The Customer Journey Maestro

If you can't beat them, join them. I have resigned from my own career as a freelance writer because AI is replacing people like me, and there's no point in waiting around for the inevitable. Now I'm focused on learning how business people can leverage AI. I don't yet have a service to offer around this, but I'm happy to discuss the practical applications of AI anytime.

B2B Strategy Advisor and Consultant

I specialize in building and executing content marketing strategies for companies seeking sustained revenue growth. My process is to create a customized messaging framework (aka, “brand story”), develop a content strategy and calendar, and execute the content strategy by building a content team and/or writing brand content.

Fractional Content Director

I love to write and create content of all kinds. My broad and deep experience across sales, marketing, and customer success gives me a unique perspective and the ability to write compelling content for just about any industry. My approach is to get the inside truth from the people behind each story, and I don’t believe in taking shortcuts. I write and publish for your customers, to engage them, educate them, and compel them to take action. The SEO stuff comes along for the ride. Let’s talk about your freelance writing/content needs.

Freelance Writer

I help B2B companies build and execute modern marketing strategies focused on customers.

B2B Marketing Advisor

Hire me on a full-time or part-time basis to up-level your go-to-market strategy. And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Go-to-Market Strategy Advisor

Your customers have their own Journey that may not match your Funnel or Flywheel. If you want to understand their journey and be there when they need you, that takes work. Designing a customer experience that builds trust, now that's another level entirely. I'm here to help - on your journey.

Customer Journey Guide

On-demand expertise in marketing strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, product and customer marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and customer success.

Fractional CMO/VP Marketing

CMO for Hire

Are you in transition? Starting from scratch or making a pivot to a new revenue growth strategy? My Virtual CMO services provide proven expertise to help you jumpstart sales, marketing, and customer experience prior to hiring executives and staffing departments. It's a low-cost, low-risk way to get the strategic advice you need.

Virtual CMO

Riptide Business Press

Ed Marsh and I have written a book, titled Common Sense Revenue Growth, that helps CEOs understand the digital and consumer disruption facing them today and develop plans to grow in spite of those challenges. Buy the book at www.commonsenserevenuegrowth.com.

Author, Podcaster and Consultant

Kuno Creative

Co-owned one of the first and most successful inbound marketing agencies, Kuno Creative. Grew the agency from a handful of talented marketers and designers to a 50+ person agency with clients ranging from national healthcare and technology companies to international consortiums and manufacturing giants. Specialized in marketing technology and sales enablement - helping companies fix leaky funnels and sales pipelines via strategy, marketing automation and optimized CRM utilization. Please visit Kuno's website, www.kunocreative.com for more information, or follow me on LinkedIn.

EVP and Co-Owner

Awakening Technology Company

Developed corporate websites from scratch using HTML/CSS, then created a proprietary CMS for creating client sites backed by a SQL database using ASP.net and later, Ruby on Rails.

Web Developer

Zydeco Energy

Independent oil and gas exploration company in Houston, TX. No longer in business.

Executive Vice President and CTO

INEXS

Exploration Geophysicist

Raytheon - GeoQuest

Product Marketing Specialist

Shell

Research professional working in electron microscopy for Shell Research and in geophysical interpretation research for Shell Exploration and Production.

Research Geoscientist

B2B Marketing Strategy Advisor With Company, Agency, and Freelance Chops

I retired in 2017 from a 40-year career, mostly in sales and marketing, for a variety of energy, manufacturing, and software companies. My penultimate position was co-owner of Kuno Creative, a digital marketing agency and one of HubSpot's first agency partners. My contributions continue as I seek to help other agency owners, professionals, and free-wheelers navigate their way through gnarly challenges in business and life.

John McTigue

Founder & CEO @ Marketing AI Institute | Co-Host of the Marketing AI Show Podcast

Paul Roetzer is on a mission to accelerate AI literacy and human-centered AI transformation in organizations.

As the founder and CEO of SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute, Roetzer is the driving force behind some of the industry's leading AI events and content. He created the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON), co-hosts the popular podcast The Artificial Intelligence Show, and is co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence.

Through SmarterX’s AI Academy, his work directly helps thousands of professionals and leaders understand and apply AI. His free monthly Intro to AI class alone has reached more than 40,000 registrants since its launch in 2021.

