On every post I’ve written for at least two years, I’ve included a badge that states: “100% Human Content.” And this is, too (as you’ll see) but I used AI to compose most of it. I’d like to use this as a teachable moment on a smart way to use AI.

This post is about my annual Uprising Retreat. Nearly everyone there noted that this event is impossible to describe unless you’re there, but I’ll try. It’s a gathering of curious and brilliant people who openly share and teach one another, creating a bond that fosters career relevance. We also have a lot of fun in a breathtakingly beautiful place.

Now, during this event, I am psychologically and emotionally immersed. There is no way I can capture all the great highlights. This is where AI comes in.

Many of the attendees used the Plaud voice recorder to record and transcribe the talks. Dr. Matt Wilkinson uploaded these transcripts to Notebook LM, where we could all slice and dice the commentary. I used this to create a first draft of a highlight post and then used Claude to massage it a bit and put it in my voice.

So … what you are about to read is fully human content, parsed and assembled by AI.

The gift of uncertainty

Before each event, I send out a survey to let attendees prioritize the agenda. This year, one word kept popping up as they wrote about their careers: Uncertainty. So, I set the tone for the event with a brand new talk called “The Gift of Uncertainty.”

We are living in a “poly crisis.” Not just a hard moment. A genuinely disorienting one, where the norms and traditions and even laws that used to orient us feel like they’re shifting in real time. We are in a world of malignant uncertainty.

I opened the Uprising by saying this isn’t a flaw in the system — it’s our fuel, especially if you’re in marketing. I encouraged everyone to explore the “courage dividends” that come from overcoming fear and acting on opportunity,  even when the outcome is uncertain.

We live in chaos. But that sets the stage for hope. And leaders who can genuinely dispense hope — not spin, not optimism theater, but real grounded possibility — are going to matter enormously in the years ahead.

The agentic economy is here, and most people aren’t ready 

Dan Nestle, Dr. Matt Wilkinson, and Brian Piper built the technical foundation for the event with a live demonstration of what an AI-orchestrated workflow actually looks like end-to-end. They showed how they used Gemini, Claude, and other tools in parallel to explore every angle of a new product launch.

They laid out the technical reality clearly: We are moving from B2B and B2C toward an agent-to-agent economy. Your customers will soon have personal AI agents filtering what they see. You will have agents producing content. The question is whether there’s anything human left in the middle.

Brian introduced what he called the “human-in-the-loop sandwich” — and the image stuck with me. Your unique expertise and stories form the foundation. AI synthesizes and organizes. But human judgment sits at the top, as the final filter. Strip that out and you get what everyone is starting to call AI slop.

Dan made a point I think is genuinely underappreciated: keep your intellectual property separate from your tools. Your brand missions, your frameworks, your SOPs — those belong in a tool-agnostic library you can plug into whatever model is performing best this month. Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT. The models change. Your thinking shouldn’t have to change with them.

Matt demonstrated a system that turns static buyer personas into interactive AI simulations. Impressive. But he noted something that grounded the whole presentation: the real reason people show up to an event is still the humans in the room. No simulation replaces that.

The scariest AI risk isn’t replacement. It’s surrender.

Dr. Jasmine Gruia-Gray named something I think we all feel but don’t say out loud. She opened with a line that landed hard: “One day I couldn’t tell which parts of my thinking were mine.”

She cited a Wharton study where roughly 73% of participants followed faulty AI advice — not because they couldn’t tell it was wrong, but because the model was confident, and they stopped checking. That’s cognitive surrender. AI doesn’t replace your thinking. It keeps you from noticing you’ve already stopped thinking.

Her solution is a Socratic framework she calls BRACED — boundary testing, reversal from stakeholder, assumption surfacing, counter-hypothesis, disconfirming evidence, decision with tradeoffs. The specifics matter less than the principle. She ran it as a live game called Prompt Arena, where the goal wasn’t to get a better AI output. It was to build better thinking habits. That distinction is the whole ballgame right now.

The body knows things the brain ignores

Nicole Donnelly, the founder of Hello Moxie, gave what I thought was the most unexpected talk of the event. She’s been studying the intersection of trauma, workaholism, and leadership — and her argument is that most of our professional systems reward us for managing our bodies like machines. We optimize for output. We suppress the signals that slow us down. And we pay for it in creativity, in empathy, in the quality of our decisions.

We don’t need to move faster. We need to stop long enough to think. Embodiment is the last moat.

You can see her TEDx talk here.

Safe marketing compounds irrelevance

Jason Dressel, CEO of The History Factory, pushed back on what he called “confidence porn” — the performance of authority that substitutes for actual expertise. The market is correcting for that. People are hungry for real knowledge delivered through real stories.

