Tech Marketing Rewired
Tech Marketing Rewired is your front-row seat into the minds of the best tech marketers, brand leaders, and technology builders in the game.
I’m Kevin Kerner, and each episode is a conversation with smart friends, some leading the charge at B2B brands, some building the tech shaping the future of marketing, and all of them rethinking what actually works in a space that’s moving fast. We get into what’s next, what’s working (and what’s not), and how to scale marketing in a way that doesn’t burn everyone out. It’s honest, forward-looking, sometimes a little nerdy, but always practical and grounded in real-world experience. If you care about where B2B marketing is headed, you’ll want to tune in.
Tech Marketing Rewired
Smart Strategies for Building AI Maturity with Ryan Bearden
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
"I'm having more fun now at work than I can ever remember." When Ryan Bearden shared this feedback from a client who had gone through his AI training program, I knew we were onto something special in this conversation.
The noise around AI implementation is deafening, but what's often missing is practical guidance on how to actually get your team using these tools effectively. Ryan cuts through the hype with refreshing clarity, drawing on his 25+ years of B2B marketing leadership at companies like AT&T to offer a pathway that works.
What makes Ryan's approach unique is his insistence on applying AI directly to your team's current workload. "Work on your work" is his mantra – no theoretical use cases, no abstract concepts. The transformation happens when people see AI improving their actual deliverables, often within days of starting training.
The "transformation journal" concept he introduces is brilliantly simple yet powerful: documenting exactly how AI impacts each task, from time saved to quality improvements. One client discovered they were saving three full days per month per person – but more importantly, they were redirecting that time to strategic work that had previously been impossible due to bandwidth constraints.
For executives feeling pressure to accelerate AI adoption, Ryan offers valuable perspective on setting realistic expectations while still driving meaningful change. "Start small, see what could be possible" provides a framework that builds confidence rather than creating resistance.
What struck me most was Ryan's observation about human connection in the AI implementation process. Creating space for teams to share their experiences – both successes and failures – accelerates learning in ways no structured curriculum can match. The serendipitous conversations that emerge when teams discuss their AI experiments often reveal the most valuable insights.
Whether you're just beginning your AI journey or looking to scale existing initiatives, this episode offers a roadmap for implementation that balances ambition with practicality. Subscribe now and join the conversation about how to make AI work for your marketing team without the overwhelm.
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
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Hey everyone. This is Kevin Kerner with Tech Marketing Rewired. I'm right in the middle of building out AI training for my own team, and when I talked to Ryan Bearden, my next podcast guest, last week, I knew I had to get him on the podcast. Ryan spent over 25 years in B2B marketing and now helps teams actually implement AI in a way that's practical, not overwhelming, which is one of the mistakes I was making with my team earlier. In this episode we talked about what adoption maturity really looks like right now, how to get started without getting stuck, and why journaling your experiments might be the most underrated AI tactic out there. We also got into how agentic workflows are changing, what collaboration looks like and what most executives still get wrong when they try to scale AI across the organization. So this is really fantastic, especially if you're an executive like me that's trying to figure out some AI training for your team. So I'm really excited for you to hear it. Let's get to it.
Kevin Kerner:This is Tech Marketing Rewired. All right, hello everyone, and welcome back to Tech Marketing Rewired. I'm your host, kevin Kerner, and today's guest is Ryan Bearden, founder of Bearden Marketing and AI Solutions. Ryan's got over 25 years of leading B2B marketing at companies like AT&T and some other top, very large SaaS brands really innovative SaaS brands. Ryan now helps businesses implement real-world AI strategies that actually work, and what I know him for is bridging the gap between technical innovation and really practical human-centric marketing and really making AI feel approachable along the way. So it's great to have you here, ryan. This is a great topic. I'm really excited to have you on the show.
Ryan Bearden:Hey, kevin, thank you so much. It's great to be back with you.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, yeah, it's been a while since we've talked. I wonder if you could well. First of all, why don't you just give us a little introduction on who you are and a little bit about the company?
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, so I, as you mentioned, I've got over 25 years of marketing experience, predominantly B2B marketing. I did a little couple of detours over on the consumer restaurant side we won't go into that, though and a couple of years ago I really noticed this AI thing, and in my previous role, I actually was looking at how could we start implementing with this, testing this, and when I left that role, I really immersed myself in it and went all in on it and went and did some certifications training and transformation certifications and have really kind of built my business all around this, and so what I do is I work with companies small to mid-sized businesses and really help them to gain practical skills on applying AI to their jobs, to their work, in a very, what I believe, easy to understand, easy to implement in very practical ways, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it, to be honest.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, that's awesome. So this AI thing is not a fad. It's actually something that's going to stick around.
Ryan Bearden:I believe so. Yes, I certainly hope so, because I need to find another gig, but no, I really truly believe. You know, all the hyperbole you're going to read out there, aside, it is really. It is a very real, very tangible thing that I think is only going to become more so in the coming years.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, I'm super excited to talk about this stuff because it's been six months or so since we've talked and, of course, the whole world has changed over the six months.
Ryan Bearden:It's a lifetime ago.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, it's unbelievable. My first question is just try to maturity. Like are people more, how much more mature are they from where we were at six months ago? Like, what are they good at and what's missing in terms of, like, their understanding? I wonder just, are people getting better at this stuff at this point?
