What Founders Can Learn From Students Cheating With AI

Eric and Neil break down 3 marketing roles they believe AI will kill first, why entry-level execution work is getting compressed fast, and what marketers need to do now to stay valuable. They also cover why specialists are likely to beat generalists, why human judgment matters more than ever, and how AI is reshaping the structure of marketing teams. They also get into what separates unacceptable, capable, adaptive, and transformative AI users, why most teams are still behind, and how marketers can move beyond basic prompting into real workflows that actually save time and drive results. Key takeaways ◾ Entry-level execution-heavy marketing roles are under the most pressure from AI. ◾ Specialists with strong judgment are becoming more valuable than generalists. ◾ Most teams are still early in their AI adoption and workflow maturity. ◾ Prompting matters less than context, systems, and human review. ◾ AI can increase output fast, but teams still need people who can think strategically. Chapters (00:00) 3 marketing roles AI will kill first (02:42) Why data analysts, junior writers, and generalists are at risk (05:25) The 4 levels of AI marketing maturity (08:07) Why most teams still feel behind (09:40) Why mental health is becoming a bigger AI issue (13:25) The AI tools that can augment your content team

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  These seven prompts cut our ad spend by 52% in 60 days. Steal them. I'm like...

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Oh, that's totally AI-generated.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  I'm like, what? What are the prompts? I don't know. I don't remember any of these.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  I don't even have... So here's the thing. Let's talk about prompts for a second. I think having to remember prompts and like saving all these prompts is theater. I think it's unnecessary to have this stuff, because I don't remember the prompts. You don't remember the prompts. And the agents themselves are getting much better at prompting. So really, it's just about studying, doing more than anything, and just constantly experimenting.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  But I agree with Eric, and but back in the day when you started seeing ChatGPT first come out, prompts were really important.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  It's not the same anymore. And the big mistake we're seeing people make now isn't really related to prompts. It's actually what data are you feeding them before you do anything else? And I'll give you an example of this with a homework, because I see a lot of kids these days cheating. And I was talking to some students. I was speaking at a college. And when I say cheating, they were using AI to do their homework. And they're telling me how AI does a terrible job. And I was breaking down to them, like, you're thinking about it the wrong way. And I was like, why does it do a terrible job? They're like, if I ask it 10 questions, you know, one or two of them will be off.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  And I was like, before you actually have AI help you, are you actually telling it what to pull from? What to read? What's your test based on? And I'm like, if you tell them where to look for the answer and only look there instead of eight out of 10 or nine out of 10 being right, you'll probably get 10 out of 10 right? Because you're giving them the exact source to pull from, and you're telling them to only pull from that source and nowhere else? And I'm like, then you'll start getting all the answers right. And they're like, oh, never thought about that.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  You know, I just realized something as you were talking, Neil. AI is not just... We're not really talking about intelligence. amplifier because kids there's a lot of intelligence kids uh I actually think AI IA intelligence amplifier is now JA JA it's judgment amplifier because children they don't have good judgment yet they don't have good experience yet right but they might be very intelligent but they don't have good experience and so the people let's say you have people on your team they have poor judgment and they use AI well if they're poor bad what was that uh BJ BJ right bad judgment amplifier

• 2:53Speaker 01

  yes

• 2:53Speaker 00

  bah right whatever you want to call it so yeah anyway I think I think that was interesting okay so let's move on to this one now okay

• 3:06Speaker 00

  I have a here you you pick one of the hooks I was gonna go with this hook I wasn't sure if I wanted to use it

• 3:11Speaker 01

  uh three roles on your marketing team that won't exist in eighteen months if you're in one of them listen up okay the first role that won't exist in twenty twenty seven is a data analyst someone who is actually just looking at spreadsheets analyzing data and telling you what to do with their data and there's a few reasons and Eric and I will name off a few of them but one is dude neither Eric or I or any company wants their data lag we want it in real time why do you need a data analyst helping you look at the data that's not in real time I'm not saying you won't have people in your data and analytics team helping out

