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AI STRATEGY  ·  MARKETING  ·  OPERATIONS  ·  LEADERSHIP

AI that moves
the whole company.

Most companies have AI tools. Few have AI results. I help leadership teams pick the right plays, build them, and train people to run them, so AI shows up as revenue, hours saved and better decisions.

Talk about your AI plan ↗See what I’ve built ↓
Strategy first.
Tools second.
Marc Heffner in his studio, where he builds and tests AI systems
Marc Heffner
AI STRATEGIST
BUILDER
MARKETING LEADER

WHY AI, WHY NOW?

The gap isn’t the tools. It’s the plan.

ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can write, research, summarize and automate. Your competitors already have the same logins. What separates the winners is simple: they tie AI to real business problems, give their people a playbook, and measure what changes.

Most teams are stuck at “cool demo.” A few people use it well. Nobody owns it. Leaders can’t tell if it’s paying off. That’s a leadership problem, not a technology problem, and it’s exactly what I fix.

Not sure where AI pays off for you? Let’s find your first 3 wins. →
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
Peter Drucker, Managing in Turbulent Times
“AI won’t replace your team. A team that knows how to use AI will replace the one that doesn’t.”
Marc Heffner
1 · Strategy: the business problem 2 · Your data and knowledge 3 · Models: LLMs · agents · RAG 4 · Workflows that do the work Results you can measure People + guardrails at every layer

Skip the bottom layers and the arrow falls over.

MY APPROACH

Strategic, safe and human-first.

Most vendors start with a tool. I start with your business: your goals, your workflows, your data and your people. Then we build up, one layer at a time.

  1. Start with the money. Every use case ties to revenue, cost or time. If we can’t measure it, we don’t build it.
  2. Keep a human in the loop. AI drafts. People decide. Nothing customer-facing goes out unchecked.
  3. Your data stays yours. Approved tools, access controls, and local models when privacy matters.
  4. Make it your team’s system. Your voice, your process, your people running it after I leave.

WHAT WE CAN BUILD

Four kinds of AI, matched to the job.

LLMS (LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS)

Content and thinking at speed

Blog posts, campaigns, emails, sales decks, proposals and reports, written in your voice and checked for accuracy. Your team edits instead of starting from a blank page.

AI AGENTS AND AUTOMATION

From output to action

Agents that research, sort leads, route requests, update the CRM and trigger follow-ups. They draft. People approve. Nothing goes out without a human check.

RAG (PRIVATE KNOWLEDGE)

Answers from your own playbook

A search-and-answer layer built on your SOPs, product specs, price books and FAQs, not the open web. New hires and customers get the right answer fast.

PRIVATE AND LOCAL MODELS

When data can’t leave the building

Open models like Llama, Gemma and Qwen running on your own hardware. Zero data sent to outside AI companies, steady costs, and full control.

Have a process that eats your team’s week? Let’s see if an agent can take it. →

MARKETING THAT MOVES THE WHOLE COMPANY

AI isn’t a marketing toy. It’s a company system.

I’ve worked side by side with engineering, operations, finance, sales, customer service and call centers. AI pays off most when it crosses those lines, so the same data and the same playbook serve everyone.

“The best AI projects I’ve seen started in marketing and ended up running half the company.”
Marc Heffner
  • MarketingContent engines, campaign builds, SEO and AI search, faster creative testing.
  • SalesAccount research, call prep, proposals, and follow-ups that don’t slip.
  • OperationsSOP assistants, intake and routing, reporting that writes itself.
  • Customer service & call centersAnswer libraries, call scoring, and coaching from real conversations.
  • Finance & reportingPlain-English summaries of the numbers, faster month-end prep.
  • Executive teamDecision briefs, scenario thinking, and an AI plan the board can follow.

PROOF, NOT SLIDES

I don’t just talk about AI. I build with it every day.

Here’s some of what I’ve designed and built myself. It’s the same hands-on approach I bring to your team.

KAXORI.IO

I built and run an AI software product.

Kaxori is a live SaaS platform for job seekers: resume and cover letter generation, ATS scoring, and a truth engine that checks every claim against real evidence before it goes out. Claude API, Supabase, Stripe, deployed on Render.

See it →

AGENT TEAM

A crew of AI agents with job descriptions.

