How to Build an AI Operating System for Marketing

Speaker 2: Reza, I'm pumped for this one. So excited to have you here.

Reza: Yes, sir. Very excited. Another year, another summit.

Speaker 2: Another year, another summit. We've been doing this for the past five years and it's our annual like state of creative strategy and where things are at. So, to kick us off, what I'm curious about is how are you seeing the current state and where are we going?

Reza: Every year we do this, it's it's such a great time to like look back and be like, how far the community's come and like what have we learned along the way. When we started Motion, the the problem that we found on marketing teams was this idea that like there's this really big gap between the creative side and the data side. And it felt like that was the biggest revenue unlock for the teams to figure out how to build a feedback loop across those two things that are so different from one another.

Reza: It's kind of where the creative analytics came from, which is like, you know, you need creative and you need analytics, and that felt like the most critical problem at the time. And then this creative strategist role kind of like emerges and like at the time it was partly a role, but it was mostly like skill or hat that somebody on the team would wear to like basically be the bridge between these two worlds, like be analytical and be creative both at the same time.

Reza: We saw the community solve that problem and like they got there and they figured out how to balance those two things. And then the next big challenge they had was like figuring out how to go all the way up into the high altitude of like what's going on in the business, thinking about like personas and messaging and like audiences and all of those things that happen at extreme high altitude. And then be able to go all the way down into the weeds and like write an incredible hook and produce a brief and write concepts.

Reza: And the community figured out that like actually being able to navigate altitudes up and down every single day and balance creative and data all at the same time, like that's what it took. Like that's where the big revenue unlocks was starting to come from. It's been so cool to watch that and we're basically like what's going on with our community and the people who've been like involved with Motion and like spend a lot of time with us, in some sense have like really figured out the art of really, really good marketing in the age of social.

Reza: And this is something I remember with a lot of like investor conversations many years ago, I would always say that the community of paid marketing in consumer are some of the best marketers in the world, partly because like the economic pressure to make really good performing ads, if you're an e-commerce business, is actually so high. And like some SaaS companies don't have that. They have like two-year payback periods. They could be very inefficient with their spend and so on. But if you're a commerce brand and you have margin on your products and you have shipping costs and like your performance really needs to work. And so there's it to me it's not a surprise why brands like Ridge and HexClad and Jones Road and others, like the these types of companies have produced some of the best marketers in the world. And so it's just been so cool to be a part of this community that that um I think has really shown the world uh what elite marketing looks like.

Reza: And there's a new set of challenges now. Things are getting crazy. There's a lot of open questions around like what's the next like big problem set to talk about. Obviously AI is like front and center of that. But also things around like the lines between different silos of marketing are really breaking down, right? Like one thing that I think everybody is is on the same page about at this point is things like to do really good paid, you have to have a really good sense of organic. And to do really good organic, you need to be really well versed in like creators in that space. And so something about at least the worlds of paid and organic and creator seem like kind of overnight those have collapsed and they're just one thing.

Reza: I don't think it stops there. I think so many other things are like colliding and to becoming like one thing. And so I think I think the the two big challenges of the moment are like, what's the question on AI? What's the right approach to it in our in our industry? And like what to do about the fact that all of these different silos of marketing are kind of breaking down into into like one thing. And now we're in the middle of like basically the third challenge of this community and this one is like the biggest one yet. And like as these people have figured out how to navigate creative and data, how to navigate these various altitudes, they basically built some version of a system, right? And this system is often like swirling around in their mind and their brain.

Reza: And the next challenge um upon them is basically to turn that brain and like build an AI brain, an AI system around all of these things that they've learned so that that process is not just stuck in their mind, but like they can actually build a real AI system around that. Um it's obviously the reason why we built runneth. It's like we've always tried to like build product and build content around the most important problem of the time. And I think that's that's the one that feels like the most critical is like if you've gotten all the way till here, you have something that works, but it may not be organized and turned into a system that AI can understand and AI can execute on. Um and so really excited to dive into all of that, explain how runneth works, explain how um to actually build a system like this and um work with our community to like take a crack at this challenge that they're experiencing now and I'm I'm confident they'll they'll figure it out and we'll we'll be in their corner to help uh to help them get there.

Speaker 2: You said something pretty big in there related to the AI brain. Let's double click. What is that?

