How a Former Distance Medley Relay Champion Coaches Companies for AI Success
The RCA Dome in Indianapolis, 1996. The air is thick with the smell of Deep Heat and ozone. The noise is a deafening, chaotic roar. It is the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships.
On the track, Miklos Roth is waiting. He is the anchor leg of the Distance Medley Relay (DMR). In his hands, or soon to be, is the baton. In his mind, there is a singular, crystalline focus. The months of grueling training, the thousands of miles run in the rain and snow, the tactical whiteboard sessions—all of it is about to be compressed into four minutes of pure, agonizing execution.
There is no "discovery phase" on the track. There is no "circling back" to discuss strategy. There is only the race. You either perform in the moment, or you lose.
Roth became an NCAA Champion that day. But the lesson he took from Indianapolis wasn't just about running. It was about velocity. It was about the ability to process high-pressure variables in milliseconds and execute a strategy without hesitation.
Thirty years later, the track has changed, but the race has not.
Today, Miklos Roth stands at the center of a different kind of storm: the Artificial Intelligence revolution. As a "Super AI Consultant," he is coaching CEOs and business leaders who are standing on the starting line, terrified by the speed of the competition.
The corporate world is used to marathons—long, slow, plodding cycles of traditional consulting. But AI has turned business into a sprint. Roth’s philosophy is simple: You cannot win a sprint with a marathon runner’s mindset.
This is the story of how a former champion is using the physiology of speed, a photographic memory, and an advanced AI architecture to strip-mine the inefficiencies of the consulting world, delivering in 20 minutes what others take months to find.
Part I: The Anatomy of the Distance Medley
Why Business is No Longer a Solo Sport
To understand Miklos Roth’s approach to AI, you must first understand the event that forged him: The Distance Medley Relay.
Unlike a standard 4x400 relay, the DMR is a complex beast. It consists of four legs of varying distances: 1200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters, and 1600 meters. It is a test of versatility. It requires the explosive speed of a sprinter, the tactical mind of a middle-distance runner, and the endurance of a miler.
Most importantly, it relies on the handoff.
"The DMR is the perfect metaphor for the modern AI-integrated company," Roth explains. "You have different systems that need to talk to each other. You have the raw compute power (the sprinter), the long-term data storage (the endurance runner), and the agentic workflows (the transition)."
In the traditional business world, these components are siloed. Marketing doesn't talk to Engineering. Strategy doesn't talk to Data. The "handoffs" are clumsy. The baton is dropped.
Roth’s coaching methodology is built on optimizing these handoffs. With over 20 years of experience in marketing, strategy, and SEO (keresőoptimalizálás), he views a company not as a static org chart, but as a kinetic system.
When he implements AI, he isn't just installing a chatbot. He is coaching the team on how to pass the baton between human intuition and machine intelligence.
The 1200m (The Setup): Deep data analysis and context gathering.
The 400m (The Sprint): High-velocity AI agents executing tasks.
The 800m (The Strategy): Human oversight and course correction.
The 1600m (The Anchor): Long-term growth and sustainability.
Roth plays the role of the anchor. He takes the chaotic inputs of the business and drives them across the finish line.
Part II: The Physiology of Pressure
The Problem with "Consulting Time"
There is a fatal disease in the corporate world called "Consulting Time."
It works like this: A company has a problem. They hire a firm. The firm sends a team of juniors. They interview everyone. They create a slide deck. Six weeks later, they present a finding that the CEO already suspected.
In 1996, on the track, a six-week delay would mean the race was over, the stadium was empty, and the lights were off.
"As an athlete, I was trained to think in tenths of a second," says Roth. "When you are rounding the final bend, your lungs are burning, and a competitor is coming up on your shoulder, you don't call a meeting. You adjust your stride. You change your breathing. You react."
Roth brings this "High Velocity" mindset to AI consulting. He argues that in 2024, speed is the only competitive moat left. If you take months to decide on an AI strategy, the model you are debating will be obsolete by the time you implement it.