Ryan Bearden:You know I mature is an interesting word I will use aware. Are people more aware of what it is, what it can do, what could be Absolutely? Is the confidence there? No, not in my experiences, and I don't say that as a negative, I'm not knocking people, obviously but I think that it is adoption, maturity and competence around it. I think is nowhere near what you might read in the trade publications on LinkedIn and other social channels, but we're getting there.
Ryan Bearden:It's just, you know, I think, human beings, we move much slower than technology. Right, we have to get comfortable with it, we have to learn how to use it, we have to be unafraid of it, and we do that through knowledge, through understanding, through education. So I think we're moving towards there. I would say maybe a slight increase in maturity, but it's really. I still say we're still in the infancy of this in terms of mainstream adoption, to be perfectly honest.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, do you think the hype is kind of it kind of drives a lot of urgency to try to learn, but it's it's actually catching up to the height is difficult because it changes everybody and we just had agents last week and it's like it just changes so quickly.
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, it's really something else. But you know, again, the people that I'm working with and I'm speaking with it's. You know, hey, I've opened ChatGPT. I've used Cloud a little bit here and there, but they really don't know how or. And there's experimentation's great. I'm a big believer in it. I tell people all the time just open it up, like, stop reading Grox, better than Gemini, better than Chat. Just open it up and start experimenting with it. Start playing with it and you're going to get comfortable moving from experimenting and playing with it at an individual level to more. We're having a real impact on how we work and the outcomes that we're driving with our business. I still think we have a good ways to go.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, and six months ago too, I was thinking like the discussion with leadership was probably don't, maybe even don't use it or use it. You know, people might have been scared to use it. Now it's probably. Well, I heard in the we did a dinner last week where I had some executives speaking around this stuff and they were getting pressure now from their executive teams to use it and use it fast Are you seeing that same thing. Is that what's driving that urgency? If you're seeing the same thing?
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, Just pressure it's. It is the you know in this day and age, right? If you look at the business landscape, there's always pressure to perform, right, and a lot of this is how do I say this? Fabricated pressure, right, Like, well, our goals are we need to grow by 25% next year? Well, is that very realistic, right? I mean, you and I have worked with companies. I've worked, you've worked with companies. I've worked for companies that are very hyper growth focused, private equity funded, and they really want to grow fast and they private equity groups and other investors want a return on that investment. We all get that, we all understand that.
Ryan Bearden:And AI, I believe, and in some people's eyes, is that next darling that's going to help us get there, going to help us double down and get there, and so I do think a lot of the pressure is coming there. But I think there's also on the flip side is I don't even know where to start. And if I start researching, I start searching, I start digging into where to start, I'm even more overwhelmed because it's so easy to get overwhelmed with what's out there, and so I think that is driving what I'll call some sense of paralysis. It's just not knowing where to start and you know, do I just get a blank check to go do this? Or how do I do this smartly? How do I do this effectively? That's not easy to navigate If you haven't dug into it this has been my whole life for two years and if you haven't done that, it's not super simple to go and find your starting point to go and it's going to look three different companies.
Kevin Kerner:It's going to look three different ways. So in the companies that you're coaching the leaders, I'm in the same boat. You know we're all trying to figure out as business owners, like, how do you get your team or team managers? Or, you know, department managers, how do you get your teams around this stuff? Is it that they don't know where to start when they come to you, or do they have an idea about doing it a certain way? Like are you having to coach them from day one, Like here's how you do this, or do they come to you?
Ryan Bearden:and say hey, I want these things implemented. Yes, a little bit of both, and there's definitely an eagerness, an interest there and a sense of urgency there, but it is. You know, how I help to frame it with them is let's start small. Let's do a pilot. I'm not asking you to come jump in bed with me with your entire organization, your entire team, whatever. Let's start small and let's see what could be. Now I tell them here's what you should expect, and I'm very upfront about that, here's what you should expect. And I do not shy away from things like ROI and the actual results and impact. I want to put that front and center. What I want to do is I want to help you realize these benefits, these outcomes, these results. But this is uncharted waters for a lot of them and a little scary. So let's start small and let's see what could be possible. And that really resonates because it gives them a little bit of flavor, gives them a taste of what could be. And, knock on wood, kevin, every time I've done it, it's worked out. There's been an expansion of work. We want to continue on this. Hey, with this, pilot's worked great.
Ryan Bearden:This current client I'm working with halfway through that first pilot, he was already signing up the next two cohorts, so they're definitely seeing the value there, and there's a lot of low hanging fruit, and that's another thing that I try to explain to them is like, listen, we're going to get some real big wins here. We're going to learn a lot, but you're going to get some wins. I can almost guarantee you that. And so, once you start showing those wins, what it really does is it opens their mind to what else could be. It expands their mind to bigger initiatives, broader use cases of it, and what I like to do is to let them get there on their own. That's very, very important.
Ryan Bearden:I think of myself as a Sherpa. I'm going to be with you and I'm going to guide you, but you're doing the work. You and your teams are doing the work, because if you're not, then you're getting nothing out of this, and shame on me. But letting them get to that, oh wow, I see the impact. This is really going well. This is really going great. We're four weeks in and the team is already doing all these wonderful things and it clicks and it's like, oh, it clicks. And it's like, oh gosh, what if we did this in this part of the group. What if we did this for our strategic planning?
