Cameron Heffernan is the Founder of Beyond Borders Marketing, an agency that helps overseas-based B2B companies and their US subsidiaries expand and succeed in the American market. He has built and led a seven-figure marketing agency, worked across three continents, and guided international clients to double their US sales and achieve substantial EBITDA growth through targeted market strategies. Cameron’s global perspective is shaped by living and working in the US, Europe, and Africa, and he is now at the forefront of leveraging AI to create more effective and scalable marketing solutions.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [00:33] Cameron Heffernan shares his global journey to building a seven-figure marketing agency
- [03:52] How moving across continents in childhood shaped Cameron’s entrepreneurial worldview
- [05:02] Why journalism skills became Cameron’s secret weapon in modern business
- [09:26] The accidental path that led Cameron to create an international marketing agency
- [10:47] How industry focus can make or break your business when a crisis strikes
- [16:09] Strategies to stand out in an increasingly commoditized marketing landscape
- [21:04] Why interactive tools now outperform blog posts for attracting and converting clients
- [23:39] How AI agents are already transforming the future of business marketing
- [26:13] Why blending AI innovation with genuine human connection is the new marketing edge
In this episode…
What happens when the world of marketing collides with rapid advancements in AI technology? With shifts in how companies reach their audiences and a landscape that changes almost weekly, business leaders must adapt or risk being left behind. How are some entrepreneurs transforming these challenges into opportunities for growth?
Cameron Heffernan, a global marketing strategist and founder of a seven-figure agency, mastered that challenge by fusing his international experience with AI-powered innovation. Having lived and worked across three continents, Cameron learned how to navigate diverse markets and help overseas B2B brands thrive in the US. He saw early signs that marketing was becoming commoditized and pivoted fast — developing interactive digital tools and AI-driven engagement systems that helped clients double sales and dramatically boost profitability.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Cameron Heffernan, Founder of Beyond Borders Marketing, about leveraging AI and global expertise to revolutionize international marketing. Cameron shares how he built a resilient agency through global experience and technological foresight, why specialization beats generalization in crowded markets, and how AI tools can amplify — rather than replace — human connection.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Cameron Heffernan on LinkedIn
- Beyond Borders Marketing
- David Not Goliath: Pick Your Battles When Seeking U.S. Market Success by Cameron Heffernan
Special Mention(s):
- “You can train your GPTs in all your favorite authors, and it’s going to follow their formulas and approaches seamlessly.”
- “If you just keep cranking out blog posts, you’re going to become obsolete — what value will bring people back to you?”
- “Don’t take things on faith — be careful who you trust and when you trust them; due diligence steps exist for a reason.”
- “You always have to have that mix. Don’t forget the humanities. Different people resonate in different ways with different touchpoints.”
Quotable Moments:
- “The best use of AI is to use it as a writing tool, writing aid, you know, to generate ideas.”
- “To just generally denigrate AI and say it’s AI slop, I just think that’s unfortunate.”
- “If you don’t give it good guidelines, it’s not going to output something that is helpful.”
- “You want to have a conversation in your podcast that’s in the vicinity of where you want to end up.”
- “Humor enhances everything. You know, when someone has a sense of humor, it keeps it interesting.”
Action Steps:
- Embrace AI-powered marketing tools: Adopt AI-driven platforms and agents to automate content creation and engagement, enabling scalable, efficient marketing that stays competitive amid commoditization.
- Focus on niche markets and specialized offerings: Target specific, well-defined market segments to differentiate your brand and drive meaningful growth in saturated industries.
- Create interactive and value-driven content: Develop tools and resources that provide real solutions to customer questions, building trust and repeat engagement.
- Train and personalize AI agents using your unique expertise: Customize AI agents with your tone and knowledge to maintain authentic, consistent messaging across multiple channels.
- Balance digital innovation with human connection: Combine online strategies with in-person engagement to preserve authenticity and credibility in a digital-first environment.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about some of the changes that are happening in the world of marketing due to AI and AI agents. My guest today is Cameron Heffernan. He’s a longtime expert in the world of marketing and now AI-fueled marketing. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:16
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:33
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And you know, every week we have smart CEOs and founders and entrepreneurs from a range of different companies.