His framework is simple: great stories need purposeful characters, a three-act structure built around conflict, and what he calls touchstones — the specific language and images that make a world feel real. Stories are 22 times more memorable than talking points. That’s not a preference. It’s neuroscience.

John Kowalski of BYK-Gardner Instruments said something I want to stitch on a pillow: safe marketing compounds irrelevance. He told the story of a company whose bear-resistant trash can failed spectacularly in a field test — and turned that failure into an unforgettable brand. The gap between what an industry expects and what an audience actually craves is where brand equity gets built. He called it the Awe Gap. I’m going to keep using that term.

Emotion is the experience. Full stop.

Stacy Sherman of Doing CX Right made a case that I think is more important than ever. As AI ingests public sentiment at scale, every micro-moment in the customer journey builds or erodes a ledger. The failed QR code. The boring hold music. The email that was obviously a form letter. These small failures accumulate, and AI systems are now reading that accumulated sentiment to rank brands.

Dana Malstaff, CEO of BOSS MOM, added a critical nuance on vulnerability — the kind that actually builds connection versus the kind that undermines authority. Her distinction: share your scars, not your wounds. Processed experiences with a lesson attached. Not active pain that you’re still in the middle of. Amen to that!

Dana also led a session on the future of brand communities, driving home the point that the best communities emerge from a dissatisfaction with the status quo. What do you want to change in the world?

Trust is the only distribution strategy that scales

Sarah Stahl, VP Marketing for Lake.com, shared how a startup resort hit $2 million in revenue on a $30,000 budget by out-trusting rather than out-spending. The mechanism was micro-creators with real proximity to real audiences. Sixty-eight percent of consumers trust a creator over a brand. That number should reorganize your marketing budget.

Chad Parizman of Ader Communications entertained everyone with a brief analysis of predictive markets and the potential dangers of addictive betting markets.

His argument was that prediction markets — platforms where people bet on real-world outcomes rather than company stocks — represent an underutilized seam for brands. 8.5 million monthly users, 25 trades per day. The conversations already happening around these markets are data-rich, audience-specific, and almost entirely untouched by brand strategy. The brands that figure out how to own those conversations are sitting on something.

It was the right mix of mind-blowing information and entertainment to end the day.

The future of content marketing

What an honor it was to sit side by side with the legendary Joe Pulizzi and hold court on the future of content marketing. Over the years, Joe and I have not always agreed but we have always been friends. As always, this was a spicy, energetic, and insightful 90 minutes.

Joe and I talked about what he calls the Trust Portfolio — and I think it’s one of the most practical ideas to come out of the event. Don’t bet everything on a single brand voice. Build a diversified network of employee creators. Give them room to be specific, to be themselves, to be a little weird. The marketing team becomes a media operations hub. The employees become the signal that cuts through the synthetic noise.

Our main debate centered around the most likely role of humanity in an AI-dominant content world. Joe thinks the window is closing. I think human art will persist. We’ll have to meet again in a few years to see what happens.

The future of your brand

Sarah Neely of Signal Swell has presented several times over the years and always has a fresh and relevant message. This year, she updated her core word-of-mouth marketing wisdom with a spin for the AI Age. She introduced a new framework — the Five C’s of AI Discoverability.

• Clarity
• Conversation
• Current
• Credible
• Composition

Mary Lague of Pilot 44 ran a foresight exercise that’s worth sitting with. If AI agents are mediating $3-5 trillion in commerce by 2036, and culture has fragmented into hyper-niche communities, what signals should we be watching now?

She hosted an interactive exercise that let every attendee create a vision of their own brand emerging from a set of megatrends such as brand communities and virtual humans.

But here’s the best part

These highlights are only the tip of the iceberg. Most attendees will tell you that most of the learning came from questions and answers, small group discussions (led by Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez, Lauren Colbert, Alice Ferris, and Chelsea Rae Stuck), breakout sessions on branding and personal branding, and late-night conversations at the bar.

For example, here are some takeaways from several attendees:

“I learned to not just embrace uncertainty, but to be grounded in it.”

“The biggest shift wasn’t a tactic. It was realizing that staying still long enough to understand what’s happening is often more powerful than reacting quickly to what’s changing.”

“Growth starts to feel heavy when nothing is compounding. That was the moment I realized the issue isn’t effort, it’s what the effort is building toward.”

Sarah Stahl, Founder, Market Movers

“Community creates the space for people to feel safe enough to move toward the future.”

“What do we hold onto and what do we release — that is our wisdom.”

