The AI Marketer's Playbook
The AI Marketer's Playbook is an actionable podcast focusing on AI and marketing. Each episode covers AI strategies, tools, and trends that are changing marketing. Listen to interviews with industry experts, analyze case studies, and get practical tips. This podcast is for anyone looking to leverage AI in marketing to improve results.
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The AI Marketer's Playbook
46 | Anastasia Martynyuk: AI-Powered Automation for Solopreneurs and Startups
AI and automation don’t need to be overwhelming. In this episode, Audrey Chia sits down with Anastasia Martynyuk - automation agency founder and business school professor—to discuss real-world ways companies are using AI to reduce manual work.
Anastasia dives into how she automated 90% of her own business operations, why businesses should fix structure before layering on AI, and her favorite tools for building lean, intelligent systems that scale.
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Hello and welcome back to the AI Marketers Playbook, where we cover actionable frameworks to help you leverage AI and marketing strategies in your business. I am Audrey Chair, your host, and today I have with me Anastasia Martynyuk, the CEO of her own automation agency, and a published author on generative ai. Anastasia is also a professor of IEBS business school, where she teaches creative design with ai. Now with over eight plus years of experience across marketing, technology and automation, Anastasia is on a mission to help companies turn chaos and so clarity using AI powered systems. So whether it's content generation. Lead qualification or smarter customer journeys. She's helping startups and large enterprises skills smarter and not had. Welcome to the show.
Anastasia Martynyuk:Hi. Thank you for inviting me where I have some issues here, but finally, we, we can speak.
Audrey Chia:Awesome. So tell us more about yourself. How, what was your journey like and what got you started in the whole world of ai?
Anastasia Martynyuk:I like, uh, three years ago I discovered my journey. Okay. And start to to work with a Canada company that build an app, that show you some emotions with images. So I do like the prompt, all the images, all the emotion that can, uh, fix it in. Like I show you, I'm angry. This is two images. What do you feel? And that's. Is the way that the psychologist can say, you okay, you are not angry. Maybe you, I dunno, you hate your boss, or things like that. Yeah. So that, like three years ago, but I have like a digital background. I work eight years in a digital marketing stuff, but now I specialize in automation because it's like. It's the tool that helped me have a organization in my company, and then I teach some or, um, implement in big companies in general. That's like a resume of me and my things. So I have, uh, I write a book about me journey and creativity or things like that.
Audrey Chia:Um, that's it. Wow. But it's such a amazing journey, right? So you started off, you know, just. Tinkering with a couple of different AI tools in the visual space. Yeah. And now you moved on to automation, right? So how do you make that transition? It's more like
Anastasia Martynyuk:because, um, in general the digital art, uh, work, graphic design, it's good. It's like my hobby because I love it because I am a very creative person. But, uh. The implementation of automation or, uh, help people to save time, is that give me more money?
Audrey Chia:Yes, definitely.
Anastasia Martynyuk:And, and first of all, I implement in my company. Then I try a lot, fail a lot too, but then I like teach some students in this case or implemented in, uh, big companies because here I am from Spain, here in Valencia. We have a very good, uh, hub of, for startups and I, I'm part of it. And then implement all my automation of help the startups here in Valencia, eh, on the site here in, uh, small companies. Then, uh, scale up to our biggest ones.
Audrey Chia:Wow. And tell us more about automation use cases. Right? A lot of people mix AI and automation, but they can be two different things or can be combined together. Yeah. Tell us more about that space of your work. What exactly is it and what do you help companies do?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Okay, so let's take an example. Uh, some here we have like the issue with some financial things and the people do it manually, not using, uh, like CRMs or things like that. They do it like in, uh, Google Sheets. The financial thing. So in this case, I have like one example. What it give you are the ai, uh, scan all the emails or all the bills that you have and implemented in your Google Sheets or in A CRM if you want like implemented more. But sometimes you don't need to use AI in this case of finances, if you can. If you need to scan it, yeah. It needs to have some logic or if you need some, um, calculus or, or things like that. Yeah. But in general, first of all, you need like the structure. Where do you have, like where, where do you waste your time? In what tasks or things like that. I mean. If you waste your time in, uh, open all the emails, see what invoice, what number, invoice, who is the person that send you, it's a lot of time. You can automate it without using, uh, Gemini or tool, uh, AI tools. But it's like, um, a little bit difficult to scan all the data that you have. Yes. Okay. So in in, yeah, in this case, we take an example, the, the automation. What do I now I do it with N8N. Yes. I, I dunno if it is the tool is good in, in, in English, uh, but before I do it with make.com it was a little bit. S better to user experience, but with this new tool is N8N. It's better because I can implement some code. I'm not, uh, informatic and engineer or things like that, but I do it all with ai. AI help me with the code, but it's very simple. The two person that have a little bit of knowledge, but you can study it in, in YouTube, you have a lot of tutorials and you can learn it. Sim it's simple. So I implement this, um, this automation that, uh, safe like, uh, 40 hours a month. To the person that works in financial. But if you are like a solopreneur, uh, one person, you are a CEO, you're a CMO, you do all the things. This little automation help you to change and, and maybe, mm. Do some kind of strategic things to grow your company.
