Every marketer's LinkedIn now says "AI-powered." Almost none of them will show you what that means on a Tuesday morning. This page does. It describes the actual operating system behind my current role: five brands, one lean team, and a weekly rhythm where AI does specific jobs, and human judgment does the rest.
The setup
North 49 Brands and the Rymar Group run five distinct businesses: Spartan Fitness Equipment (commercial and home fitness, carrying lines like Life Fitness, Precor and TRX), Vintage Iron Cycles and Synergy Bikes (e-bikes and electric cycles), VO3 Fitness, and Rymar. Different customers, different price points, different seasons, one marketing function, which I lead.
That means strategy, budget, campaigns, content, e-commerce, events and reporting for all five, delivered by a small team I direct while staying hands-on myself. The only way that works is a system with no wasted motion.
The weekly rhythm
Monday is the numbers. GA4, Meta Ads, Google Ads and Shopify data for each brand, reviewed against the month's targets. I decide what gets more budget, what gets paused, and what needs creative refreshed. This is a judgment exercise; AI doesn't make these calls.
Tuesday and Wednesday are production. Campaign builds, email sends, landing pages, product launches. This is where AI earns its place, detailed below.
Thursday is the brands' own worlds. In-store promotions, corporate events, product launches, supplier co-op marketing. The physical side that no tool replaces.
Friday is the system itself. Reporting, next week's plan, and one improvement to the machine: a better template, a cleaner automation, a page that converts a little better than it did last week.
Where AI actually fits
I use Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini daily, in four specific jobs:
- Brainstorming partner. Before a campaign, I work through angles with AI the way you would with a good creative director: "here's the product, the audience and the season, argue with me about the hook." The ideas that survive that argument are stronger than my first draft alone.
- Pressure-testing strategy. When I've set a positioning or budget split, I have AI attack it: what would a competitor do, what's the weakest assumption, what would make this fail? It's the fastest honest second opinion available at 7am.
- Refining content. First drafts are mine or my team's. AI helps tighten, vary and adapt, five brand voices, one afternoon, without the copy going generic.
- Research aid. Market scans, competitor rundowns, spec comparisons across the fitness and e-bike categories, summarized fast, then verified before anything ships.
Where it doesn't
Just as important is what AI never does here:
- It doesn't decide. Budget, positioning, pricing support, what gets published, those calls stay human, informed by the data.
- It doesn't replace taste. A Harley-Davidson background teaches you that brand is discipline. Every output is edited against each brand's voice before it goes anywhere near a customer.
- It doesn't touch the numbers unsupervised. Analysis starts from real GA4 and platform data that I pull and verify; AI helps interpret, never invent.
- It isn't a volume machine. The goal was never "more content." It's better thinking per hour, and a lean team that can hold five brands to a standard that usually takes a department.
The other half: building it yourself
AI-assisted thinking pairs with hands-on execution. I write and ship the HTML, CSS and JavaScript changes on the Shopify and WordPress stores myself, landing pages, UX fixes, tracking, CRO experiments, without waiting on a developer queue. When the person who sets the strategy can also change the website by lunchtime, the whole portfolio moves faster.
What this means if you're hiring
The tools will change again next year. What you're actually hiring is the operating system: a senior marketer who can own a multi-brand function, lead a lean team, put AI to work where it belongs, keep judgment where it belongs, and show the receipts, 3.5x ROAS, 60% organic growth, 20% retention lift, Dealership of the Year, from every role that came before this one.