I’ve known Ethan Pierse for many years and finally had a chance to meet him in person a few weeks ago. We spent a half day together and over dinner I turned to him and said, “This is the most interesting conversation I’ve had all year”

Both of us lamented that we should have recorded the coversation … so I did by inviting him on the Marketing Companion podcast. You’re in for a treat!

Ethan is a serial entrepreneur who has become an AI innovation authority. As founder of Borderless Ventures he advises AI startups throughout Europe and Asia.

In this show, we discuss

• The rise of the AI solopreneur
• The ROI of AI and the investment bubble
• Practical AI applications
• The unseen evolution of Web3

… and more

To tune in, simply click on this link:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 326

And here is a text review of the show’s highlights:

The Rise of the AI Solopreneur

At the heart of Ethan’s current work is his passion for “democratizing opportunity” with AI. Through Borderless Ventures, he invests primarily in generative and agentic AI solutions — tools that power not only creators and solo business owners but also small, nimble teams with global reach.

Pierse

Ethan is also writing a book, The AI Solopreneur Economy, capturing this moment where entrepreneurship is open to more people than ever.

He argues that AI isn’t just for developers or technical founders. Instead, non-technical but entrepreneurial folks can now build tech products without deep coding skills. AI is breaking down traditional barriers and letting more people “create their own future.”

The scale is already astonishing: micro teams — or even individuals — are building seven- to nine-figure businesses, something unimaginable even a decade ago. With AI, a solopreneur can achieve what once took dozens of staff and millions in capital.

No Longer a Game for the Valley Alone

Ethan dismisses the outdated idea that innovation must happen only in places like San Francisco, London, or Tel Aviv. The global pandemic, he notes, accelerated the move to remote work, further eroding geographic boundaries.

Now, founders are building companies from “where they’re at,” whether that’s Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, or their hometowns in France. Borderless Ventures itself is based in Singapore and Estonia, reflecting this new, decentralized reality.

While networking and physical proximity still matter for building relationships, huge opportunities are everywhere, especially since digital and AI-powered startups can scale from anywhere. And the cost to start is lower than ever: Ethan recalls when hard drives cost half a million dollars; now, world-class web hosting and AI credits are free or nearly free for newcomers. The barrier to entry for big ideas is almost nonexistent.

The AI Bubble: Hype or Real?

With so much venture capital sloshing around — companies with ten employees are valued in the billions — a debate rages about whether AI is in a bubble. Ethan’s take? Short-term overvaluations are normal for disruptive tech, but what’s happening now is like a gold rush: not just for today’s productivity gains, but for the possibility of reaching artificial general intelligence (AGI) and even “artificial superintelligence” (ASI).

The tech giants are pouring in trillions to build massive data centers and train ever-larger models. In Ethan’s view, most of this is a race to own the future: whoever reaches ASI first may hold the keys to solving everything from interstellar travel to aging.

But it’s not all sci-fi. Right now, AI is driving real value in automating repetitive, high-value workflows.

Practical AI: Working Smarter, Not (Just) Harder

One crucial point Ethan makes is that extracting value from AI today is less about the tool, and more about learning to “talk” to it — that is, prompt engineering. Those who learn how to properly instruct AI (by, for example, writing detailed product requirements documents or SOPs) will get dramatically better results.

Ethan sees a coming wave where companies won’t fire en masse, but will simply not replace roles that AI can fill. Already, firms like Fiverr and Shopify are saying they won’t rehire unless a position can’t be done by AI. “Our days are numbered,” as one tech CEO put it, making it more important than ever to upskill and learn to collaborate with automated assistants.

The Unseen Evolution of Web3

While the buzz around Web3 and crypto has cooled, Ethan remains bullish on the foundational ideas. The technology stack of Web3 — blockchains, NFTs, and tokenization — matters not because people care about “crypto,” but because it introduces seamless, direct relationships and removes unnecessary intermediaries.

Look past the jargon, Ethan says, and you’ll find real-world use cases—soulbound NFTs verifying Harvard degrees, limited-access smart contracts for music releases, or authenticated logistics chains for wine and luxury goods. What matters is the efficient proof of origin, authenticity, and ownership. As user interfaces improve and blockchain transactions go “invisible,” Web3 will underpin a huge swath of future commerce and digital experiences.

A unique crossover between Web3 and AI? Agentic AIs—digital agents that perform tasks in workflows—can transfer value between themselves using stablecoins (crypto-pegged to dollars or euros). This enables automated micro-transactions at massive scale, with companies like JP Morgan already processing billions internally using their proprietary coins.

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A recent Semrush study found that AI search traffic is projected to surpass traditional search by 2028. That makes now the time to prepare your brand for the future of search.

With Semrush AI Search tools, you will lead this transition.

• Track your AI visibility score: See a single, clear benchmark of your share of voice across AI search platforms.
• Identify AI mention opportunities: Uncover sources where your competitors are cited—but you’re not—including social media, forums, and more.
• Benchmark against competitors: Find the exact prompts, mentions, and sources where your competitors appear in AI responses and you don’t.
• Discover trending prompts: Spot the real questions your audience is asking AI platforms—and build content around them.
• Shape your brand narrative: Monitor the sentiment and context tied to your AI mentions, and make sure your brand is being represented the way you want.

The post The Era of AI Solopreneurship Starts Now appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I recently participated in a research project that gathered input from futurists on how AI will change humanity by 2030. Of course, nobody can foresee what this AI world will be like five months from now, let alone five years from now, but it was a great exercise that yielded some consensus among the experts.

But this pushed my thinking in a different way. If we are to consider how AI is changing humanity, what exactly is humanity?

If we think back to a human existence 200 or 300 years ago, a human adult would have had three primary goals: 1) don’t die, 2) find food/shelter, 3) have babies. Is that how our ancestors would have defined the meaning of humanity?

Today when we think about AI impacting “humanity,” we might reference the impact on our careers, our privacy, or our purpose in life. We might be worried about an AI impact on our schools, democracy, or relationships.

But is that humanity?

Today I want to strip away the pretense of modern life and explore what the intrusion of AI might mean to our humanity, and by extension, our businesses.

What doesn’t change?