Brian W Piper, Founder of AIreFlow Solutions

Melanie Borden, Author, “Theatre of the Mind” · Founder, The Borden Group

Mike Carr, Cofounder of John13.org &  Autism Labs

“When Mary Lague said 44% of Gen Z workers try to sabotage their company’s AI, it reordered my worldview. Leveraging AI is far more than mastering prompts and learning tools. It also involves helping people understand and work through massive change, many fear or don’t understand, so they seek to control it, apparently often to the detriment of their employer.”

“As Mark Schaefer said, leaders dispense hope. And when he exhorted us to create pockets of hope, order, and meaning, it landed as a clarion call to action for me and my business.”

Dan Christ, Owner and founder of Dan Christ Digital Services

“It’s possible not to be completely freaked out and overwhelmed about AI.”

Lisa Kohn, International Speaker, LisaKohn.com

“When you can’t tell if you’ve become part of the AI hive mind, you realize you’ve done it to yourself. Jasmine Gruia-Gray’s session on cognitive surrender was a moment that turned the conversation inward. While every other session was about forces changing the world around us and how to respond, she asked what we might be doing to our own thinking in the process.”

“Mark opened by making the case that uncertainty is the entry point for original thinking, and John Kowalski’s awe gap session reinforced it from a different angle. Safe marketing compounds irrelevance. The seam, the real opportunity, is in the unexpected.”

Elizabeth Humphries, Marketing Strategist, Market Your Marketing

“I was in awe of the people in the room at Uprising! Inspiring and engaging. It reminded me of the importance of presence and being fully present at an event like this will allow you to get the most out of your experience. If you’re distracted and disengaged, you could miss something that could change your life.”

Sid Meadows, President of The Collaborative Network and Host of The Trend Report Podcast

“The jaw-dropping moment for me was when I was encouraged to break through a self-limiting belief about what type of speaking engagements I could get paid for. For the first time in 25 years, I saw a path forward to market myself.”

Mike Garrison, founder of Values Based Mindset and author of Can I Borrow Your Car?

“Leaders dispense hope… giving your team, your customers, and your industry permission to believe something better is possible. When you stop selling features and start offering a vision worth following, you stop being a vendor and become the reason people show up.”

“The sheer volume of knowledge, expertise, and insight in this room was mind-blowing.”

John Kowalski, Disruptive Awe Architect, Disruptive Awe

“Our humanity is being stripped from us. Each talk pointed back to specific actions we can take to be more human, including choosing to be hopeful, more discerning, actively cultivating community by creating spaces where people feel valued, and reframing failure as experimentation. The more we lean into these things, the more we will become the trusted leaders and brands of the future.”

“Nanocommunities of 40 or fewer will be the future! This affirmed our company’s strategy. Scale is not always the answer.”

Nicole Donnelly, Founder, Hello Moxie

“Personal consequence is the real work. The breakout conversations are where ideas become valuable because they become personal. The unique element of The Uprising is that we get to intentionally take the time to unpack it and ask: What does it mean for me now?”

“Malignant Uncertainty” looms over livelihoods. The time needed (and spent) to process this feeling, with other smart folks, became the difference-maker.

“The Uprising had a contagion of bravery and a level of openness that elevated everyone.”

Lauren Colbert, Principal—Strategic Facilitator of Strategy, Innovation, & Collective Intelligence at Filament

“The fireside chat between Mark Schaefer and Joe Pulizzi reframed how I think about trust at scale. Mark mentioned that Cisco had trained more than 10,000 employees to speak on behalf of the brand — certified, equipped, and amplified. Joe called this building a Trust Portfolio. Distributed authorship. Distributed trust. Distributed reach. That changes the marketing job.”

Matt Wilkinson, CEO, Strivenn

“In an era of automation, bots, and synthetic content, care becomes premium. People want guidance, reassurance, belonging, support, and human attention. This made me rethink how I show up online and how I position my own services—not just as a consultant, but as someone who helps people navigate change.”

Valentina Escobar-Gonzalez, MBA, Bilingual Marketing Consultant and Founder of Beyond Engagement

“I’m energized by Mark’s idea of ‘uncertainty as fuel.’ It’s a powerful reframe in a time of so much chaos. ‘Negative capability’ is another reframing that speaks to intentionally and patiently pausing to connect new dots. I learned so much over the two days, and I know that I will continue to learn from this circle of smart humans.”

Sarah Neely, Vice President of Strategy at Fuzz and Founder of SignalSwell

“Each courageous moment rewires you to believe in yourself. This is the courage dividend.”

“I appreciated Sarah Neely’s new perspective on the future of discoverability — the S.H.A.R.E. framework (surprising, helpful, authentic, relevant, experiences).”