Kevin Kerner:you know how do we apply it to that? This bigger, larger scale, more executive focused initiatives? Yeah, yeah it's. It's very similar in some ways to the whole digital transformation thing that was happening yeah five or six years ago.
Kevin Kerner:But at the digital transformation time it was big platforms. Yeah, it wasn't super accessible. It it was top down and what this is is more of it's AI transformation. It's more bottom up. It's sort of the pressure is different. I mean, you're still as a business owner, you still know you need to do it, but you know your people are probably already using it anyway. It's almost like it's digital transformation without the guardrails. It's just like all over the place, crazy stuff.
Ryan Bearden:No. And one thing you said that I think you really hit the nail on the head, which is bottoms up, and I am a believer that and I'm not saying top down is just going to fail, I'm not saying that at all but when you start to see how it's impacting day-to-day work individual contributor level, people manager level then you start to really open your eyes to what could be at that next level, as I said a minute ago, and so I'm a big believer that start in the trenches and start to see the impact in the trenches, because it's not just, oh my gosh, we're doing this faster, but what else are we doing now? And that's probably one of my favorite things is I ask my students to students. It feels funny saying that but, I, ask them to.
Ryan Bearden:I have what's called a transformation journal where they go fill it out and essentially just ask them each time you use AI on a deliverable go what was the deliverable? Describe it a little bit. How did you use AI? How long does it normally take you, how long did it take you with AI? And if you do this on a regular basis, how much time do you anticipate it saving each month?
Ryan Bearden:But the more important question in all that is was the quality of the output, the same, better or worse? Because if we're just doing a bunch of the same stuff, faster but crappier, well, what's the point? Right, like we're moving backwards, and so that's really important. I could point all day long to here's how much time you're saving, here's how many hours this team is saving, and it's really that first cohort at the end of it each month going forward. This is based on their words, kevin. They are filling out this information, but it's the two biggest things I point to. Is you just saved like three days each person per month, three full days in time? But also, more importantly, how are they talking about they do their work? How are they talking about how they do the work? How are they talking about the things that they're doing now, that they weren't able to do before, and that, to me, is a little bit fuzzier when you get to a ROI conversation with a CFO, but, as you well know, that is so important.
Ryan Bearden:I mean, think about your team If they're completely doing hey, I saved five hours a month over here, but now I'm doing this. I'm spending those five hours doing this, which is more strategic work new business opportunities. How are we expanding the opportunities with this existing client in your world? That's the kind of stuff that's really really super important. And then, once they see that, then at the leadership level, it's really gosh. These are all the things that we wanted to test, but they're always on the back burner because we never had time. Well, now you have time. You have time to do those things that were more ambitious but just out of reach because of bandwidth.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, that's great. That's really great. Well, we talked when we were setting up for this about the AI education stuff that we're doing at Mighty and True, and you were really helpful in guiding me on a few things I want you to take me through, because I know a lot of people are thinking about training for their teams. I want you to just give us some of the different tactics you use for training that are meaningful, and I think the one thing you told me about was like there's an overwhelmed component of all this and there's keeping things practical. Tell me, tell us, a little bit about the training formats that are really having the most impact.
Ryan Bearden:So one of the things that I really focus on is, you know, when I first started getting into this, kevin, I was really dead set on. I really want to be on the cutting edge. I want to stay on top of all the new stuff that's coming out, and you actually do this quite well. I will say, I don't know how you do it, but you do it pretty darn well. Yeah, it drives my team crazy, but it's like I quickly realized all of this kind of news whether it's agents, any sort of automations that is so far off from the mainstream, when most companies have maybe most individual contributors and even leaders have maybe opened Copilot or Gemini and done a few things. And so I quickly like settle down, ryan, let's go focus on practical skills at the most basic level, and what I truly believe in my experience of playing with various tools and looking at them is mastering the large language models, and I don't care which one you prefer. Mastering those is critical, foundational skills for you to really harness AI to its full potential, not only today, but in three years, when it will look vastly different than it does today. I also believe that the LLMs large language models will be able to do the majority of what these point solutions claim to do just as well, if not better, and so what I really do, my approach, is we're going to focus on building your skills, on using the large language models in your work, and I think that in your work is a really important key is that I might have a few slides. I have, maybe, in each training session, two to three slides but we spend 95% of the time. What are you working on today? What is the deliverable you're working on this week? What is a problem or obstacle you're facing this week that you're having trouble overcoming? Okay, so that's what we're going to do today. In each session, it's laser focused on something you're working on or something you're trying to overcome. And once you really apply it to their real work and one of the things I always harp on one of the slides I show them every time is work on your work is, you know, one of their three key principles? Ai is your blank. For each person that's very different. How is AI going to help you today? Incremental gains You're going to get better and better and better at this each time. But, most importantly, work on work. I'm not here to pull up a random scenario and show you how cool the tool is. We are here to work on your work and that has really resonated the most. And when they see the impact and they see, think about how much time we spend at our jobs. Kevin, over the course of our life we will spend far more time at our job than we will with our families. That's just a fact. If I can show you how to do it faster, easier and even better, then we're all going to win. That is my ultimate goal.