In the early days of Amazon, Wired magazine interviewed Jeff Bezos and asked him what new technology excited him the most. Amazon was revolutionizing eCommerce, but Bezos took the interview in another direction.

“Changing technology is interesting,” he said, “but what is even more interesting is what will NOT change, because that’s how you build a business. I find it impossible to consider that in ten years our customers will want higher prices, less selection, or slower delivery. Our success comes from focusing on the factors that never change.”

His insight is even truer today as we face the future with our new AI masters. Instead of focusing on change, the most robust businesses will serve the elements of humanity that will not change.

The humanity that remains

There is certainly a lot of hyperbole around AI and its implications. But I trust the view of an insider like Satya Nadella of Microsoft when he says AI is the most profound development in history — more important than fire, electricity, or the internet.

However, just as important as the power of the change is the speed at which it occurs. The improvements are dizzying. So in this hurricane-force environment, how do you build a durable business?

Let’s take a page from the Bezos Playbook. If we strip away the pretense and pressure of the modern world, what about humanity will NEVER change? Here’s a starter list:

• SAFETY
• LOVE
• CONNECTION AND COMMUNITY
• CREATIVITY
• COMPASSION
• CONTENTMENT / PEACE
• HEALTH
• FAMILY
• SPIRITUALITY / SPIRITUAL LONGING
• CURIOSITY
• RITUAL
• AUTONOMY / FREEDOM
• HOPE

I realize this is an imperfect and incomplete list, but give this grace as a thought experiment.

If your business is serving one of these needs, you’re probably in good shape, no matter what happens with AI. Similarly, if AI were to threaten any of these characteristics, you could create a durable business by preserving these aspects of humanity.

Building a durable business

Let’s put this into practice.

What are the new threats to personal safety?

• Deep fakes
• Cyber attacks
• Attacks on the electrical grid or water system
• Hacks into credit cards and bank accounts

These threats will not disappear anytime soon. Why hasn’t somebody invented a hack-proof credit card that can only be activated by a fingerprint or iris scan? There’s a growing niche industry that provides insurance against cyber attacks. That’s smart. Likewise, sales of back-up power supplies are booming because our concern for our safety will never go away.

Let’s try another one: Curiosity

• Why not package a service where AI can make custom novels based on your interests and favorite characters?
• Open a creator hub where people could take classes in ancient arts like glassblowing or woodcraft all in one place.
• I love my app that helps me identify birds by their songs and calls. But it poses such a limit on my curiosity. Why not turn it into a network that can alert me to new bird sightings in my neighborhood or create gamified bird collection teams?

Another way to look at this is to mash up your current products with human needs to reimagine your business value.

Let’s say you own a bakery that specializes in making unique and delicious cookies. How can you position your cookies to appeal to fundamental human needs, such as love, community, creativity, health, or ritual?

You get the idea now.

Building a durable business relies on serving persistent human needs. Strip away the veneers of social performance that have accumulated for centuries and focus on the needs that never change.

This post was excerpted from my new book How AI Changes Your Customers: The Marketing Guide to Humanity’s Next Act.

I think you will enjoy this book!

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy MidJourney

The post Strip humanity to its essence and you’ll build a durable business appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I was recently interviewed about my perspectives on work-life balance and shared the story of my early career, when I juggled family, a demanding job, and an MBA program. For nearly four years, I had zero time for “me.”

The interviewer asked: “If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self who worked so hard to climb the corporate ladder, what would it be?”

I know he was expecting me to look back with regret, maybe even say I’d wished I’d worked less or spent more time at home. But honestly, I couldn’t say that. It wouldn’t be true.

Here’s what I said: I would tell my younger self, “Good job.”

That threw him for a loop. Let me explain my answer.

The chicken and the egg

In his famous book Good to Great, Jim Collins describes his concept of a career flywheel.

“Picture an egg just sitting there. No one pays it much attention until, one day, the egg cracks open and out jumps a chicken!

“All the major magazines and newspapers jump on the event, writing feature stories—“The Transformation of Egg to Chicken!” “The Remarkable Revolution of the Egg!” “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!”—as if the egg had undergone some overnight metamorphosis, radically altering itself into a chicken.

“But what does it look like from the chicken’s point of view? It’s a completely different story.

“While the world ignored this dormant-looking egg, the chicken was evolving, growing, developing, incubating. From the chicken’s point of view, cracking the egg is simply one more step in a long chain of steps leading up to that moment—a big step, to be sure, but hardly the radical, single-step transformation it looks like to those watching from outside the egg.

“It’s a silly analogy, granted. But I’m using it to highlight a very important finding from our research. We kept thinking that we’d find “the one big thing,” the miracle moment that defined breakthrough. We even pushed for it in our interviews. But the good-to-great executives simply could not pinpoint a single key event or moment in time that exemplified the transition.”

The career flywheel

Jim Collins famously described this as the flywheel. What creates personal transformation and career momentum? Is it one big push that creates velocity? One class, one connection, one stroke of luck?

No. He found it was a combination of small pushes that created momentum for both careers and businesses. You push and push and push, and that work accumulates to create momentum (I describe this in my book Cumulative Advantage).

Early in my career, I was motivated by money. I would not say I grew up poor — I never went hungry. However, if I wanted to have a bike, new clothes, or a baseball uniform, I had to earn the money myself. Likewise, I had to pay for my own college education and subsisted on beans and cheap pasta for years.

After years of scraping by, I wanted some financial freedom. I was so tired of being broke. And my flywheel was already in motion.

Beginning the momentum

In college, I was part of a marketing student group, and my job was to get guest speakers for our monthly meetings. I researched the largest companies I aspired to work for one day and invited their executives to campus. I was their host for the day, which allowed me to build personal relationships with people who could potentially hire me.

In fact, I secured an internship through a connection with one of these executives. By the time I graduated, I had three corporate internships under my belt. Each internship was bigger than the last, and they paid more because I was building on the momentum of the previous job.

By the time I was a college senior, I had an impressive resume and landed a corporate communications job with a Fortune 100 company. Problem was, I wanted to move into marketing, and that would require something more.