Jasmine Gruia-Gray, Managing Partner at Strivenn and co-host of A Splice of Life Science Marketing podcast, Product Marketing Tips newsletter

“Courageous actions rewire who you believe yourself to be.’ —Mark Schaefer. I found this particularly pertinent because every time I have taken a leap professionally or personally, it has paid off, and helped me douse some of that imposter syndrome or lack of confidence you get when you’re in a room that you’re not quite comfortable in.”

Stacey Miller, Vice President, Communications at Auto Care Association

“I need more community in my life! (inspiration, empowerment, safety).”

“Trust = safety. Nurture messaging creates belonging.”

Knox Keith, Author of Validated

“I’m inspired by how domain experts forge and build AI solutions. Just as my agency is building AI to address concerns related to accuracy and contextualization, I was so impressed by Dr. Jasmine Gruia-Gray’s work focused on critical thinking and cognitive decline. Her Socratic method-based BRACED framework was excellent.”

“Joe and Mark’s discussion has me completely re-imagining our leaders and employees as characters of our story, and how we tell that story through both company-owned and employee-owned platforms. This will likely be the biggest actionable takeaway in my strategic and tactical shift.”

Jason Dressel, CEO, History Factory

“We shouldn’t treat AI LIKE an audience. AI IS an audience—multiple audiences, in fact.”

“Negative Capability is the skill we need to cope with chaos. Marinate in an issue before acting under pressure to respond, and that’s how insights will be revealed.”

Dan Nestle, Founder and CPIO of Lilypath

“Within the first 15 minutes, I had my first ah-ha moment, when Mark said: ‘Every time I feel afraid, I do it!’ I need a poster of this in my office.”

“We are in the eye of the AI storm, but it also presents so many opportunities. I realized that I don’t have all the answers about how businesses will assimilate or adopt AI platforms, but I do know that the most powerful force in business is still human connection. Spending three days with 39 of the most knowledgeable, forward-thinking leaders in AI and new technologies left me feeling inspired and full of hope. The Uprising was an Executive Education course on steroids!”

Anne Deeter Gallaher, Owner/CEO of Deeter Gallaher Group LLC

“In a world that constantly competes for our attention, we need to ‘control the inputs.’ In other words, be deliberate about how much news we consume, which social media we engage with, whose opinions we give weight to, and how much access the outside world gets to our inner peace. Those inputs shape our focus, our fear, our energy, and ultimately, how we show up at work and in life.”

“We’re living in a time of ‘malignant uncertainty,’ where change isn’t only constant, it’s harder to predict. Companies need to let go of overly rigid plans and pay closer attention to what customers and employees are thinking, feeling, and doing in real time. The brands that earn trust will be the ones that build emotional connection when everything else feels uncertain.”

Stacy Sherman, International Keynote Speaker, Influencer & Podcaster: DoingCXRight.com

“AI is evolving and changing how we operate at a personal and work level faster than ever before. There is opportunity in seeing this ‘seam.’ Uncertainty makes room for me for creativity, growth, and progress.”

Debra Feresten, Debra Feresten Homes

I used to believe more content would grow my business, but now I see that trust is the real currency—and content is just the vehicle to earn it. That changes everything: from chasing reach to building a small, intentional audience that actually cares.”

“My AHA moment was realizing we’re not heading toward a world with better ads—we’re heading toward a world without them. When there’s no ‘skip button,’ only brands that create trust, community, and meaning will survive.”

Yevette Lynn, Kingsport Headshot Photographer and Studio Owner, The Journal

“AI tools become personal. They are like the hammer that a carpenter uses every day. They form to his hand and are customized to his needs. There is beauty in the wear of such tools, but if you were to pick one up, it feels foreign. To use them properly, one must interact with these tools and shape them to one’s personal needs.”

“Being raw in our content gives our community permission to share. But that sharing should come from scars, not wounds.”

“The tension between the obligation to react to the world and the value of marinating in uncertainty is the obligation of leadership.”

Atom Freeman, Founder of Prana DM, Host of Comic Industry Insiders podcast

“Building a personal brand is not a project, it’s a LIFESTYLE.”

“The customer journey is the cumulative effect of every interaction, good or bad.” Every micro moment shapes perception, and people are constantly evaluating, even when you are not thinking about it. What they remember is not necessarily the process, it is how it made them feel. “Emotion IS the experience”, and that is ultimately what defines your brand.

Your most powerful, underutilized influencer channel is already on payroll. Employees are a built-in network of credible, motivated nano-influencers, but only if you replace control with trust and give them a clear, supported way to share. If your own people are not advocating for your brand, why would someone else?

Chelsea Rae Stuck, CEO Craeve, and Host of the Curiously Stuck Podcast

And … back to me.

We can’t stay relevant on our own. Everybody who attended The Uprising has a new set of tools and a professional network to help them navigate the future.

