A year of real human conversations distilled into the ideas that keep resonating
The world’s best marketers, CEOs, and org designers are all wrestling with the same thing right now. Five different shows, hosts, and takes on where AI is taking us, and every single conversation circled back to the same idea.
Human-First AI Marketing® is the throughline. After a year and a half of podcasts, guest appearances, speeches, webinars, and presentations, I figured it was time to do what any good musician does after a long tour: sit down and look at the lessons learned and the impact of what happened. I will also share some of my greatest hits.
The Tour Stops
Feedspot recently published a list of my top 5 best podcast appearances and guest interviews. Here is what they picked as my most interesting discussions:
Org Design Podcast, I joined Damian Bramanis and Amy Springer to talk about what AI is actually doing to marketing teams. The short version: AI is disrupting entry-level work while amplifying the judgment and creativity of senior marketers. The humans who know why something works are suddenly worth a lot more than the humans who just know how to execute it.
Conversations with Zena, My AI Colleague, David Espindola and I talked about what Human-First AI Marketing® looks like for small and mid-sized businesses. The Iron Man framing came up early and stayed for the whole conversation. You’re in the suit. AI makes you stronger, faster, and more capable. But you’re still the superhero!
Business Podcast Spotlight was a different kind of conversation entirely, one about how to make a podcast work as a real content engine without burning out. I shared my “tentpole” system for building a publishing rhythm around a few big ideas rather than chasing an endless content treadmill.
The Digital Leader Show, we got into the darker side of the AI era: pitch-slaps, AI slop, and the marketing sins that are quietly destroying trust. I’ve worked with brands like LinkedIn, Uber, Zoom, and the Kansas City Chiefs, and the pattern is always the same. The ones that win don’t chase volume. They chase relevance.
And on the TurnKey Podcast with Doug Sandler, we talked about community activation and what it actually means to market like a big brand on a small business budget. The brands that earn the most referrals aren’t the loudest ones. They’re the most trusted ones.
The Greatest Hits
Every tour has the songs the crowd knows by heart. These are mine. I asked AI to review all my speeches and podcasts to pull the top 5 lessons I frequently share.
Iron Man, Not the Terminator
People still come to AI conversations braced for bad news… They’re waiting for someone to tell them their job is disappearing, their industry is over, their skills are obsolete. I’ve been opening this reframe for two years now because it still does the work.
AI is not autonomous salvation or destruction. Instead, it is still about human intent. Tony Stark didn’t become irrelevant when he built the suit. He became exponentially more capable by leveraging it. The marketers who are thriving right now put on the suit and become superheroes. Learn more here.
The Private Chef vs. The Vending Machine
A vending machine dispenses generic slop. You press B7, you get B7. It doesn’t know you. It doesn’t care what you’re trying to accomplish. It just outputs.
A private chef creates for you. They know your preferences, goals, dietary restrictions, and guests. Every meal is handcrafted, not manufactured.
Most AI-generated marketing looks like it came from a vending machine. The brands that stand out are the ones using AI like a private chef’s kitchen: high-quality, locally sourced ingredients, human taste tasting at every step, and made just-in-time for someone specific. Learn how to stop using AI like a vending machine.
The Concentrated Orange Juice Theory
This one comes up every time I talk about scalable storytelling, and it always lands.
You can’t make good orange juice from weak concentrate. If your source material is generic, your AI-assisted content will be watered down. But if you start with rich, high-quality source material, a real conversation, a genuine client story, a point of view that only you can hold, the AI juice is worth the squeeze. One great, properly concentrated idea can become a blog, a LinkedIn post, a podcast episode, a newsletter, a short video, and a sales conversation starter.
The results don’t lie. Weak ideas amplified with AI just means more bad juice, faster. Learn how to leverage Degenerative AI to concentrate your ideas.
The Campfire Stories
People have always gathered around whoever tells the best stories. Long before printing presses, podcasts, and AI content production, the person who was remembered and recommended was the one with the most compelling story and the most generous spirit for sharing it.
AI models work the same way. They gather their recommendations from the voices they’ve heard most, remembered best, and trusted most consistently. That’s why I believe scalable stories are the new battleground for search visibility. You’re not fighting for page one anymore. You’re fighting for a place in the model’s memory, your Share of Model.
Scalable storytelling is how you earn that place. You tell your campfire story consistently, with real anecdotes, real expertise, and real human perspective. The brands that do this will be the ones the model reaches for when someone asks a question, you’re qualified to answer. That’s why I created Avenue9’s AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) services.
The Trust Tree
I think about brand trust the way I think about a tree. The roots are authenticity, reliability, credibility, and generosity. The trunk is your scalable story. The branches are your branding and outreach. And the fruit, the referrals, the recommendations, the revenue, only grows when the roots are healthy.
Every referral, every recommendation, every unsolicited mention in an AI answer starts with the same thing: a root system that’s been growing for years. You can’t hack at a tree and expect it to survive. You can’t skip ahead in the growth cycle and go straight to harvesting the fruit. The brands that are winning in the AI era are the ones that planted the right things years ago and kept tending them. The Trust Tree is how you build an online reputation that deserves to be recommended.
The Encore: Human-First at Every Stage
Every great setlist ends with the song that says what the whole show was really about. The moment everyone was waiting for…
Here’s mine: The most human marketers still win.
That’s not nostalgic sentiment or a rejection of AI. It’s a competitive strategy. In a world where anyone can generate content in seconds and measure every click, the scarcest thing in marketing is humanity. Real perspective. Genuine expertise. A brand voice that sounds like a person because it represents real people.
Human-First AI Marketing® is the throughline across every stage I’ve stood on this year. Different rooms, different audiences, same song.
The way to win in the AI era is to be unmistakably human. The algorithms, agents, and AI that everyone feared would replace us are actually rewarding the things that make us irreplaceable. For now, that gives me tremendous hope and the motivation to keep playing.
What is your next greatest hit?