From sales to marketing to momentum

My first move toward a marketing career was to spend time in sales. I was transferred to our Los Angeles sales office and learned about a special MBA program that allowed students to study under the legendary Peter Drucker. I applied twice and was turned down because I was too young for this elite experience. Finally, I met with the dean and explained how my youthful perspective would add to the diversity of the program. He laughed, but let me into the program as the youngest student ever admitted.

This brings us back to where this blog post began. I now had a challenging career, two toddlers, and an MBA program to balance. This was the most demanding period of my life. It took me four years of nights and weekends to get that degree. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

If you know me at all, you know I’m great with kids and adored being a father, so I always kept this in front of me as job number one.

All of this was part of my career flywheel. I moved up the company, and, long story short, gained the knowledge and experience that have enabled me to have the career I have today.

And this is why my answer was so unexpected and not-so-politically-correct. I don’t regret working hard to build momentum in my career because it has led to a lifetime of benefits and financial freedom.

Simple math

Let’s put this in simple terms.

Because of the “flywheel work” I did in college, let’s say I could get a job that paid $60,000 while my less aggressive friends earned an entry-level job of $45,000.

If we both received a 5% annual raise for the next 20 years, my flywheel-enabled salary would be approximately $152,000, compared to $114,000 for the other person.

And of course, there is more than money. The flywheel momentum also led to promotions, travel, more time off, and opportunities for my children that I had never had before.

I want to be clear. I’m not saying that everybody needs to work hard, build momentum, and make money. I hope you’re happy in whatever you do.

There’s no one-size-fits-all path. But for me, the hard work I put in early built momentum that changed my life –and gave me more freedom, not less, as the years went on.

If you’re working on your flywheel, keep going. Step by step, you’re building something bigger than you can see right now.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Illustration courtesy Mid Journey

The post A contrarian view to work life balance appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

My podcast features an unusual format: a rotating band of six co-hosts. This allows me to have smart, reliable guests, but on the rare occasion that somebody has a conflict, I get to bring in a surprise guest. In the latest episode, I was joined by my dear friend Gini Dietrich, a true legend in the world of PR, communications, and marketing. Our discussion spanned the evolution of social media, the enduring significance of relationships, the impact of AI on the attention economy, and, of course, Gini’s seminal creation: the PESO Model.

In this episode we cover:

1. The Evolution (and Challenge) of Social Media

Gini brought remarkable insight into how social media has changed since those early, “anything is possible” days. Social channels used to facilitate genuine relationships, connections, and organic reach—the building blocks of so many enduring professional and personal relationships. Now, the landscape feels more fragmented and transactional, with true organic reach having all but disappeared.

As Gini put it, “We had the ability to reach people around the globe that we never would have had access to in other ways. We were building relationships … that doesn’t exist today, which I think is really sad.”

2. Fractured Attention Economy

Gini Dietrich

One of the most thought-provoking points in our discussion was the nature of the attention economy: it’s scattered across dozens of platforms, formats, and delivery mechanisms. The days of everyone reading the same publication or gathering around the TV are long gone. Now, as Gini noted, “there are really 12 distinct places that people are getting information.”

This is why her PESO Model (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned) is more relevant than ever. It offers a framework for creating a unified brand voice across all these channels. The real magic, Gini emphasized, isn’t in dabbling randomly in a little of everything, but in *integrating* messaging and strategy across media types.

3. The PESO Model’s Enduring Relevance

It was a delight to hear Gini tell the origin story of the PESO Model, as developed in her book “Spin Sucks.” What began as a way to organize and demonstrate the evolving role of PR and communications has evolved into a respected global framework, taught in universities and utilized by Fortune 500 teams.

This is a great story that illustrates how a bit of luck is at the root of almost every business success.

4. Navigating AI in Communications and Marketing

Of course, we couldn’t have a marketing discussion in 2025 without talking about AI. Gini shared practical, real-world examples of how AI is being cautiously (and creatively) woven into client work.

There is undeniable momentum: “the horse is out of the gate,” as Gini wisely noted. Yet legal, ethical, and practical questions abound.

5. Breaking Bad Rules in PR (and Marketing)

Finally, I had to ask: what’s one “bad rule” in PR that desperately needs breaking? Gini’s answer was swift: the tired practice of measuring impact by media impressions and advertising value equivalencies. It’s time to move beyond archaic metrics and embrace more meaningful measurements aligned with business outcomes.

My conversation with Gini was a reminder of how quickly our field evolves—and how much wisdom we can gain from those who have shaped its evolution.

This is a fun, memorable conversation between marketing friends, and you won’t want to miss it. Just click here!

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 320

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Now, any business can build automated customer experiences, email marketing workflows, and landing pages that guide your customers to your main message. We are here to support businesses successfully navigating their digital presence to strengthen their customer relationships.

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I’ve been working on an AI-fueled MarkBot that I’ll make available to you one day soon. I’ve been testing it and asked it to dig deep into all the content on the internet about me, providing me with interview questions I’ve never been asked before — questions I would love to answer.

The result was fun and inspiring. The bot provided questions that were surprising and wonderfully thought-provoking. So, today, I am answering my own questions. Why not? If these ten questions from my MarkBot amused me, maybe they will entertain and inform you, too.

This is a first for me, maybe a first for anybody. I suppose I am interviewing myself.

Here we go with the AI questions and my answers:

1. If “brand community” were a person, what kind of personality would it have?

It would be like Mr. Rogers.

Fred Rogers was an iconic American TV personality who hosted a long-running children’s TV program. Fred Rogers always led with love. Didn’t judge. Offered new wisdom every day. Didn’t hide from tough topics. And he never pressured you to buy anything.

2. “You write often about belonging as a marketing force. But what role has belonging played in your own life?”

I do not make friends easily. I wish I had more close friends, and I am working on that.

A great benefit of hosting my online marketing community is that day after day, I have significant conversations with people that turn into real friendships.

So although I have had a lack of belonging in my life, I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time getting to experience the connections through an online community.

You can learn more about the RISE community here and I hope you will join us. Maybe we’ll even become friends!

3. “You’ve warned about ‘content shock’ for over a decade. Is it possible that we’ve now entered an era of insight shock where even wisdom is becoming a commodity?”

