AI and Marketing: Insights from Todd Krise at the B2B Expo

Todd Krise on Making AI Marketing Accessible for Small Businesses at the B2B Expo

At the B2B Expo, Todd Krise, CEO and founder of MercenaryMarketing.ai, discusses his background in agencies and his focus on supporting small businesses and solopreneurs who often can’t afford traditional retainers or consistent strategic support. He describes building a platform that curates AI tools and plans for a community launching next year called the Mercenary Network, with a future in-person “safe house,” aimed at providing ongoing access to knowledgeable people and increasing clients’ ownership of their digital assets. Todd explains how AI can enable consistency and quality by handling mundane tasks so teams can be more present and human, and he notes that many small businesses need guidance because AI feels nebulous. He also reflects on the rollercoaster of transitioning from agency work to founding a company and shares takeaways from his talk, “How to become your own AI Marketing Agency.”

00:00 Meet Todd Krise
00:28 Mercenary Origin Story
00:57 Marketing for Small Business
02:12 Community and Access
03:24 AI Tools Any Industry
04:36 Human First AI Workflow
05:33 Educating Clients on AI
06:55 Agency to Founder Rollercoaster
08:48 B2B Expo Experience
09:26 Talk Takeaways
11:28 Wrap Up and Thanks

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn

Connect with Meredith on LinkedIn

Follow Compression Marketing on Instagram

Contact Meredith: info@compressionmarketing.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Todd, thank you so much for agreeing to come and chat with us, talk about all the things that are happening at the B2B Expo. First and foremost, just tell us who you are and about your organization and what you know what you're looking forward to having happen ha having happen.

unknown 0:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

If I can speak at the end of the day at the expo.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm my name's Todd Kreis. I'm CEO and founder of mercenary marketing.ai. But I do have to say, yeah, I love it. I love it. I love it. Well, actually, that's a good talk segue because I love telling this story. My boss, uh, my last agency, he loved bringing me in because I was like director of ops over the agency. And so anytime we had a problem, he always, and then one meeting he was like, There's gonna be a todd-sized hole in the wall by the end of this meeting. And so I just love that. And so like it made me think of like, hmm, I'm like an assassin, I'm coming in and I'm mercenary, I'm a mercenary, you know.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

So I love it, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, but that's essentially I've been in the agency game, and I've always tried to fight for the little guy and the small business owner, the solopreneur, and I've always wanted to work with those types of people because they're so passionate, but our budgets and proposals never matched well with them. We never were able to give them what they needed on a day-to-day basis. We're like, oh, you ran out of hours because you took up all the account service and everything. I was like, that sucks because we want to do more with you. And so I'm finally in a spot now to have a platform that curates a lot of great AI tools. I have a community launching next year, which is the mercenary network, and I hope it goes into something that I can have an in-person place that I call a safe house, and then everything like that to just grow it a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

So it paints such a cool picture, right? Like it be like it's a strong story mercenary AI. Like I don't know, I just and the alliteration. Exactly, exactly. But I love what you said about it being for like for the little guy, right? Because you're right. There it's really, really hard to find an agency scenario that's approachable and doable when you're in that smaller space. You're like, what do I do? Easy. You know, what do I do? Yeah. Now we'll have a solution. Yeah. Because I don't hear a lot of places talking about making it accessible to the smaller business.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, well, that's good. And like another part of that was like if I sold something as an executive at an ad agency, of course I wasn't gonna be their day-to-day contact. And so they lose that strategy, they lose that uh higher level opinion on stuff. And so like this, they come into the community, they get access to the people who are always gonna be there. Yeah. I'm trying to hopefully that's a differentiator compared to some of the larger firms out there and stuff that I've worked for.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So people are craving that as a community. Like they like so as a strong desire for it. And I think your uh your your timing is chef is like it's just is I talk I talk a lot with B2B companies in like regulated spaces that express a lot of those same kinds of concerns as they're trying to grow. Yeah. So like I get that this agency opportunity is available to me when I'm an enterprise, but what do I do in the meantime?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Right? And a lot of times it's sort of Frankenstein's monster. It's a little bit from over here, a little bit over here, we hobble this together by ourselves, and then we sort of like shove that out onto the website and we hope it works.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Right? Yeah. That approach, that patchwork quilt approach, is it gonna work long term?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Do you have a do you have a certain type of industry you really like to serve, or a core group of these people in this industry are my favorites?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

It's not because that's been what's so refreshing about this year of being able to have a conversation with anybody in any industry and be like, you know what? I have a set core of fundamental tools that can get you going, and you can start prospecting, start creating content, and you know, you can allow the AI to help you be more than yourself. So that's been an exciting part of that. And as you were talking there before, like I was thinking of what is nice about AI that I think we're a lot of us here are taking advantage of is the fact that like a lot of people may pay for that larger retainer in the past, try it out for three months, and then give up because I didn't get that ROI right away, right? Right, and so that's what I've been trying to preach to people. I keep it simple here to this week of like consistency and quality. Like that, I think that's what AI is gonna allow us to do so that we can be more human and we can be more present in meetings, be out there talking to folks and allow those mundane tasks to be handled by our AI minions.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the thing, right? Like the human part of that is it it's what makes the rest of the AI power possible, right? Yeah, the better we do as humans, the better it can help us. It at least that's what I like to think.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

I hope so. Yeah, because like if it I mean it's for me, it's not for anything else.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