The 2026 Uprising was a call to stop trying to be “safe” and instead build a future where our humanity is our most discoverable and durable asset. I hope you will join us May 04-07, 2027. Registration is open.

Some photographs provided by Yevette Lynn Photography

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 Human Renaissance in the Agentic Age: Insights from The Uprising Retreat 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 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:

Click here to enjoy The Marketing Companion Episode 319

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this fantastic episode.

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This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

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.

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post Building a simple AI assistant can transform your business now appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Each year, I read Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It is one of the greatest books ever written and a reminder of the best and worst of the human condition.

The central premise of this famous book is that “to be human is to suffer,” and that how we handle our suffering defines us.

This became an unexpected topic of conversation with my friend Dana Malstaff. We were speaking at the same event recently, and I took advantage of the opportunity to bring together some friends for dinner. When the other two people paired off in conversation, Dana had a chance to say something to me privately—she was going through a gut-wrenching and stressful period.

The deep sadness on her face resonated with something buried in my own heart. For a moment, we were connected by the quiet acknowledgment that suffering, as Frankl taught, is universal—sometimes the greatest comfort is knowing you’re not alone in it.

The private moment passed as the server brought our food, and the four friends resumed a more public conversation. I felt inadequate as a friend, knowing that an opportunity to comfort her in the moment had passed.

The next day, I flew home to the other side of the country, but I could not get that look on Dana’s face out of my mind. I wrote some words of encouragement to her based on my own experience with suffering. I knew how hard it was to keep operating as a human and a business professional when the world crashes around you.

She appreciated my advice and suggested that our next Marketing Companion podcast episode could explore the theme of “persisting through suffering.” How do you keep going as a business leader when your mind and body want to quit?

I could not imagine a scarier topic. Which means … I should do it.

Meaning in Suffering

I didn’t know how this would go as a podcast episode, but I’ve learned that when something is out of my comfort zone, I need to pursue it. This is when I grow as a person.

So Dana and I talked openly about our suffering and our strategies to persist when the world won’t let us step off to catch our breath.

Before I turn to this conversation, I want to emphasize that I am in no way comparing myself to Viktor Frankl and the horrors he experienced in a Nazi concentration camp. I started this post with his quote because it is part of my psychological approach to life, and to introduce you to this book if you did not know it.

As this podcast enters its thirteenth year, this episode certainly stands out as a unique and gripping human tale. While it might seem like “suffering” has nothing to do with marketing, it has everything to do with marketing, a profession that runs on empathy and understanding.

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 313

The illustration on this post is “At Eternity’s Gate” by Vincent van Gogh.

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this fantastic episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

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

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post Finding Meaning in Suffering: Business Leadership When Your World Is Falling Apart appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

This is a milestone moment in the history of The Marketing Companion podcast as we welcome a new co-host to the show (we have six rotating co-hosts!).

Dana Malstaff is a true marketing visionary and I learn something from her every time I connect with her. In her first show, she certainly held up her track record!

We are both of the mind that the marketing world will need to infuse humanity into our work as we hurdle inexorably into our AI future, and Dana suggested some ideas I had not considered before, like:

• Blending personal emotional states with AI commands to provide more actionable tasks
• Creating emotional connections with your audience through product discussions
• Moving away from mass marketing or a huge community to a plan where human connection is still possible

… and much more. It’s such a great show! To hear more, just click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 307

Please support our sponsor, who brings you this fantastic episode.

Bravo for Brevo!

This episode is brought to you by Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Brevo gives you the tools to attract, engage, and nurture customer relationships.

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

Go to https://www.brevo.com/marketingcompanion to sign up for Brevo for free and use the code COMPANION to save 50% on your first three months of Brevo’s Starter & Business plan!

The post How to infuse humanity into an AI World appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I’ve written 11 books, and among those hundreds of thousands of words, there is just one chapter devoted entirely to one person. That would be Chapter 4 of Belonging to the Brand, which features Dana Malstaff, the most visionary person I have ever known on the topic of brand community.

Dana’s success has been revolutionary, building a tribe that exceeded 80,000 members and a steady revenue stream from her devoted Boss Mom community fans. Her innovations around automation, leadership, and reward systems would be the envy of any entrepreneur.

And, in the 300th episode of The Marketing Companion, Dana describes why she “burned it to the ground.”

On the surface, Dana had built an entrepreneurial dream, making seven figures with no sales or marketing team, no advertising, no “branded content” plan. How would it make sense to abandon such a remarkable achievement?

But when you listen to this captivating episode, you’ll learn why, once more, Dana is pushing boundaries and showing us the true future of the brand community.