Ryan Bearden:And I had one of the clients in that pilot program. She texted me a few weeks into it. She goes I'm having more fun now at work than I can ever remember and I thought, wow, that really is awesome. That makes me feel good, that makes me feel great. And she's in a very stressful job. So to hear that was really great.
Ryan Bearden:And I think that is really the key thing is we're going to focus on your work. It's eight. My training, my kind of core training, and I can customize this for anybody and I've done it before but, like the core foundational program is eight sessions, just like martial arts white belt all the way to black, and each one it focuses on a different area of your business. We're going to create SOPs. We're going to automate some certain deliverables. Once we've created those standard operating procedures, I'm going to teach you how to tap into experts who, whatever problem you're facing today somebody has written a book about it, I can almost guarantee you, or done a TED talk about it. I'm going to show you how to tap into those to create an action plan to overcome this challenge, to creating GPTs using APIs and automations, yada, yada, yada, the whole gambit of things. But it's really. You're going to walk away. I guarantee you will walk away with skills that you never would have been able to develop on your own.
Kevin Kerner:What are those? I mean, that sounds great. What are those LLM proficiencies? What are the types of things that you would say these are the proficiencies that you need, that you need that you help people improve on? Like, I think of them kind of blind spots at this point, because it's like they just don't know. And if they if they did know the LLMs could do certain things, there'd be a reflex to use them more. But what are they from your perspective?
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, I don't know how this answers your question, but let me say it and then I'll find a better way to say it. The single biggest thing where I see people get hung up is you're trying to interact with Gemini, chatgbt like it's software, and chat GBT like it's software. And well, I put this in there and it didn't give me what I wanted. This doesn't work. This is dumb or I don't know how to use this or whatever. And what I tell them is talk to it like it's a person, like it's an intern or a colleague. And if you have an intern, you're going to give them. You guys do internships. You're going to give an intern a task, go do this. That intern comes back to you and says here's what I did, and you go well, this isn't what I wanted. Well, you're not going to fire that intern, you're not going to berate that intern or whoever. You're going to give them feedback. You're going to give them additional context. You're going to redirect them and have them go back and do it again. That's how you communicate with AI. That is how you get the most out of it. And so what I tell people is don't worry about becoming an expert, prompt engineer. By the way, ai can create prompts better than you can, I promise, and I'll show you how.
Ryan Bearden:But you need to master how to communicate what it is you need, what you're looking for. Can you clearly articulate that? And it's funny, kevin, because think about how many things happen in Mighty and True that are on autopilot, where, if I ask you, if I ask Jennifer, if I ask anybody on your team, walk me through the steps you take to do this. That's not easy because, well, I just do it automatically. It happens automatically. And when you're thinking about improving processes, when you're thinking about accelerating deliverables, you need to be able to, which is so funny because it's a very human element, right, it's a very human thing.
Ryan Bearden:Can you break this down into steps and the tasks? Can you communicate? This is what I'm trying to do. This is where I'm struggling. This is where I need help. If you can do that, you're like 60% there, you're 60% there, and then it's just kind of learning to go back and forth and then accepting the fact that I'm going to get not so great output sometimes, but if I keep working with it, I'm going to get a better output, and I think that that is a core, fundamental element of getting success from these tools is knowing how do I communicate like this, how do I think like a human and communicate like a human, because once I do that, then this tool is going to, which sounds counterintuitive, but this tool is going to give me so much better output, so much better results.
Kevin Kerner:I think that's the key thing. A lot of the people that are working with the agents now are anthropomorphizing the agent with a name, like they call their agent. It's literally a worker on their behalf. A lot of the tool providers are talking about it that way, which I think we'll come to at some point. They're not. They're not ready yet at this point.
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, we're still very early. There's this guy, adam Robinson's his name, his company are I'm going to butcher this, or anyway. He owns a SaaS company and he's very active on LinkedIn. He's very he's kind of like you, he's very open. Here's what we're doing, here's what we're trying to build this company and if it doesn't work, I'm going to tell you. And when it works, I'm going to tell you. And he put a post out recently.
Ryan Bearden:It was like all five of our employees are going away for a week and we're having these agents run the company and my first thought was environment. But I that scared, like I'm uncomfortable and I'm not associated with your company and I'm a little uncomfortable with that. But yeah, I mean I, I, I think we are early in that sense, but I I'm not a fan of the naming your agent type of thing, cause, for we could go down a rabbit hole for you know, for another hour, just on the psychological, emotional aspects of that. But it is funny, cause we will get there. Where you are, you know, you talk about it where you're managing three or four agents, you might have someone on your team that's managing three or four agents that are doing work. Hopefully they're, you know they're spot checking it, yeah, but it is. That day is coming. I think it's further off than we think, but it's coming.
Kevin Kerner:If you can get someone to be more mature in how they're communicating with the LLM and prompting and they, you know they're getting good at that what's the next level? What's the thing that you do with them to get them to the next level of proficiency? Or do you have to Do they just the spark is already there, they just take off.