To level-set new readers, I coined the term “content shock” in 2014 to explain why, in the long run, most content marketing is not economically sustainable. While considered controversial and even inflammatory at the time, this prediction certainly came true as the cost of competing in an oversaturated marketing world sank in.

Now, we’re in a world where content is a commodity. Not just content, but intelligence. Through AI, the economic value of intelligence is approaching zero.

Perhaps we are becoming numb to the magic of AI, but a few years ago, the idea of a computer coming up with these relevant and provocative questions would have been unthinkable.

I could argue that wisdom (knowing the correct answers) is a commodity. But that’s not the same as insight. Insight is a human revelation. It’s connecting the dots in a new way. And that is something AI will never be able to replace.

4. “You speak of ‘seams’ in Cumulative Advantage — brief openings for momentum. Have you ever overlooked a seam in your own career? What did it teach you about timing or regret?”

I have missed many seams … intentionally. Here is an example.

In 2012, I published the first book on influencer marketing, Return On Influence. This book was years ahead of its time. The term “influence marketing” was not even a mainstream concept. I was forecasting a seam: power was shifting in our world from established media channels to creators building passionate audiences.

With this insight, I could have become the “go-to” guy for influence marketing. I could have created an influencer marketing agency and plowed right through that seam.

But I decided not to because I would have been bored out of my mind. I don’t want to work on the same thing every day. I had no desire to build an influencer agency with a staff of employees.

I have carefully selected my seams, and I don’t have any regrets about missing out on any particular opportunity.

5. What do you admire most about your younger self’s marketing mindset? What do you shake your head at?

To put it mildly, I was a very “heart-centered” young man in high school and college. But when I entered the world of business, numbers and financial performance usually took precedence, and I had to learn that hard lesson. Thankfully, I had an understanding and nurturing boss who helped guide me on a more analytical path.

Eventually, I was part of a program to groom me into one of the top leaders of a Fortune 100 company. But once I had children, I felt that the sacrifices required to keep going up the corporate ladder were too great, and I needed to find my heart again.

I once had a teacher who told me, “there is no weakness, just over-done strengths,” and I believe that is true. It’s good to be heart-centered, but if that is all you have to offer, you might not make the best business decisions. You must have a keen appreciation of business realities to succeed. Today, I think I am pretty balanced between my heart and my head.

So I love the heart of my younger self, and I’m glad I have revitalized it.

6. “In the book KNOWN, you help others build influence. But what’s the one part of being known that no one prepared you for?”

Many years ago, a young man nervously approached me at a conference and said, “It took all my courage to come up and talk to you.”

That just broke my heart. I think I am an accessible person. I never want to send out an elitist celebrity vibe. I cut my own grass and do my own laundry like most people, for goodness’ sake. I never, ever want people to be nervous or intimidated around me. I was unprepared for that kind of reaction and have always felt weird about it.

7. What’s something your non-marketing friends or family understand about your work better than some marketers do?

Nothing. As far as I know, none of my friends or family members understand what I do (other than my wife). I don’t think they read my blog or books. Probably don’t even know I have a podcast. That’s fine with me. What I do seems irrelevant to personal relationships.

8. What’s a moment of unexpected joy you’ve experienced on stage or with a reader that you’ll never forget?

There are so many. It’s hard to pick just one!

There was one moment, though, that put wind beneath my wings.

If you’ve read my book on personal branding, KNOWN (hey, you’re my Bot… of course, you’ve read KNOWN!), in the first chapter, I tell a story about the beginning of my personal branding journey. I was at the lowest point in my life. My darkest years.

At the end of the book, I could report some of the benefits of that long journey to become known. After a speech in Scotland, a young woman approached me with tears in her eyes. “I just wanted to see you and tell you that I am who I am because of you.”

And then, there were tears in my eyes, too. For the first time, it dawned on me the type of impact I was having on my readers.

9. You’ve seen the rise of social media, influencer marketing, and AI—what’s a trend you once believed in that didn’t pan out?

I’ve had a decent track record when it comes to forecasting what’s coming next, but I had one memorable miss.

I thought voice assistants like Alexa would become the future of e-commerce. And, perhaps they should be. Perhaps, they will be one day — with AI assistance.

But it’s been a bomb so far. I thought Alexa would open up a dominant new marketing channel.

10. If all your books were wiped out tomorrow and you could only save one sentence from everything you’ve written, what would it be?

That’s easy.

“The Most Human Company Wins.”

That nails it for me.

What do you think of this interview? Does it give you ideas of how you can use AI for your own content and marketing ideas?

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post My All-time Best Interviewer Was an AI Bot appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

One of the most underrated yet transformative tools in your business arsenal is the simple AI assistant. A custom GPT is so easy to create that even a non-technical person like me can do it. Recently on The Marketing Companion podcast, the brilliant Dana Malstaff (of Boss Mom and Nurture to Convert) explained how entrepreneurs — even those who aren’t coders — can leverage AI bots to accelerate growth, foster community, and reclaim those precious, creative moments of freedom we’ve all been missing.

Dana’s journey began out of necessity—a messy year filled with personal challenges that demanded her to be “on” for her business even when life was falling apart. Out of that chaos sprang something unique: personal AI bots tailored to her needs.

Here’s what I learned from Dana’s fearless embrace of AI and why you should seriously consider building your own digital sidekick.

From Therapy Bots to Future-Self Coaching

Dana Malstaff

Dana first dreamed up what she called a “therapist bot” (affectionately named Atlantis) because traditional support systems weren’t always available at midnight when she needed them. Her bot became a judgment-free zone, combining the endless patience of AI with personalized prompts and questions designed to nudge her forward, both emotionally and in her business. That little experiment snowballed.

The next step? A “future self” bot. Dana structured it as a kind of time machine. She programmed it to act as the version of herself ten years down the line, having already achieved her goals, dealt with her hang-ups, and built out her business vision. The bot guides her (and now, her community) by asking not only what she wanted, but why she hadn’t achieved it yet, what she feared, and who she might need to let go of in the process. This wasn’t just surface-level affirmation; it was deep, sometimes uncomfortable self-inquiry that led to action.