The brand community is an important part of the future of marketing. You won’t want to miss the wisdom and insight from this show! Just click here:

Click here to enjoy Marketing Companion Episode 300

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There is a quote in my new book that is gripping and profound, but I’m not sure I fully understood it until this week. This quote is from Boss Mom CEO Dana Malstaff: “It’s easier to start a movement than build a business.”

Dana is a visionary business leader, and when she speaks, I listen.

But what does this quote really mean? What does a movement have to do with business and customers? It seemed a little woo-woo to me. Are you going to walk into your supervisor’s office and tell her that you’re starting a movement this week?

As I was helping a client with an exhausting sales problem, the truth finally sunk in. I understood how a “movement” can connect to business success, and I wanted to pass this insight along to you, too. Here’s what happened …

The spark of an idea

I love doing my one-hour coaching calls. Anybody, anywhere can sign up, and I get to meet the most fascinating people from all over the world!

A recent call was with an artist who specializes in a practice of music therapy. He teaches people how to play musical instruments in a way that helps them calm down and heal — certainly something needed in the world today. I liked his idea, but he struggled to keep his business going.

He had some limited success using Facebook ads to drive sales of his classes, and he had read every book and blog post he could find on sales funnels and lead generation.

But after many years of endless ad cycles and experiments, he barely made ends meet and was exhausted. He had read my book Belonging to the Brand about the link between business and community and wondered if community-based marketing could be his answer.

As we talked about a possible business strategy, the meaning of Dana’s quote finally lit up for me.

Start a movement or build a treadmill?

I think the missing link between sales funnels and community is the emotional bond.

A lead magnet can attract clicks and maybe people who like free stuff, but it’s a treadmill that never ends. Keep advertising, keep promoting, and keep them clicking. Even with the help of automation, this focus on filling a pipeline with strangers can wear you down, and my friend was feeling it!

But what if you had a community where people feel something as well as buy something? They’re part of a community because they love you and believe in your mission. That is how you start a movement: enabling people to achieve something, to build something, to change something. And Dana’s right. That’s also a sustainable business strategy with a lot less wear and tear.

Building momentum for a community requires time and patience. And my friend did not have time or patience. Every time I urged him to create content with consistency and build an audience that leads to community, he reverted to his addiction to sales funnels. It’s fast. It can create leads tomorrow. He was tethered to the treadmill and was afraid to jump off.

But as we talked through his alternatives, he began to see that he had to change or the sales funnel exhaustion would never be over.

Start a movement, start a business

I don’t think a community is necessarily the right strategy for every person or business, but it was for this man. He truly could change lives, and the people in his circle loved him and wanted to follow him. But he couldn’t see this as the start of a movement. He saw his followers as sales leads.

I explained to him that if he had a community of hundreds, or even thousands, of people who believed in him, the treadmill could be over. His community would sign up for his classes, workshops, and events because they believed in the movement — music for healing, music for peace.

Eventually, their bond would not just be to him. It would be to each other as friendships and collaborations bloomed. They would belong to the brand. I’m happy to report he is exploring this new path.

Dana’s Boss Mom community now has 80,000 members, generating about a million a year in revenue. She has no sales team, no sales funnel, no ad budget, no lead magnet. She created a self-sustaining community, a movement of people who want to grow as mothers and entrepreneurs.

When I interviewed her for my book, I kept asking her for the monetization strategy and the measures of ROI. Over and over again she insisted that her only focus was the movement — creating successful mom entrepreneurs. If you have a movement, the business will take care of itself.

That seems so much more fulfilling than the sales funnel, right? Organic growth and customer advocacy instead of SEO and ad cycles. The movement nurtures and heals. The movement drives the business. The movement IS the business.

This is why I made the bold claim in my book that community is the last great marketing strategy. Content, ads, and SEO will always have a place, but these ideas are becoming dramatically less important in a streaming, AI-driven world.

But we have always needed community, and we always will.  Have you thought about enrolling people in your movement instead of moving them through your sales funnel?

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant. The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

The post Is it easier to build a business or start a movement? appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Too short for a blog post, too cool to ignore, here are ten short observations on the marketing world worthy of your attention. Starting with … my first revenue from ChatGPT!

1. Revenue from ChatGPT

I just earned my first revenue from ChatGPT when a new client found me by searching for “top 10 marketing experts.” I tried this myself, and the list would shuffle on each query, but I was usually in the top ten. Also, I had friends try this in Europe, and the same names came up, all of them Americans by the way.

Why is this first revenue from ChatGPT significant?

1. Not only was this the first revenue from ChatGPT, but this might also be the first business that came to me via a search engine other than Google! It makes you reconsider the role of SEO in the ChatGPT world.
2. Microsoft is investing $10 billion in OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Microsoft owns Bing. Remember Bing?
3. Google has its own AI — perhaps the most powerful in the world — waiting in the wings. When will they unleash it on the world?