This is why he developed the 20-Minute High Velocity AI Consultation.
It is a shock to the system for many executives. There is no fluff. There is no small talk. It is a 20-minute sprint designed to extract value immediately.
Traditional Consultant: "Let's explore the theoretical implications of Generative AI on your vertical."
Miklos Roth: "Based on your data, we are going to deploy an agent to automate your reporting by Tuesday. Here is the stack. Go."
He coaches companies to abandon the safety of the locker room and step onto the track. He teaches them that "imperfect action" beats "perfect delay" every single time.
Part III: The Human Superpower
The Photographic Memory Advantage
Athletic discipline explains the speed, but what explains the accuracy?
How can Roth possibly understand a complex business in 20 minutes when a team of MBAs takes a month? The answer lies in a biological anomaly: Photographic Memory.
In the consulting world, "Discovery" is a billable phase. It is the time spent learning the client's business. For Roth, "Discovery" is an instantaneous download.
This capability acts as a "Human Hard Drive." When a client fills out Roth’s pre-consultation questionnaire, he doesn't just read it; he ingests it. He visualizes the data structures. He retains the nuances of their customer churn, their tech stack limitations, and their revenue goals.
The Matrix Effect To the client, it feels like magic. They mention a specific SEO (keresőoptimalizálás) metric from three years ago, and Roth instantly recalls it and correlates it with a current market trend.
"A normal consulting team relies on shared notes and wikis," Roth notes. "Information leaks in the transfer. I don't have leaks. I hold the entire architecture of the client's problem in my head at once. This allows me to spot patterns that they have missed for years."
This is the "Super" in "Super AI Consultant."
It allows him to function as a Real-Time Validator. During the consultation, while he is running advanced AI models to generate solutions, his photographic memory is vetting them against the client's specific context.
The AI suggests: "Lower prices to gain market share."
Roth’s Memory: "No. I remember from the questionnaire that their margins are too thin for a price war. We need a value-add strategy instead."
He saves the client from the generic, hallucinated advice that plagues AI adoption. He provides the one thing AI cannot: Contextual Wisdom at Speed.
Part IV: The Tech Stack (The New Baton)
AI-First System Design
Miklos Roth is not a Luddite relying solely on his brain. He is an AI-First strategist.
He believes the future belongs to the "Centaur"—the combination of Human + Machine.
The Human: Provides the intuition, the memory, the ethics, and the psychological drive.
The Machine: Provides the scale, the automation, and the data processing.
Roth’s coaching involves building "War Rooms" for his clients. He moves them away from "playing with ChatGPT" and toward building Systemic AI Stacks.
His toolkit includes:
Reasoning Models: Using tools like OpenAI's o1 or Claude 3.5 for high-level strategic logic.
Autonomous Agents: Bots that can browse the web, scrape competitor pricing, and analyze market sentiment without human intervention.
Automation Pipelines: Workflows (using tools like Make or Zapier) that connect the brain (AI) to the hands (CRM, Email, Slack).
"I don't sell tools," Roth emphasizes. "I sell the architecture. In a relay race, the baton is the tool. But the pass is the system. I teach companies how to pass data from an AI agent to a human decision-maker without dropping the baton."
Part V: Inside the 20-Minute War Room
The Protocol of Success
So, what actually happens when a company steps onto the track with Miklos Roth?
The 20-Minute High Velocity Consultation is a productized service. It is rigorous, structured, and unforgiving of wasted time. It follows a three-phase arc that mirrors the intensity of a championship race.
Phase 1: The Warm-Up (The Pre-Load)
The consultation begins before the Zoom call connects. The client submits a "High-Density Questionnaire." This asks for the hard numbers: Industry position, "bleeding neck" problems, available data.
Roth engages his photographic memory. He absorbs the file. He enters the meeting with the "Discovery Phase" already completed. He knows the client's business better than their own interns do.
