Learning ai is a trap (if you’re a founder, here’s what to do instead)
Guess less. Grow more with this Notion dashboard.
Honestly. I didn’t start with Python or agents, I started with the bottlenecks in my business.
For me, the question wasn’t “How do I learn ai?”
It was: “Where am I spending way too much time for way too little return?”
That turned out to be:
Writing client briefs from scratch after every discovery call
Duplicating the same onboarding steps for new clients
scrambling to pull performance insights every week
So I approached AI more like a systems co-pilot than a shiny new hot toy on the market. I didn’t build anything from the ground up. I just:
Used ChatGPT to turn client convos into content drafts
Set up Notion AI + Zapier + Asana to streamline onboarding workflows
Created prompt libraries for recurring tasks I dreaded (and also, I didn’t want to be a prompt engineer)
And let me be clear…I still don’t know how to code.
But now I can operate like I have a team of five, and sleep like I only have one.
If you’re a founder, I’d say, don’t start with ai. Start with your friction point. Improve your systems. Then build out your tech stack from there.
This is your semi-comprehensive guide when you’re stuck on where to start!
The founder's dilemma
Ad Hoc Tools
Multiple disconnected platforms with no consistent approach to selection or implementation.
“Gartner survey finds marketers utilize just 42% of their martech stack capabilities.” (Garter 2023)
Frankenstack Workflows
Duct-taped tools that break when you try to scale or change anything
No SOPs
Processes live in your head, making delegation or scaling impossible.
Leaky Funnels
Customers fall through cracks between disjointed platforms and processes.
⚠️ You're spending unnecessary time and money on growth, but can't track ROI or scale repeatably.
The case for marketing-led ops
What is Marketing-Led Growth?
Integrated systems and operations that support the entire customer journey:
Demand generation
Customer acquisition
Onboarding experiences
Retention & advocacy
You can have all the marketing tools and none of the systems that won’t enable predictable, measurable growth across the entire customer lifecycle. The tools don’t generate the growth—your systems do.
Why Marketing Should Drive Ops Early
To gain a better understanding of marketing-led growth, let’s compare it to two other approaches that we often hear about: product-led growth (PLG) and Sales-led growth (SLG).
Marketing owns the full-funnel customer journey.
Revenue clarity from lead to expansion.
Faster experiment-to-scale cycles.
MLG bets that scaled storytelling, community, and media spend can pull prospects through most of the journey before sales or product ever say “hi.”
3 companies that made marketing the prime growth engine
Hubspot, B2B Software as a Service (SaaS)
The godfather of “inbound” content, long-form playbooks, ran its own media hub (HubSpot Academy, blog, podcast) years before anyone talked about PLG. They have my email at least 987 times.
Canva, Consumer & Enterprise SaaS
The “Design for the 99 %” narrative + viral template marketplaces + headline partnerships (Pinterest, Leonardo.ai). Mic drop.
Duolingo, Consumer SaaS
Let a 23‑year‑old run TikTok. Leaned into mascot comedy, real‑time memes, and creator collabs. Need I say more…?!
The 3-layer ops stack you need
Visibility: Tools and systems that provide clarity on performance and customer data (i.e. Dashboards, Attribution, CRM)
Workflow: Processes that drive efficiency and consistency in marketing execution (i.e. SOPs, Automation, Campaign Ops)
Infrastructure: Foundation for scalable marketing operations and clean data management (i.e. Tool Stack, Data Hygiene, Permissions).
Ops hacks for solopreneurs
Notion Templates for Campaign Tracking
🟡 Low lift/⚡️High impact
Use pre-built templates to plan, track and measure campaign performance in one dashboard. Easy to connect your tools via embeds or APIs.
Single Source of Truth Doc (also known as the holy grail)
🟡 Low lift/⚡️High impact
Create one master document with all critical business data points: campaign UTMs, CRM fields, audience segments, and brand assets linked in one place.
Zapier Recipes for Lead Routing
🟡 Low lift/⚡️High impact
Automate lead routing without code. Connect form submissions directly to CRM, email sequences, and Slack notifications with templated Asana workflows.
Loom Video SOPs for Onboarding
🟡 Low lift/⚡️High impact
Record quick walkthrough videos of your marketing operations processes. Save time on repetitive training and ensure consistent execution.
The 60-min ops audit (for non-technical founders)
Pinpoint what’s breaking behind the scenes before it slows your growth.
Run this audit to help you spot the operational blind spots holding your marketing back. So you can fix what’s messy, automate what’s manual, and scale what’s actually working.
📣 Marketing Execution: Is there a system to launch campaigns?
✅ Documented campaign process exists (i.e. a brief)
❌ No centralized campaign calendar
❌ UTM codes are inconsistent or missing
✅ Team knows their roles in campaigns (i.e. a RACI)
Quick Fix: Download The Flow State and get a campaign brief you can implement immediately. Hit the subscribe button below.
👽 Customer Data: Is there clean CRM hygiene?
❌ Lead sources aren't tracked consistently
❌ Duplicate contacts exist
✅ Contact fields are standardized
❌ No regular data cleanup process
Quick Fix: Run monthly data hygiene checks with your tool’s duplicate management system, or a simple spreadsheet audit via Chat GPT.
📊 Reporting: Can you see what's working in under 5 clicks?
✅ Key metrics are clearly defined
❌ No single dashboard for KPIs
❌ Campaign ROI calculation is missing
❌ Data spread across multiple tools
Quick Fix: Set up a dashboard in your preferred CRM tool with your top 5 marketing metrics.
Key workflows to systematize first
Start by locking in these high-leverage operational workflows to eliminate repetitive work and build repeatable wins.
Templates & Swipe Files
Skip the grunt work. If you’re spending more time figuring out your tool stack than actually using it—I created these plug-and-play resources to help you get your marketing ops moving.
I help founders set up their first ai-assisted workflow to finally see what marketing is working, what’s wasting money, and free up 10+ hours a week doing it.
If attention is the new currency in marketing…then focus is wealth.
Let’s get to the wealth.
- Tennile