Ryan Bearden:I think that's it. I mean, I think it's so organic and the way that I set up my training is very much like you know. I mentioned the transformation journal and there's also like at the end of each session like there's homework, where you know you go submit your homework and you get certified for that belt for that particular session, but going off and doing the homework I have so much fun with that I really encourage them to record their screen and themselves talking through. You know like two to three minutes record your screen to it.
Ryan Bearden:But I'm like you don't want to do that, put in a document whatever. But when I go through the homework and I read it and they usually do it within 36, 48 hours after the session they're getting it, they're grasping it and they're applying it immediately what we learned in that session. They're applying it immediately to another deliverable and so I do think it's pretty organic. I like to tell people that what I do is you do AI training. I give people confidence and capacity and once you give them that human beings are spectacular, spectacular species, right, we can do anything.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, your Sherpa thing is pretty much.
Ryan Bearden:They're not on my back, I'm guiding them and saying now, you see this. And even I had the hate SVP of marketing. He came to one of the first. Back I'm guiding them and saying now you see this. And even I had the SVP of marketing. He came to one of the first sessions. I told him I was like you, come for free, I want you there. I won't even charge you, knowing he wouldn't come to all of them, but it was his first ever experience spending this much time focused on it. And the first thing he said is he joked and said you've ruined my life. You've opened my eyes to so many rabbit holes I can go down, my mind is spinning about where to go and I was like good, that's what I want.
Ryan Bearden:I hopefully ruined your life in a good way.
Ryan Bearden:But it is so organic, kevin, and it's just you know this well where there are things where you could take the textbook, you could take the syllabus from a college course or whatever and never go to the class, but you're probably not going to pass the test, you're probably not going to do well, right.
Ryan Bearden:It's that there's that whole element of being taught, being led down the path of learning, versus trying to go do it on your own, and I think that that is that's where the power is, and you know the cool thing I will you thing kind of to answer your question another way is that first cohort we did they were like. Afterwards they were like, well, what's next? We want to keep going, and so I've actually built a few follow-up sessions that we're doing within where we're going to get more into more automations, more agent type, even like introducing them to Relay, which you and I know very well. So some of these other tools that are out there, where it's again, this is not a silver bullet for your organization, this is getting your mind wrapped around that next level of agentic workflows and automations that are there.
Kevin Kerner:And so once you get them to that level and proficient, then the force is out of the table and they're going to go off. They're going to go. Do you think? I really love the idea of that aligning the Sherpa, the guide, with the work that they're currently doing, because I can immediately see that, oh, this thing, this actually helps me in my day-to-day job. Are there circumstances where you want to train them in a broader way, like the reason? There's a question behind this question, like we're we're trying to create this, this, this environment're. Yeah, we're trying to create this, this, this environment of what we call collaborative delivery.
Kevin Kerner:So, where you have a person who might just be as a very specific role without it.
Kevin Kerner:Now they can stretch to another role because they have this ai assist with them now they might not have all the context of, you know, whatever that role is, but they can at least help what they can pitch in, and so it's's an amplified initiative for us because we can have employees go off and do things. Is it worthwhile giving an employee more perspective than just the stuff that they work on, like having them work on exercises that are not related to their role, just so they can see how those things work? Have you tried that?
Ryan Bearden:Yes, I have, and it's a great, great point. And I think there's certain types of organizations where this is really good. I mean, I think about your company kind of fits this mold a little bit. But think on the non-service side, not agency side, like you're a startup and you got five or six employees, well, you probably don't have an HR team, you probably don't have a marketing team, let's be honest. But you should probably have some HR functions happening, deliverables happening, marketing things happening, and so, in that sense, how I would approach, I do think it's a very good idea how I would approach that is much more on a workshop basis.
Ryan Bearden:I've actually done this. Actually, one agency that I worked with their creative team I actually built. I knew their, I had access to their processes. This is our process, our best practices on how we do. And for the creative, for their ops team, I took them through the train because I knew they needed these kind of Swiss army knife skills. But for the creative team I did I think six or seven I'm going to do a workshop for every aspect of your process and I'm going to show you exactly how AI fits into this. So we're actually going to do some real client work, not the actual deliverable, but we're going to do sort of in unison, if you will, in parallel. We're going to do some real client work incorporating AI to give them a sense of how this could happen.
Ryan Bearden:I would do that something very similar for a company of like hey, here's this person, she's he or she's a very strong project manager. They don't really have marketing experience or we need really to get some HR things done. I would go and build that. Let me show you how to do this. The one caution I would say to that and this is what I the rush to automate and to there's a lot of fear out there amongst the creative teams. I think to uncertainty around this is I can teach someone who's got an HR background how to use AI to do marketing deliverables, but what I can't do is show them what good is. The risk is when the output comes from. You know you're building a campaign or you're writing a blog something as simple as that or an email campaign, knowing what is good and why or where it could be approved as why. I can help you get there pretty far with AI, but I still believe the human in the loop is the single most important aspect to all of this.
Ryan Bearden:Or maybe expert in the loop, yeah expert in the loop, exactly right, not just any human, but an expert or a specialist in the loop to be able to understand. This is good quality, this is appealing. This is hitting the points of our target audience, and here's why good quality, this is appealing. This is hitting the points of our target audience and here's why that's the only risks, and that's a big one. That is a big one, but absolutely I could walk in and I feel confident. Within a month I could have a lot of people cross-trained on different functions. That's, that's an easy thing to do. But again, it's that discernment of quality that is just important that people need to be aware of. Yeah, we got a lot of, as I mentioned at the start, that people need to be aware of.
