When to Turn OFF the AI (And Trust Yourself Instead)

In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, Kendra talks about the growing misuse of AI in marketing and why relying on it too heavily can actually damage your credibility and connection with your audience. While AI can be a powerful tool, Kendra explains why it should support your ideas—not replace your thinking, voice, or experiences. 

Drawing from real examples with clients and her own marketing experiments, Kendra explores the difference between AI-generated content and AI-assisted content—and why that distinction matters more than ever.

The Problem with “AI Slop”

• How businesses are using AI to generate content without reviewing or editing it
• Why generic AI-written blogs and posts weaken credibility
• What happens when marketing strategy is replaced by automation

AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement

• Why AI still needs human insight, direction, and editing
• The difference between AI-assisted content and AI-generated content
• How AI can save time without sacrificing authenticity

The Power of Human Stories in Marketing

• Why personal stories and experiences connect with audiences
• How unique moments—like real-life anecdotes—create authenticity
• Why AI can’t replicate your quirks, voice, or lived experiences

What Happens When You Trust Your Voice

• How Kendra saw stronger engagement after shifting from AI-generated to AI-assisted emails
• Why audiences respond to content that feels human and personal
• How authentic marketing leads to better results and new clients

Key Takeaways for Marketers

• Why strategy and audience understanding must come from you—not AI
• The importance of reviewing and editing every piece of AI-assisted content
• How to audit your recent marketing to make sure your voice is still present

If you’re using AI in your marketing—or wondering if you’re relying on it too much—this episode offers a practical reminder that the real value in your content comes from your perspective, stories, and strategic thinking.

AI can help you move faster, but your voice is what makes your marketing meaningful.

Looking to leverage AI? Want better results? Want to think about what you want to leverage?

