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Most businesses are using AI to move faster, create more content, and keep up with the noise. The problem is that speed without differentiation just amplifies average. In this episode, Mike Montague sits down with Jonathan Aberman to unpack a smarter way forward: treating originality as a measurable, strategic advantage in a world where AI is trained to produce sameness. They explore why creativity alone isn’t enough, how AI can mimic “good” marketing, and why the real edge comes from producing ideas, insights, and connections that stand apart.

For SMB owners and marketing leaders, the takeaway is practical and powerful. Your growth doesn’t come from using more tools; it comes from sharpening your unique point of view and using AI to scale it. You’ll learn how to rethink creativity as an outcome, how to identify where your marketing is blending in, and how to build a system that amplifies your voice instead of replacing it. If your content feels busy but not effective, this conversation will help you shift from sounding like everyone else to becoming the signal your market actually notices.

The Top Takeaways From This Episode:

- Originality is the real competitive advantage in an AI world
AI is trained on existing data, which means it naturally produces average outputs; growth comes from ideas that break away from that baseline.

- Creativity isn’t the goal; originality is the outcome that matters
Creativity is the process, but what actually drives value in business is producing something meaningfully different and useful.

- AI can mimic creativity, but it struggles to produce true differentiation
It generates polished, familiar ideas; it rarely creates the kind of unique thinking that stands out in a crowded market.

- Most traditional ways of measuring creativity are now obsolete
Standard tests and frameworks can be gamed by AI, which means businesses need new ways to evaluate human contribution and thinking.

- Originality can be measured based on the uniqueness of output
The focus shifts from how you think to what you produce; the distance between ideas becomes a signal of originality.

- Every human has a unique form of originality
Some people invent new ideas, others connect existing ones; both create value and differentiation in different ways.

- AI creates sameness; humans create contrast
When everyone uses the same tools the same way, everything starts to look identical; human perspective is what breaks the pattern.

- The future is human + AI collaboration, not competition
The advantage comes from combining AI’s speed with human judgment, instinct, and originality.

- You can benchmark human thinking against AI for the first time
This creates a new opportunity to see where your team actually adds value beyond automation.

- The biggest risk isn’t AI replacing you; it’s becoming indistinguishable
Businesses that rely on generic, AI-driven content will blend in; thos

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

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In this episode, Mike Montague talks with Dan Baird of Wrench AI about why the future of marketing belongs to businesses that can target the right people, personalize the right message, and prove what is actually working. They unpack the shift from generic AI content and mass outreach to smarter systems built on lead scoring, behavioral signals, personality-driven messaging, and better audience research. The conversation makes a strong case that hyper-targeting and hyper-personalization are not just shiny tactics; they are how SMBs and midmarket companies can reduce waste, improve conversions, and compete far above their weight class.

Mike and Dan also explore the bigger themes behind this shift: why AI shortcuts stop working once everyone finds them, why authenticity still beats scale, and why better marketing starts with understanding who to talk to, what to say, and how to say it. They share practical takeaways on using AI to make stronger decisions, improve message-market fit, and build relationship-driven growth instead of blasting the world and hoping for 1%. For owners, marketing leaders, and growth teams, this episode is a smart look at how smaller, more focused companies can win in an AI-first market.

Top Takeaways From This Episode:

AI stops being a shortcut the moment everyone uses the same trick

Dan’s point is that novelty fades fast, so the real advantage comes from better thinking, better systems, and adapting faster than the crowd.

The best marketing starts with better research

He argues that strong sales and marketing come from asking better questions, understanding the buyer deeply, and shaping the message to what the audience needs to hear.

Hyper-personalization beats generic AI content

Instead of sounding polished but bland, messaging should adapt to the buyer’s personality, preferences, and decision style to reduce friction and improve response rates.

Who to talk to matters as much as what to say

Dan emphasizes machine learning-based targeting that identifies better-fit prospects, especially early adopters and high-margin buyers, before teams waste effort on everyone else.

Better targeting creates better economics

His “bigger, fewer, better” idea is that speaking to fewer, better-fit prospects can outperform mass outreach because it improves conversion quality and reduces wasted spend.

Reliable ROI needs real data underneath the AI

He warns that LLMs can sound smart while making things up, so marketers need lead-score tables, logic, and measurable systems behind the output.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.