Reza: Yeah, so it's just it's just this idea that like, you know, you look at anybody in in in the company regardless of how AI savvy they are or not, everyone is having like some version of um their approach to AI. So like people might spin up a Claude project and dump a bunch of files into it and then they'll use AI in that way. The purpose of an AI brain is to have the person who's like figured out the best approach and system, you want that to extend to everyone else on the team as well. This like siloed usage of AI is a really big problem because if you believe that the approach that you figured out that was swirling around in your mind is the one that you want to base everyone's work off of, then how do you transfer that knowledge not just to the individual, but the individuals and their AI usage so that when they're using AI and you're using AI and the other person on your team is using AI, how is that compounding and built off of the same system as opposed to like everyone kind of running in their own direction?

Speaker 2: And that's the problem where some of the best people in the industry are looking to solve. And it just takes a lot of technical setup right now to do that effectively. And even with the best technical setup, it's still very hard to make it collaborative with everyone else. And that's the purpose of like building runneth to make the the the technical part of all of that not the biggest challenge and to make it so that people are actually spending time iterating on their systems and their approach and their POV and not trying to like rip their hair out figuring out how are we going to collaborate with each other on AI.

Reza: And so that was the whole point of runneth is that like the industry needs an AI brain for marketing, basically. And all that means is that I think everybody understands that like one of the realities of AI is that we all need to change the way we work as a society, right? That like knowledge work is changing in an incredible degree. Everybody who's remotely close to engineering has seen that that industry has already flipped entirely on its head and the way that engineers do work is completely different. Every other industry, the same thing is happening.

Reza: Every company is going to have these like AI brains for various parts. So like you see AI for legal, AI for finance, AI for this, AI for that. And I think that that is the right kind of setup. And what we've set out to do is basically build the AI brain or the AI operating system for the entire marketing department. And that's a really big leap for us, right? To be like, actually it does feel like we need to solve this for all of marketing, not just a subset of it because that's kind of what AI demands.

Reza: AI is not a thing to be like shoved into a silo, right? Like your entire process should be running based on the same system. Whatever everybody like normally using AI will do is like go and create like a Claude project and dump it with a lot of stuff. Like so there's this principle that everyone's kind of understood of like it makes sense if I can brain dump to AI and then it can execute based on that. Like it's the same idea, but imagine it like multiplayer and it works with your team and like it's just exceptional and world class at not just being able to like give you prompt outputs, but actually do work for you and like create outputs for you.

Reza: And so just to get a little bit technical for both the the the mad scientists and the non-mad scientists, we did something pretty crazy in building runneth, um which is that in order to get the most out of AI, it's why people go and buy the Mac Minis, you actually do need to give it access to a computer. And we believe that you need to give it access to an entire computer that's just theirs. We've gone out and given every single one of our customers and everybody who becomes a customer of runneth has their own entirely dedicated virtual machine computer that is not shared between them and other people. It's like uniquely theirs.

Reza: And runneth operates outside of this machine for them. And the reason we did that is because in order to build an AI operating system or an AI brain for the entire marketing department, like it makes sense that there's going to be the need for like really robust infrastructure there. And it maps exactly to the idea of the Mac Mini, which when that first came out and people were like running their open claws through that, we immediately were like, that's obviously the right pattern. It just needs to be like seamless and easy and secure and multiplayer and domain specific.

Reza: And so that's what we've built. We want to help the best marketers in the world leapfrog the technical challenges of running the the best, most world-class AI operation for marketing and put the focus back on the craft.

Reza: And say that like actually if you want to win in marketing, it's not because you figured out how to set up a Hermes agent on a Mac Mini over the weekend. That that it does not make sense that like that's the person who wins marketing. No way. Like the thing is like who could be the better marketer? And then the big challenge there is that like, okay, how do you do that? Which is why we've always had an emphasis on like educational content and trying to teach the craft. We spend way more time like talking about the craft than we do our product, and that's always been true.

Reza: And the reason is that like that's the hard part. And like actually even early days Motion, people would show up to the product and they're like, what am I supposed to do with this thing? And we're like, oh, you need to get better at like the craft. And then it becomes obvious what you're supposed to do with this thing. And so like we've always been very focused on like, how do we teach this stuff? And then like the product and the tooling become obvious.

Reza: And so, yeah, just excited about this stuff and I think the world is changing. There's a lot for people to learn. We've tried to be a great resource in terms of like education and product in the last few years and like we're doubling down on all of those fronts. Continue to be a resource for our customers and our community in in this next phase of uh basically on the path to the CMO job that I think our our community will will navigate really well.

Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Reza, we've been talking about this idea of the marketer who's going to gobble a lot more, 100x themselves and they're a future CMO in this entire process. I'm wondering if you can share a couple examples of how runneth can help them and enable them.

