It’s Actually Pretty Easy to Get Ahead of 99% of People with AI
Episode Stats
Summary
Winning with AI in 2026 is going to be a lot easier than you think. In this episode, Alex Blumberg, founder of Martell Ventures, talks about how you can win with AI and how to get the most out of it.
Transcript
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Winning with AI in 2026 is actually pretty f***ing easy.
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Most people are just thinking about it the wrong way.
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And I'm not gonna tell you how to get better at prompting
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first and foremost, is AI doesn't actually solve problems.
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For the longest time, winning has been man plus tool,
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then your job is to be a better man that uses the tool.
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the person who understands the problem the best,
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not the person who understands the tool the best.
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Each quadrant will show you how to collaborate with AI
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And the easiest one to start with is give it to AI.
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things like synthesizing texts or looking over emails
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It'll analyze the financials, it'll analyze your words
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and it'll put it together and it'll get us a table
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that gets us clear on the decisions we have to make
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Why are we trying to do stuff that's so wildly easy for AI
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These are just a small, tedious tasks that AI can do
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and you just wanna give it to it and automate it.
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I'm talking about things like meeting notes, right?
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I use Granola, it's one of the best tools out there,
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it's summarized, it's tagged, it's added to Notion.
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of all the data about your life and your business
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in one place so you can see if anything's going off,
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and it's just a really easy thing for it to do in autonomy.
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And then the third is to summarize your messages, okay?
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And I know the dopamine hit of clearing out your inbox
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but it's still work and you don't have to do it.
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I asked my agent to go check all of my messages,
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that I need to prioritize today based on my goals.
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So it told me I had a YouTube shoot and a real shoot,
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It told me that Ann needed a call to review the podcast
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that i'll be doing on my san francisco trip and also said that team needed sign off on a new
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feature that we're adding to our apex voice system now i know exactly what i need to do today
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without scrolling through the countless message without getting distracted without doing stuff
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that i don't need to do so how do you know when a task belong in the g quadrant i use what's called
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the rule of ours first is it repetitive is it something i have to do at least once a week
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second is it rules based does the task have the same inputs and outputs every single time
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the third is does it generate a return does it take me more time to run this whole automation
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than just do it every time the last thing i want to do is spend 60 hours to build something that
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takes me less than two minutes a week to do so if the answer is yes to all three repetitive
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rule-based and gives me a return on my time then i hand it to the ai today and look you can use a
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ton of different ai tools for this quadrant some are some are awesome so to help you out i put
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together my entire ai tech stack every tool i use in every business that i own to run a super
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efficient business it's 100 free just dm me the word youtube stack on instagram and i'll send it
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right over to you now that's the easy stuff and with it you could probably free up a couple hours
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of your week now we need to move on to the next quadrant where the real work happens quadrant
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number two accelerate i know my handwriting sucks but just listen to my words okay accelerate now
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this is where it's hard for humans but easy for computers really complicated processes we're
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we're trying to find a signal in the noise, AI strives at this thing. And the cool part is you
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can accelerate all that work with AI where AI buys you back days of work. So here are just a few
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things that you can use AI to accelerate with. First off is research. I use this probably the
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most every day. I have an idea, I go to my AI. I go, hey, do some research, find some people,
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tell me what you think. Hey, I found this link for this cool idea. Tell me based on what I'm
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using today. Is it helpful? Should I add it? Do deep research project around strategic decisions.
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Look at my life. Tell me, is there anything I'm missing? The other one is data analysis.
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If you're starting off as a business owner for data analysis, think about it. You have Facebook
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ads, you can get it analyzed. You have social media data, get it analyzed. You have contracts.
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Why don't you ask it to go analyze all your legal contracts to see if you sign something? You
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probably should know. You shouldn't be spending hours on spreadsheets, especially creating anything
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from scratch. That is where AI shines. Market breakdowns, like figure out what's going on in
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your industry, what's going on in the market. Every morning, I have multiple prompts that scan
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and research and figure out what's new in the news that tells me all the things I should be
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paying attention to as an innovator in my space. Your job as a leader is to be able to see around
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the corner. The news is out there. Have the AI go analyze it. When you think of tasks in this
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quadrant, these are the three questions you get to ask yourself. One, is it looking for a pattern?
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Because AI can spot patterns faster than any human.
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Most consultants just ask you to borrow your watch
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that type of work where you're processing it with AI.
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And they're like, fine, then use my 108010 rule.
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10% ideation, the input, the prompt, the innovation,
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and then come in at the very end for the last 10%
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where you give it the thing that makes it really awesome.
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At least the AI took 80% of the work off of your plate.
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80% done by somebody else or AI is 100% awesome.
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So, so far we've been giving AI just the easy stuff.