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Most businesses are sprinting into AI, cranking out more content, launching more automations, and moving faster than ever. The problem is, speed doesn’t fix a broken foundation. In this episode, Mike Montague sits down with Carmela Fortin to unpack the “pre-AI layers” most teams skip; the human factors like clarity, alignment, buyer psychology, and real conversations that actually determine whether your marketing works.

You’ll learn why more AI content often leads to fewer results, how to spot the hidden gaps in your strategy that data alone can’t reveal, and what high-performing teams are doing differently to win in a fast-changing market. If your team feels busy but not effective, this conversation will help you slow down just enough to choose a better direction, so AI becomes an amplifier of your strategy, not a distraction from it.

Top Takeaways

• AI won’t fix a broken marketing foundation: If your messaging, goals, and strategy aren’t clear before AI, you’ll just scale confusion faster instead of results.
• The most important marketing signals aren’t in your data: Buyer anxiety, hesitation, and internal team readiness often drive decisions more than anything your dashboards can measure.
• Speed creates activity; clarity creates outcomes: Moving faster with AI feels productive, but without direction it leads to wasted effort and misaligned campaigns.
• Vanity metrics hide the real story: Traffic, clicks, and conversions don’t tell you why something worked; real insight comes from conversations and context.
• Human conversations are your biggest competitive advantage: Teams that actively talk to customers, ask better questions, and listen deeply outperform those relying only on automation.
• AI can amplify bad decisions just as easily as good ones: Poor inputs, weak strategy, or misaligned goals get scaled just as quickly as strong ones.
• Most teams are optimizing for outputs instead of outcomes: Creating more content isn’t the goal; creating meaningful engagement and business impact is.
• Alignment can’t be automated: You can’t shortcut team buy-in, internal clarity, or customer understanding with tools; those have to be built intentionally.
• Marketing success starts with better questions, not better prompts: The teams winning right now are asking deeper questions about their buyers, not just trying to generate better AI outputs.
• The future belongs to teams that blend human insight with AI efficiency: The edge isn’t choosing AI or human strategy; it’s knowing how to combine both in a way that builds trust and drives action.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.

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Most businesses are producing more content than ever… and getting less response. Why? Because somewhere between automation and scale, they lost the one thing that actually converts; their voice. In this episode, Mike Montague sits down with Rachel Minion to unpack the real challenge of marketing in the age of AI: how to grow without sounding like everyone else. From the “AI slider” between human and machine to the rise of robotic outreach and creepy personalization, this conversation gets honest about what’s working, what’s not, and why authenticity is becoming your biggest competitive advantage.

You’ll learn how to use AI as an amplifier instead of a replacement, how to build marketing systems that still feel personal, and why trust; not volume; is the real growth lever for SMBs and midmarket teams. If your marketing feels like a vending machine instead of a conversation, this episode will help you reset your approach and start creating content, outreach, and experiences that people actually want to engage with.

Top Takeaways

• Authenticity is a discipline, not a default: You have to actively train and refine AI outputs to match your voice; if it doesn’t sound like you, it doesn’t ship.
• Bad automation is obvious and instantly ignored: Buyers can spot templated, scraped, or mass-personalized outreach immediately; it erodes trust faster than it creates leads.
• Relevance beats scale every time: A simple, human “just checking in” message outperforms high-volume automation when it feels real and intentional.
• You don’t need millions of leads; you need the right ones: High-volume outreach can work in theory, but it’s inefficient and unsustainable for most SMBs without massive resources.
• Build the business you actually want to run: Scaling without intention leads to a job you don’t enjoy; clarity on who you serve and how you serve them changes everything.
• Your positioning drives everything downstream: When your offer, audience, and messaging are aligned, your marketing, sales, and referrals start working together naturally.
• Your last sale should help you get your next sale: Strong client experience and clear outcomes create momentum; referrals and repeat business become your growth engine.
• Trying to serve everyone breaks your scalability: Broad targeting creates operational chaos; focus allows you to build repeatable systems and hire effectively.
• The right clients make growth easier, not harder: When your offer fits your audience, retention increases, referrals grow, and marketing feels lighter instead of forced.
• Authenticity creates a pattern interrupt in a noisy market: Even imperfect, human moments stand out more than polished, generic AI content; people respond to realness.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.