And if you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub and Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes for you to check out, so be sure to do that. And before we get into this, this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships by helping them to create a podcast, we have the easy button for any company to launch and run the podcast. We do three things strategy, accountability, and full execution, and even invented a platform called Podcast Copilot to work alongside that. So if you want to learn more about it, go to our website. rise25.com or email our team at support@rise25.com.
All right I’m excited to have our guest here today. His name is Cameron Heffernan. He is the founder of Marketing Beyond Borders. It’s an agency that specializes in helping international B2B companies to expand and grow in the US market.
He’s worked across three different continents and built a seven figure marketing agency, and now is really involved in AI, in marketing. So we’re going to talk about that. And he and I have like a zillion things in common. We just keep on discovering new things we have in common. We grew up in many of the same places.
It turns out we went to the same elementary school when we were like six years old. So really funny, lived in the same town, all this kind of stuff. So I’m super excited about it. But Cameron, let’s start with I always like to know what my guests were like as a kid and if they were selling, you know, gum in school, get busted by their teacher, selling weed in high school, get busted by the principal. You mowed lawns in Bethesda.
Hot, sweaty. Muggy. Bethesda, Maryland. Tell me a little bit about young Cameron doing that.
Cameron Heffernan: 02:17
Okay. Yeah. That’s true. It is a humid, hot, nasty place. I think now it’s even more unbearable with the changes in the climate.
It was hard work. I remember I would make maybe ten bucks an hour, and I was telling my son recently about that. And he’s like you. That’s what you would earn. He was he would quizzically look at me like, what was I doing?
What was I thinking? But I just always had, you know, been working. I did one of those kids who would buy a bag or two of candy and break it up at school and sell it piece by piece and just think of, wow, what’s the margin going to look like at that? And at that time it was just I enjoyed doing it, enjoyed the hustle. I would then invest it in record players and albums and Jolt Cola and all that fun stuff.
So it was enjoyable.
John Corcoran: 03:01
Better than baseball cards, which I sunk into. And I still have a bunch of baseball cards in my attic that are worth less than they were back then. And I thought that was my retirement plan.
Cameron Heffernan: 03:09
So I hear, yeah, I miss him. I literally had him in a, in a, in a shoebox. My kid looked him over, flipped him, threw him five seconds. He’s worthless in the 80s. They overproduced all these.
Yeah I had like rookie Trammell, rookie Yount, Bo Jackson, no pennies. Yeah, I know, it’s sad.
John Corcoran: 03:26
So you and then one of the more foundational experiences for you of your childhood was you actually moved around. Another thing we have in common, by the way, my family moved a number of different times. You grew up in southern, so first, first, I was born in DC, then went to Southern California, then Massachusetts, then back to Southern California. Every time we moved, basically it was 3000 miles away. Big culture shock.
What was that? Tell a little bit about that. And your stint. You also did a stint in Australia and how that had a lasting impact on you.
Cameron Heffernan: 03:52
Yeah. You don’t think of those until later when you’re older. But looking back at it now, you see, it was formative. And my dad was in education and he had a sabbatical in New South Wales, Australia. We spent half a year there.
When you’re ten. That’s a long amount of time. And it did have an impact on me and my siblings. I was the oldest, so I think it affected me the most. Then we’re back in the US.
Another short sabbatical in the Midwest and then to the DC area, which I love and consider, you know, one of my homes. I’ve been here, you know, 3 or 4 different times as a young adult now, more as gray adult. And I do love we lived later in Europe, but coming back to be in DC was nice because you can. Your next door neighbor may be a diplomat at the embassy, and across the street is somebody who is is visiting visiting scholar or, you know, someone who’s here for a couple of years for a federal gig of some type. And it’s great that exposure and that diversity.
John Corcoran: 04:48
Yeah, definitely. Interesting. What drew you to journalism? I actually grew up in a journalism house, and my dad was a print journalist and then a television journalist, and then I pursued it a little bit when I was younger. Was editor of my high school newspaper.
What? What drew you to that career?
Cameron Heffernan: 05:02
Yeah, I was convinced I was going to be. I couldn’t make it as a starting pitcher, so I was convinced I was going to be a sports journalist. That was my career vision and my path. And I had one internship my senior year at college. I thought, well, Syracuse, I’m going to go.