I feel like uh that's why I want to localize my efforts of like keeping it hands-on, sitting down at the table with folks. Because I feel like the team, the clients I have right now, I feel like they can be 15, 20-year clients because I sat down at the table, shown them where their Google Ads account was, which the other agency was just hiding from them for three years, you know. So it's little things like that that are just making them feel like they have more ownership of their digital assets, even though they totally don't want to know all of it. I get that. I don't want to know a lot of the things they do either. Like, and so if I could just provide just a little more security and a little unveiling of that that cloud, you know, there. So that's that's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Do you find working with some of those with clients that are that size, do you find that you sort of have to educate them a little bit on what's possible or where they can take these things? I find I oh yeah, I've had a lot of conversations with again smaller businesses. They're like, this AI thing is so big and so nebulous, I don't even know what I'm supposed to do or where I'm supposed to start.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, and I'm trying to solve that by like, here is how I can get you on a knowledge base, and you use that knowledge base to just activate certain criteria, certain tactics, yeah, and keep it as simple as possible. And so that they can at least see the flow of things. And but that's also it's like Todd, I trust you to do it. I just want to have access to it. Right. And that I'm solving that. I mean, so I'm getting more trust that way than I ever had before in other jobs and stuff, and that's happy. No more getting bitched out on Zoom calls, right? And have remote remote relationships that you just know you're almost essentially one bad call away from getting fired, right? And that's just not a great life to live.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

No, yeah. And it's and it is, it's that it's a churn and burn type of thing. And I feel feel like uh most marketers have lived it in some foreign fashion in their career. Yeah. We've all had our agency moment and we've all learned something from it that we've then brought out into whatever it is that we pursue next. And it can be in both of our cases, it's founding companies. Yeah. So maybe talk a little bit about what that experience has been from going from working in an agency to being a becoming a founder and building and running your own business.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Well, it's and I'm not like kissing your ass or anything, but like now I am, I'm a little envious because I love this setup. So I it's a I appreciate that. That's very kind. And I say that because I'll actually answer your answer, your question, because it is a roller coaster. My God, it's a roller coaster. Because like it's like, all right, I feel like I'm doing well. My my layout, my background's gonna look so cool. Like mine's not even ironed out, you know? Like I'm just like a guy that has like a bachelor pad over there right now. So it's like a lot of things like that. You're just like, you feel like you're you know you're controlling it, but no, you're not. You're not. You're trying to just hang on there and try to find the right people to work with.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

You have a completely different clientele than me, probably, and we find the right people.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

So one of the things I one of the things I've heard, I can't remember where I heard it, but I keep coming back to it. It's like if my head if I don't have my head in my hands at least once a day going, what am I telling? But I'm not doing it right. Yeah. But if I'm having the experience, I must be doing it right.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, I saw a meme the other night that was like, if you're not sitting up at night, like with your hand head in your hands, having that holy crap feeling. Yeah, yeah, you're not doing it right.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah. So as long as that's your north, yeah, like clearly we're not okay. That's that is the lived experience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Um, I totally know what you mean about this, like, this roller coaster. Like you think you figured it out and like, uh, nope, and then you come back. Yeah, it roller coaster is a great way to describe it, but boy, it's fun.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, it is fun.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

And it's there's a lot about it where you're always getting to learn something new and you're always getting to try something new. And that's that's the fun part. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, it's it is a roller coaster for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

That's cool. Well, congratulations on this. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely. And I it's you know, when you come to speed things like this, you never know what to expect. You do conferences, you do expos, you do the thing. But this is our this is compression marketing's first event here with B2B Expo.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I feel like it's been uh it's been good. I've had some good foot traffic. How many times do you go to an event and you're just like twiddling your thumb? Somebody wanders by and like doesn't make eye contact but takes your flyers or whatever. I feel like the foot traffic's been pretty good. Yeah. And the conversation, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you gotta make it you gotta put in the work to get it right. It's true. So it's true. Can't just twiddle your thumbs in there, you know. So we'll get your phone. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. So you you're speaking at the event. Yes, I just had that today. Okay, yeah. So that that was probably, I mean, I had like six people lined up to talk to me afterwards. Fantastic. I love when people, I had a dad in the in the crowd that he laughed at some of my dad jokes in there. So I'm like, I was like, yeah, that's thank you, man. Yeah. Because I even uh trained like when I first made my custom GPT, like first one ever, I was like, can I turn into AI todd? And I was like, can you finish every answer with a dad joke? And it did. So I was like, this is awesome. I love AI.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Right? Sold. Everybody's had that moment where they've had that, like, and I'm in. I'm sold. I'm good. Yes. What's the when you were when you were giving your talk earlier, what was like the key takeaway you wanted people to make sure that they like that they took home?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

I wanted yeah, I wanted to show those two things of like, look, you do the work up front, you can make your life a hell of a lot easier in the future. And I feel like people got that because I I didn't want it, I know they told us not to be salesy in the pitch, but like I'm like, well, we built this really cool platform, so I might as well show that as the example of how because the title of my talk was how to become your own AI marketing agency. Yeah. Whether you're a solopreneur or a business owner, or trying to elevate the office manager or intern that you've just been like, I gotta get more out of you.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

And so that's kind of like the approach I took of like, this is how you can do that without having to spend a huge fortune to do so.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

So I I cannot imagine that people didn't walk away with value in front of you. I hope not.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah, I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Especially if you had people lined up to chat with you after, like that's there you go. It's definitely a victory. And what but I mean, what better way to prove that it works than to show them? Yeah, right. That's always where the proof is. Show them. Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. That's great. Like I said, especially for that solopreneur or that like I don't even have money, I don't have resources, I don't like how to approach it. Yeah, I love that you've created something that is accessible. Oh, good. Uh thank you. That's I hope that you have nothing but success. Right back at you with that for sure. And I like just so appreciate you stopping by to chat with us. Like this is so fun. Yeah, absolutely. I would have another conversation with you any day. This was so fun. Um but wish, you know, hope the rest of the expo is a great success for you and keep touch.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, me too.