Happy New Year to you dear listener!

Have you ever felt that familiar January anxiety either because you’re feeling guilty that you don’t have a perfect set of goals for the new year or because you’re second-guessing if your goals are ambitious enough, structured enough, or even the right ones? If that’s you then this episode is for you. (Happens to us every year!)

They say it takes one to know one 😂so as 2026 began, we both wanted to help ourselves (and hopefully help you too) get the year off to a great start.

We got busy on our laptops and in this episode, we share our personal experiments where we used AI to reflect on 2025, as well as help us set meaningful goals for the year ahead.

We road-tested ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

The results were super interesting . . . and helpful. One model delivered a remarkably accurate summary of Greta's entire year (likely because she'd used it most consistently), while another coached Claire through building a custom Project that will track her goals throughout 2026.

In this episode we discuss:

• The tension between letting AI lead your thinking versus using it as a thought partner
• How to set up an AI project (or GPT, Gem etc.) that coaches you through goal-setting
• How you can quickly create vision boards and mind maps, and . . .
• How AI may just change how you frame and think about your entire year.

Whether you're a seasoned AI user or just getting started, listen now for practical approaches you can try out right away.

Wishing you an intentional, productive and fulfilling 2026!

Useful Links

Claude – Anthropic's AI assistant

ChatGPT – OpenAI's AI assistant (try "show me my year" for your personalised review)

Google Gemini – Google's AI assistant (find Nano Banana here by looking in the prompt window on the bottom left and clicking on ‘tools’ then choose ‘create images’.``)

Notebook LM - Google’s interesting AI tool that will allow you to create a Mindmap, an audio episode, presentations, flashcards, and many other forms of content from uploaded files. Definitely worth a play.

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If you've heard the term 'AI agents' but aren't quite sure what they actually are or how they could help you at work, this is the episode for you.

Our guest is Dominick Ng, Director of Engineering at Relevance AI, a platform that helps businesses build and deploy AI agents. Before joining the startup world, Dom spent nine years at Google, rising from software engineer to senior manager. He also holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics and won a Fulbright Scholarship to UC Berkeley.

What makes Dom such a brilliant guide for this topic is his ability to explain complex technology in human terms. As he puts it, agents are fundamentally about adding human-like decision making to automation — handling the qualitative judgments that previously only people could make.

In this conversation you'll hear:

• A clear explanation of what agents actually are and why they're different from previous automation

• Real examples of agents creating entirely new business possibilities that couldn't exist before

• How to address privacy and security concerns when handing tasks to agents

• Dom's advice for anyone feeling overwhelmed by all of this

Dom is refreshingly honest about both the opportunities and the concerns he has about AI's impact. His perspective on how humans and AI can work together — and the 'spark' that makes human creativity irreplaceable — is genuinely hopeful without being naive.

If you've been curious about agents but not sure where to start, this is the conversation you can thank us for later.

As this is our final episode of the year, we want to wish all our listeners Season's Greetings. Thank you for listening throughout the year, and we wish you a kind and fulfilling new year ahead.

Enjoy this episode with the ever-curious and articulate Dominick Ng...

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Recently we spoke with a group of CEOs who said they felt confident leading their organisation's AI investments. Yet when we asked how often they actually used AI, only one third of the group used it daily.

This disconnect is everywhere. Around boardroom tables and in senior leadership meetings, executives aren't using AI consistently. The latest data backs this up: most people still aren't using AI daily and that's a problem given how fast AI is changing and improving.

If you're not using AI regularly; learning from it and about it as you go; how can you effectively contribute to, or lead, your organisation's AI strategy?

So in this episode, we get super practical to help leaders become power users. We share five specific ways we use AI to amplify our own leadership work and impact, including practical tips on how exactly you do this. Our use cases range from handling difficult conversations to tackling the strategic challenges that keep us awake at night.

We also reveal which AI model significantly outperformed the others for a particularly valuable leadership task and why one very specific technique of using AI as a thought partner has become indispensable in our own work.

Enjoy this super practical episode with ideas we know you’ll want to start using immediately.

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Ever wondered if you’re missing out on some easy AI hacks?

We were both surprised recently to read the results of some research we'd conducted with senior executives about their AI usage to see that most people are barely scratching the surface of what these tools can do. That’s prompted us to create this episode bringing you a practical guide to the techniques that actually make a big difference.

We're sharing the most powerful techniques and hacks we've discovered after constant AI use and refinement. These aren't theoretical concepts or beginner basics, they're the strategies and simple steps that can transform how effectively you work with tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Co Pilot.

In this episode, we reveal four separate and easy approaches that will upgrade your AI outputs immediately. Don’t worry, you won’t need to spend hours learning or implementing any of these hacks.

For example, you'll discover how to get AI to do the heavy lifting on prompts themselves (yes, really), and learn a great way to tackle repetitive tasks with ease, avoiding re-inventing the wheel time and time again.

Some of the techniques you’ll hear about include:

• The metaprompting technique that can save hours of prompt refinement
• How Projects, Gems, GPTs and Custom Co Pilots may turbo-charge your productivity
• A step by step explanation of how you can set up these tools, and
• Exactly how AI was used to help generate some of the copy you’re reading now.

Whether you're already comfortable with AI or still finding your feet, we’re confident that at least one of these techniques will help you level up your own AI skills and outcomes.

Listen now for practical and real examples of how these techniques work in action to help you work smarter with AI.

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What happens when a group of friends gathering at Starbucks on Sundays to experiment with ChatGPT evolves into a global movement spanning more than 40 cities?

That's the journey of Build Club, and its founder Annie Liao has some compelling insights about what it takes to actually make AI adoption work—not just in theory, but in practice.