Audrey Chia:Definitely. I love what you said about AI freeing at the time. Right, and because if you are doing everything at the same time, then actually all these time savings you get from automating some processes is a huge value add. Especially if you're running a business and you have 10 other. Priorities to consider. You wanna get your grant work done with AI and with automation. Now, how can companies decide whether AI and automation should be the way to go, or if automation itself is enough? How do you make that distinction?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Because first of all, I analyze all the systems that have the companies. I mean, if, if the company have a different department, if you are one person, one person talk with me and I know where, uh, automate things. But that big company. All the times have like departments. Do you have like a marketing, a financial, uh, a people or, um, more like complicated logistics. Some, some of these departments. Then I talk with people that is like the director of the department and, and now and think what kind of thing I can automate. Not all the, not all the time it needs ai simply is like a system or a strategy, workflow, things like that, uh, that can help with sa saving the time. All people want AI in the her company, but it's not always the solution of the problem that they have.
Audrey Chia:Yeah, that's something that I also resonate a lot with when I host workshops for teams. I also tell them to use a problem first approach. Now I realize that a lot of companies just say, I wanna use ai. But then maybe there isn't a need for it. Maybe it takes up more time to build out a system and maybe their team members just need a little bit of, you know, knowledge and training in order to leverage ai. Um, and that's all that methods instead of building out entirely. Yeah. Maybe they need
Anastasia Martynyuk:like a CRM in general that collect all the data that came to to the, um, to the business because I have cases that it's a aesthetical clinic or a dental clinic that they don't have. No, no. CRM, no da data collection. They like, uh, do all the scheduling thing in Instagram or in WhatsApp.
Audrey Chia:Yes.
Anastasia Martynyuk:But it's like no connection with Google Calendar or Calendly or, or all the tools that we have to schedule some, uh, appointments. So. They want ai, but they don't know how to organize their own data that they have in this time. Now, what do you have? So we need to see if you can implement AI in your systems, or you need like a, a solid, uh, structure to organize your company. They don't think like, oh, okay, I need ai. That's it.
Audrey Chia:Yes. Yes. So really being very critical about your own processes first and then finding the right solutions is a lot better than just jumping into the AI hype and saying, I need AI for everything. But Anastasia, you also mentioned a tool called N8N. So I have heard this tool from many other AI first founders. Can you tell us more about what it does and what are, what are some possibilities, you know, and use cases for N8N.
Anastasia Martynyuk:Uh, possibilities. There's a lot of possibilities because like open source, you can implement a lot of tools. In general, it's a lot, I don't know, like, like, um, 500 or or more tools that you can implement. And if you can, if you don't have like, uh, the tool there, you can do it by api. It's like a code that connect with, uh, one page to another. Okay? You can do it like this. It's a little bit complicated, but, but you can do it. So this tool, what do is. You, you can do a simple agent, AI agent that do, do like billing or um, post in social media, things like that. Then you can, uh, to make all the, uh, full department. I mean, I know entrepreneurs that have like all the social media automated and they do like one. One in a one time in a month, like automate all the, um, all the social media thing and they have like a department in. In one flow. I mean, in one place you have like all your department that you can do. If, uh, if the email came here and the tag is, uh, bills, it goes to the financial department. If they go like collaboration, do go to the CEO and CEO, contact with the collaborators. So things like that. Definitely. So in the in resume we have this tool that do all the things, but you need, this is like you need to study it, invest a lot of hours. And this tool fail a lot because all the connection can fail. They, you can construct like an agent, today's working good, and tomorrow is like crash and brought some link. And the automation that's not going but. Okay. Wow. All the AI works like this. You need to like all the time be, um, updated because I, I am a CRE creative person, so I use all the tools that it's like my journey, the three or big or things like that, but. In, in automation thing, you need to update and invest a lot of time to know how work the, the tool.