By the way, I assure you that I am NOT one of the top ten marketing experts in the world. Just in my own circle of friends, I can easily name ten people smarter than me. However, I have an effective personal brand, and that is everything in this world.

2. Building on that idea …

ChatGPT and other AI bots present an existential threat to many creators. I have shouted from the rooftops for years that working on your personal brand and the meaningful, emotional connection with your audience is the ONLY thing that can save you.

Here’s another lesson in personal branding.

One of the things I teach about in my Personal Branding Master Class is the importance of paying attention to qualitative data as a measure of your progress.

How do you know you are becoming “known?” This is an essential question, and the answer is not always found in a quantitative measure like revenue.

Keep a sharp eye on qualitative measures of success like:

• People finding you and asking questions
• Invitations to be a guest on a podcast or video
• Kind words about your content in a social media post or tweet
• Higher levels of engagement and social shares of your content

These are all signs you are becoming “known.” As long as this is happening, keep going!

It’s the same for me. I watch for qualitative signs of success. This week, I was mentioned in an article on The Drum alongside luminaries like Scott Galloway and Martin Lindstrom. I was asked to be on a Pew Research Futurist Panel with several Internet Hall of Fame pioneers. Could that have happened five years ago? No. These are important signposts of progress and leading indicators of future commercial success.

The personal branding journey is never over for any of us.

3. Evil uses of ChatGPT

A common “black hat” SEO technique was to scrape excellent content from other websites and re-publish without permission to drive ad sales on a crappy site. As Google improved, it detected these frauds and penalized the culprits.

I recently discovered a tricky new use of AI. The bots scrape original content and then use ChatGPT to re-write the copy just enough to make it seem like it’s original! Here’s a screenshot of my original post:

And here’s the AI-modified version:

The AI re-write is not very good, but it doesn’t have to be. It only has to be Google-sufficient to build authority and attract eyeballs to this site. The only way I discovered this is because my friend John Espirian was mentioned in the article and he got an alert that his name was being used in an article.

Where corruption can occur, corruption will occur!

4. The story of my life

5. My go-to application

When people ask about the best apps I use on my job, I have a boring answer: Excel spreadsheets and WordPress!

However, I am also a huge fan of SEMrush. I am NOT a paid “influencer” for the platform, but I just honestly love it because it saves me time and money. Three ways I use it nearly every day:

1. Detailed competitive research for my clients
2. Reports on content and keywords that inspire content plans
3. Analysis of my website performance with detailed action plans. Years ago, I used to pay $500/month to a person just for this one report!

6. But I LIKE my dance moves …

This week I had a great conversation with Dana Malstaff. Dana is a true business visionary and I devoted an entire chapter to her in my book Belonging to the Brand.

She was talking to me about where she publishes content and in regard to TikTok said, “I want to be known for my brains, not my dance moves.”

Now Dana knows there are deep layers to TikTok and it is an important social media channel. But she is just one person creating content for her entrepreneurial business and she knows that WHERE you show up and HOW you show up are important.

Similarly, my Marketing Companion co-host Jay Acunzo announced this week that he is leaving Instagram. I hate that because Jay is an entertaining storyteller, but he explained it is taking too much time and distracting from his core business.

To have an effective online presence, you have to be great, and you can’t be great in five places. Be intentional about where you spend your time.

7. An important lesson in one photo

Carrying the “where you show up” discussion even further, this ad should inspire discussions on several levels.

I think this is amazing. Sir Elton is creating relevance within a new generation.

8. What happened to voice marketing?

A few years ago, many were claiming that voice-activated bots were the next big commerce platform, emphasizing the importance of Amazon’s Alexa and Echo.

This is one of the big mysteries of the marketing universe: Why Alexa and other voice assistants never rose above the level of voice-activated clock radios. I mean, Siri still spells everything wrong, and I haven’t used Alexa in two years. I recently just remembered that I had one.

Amazon just announced a 10,000-person layoff, and apparently, this has hit the Alexa team heavily. News accounts reported that Alexa has little developer activity or commerce usage any more.

There is SO MUCH progress on AI and audio applications. How did this fail so badly? Is this a case of bad timing? Bad marketing? Or was Alexa just a bad idea? Would love to hear your views on that.

9. Keeping in touch with all of you!

Last month I opened up my calendar for any blog reader who wanted to talk to me. For two days, I met amazing people in back-to-back 20-minute meetings. It was SO MUCH fun!

If I had to point to one theme of these discussions, it would be “relevance.” How do we stay relevant amid this hurricane of change? Keeping up with this crazy rate of change is on a lot of minds.

