How To Collaborate With AI: Small Business Marketing

AI is not waiting for anyone’s comfort level, and small business owners feel that tension every day. We talk through the good, the bad, and the ugly of AI marketing from a real-world perspective, including what’s changed as of June 2026 and why “it knows too much” isn’t a strategy. The goal is simple: use AI to move faster and think clearer without letting it erase the thing that makes your business recognizable. 

We get specific about what we avoid, especially AI-generated graphics and logos. If your posts suddenly look like everyone else’s, your branding stops working. We break down why consistency matters, why AI visuals often come out busy and uneditable, and the easy mistakes people miss when they don’t proof details like dates and business names. Then we dig into the logo problem from the production side: if you can’t get a true vector file (SVG, AI, EPS, print-ready PDF), you can’t reliably scale and print it for signs, vehicles, and high-resolution uses. AI can be great for inspiration, but professional execution still matters. 

On the flip side, we share how we actually use ChatGPT daily as a collaboration tool: brainstorming content strategy, organizing thoughts, refining offers and packages, and workshopping ad ideas with real budgets. Think of it as a way to get unstuck, reduce overwhelm, and pressure-test decisions, while still applying your experience so you don’t sound copied. If you want practical guidance on using AI without sacrificing your brand identity, this one will help. 

Subscribe for more small business marketing clarity, share this with a friend who’s overwhelmed by AI, and leave a review if it helped. What are you using AI for in your business right now?

Transcript

Welcome And Why AI Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What's up, guys? Welcome back to your favorite podcast. I'm Shelby McFarland, the host as well as the marketing boss. Thanks for tuning in again. I love doing this for you guys. As I say, every single episode. I love to educate you on the things that I'm learning, on the aggravations I'm having, on all things business and marketing for your small business. Today we're talking about AI: the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. It is something that I get asked about almost every time I speak, as well as when I'm in conversations with future clients. And so why not just cover it for you guys on the podcast so I can start sending it over and people can hear all my thoughts about AI as of right now, which is June of 2026, because you never know. My opinion may change by July of 2026. Um, so that gives you a little bit of a time stamp of when I'm doing this. AI came out a couple of years ago, and I was a little freaked out at first because I was kind of old school minded and I thought that it was gonna take my job. I thought that it knew too much information. Don't we hear that from everybody? Um, in fact, I just had this conversation with Nick last weekend, and I said, Hey, I'm gonna actually do a webinar on how to use Chat GBT and how to make it like teach it more about yourself. So, like training

Fear Of AI And Training It

SPEAKER_00 1:23

your chat GPT. And he said, Why would you feed it more information? It already knows so much. And my argument to that was why wouldn't we? It's not like we have a choice of it going away because it's not going away, it's gonna be here forever, it's gonna be here to stay. So why not use it for our benefit and why not teach other people how to use it as well? So if your mindset is, you know what, it already knows too much, or it takes so much energy, or whatever people are saying, water and all that kind of stuff. Okay, it may be doing all of that, but we can't steer away from it. It's here to stay forever, and it's probably gonna be even more so in 10 years, 20 years from now, something better is gonna be coming, is gonna come out. And so why not jump on it now so that way you're not behind? That's the worst thing that people have done with social media, is especially with social media, is it came out full force. People are starting to use it for their business, they're running ads, they're doing all the things, and then you've got these people that are 10 years too late, and they're like, oh, I guess I'll have social media now. Well, you've been in business for 40 years, social media has been around for 15 of those years,

Get Ahead Before You Fall Behind

SPEAKER_00 2:35

and you're just now starting it, it's gonna take a little bit longer. It's no different than if it's an MLM. Don't you want to like get on the ground level of multi-level marketing companies? Yes, because those are the ones that make the money, right? You start from the beginning, then you build your team, and you start making money on them. So essentially, technology is the same way. When we are given opportunities to take advantage of the new things that are coming out, we want to take those. We want to take the risk, we want to get to know that specific thing better and how we can use it for our business. With Chat GBT or AI in general, there are a couple of things that I want to steer clear of. We don't really use it for any kind of ads, um, as in like graphics for our ads, because they all are looking the same. I'm sure you guys are seeing an influx of those on your feed on social media. It is a little frustrating for people like me and my team because we are paid to do graphic design and it's kind of like minimalizing

Why AI Graphics Hurt Branding

SPEAKER_00 3:36

what we're doing for our clients. But then also it's not really giving you a unique look to your business. And that's what we really want is that unique branding to you. Yes, you can tell it your branding colors, you can show it your logo, you can tell it your business name and your phone number, but what it comes out with is not unique branding to you. And if you're using that on social media, it's not matching anything that you're already posting on social media, right? And that's what's important when we're posting our graphics, is that it all looks the same. That if you go to our clients' uh social media pages, you will see templates that we are using that are individualized and customized for each company because that is the point of branding. When you see black and white and something about marketing, I want you to think of me. Whenever you see blue and silver, I want you to think of bit and fence. Those are very specific to their business, to our business. Um, a lot of us state farm agents, if you're seeing red and black, that's state farm, right? So it's all about keeping that branding consistent. Chat GPT or other uh AI softwares that you're using for these graphics are not gonna be able to keep that very consistent. And they're not editable. Yes, it will come up with a Google Doc or it'll come up with a Canva link or something like that, but it's not gonna be completely edible and customizable because then you're still gonna have to go in there and change some things, right? So we want to make sure that when we are using AI, that we're not using it for our graphics specifically because it's just putting out so much of the same looking thing, and it's very frustrating for people that are in marketing. And honestly, the consumer side of it as well. I hate to see those things because they are so busy. It's so much information in one little graphic. You want to keep it very simple, very straightforward. My attention span is already like zero, so I don't want to have to look at a graphic and try to figure out what exactly is this, who is this for, when is this, what what do I wear? And I've seen a lot of times that people actually don't put their business name on it, or they won't put like the date on it, or something like that, and it misses a couple of things because they're not proofing it after AI has like already put it out there for them. So when you're using AI, let's just not use it for graphics and don't use it for logos, guys. I just had someone last week try to get me to print a logo because I own a sign shop as well, and they're like, hey, um, this logo is uh straight from G Chat GPT and it says it's vectorized. And I was like, well, there's no such thing. Chat GPT cannot vectorize an image. It can tell you that it's a vector, but it's not vectorized. There's no layers to it, it's