Audrey Chia:Wow. Yeah. And what I love about what you said was you actually spend a lot of time learning, experimenting, and failing before figuring out, okay, how do you build such systems? Right? So in your journey, what helped in your process? Were you learning, you know, watching YouTube videos? Were you testing the two every day? What was that whole journey of learning like since this is a whole new process for you?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Depend on what tool, if it's like creating images or videos with ai, I need a lot of time, um, trying things. Mm-hmm. I mean, you, you need a creative mind. You, you know, in your mind what you want to represent in a picture. Uh, and if, if it not work, you need to change the prompt, change the angle, change the light, change the whatever. And then in the. I dunno. You try it 20 times and it works okay. In automation, you first need to know how the flow is going. It's not like learning to code or things like that. You need to know the flow. I mean, it starts with a message in WhatsApp. Then, uh, the response is like, the answer is, uh, whatever. And this data going to, I dunno, chat GPT to analyze what the people say. Then ChatGPT give you like a presentation. I don't create your presentation. What, where you need to. Um, like, um, what you need to represent in this presentation, they do the structure. If you need to send an email, you need like A-H-T-M-L to have like a very good structure and it is not going to be like only numbers on, in Jason on some like code thing. You, first of all, you need to understand the flow, then you need to understand. All the points of the flow, how it's going to work on, what kind of input on and output need to do in general, and then run all the things, all the, I, I dunno if the same, in Spanish and in English. Notes. Notes. Like, yeah. Yeah. Notes the building. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Uh, you need to know how it work and then run it, and then if they fail, you need to try to fix it. And that's it. Try it a lot. First trying your own. Uh, your own things on your personal, uh, emails, on your personal tools, on your personal WhatsApp. Then, uh, publish it there and do all the flow. Like a customer person, not like, uh, owner of your own business.
Audrey Chia:Wow. And curious to know, right? Does it cost a lot in terms of credits to run your automations and to test the processes?
Anastasia Martynyuk:If you, if you try to understand it, yeah, it's a lot of time, but once you have like a template, you can only adjust some things to fix, uh, customer customization. Okay. And you, you use like, um, when I, when I sell all this automation, I adapted to all the business business that come for me. So what you need to do is like fix some issues and that's it. But you, you, what you sell is your time investing This tool, not the
Audrey Chia:template. Yes. Wow. I love that you say that also, and it's cool that you already built a flow, right? So when businesses come in, you're just tweaking it for different use cases. Yeah. How about for your own business? Are you also using a lot of automation and AI in your day to day? Yep. All day. All time. Can you give us like a couple of examples of like, you know, daily use cases that you love, systems for?
Anastasia Martynyuk:All the funnel, my funnel, internal, all the funnel is automated. I don't touch anything. I have a lead magnet. Then they pass to a call. The call is with me or some of my team. Okay? And then all the onboarding, all the things that I want to, um, to the businesses that I bring services. All this. Think like the, the first touch, okay, is automated. The call is not automated because it need like a human touch in this thing. Then all the onboarding of the client is automated too, and all my finances too, because I, I don't, I don't like it.
Audrey Chia:Yeah. And I think it's brilliant that you can then use automation to do things that you don't like, right? So that it frees you time to do things that you actually do. Now, you talked a bit about the human touch, right? So I would love to know, as a creative yourself, how do you find that balance between, you know, that creativity, that human touch as, and ai, especially when it comes to marketing?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Okay. I like, I. I like my human touch in general because I, I teach AI how I speak, so I have like a 10 or 12 GPTs only for one task. I mean. I don't have like, uh, gpt that do all the things. I have a gpt that do one task. I mean, one, it's, uh, doing my copies. The other ones is creating me images. The other ones is doing like, uh, the presentation of all the businesses that we have. Uh, the other ones is, uh, is, is like scrapping, scrapping mean, uh, news of AI to to study it. And the other ones, I have two more. One is finance still, the other ones is collaboration. And I, I don't remember the other one. Yes. More than enough. Like, uh, yeah, yeah. But if, if the people use GPTs to do all the task, they don't have to do it. They only need to specialize the GPT in one thing. And that's it. It's like I am an employee. You have one copywriter. The other is doing the marketing. The other, like in financial, it is like a department for a entrepreneur that starts or is like one person or two person in, in the team.
