I Thought It Was the Worst Day of My Life

This week, in Episode 269, we welcome Ted Wolf, co-founder of Guidewise, as the newest regular member of the 21 Hats Podcast crew—and Ted arrives with a pretty good story. Back when he was building his IT staffing business with his brother, a senior employee walked out. But he didn’t walk out alone—he took key employees, key accounts, and 40 percent of the company’s revenue. At the time, Ted thought it was the worst day of his business life. Turns out, he says, it was his best. Because that disaster forced him to rethink everything—how decisions get made, how profits get shared, how responsibility gets distributed. And that shift led not only to healthy growth but eventually to the kind of exit business owners dream about. That experience continues to inform the work Ted does today, helping companies integrate AI into their operations. The hard part, he tells Jennifer Kerhin, isn’t the technology—it’s the people. It’s managing the change, the fear, the implications. The technology matters, too. Ted and Jennifer also discuss whether small businesses should try to retrofit AI into their current tech stacks—or whether the smarter move, painful as it may be, is to start fresh.