The Logo And Vector File Reality

SPEAKER_00 6:26

not in PDF, it's not in AI, like dot AI is in Adobe Illustrator, it's not an SVG. Like I need it in those um different formats so that way I can print it and it be in the highest resolution possible. So whenever you use it for a logo, it's not necessarily giving you the best resolution to it because it doesn't really have those capabilities. So if you use it to create logos, maybe use it for inspiration or something like that, and send it over to a graphic design artist so that way they can create it and it be a vector form. So you can use it on everything, social media, printing it on a sign, um, on your car, whatever, graphics. Because that is very important. We want to stay professional. I think sometimes when people are using um AI for graphics, it just comes across as a little unprofessional. And we want to be as professional as possible, and we want to impress our future clients and our future customers. We don't want to just be like everybody else, right? But there are some good things about AI. We use it every day at the marketing broker. I use it every day. In fact, I named my AI Karen. Me and Karen get along very well. Um, sometimes she tells me I'm wrong, sometimes she tells me I'm right, and I like both of those because we can have a conversation. Again, I believe that there's not too much information I can give her because she already knows things. She already knew my daughter's name before I even told her my daughter's name. A little creepy, right? Ever

Daily AI Wins For Marketing

SPEAKER_00 7:53

since that moment, I said, you know what? I'm just gonna lean into this whole experience and I'm gonna use it in different ways so I can learn how to use it and teach other people how to use it. So a couple things I use AI for business-wise, I have a whole thread and I use it as a business therapy session and I put air quotes around it because it's not really therapy, but it's a great place for me to just bounce ideas off of the off of Karen as well as myself, and it keeps it all organized for me. So if I'm having some issues with like certain roles in my business, okay, so I'm trying to morph this person into this role. How is a great, like, what's a great transition from there to here and what does that look like? Um, I'm also, hey, these are the services that I'm offering. This is the package options that I have. What's a better way for me to frame that when I'm selling? So I like to talk back and forth with her so that way I'm kind of getting an idea of like, okay, I need to increase my pricing, or I need to um sit over here and think about these are new services that I need to offer, or maybe I should put these services with these services and offer something different. It's nice to have that back and forth and those ideas back and forth because it's not as a lonely feeling. You guys may have people in your life that you can bounce those ideas off of and really help to master that. But for me, it's just me right now, and sometimes I'll talk to Nick about it, but we're in two different industries, and so it's just nice to have someone that can grab internet information. The best part about that is I'm like, hey, listen, I'm trying to do these services and these services. And she's like, Okay, well, this company over here actually offers this, this, and this for this price, but they're in a different state. So maybe we do it this price because this is what Arkansas should be. So it's nice to get that information back and forth. Another way that I use AI every day is to brainstorm ideas for my business, for pitches, for um content, for clients. I like to be like, okay, these are each client of mine has like a tab on the side, and I'll be like, okay, this is Nick Tupperville State Farm. He is trying to spend $1,000 on an ad or on ad spend. What do you think the best strategy is to get phone calls to his office for $1,000? And we break it down, these should be meta ads, this should be Google ads, this should be um like community service type stuff, like giving back to the community. This is what this looks like. And so then we go back and forth and we chat about it so that way we're really um customizing this for the best of his dollar. I'm not just taking what they say and going, okay, I'm gonna implement that. No, I'm taking what they say into consideration, then taking my own experience and all of that and putting it with it, and then I start implementing a strategy. If you just take exactly what it says, you can tell because it's what everybody else is doing. It's what you can take from your own experience and put that information with it together and collaborate with it. Essentially, AI is a collaboration tool. It's great to have for inspiration, for brainstorming, for understanding a better way of doing things, thinking outside the box that we may not think about, because I know in my own head I'll get stressed out or I'll have other things going on that I can't really just focus on that one task. So it helps me just keep that focus and to chat about it and get it out of my head. Because sometimes when I

AI As A Collaboration Tool

SPEAKER_00 11:35

have ideas about my own business, I get overwhelmed with it and I'm just like, uh, I avoid and I push it to the side. But now I'll be like, hey, listen, we're gonna talk about this. Let's get all of it out, and either it's a good idea or it's a bad idea. So I really challenge you to lean into AI for the good of AI. Don't lean into the bad. I want you to lean into the good. I don't want you to have this closed mindset about how scary it is or how it's taking everybody's job. No, it is a resource for you to use, especially even in marketing for your own business. It is a great resource to market your business. It's great for brainstorming, it's great for content strategy brainstorming. Maybe you're just kind of blocked and you don't know what you're gonna be posting for the next 30 days or so. Just let it help you with that content strategy and help you build that out. But then you use your own knowledge, your own skill, your own Canva. So that way you're creating those graphics and putting those out there. If you have any comments or if you have any notes for the followers or listeners to this, I would love to hear more about how you're utilizing AI and your business every single day. I'll catch you on the next one.