Artificial Reality

Galina Fendikevich
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Business

Everyone is talking about what AI can do. Few are talking about what people actually need it to do. Artificial Reality is a podcast about the reality behind AI adoption. Hosted by Galina Fendikevich, the show explores how AI is actually being used across industries like manufacturing, construction, logistics, healthcare, finance, hospitality, and beyond. Each episode brings together operators, executives, founders, and industry experts to answer three questions: • What's working? • What's broken? • What still needs to be built? While much of the AI conversation focuses on models, funding, and product launches, Artificial Reality focuses on the people expected to use these tools every day. How are businesses actually adopting AI? Where does implementation break down? What problems still haven't been solved? And what should builders create next? The future of AI shouldn't be shaped only by the people building it. It should also be shaped by the people using it. Artificial Reality is where those conversations happen. Follow along here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/

Episodes

  1. Jul 18

    How a Non-Tech Founder Built a 15-Agent AI Health & Wellness Business on Claude

    Dr. Nikki Siso built 15 Claude skills to assess your toxic load. One client's root belief surfaced in just 3 questions. The holistic health practitioner and Conscious Kitchen founder breaks down how her TALKS assessment cut client intake from hours to 45 minutes with a 10-page report, why she banned all FDA and EPA-approved sources from her AI, and how a client reached the root of a lifelong belief system in 3 questions after years of therapy never got there. Dr. Nikki Siso is a certified holistic health practitioner and the founder of Conscious Kitchen in Westlake Hills, Austin, Texas. She developed Type 1 diabetes at 29 despite being vegan since 15, which launched a quest through a Harvard master's in sustainability, a PhD in holistic health, shamanic work, and every biohacking tool she could find. She now runs TALKS, a total toxic load assessment powered by Claude. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in holistic health coaching: Nikki's TALKS assessment walks clients through 15 body systems, then hunts through their bathroom, kitchen, and thought patterns for toxins. It generates a 10-page report in minutes. Before AI, the same process took hours and was never as thorough.She trained Claude across 15 disciplines and directed it where not to look. No FDA, EPA, or pharmaceutical-approved sources. The EPA approved 86,000 chemicals by letting companies self-certify safety.A client who worked with therapists for years said the assessment reached the root of her lifelong belief system in just 3 questions.The assessment took hundreds of hours to build. The 10-page report crashed the chat when it exceeded token limits. The team had to move report generation to the backend and deliver it by email.Nikki wants real-time voice conversations in her cloned voice so clients can walk through their home during the assessment. The current 5-8 second delay makes the experience too jerky.This episode is for you if you're a health practitioner or coach looking to scale without losing your personal approach, if you're a business owner curious about what it actually takes to build an AI product from scratch, or if you're building tools for practitioners and want to hear what's missing in deployment, voice, and backend orchestration. Follow Dr. Nikki Siso: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nikkisiso Conscious Kitchen: consciouskitchenatx.com TALKS Assessment: consciouskitchenatx.com/talks Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality Hosted by Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

  2. Jul 17

    I Trusted AI To Build My Restaurant, It Cost Me $30,000

    Dr. Nikki Siso used AI to open a raw restaurant. Some tools saved thousands. Others cost her $30,000 and a full month. The Conscious Kitchen founder breaks down how ChatGPT caught 8 harmful clauses in a 45-page lease in 3 minutes, why AI completely missed the local permitting steps needed to pass health inspection, and how she built 15 custom skills in Claude to assess toxic load across food, homes, and thought patterns. Dr. Nikki Siso is a certified holistic health practitioner and the founder of Conscious Kitchen, a raw, organic, plant-based, gluten-free restaurant in Westlake Hills just outside Austin, Texas. She holds a PhD in holistic health and nutrition with a specialty in peak performance and co-founded the restaurant with her mother, a master chef of 30 years. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in holistic food and restaurant startups: Nikki told ChatGPT to "act like a commercial real estate agent" and review her 45-page lease. It flagged 8 risky clauses and drafted a letter to the landlord. An attorney reviewed the letter for free instead of his usual $1,000 fee.AI had zero structured guidance on restaurant permitting. It didn't know that hiring an MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) engineer should be step one. That gap cost a month of delays and $30,000 on an unnecessary contractor.The opening budget was $30,000. The final cost was $85,000. Nikki was on Facebook Marketplace buying chandeliers for $50 and driving to Dripping Springs to pick them up.She wishes someone would build an AI tool that pairs your blood work and dietary restrictions with a restaurant menu and tells you what you can safely order.AI-generated label designs came back looking generic. A human designer made microscopic adjustments that gave her brand a sophistication AI could not replicate. This episode is for you if you're opening a restaurant or food business and want to know which AI tools save real time, if you're exploring AI for the first time and want honest stories instead of hype, or if you're building AI products and want to hear what's missing in local permitting, budgeting, and personalized nutrition. Follow Dr. Nikki Siso: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nikkisiso Conscious Kitchen: consciouskitchenatx.com Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality Hosted by Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