Send us Fan Mail

Artificial intelligence is moving fast; faster than most business leaders realize. In this episode of the Human-First AI Marketing Podcast, Mike Montague sits down with AI researcher Dr. Craig Kaplan to explore what may be the next major shift in technology: the transition from AI as a simple tool to something closer to an intelligent entity. The conversation tackles the big questions people are asking right now: Will AI become smarter than humans? How quickly could that happen? And what does it mean for businesses navigating the AI revolution?

Along the way, Mike and Craig explore the real risks and opportunities of advanced AI, including the difference between the “Terminator scenario” and the “Iron Man scenario,” the race between governments and tech companies to build more powerful systems, and why many experts believe AI development is accelerating faster than expected. For SMB leaders, marketers, and curious innovators, this episode offers a chance to step back and see the bigger picture. You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of where AI is heading, what superintelligence could mean for society, and why the choices we make today will shape how humans and intelligent machines work together in the future.

Top Takeaways

• AI has evolved through three major phases. It moved from rule-based symbolic systems to machine learning and now into the emerging era of autonomous AI agents.
• We are shifting from tools to intelligent entities. Modern AI systems are beginning to act more like independent intelligences that can take actions and make decisions.
• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the next milestone. AGI refers to AI capable of performing any cognitive task at the level of an average human.
• Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) may follow quickly. Once AI reaches general intelligence, it could rapidly surpass humans across many fields.
• Many experts believe the risk of catastrophe is non-zero. Poorly aligned superintelligence could pose serious risks if development continues without safeguards.
• The biggest danger may come from the AI arms race. Nations and tech companies are competing to build more powerful systems, making it difficult to slow development.
• Regulating AI will be harder than past technologies. Because AI is widely distributed, traditional regulation models may struggle to keep up.
• Advanced AI will likely develop goals and values. The values embedded in these systems will shape how they interact with humanity.
• The future could resemble the “Terminator” or “Iron Man” scenario. Outcomes depend on whether AI systems are aligned with human interests.
• The choices we make now matter. Today’s research, safety standards, and design decisions will determine whether AI becomes humanity’s greatest tool or its greatest risk.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, Raj Singh, VP of New Products at Mozilla, breaks down the “ownership economy”; a world where starting a business is getting simpler, faster, and cheaper because the builder toolkit keeps losing friction. You can spin up a real brand presence quickly, look professional early, and test ideas without burning months on dev or a big stack of services.

Raj also gets blunt about what actually wins once “anyone can build anything”: trust and distribution. He explains why the noise is exploding, why old growth tactics get less reliable, and why reputation and taste matter more than ever when AI output trends generic. For SMB owners, the takeaway is practical; pick one AI tool and start, map your day-to-day work, then ask AI to help you reclaim time and focus on what makes you distinctly you.

Top Takeaways

• The “ownership economy” is accelerating; it is now genuinely easier to start a business fast, look professional early, and spend less doing it.
• When anyone can build anything, trust and distribution become the real bottlenecks; product alone does not guarantee growth anymore.
• The signal-to-noise problem is getting worse; SMBs win by building credibility and becoming a clear “signal” in a sea of generic output.
• Paid acquisition and PR are less reliable in high-noise markets; brand and reputation do more heavy lifting than they used to.
• AI output tends to average out into “generic”; your taste and judgment are the differentiators that keep your work from looking like everyone else’s.
• “Less features” can be a strategy; simpler products are easier to understand, adopt, and market.
• For non-technical SMB owners, the best first step is picking one AI tool and using it daily; tool sprawl kills momentum.
• To build a moat, look for advantages big platforms cannot copy quickly; proprietary data, cross-platform needs, and workflow depth are strong candidates.
• Multiplayer and sharing experiences can be defensible; teams and families create stickiness that basic “native” features often do poorly.
• As AI gets more integrated into real workflows, trust and guardrails matter more; automation without safeguards can create expensive mistakes.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of The Human-First AI Marketing® Podcast, Mike Montague sits down with Brett Farmiloe, CEO of Featured.com and Help a Reporter Out (HARO), to talk about the real PR opportunity most small and mid-market companies are missing in 2026. You’ll learn how getting featured in credible media outlets isn’t just great for brand awareness, but it’s also how you get cited in AI models, improve your SEO, and build the trust that drives high-value sales conversations.

