Finding Your AI Champion: How to Build Superstars Inside Your Business

Every organisation needs its Messi or Ronaldo — that one person who knows the business inside out and can now use AI to drive productivity, profitability, and growth. In this Dumb Monkey deep dive, Aamir Qutub explains why you can’t just hire this skill from the market — you need to spot and grow AI champions within your own team . We’ll cover how to identify these superstars, how to retain them once you’ve found them, and how to scale their impact across the organisation. Whether you’re a leader or a professional, this episode is your roadmap to becoming — or building — an AI champion.

Transcript

00:00:04:08 - 00:00:37:15 

Aamir 

Hey, this is Amir from the Dumb Monkey Show, and I'm going to put my director's hat on 

for this one. So one thing that stood out in the conversation with Ramon Rodriguez is by 

acquiring and learning these AI skills, but also having the overall knowledge and 

understanding of being in the business for such a long time. Ramon has developed this 

unique skill where he understand the business really well because he has been in and 

out of the business, but now he understands AI and he understands how you can apply 

AI to the business. 

00:00:37:17 - 00:01:05:08 

Aamir 

So by doing this, Raymond has become an asset for the organization that a star player 

that Messi, that Ronaldo of the team. Like, no matter who your CEO or CEO is, you have 

got this a star player in the organization who not only understands the business, not 

only understands the technology, understands AI, but can actually use AI to make 

himself more productive. 

00:01:05:12 - 00:01:16:02 

Aamir 

But most importantly, make your organization more productive, more profitable, and 

more efficient if you use this resource efficiently and effectively. 

00:01:16:04 - 00:01:48:22 

Ramon 

A big part of my role is collecting information and presenting it to executives and 

boards, and making sure the picture is is there. So instead of building out presentations 

now, I will get called code to build at HTML interactive dashboards. That's got market 

intelligence, you know, risk tools and financial modeling that they can, pull out. That 

takes me maybe ten, 15 minutes to put together that previously pulling a deck, putting it 

together like we're talking five, six hours and not to mention people's face drop when 

they say, like, is this a website? 

00:01:48:24 - 00:02:09:09 

Ramon 

Yeah, it's just to email code. But Claude Code builds it out and super quick and great. 

And for me as well, another thing I use it for is, I'm constantly downloading things that 

are on my, my PC, my documents, and it's so, so messy. Client files organization. So I've 

built I'd not script and it just organizes my calendar. 

00:02:09:11 - 00:02:18:04 

Ramon 

Organizes my files locally in just case I completed my computer, like, you know, nice and 

tidy. It's just the small things that create mental clutter for me I don't have to think 

about. 

00:02:18:06 - 00:02:20:20 

Aamir 

So how many courses did you do to learn all of this? 

00:02:21:00 - 00:02:24:10 

Ramon 

Yes. No. None. 

00:02:24:12 - 00:03:07:14 

Aamir 

So here are a couple of challenges that I want to throw at you as a business leader of 

your organization. Some homework, some thinking that you need to do instead of just 

listening to the podcast and thinking, oh wow, what a great podcast. Here are some key 

actions that you need to start thinking about. Number one is actually finding that AI 

champion within your organization who doesn't come from, or necessarily comes from 

a technical background, but understands your business as a whole really good, or at 

least an aspect of the business really well and can leverage AI to make your work and 

make your processes more efficient, more productive, and more profitable. 

00:03:07:16 - 00:03:37:20 

Aamir 

Because this is a skill set that you cannot hire from the market. Now, you can engage 

someone like me to do your AI strategy or a roadmap. We can probably build agents for 

you, but you still need someone in your organization who's working closely with the 

team members who understand your business really well. To come up with those use 

cases, to understand what I can do, and how you can actually use AI to make your 

business ready for the AI era. 

00:03:37:20 - 00:04:06:20 

Aamir 

That we are entering now. So as a business leader, it's your responsibility to find these 

AI champions within your organization. And if you don't have skills or these AI 

champions within your organization, then you need to develop an environment that 

fosters this within your organization that encourages people to learn AI and implement 

that not only within their business function, but also helping other team members to 

embrace AI. 

00:04:06:22 - 00:04:32:05 

Aamir 

Now, the second challenge is that once you have identified these AI champions, these 

superstars, these amazing people who are going to take your organization forward, how 

are you going to retain these people and how are you going to best utilize these people 

for the growth of your organization? So think about it. Someone like Raymond 

Rodriguez, who wouldn't want to hire and have this person in their team. 

00:04:32:07 - 00:04:58:09 

Aamir 

Now the challenge is how would you retain this person? How would you give this person 

enough challenging work that keeps him or her motivated and stay with you and your 

team and help you grow your business? And the next thing is that how do you take the 

skills and capabilities of this one person, or 2 or 3 people and scale it across your 

organization? 

00:04:58:11 - 00:05:25:18 

Aamir 

Because now you are sitting at a goldmine, and if this person is only utilizing their skill 

for their own team or their own department, then you are missing out on a bigger 

opportunity to be able to leverage those skills across your organization. Now, your 

organization might have a team of amazing technical people. You might have a CIO, 

CTO, but it it's not necessarily the job of that technical person to be that AI champion. 

00:05:25:20 - 00:05:56:17 

Aamir 

It can be a technical person if they understand business really well, but they don't 

necessarily have to have a technical background to be that AI champion. And then 

finally, a personal challenge to everyone listening to this. No matter whether you are a 

business leader or a professional mid-level manager, doesn't matter who you are is how 

do you develop the skills that can help you become that superstar, that rock star, that 

Messi, that Ronaldo of your team? 

00:05:56:19 - 00:06:16:17 

Aamir 

And trust me, it's not that difficult to learn. You can start by learning for free on YouTube, 

or you can go to Dumb Monkey AI Academy, Dumb Monkey Dot AI, or download the 

Dumb Monkey app. We have got a very excellent free course to get you started on 

applying AI within your business. Then we've got some certification courses over there. 

00:06:16:19 - 00:06:40:08 

Aamir 

And as you start to go through those courses step by step, but most importantly, start to 

apply those learnings in your day to day work. I can guarantee you that within three 

months you can become that AI champion or the rock star superstar of your 

organization. I think I've given you enough homework to think about and act upon, and 

I'll see you in the next episode.