Audrey Chia:And I think that's also something I talk about when it comes to building GPT for like copywriting or marketing. I have specific GPT for every client, specific GPT for every use case. So I have a GPT for Google X for every client. Yeah. And that allows me to be very tailored, right? So I don't have to, uh, re, you know, re prompt it. Sometimes I have the project files. But right now, I don't think you can link projects to GPT as of now. Um, no. No. Right. So my eventual hope for open AI is to have projects so you can house client projects, then bring in the gpt. That would be my ultimate combination of them both.
Anastasia Martynyuk:Yeah, I wanted to, let's hope I started with with an emojis. Yeah. I have like emoji in the first, I mean, when you talk with a chacha pity or cloud or what. Uh, ai do you talk I do like emojis. The red emoji, the red cycle emojis means, uh, and, uh, I dunno, the green triangle, it's uh, the other ones and I do it like this.
Audrey Chia:Yeah. And I think you mentioned a lot about time and cost savings, right? But let's say you have a business owner and they feel very overwhelmed and they, they want to automate or use AI for everything. How? How do they get started? Like what is the first thing they should do when they want to get started, but they have no idea how to,
Anastasia Martynyuk:they first need to organize their own business. I mean, do the basics. What, what do you, I have what I need to sell, uh, how it's selling and how is the user experience of all this thing, or in marketing, what I do, I do. In, uh, in, maybe if I create, if I am a content creator, what I need to do in general or what it's like, um, structure all the steps that I need. Do in one department or in what kind one kind of, um, yeah. Department or task. I think first of all, you need the structure. Then you automate the structure is all. If you don't have a structure in your business. It's 10 twofold.
Audrey Chia:Yes. And I think having that structure in place then gives you that clear system of what you want to prioritize. Yeah. What are the challenges that you're facing? And then only then you start thinking about how you want to use AI in the process if it's applicable. Right. And I think having that structure in my helps, what is perhaps a common challenge that you have seen with business owners who are trying to start this journey?
Anastasia Martynyuk:They don't know. Mm. Where is the waste of their time? Mm. I mean, um, they think that, uh, answer all the emails, it's good, but they pass like a lot of time answering males. And in males it's not. In general, it's not the sale channel. Yes, you need to do all other things to sell. Not only answer emails. That's why this is the first thing that I automate.
Audrey Chia:Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense, right? It's something you have to do every single day, but at the same time takes up so much time and then you don't have time to do other things that matters, like sales, right?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Yeah. I have one automation that, uh, send me a message, but it's like a telegram message, uh, if I have something important in my mails. If not, it's like I don't see. Nothing.
Audrey Chia:Yes, I don't touch
Anastasia Martynyuk:it.
Audrey Chia:And I'm sure that saves you from all the spam or the junk meals and even meals that you know you subscribe to, but you don't really need to respond to urgently. Yeah. I think having that system of hierarchy would help. What is perhaps. One underrated tool that you love, or underrated workflow that you absolutely adore that most people don't even think about besides the E thing you just talked about.
Anastasia Martynyuk:Okay. I have, uh, once it's like ums. Answer all my WhatsApps. Okay. Wow. This is, yeah. Yeah. Uh, the, the professional ones not my personal, it's a different thing. Answer all my WhatsApps and then one tool ChatGPT I love it. Claude anthropic, AI or Claude. For me, it's cloud. Yes. I love it. To, to code and then mid journey. Mijo is like my first tool that I fall in love three years ago.
Audrey Chia:Yes. And do your clients right now actually reach out for automation of, uh, uh, AI generator images? Is that something they are looking for?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Yes, because like yesterday came for me, uh, one client that, uh, do like semi-permanent tattoos.
Audrey Chia:Oh.
Anastasia Martynyuk:They need to generate more content and redesign their, some of their tattoos that are, have a copyright because big investor comes and then, uh, they want like, change things. Yes, yes. So yeah, I use it for my things, but I, I automate this thing too. Wow. I, I do it with mid journey now, but with ChatGPT and uh, uh, flux. And have an happy, like, can do it, but it's, it's to the simple tattoos because the, the complicated need like a human touch, all the lines that need to be like perfect, they need to upscale or.