I’ll go cover the Orangemen. I’ll be interviewing Derrick Coleman when he was graduated. By then, I’ll be interviewing. All these guys will be best friends. No, I was covering, you know, high school, track and field and field hockey and those kinds of things.
So it wasn’t quite as glamorous as I expected.
John Corcoran: 05:31
Is it because they have a journalism program there and so they can’t all cover like the football team?
Cameron Heffernan: 05:36
That’s part of it too. Yeah, that’s part of it. You know, there was a path for that. But it’s it’s a long wait to get there. Yeah.
And I just didn’t have the patience for it. I’m like, maybe that’s not quite for me, but I still had the, you know, the toolbox, the skill set. My degree was newspaper journalism doesn’t even exist anymore as a major. Right. But, you know, the skills.
I still use those skills all the time. And I think about now I’m applying them to business problems and digging into what’s behind this. That’s one of the key lessons I tried to share with my kids. And they asked me a question, you know, to quote The Wire, follow the money. How does this work?
Why is this set up like that? You know, why does the government charge you for taxes? Well, let’s unpack that and look at who’s paying for things. Where does that money come from? Why does this cost 450 and not $2 like it used to?
John Corcoran: 06:20
I’m curious because, you know, I didn’t become a journalist, but I did become a writer. That was my first profession. I was a writer in the Clinton White House presidential letters and messages, and then a speechwriter for governor of California. And I look back now, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to become a writer today. I’m just too scared about it.
In fact, just yesterday I felt a little bad about it. I was talking to someone at an event, and he told me that his daughter was really interested in becoming a writer, and I was like, what are you telling her about that? Because, you know, I was like, honestly, I wouldn’t advise someone to do that. What what are your thoughts? What would you say to a younger person?
Cameron Heffernan: 06:54
Yeah, it’s really hard. I would say there’s an energy. Just this morning it was one of the Wayans brothers was interviewed because there’s a new movie coming out that he’s in, and he said his secret to success was being that versatile. That hyphen in between those different titles write, direct, produce, get funding all those things. You still have to have that writers or directors brain mentality and mindset.
So I love that muscle. But hell, like I’ve perfected, I feel optimized the gpts and the projects that we work with to really get my tone of voice. It’s not perfect, but is it 90% there, and we can smooth over the rest? Absolutely. Yeah, it’s good quality and it’s a good starting point.
John Corcoran: 07:35
You ended up writing, it looks like, about technology and computers, and had a couple of different stints there. Do you see that as being relevant in what you do today, and if so, how so?
Cameron Heffernan: 07:47
I guess I’d say I had I did have an early startup right around that.com burst, that bubble era. I do understand.
John Corcoran: 07:58
What was it? What was the early starter?
Cameron Heffernan: 07:59
We were. So I was working in San Francisco. I was working at PC world, and I would interview. And I had different beats that you covered. I interviewed people from all the big companies, you know, HP, I covered laptops and printers and stuff, and people would come in and they’d pitch their ideas and their concepts.
I’m thinking, I am they’re no smarter or more savvy than me. Why don’t I do this right? And it was at a time where you really could, you know, 99, 2000 was very accessible. So I partnered up with a guy I knew who was starting a project management, basically now Microsoft Project. But at the time it was quite innovative and it was and it was real time project management.
And then the bubble burst. It didn’t work out. We got acquired at pennies in the dollar, but the learning experience was was fabulous.
John Corcoran: 08:45
And to be fair, at that time in 2000, like if you lived in the Bay Area in San Francisco, you kind of had to have a startup like it was a mandatory, like they wouldn’t let you live there if you didn’t have a startup of some sort. Right? You know? Oh yeah, people would even make it up, like if they didn’t like working at a startup. Yeah, sure you are.
So you you go on from there and you had a number of different kind of corporate roles. You work at UCSF and Robert Half International. You have this kind of whole career in communications before you end up becoming an entrepreneur, kind of like me. I was in my early 30s. Really early.
Yeah, early 30s, I guess mid 30s when I started, when I first became an entrepreneur. So what inspired that?