• 3:50Speaker 01

  but you don't need someone reporting to you on the data AI should have it right then and there notify you when something is wrong and then when anyone on your team whether in their in data or in marketing or any other role they should just be able to ask AI a question related to your data and it pulls up the answer for them

• 4:09Speaker 00

  yep number two I would say is the entry level content writer the entry level SEO writer I think that is something that's going to you you need someone with good judgment and good experience overall and so someone that can just um you know generate basic copy like ehow remember demand uh what was it called was it called ehow what was he eventually changed into

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know, but I know what you're talking about. It was like, uh, that big company in L A.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Back in the day, um, demand media.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Demand media, there you go.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  So they used to generate, you know, people used to generate a bunch of like, you know, articles that were like five hundred words or something like that. They would hire people in like, uh, you know, India, for example, right? And just crank out a bunch of these for it to the game, game S E O. Nowadays, you already have generative A I tools like Chat G P Claude that can generate basic content for you. So I think entry level content, content creators or writers, um, I think what's gonna happen is you're going to have, you want a single human editor instead, those are gonna be hired more, uh, those are gonna be in more demand than just the entry level content writers.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yes. The last one I would say is marketers, especially on the entry level, who are jack of all trades, will not be as needed. Specialists will do way better in today's role than jack of all trades, because when you specialize, you have really amazing domain expertise where you should, and you should be better at things like strategy or the nuances where sometimes A I will miss or get wrong. I, I, we look at an organization as a pyramid flipped upside down. You have more people at the higher levels and mid levels, and you have less people at the bottom. And a lot of the people in the mid and higher levels, sure, some of them will be jack of all trades, but the majority of them will be

• 5:54Speaker 01

  like extreme specialists who are A players at one specific thing.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Dude, so we should talk about the levels here because you're talking about that. So there are really four levels when it comes to A I marketing. Ninety percent of teams are stuck at level one. Here's how you jump to the level three. So the four levels here. Number one, level one, unacceptable, okay? Ninety percent are unacceptable, sorry. Number two.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  But describe each level. So what is unacceptable when you're saying unacceptable?

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Let me go through the first and then I'll come back. Okay, so level one is unacceptable. Level two is capable. Level three is adoptive and level four is transformative. Okay, I'm gonna go through each one. Okay, these are, and then we're gonna talk about how you can jump to level three, which is adoptive. So then this is stolen from Zapier's A I fluency table. Okay, I just wanna give him credit. So unacceptable is obviously unacceptable, okay? So unacceptable means that in twenty twenty six, if you say, hey, how are you using Aaron? Oh, I love using Chat G P T. Even these executives we talked to from the Hold Co's, oh, I'm not really into A I right now. If you want A I, uh, I'm not your guy. Actually, this guy was a president for one of these, these companies, right? He's like, yeah, I'm not really into, how are you using it right now? Oh. I'm just using it to search for things. I'm using it for recipes. It's been tremendous for that.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Okay, unacceptable. Level two, you have people that are capable. Capable now means that you are using like Claude Co-Work, for example. You're using to maybe schedule things for yourself. You're using it to analyze your spreadsheets quickly, okay? You're using for actual, real work, not just at, you know, base level, okay? So that's, by the way, this, this chart changes. We're talking like every month or so this changes, okay? So you have, you have unacceptable, you have capable, then you have adoptive, which is where we want most people to go, okay? Adoptive is where you are using something, okay? And let's say you're using it to, you're inputting something into AI and you're having it do the keyword research for you, or you're having it create like 200 ads for you at the same time, okay?