Audrey Chia:Yeah, and I think that's a great example of, you know, creativity, right? Because on one hand you have these simple designs and visuals that AI might be really good at, but on the other hand, you also have something that's more technical, something that needs a bit more of that creative fla, and that's where I guess. Having that human touch as a tattoo artist is still very important. And of course, I guess as a consumer, you would want your tattoo artist to create something unique, something special, um, something that you can relate to. And I think these are the things that will never go away despite how powerful AI is now, Anastasia, what do you think is a mindset shift that people need to have about ai? Because I have seen people saying AI is. Here to take over our jobs. I have seen people saying, I wanna learn about ai, but it's too much information. I have seen people saying, you know what? Let's see how it goes. What is one big mindset shift that you believe people should have?
Anastasia Martynyuk:That AI comes here to help you? That's the truth. Um, because if I look at me now and maybe four years ago that, yeah, it doesn't help me. Like I don't know what it is and that's it. It's like I waste a lot of time in things that they are like, not productively, no, they don't have like, um, repercussion with me. My in, in my business. I think that you need to, all people need to know how it works, not to learn and to work how it works. Okay. The new generation, they apply it every day. They use it like a doctor, a psychologist, or therapist or thing like that. I don't use it like this. I, I use it like my, my partner maybe and that, and that's cool. When I feel alone, it's like, okay, I have a bad day. Uh, I need to do something to be a little bit happier. So they said, told me like, uh, drink a beer. You need to go to the beach and. I dunno, mojito or let's, let's, uh, disconnect. Yes. Yes. And go to the beach and enjoy the, the summertime.
Audrey Chia:Yes. I, I think as much as we love ai, it's good to take a break sometimes, you know, have some real human time in the sun. It always helps. I like, what do you see right? AI is here to stay, and we have to learn to embrace it. It's here to help us. But I think one interesting thing is for students, right? And I know you teach students as well. Yeah. In this new generation, there is no blueprint, there is no textbook about ai. How do they navigate this new world? Right? It's almost like the teachers themselves haven't even learned this skill. So it's for the students to figure out where do they begin? What advice do you have for students or parents or children?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Okay. Uh, the next, next thing they I need to do is like teaching children, uh, to how to use ai. So I like start with some kind of, um, I don't know things like creativity, things, some, um, they need to play with ai. I mean, I, if I need to teach like my, if I have a child, I need to teach it. They start with, uh, our creative tools, I mean with all image generation or, or video generation. And they need to be like a game. And then they can start with ChatGPT. But first of all, I mean, it's better to show it how it's like, uh, create things and they like it. Yes. Then start with like a text thing, because texting you maybe can be a lot of information in general, but the creation or image tool or video tool is like very funny.
Audrey Chia:Yeah. And I think like for a young child, right, learning how to love. The process, enjoy it. Play. I think those are key things that if you can inspire a child, that would help. I know that in Singapore, there are some people who are building out mini storybooks for children based on their imagination based on the stories and the characters that they like. And I think that is a great way to use AI to get them to start thinking out of the box, but also start showing them the potential and the possibility of it. Now, with that in mind, also anesthesia, is there one tip that you have for folks listening who haven't tried AI who are on the fence of automation? What is one thing you have to say to them?
Anastasia Martynyuk:They don't. They don't need to be afraid. I, I mean, they don't give you, they don't stole you. Uh, your job. You need to adapt to like new era and for you need to try it. That's my, uh, advice. You need to try it and you're gonna love it.
Audrey Chia:Absolutely. I like to say the future is now. The future is here to stay. And we are right here enjoying, you know, this very exciting times. So if you are listening, don't be afraid to get started. Get your hands dirty. Just try something new and you never know what might come out from it. So, Anastasia, thank you so much for joining us. Where can our listeners find you and who should reach out to you?
Anastasia Martynyuk:Um, they can find me. I have like my, my business or my own page, but they can find me in my own page. It's like anastasia martin.com. Awesome. It's simple. Is my
Audrey Chia:name awesome and maybe we'll in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Anastasia, for your time. And thank you folks for tuning in. Don't forget to hit the bell for more actionable AI and marketing insights. We'll see you next week. Take care.