The Enlightened AI Podcast

If you've been charging straight at a goal and still missing it, what if the power comes from stepping back first?

In this episode of The Enlightened AI Podcast, host Bob Quintana sits down with Cathleen Mancino, founder and executive coach at The Slingshot Method, for a practical conversation about why charging forward often backfires, how a step back to assess and audit gives you more power on the way forward, and how AI can take on the heavy lifting in sales without replacing the human work.

Cathleen grew up in sales and became an award-winning top producer in technology sales. She later led the software company Output Solutions as CEO, working with organizations like Adobe, McGraw-Hill, Pfizer, GE, and the US Pentagon. Today she is founder, CEO, and executive coach at The Slingshot Method, a sales and leadership development practice. She is an ICF certified coach and a speaker, and she leads Girl Unafraid, a community that helps women grow professionally and personally.

• Why charging straight at a goal often backfires, and how the Slingshot Method works: step back, assess, then move forward with more power
• What Cathleen looks at first in a sales process, including rapport and knowledge
• How AI can speed up research, surface triggers, and evaluate sales conversations
• How AI caught a client's filler words, including “does this make sense?”
• Why every business avoids prospecting, and how to let AI do the heavy lifting with you, not for you
• Why you should ask AI to interrogate you until your ideal client is clear, then build a list and a cadence

Guest: Cathleen Mancino, Founder of The Slingshot Method · Executive Coach

Host: Bob Quintana

Sponsored by: accelerAIte

Links:

Cathleen on LinkedIn

The Slingshot Method

Bob on LinkedIn

Enlightened Entrepreneurship

If your positioning is fuzzy, can AI really help you grow?

In this episode of The Enlightened AI Podcast, host Bob Quintana sits down with Julien Marzouk, fractional CRO and strategic growth partner at Kinesis Partners, for a practical conversation about clarity before agents, founder bottlenecks, and why building the agent is the easy part.

Julien grew up in Paris, started as a business journalist at CNBC Europe, then moved into strategy consulting. In 2016 he co-founded Kinesis Partners and helped more than 50 European SaaS companies expand into the US. He later led coaching at SaaS Academy, and today runs his CRO practice in Brooklyn while coaching in TinySeed’s SaaS Institute.

• Why AI punishes fuzzy positioning and rewards clarity
• How a founder becomes the bottleneck, and how to get out of the way
• Why building the agent is the easy part, and what has to come before it
• How automation exposes broken sales processes and customer journeys
• Where AI agents work best: sales, support, ops, and ads
• How leaders adopt AI without losing ownership, people, and culture

Guest: Julien Marzouk — Founder of Kinesis Partners · Fractional CRO

Host: Bob Quintana

Sponsored by: accelerAIte

Links:

Julien on LinkedIn · Kinesis Partners · Bob on LinkedIn · Enlightened Entrepreneurship

In this first episode of The Enlightened AI Podcast, host Bob Quintana sits down with Jared Robin, founder of RevGenius, to talk about what “good” looks like in an AI world and why greatness still comes down to the human side of the work.

AI can draft, summarize, and ship the baseline faster than ever. That raises the bar on what stands out. Jared and Bob dig into how founders and go-to-market leaders can use AI without sounding like everyone else, stay close to their customers, and build something people actually care about.

• Why AI made “good” cheap and everywhere
• What still separates great work from average work
• How Jared thinks about community, sales, and learning in public through RevGenius
• Practical ways to use AI as a teammate without losing your voice

Guest: Jared Robin — Founder of RevGenius

Host: Bob Quintana

Sponsored by: accelerAIte