, but sometimes we don't do that you know, for ourselves. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. So how are you going to celebrate the acquisition of Latch? Alisha Esmail: I am Kelly Jedele: Or have you? Alisha Esmail: well we're we're taking a trip. We're gonna go to Thailand and Vietnam. So I'm pretty excited about that. Kelly Jedele: Love that. Love that. Alisha Esmail: it's a it's a weird season, right? Like it's it's coming into the end of the year, Q4. so right now I'm focused on just helping some of my friends in being support to some companies around me. And and and we're taking some some small trips here and there. Kelly Jedele: Yeah, it's good. Alisha Esmail: the winters in Canada are hard, so it's really the better time to to get away. That's right. Yeah. It's our minus forty winters. You gotta you gotta escape them. Yeah. Kelly Jedele: That's right. You're not in Texas. I forget that. I f I always forget that. Yeah. It's not 65 degrees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's 18 degrees here. So we're we're happy. We're happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's toasty. Yeah, we're we're Alisha Esmail: Wow, that's it's zero degrees here. Cool. Kelly Jedele: we're doing great. No fall, no fall boots here. So Alisha, now that Latch has been acquired, what is next? I wanna I want to hear more about this. Like where are you? What is your What's on the horizon? What's your dreams, your goals? Tell us about that. Alisha Esmail: Well, think the biggest thing I've seen, honestly, in the last year, I spoke to well over 500 companies now, probably getting closer to six, and I'm seeing two major extremes in AI. Okay, you're seeing the people that still have no idea where to start. They know it's important, they know it's not going away, and they just they get overwhelmed by it. They still have a business to run. So they're like, how am I supposed to learn this new thing and run my business? And it they just Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Alisha Esmail: don't know where to start. Then you have the second, Kelly Jedele: Where does it fit? Alisha Esmail: it is, it's it's very real. And I I have a lot of compassion and empathy for all business owners because this is really gonna shake up the way the world works. And if if you haven't started implementing it, you're already behind. But we don't want people to feel that way. We want them to feel empowered and supported and and ready to crush it. So then you have the other side though, and this one, this one kind of like makes me laugh a little bit. And I know we've riffed on this a little bit, but You have this other side where founders and and executives and business owners are just going. I'm I'm gonna I'm doing air quotes here all in on AI, and they're playing around with all these tools and they're spending all this money, but nothing's actually changing in their business. So they're not more profitable, they're not more efficient, and their team is getting frustrated with them because they've built this dashboard that doesn't really work and they're frustrated with their team because their team is not using the dashboard and these agents they're trying to build, but the staff are like, we still have our job to do and we don't see the benefit of this. So there's this massive disconnect. And I'm actually gonna steal an analogy from the founder of of High Level, who I I had on my podcast recently. He Kelly Jedele: Yeah, yeah. Alisha Esmail: used this analogy of a tree. And how, before AI, we used to cut down trees with a s a s like a an axe or like one of those saws, right? Kelly Jedele: Right. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: And go back and forth, it'd take a while. And now all of a sudden with AI, we have these chainsaws. And so business owners and executives are, you know, just taking chainsaws to all these trees, and they're becoming tree cutters instead of running their business. And I think that's a huge mistake. AI's not there. To distract us. It should be there. If if you're smart about it, you should use it to leverage it so that you're focusing on only what you can do. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: So that's that's the area that I want to focus on next is helping businesses implement AI in a way that's really gonna move the needle for their business, really getting that efficiencies, the workflows on lockdown, and helping their team focus on their zone of genius. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. You asked that asked me that question yesterday that I saw that you asked a few other people, talk about that. Alisha Esmail: Yeah, the theory of constraints. it's it's so simple, but it's something that I wish I learned earlier in business, but also I I w I think we all need to come back to. in business. It doesn't matter, like you could you could apply it to life too. But the theory of constraints is what is your biggest bottleneck? What is the one thing that you know if you changed that one thing, everything else flows. Everything else flows. And so A lot of times we're we're solving the wrong problem and we're wasting our time, we're wasting our energy and we're not getting ahead. I I think same thing with with AI, right? We're playing with all these tools and we're not getting ahead because we're not solving the right