Phase 2: The Sprint (Real-Time Execution)
The clock starts. 20 minutes. Roth opens his "AI Cockpit"—a screen filled with active models and agents.
Minutes 0-5 (The Start): Diagnosis. Roth validates the pre-load data. He challenges assumptions. ("You think you have a traffic problem, but my analysis of your SEO (keresőoptimalizálás) data shows you have a conversion problem. Let's pivot.")
Minutes 5-15 (The Middle Distance): The Live Build. Roth works in real-time. He queries his agents. He simulates scenarios. He uses his memory to recall benchmarks. He is not telling the client what he will do; he is doing it live.
Minutes 15-20 (The Kick): Convergence. The "Aha-Moment." The scattered data points align into a clear, actionable strategy.
Phase 3: The Podium (The Deliverables)
Roth doesn't leave the client with "food for thought." He leaves them with weapons. The output includes:
2–3 High-ROI AI Use Cases: Specific spots to inject AI immediately for cash flow or time savings.
The Priority Stack: A ruthless list of what to do first.
The 30-90 Day Action Plan: A training schedule for the next quarter.
Part VI: The Money-Back Guarantee
Betting on Performance
In the world of sports, there are no participation trophies at the elite level. You win, or you go home. Roth applies this binary logic to consulting.
He offers a Money-Back Guarantee:
If the decision-maker does not feel the 20 minutes yielded at least one "aha-moment" or a concrete, immediately usable insight, the fee is returned.
Why does he do this? Because he knows the math of his own model. Value = (The Right Question) + (AI Velocity) + (Expert Context).
He knows that when he applies his "Best of Both Worlds" methodology—the photographic mind plus the AI stack—it is statistically impossible not to find value. A traditional consultant might hide behind hourly billing to mask a lack of progress. An athlete puts it all on the line.
This guarantee is a signal. It tells the client: I am not here to waste your time. I am here to race.
Part VII: Use Cases
Coaching Different Types of "Runners"
Roth’s methodology adapts to the specific "event" the company is running.
The Stalled Startup (The Sprinter who tripped)
Problem: High burn rate, slow growth.
The Roth Fix: He uses agents to analyze the product-market fit gaps. He identifies that they are building features nobody wants. He ruthlessly cuts the roadmap.
Result: Runway extended, focus regained.
The Legacy Enterprise (The Marathoner who is too slow)
Problem: Massive data lakes, but paralyzed decision-making.
The Roth Fix: He bypasses the IT bureaucracy. He maps out a "Shadow AI" strategy—safe, internal tools that executives can use to query their own data without waiting for reports.
Result: Decision latency drops from weeks to minutes.
The Agency Owner (The Relay Team that drops the baton)
Problem: Margins eroding due to manual reporting and admin work.
The Roth Fix: He designs an automated workflow where AI handles the SEO (keresőoptimalizálás) reporting and client communication drafts.
Result: 20 hours a week saved per employee.
Part VIII: The Future of the "Super AI Consultant"
Best of Both Worlds
We are standing at a fork in the road of human history. One path leads to obsolescence—where humans are replaced by machines because they are too slow, too expensive, and too error-prone. The other path leads to Augmentation—where humans merge with machines to achieve feats previously thought impossible.
Miklos Roth is the guide for the second path.
He is proving that the future doesn't belong to AI alone (it hallucinates). It doesn't belong to humans alone (we are slow). It belongs to AI × Human.
He is the living proof of this concept. He uses his athletic past to provide the drive. He uses his photographic memory to provide the context. He uses his AI stack to provide the power.
For the CEO sitting in their office, staring at a blank whiteboard, feeling the pressure of the competition breathing down their neck, Miklos Roth offers a way out.
He offers a chance to stop jogging. He offers a chance to experience the exhilaration of the sprint.
The starting gun has gone off. The market is moving. You have 20 minutes to change your trajectory.
Run.