Gardner Malouf — Why AI Has to Help Your Employees Before It Helps Your Customers

Kai sits down with Gardner Malouf — third-generation owner and president of Malouf Furniture + Design, the Gulf Coast furniture retailer his grandfather founded in 1946 — for a working conversation about what AI actually looks like inside a 60,000 sq ft, family-run, brick-and-mortar business: the operating system Gardner is quietly building underneath the store, why his AI rollout starts with his employees instead of his customers, and how ElevenLabs voiceover, an AI receptionist, and a little Claude vibe coding fit into a 79-year-old family business that's lived through hurricanes, floods, and the oil spill. Plus The Rundown — five AI stories every business owner needs to know this week — and a Playbook segment on argumentative prompting: how to get AI to argue both sides of an idea against itself so you stop getting back the answer you already wanted to hear.