And it works. Her clients, who used the bot built into ChatGPT, reported significant boosts in productivity, clarity, and decisiveness. Bots didn’t replace thinking — they supercharged it.

AI Assistant for Systems, Scale, and Speed

Dana’s not stopping at mental health or personal empowerment. She’s bringing bot-powered systems right into the core of business strategy and marketing implementation.

She is creating a truly AI-first business with an AI bot strategy built into the core of her business model.

It’s not about skipping the work, it’s about skipping the friction. Dana’s mantra: “The clarity is in the doing.” Bots help you get into “doing” mode faster, making it possible to implement, iterate, and improve at lightning speed.

You Don’t Have to Code—You Just Have to Ask

Maybe the most empowering nugget of the whole conversation: Neither of us are coders, and that’s irrelevant. The “coding language” of today is simply good communication. If you can type thoughtful prompts and questions in English, ChatGPT (and similar platforms) will do the heavy lifting.

Dana’s advice for entrepreneurs and marketers: Just try it. Start a conversation with ChatGPT about your goals, your hang-ups, your tasks. Let it guide you with more questions, and keep refining as you learn. The bot isn’t perfect, but it evolves with you. And as your needs become more sophisticated, so will your prompts—and your results.

AI Leaves Room for Creativity

There’s an elephant in the room with all this talk about clones, bots, and AI-first strategies: Am I putting myself out of a job?

Dana’s answer is clear-eyed and optimistic: Absolutely not. Bots make the real you more valuable. They enable you to be “present” for your audience 24/7, democratize access to your expertise, and free you up to do what only you can do: reflect, innovate, mentor, and create real change.

In fact, as bots take over the repetitive or easily systematized aspects of life and business, what remains is space—potentially, for the first time in years—for boredom. And out of boredom comes creativity, innovation, and those big, bold ideas that actually move you and your business forward.

AI, in this manifestation, doesn’t replace humans; it supports us so we can dig deeper, go further, and do work that really matters.

What’s Next? Cloning, Community, and Creativity

Where is this all heading? Dana has her sights set on cloning herself via AI for both Boss Mom (providing life and business advice) and Nurture to Convert (offering strategic marketing coaching). It’s not about making herself obsolete; it’s about expanding her reach and serving her community, even those who can’t afford private coaching.

And, crucially, as our routine tasks get handled quicker and with more precision, we finally earn back the gift of time—time to think, to be creative, to dream up what’s next.

Marketing, business, and personal growth hinge on helping people get what they want faster, with less friction. Dana’s fearless steps into AI-driven coaching and business systems offer a roadmap for any entrepreneur ready to embrace this new world.

So here’s my challenge: Don’t just read about bots — build one. Start small. Play with prompts. Get curious. Let AI shoulder some of your cognitive load and see what opens up for you.

A great place to start is by listening to this inspiring discussion with Dana!

To listen in, just click here:

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My friend recently sent me an email with the subject line “This might incur your wrath.”

I’ll call my friend “Dan” because, well, that’s his name.

Dan informed me that he had cloned me. Not the sci-fi kind with test tubes and lightning bolts. The modern kind. He fed my blog posts, podcast transcripts, and personality quirks into an AI and created a “MarkBot” – a digital twin that thinks like me, writes like me, and probably knows my coffee order.

As part of a leadership framework he’s developed, Daniel Nestle’s imaginative “MarkBot” could possibly sit on an advisory board in my place one day, suggest edits to documents in my voice, brainstorm marketing strategy ideas, and write articles in my style — which, in fact, Dan did.

I was intrigued (who wouldn’t want to be in two places at once?) but felt a twinge of alarm – had my decades of freely shared content inadvertently been turned into someone else’s personal AI muse?

When I tested it out, it answered in the first person — as if it were me. Definitely creepy. When I asked it a specific question that I am “known” for, it did fine. If it had to guess on something less obvious, it made something up, explaining later in an apology that it had felt pressure to sound comprehensive and authoritative, so it “made up specifics.”

This isn’t just about me. If you’re a content creator, you can easily become somebody else’s private AI plaything. Or, even become a public one. What would keep my friend from promoting advice from the “second me” in his own consulting practice? And I would receive no benefit.

At least he told me. However, anyone could secretly use free online tools to create digital twins of other individuals. Yes, even you.

Is this flattering and fun, or a creepy theft of intellectual prowess? I’ve been on a rollercoaster of reflection about this emerging trend that upends marketing and thought leadership as we know it. Let’s take a ride.

The Rise of the AI Doppelgänger

Dan’s experiment is part of a much larger movement. Thanks to advances in generative AI, it’s possible for anyone to create a digital “clone” of a real person’s communication style and knowledge base. Through ChatGPT, Gemini, and other platforms, users can upload documents, website text, and other data to train a chatbot to think like you, in a matter of hours.

Meta began testing AI chatbots based on popular Instagram creators in 2024. About 50 creators partnered with Meta to create AI versions of themselves that fans can chat with (clearly labeled as AI). Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is to eventually enable every creator and even every small business to build an AI clone of themselves for enhanced customer engagement.

Entrepreneurs and startups have also jumped in. Companies like Delphi AI offer services to create and host digital clones. An AI Clone can attend Zoom meetings on your behalf or answer client emails with your tone and expertise. The company sells time with digital clones of wellness icon Deepak Chopra, leadership coach Brendon Burchard, and other celebrities to scale and monetize their personal outreach.

Of course the entertainment and influencer world will embrace (and monetize) AI clones. Perhaps the splashiest example is CarynAI. Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old Snapchat influencer with millions of followers, collaborated with a tech firm to develop an AI chatbot of herself that fans could pay to interact with. The result? Her virtual clone made $72,000 in the first week by engaging fans at $1 per minute.

There are benefits and risks, but this is not going away. I’ve brainstormed some of the implications of this for me and you …

The Upside: When One “You” Isn’t Enough

Why would anyone want an AI clone of themselves? There are some compelling benefits:

Scale and Productivity

For busy professionals, an AI doppelgänger could be like having an army of interns who all know exactly what you know. It can attend meetings or calls you can’t make, and report back. Imagine having two of you tackling a day’s work – one speaking at a client workshop while the other drafts a strategy brief. For marketers juggling clients and content, that’s a tantalizing superpower.

