What If Every Employee Had Their Own AI Executive Assistant? with Nick Sonnenberg

What if your intern had a better executive assistant than your CEO? In this episode of TNW, Aydin sits down with Nick Sonnenberg—Wall Street veteran, bestselling author, and founder of Leverage—to explore how AI agents are radically transforming how work gets done. Nick demos a real AI-powered assistant that can handle email, prep meeting briefs, and even outperform human teammates. You'll hear how he structures agent orchestration, optimizes prompts as IP, and envisions a future where everyone at every level has a digital assistant. What You'll Learn: - Why every employee (not just execs) should have their own AI assistant - How AI agents can be “managed” like employees—with hierarchy and QA - The role of MCP (Model Context Protocol) in unlocking personalized, high-context automation - Why context is king in building truly useful AI workflows - Why prompt libraries should be treated like company IP Timestamps: 00:00 – Imagine if interns had better EAs than execs 01:00 – Nick’s background: From high-frequency trading to AI consulting 02:20 – The origin of Leverage and the obsession with efficiency 03:10 – Inbox Zero, RAD framework, and AI-powered email agents 04:50 – What is MCP and why it matters 06:20 – The CPR framework: Communicate, Plan, Resource 08:30 – Orchestrator agents and agent 11:00 – QA as the new job for every role 12:00 – Why execs are adopting AI faster than junior employees 13:40 – The “Sniper Agent” and building executive briefs 16:00 – Personalized, context-rich email drafting 20:00 – Prompt optimization strategy as a business asset 22:30 – Real-time battle card generation and agent chaining 23:30 – Custom summaries using frameworks, not just transcripts 24:00 – Behind the scenes: building and deploying agents Tools & Technologies Mentioned: Claude – Anthropic’s AI model, used here with MCP and custom agents MCP (Model Context Protocol) – Allows secure access to private data and agent orchestration within AI platforms Asana – Project management tool integrated with agents Zapier / NADN / Crew AI – Automation platforms for building AI workflows Perplexity – Used to scan public web/news as part of the AI brief generation Coda / Notion – Popular tools for knowledge capture, now evolving into AI-integrated workflows HubSpot – CRM used to integrate and personalize AI-generated content Fellow – AI meeting intelligence tool for smarter call summaries Nick's website: https://www.getleverage.ai/ Subscribe at⁠ thisnewway.com⁠ to get the step-by-step playbooks, tools, and workflows.