problem. And so for anyone that's listening, like even just take a moment today, what is the one thing that you know if you solve that in your business, you become more profitable, you have your time back so you can spend more time doing what you love, whether that's growing your business or with your family, travel. What's that one thing? And then attack it. wake up every morning and attack that thing for the first three, four hours of the day. Kelly Jedele: It's in my world, that's the one thing that with Jay Pepazan and Gary Keller, that book, I've read that book so many times. And it's just what's the one thing that we can do today that would, make everything else you just not not needed? So that the theory of constraints is just it's it's amazing. So also let's go back to AI. So do you have what are your thoughts on the the different systems? Are you a are you all in with Claude? Are you a grok bot? Like what's going on? Like talk talk to us about, you know, chat GPT. Where are you? Where are you with the different systems? Where are you? What today? Yeah. Yeah, we wanna know. You we top two hundred. Yeah, right. In this moment it does. Alisha Esmail: Yeah, yeah. that's the golden question, right? That's the golden question that everyone's asking. And I I love that you just said today, right? Like, cause it changes. Like I used to be all in on AI, and then I went super hard into Claude. And I don't think I've ever been in a season where I'm only using one platform. Like it's it's a mix. Like I s I still Kelly Jedele: Same. Yeah, that's fair. Alisha Esmail: have some open claw stuff running for me that's doing its job. I went really hard on OpenClaw when it came out, bought a Mac Mac mini. Got it all set up, and then moved a lot of that stuff back to to Anthropic and Claude. I'd say my number one for my main my main work is still Claude. I I like Anthropic's values and what they stand for. I know there's no perfect AI platform out there. But they seem to be the best when I if you read the read their t terms and services when it comes to data and safety. I trust them a fair bit, compared to some of the other players out there. won't name names, but I also Kelly Jedele: Yeah, yeah. Alisha Esmail: I still have Grockbot running some things for me in you know, taking care of some business on the personal side. Muse is good for some of the personal stuff. Am I if I am I gonna give them my f financial information? Not right now. But who knows, ask me in a month, maybe things have shifted in the landscape. and then, open AI is still doing really cool stuff. when it comes to imaging and certain workflows, we still leverage like ChatGPT and open AI codecs quite a bit. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. That that's awesome. And I know that you have created several agents and t talk to me more about the agents that you've created and what you're what you're using them for, what you're proud of, like what you've had clients, you know, share with clients. Like where are you in that and talk more about that? Alisha Esmail: I think one of my favorite ones is the LinkedIn engine. I recently Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Alisha Esmail: gave it to a friend of mine to set up and she told me in in after two weeks of using it 'cause I hadn't talked to her, she told me she had gotten more engagement on LinkedIn in that two weeks than she ever has before. And that was cool to hear. Yeah. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. That's awesome. Alisha Esmail: Yeah. So I that's one of my favorite ones right now. Kelly Jedele: there when she said that. That was that was like Yeah. Alisha Esmail: That was a cool one. another one is my podcast agent. So I have four different agents that are part of my podcasting team. And it's been cool. Like some of the guests I've been able to get, like I mentioned the the founder of of Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Alisha Esmail: High Level was on my podcast recently. Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Alisha Esmail: And that was because my my agent, my employee set that up for me. And and that's pretty cool. I've I've met some amazing people from around the world who are doing all sorts of impact-driven change to AI stuff to you know what some would call old school traditional business. And so that's one of my favorites. I would say every time I find myself doing a task more than once, definitely more than twice, I start looking at how that can become an agent. And I then I also have a few agents that all that figure out who other Who else we need to hire when it comes to to AI employees? So I have an AI employee Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Yeah. Who do we build the team? Alisha Esmail: that I'll run and it it goes through everything we're doing and it finds where we're still wasting time and repeating the same task that that could be taken off our plate. So that's actually recently become one of my favorites. and then of course I have like my finance agents, my marketing agents, a pool of operation agents. HR, it's it depends on the flavor of the week, but those are some of my favorites right now. Kelly Jedele: Yeah, that's awesome. So walk me through when you're talking to a new small business that you're working with, like what does that process look like when you're like how to see