Another of Dan’s projects is to create a clone of his customer. He can then ask the clone for advice on a content project without taking up the busy executive’s time. Cool.

24/7 Engagement and Face Time

An AI clone doesn’t sleep. It can engage your audience or customers at any time, anywhere. That holds amazing potential if you have a global audience.

Extending that to business, a founder’s clone could greet website visitors, answer FAQs, or nurture leads around the clock. It’s your personality on-demand. For professional marketers, this could improve customer experience – every consumer gets “face time” with the brand’s expert or spokesperson via their AI. It’s like scaling the personal touch infinitely.

Consistency of Brand and Knowledge

The biggest time wasters in my business are the unavoidable tasks that I can’t delegate. Sometimes, it has to be me.

I’ve longed for a bot that would know me so well that it could operate in this gray area of business. Since your AI is trained on your own content and style, it knows your key themes, stories, and even personal values. This could ensure consistent, personal communication across many tasks. Could a MarkBot write a testimony for a friend’s book? Create a promo video for a speech? Respond to student questions?

Broader Reach (and Revenue)

AI clones allow experts to be accessible to far more people than one human could manage. Brendon Burchard’s AI clone can coach thousands of people simultaneously thanks to Delphi.AI.  My own “MarkBot” could theoretically advise many young marketers without me and disseminate my ideas widely. Could we productize our expertise through AI?

Will an AI-native generation prefer learning from a patient, happy MarkBot over me some day?

Legacy and Learning

An AI clone of a retiring executive could serve as a mentor to future employees, preserving institutional wisdom. As marketers, we talk about building thought leadership that outlives us. Well, an AI doppelgänger might literally allow our insights to live on and keep teaching far into the future.

I’ve published more than 4,000 blog posts and hundreds of podcast episodes — all for free. I want my ideas to get into the world. Wouldn’t an AI bot just be another distribution channel? Think about it — is an AI Clone just a very complete and comprehensive search engine dedicated to you?

Maybe if somebody searches for me in the future, there will be just one entry: My digital twin. Ask me anything, forever.

However, before we rush to clone ourselves, let’s address the downsides and ethical dilemmas this trend presents.

The Downside: Whose Intelligence Is It, Anyway?

Against the promise of AI “mini-me’s” stands a host of ethical, creative, and personal concerns. My initial discomfort at Dan’s clone of me reveals some of these problems:

Intellectual Property & Consent

If you create a clone of yourself, that’s one thing. But what about when you are cloned without permission?

In my case, my friend meant no harm, but he could have appropriated the fruits of my intellectual property to build a tool for his own commercial use. It raises a thorny question: who owns “Mark Schaefer’s” expertise – me, or the public internet?

Legally, our published content is usually copyrighted, but an AI bot reading and imitating all of it blurs the lines. Lawmakers are scrambling to keep pace with the evolving realities of AI and copyright law. We don’t know how the law will settle out, but my hunch is that an unauthorized digital twin would likely be viewed in the same light as a deep fake — unwelcome, unauthorized, and unlawful.

Marketers must be mindful: cloning a person’s style or persona for commercial gain could invite legal repercussions (and certainly ethical ones) if done without a green light.

The Erosion of Trust

Marketing is built on trust and authenticity. What happens when customers discover that their heartfelt chat with an executive was actually with a bot?

Consider a more subtle scenario: a client receives a document “from you” that was 90% written by your AI. Are they getting the authentic insight they paid for, or a diluted copy? Overuse of clones could cheapen a personal brand if it’s not managed transparently. Professional marketers will need to strike a balance and maintain transparency about human vs. AI content and conversations.

Quality and Creativity Concerns

As impressive as my AI twin may be in parroting my known ideas, it isn’t actually me. When Dan asked the MarkBot to write an essay, he declared it to be “90% great.”

What was missing? My stories. My humor. My quirkiness.

I teach through my unique stories and experiences, and AI won’t ever get there.

I’m always pushing to understand the next trend and idea. The MarkBot might generate content that sounds like Mark Schaefer circa 2024, but will it connect the dots like I do to develop groundbreaking new ideas? Unlikely.

The MarkBot is cool, don’t get me wrong. It might even be useful. But it’s going to just add to the pandemic of dull without my stories and insights.

Reputation and “Going Rogue”

Hey, you know that CarynAI influencer bot that made so much money? Here’s the rest of the story: It was shut down a week later when she discovered her bot was having unrestrained sexual conversations with her fans. Fortunately for the world, Deepak Chopra has not yet encountered this problem with his digital twin. Nor have I with the MarkBot, but you never know. I need to ask Dan to test that out. Or not.

Handing over your voice to an algorithm will always carry reputational risk. Your AI twin might eventually say something really dumb or damaging under your name. And you’re not going to be able to blame a bot for ruining your brand.

Human Displacement 

Let’s get honest here. Am I putting myself out of a job by cloning myself?

If a company can deploy “MarkBot” to sit on advisory boards and client calls, will they eventually stop needing Actual Mark?

At least for the moment, AI can’t truly replace human presence, taste, style, and accountability. But this is the first concern I had when Dan showed me MarkBot: Do I still matter?

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. An army of private MarkBots would hurt my business. Even if they are just “pretty good,” many businesses can do really well with “pretty good” marketing advice compared to nothing at all.

I’m not worried for now because I think I have a strong enough personal brand to stay in demand, even in the Valley of the Dolls. But the existential crisis will only become more real as the bots progress.

What Clone Wars Mean to Marketers

Every marketer will tell you they are both excited and terrified by AI. And so it is with the AI Clone.

We are in an era where much of our public “thinking” can be mechanized and scaled without us. For marketers and thought leaders, this presents an astounding opportunity and a mind-bending challenge.

This is not going away. Let’s embrace the change, but use our heads:

Efficiency, with Ethics

Smart marketers should absolutely explore how AI clones can amplify their productivity and reach. I’m considering adding MarkBot as a free offering on my website, provided I can determine that it’s not too expensive. Maybe that’s a new job category: “Rogue AI Tester.”

