Rob Lennon

Most creators, coaches, consultants, and solo business owners know AI is powerful — but they’re trying to learn it by wading through hype, half-truths, and overly technical tutorials built for engineers, not entrepreneurs.

And that's a problem because those flashy demos and one-size-fits-all prompts ignore what actually matters: practical, repeatable business outcomes. They don’t teach you how to think with AI... they just throw more tools at you.

Because of that, people end up feeling overwhelmed, unsure, or worse: they waste hours tinkering without anything meaningful to show for it. AI becomes another shiny object instead of the time-saving, clarity-creating tool it could be.

Which means you stay stuck in the loop of knowing AI should help your business, but not knowing how to make it stick, missing out on the dozens of small daily wins that could actually move the needle.

On the other hand, what I do is cut through the noise and show you exactly how to use AI in ways that fit your business, your brain, and your bandwidth.

I give you high-leverage prompts, real frameworks, and live walkthroughs that make it easy to start using AI — not just understanding it — whether that’s creating content, refining offers, or automating tasks...

So that you build AI into your actual workflow in small but mighty ways that save time, spark clarity, and support the work you’re already doing — not add more complexity to it.

As a result, you become the kind of business owner or operator who’s not just keeping up with AI — you’re benefiting from it. Quietly outpacing others not with gimmicks, but with smarter systems, clearer messaging, and more momentum — powered by real-world AI you can actually trust to help with your most important work.

Solopreneur Coach / Consultant

Supporting solopreneurs, founders, and agency owners with coaching and consulting on audience growth and audience-driven business systems to drive $$$ at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

Runqiu Cai

I'm celebrating 5 years at Maven 🎉. One day, I reply to a cryptic tweet from Gagan about his unnamed company… and like a blink of an eye, I'm now the village elder.

We recently came back from an amazing offsite in Oaxaca (my 10th) and welcomed 6 new Mavens. I gathered some thoughts on how to succeed at Maven that apply to any startup.

1) Being a high performer means shipping all the time, at a very high pace. For non-technical ICs, this means docs, dashboards, insights, decks, automations, emails. The key is doing it at a pace that's overwhelming to most.

2) Build in public. I push myself to make at least 1 public channel post per week and demo every week - not just updates, but insights that x-functional teams would find genuinely helpful.

3) One clear sign a new hire is struggling is that they're not posting on Slack. All their work happens in DMs, they don't comment, they don't emoji. You *can* turn this around by doing 1 and 2.

4) ICs MUST learn to manage up and across. Most people who complain about their boss (micro-manager or "LGTM" boss) are bad at managing up. Unless your boss is toxic, they want you to succeed. Figure out how they want to communicate, how often, and give THEM feedback on how to manage you.

5) Most blockers are self-imposed. If product/design capacity is a blocker, scale down the ask or figure out how to do it without them. Be tenacious, show real results, and you'll get that exec buy-in.

6) Give way more context than you think before asking for things. People's context windows are smaller than AI's. Also, you should do some of the work first i.e., write a short doc with the context and timeline to make it easy to help you.

7) Learn your company's data inside and out, and don't just rely on AI. Once you know where data lives, how to manipulate it, and the general "shape" of your data, you'll be the MVP on your team (and win your company's Kahoot competitions).

8) "Do things that don't scale" but always keep it at the forefront. When starting something new, figure out how to test it cheaply (brute force is my motto), show results, then figure out scaling. But often projects fail because they can't scale. If you don't have conviction on how to scale, make a go/no-go decision quickly.

Finally, what keeps me most energized is the people and culture of Maven. When you find a culture you thrive in, it makes all the difference in your life. Our culture is not for everyone… we are intense about our work, we show our work and give feedback in public. We also care about each other and exude chaotic good energy. I love that our unofficial mascot is a googly eyed logo with a 🔪.

5 years in, I couldn't be more excited for our future. Can't wait for you to see what we're cooking!

Runqiu (Rachel) Cai

Head of Growth Marketing at Maven | Previously Google for Education

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The Battle

Rob Lennon

Runqiu Cai

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The Battle

Rob Lennon

Runqiu Cai

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Engagements

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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);}Runqiu Cai's LinkedIn Performance

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