  3. Jul 15

    How She Cut Her Payroll by 83% Using This One AI Agent

    M&A adviser Christine McDannell says her $100/month Claude subscription does the work of $40,000 in monthly payroll. She breaks down how she trained Claude to draft every client email in five days, why a seller walked into a meeting with a $5 million AI valuation on $125,000 in net profit, and what Claude told her after analyzing 18 months of her Slack messages. Christine is the founder of The Magnolia Firm, a boutique M&A brokerage specializing in selling profitable tech companies. She built and sold multiple companies of her own before launching the firm five years ago, running her own exits and deal processes from start to finish. She also runs an AI implementation club in Austin. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in mergers and acquisitions: How Christine trained Claude to draft all her client emails. It checks every 30 minutes, writes meeting briefs from her calendar, and got so good that she and her team couldn't tell who wrote them.The $5 million valuation disaster. A husband and wife team used Claude to value their business and it counted every department's payroll as an asset instead of an expense. The real number was a 3 to 4x multiple on $125,000.She exported 18 months of Slack messages and every Trello task, then told Claude not to hold back on leadership feedback. It pointed out she said "sorry" 148 times compared to her team member's 14.Why she built an AI voice phone agent but hasn't fully deployed it. The latency creates awkward pauses that make callers want to hit zero for a human. She is waiting for the tech to catch up.Her pitch to Silicon Valley: build one end-to-end marketing tool. Right now it takes five separate tools for keywords, captions, branding, and posting. She is still the bottleneck at every micro step. This episode is for you if you work in M&A, business brokerage, or professional services and want to see how one adviser automated nearly her entire workflow. It's also for business owners testing AI tools who want real examples of what saves money versus what still falls short. And if you build AI products, you will hear exactly where the tooling gaps are from someone deep in the workflow every single day. Follow Christine McDannell: Website: https://www.christinemcdannell.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinemcdannell/  Artificial Reality: Website: https://www.artificialrealitymedia.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/ In-person events: https://luma.com/artificialreality Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/

  4. Jun 18

    He Runs PR for Deep Tech Startups. If Your Agency Isn't Using AI, They're Robbing You.

    PR strategist Sam Polstein breaks down why AI makes everyone an average comms person, why LLMs cannot build media lists, and why AI copy has zero emotional resonance. Sam leads communications and content at House, a creative shop focused on deep tech startups. He started on political campaigns across the Midwest before moving into corporate comms and eventually narrowing his focus to hardware and deep tech companies building complex products. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in deep tech communications: Sam runs his entire workflow on Claude paired with Obsidian, storing client strategy, call transcripts, and writing standards as plain markdown files. If he ever needs to switch LLMs, the context is portable because it belongs to him, not the model.The PR job has fundamentally changed. Sam no longer writes press releases sentence by sentence. He pulls insights from client conversations like an investigative reporter, and AI handles the drafting. The real work is in finding the angle.LLMs are surprisingly bad at building journalist media lists. Predicting what a reporter will write next requires tangential thinking and fresh data. When there is even a three-week lag in the model's information, it is basically useless for this task.Sam keeps a context folder called "good writing" with examples and a trope checklist. He has Claude edit its own drafts against that folder. Even so, every LLM has a recognizable tone that makes everything sound the same.His top wish is a journalist intelligence tool he can debate like a colleague. He wants to ask "Will this reporter cover my client?" and have it argue back using that reporter's most recent articles and beat direction. This episode is for you if:  → You work in communications, PR, or content marketing for technical companies and want to see how a working AI workflow actually looks.  → You are a founder or business owner trying to figure out whether AI can replace your comms team or just make them faster.  → You are building AI tools and want to understand what PR professionals actually need that nobody has built yet. Follow Sam Polstein: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sampolstein Website: deeptech.agency Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

  5. Jun 18

    Why AI Keeps Failing in Luxury Hospitality (And the $Billion Opportunity Behind the Scenes)

    Sofiane Ghorbel has spent 25 years in luxury hospitality. His take: AI's biggest opportunity isn't at the front desk. Luxury hospitality executive Sofiane Ghorbel breaks down how AI lets small teams operate like large organizations, why luxury clients are the least willing to share the data AI needs most, and why the real value of AI in hospitality lives behind the scenes. Sofiane Ghorbel is the Founder and CEO of AL Hospitality Group, a firm focused on luxury hotel investment, repositioning, management, and strategic advisory. With over 25 years serving luxury travelers, family offices, and institutional clients, he's seen hospitality from the guest, operator, owner, and investor perspective. This fall, he's launching AI and luxury roundtables in New Canaan, Connecticut to connect AI innovators with hospitality leaders. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in luxury hospitality: AI is already a force multiplier for small luxury teams. Destination research, hotel comparisons, itinerary creation, and proposal prep now happen in a fraction of the time.Marriott deployed an AI concierge chatbot and a reporter found it couldn't even recommend local restaurants. They pivoted to backend operations, where it actually delivered."We don't sell rooms. We don't sell cruises. We don't sell flights. We sell trust." One wrong AI recommendation can destroy a client relationship that took years to build.Sofiane wants an AI tool that manages the follow-up process after booking. His team manually calls every hotel concierge and provider to check on welcome envelopes, restaurant options, and local safety conditions.The real AI value is behind the scenes. Investors and hotel owners who use AI to analyze markets and move faster will win the deal. The ones who wait will lose it. This episode is for you if you work in luxury hospitality, travel advisory, or hotel investment and want to know where AI fits your workflow today. It's also for business owners exploring AI adoption who want a real look at what delivers and what falls flat. And if you're building AI products, this is a front-row seat into what practitioners actually need, from privacy-safe personalization to workflow-specific tools. Follow Sofiane Ghorbel: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sofianeghorbel Website: alhospitalitygroup.com Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media Events: luma.com/artificialreality Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

