Digital Velocity

Welcome to the Digital Velocity Podcast...a podcast covering the intersection between strategy, digital marketing, and emerging trends impacting each of us.Host Erik Martinez, Founder and Lead Strategist of Digital Velocity Agency, brings you a wealth of marketing experience along with his unique perspectives. Join him each week as he interviews industry veterans to dive into the best hard-hitting analysis of industry news and critical topics facing brand executives.

Digital Velocity is a business podcast hosted by Erik Martinez, with 117 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Erik Martinez hosts Digital Velocity, a business show with 117 episodes published.

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  Episode #116

  Your Team Isn't Resisting AI, they're Waiting for It to Be Relevant with Mark Maynard ACC

  Jul 21, 202641 minS1

  You've been using AI for months. You can see what it does. And when you look around the room, you can count on one hand the people on your team who are actually using it. The rest aren't pushing back. They just haven't started. "I had to hear from some other people how they're using it in their daily lives, and I didn't wanna just trust people who are tech-savvy." That's Mark Maynard, a coach, author, and speaker who helps leaders in hotels, restaurants, museums, and a construction company connect purpose to daily operations. Six months ago, he was the person on your team who still hasn't tried it. Using ChatGPT for recipes and road trip stops, nothing more. Mark joins host Erik Martinez on Episode 116 of the Digital Velocity Podcast to talk through what actually changed, and what it means for leaders trying to bring their teams along. Mark shares the specific moment a client problem broke through months of skepticism, explains why trusted people telling real stories mattered more than any demo, and describes how he used AI to help a construction company turn 1,000 pages of operational playbooks into something their employees would actually remember. "Efficiency was not the desired outcome, depth was." If the people on your team haven't bought in yet, this conversation reframes why, and what to do about it.

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  Episode #114

  Episode 114: Storytelling in the Age of AI: Why Good Content Still Starts With Humans with David Ebner

  Jul 6, 202634 minS1

  You are publishing more content than ever. So is everyone else. And somewhere in the rush to keep up, a lot of it started to sound the same. David Ebner, President of The Content Workshop, has a blunt explanation for why. "A tool doesn't know what good is." In this episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast, host Erik Martinez and David Ebner get into storytelling in the age of AI: why so much of it reads like word salad, what actually separates good from generic, and why the speed everyone is chasing might be the very thing making the work worse. David has spent 13 years telling brand stories, and he does not think AI is the problem. He thinks the problem is that most people never learned what good looks like before they handed the work to a machine. There is a specific thing David does before he ever hits the magic button that most people skip. Miss it and you get slop at volume. Get it right and the tool starts turning you into something closer to a superhuman writer. Listen to Episode 114 to hear where human creativity has to stay in the process, and why good was always good no matter how it gets made.

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  Episode #113

  Episode 113: Your Best AI Person Hasn't Told Anyone Yet

  Jun 30, 202635 minS1

  Erik Martinez and Pat Barry made their AI predictions six months ago. Agents, AI shopping, rising costs, governance. They were right about almost all of it, and almost none of it showed up the way they expected. Pat keeps running into the same pattern across every organization he works with. Someone has quietly built something remarkable with AI. When Pat tells them to share it, the answer is always some version of "yeah, they're not really into it." The capability exists. It's invisible. And nobody is asking why it stays that way. Meanwhile, Erik went from spending his days in Excel, PowerPoint, and Canva to doing ninety percent of his work inside tools that didn't exist in their current form six months ago. Pat's building entire training decks with agents that get him 85% of the way there in a quarter of the time. AI platforms are turning into the new office suite, and most people haven't realized the shift already happened. Token costs are climbing and Erik describes trying to track them as "absolutely maddening." One of Pat's healthcare clients made a governance decision that positioned them as what Pat calls "the team of the future." A university with 50,000 employees and access to the same tools can't keep up. The predictions were about what AI would do. What actually changed was how the humans work. That gap is the conversation in Episode 113.

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  Episode #112

  Episode 112: Your Agency's AI Progress Is One Resignation Away from Zero with Ishant Kulshreshtha

  Jun 22, 202630 minS1

  Most agencies have someone who's figured out AI better than anyone else on the team. They built the custom GPTs. They know the prompts. They're the one everyone asks when something breaks. Now ask yourself: what happens if that person leaves tomorrow? "If your agency relies completely on one AI champion, the agency's progress is limited to one resignation." Ishant Kulshreshtha , AI Strategic Analyst at White Label IQ, joins host Erik Martinez on Episode 112 of the Digital Velocity Podcast to talk about what it actually takes to move AI knowledge out of one person's head and into the organization. Ishant shares a practical 30-day process any agency owner can start today, explains why the data your agency has been collecting for years is more valuable than any tool you could buy, and makes the case for why building AI capability is a team sport, not a solo act. If you've been relying on one person to drive your AI progress, this is the episode where you find out what you're actually risking.

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  Episode #111

  Episode 111: Why 83% of Agency Leaders Know the Strategy and Still Can't Execute It | Agency Core 2026 with Brian Gerstner

  Jun 8, 202632 minS1

  <p > 579 agency leaders were asked what they need to do to succeed. The answers were clear. Then they were asked if they're doing it. 83% aren't.</p> <p > Brian Gerstner, president of White Label IQ and co-founder of Agency Core, sits down with host Erik Martinez to unpack what the Agency Core 2026 research found when it studied the gap between knowing and doing across small and mid-sized agencies.</p> <p > As Brian puts it: "there was very clear understanding of what needs to be done. And when we ask people, what are you doing? massive gap"</p> <p > The research identified...

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