I loved spending time with so many interesting people from around the world, and I will probably open up my calendar again in the summer. In the meantime, anybody can sign up for an hour to talk to me about their business problems. I’m always accessible to you.

10. An insight on viral

I’ve been blogging every week since 2009 and had my most significant “viral hit” last month. Although I first posted this article on my blog, for some reason, it really took off on when I posted it on Medium. The article:

20 Entertaining Uses of ChatGPT you never knew were possible

Here is the lesson. This work was created by a collaboration of friends from my RISE community, not an AI bot. I am certain this post would never have achieved its viral status if I had written it alone or composed it with ChatGPT prompts.

Humans for the win!

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak at your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Illustration generated by MidJourney

The post I just earned my first revenue from ChatGPT and other observations appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

I recently interviewed my friend Dana Malstaff for a new book project and she provided some extraordinary advice about entrepreneurship and leadership.

Dana is the powerhouse founder of BossMom. She has this energized, confident, visionary drive toward the future of marketing and community that inspires me every time I talk to her. I wanted to know … how did she get to that place? What drives this vision?

She told me a story about how, when she was little, she loved to help her stepfather on his business ventures. She got to see first-hand how entrepreneurship works.

As she started to take on more tasks for the business, she asked for direction on what she needed to do to succeed. Her step-father said:

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want when I see it.”

I thought this was an exceptional piece of leadership advice. It’s so empowering. He’s saying, “Find your own path. I trust you.” And yet, he also leaves open the opportunity to mentor her when problems arise.

Anyway, I thought this was cool and I wanted to pass it along since it might have a positive impact on you, too. Dana Malstaff is a brilliant leader. I want to be like her when I grow up.

Mark Schaefer is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions. He is the author of some of the world’s bestselling digital marketing books and is an acclaimed keynote speaker, college educator, and business consultant.  The Marketing Companion podcast is among the top business podcasts in the world. Contact Mark to have him speak to your company event or conference soon.

Follow Mark on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Discover his $RISE create community.

Illustration courtesy BossMom

The post An important insight on leadership from Dana Malstaff appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

Jeremy emphasized that to a large extent, customer experience will define eCommerce. This connection between experience and customer loyalty was a major topic throughout the retreat. He predicted a bolder integration between major banks and commercial services and social media.

And now, some exclusive Uprising insight

Click on this link to listen to Episode 172

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It’s hard to ignore — 630 million business professionals are active on LinkedIn. They have twice the buying power of a normal web user. If you’re in business, you need to be exploring advertising on LinkedIn. Brooke and I have both had tremendous success with this marketing platform and to help you get started, LinkedIn is offering Marketing Companion listeners $100 in free ad credit. That can go a LONG WAY! Take advantage of this opportunity today by visiting linkedin.com/companion

The post The Uprising brought together 30 marketing thought leaders. Here’s what happened next. appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

[podcast_player]

By Mark Schaefer

There’s no more relevant or interesting topic these days than the moving target of monetization in the online world. The model has changed drastically over the years but Dana Malstaff has found a method to do it right.

Dana is the leader of a 37,000-member BossMom Facebook Group that has provided a steady and growing income to her family. She does it by protecting her group members, by making them feel like they are accepted and they belong — never by advertising or selling directly.

Dana has discovered how to monetize a Facebook Group in a way that has created a thriving little empire that includes a conference, consulting services, and her latest book Climb Your Own Ladder.

Dana’s approach is an excellent example of the human-centered marketing I propose in Marketing Rebellion and the source of a rich conversation between myself and Brooke Sellas on the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.

And then, a rant!

On the new Marketing Companion show I also go on a rant. Social media marketing has become a legion of followers who flock to the latest trend until they ruin it, in this case video storytelling.

There are 65 years of content uploaded on to YouTube every day. So why exactly are you posting more videos? Don’t follow the crowd because a guru tells you to do it. Great marketing isn’t about conformity, it’s about non-conformity. You’ll want to pay attention to this section of the show.

Here are some additional thoughts on why the future of social media marketing is NOT in video.

The new episode also explores the new surveillance economy and how social media might be used to track welfare fraud.

And finally, while most people show courage in their lives by coming out of the closet, we have some fun with Brooke as she goes into one.

There’s lots of fun and insight ahead on the 150th episode of The Marketing Companion:

Click on this link to listen to Episode 158

Other ways to enjoy our podcast

• Try this! “Alexa, play the latest episode of The Marketing Companion.”
• Click here to download the latest episode or subscribe in iTunes
• Listen to us on iHeart Radio
• Find us on Google Play
• Find the podcast on Stitcher
• Complete Marketing Companion Episode Guide

The post How to monetize a Facebook Group appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.