Reza: Like it's it's the opposite story of basically humans are cooked, AI is going to do everything. Our view has always been it's literally the opposite that people are going to be so much more valuable as a result of AI. That comes with a lot of responsibility to be like good at what you do. And so I think again, why we really emphasize on like you have to be good at the craft because the problem is if you're not good at the craft, like you're just going to amplify noise and slop and like that is real.

Reza: But for those who like care about the craft and get good at this stuff, then really what what runneth and AI in general allow those people to do is like really multiply themselves. Like the reason why people would grow teams to be really big was because there was leverage in teams. So like I'm really good. I have a great take on the world and a really good POV.

Reza: But there's only so many hours in the day. There's only so much I can do. The way for me to gain leverage is to create enough value to like justify hiring another person. Hopefully that person is also really great and I can train that person and hire more of those people and have a really big team and lead a large team. All of that is in the service of basically taking somebody exceptional and giving them leverage. That's really all it is.

Reza: If you can take that exceptional person and give them leverage through really well-implemented AI, then like you get that same phenomenon. And what happens to that person, we've been like referring to this idea of like the 100x marketer. Um engineers have been talking about this quite a bit even pre-AI. There was this idea of a 10x engineer who was just like 10x better than the average engineer. And that person with AI is like a 100x engineer or a 1000x engineer.

Reza: And I think our society has not like priced in what happens as that starts to happen with regards to like genuinely how much impact a single individual has, provided that they're actually good at what they do. So again, goes back to the emphasis on like if you want to do well in the AI era, forget about AI and just get really good at the craft because AI is going to be more seamless, it's going to be easy, it's all just going to work. And the difference becomes like who's actually good at pointing this AI stuff to create more value. Value creation from a single individual is like honestly boggles my mind because what happens if a single individual can create the amount of value that like a team of 50 people used to be able to do, which I I think is genuinely possible.

Reza: Like that should reflect in the compensation of those people. And like as a company founder, the math is actually pretty straightforward, right? If you have a single individual who can genuinely create the impact of 50 people, would you not pay them the equivalent of like five people? You totally would. And you're still paying a tenth of what it would cost to hire 50 people. And I think that happens sooner than people might imagine. And it's not going to be because they were the world's best prompt master. That's not going to be the thing that drives that. It's because they became really, really good at the craft and the discipline of whatever domain they were in.

Reza: And then they will just see their value start to explode and skyrocket. So yeah, I think the 100x marketer is totally real. We've been kind of equating that with the CMO role because I don't think there's any leadership role that is going to survive as a leadership role if they're not deep in the trenches creating value as this like super IC. And so in some sense, there is no difference between the 100x or the 1000x marketer and the CMO. That that should be the same person. So like um if you're a CMO, getting back into the trenches is actually a really good idea because it's not just through hiring more people that you're going to gain leverage. Like you can actually get get leverage in the trenches.

Reza: And if you're an IC who's up and coming, as you get really good at this discipline, you are actually well on track to be um the most important person in the marketing org if you can be the person who basically understands the discipline and is able to gain leverage through AI. The person who does that the best, in my opinion, deserves the top job. And so what you actually want to do is like sign up to all our bootcamps and like consume all of our content and education. Like is that's going to be the thing that makes the difference on uh you know, how well people can navigate their careers in these kind of crazy times.

Speaker 2: Last question I have before I get you out of here is you mentioned it yourself, there's a lot of people who are feeling overwhelmed right now with all of this. It's pretty cool that we've seen this rodeo before. I'm wondering if you have any final words of advice for people out there.

Reza: Yeah, so we actually just talked about this internally with our team and this idea that a lot of people are thinking about AI and the work that it can produce. And it's correct. Obviously AI is meant to be like a labor force for us that is able to actually produce work and produce deliverables. But that's very challenging to do if like the context and the input is not well set up.

Reza: And so I would say whether you use runneth or not, the first priority should always be like, how do I set up the right context environment so that AI can make magic for me? And if that part of the equation doesn't feel grounded, then I think it'd be very confusing and very unpredictable the kinds of output that you'll get with AI. And so I would say like start with the context and start with getting like really disciplined about how that works.

Reza: And then you'll kind of see that like the work kind of just does itself, right? So that stuff is like by far, by far, by far, by far the most important. From a lot of conversations that I've had, like people have not quite gotten this point right yet. So I I think I've like can say with some confidence that like most people listening to this would probably benefit by spending some time there um to like get just get set up properly so that the work that happens with AI becomes something that you feel like you're in control of as opposed to like you're just kind of swimming in the slop and you don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2: I love it. Perfect way to end it. Super actionable. Hopefully we have a resource we can put together and give to people on that one. But Reza, appreciate you, man.

Reza: Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: Thank you.