Podcast

Vlada Mentink – Lean, Smart, and Automated: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Working with AI

Fear says AI will replace you; focus proves it can finally give you your time back. We sit down with AI and data strategist Vlada Mentik to unpack how solo founders and small teams can cut through the hype, start small, and build systems that free up hours for high-value work. The throughline is simple but powerful: mindset first, tools second. When you stop chasing shiny features and begin with a clear problem, a tiny workflow, and rich context, AI becomes a calm advantage rather than another source of stress.

Vlada shares a practical roadmap for getting started: choose the task you dread, map the steps in plain language, and ship one working automation before you add another. We get into the biggest traps—tool-first thinking, generic prompts, and automating chaos—and show how to avoid them with human-in-the-loop design, purposeful data, and small wins that compound. You’ll hear a standout example of automating client onboarding to make space for personal video welcomes that boost conversions and trust. We also explore data minimalism, arguing for intentional data over petabytes, and how faster, good-enough decisions often beat late, perfect ones.

Productivity gets a refresh here. It’s not about doing more; it’s about doing better—creating room to think, rest, and ship higher-quality work. We touch on no-code for prototyping and when to code for scale, why sharing prompts lifts team performance, and how transparency and sustainability factor into responsible AI use. The conversation closes with a crucial reminder: AI doesn’t think or create; you do. Treat it like a translator that amplifies your taste and strategy, and you’ll build leaner, smarter workflows without losing the human touch.

If this helped you see a cleaner path to practical AI, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review—what’s the first task you’ll automate this week?

Jean Marc Seigneur – In Trust We Build: Designing the Future of Digital Reputation – Intangiblia™

What if your glasses could spot a deepfake before your gut does? We sit down with Jean Marc Seigneur, a veteran researcher of decentralized trust, to map where security failed, where it’s catching up, and how proof—not vibes—will anchor the next decade of digital life. From central bank digital currencies to NFTs that carry qualified electronic signatures, we unpack how legal recognition and cryptography can finally meet in the middle, turning tokens into enforceable rights and payments into reliable public infrastructure.We also go beyond buzzwords to the missing pieces: education and design. Friendly apps hide sharp edges, so we talk about why countries need their own experts, not just imported tech, and how wallets must evolve with safer recovery, better defaults, and interfaces that explain risk without slowing you down. AI raises the stakes, so we explore signed videos, verifiable identities, and provenance trails that help you tell a real voice from a cloned one at a glance. Reputation won’t live on a web page for long; it’s moving into the physical world as augmented overlays that can help or harm depending on what they reveal and to whom.Bias won’t vanish either, because human trust is social and local. We discuss how to balance peer signals with regulators’ oversight, why transparency about AI use will give way to tracking human effort, and what a time-based “work token” could add to creative markets. The red thread across it all—payments, NFTs, augmented humans, and AI media—is simple and demanding: protect freedom while proving claims. If we want technology that empowers rather than deceives, we have to design, debate, and defend the trust layer itself.Enjoy the conversation? Subscribe, share with a friend who cares about digital trust, and leave a review to help more curious minds find the show.Send us a textCheck out "Protection for the Inventive Mind" – available now on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. The views and opinions expressed (by the host and guest(s)) in this podcast are strictly their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the entities with which they may be affiliated. This podcast should in no way be construed as promoting or criticizing any particular government policy, institutional position, private interest or commercial entity. Any content provided is for informational and educational purposes only.
  1. Jean Marc Seigneur – In Trust We Build: Designing the Future of Digital Reputation
  2. Vlada Mentink – Lean, Smart, and Automated: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Working with AI
  3. Heidrun Wechter-Essig – The Board Whisperer: Power, Pivots, and Playing the Long Game
  4. Anna Aseeva – Sustainable by Code: Rethinking Tech Governance from IP to AI
  5. Vipin Saroha – Beyond the Dashboard: How Data and AI Are Rewiring Public Value

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