A research analyzer, a content draft factory and a model benchmark agent, each with a written role, boundaries and a human owner. They draft. I approve. Nothing posts on its own.

PHYLAXRAG

A private knowledge base that answers from source.

A retrieval system with local embeddings that reads technical libraries and answers with citations, not guesses.

ROI CALCULATOR + WORKFLOW

Lead capture that runs itself.

A GenAI ROI calculator wired into GoHighLevel workflows: confirmation emails, internal alerts and timed follow-up nudges. I build the same kind of automations in n8n.

SEO INTELLIGENCE DASHBOARD

AI that reports facts, not fiction.

A real site crawler checks titles, schema, speed and more. The AI only writes recommendations from what the crawl actually found.

THIS WEBSITE

Built with AI agents, run on HubSpot.

Design, copy, schema, booking, email tagging and follow-up workflows, built with Claude as my engineering partner and checked by hand.

CONTENT ENGINE

Teaching AI in public.

The Marketing + GenAI Power Brief newsletter, the NXST LEAP Academy video series (Claude vs. ChatGPT, picking the right GenAI tool, scripting video in 10 minutes), and AI video made with my own voice.

See it →

LOCAL AI RESEARCH

Testing what runs on your own hardware.

A 2026 field report on local AI: hardware, open models and agent systems, and when local beats the cloud on cost and privacy.

TRAINING THAT STICKS

Your team leads the system. They don’t just use it.

Tools change every month. Good habits don’t. I train teams to think with AI, not just click buttons, whether they’re brand new or already juggling five tools.

  • Prompt playbooks built from your best people’s thinking
  • Reusable prompt and template libraries by role
  • How to fact-check, edit and QA AI output
  • Executive briefings: what AI can and can’t do for your business
  • Simple scorecards so you see what’s working
Want your team using AI the right way in weeks, not years? Let’s plan the training. →

GUARDRAILS, BUILT IN

Safe by design.

  • Company data never goes into public AI models without approval
  • Role-based access and review steps for sensitive content
  • Truth checks: claims must trace back to a real source
  • Clear rules on what AI can and can’t do on its own
  • HIPAA-ready workflows for healthcare and dental teams

“Not found” and “not true” are not the same thing. Good AI knows the difference.

YOUR FIRST 90 DAYS

From curiosity to results in one quarter.

  1. 1

    Days 1–30

    Find the money

    Interview leaders, map workflows, and rank AI ideas by value and risk. You get a short list, not a long deck.

  2. 2

    Days 31–60

    Prove it

    Build 2 or 3 pilots with real users and real data. Track hours saved, speed and revenue impact.

  3. 3

    Days 61–90

    Scale it

    Roll out what worked, train the team, set guardrails, and hand over playbooks so it keeps running without me.

QUESTIONS LEADERS ASK

AI, answered plainly.

What does an AI strategy consultant like Marc Heffner actually do?

I help leadership teams find where AI pays off, then build it. That means picking the right use cases, setting up the tools and guardrails, training your people, and tracking the results in dollars and hours, not demos.

Do we need a big budget or a data science team to start?

No. Most companies start with the tools they already pay for, plus a few focused workflows. I start small, prove value in 30 to 60 days, then scale what works.

How do you keep our company data safe with AI?

Your data stays yours. I use approved business tools, role-based access and human review. When privacy really matters, I can run models on your own hardware so sensitive data never leaves the building. For healthcare teams, every workflow is built around HIPAA.

Which AI tools do you work with?

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity for writing and research. n8n, GoHighLevel and HubSpot for automation. Retrieval systems (RAG) for your own documents, and open models like Llama, Gemma and Qwen when you need them local. I pick the tool to fit the job, not the other way around.

Can Marc lead AI adoption as a fractional CMO or as a full-time executive?

Yes, both. I work as a fractional CMO for companies that need senior help part time, and I'm open to full-time CMO and VP of Marketing roles where AI is part of the growth plan.

What industries do you bring AI into?

Manufacturing, industrial and commercial products, foodservice equipment, consumer brands, healthcare and dental groups. I work across B2B, B2C and direct to consumer.

KEEP READING

My latest thinking on AI

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Ready to make AI a strength, not a stress?

30 minutes. No pitch. We’ll look at where AI can pay off for you first, and what it would take.

Book a call ↗See my results →

Clear strategy. Hands-on execution. Revenue you can measure.