From the rise of reactive PR to the surprising ways AI is reshaping journalism, this conversation breaks down how modern PR actually works, and how SMBs can use AI tools without sounding like them. You’ll hear actionable tips on pitching reporters, showing up with original insight, and why getting quoted by a human is the best way to be found by machines. If you want smarter exposure without selling your soul to algorithms, this episode is your blueprint.

PR is evolving & reactive PR is where SMBs should start.
Instead of blasting press releases, look for in-progress stories where journalists are already asking for sources.

Small businesses can now use AI to scale media outreach.
AI tools can match your expertise with relevant media opportunities and even help draft responses so you're not starting from scratch.

Generative AI can’t replace original thought.
Journalists want human insight, not ChatGPT output; Brett’s platforms detect AI-generated content and surface real voices.

Your media mentions feed your future search and AI visibility.
Getting quoted in trusted outlets increases your odds of being referenced in AI models and cited in search results.

Only pitch where you’re a perfect fit.
Relevance, timeliness, and helpfulness matter more than hype; follow instructions, respond fast, and be genuinely useful.

AI doesn’t write your story, but it can help find the right audience.
Let AI do the heavy lifting of filtering through thousands of journalist requests, so you can show up where it counts.

Press isn't dead; it's just decentralized.
Authority is now earned across podcasts, Substacks, newsletters, and traditional media. PR today means showing up across all of them.

Original human content will only get more valuable.
As AI slop floods the internet, real, expert insights become a premium commodity for both journalists and machines.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.

Send us Fan Mail

What happens when AI meets immigration, one of the most complex, emotional, and high-stakes journeys in someone’s life? In this episode, Mike Montague talks with Grant Frazier and Ryan Bradley, co-founders of Global Entry Hub, about how they’re using AI to make immigration support more accessible, trustworthy, and human. You’ll hear how they built a multilingual AI assistant that guides people through global immigration processes, and why accuracy, empathy, and trust had to come before speed or scale.

This conversation goes far beyond immigration. It’s a masterclass for marketers and business leaders in what not to do with AI, and how to build smarter systems that actually serve people. If you’ve struggled with AI content that feels robotic, tools that underdeliver, or marketing automation that breaks trust, you’ll get fresh insight here. From hallucinating chatbots to real-world data architecture, Grant and Ryan share lessons every SMB leader should hear before launching their next AI initiative.

Top Takeaways:

• AI should be scoped with precision rather than speed.
Trying to build broad, general-purpose tools leads to confusion and a loss of trust, especially in high-stakes industries.

• Trust is earned through constraint, not creativity.
Their AI assistant only answers what it knows with certainty, which is critical when people's futures are on the line.

• Accuracy is more important than automation.
A wrong answer in immigration isn’t just a typo. It could cost someone time, money, or even legal status.

• Data infrastructure matters more than the UI.
Behind their AI agent “Mira” is a web of scrapers, data lakes, APIs, and logic rules that make her reliable.

• Hallucinations aren’t just a tech issue, but a human one.
Users must trust what they’re being told. Without that, your AI becomes a liability rather than an asset.

• Global audiences need local nuance.
Many AI tools reflect a Western bias in training data; true global support requires cultural and linguistic adaptation.

• Human support is still essential in emotional customer journeys.
For something as personal as immigration, no AI can replace the empathy and assurance of a real person.

• Don’t market your AI before you prove it works.
Early “AI-first” marketing fell flat until it was paired with human follow-up and refined positioning.

• Governments move slowly. Startups don’t have to.
While governments may take 5–10 years to modernize, startups can fill urgent gaps now if they build responsibly.

• The biggest risk in tech is overpromising.
Most AI failures in business come from trying to do too much, too fast, without clear constraints or user understanding.

The Human-First AI Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Avenue9. We use artificial intelligence to amplify your unique voice, empower your marketing team, and enable your scaling business to achieve big-brand success.

Explore new avenues available with AI marketing at Avenue9.com.

No matter where you’re starting from or how big your goals are, we turn modern marketing challenges into exciting opportunities. Let's get started with a discovery consultation!

Want to be a guest? Send Mike Montague a message on PodMatch here.