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This is where it's like still hard for computers
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And unfortunately, if you don't have experience or taste,
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it's actually really hard to get great work out of this.
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and the car wash is 50 meters away from where you live,
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and you asked it, should you take your car or walk,
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It doesn't have the context, it doesn't have the nuance,
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and go, that feels right, that is the way I would do that.
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I really don't know many people in today's world,
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I don't care if it's media or ads or brainstorming
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to give them something visual they can look at.
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for what the world or the market or the culture wants
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to decide how you're gonna finalize and shape a song.
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Think about the prototypes, think about the apps.
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If you haven't tried building something like an app
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So partnering with AI to give you those options,
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For example, when I wanted to create a workbook
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I couldn't believe that it would design these diagrams this way,
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that I could prompt and change and prompt and change.
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And eventually I got it to a place where I'm like,
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yes, this looks good. Give it to my designer. He makes it look great. Now I have a completed
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workbook. The whole idea is AI is your partner in very creative and strategic work. So how do
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you know if a task belongs in this quadrant? There's three checks. One, does it require taste?
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Your personal opinion. AI can generate options like ads. It can generate emails, but it still
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requires you to pick the right one. Two, does it require vision? This is the strategy. This is the
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sequencing. The AI can execute, but it still needs to be told, do it in this sequence. That's why
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most developers build apps in plan mode. It shows them what the plan is. Then you can change the
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plan, the sequence. It gives you options. The human still decides the sequence or the phases
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it's going to build in. Then the AI can build it. And last, does it require care? AI can help you
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draft messages, but you may be the person that needs to deliver it because humans still want
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to hear from other humans how many times have you been really pissed and you want to send a message
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and you know you shouldn't so you sit there and you work with ai to help it craft you 17 different
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variations am i the only one that's just me and then finally you find one that says the thing the
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way that you know the person is going to receive and you're like oh my gosh crisis averted that's
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this box i don't think ai replaces humans it actually takes away the things have been keeping
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us apart so if you answered yes to any of these integrate it with ai so you've handed ai the easy
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stuff that's the give then you gave it the stuff to accelerate things that take you a lot of time
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but it can do it really easily then we went to the i and we've integrated so we start collaborating
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with it on some pretty creative work now this last quadrant is where you want to spend all of
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your time quadrant number four is no ai these are the things that are easy for humans and wildly
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hard for computers these are the moments that need your presence not a prompt i don't believe
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business is b2b i think business is h2h human to human and like i said the more we can give ai to
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do the stuff that keeps us away from being more human the better the human experience is no ai
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is actually the quadrant that makes you a weapon irreplaceable now taste vision care don't just
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guide the action they are the center of it so here are some things i think you should never outsource
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to AI. One, leadership. People don't follow computers. They follow people. People inspire
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them. If you're a leader, by definition, it means you have followers. I've never met followers of an
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AI. Now, there might be some weird people out there, but we'll leave that alone. I think that
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your opportunity to show up for people, to believe in them, to communicate, to invest in them, to
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build the people, that is a very human thing to do, not an AI thing to do. Number two is kind of
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like persuasion. I think that there are certain situations when you're doing certain negotiations
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that you need a person involved. When we're talking business development, we're talking
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partnerships. Yes, you can use computers for a lot of sales processes, but I'm a big fan. It's
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like if it's important to your business, you show up, you look at them in the eye, you sit knee to
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knee. When you're negotiating with somebody, that human part is what matters. Number three is
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coaching, right? It's different than training and it's different than just learning. Coaching means
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you sit down and you help guide somebody to become more. This is where I say you build the people and
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the people build the business. The best way to do that is to coach. Have them come into your work
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and shadow you. And number four is networking. This is where you go out and you talk to people
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hand to hand, voice to voice, and you build relationships with them. You find ways to add
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value. Most people's value is in their network. Your network equals your network. Nobody's going
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to trust their relationships with an AI. They'll trust you with it because if you're somebody
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that adds value, they know if they introduce you to somebody, you're going to add value to their
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life. Not your AI, not your email response, not your templates. They want to talk to you.
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And this quadrant right here comes down to one question. Does this revolve around your humanity?
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If a human is on the other end and they need to feel you, not a machine, then it's no AI.
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way different than you just watching this video.
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We gotta give to AI, we gotta accelerate with AI,
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And any task on your plate lives in one of these quadrants.
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AI is reshaping every industry, every job, every business.
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There's just no future where the AI models don't get better
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Learning this and working your way up to no AI,
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where you're the most envisioned, the most taste,
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what's the thing you would love to be doing more of
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Because that is your focus and everything else,
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let's give it to ai and remember i put together an entire ai tech stack every tool i use to run
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my 100 million dollar business if you want it just find me on instagram and message me youtube stack
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and i'll send it right over to you and if you want to see why i'm going all in on ai this year