Agentic AI: The Future of Work
Agentic AI: The Future of Work (and Why Barbara Jones-Brown is Already There)
Every now and then, I sit down for a podcast conversation and walk away thinking, damn… that just re-wired my brain a little bit. That’s exactly what happened when I had Barbara Jones-Brown on the Build Your A-Team podcast.
If you don’t know Barbara yet, you should. She’s an Army Veteran, founder & CEO of Freeing Returns, a retail tech company that helps big enterprises recover millions in “lost” revenue. Her software now runs in over 4,000 stores across the U.S., Canada, and Japan. She’s built and exited startups for nearly $100M. She’s got Serena Williams as an investor. And she’s a passionate advocate for diversity in tech.
Impressive, right?
But what struck me most in our conversation wasn’t just her track record. It was the way she talked about AI – specifically something she calls agentic AI.
From War Rooms to Board Rooms
Barbara was 19 when she found herself in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, M16 on her back, setting up tents in the middle of the night. At one point, alarms went off, everyone threw on their gas masks, and she realized this wasn’t training anymore. This was real. Her story is actually pretty funny, but this is where she realized that hard training works.
When you’ve been through that kind of fear, the stuff most of us call “challenges” in business doesn’t rattle you. Barbara has carried that grit into everything she’s built. Which is why when COVID threatened to wipe out her consulting business in 2020, she didn’t fold. She pivoted – turned PPP money into her first SaaS platform, and it’s been scaling ever since.
Her lesson? Fear is fuel. Challenges are invitations.
Okay, So What the Heck is Agentic AI?
We’ve all played with ChatGPT or some other chatbot. You type a question, it spits out an answer. Cool. Helpful. But Barbara explained the next level: agents.
Here’s the difference:
Chatbot: You prompt it → it responds → repeat.
Agent: You prompt it ONCE → it goes to work in the background → it comes back with results.
As Barbara put it:
“A chatbot, you have to go in every time you prompt it. An AI agent – you prompt it once, and it goes off and does work for you. It can reason, it can generate, it can talk to other systems. That’s the real digital workforce.”
Think of it like the military. You don’t babysit every soldier. You tell the Commanders what you want, and they delegate it down the chain. Barbara builds these agents with sub-agents underneath – one that finds vendor credit fraud, one that spots return fraud, one that crunches inventory data. Together, they act like a digital workforce.
That’s not a buzzword. It’s literally the idea of having AI teammates who do tasks autonomously while you sleep.
Separating the Hype from the Real
Of course, AI has become the buzzword. Everybody slaps “AI-powered” on their website whether they’ve got it or not. Barbara’s advice?
“Everybody now says, ‘I’ve got AI.’ But a lot of people really don’t. Try before you buy. Figure out what you want AI to do for you, then test the tool before you pay for it.”
Her company runs AI-first, but with discipline. She doesn’t hoard 50 tools. Just five or six that actually move the needle:
ChatGPT for content and custom GPTs.
Claude for software/code generation.
Hayden for video and voice.
Google’s Notebook LLM for deep research.
Napkin AI to turn that research into white papers.
That stack 3X’d her team’s productivity. And she didn’t lay anyone off. She just gave her people digital superpowers.
Or in Barbara’s words:
“Don’t use AI to cut people. 3X them. Now these humans can do three times as much work with the tools you give them.”
How This Applies to You
If you’re a business owner, government contractor, or PE-backed exec, here’s the part to underline: you don’t need to boil the ocean with AI. Just ask:
Where do I waste the most time?
Where do I lose the most money?
Where do I need leverage but don’t have the headcount?
Then try a tool or build a simple agent around that.
In GovCon, an AI agent could check compliance sections in proposals.
In Private Equity, agents could automate portfolio reporting.
In Small Business, agents could handle outreach, research, or follow-ups.
Start small. Test it yourself before handing it to your team. And remember: the leaders who lean in early will have a compounding edge.
Wrapping It Up
Barbara’s story was legit. From a teenager in a gas mask in the desert… to a founder backed by Serena Williams… to someone helping the biggest retailers in the world claw back millions they didn’t know they were losing. And now, she’s pushing the frontier of agentic AI.
If you’re curious about where work is headed, this is it. AI isn’t just a tool anymore – it’s teammates. And the sooner you start experimenting, the faster you’ll figure out where those digital teammates can 3X or 10X your world.
You can catch the full conversation with Barbara Jones-Brown on the Build Your A-Team Podcast. Trust me – you’ll walk away with your brain buzzing too.