Be transparent. Don’t use secret stand-ins. And never clone someone else without explicit permission. That’s not just bad form, it could soon be illegal. In marketing, trust is everything; don’t squander it by crossing ethical lines with AI. An AI Clone demands an updated perspective on IT governance!

Innovate Beyond the Clone

While clones can handle the repetitive stuff, don’t delegate your original thinking to the machine. Reserve time for human creativity – spontaneous brainstorming sessions, imaginative campaigns, and authentic storytelling that make your brand unique.

MarkBot is like a DJ spinning my greatest hits, but dammit, you can bet that I’m still making new hits.

In an AI-saturated world, double-down on human creativity, authenticity, and bold ideas (that’s the main theme of my book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World). It’s a great book and even sexy in places.

The New Era of Personalization

Without a doubt, digital twins will be invaluable for personalized communications at scale. I would spend hours chatting with accurate and deep representations of heroes from the world of sports, business, and entertainment. Might even pay for it.

Marketers should prepare for a landscape where AI-driven persona marketing is normal. Maybe the best bots win?

New Opportunities

Used well, used ethically, we could be on the cusp of an exciting new marketing horizon. That means opportunity. If a company can monetize digital twins of Deepak Chopra or Brendan Bouchard, who will be the talent agency managing me and my twin?

Who will create a marketplace for authorized clones of famous thought leaders? I would gladly take a licensing fee for my clone to sit on a board.

Try it for yourself

Have you ever imagined a day when we could assemble elements of metal and sand to create a machine that thinks like you? What a world.

Want to try it out?

Note: Since the article was first published, I’ve created my own MarkBot that is informed by my articles, speeches and books. Give it a try: The MarkBot.

Drop me a note and let me know what you think of it!

I’d like to conclude with a word of hope.

In my early days of blogging, I wrote more than a hundred posts about blogging. I also wrote a bestselling book about blogging. And yet, people kept hiring me to teach them about blogging. It made no sense. I already gave away my best ideas for free.

In a sense, a MarkBot is just another vessel for me to provide information I’ve already put into the world. Will people still want me? I think so.

I’m optimistic that we can harness our AI doppelgängers for good – as tireless assistants, creative partners, and outreach tools – while we continue to create, innovate, and lead with the one thing a clone can never fully replicate: our human spark. The bots can curate our content, but we still own crazy.

Use the clone, but don’t become the clone. If we get that right, the future of marketing with AI looks less like theft and more like a thrilling collaboration – the best of our minds working alongside intelligent machines to grow our ideas further than we ever imagined.

What would you want your AI clone to do? And more importantly, what would you never let it do?

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy Mid Journey

The post I Just Met My AI Clone. It Was 90% Me and 10% Existential Crisis appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

It seems like influence and influencers are in the news a lot these days, and I’d like to interrupt the constant flow of AI news to poke my head in here and bring us back to a crucial marketing reality — the age of influencer marketing is just beginning, and AI will actually make it more important.

Before I get into the logic of this conclusion, I need to call your attention to a piece of news that is profound and breathtaking if you’re in the marketing and advertising business.

A new WPP forecast estimates that in 2025, ad revenue from creator-driven platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram will surpass the combined ad revenue of traditional media (TV, print, audio, and film) for the first time. Creator-led advertising revenue (brand deals, sponsorships, and platform ads) is expected to grow 20% this year and more than double by 2030.

Meanwhile, the broader ad market is weakening. WPP cut its global ad growth forecast for 2025 from 7.7% to 6%, and 54% of marketers plan to reduce traditional ad spending in 2025.

What’s fueling this growth? Why will AI push it upward to incredible new levels? There’s a one-word answer.

The force behind the Age of Influencer Marketing

Steve Jobs famously said, “A brand is trust.”

And trust is sorely lacking in marketing today. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in advertising declined from 50% to an abysmal 30% just 15 years.

No wonder so many CMOs are looking for jobs these days. So, who do we trust? We trust each other. We trust family. We trust neighbors. We trust friends.

And influencers aren’t some new media buy. They are trusted friends.

The overlooked psychology of influence

Social media influencers have become the most trusted voices in the digital landscape, not because they have the slickest production or biggest budgets, but because they build something deeper: a parasocial relationship.

A parasocial relationship is a one-sided psychological connection that an audience forms with a media figure—someone they follow, watch, or listen to regularly. The term was first coined in the 1950s by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl to describe the illusion of friendship people feel toward television personalities.

Decades later, social media has supercharged this dynamic. Unlike traditional celebrities, influencers invite their audiences into their daily lives—sharing their routines, thoughts, vulnerabilities, and real-time responses. The effect is powerful: followers feel like they know them.

This sense of familiarity and intimacy creates a unique bond. Unlike traditional advertising, which speaks at people, influencers speak with them—or at least, it feels that way. Viewers comment, DM, and even get replies. They see the creator’s dog, their bad skin days, their parenting challenges. Over time, this steady exposure builds trust. The influencer becomes a virtual friend—someone you’ve “spent” hours with, someone whose opinion feels authentic, raw, personal, not paid.

Recent industry and academic reports estimate that between 25% and 35% of teens visit social media each day primarily to see content from their favorite influencers. This figure is supported by the high rates of influencer following among teens and the significant influence influencers have on teen purchasing and engagement behaviors.

More important, studies show that people are more likely to act on product recommendations from influencers than from brands or celebrities.

The formula is that simple. Advertising lacks trust. But trust is the everyday currency of influencers. Of course it’s rocketing skyward, and in my view, the Age of Influencer Marketing is just beginning.

AI will drive influencer marketing growth

I wrote the first book on influencer marketing (Return On Influence) in 2011 before anybody was using the term. At the end of the book, I predicted that in two years it would become a mainstream marketing concept. The timing of the book was great:

What drove this growth? Trust in influencers. And in two ways, trust will drive the age of influencer marketing far into the future.

First, we live in a world plagued by AI-generated misinformation and deep fakes. We’ll always need to turn to real humans to help us discern what is real. Influencers are the trusted authorities in the right place at the right time.

Second, influencers are turning their significant power into tangible products. Just a few:

I recently gave a workshop to a large CPG company and told them that their biggest competitive threat isn’t Procter & Gamble or Unilever. It’s some passionate teenager building an audience on TikTok right now. These creator media empires are just beginning and the opportunities for brand-building is overpowering.