  6. Jun 17

    How a Luxury Yacht Company Is Using AI Without Losing the Personal Touch

    Luxury yacht broker Jennifer Kerum breaks down why 80% of her clients have no idea what they actually want, the time a client used ChatGPT to overrule his own captain, and why Silicon Valley has no idea what the yacht charter industry needs. Jennifer Kerum is the founder of Anchor Croatia and the upcoming Luxury Yacht Rentals. She built a yacht charter business from scratch with zero industry background, grew it through social media in an industry dominated by companies that have been around since the 1950s, and is now expanding globally with AI at the center of her new platform. In this episode, we cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in the luxury yacht rental industry: ● How AI translation is helping her serve international clients across languages that Google Translate used to butcher ● Why a client screenshotted ChatGPT's answer about anchoring in 25 knots of wind and called her furious when it was wrong ● The "what's your vibe" onboarding idea that could replace a month and a half of back-and-forth with first-time yacht renters ● Why she wants AI to remember what wine her clients drank, what islands they visited, and their kids' birthdays ● Why charter companies keep getting ignored by AI builders who would rather do hackathons than get on a boat This episode is for you if you run or work in luxury travel, hospitality, or charter services. If you're a business owner exploring AI but don't know where to start. Or if you build AI tools and want to understand what real operators actually need. Follow Jennifer Kerum: Instagram: instagram.com/theanchorcroatia Website: anchorcroatia.com Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality  Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gfendi/

  7. Jun 16

    They Do $20M a Year on Sticky Notes. Why Your AI Still Can't Close Them.

    Legacy industry adviser Annija Eizenarma breaks down why $20M businesses still run on sticky notes, why operators reject AI for AI, and how one design partner can unlock 100 doors. Annija Eizenarma is a founder, investor, and adviser who helps technology companies sell into legacy industries like construction, manufacturing, and logistics. She started her first business at 17 in Latvia, built and exited a smart home and building automation company, and has since guided hundreds of startups through selling to physical-world businesses. In this episode, I cover what's working, what's broken, and what still needs to be built in legacy industries: The AI companies that succeed in legacy industries start by solving one narrow pain point, proving they can deliver, and expanding from there. Full platforms with dozens of features overwhelm buyers who've run profitable businesses for decades without them.Many AI founders build ideas by asking ChatGPT for the biggest market opportunity instead of visiting job sites and sitting with operators. After months coding in their apartments, they hit the real world and discover friction they never planned for.Annija has seen $20M-a-year businesses run entirely on sticky notes. Some legacy operators will tell you point blank: "I'm exactly where I want to be. Never call me again."The number one thing legacy industries need before any AI adoption is organized data. Fragmented systems, scattered financials, and messy records can add months of onboarding friction before a single feature goes live.Legacy industries run on trusted referrals and closed communities. One well-chosen design partner can open 15 doors, which can open 100. You earn your way in one relationship at a time. This episode is for you if you run or operate a business in construction, manufacturing, logistics, or any physical-world industry and you're trying to figure out where AI actually fits. It's also for business owners exploring AI tools who don't want to be sold a platform they'll never full use, and for builders and developers who need to understand why their sales cycle keeps stalling in traditional industries. Follow Annija Eizenarma: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annijaeizenarma Website: aebridges.co Artificial Reality: Website: artificialrealitymedia.com Instagram: instagram.com/artificialrealitymedia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media In-person events: luma.com/artificialreality Galina Fendikevich: linkedin.com/in/gfendi

  • 7 Episodes

About

Everyone is talking about what AI can do. Few are talking about what people actually need it to do. Artificial Reality is a podcast about the reality behind AI adoption. Hosted by Galina Fendikevich, the show explores how AI is actually being used across industries like manufacturing, construction, logistics, healthcare, finance, hospitality, and beyond. Each episode brings together operators, executives, founders, and industry experts to answer three questions: • What's working? • What's broken? • What still needs to be built? While much of the AI conversation focuses on models, funding, and product launches, Artificial Reality focuses on the people expected to use these tools every day. How are businesses actually adopting AI? Where does implementation break down? What problems still haven't been solved? And what should builders create next? The future of AI shouldn't be shaped only by the people building it. It should also be shaped by the people using it. Artificial Reality is where those conversations happen. Follow along here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/artificial-reality-media/

Information

  • Creator
    Galina Fendikevich
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Galina Fendikevich
  • Show Website
    Artificial Reality