Kevin Kerner:We got a lot of, as I mentioned at the start, we got a lot of questions last week at the dinner about, you know, executives wanting this stuff to roll out real fast.
Ryan Bearden:Yeah.
Kevin Kerner:And maybe a couple questions. One, what guidance would you give those like these were all marketers, so it was just that specific department. What guidance would you give them on how to message that back to the executive team, like what? What? It seems like you'd want to acknowledge it. Yes, we want to use AI but, like I, have another question around measurement, like how do you, how do you prove the ROI on this stuff?
Ryan Bearden:Yeah. So the first question I would ask to answer that question is how do you define fast? Like it's fast fast at a board level might be in the next six months. I want every single person in this company fluent in AI. Okay, Well, what does that mean? Like, do you want them building AI tools or do you want them using AI to do their jobs, incorporating it into their processes?
Kevin Kerner:Or less people or less people.
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, and I try to steer away from the less people conversation, not because I'm scared of it, because I do not think that is the right lens to look at this through, at least not initially. That could be a byproduct of all the work that goes into it. Let's say for the six months. But I really, personally, I just like I'm here to supercharge your people, not get rid of them, and so. But with that said, I would say let's say it's six months. I think that is a very reasonable amount of time to pilot some programs, expand those, scale those programs Obviously, find what's working and scale that and begin to have it across your organization. If we're talking AT&T, probably not, but if we're talking a 500-person company and depending on the capacity they wanted to do, I think that's very realistic. The thing is, is that what I like about my approach? I'm biased, but what I like about my approach is because I am applying it to your job, your day-to-day. The adoption and implementation is going to be almost overnight, and when I say that, what I mean is after one, two, three sessions you're going to be doing various things differently and better, like I guarantee you you will, and the next time I see it not work like that will be the first time I see it not work like that. So I feel confident saying that. But I think it really comes down to listen. We want to do this fast. Okay, well, what is fast? So let's build a roadmap, let's build a plan and let's define success. I think to your point.
Ryan Bearden:One of the biggest things, too, that people often miss, kevin and I've brought this up a lot with workshops I've done with companies as well as the ones that I'm training is you should really have sort of policy or guidelines in place. Those policies can change. Think of your first AI policy that you create and maybe it's for a marketing team or a sales team at first, but it should have guard rails. But the guard rails are rubber. They can bend because you don't know what you don't know and the more you get into it, the more you see. Then that might help reshape that AI policy. But I think you have to have some guard rails in place.
Ryan Bearden:There was a statistic I read today, as a matter of fact, of the number of people that are employees that are still hiding their AI usage from leadership, which should scare the hell out of. It's very high. It is very, very high 60 plus percent in this one study, but also within that. It was a survey. They talked to 50,000 workers across the globe, but there was also there might be putting company information into LLM. Maybe they're using a free version of the LLM. They're not considering the privacy and security things that are really into this at a leadership level. Eyes wide open of here's what we're going to go do.
Ryan Bearden:Here's our gameplay we're going to have some, establish some guardrails first, and then we're going to go, let's just say, six months, and at the end of that six months we're going to reevaluate, revisit. Where have we seen the most impact? Where have we seen the most success?
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, success. Yeah, I was thinking to you. I think it's all good and I agree with it all. I think the executive question that I heard last week was kind of around overexcited executives wanting to push it into marketing such as there'd be huge efficiency gains, whether that's in fast for stuff or more people. If I'm a CMO, I might say that's great. A we're already using it. We've been using automation for years. This is just automation with some additional capabilities, so we need to implement it like we implemented our automation and we can get better at that. But it's not all ready for prime time. What you're hearing on LinkedIn and all the other things is not exactly what you're going to get out of my marketing team. They're just not ready yet. We're not going to have agents running everything. We're not going to have automations with AI on top of them.
Kevin Kerner:Yet Now there are some point solutions that do that. I think there's a really good case for SDR customer service use cases, and there are a bunch of those. But from the marketing team, there's so much nuance in marketing You're really overreaching to say, let's just put AI in place and, you know, start seeing massive efficiency gains and less people. That's just.
Ryan Bearden:That's right. I think the you know what I would say to. That is number one there. What doesn't get near the headlines that you know? You and I have read the headlines of. You know Microsoft's cutting 6,000 jobs and they're going to do automation, duolingo.
Ryan Bearden:You know a lot of these companies that are out there that have, like, been very bold come out. You know bold leadership mandates, for lack of a better word. But what you don't hear about are the companies that cut customer support teams because they want to automate it with AI, that cut marketing people or SDRs because they want to automate it with AI. Well, six months later, what are they doing? They're hiring those people back. Why? Well, because it's not performing as well as a human, and you know not to sound like an armchair quarterback, but yeah, I mean, somebody is going to have to be the company that goes all in first and and like has to back up and say, well, and like has to back up and say, well, that didn't work out the way we wanted it right. And you know, no matter what you know digital transformation, e-commerce, whatever we go back, you know last 30, 40 years, any innovation like that there's always the people that are the early adopters that are rushing into it. So, but also let those be the lessons that we don't have to go and repeat, right, like, don't go with a mindset that you're going to get rid of 5% of your marketing team because of all this. Go with a mindset of we're going to make smarter decisions, we're going to be able to personalize, to get more personable with our communications and our messaging, we're going to be able to support our salespeople better. We're going to get to market faster. We're going to know what our competitors are doing well and not well faster. Those are the things where it's like I will show you how to do all of those things and then some very quickly and then start to decide are we seeing the impact?