Annie, who recently raised over $1.7 million and relocated to San Francisco, has a front-row seat to how AI is reshaping work. From her early days in data science at Westpac to strategy consulting at BCG and venture capital, she's now solving what she calls the "AI adoption problem" that enterprises are struggling with worldwide.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why Annie's "AI Champions" approach has been Build Club’s most successful way of helping companies embrace AI
• How she struck partnership deals with big names like Nvidia and Lovable
• Annie’s prediction we’re all likely to have agents working overnight on our behalf and what that means
• The AI tools Annie uses in her daily workflow, and
• What makes San Francisco's AI ecosystem fundamentally different from Australia's

From her vantage point in the Bay Area, Annie shares what excites her most about seeing people use AI for the first time, why there might be too many no-code tools flooding the market, and the practical steps anyone can take to position themselves for what's coming next.

Enjoy this episode with the indomitable Annie Liao.

Useful links:

Build Club website

Annie Liao on LinkedIn

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This week we explore how AI is transforming the way we approach and develop strategy - not just in boardrooms, but in so many of the myriad of decisions businesses and leaders need to make almost daily.

Our guest is Ross Dawson, a globally recognised futurist, keynote speaker, and strategy advisor. Ross is the bestselling author of ‘Thriving on Overload’ and founder of the Humans + AI community. Ross’s clients around the globe have included Google, Microsoft, American Express and Procter & Gamble.

Ross's work today is focused on what AI can do to augment and support humans in a positive, value-adding way. He neatly combines both the big-picture vision of a futurist and the practical insights of someone experimenting with these tools daily.

What struck us most about this conversation was Ross's articulation of how AI can be used across four distinct domains of strategy and how he’s observed few organisations have sharp clarity on each of these distinct and important elements. He also shares how AI is prompting forward thinking leaders to think about their strategy development and decision processes in different ways now AI can be injected into the process.

In our conversation, you'll also hear Ross share:

• The technique Ross learned from Nvidia's CEO for optimising AI outputs using multiple models
• Practical examples of AI being used in boardrooms including a unique conversation ‘monitor’
• The 2 most important human skills Ross believes we all need in an AI-augmented world, and . . .
• How threatened entry-level jobs can be completely reimagined to create value for both the individual and the business.

This is a thought-provoking exploration of how humans and AI can work together to create better strategies and better outcomes, so enjoy this episode with the forward-thinking Ross Dawson.

Useful Links

Ross Dawson’s website

Humans + AI Community

Ross's book - Thriving on Overload

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Imagine you're a marketing professor who saw the AI revolution coming years before ChatGPT hit the scene, wrote the definitive book on AI marketing in 2021, and now find yourself at the epicentre of one of the most dramatic transformations in history.

This is the very position this week’s guest, Jim Lecinski, finds himself in. Jim is a Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University's prestigious Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches AI in Marketing and has won Professor of the Year.

Adding to Jim's canny foresight is his prior, 13-year career as a VP at Google. As a result, Jim brings both the practitioner's real-world experience and the academic's analytical rigour to one of the most important questions facing leaders and marketers today: how do you harness AI not just for efficiency gains, but for genuine competitive advantage and growth?

In our conversation, you'll also hear about:

• Jim's 2x2 framework for thinking strategically about AI applications in marketing
• Use-case examples from brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and IKEA where AI is used to revolutionise everything from creative development to customer service
• Why businesses need to prepare for the shift from search engine optimisation (SEO) to "generative engine optimisation" (GEO), and what that means practically
• The emerging world of AI agents and how this will fundamentally change how we all shop, and
• Jim's essential learning resources for those who want to stay ahead of the curve.

We loved the way Jim shares his own wisdom and insights as well as sharing many examples of what market leaders are actually doing with AI.

We know you’ll enjoy this conversation with the whip-smart professor who saw the AI future ahead of the crowd.

Useful Links

Jim Lecinski on LinkedIn

AI Marketing Association

Marketing AI Institute

Andrew Ng’s AI for Everyone course on Coursera

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Ever wondered what it's really like inside one of the world's fastest-growing AI companies? This week we get unprecedented access to the inner workings of Leonardo AI through their Chief Commercial Officer, Donna Thomas.

Leonardo AI is a Gen AI-powered image and video generator and it’s one of Australia's AI success stories. It scaled from zero to 19 million users in just two years before being acquired by Canva last year.

At ‘Leo’ as they call it, Donna plays a central role overseeing customer, marketing, sales and enterprise adoption, as Leo charts its evolution from a fast-growing creative AI platform to an enterprise-scale solution.

Donna takes us behind the scenes and shares what hypergrowth feels like from the inside. She says Leo has redefined her understanding of speed itself.

In such a fast moving environment, the challenges of managing and sustaining teams through constant change become critical and Donna shares the specific structures and rituals Leo uses to maintain team stability while moving faster than she's ever experienced.

In this conversation, you'll also discover:

• The key differences between working at a traditional tech giant versus an AI-native startup and what skills become essential
• The "listening muscle" required to synthesise signals from customers, competitors, and tech developments in real-time
• Practical strategies for managing and sustaining teams through hypergrowth and hyper-fast work rhythms
• Why Leonardo embeds AI across everything from customer service to engineering and HR, and how they manage the complexity of using multiple different AI tools internally; and . . .
• Donna's advice for professionals wanting to become more AI-fluent and free up time for deep work.

Whether you're curious about life inside a cutting-edge AI company or looking for practical insights on adapting and leading in our rapidly changing work environment, this conversation offers a rare glimpse into how a world-leading AI-native organisation is managing these challenges and opportunities.

Enjoy this episode!

Useful Links

Leonardo AI

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