what their current systems are and how AI could be added in? Like how would you just be a part of their community and their world to figure out where AI can fit in and help them? Alisha Esmail: Yeah, I typically start with a quick AI audit to understand their business and their landscape because there's certain things with AI that are the same across the board, but business needs might differ, right? If we go back to the theory of constraints, that one thing is gonna be different from you to me to, you know, John or Jill. So understanding what their what their business goals are and where they are and their workflows, their processes, and their teams is really important. Because if just throw AI on top of a broken process or crap, you're gonna you're gonna get crap faster, which we don't want, right? So Kelly Jedele: More crap Alisha Esmail: more crap, more crap and quicker. That's it's not really what we're going for. So Kelly Jedele: Not at Alisha Esmail: what I do is just help identify what that roadmap to implementing AI looks like, and then if something is broken or needs to be tweaked, we can identify that, fix that first, and then let's start. integrating AI to buy back your time immediately. And I think I think it's in some instances it's easier than people think it is. And even if they just start talking to Claude or ChatGPT or Grok, they can find they can find those workflows and start taking stuff off their plate. The the trick is though is you don't want to just start having AI do things for you willy-nilly, like checking your email, updating your email, clearing it up. You want repeatable agents that are doing work and actually taking it off your plate where you're not the director anymore. you're not saying, Hey, check my email, organize my email. It's just doing it on a regular basis. So even my EA, my EA doesn't really do EA tasks anymore. She's more of a chief of staff. Kelly Jedele: And and that's I think part of what I just I really love about what you're doing with the small businesses and just a huge shout out for you is I as a small business owner, like there's very little bandwidth in my day, in my brain, to be able to add on this whole new AI system. Like I get overwhelmed with it quickly. And I am using it not as efficiently as I could. So having someone like you come in and do an audit with me. to be able to help me see where I can add in AI, how to add in AI, and which agents to do that and how to do that is just majorly impactful. So for a company like mine that's been around for 17 years, there are, I mean, multiple areas of of AI possibility just in my probably just day one, like the first ten minutes of my day. So what's one area that you would say if you were me that you would implement AI if you if you were me today? Alisha Esmail: I'd get I'd get an AI brain in place if you don't have one, so that your team can also leverage a lot of your knowledge. Like part of what what I why Kelly Jedele: Fair Alisha Esmail: I was able to start focusing and go all in on AI is the first thing I did for for the coffee company was build out that central brain. And now it's changed and adapted over the years, but it started there because if you have that, all the other workflows can build on top of it. And it's The same knowledge and all the information, which I will say, pre-AI, that's been one of the hardest things for any business owner and founder, right? Is like taking what's in here and Kelly Jedele: Absolutely. Yeah. Alisha Esmail: getting it like into your staff and getting it into your team. And as there's turnover, yeah, and like even turnover and like management, right? It's like, okay, like now I gotta retrain this person. Yeah. But Kelly Jedele: Yeah. Just those new little nuances. Yeah. Yeah, and the turnover. Yeah. Yeah. Not enough SOPs. Yeah. In in any yeah. Alisha Esmail: having that, that centralized AI brain is is game changing for that because yeah. Yeah. Kelly Jedele: That's brilliant. Yeah, great, great. Well, thank you for your time today. That's it for us in this moment, but I know that you and I will continue this conversation. Where can people find you? Alisha Esmail: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm pretty active on there. Just DM Kelly Jedele: Okay. Alisha Esmail: me. actually, you know what? I'm happy to give you know a gift away to your to your listeners if they're interested in that audit and they're not sure if and where they can implement AI, just DM me audit and I will send them a free quiz that they can take and work through. And that'll give them some insight on where they should be leveraging AI in their business. Kelly Jedele: Fantastic. Okay. Alisha Esmail: So DM me on socials and then check out my website Alishaesmail.com and or check out the episode of Kelly on my podcast on In the Pocket. Kelly Jedele: Yeah, we did podcasts on yours. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you for your time today, Alisha And if you like this podcast, please like or share it with anyone that you know that might benefit from it. And if you're looking for a podcast, please subscribe and we would love to hear more from you. Thank you for your time today and we'll see you next week. Bye y'all. Kelly: That's the show. One favor before you go. Send this to one woman who needed to hear it today. Strong doesn't mean solo. I'll see you next week.