Ryan Bearden:What is the impact of this? Is it fewer lost deals? Is it higher conversion? Put the marketing hat on Higher conversion rates, lower cost per opportunity, more close rates, whatever that may be. But the one thing I will tell you, which, again I say, is foundational I'm not hanging my hat on the fact that you're going to be able to do the same work in a third of the amount of hours. That is a good thing, but it's not the end. All be all. At the end of the day, is our business growing? Is it functioning more efficiently? Are we getting revenue growing with revenue? Are we growing faster? All of those things. You got to be able to tie it to that, which is not terribly difficult to do, but you just got to go in there with the onset from the onset. You've got to document that and know that this is how we're measuring success.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, that's, that's awesome. You gave me some really good advice advice last week or last time we talked around. You know different types of training stuff that I do. I just want to really quickly top five things that you've learned not to do when you're trying to train a new group on AI. Like, what are the five things you say don't do this If you're going to try it?
Ryan Bearden:Yes, the biggest one is no matter how much they've told you they use AI or how much experience they have with AI, don't throw more at them than your program already does. I did this one time where I threw like, hey, I've been using it for three to six months. It's like okay, well, I'm going to kind of accelerate these two sessions I'm going to put together and you're like nope, didn't work. I mean, you used this word earlier, so overwhelmed they got so overwhelmed.
Kevin Kerner:Don't overwhelm, that's a good Don't overwhelm, that's a good.
Ryan Bearden:Don't overwhelm that I mean that's. I cannot say that enough. That's that looks different for every single person. But, like the over, I've got a demo that I do that. It's just like I'm going to prove to you how well I knows your job and you potentially put it in your job title or your LinkedIn profile and it gives you it's a GPT. That is matrix of like. Here's your top eight core responsibilities and all the deliverables.
Ryan Bearden:And I have seen more people just shut down and disengage because they're impressed but they're overwhelmed. And when you get overwhelmed like that, it rarely is a good thing. So that's the big one is, even if it seems so basic, nine times out of 10, every person sitting in that session, that class, is gonna get something out of it, something positive out of it. That's the number one thing. The second thing I would say is it is absolutely imperative. I push hard, as hard as I can. They don't work for me. But do the journaling, take notes, keep a journal of what you're doing and how you're doing it, what's working, because I really push them.
Ryan Bearden:Also, this is not about me getting numbers that I can go promote my business If there are things that you did that didn't work. I want to know that. In fact, more so than the things that did work, Go, identify and highlight the things that are working well and the things that aren't working well, Because that's one of the things that I tell people is I mentioned to you, like the hey, talk to it like it's an intern or a person, not like it's software. But also context is everything that's like hey, write me an email. Okay, we're going to get a crappy output, so put context to that. Yeah, and when you do those two things, you're going to very quickly realize what it's good at and what it's not good at. And spoiler alert it is not good at everything. Contrary to what you might read, it is not good at everything.
Kevin Kerner:So don't overwhelm, don't miss the opportunity to document, which I think is great. Anything else you can think of. I'm taking notes for my own training program.
Ryan Bearden:Those are the absolute biggest ones that I would say, and this is for you and your position, kevin. This is important. So when I I do my trainings, we do like one hour, like usual. Wednesdays we do the session and then on Fridays I have office hours. We're like listen, I'm gonna open up the bridge for one hour. This is your time. Come to me. Is there something you're thinking about? Or you have another opportunity, or are you struggling with something we learned this week?
Ryan Bearden:Whatever it is, but when you get them together, I used to think that and I still think this. You know, if you had a training session that had HR, ops, marketing, sales, all in one, they would get a lot out of it. And the way that I've structured this training is to where you could have those people together and they would still get a lot out of it. But when you have a marketing team together or an ops team together, just them talking amongst each other about how they've used it, like I just sit back and I'm like this is gold, the serendipity, this is gold.
Kevin Kerner:The opt-in to share.
Ryan Bearden:And I went to the SVP when this happened and I'm like these are the common themes that they talk about on the office hour calls, when they get talking amongst each other, and it was really cool because he said to me it was four key things. And he said these are the four things that keep me up at night the most. And I'm like and now your people are thinking about this, they're thinking about it in different ways, and so the point there, kevin, I think again from a position of leadership like yourself is let them talk and listen, celebrate, get them together, yes, and let them talk.
Ryan Bearden:And celebrate the failures.
Kevin Kerner:Awesome we're smarter now. We're smarter now and celebrate the failures. Awesome. We're smarter now. We're smarter now. Cool. This is great. Okay, so I wish I could. I wish I could go on for more, because I'm taking notes with all this stuff, or we're in the right in the middle of this stuff, so super helpful for me and, I'm sure, for others.