• 7:44Speaker 00

  You're basically have a human review the AI work. The human asks for something, the AI doesn't work, the human reviews. That is adoptive. Okay, I'll give, I'll give you an example. Someone, someone on our team's done this. They created something end to end. It plugs in with our agent and they'll say, hey, with this agent, hey, can you spin up 200 ads based on, you know, the data over here? Literally, it can do that. That's weeks or days of work that's condensed into just this workflow. That's where we want most people to go. The only difference with transformative and adoptive is that workflow still requires a human in the loop there to constantly check it more often. Transformative means you have a closed loop where the system is improving on itself recursively. And you want a lot of these workflows in your company.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Transformative, you're probably gonna, only gonna have like maybe 1%, 2%, 3% max, maybe 5% of people that are transformative right now as I record this. That's why you want most people to get to adoptive because Neil, today's capable is tomorrow's unacceptable.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  That's true. That is very true. Dude, it's, it's moving at such a fast pace. One of the biggest questions I tend to get asked by marketers right now is how do we keep up with all of the change? And you know what I tell people? You can't keep up with all of the change. And don't worry about being the first adopter to every single new platform. Wait to see what settles in a few months after launch and focus on those things that are gaining a lot of traction and look like they're gonna stick around.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  I would say. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. One, if you try to keep up, you can't. I feel like I'm behind every single day. I'm sure, you know, the people you talk to, the friends I talk to, I think they're on,

• 9:55Speaker 00

  that we think everyone's on top of it, nobody's on top of it. Like, you just figure out what you can based on the time that you're willing to allocate to it. And I would say, look, if you feel like you're very AI-pilled right now, the only concern I have for people that are very AI-pilled is the risk of burnout. You're definitely going to feel momentum, but the burnout can be really real now because you don't stop working. Because there's people on my team that work till 2 a.m. I'm like, nobody told you to work till 2 a.m., right? He's like, no. I'm like, then why are you doing it? He's like, because I'm having so much fun right now, right? The other person's like, 1 a.m. And he's like, I found out the ChatGPT new images model. I'm like, that's fantastic, but please, I need you guys to, you almost need to have a mental health policy. Like, I used to kind of like, we used to be like, okay, yeah, mental health policy. Right now, it's like, no, no, no, you really do need a mental health policy now.

• 10:39Speaker 00

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• 11:01Speaker 01

  You have a lot of people that you know that are entrepreneurs, and I am in a similar camp as you. It's funny, when I talk to my entrepreneur friends, one of the biggest problems we see in many departments, especially marketing, because you're adapting so much with AI, is actually mental health. And we're seeing it become a bigger and bigger problem because people are overwhelmed, they're working too many hours, and they're not taking care of the health. And people have this misconception that you just get more done by working more. If you don't get enough sleep, you'll actually be less productive. And sleeping, like, I sleep eight hours a day. Sleeping a solid eight hours a day. And again, this isn't health advice, but what I found for me and most people,

• 11:43Speaker 01

  you actually are more productive and you get more done in the hours you are working where compared if you have a lack of sleep. Because you have less brain fog.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  I think this period right now, maybe the next five, 10 years or so, most people will have, most companies will have some type of mental health policy where probably your tokens get shut off or something like that. But I, I just think, I, I think, I think so. You, you, you just turn, you turn the intelligence off.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  That's so good.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I never thought about that. And like, your tokens are shut off. You're working too much.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  No. But like, I, I think it's, people are gonna realize that, hey, like, maybe this thing is intended to help us, make us work less overall. In the long run, right? I think right now, everyone's just so excited by this new technology that I think we're gonna over-index over work right now. I think longer term, it might decrease, right? But I also think the motivator people are always gonna be the same, but that's never changed in history. So.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, it's, it's ridiculous. But, um, yeah, and I feel bad for people too, because it's like, the, the people that don't work hard, I have to push to work harder. The people who are A players, they work too hard and I actually had to push them to like,

