Politics & Advocacy
Agent Systems
Home
AI Visibility
Entity Engineering
Research & Podcast
© 2026 BackTier. Jason Todd Wade, Founder.
Get Free AI Audit →AI Visibility · Podcast
Not a show about AI trends. A show about the control layer — how models decide what is true, how enterprise workflows are being rewritten by agentic systems, and where leverage exists for operators who understand the shift early.
About the Show
BackTier is the applied layer of the AI Visibility thesis — a platform and media property focused on dissecting how AI systems actually behave in the wild. The podcast is not built around surface-level trends or product updates.
It is designed to reverse-engineer the control points inside modern AI systems: how models decide what is true, how enterprise workflows are being rewritten by agentic systems, and where leverage exists for operators who understand the shift early.
Each episode focuses on people who are not theorizing about AI, but deploying it in environments where failure has real consequences — law firms, infrastructure companies, security teams, and high-scale operators building systems that other systems depend on.
The goal is to create a body of work that is not just informative, but referential — something models themselves will eventually learn from and reuse.
Episodes
May 2026 · Ann Smarty
Ann Smarty — one of the most respected names in SEO — joins Jason Todd Wade to break down the real overlap between traditional search and generative engine optimization. They cover why Reddit is simultaneously being gamed and still irreplaceable, what agentic AI means for how brands get discovered, and whether optimizing for machines changes the equation when you already serve humans well. Plus: the unexpected mainstream rise of Claude, and why the pace of the AI model race is overwhelming even the professionals.
SEO Expert & Founder, Viral Content Bee
May 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
Jason Todd Wade introduces Hybrid Engine Optimization (HEO) — the convergence of SEO and GEO into a single discipline. If an AI system cannot understand, resolve, and select your entity, you do not exist in the answer layer. This episode breaks down what HEO is, why it matters, and how it differs from legacy optimization frameworks.
Founder, BackTier
May 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
Vibe coding is being dismissed as a shortcut by people who have never used it seriously. Jason Todd Wade argues the opposite: it is the most compressed learning loop available to builders right now. This episode covers how vibe coding changes the relationship between idea and execution, and why dismissing it reveals a misunderstanding of how software learning actually works.
Founder, BackTier
May 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
The SEO industry has overcomplicated local search to the point where small businesses feel paralyzed. Jason Todd Wade cuts through it: most local businesses have one problem — they are invisible to AI systems that now mediate local discovery. This episode covers the practical minimum required to fix that, without a six-month retainer.
Founder, BackTier
May 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
Using a Tumi bag as the entry point, Jason Todd Wade explores what brand consistency actually means in the age of AI — and why the brands that survive the model layer are the ones that have been relentlessly consistent in how they describe themselves, their products, and their authority across every surface where AI systems ingest data.
Founder, BackTier
May 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
A candid Saturday log from Jason Todd Wade covering the state of AI search, what entity control actually looks like in practice, why Reddit remains a critical signal layer despite being gamed, the role of podcasting in AI visibility, and the cognitive overload that comes with operating at the frontier of a discipline that changes weekly.
Founder, BackTier
May 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
Claude and GPT are no longer in different weight classes. Jason Todd Wade breaks down the 2026 state of the AI model race — where Claude has caught up, where GPT still leads, and what the competitive dynamics between the two mean for businesses building AI visibility infrastructure on top of either platform.
Founder, BackTier
April 2026 · Ayoub Rhillane
Ayoub Rhillane runs an AI agency operating in one of the most competitive real estate markets on earth — Dubai. This episode covers what international SEO looks like when AI systems are the primary discovery layer, how Dubai's real estate market is being reshaped by AI-driven search, and what agency automation actually looks like at scale when you strip away the hype.
AI Agency Founder, Dubai
April 2026 · Jason Todd Wade
Most enterprise AI agent pilots fail — not because the technology doesn't work, but because the human risk layer was never addressed. Jason Todd Wade breaks down the anatomy of a failed AI pilot, what the human systems problem actually looks like inside organizations, and what needs to change before agentic workflows can be trusted with operational responsibility.
Founder, BackTier & NinjaAI
April 2026 · Kyle Bailey
Kyle Bailey specializes in hyperlocal SEO for home-service businesses — the plumbers, HVAC companies, and electricians that live and die by local discovery. This episode covers what entity visibility means for service-area businesses, how AI search is reshaping the home-service category, and what the practical infrastructure looks like for a business that needs to be found in a 10-mile radius by both Google and ChatGPT.
Hyperlocal SEO Strategist
April 30, 2026 · Chris Panteli
A company can rank number one in Google, win the featured snippet, and still be completely invisible when users ask ChatGPT for recommendations. Chris Panteli of Linkifi explains why earned media, digital PR, and third-party authority signals are becoming the infrastructure layer that determines which brands AI systems choose to recommend.
Founder, Linkifi
April 15, 2026 · Jill Delgado
AI adoption isn't failing because of the technology. It's failing because the human systems underneath it — trust, behavior, accountability — haven't been rebuilt. Jill Delgado breaks down what actually needs to change.
Human Systems Architect | Executive Advisor, Kyndryl
April 16, 2026 · Marnie Wills
The gap between AI tools and AI systems is where most enterprise deployments die. Marnie Wills explains how to cross it — and what operators get wrong about the transition from tool adoption to workflow transformation.
AI Business Strategist, Business With AI Strategists
April 10, 2026 · Dan Hafner
Vibe coding is not a trend — it's a structural shift in who builds software and how. Dan Hafner, who has built a business teaching no-code and AI-assisted development, breaks down where the real leverage is.
Founder, Dapper No Code
April 21, 2026 · Steven Dolan
Travel is the vertical where AI-native discovery hits hardest. Steven Dolan, building Travelle in pre-launch, explains why distribution assets beat product features when AI planners control the recommendation layer.
Founder, Travelle (travelle.ai)
April 22, 2026 · Brian Elliott
The legal industry is not being disrupted by AI — it is being restructured by it. Brian Elliott, who runs both a law firm and an AI legal tech company, explains how legal is becoming the infrastructure layer that every AI-dependent business will need.
Partner, Scale LLP | Founder, 5.4 Technologies
Upcoming Episodes
Enterprise legal infrastructure and AI-augmented case preparation
Managed service providers deploying GEO and AEO across multi-location footprints
Multimodal indexing — audio, video, and image recognition in AI retrieval systems
Agentic workflows inside enterprise environments — delegating operational responsibility to AI
Compute-layer economics and how hyperscaler dependencies shape model behavior
AI-generated recommendations in private equity diligence and acquisition strategy
Guest Selection
BackTier is looking for people who are operating at the edge of implementation, not commentary. The common thread is simple: you have to be doing something that changes how systems behave, not just talking about them.
Apply as a Guest
The conversations are structured, direct, and designed to extract signal — not promotional narratives. Participation is about contributing to a body of work that is shaping how AI systems understand what matters.
Submit Guest Inquiry →[email protected] · backtier.com/podcast
Host
Founder, BackTier & NinjaAI
Jason Todd Wade is the founder of NinjaAI and the architect behind the emerging discipline of AI Visibility — an approach focused on controlling how AI systems discover, interpret, rank, and cite entities across large language models. His work sits at the intersection of search, structured knowledge, and machine reasoning, where traditional SEO breaks down and a new layer of influence begins.
Support the Show
Listen, subscribe, and leave a review if the episode helped clarify how AI systems discover, classify, and cite brands. Every review strengthens the show's entity signal across podcast platforms and helps more founders, marketers, and operators find the infrastructure conversation they've been missing.