Kevin Kerner:I warned you that we do this thing called uh ai roulette and I've loaded your LinkedIn profile into a space in perplexity and that space has some instructions to try to throw you off your mark here. Good, no, it's basically just give me a crazy question. Give me a really unique question. It's been pretty good so far, so I'm going to hit send here and see what it gives me. It's only using your LinkedIn profile, okay, okay. Okay, it says a little setup here. It always is long-winded perplexity.
Kevin Kerner:You've transitioned from leading marketing and large organizations to helping businesses and even your own family embrace AI for both work and daily life. But recent studies show trust and authenticity are becoming pain points. 80% of consumers still crave real human connection over AI, and more than half of US workers feel uncomfortable when brands use AI-generated content without transparency. So here's my roulette question for you If inauthentic AI-generated marketing content can actually damage brand trust, even as AI becomes unavoidable, do you think we'll soon have brands going out of their way to prove they are human behind the curtain? And, as an AI transformation consultant, what's the most delightfully human mistake you hope AI never learns to fix, because it actually makes brands more lovable or at least more real. So that was a long one, yes. So do you think brands will go out of their way to prove they're human, even though they're using AI, and they'll make mistakes doing it, and do you think it'll make them more I?
Ryan Bearden:do think they will go out of their way. I have seen one example of this, and I will not name the names or the company, but one person whom I know very well smart, smart, smart, and she contributes blogs for her company and she puts at the bottom of her blogs AI was not used at all in the writing of this, which I kind of snickered at. Who cares? But I do think they will go out of their way. I think the complaints, the pissing and moaning of AI content I think is overblown. There's oftentimes.
Ryan Bearden:I'd want to challenge people. I want you to show me, of all the content you're talking about, what was AI created and what was not AI created, and also what about the stuff that fits in the middle. It's not black and white, it's just not. But I do think, in terms of a just reacting to that, because that is a very loud that what you just said is very loudly getting echoed out on linkedin. Oh yeah, and so I do think people are going to react to that and they aren't going to go out of their way to to demonstrate the human element. And what was the other part? What is one?
Kevin Kerner:as an ai transformation consultant. What's the most delightfully human mistake you hope ai never learns to fix, because it actually makes brands more lovable or at least more real Mdashes. Don't get me started on the Mdash.
Ryan Bearden:I think jokingly like this is a pet peeve of mine, but jokingly I'll say the misuse of there, there and there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I do think I believe that passionate, loquacious writing is something I don't see with AI. I use AI a lot for writing. I never take what it gives me. I take it and I go make it, I run with it. Sometimes I'll rip it to shreds, sometimes I'll change this or that, but I use it all the time because it helps me get it done faster. The way that I speak, I have a tendency to be wordy. We're proving this right now on this podcast and so I think that the kind of loquacious cheeky, that's not an error, though that's not an error, that's a style. That's a style.
Kevin Kerner:That may need some ripening over time. Maybe we'll look back in another five years from now and this will be we'll think of AR AI as kind of like Ms Pac-Man and we'll be like, oh, that was cute back then. It was so cute or Frogger or something.
Ryan Bearden:I would say you know, maybe it definitely can fit this. But you know, I always get a kick out of when people, like, are very passionate about something and put their foot in their mouth, not intentionally. That's always entertaining to me, that uncomfortable feeling that you get when you see that. But it's certainly something, again, ai can fix. But I don't know. That's. I think you're right. It's it's hard to, it's hard to think of and I'm very much locked into like work Right, it's hard to think of and I'm very much locked into work right.
Kevin Kerner:But in life there's yeah we're in the middle of its mistakes now. They're cringey, but that cringe eventually might become something that's cute at some point. Who knows? I don't know.
Ryan Bearden:We'll know in the fullness of time how all this works out. I do think the MDash people losing their mind over the MDash cracks me up A little crazy. The writer guy.
Kevin Kerner:I still have, by the way, a GoFundMe to get to know that yeah that's right, you keep that going and promote that.
Ryan Bearden:You might be making a trip to Costa Rica soon taking the whole family, but yeah, I do think we'll have to come back and look at that one. But it is a very interesting question I would need to ponder that one Perplexity wins.
Kevin Kerner:Perplexity wins at stumping us. It's really good at throwing the sideways stuff. So this is great, ryan. I really appreciate you being on. I'm sure people are going to want to get a hold of you. I would encourage them to reach out to you for all of your training, expertise and AI knowledge. What's the best way to get a hold of you? And I know you really like to talk through this stuff.
Ryan Bearden:Yeah, I love it and thank you for having me, kevin, this is always a blast. You know, beardmarketingcom is where you can go to site. You can get ahold of me there. I have a YouTube. I'm actually getting very active in my YouTube trying to do more videos. Beard Marketing Solutions is the YouTube handle and you can go check out videos. You can reach out to me there as well, but it kind of gives you that those videos will give you a little bit of a taste of sort of my style, what I go through and what I can teach you. But yeah, always love talking shop about this. So welcome anyone and everyone.
Kevin Kerner:Yeah, this has been great, Ryan. We'll get together soon. I really appreciate it. All right, thanks, kevin. Okay, thank you.