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Work less?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Work less, spend time with family.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I'm like, dude, this is just a recipe for disaster for your personal relationship with your kids or your spouse, just any of it. And I'm like, you need to work less.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  And you just can never push those people, like, you, you have to push them, but you can never convince them to work less. Like, sometimes they'll take like a vacation. I had someone tell me like, oh yeah, I'm gonna now have to travel to Mexico more because of family. But don't worry, they have better internet than Cuba. I'm like, dude, I don't worry about you. You work seven days a week and you need to work less. The internet, if it's shitty, is actually a good thing. So that way you actually work less for once and you spend more time with your family.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Dude, speaking of vacations, I'm going on vacation tomorrow. So that, that's our recruiting day. So it's like, it's, but it's, it's because there's, there's like, it's a, like, part of the reason is like, I've never been to Mexico City, so that, that's where I'm going. But it, it's just like, um.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Oh, this is the trip we were talking about during lunch.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  The work is non-stop.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And are you gonna stop using AI during this trip?

• 13:42Speaker 00

  No.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  That's not a vacation.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  You, do you actually go on vacation?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  I'm going on a Disney cruise.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  For the first time, but usually you worked in your vacations.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Well, I still get to work on the Disney cruise. They have internet.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Well, we work because it's fun. That's part of my vacation. But you know what? I, I don't have to get on all these calls. I don't have to be in all these meetings. That's the fun part.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I, I'll do the same stuff, so.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you'll still be working. You're, you're obviously going to spend time with your family and all that. Um, but let's just be honest, we enjoy working and this is my time to learn more, to experiment more. That's all I'm doing.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, we get to pick one more here, so let's pick.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm gonna go with this one. This, this is a, this is, this one's a bit of a, um, like a, what do you want to say? Headlinie, clickbaity one. Let's go with this one, okay? Here, ready Neil?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, go for it.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  So we replaced four people on our content team with five AI tools. Output went up three X. Here's the stack. So I'm like number one over here, okay? So we, using Higgs Field, Higgs Field has been great um in terms of cranking out way more ad creative or way more videos, way more UGC content. It just wasn't previously possible before. Um, and by the way, when we say replaced, we mean augmented our team.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, number two, uh, and we're not saying we actually need three X output. This is that headline that AI came out for us, but um, we've done tests with Answer the Public, that is my own tool. Um, usually can cut down time spent on content creation by a third to a fourth. So you're saving quite a bit of time because not only does it help you find the topics, it helps you write. You still should keep a human in the loop. It'll help you post. It'll help you come up with the images. It pretty much does a lot of it soup to nuts and it can do it in a lot of different languages, but still even with that. You still need a human in the loop. And I really advise, no matter how many tools Eric and I give you,

• 15:44Speaker 01

  we are not advising you to take out humans from the loop for content creation. You may not need as many humans, but if you replace humans fully, your results aren't going to be as good.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Number three, this is a big one. Google's design.md file unlocks you, especially as a marketer, because now you can have consistent designs for landing pages, for ads, for all the things that you're trying to do that you feel blocked on before. It's like, oh, sure, you can use all these cool tools, Nano Banana and all that. But when you generate things and they look, your carousels look inconsistent, your landing pages look inconsistent, your ads look inconsistent. It's not that helpful, right? So you need to have some type of brand consistency. Design.md is going to help you do that, and it's completely free to use.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Number four? Number four, you can either use HeyGen or you can use YouTube's tool when you're publishing content. They'll adjust your content into multiple languages, which is really great. I know some of these social media platforms are already doing it, but not all of them are doing it. And that's where HeyGen gets in there because it can just sync your lips and all that kind of stuff with whatever language you're trying to create content.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  Number five, last but not least, you've got two options here. You can use HeyGen's HyperFrames, which is open source as well, to create videos. Okay? Or you can use Remotion. Both are great if you want to make, let's say, a video for Answer to Public. I want to make a video for ClickFlow, for example. You can sync that with your design.md as well, and you can make these kind of one-minute videos introducing a new product or a new feature, whatever it is that you have. And then you can then be publishing it to everything that you, all the social channels. And so if you combine these five things, you're going to augment your entire content team, and the good people are going to become way stronger. And it's going to be a happier time for everyone. So, guys, that is it for today. Please let us know what you think about this new format, new-ish format, and we'll see you tomorrow.