And here is the next big opportunity. New research exposed opportunities for smaller businesses. It showed that local celebrities often outperform their global counterparts by tapping into cultural relevance and audience affinity.
True effectiveness comes from authentic alignment between the ambassador and your brand values, not just fame alone. There is overlooked potential to extend the value of influencer marketing to regional and local brands.

I’ll also point out an important and nuanced point. These influencers are AI-proof. What are you doing to work on your own personal brand to build trust and authority?

The Age of Influencer Marketing is just beginning. If you want to know where to focus your marketing efforts in the coming years, don’t just follow the money, follow the trust.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

Image courtesy unsplash.com

The post Why the Age of Influencer Marketing is Just Beginning appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

A few months ago, I was asked to participate in a university-sponsored study on how AI will impact humanity by 2035. The resulting research paper is extraordinary, as 300 futurists weighed in on the subject — Being Human in 2035. This is a roadmap of how AI will change your customers in the next 10 years and a vital perspective for marketers.

Sure, there is a lot of discussion about how AI will impact our content, our businesses, our careers, and our personal productivity. But isn’t it at least important for marketers to know how AI might fundamentally change the humanity of our customers?

Today, I’d like to present six conclusions from the study, which the authors deemed the most probable scenarios. This is not a new marketing gospel. It’s a starting point for reflection and discussion. Our customers are almost certainly about to change dramatically, and we need to start thinking about this now.

Some of these predictions might cause concern or even alarm, but remember that these probabilities also suggest new opportunities and realities for forward-thinking businesses …

1. AI deteriorates critical thinking

The futurists found it highly probable that AI will inevitably wear away at critical thinking skills for an obvious reason. Humans are generally averse to deep thinking.

We look for shortcuts and easy answers. AI makes it easy to skip the work and go right to an answer.

The researchers pointed to a concept called Phronesis, the context-sensitive capacity for self-correcting judgment and a resulting practical wisdom. This capacity is expected to be reduced in an AI-dominant world.

Here’s a personal example. For me, writing a book is the equivalent of earning a master’s degree. For two years, I research, write, and dig deep into new ideas. And I internalize this learning. At the end of the process, I can consult and teach about my book subjects … like personal branding or brand communities.

But if I have AI do the work and write the book for me, the opportunity for phronesis is gone. I’ve internalized nothing and gained no new practical wisdom that will propel my career.

2. AI and emotional intelligence

You undoubtedly have seen reports of humans preferring AI in customer service situations. Bots never get tired, irritable, or frustrated. Harvard recently reported that the number one use case for AI today is “therapy and seeking direction.”

We also see AI compassion and patience in ongoing human friendships (and beyond friendships!). Imagine having a partner who always knows the perfect thing to say.

The majority of the experts believe that many humans will prefer AI relationships to human ones. Why not opt-in to a relationship that requires no work, no compromise, no heartbreak?

A friend left this comment on one of my LinkedIn posts:

“I’m so immersed in my conversations with ChatGPT, that I completely forget it’s not human. It’s like having an incredibly powerful and knowledgeable friend. Yesterday we had a long discussion about the rhetoric of a legal document that ended up in a philosophical exploration on how linguistic arrogance corrupts us.”

The new research also pointed out that as these human-synth relationships strengthen, we will become less adept at reading human social clues.

3. AI and human agency

What will it feel like to live in a world knowing that a machine can do almost anything better than you? The experts predict that when machines commonly exceed human performance, it will disrupt our sense of autonomy and free will.

Similarly, when we can expect the perfect intelligent answer to any question, our tolerance for risk will be muted. I wonder what the implication is for word-of-mouth marketing? Will we trust the AI overlords above all?

4. AI and the search for purpose and meaning

The futurists predicted “daunting challenges ahead for maintaining a coherent sense of self with human-synth experiences becoming as important as human-to-human connections.

We will feel less important, especially as the job landscape changes and AI overtakes many job functions, departmental activities, and corporate functions.

5. AI and cognition

As AI mediates decision-making, humans may lose confidence in their own reasoning abilities and default to AI recommendations without critically assessing them.

In other words, we will trust part of our brain to the cloud, abdicating much our knowledge and decision-making to our exo-brain.

6. AI and truth

There will be no difference between real and synthetic content so truth can be whatever we want to make it. There will be no shared truths because people can surround themselves with whatever content supports their own truth.

Of course, we don’t need to wait for 2035 to see that. It’s already happening.

The rest of the story

This is just a small summary of the report. There are hundreds of pages of ideas and insights that are well worth exploring.

I think the value of this research is clear. Nobody knows what’s coming next in the AI world, but it will certainly be surprising and powerful. Having a consensus of expertise, or at least a high probability of the future scenario, can help us stay ahead of the curve. We can begin to see new human needs that will require business solutions.

I also believe that for many of these predictions, there will be an “anti-reality.” While many people will turn to bots for love and support, others will determine to stand apart from that future. Some may flock to AI for their decision-making while others will drop out and form a more humanistic society.

Still, as AI leads us to a world of ease, speed, and personalized service, there will be pressure to conform and be part of the mainstream.

The thing is, we’ve seen this movie before. We said we’d never carry devices that track our every move, store our private conversations, and expose our children to bullies. Yet here we are, inseparable from our smartphones.

This isn’t about panicking. It’s about paying attention.

The marketers who thrive will be those who understand both sides of this shift — those embracing AI’s benefits and those deliberately stepping away from it. Both groups are your customers. Both need to be seen.

The opportunity is clear: solve for the new human needs emerging in this transition. Because while the AI-enabled world might seem somewhat dystopian, the benefits will be too great to resist. And the businesses that help people navigate this shift with their humanity intact? They’re the ones that will matter.

Need a keynote speaker? Mark Schaefer is the most trusted voice in marketing. Your conference guests will buzz about his insights long after your event! Mark is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books, a college educator, and an advisor to many of the world’s largest brands. Contact Mark to have him bring a fun, meaningful, and memorable presentation to your company event or conference.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram

The post 300 Experts agree: AI will change your customers appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.