Roetzer’s entrepreneurial journey began long before the current AI boom. A graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, he founded PR 20/20, HubSpot’s first partner agency, and sold it in 2021 after establishing it as a pioneer in digital marketing.

This unique background as both an agency innovator and AI educator gives him a practical, story-driven approach to helping professionals and leaders reimagine business models, reinvent industries, and rethink what's possible.

Paul Roetzer

If your company isn’t generating significant ROI from AI adoption, then you have a people problem. 

AI transformation and value creation certainly requires an understanding of and access to the technology. 

But, more importantly, a willingness of the humans within your organization to change. 

Change is hard.

Many people see AI as a threat to their jobs, or, more deeply, a replacement to the work they find fulfilling and meaningful.

Without proper AI education and training, plus a comprehensive and empathetic approach to change management, your company will fall short of its potential and open the door to competitors who are more strategic in their AI transformation plans.

I read a great post from Jack Soslow, CEO of Ciridae, that sums it up well:

“This is what Silicon Valley doesn't understand about AI transformation. Technology is the easy part. Finding the problem is harder. But the hardest part, the part almost nobody wants to do, is the human work of driving change. Sitting with people. Earning trust. Refining the product until it fits their hands. Pushing until adoption actually happens.

“Generating $1 of EBITDA requires three things working together: (1) business acumen to find the real problem, (2) technical skill to build a solution that works, and (3) people skills to drive behavior change. These capabilities rarely exist in one person. They barely exist in most teams.

“This is why transformation is so expensive.”

Most leaders won’t do the hard part. 

You have an opportunity to differentiate and drive enormous value in 2026 by taking a human-centered approach to AI.

Founder & CEO, SmarterX & Marketing AI Institute | Co-Host of The Artificial Intelligence Show Podcast

AI as an Analyst, Advisor, and App Builder

Mike and I have been making an effort on the podcast to share more stories about how we’re using AI to build and run SmarterX. 

Hopefully the examples we share give you some ideas and inspiration to apply AI in new ways to your business and career.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the ways I used AI this week:

1) P&L Report Summary

On Thursday, our COO shared a screenshot with the team of revenue by line item in the P&L (Jan. 1-15 vs same period YoY). It was meant to  give a quick look at how we’re starting off the year.

I took the screenshot and dropped it into Gemini and my ChatGPT Co-CEO as an experiment.

Prompt: “Analyze this and write a summary I can share with the team. Focus on insights and opportunities.” 

Considering how little context I provided, both Gemini and ChatGPT showed tremendous potential to produce financial reports. 

We’re working on tighter integration of AI into all our company reporting so that the team can more quickly turn data into intelligence, intelligence into actions, and actions into outcomes. 

2) Travel Advisor

I had a talk in Chicago on Friday morning. My plan was to drive there from Cleveland on Thursday after my Intro to AI webinar. 

On Wednesday night, the winter weather took a turn, and I started second guessing my drive-vs-fly decision. 

So, I went into Gemini:

Prompt: “I’m heading from Cleveland to Chicago tomorrow. My plan was to drive because I like the quiet time and ability to conduct phone calls. However, the weather and roads don’t look great. Can you review the forecast and consider my options of driving versus flying.”

Gemini came back with a very clear recommendation: Don’t drive!

“A typical 5.5-hour drive is likely to become an 8 to 10-hour crawl. If your schedule allows the expense, flying is the significantly safer and more reliable option tomorrow.”

Gemini then searched flight options and I made the switch to a direct flight later on Thursday. 

3) Org Chart App 

This is probably the one I was most geeked about this week. 

I’ve been searching off-and-on for years to find software that would enable me to build and visualize dynamic organizational charts.

I’ve tried a number of tools, and always been disappointed by the lack of functionality. So, I went into Lovable and started a new project with this prompt:

Prompt: “I need to build an interactive org chart that enables me to envision multiple versions of potential organizational structure”

Lovable took me through a series of questions about the design and functionality (using its reasoning capabilities), and within 10 minutes I had a working minimum viable product (MVP) that I am now using to plan for our staffing and structure. 

As someone with zero coding ability, I was able to build and refine a working app better than anything I’d ever tested. 

Let that sink in. 

With AI, you can just build things. 

The future of work has arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed

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The Battle

John McTigue

Paul Roetzer

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taplio

The Battle

John McTigue

Paul Roetzer

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Paul Roetzer's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScorePaul Roetzer's LinkedIn Performance