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Transcript

Welcome And A Personal Story

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Hi, I'm Kendra Corman. If you're a coach, consultant, or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science. And that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. A funny story for you. My husband wasn't standing outside my office because I have my red, I'm recording right now sign out on it. And he looked through the window and saw that I was priming with my hair and decided that he wasn't going to come in. And so he was testing the waters a little bit for a second to see if he was allowed to come in. I'm like, I'm not recording yet. He's like, well, you were like podcast supermodel. Um, so anyway, I just thought that was funny and wanted to share. So anyway, that kind of story is something that AI doesn't know, that AI doesn't have, that AI can't share with you, right? Because it doesn't know. Right. And it was a unique situation between me and my husband. Whether or not it's relevant or you care, or there's a better way to couch it. Yes, it could help me with all of that, but it can't replace those experiences and what I'm doing. We'll go ahead and acknowledge the fact that I love AI. I tell people to use it all the time. I am constantly pushing people to use it. And today we're going to talk about why you shouldn't. Um, and that's really because people are using it and they shouldn't be, or they're using it incorrectly. We talked back at the beginning of the year with Sue Justice on AI Slop, and I am seeing more and more of it pretty much every day. Um, and it's really getting annoying. So I wanted to talk a little bit about it. AI is incredible. The people are using it to replace them, their thinking, their editing. And it doesn't. At least not yet, right? In some things, maybe it could, but stop doing that. So let's talk a little bit about some AI gone wrong and what you can bring to the table that AI can't. And then let's talk about some of the results that can happen when you trust yourself over AI. Now, of course, you don't have to trust yourself 100%, right? It's all about being imperfect and you can leverage AI as a tool, but let's talk about why you shouldn't. Somebody reached out to me because they wanted me to help them with their marketing. And their plan was Chat GPT is going to write all of my content. I can get it done in 10 minutes. Blogs, blogs, long personal blogs, but they were just gonna have AI write. And I was like, okay, so has AI been doing this for you? And they said yes. And so I went out on their website and looked at their blogs. And I'm like, this is not good, right? This content was generic. They clearly didn't review it because it had stuff in it that I could guess was not true. I verified with them that it was not true as an example because AI wanted to make them happy. They didn't have custom projects, they didn't have custom GPTs, they didn't have any of those things set up where it would be grounded in their experience. And they were just making slop and not reviewing it. And so I said no, that I couldn't work with them because anything I was gonna do for them wasn't gonna make a big enough difference. Now my inside voice was like, yeah, no, we're definitely not doing this because you're lazy and marketing isn't about being lazy. Yes, it's a work smarter, not harder. I get all of that. AI saves me 30 to 40 hours a week still on average, which is amazing, but it's not perfect, right? And there's times when I do things that AI just can't help me with, and that's important, like recording this episode. Yes, I could use AI. I'm not going to. So another client, I'll give you an example, um, sent me some AI-generated content that came from some brief direction that they clearly gave it. And they had it. I'm guessing that the direction was, give me creative names for this, right? And they made zero sense. They made so little sense. And the content that they sent me made such little sense that I couldn't actually figure out what they were trying to communicate. And it delayed everything a week because I had to meet with them and follow up and get more information until they finally sent me the stuff without the creative names that AI came up with for them, right? And then I was actually able to build the content that we needed. Now, did I use AI for that content? Yes, but I gave it a lot more information. They were just totally phoning it in. And I guess this is a line between when not to use AI and when to not use AI wrong, but they both apply, right? They knew what they wanted to communicate, they understand their audience. The information that they gave me, without the, again, those creative names that they put into it, was actually better. It was way better than the junk that AI spit out at them that they thought sounded cooler and said nothing. The trend that I'm seeing or the pattern that I'm seeing is that people aren't reviewing, they aren't editing, and they're not thinking. AI doesn't think. Yes, I talk to it like it does. Yes, sometimes it feels like it does, but it doesn't. And it needs us to guide it and give it information and insights all along the way. So I want you to think about what does it tell your audience if they feel that no human has touched your content? If nobody touches your content or no human reads it and it's got all the AI red flags, even if you write that way, because I love my M-dashes, but and I've used them before AI, but even with all those M-dashes, right? Um, you know, it's clear when something is AI generated. I think without that editing piece, people are again phoning it in and people are losing credibility with their audience. A couple of weeks ago, I talked to you about how much credibility my book gave you. I gave me, I should say, not you. Um, but it made a difference, right? And yes, that was AI assisted from my content, my ideas, my thoughts, my angle, what I wanted it to communicate, who I wanted it to communicate it to, all of those things. And I reviewed it a lot of times. And I had somebody else review it and proofread it, et cetera. And I think that that's important. So don't get me wrong. I've totally phoned it in um on my stuff, not my client's stuff. Thank God. I've been tired. I've been just exhausted and just needed to get something done. And I did it with AI. Um, copy pasted didn't really look not good. Definitely not good. I've really challenged myself to make sure that I'm not doing that because really, what does that say about me? What do you think I'm gonna do with your content if you see that type of stuff? Right. I would never do that with my client stuff, but you don't know that if you're a prospect or uh, you know, thinking about working with me, right? And so it's totally easy to fall into a trap of, well, it's just social media, right? I'm really busy, I'm really tired, I don't have time to think about this. And I think, again, you know, if you aren't treating your work to the level that your clients are going to expect you to treat theirs, they're gonna assume, like people are gonna just assume that that's just how you work. And that's not the reputation I want. That's not the reputation I deserve. And so therefore, I don't use AI as copy paste. AI can learn your voice, you know, um, it can learn a lot of different things about you. AI definitely helps me draft things, definitely knows my voice sometimes, I think more than I do, but it doesn't know the weird quirks about you, right? I mean, I swear AI loves inserting coffee stories into my or coffee references. I don't drink coffee, right? I like my diet cokes, which I found out were like called fridge cigarettes last year or something like that. Or um, what was it? I um I like tea, I like hot water, um, all the things just I will not drink coffee. It's just too bitter or something for me. I've just never liked it. I probably should try it again, but it doesn't know that. It doesn't know why I don't like the smell of it and all the work, weird quirks that make people connect with me, right? Um, I've talked about this before, if you've been around for a while, that you know, my Bucky's email about Buckies and traveling down to Florida been a really hard time in my life when my mom had fell and I was going down to um help take care of her at the hospital. That email, yes, it was AI assisted, but it was my journey, what I noticed, the things that I did, and it got me several clients, more than one. So you've got to think about how AI is showing you, right? It's gonna water it down for the most part. It's gonna give generic responses, generic information that doesn't reflect you, doesn't reflect your thoughts. It doesn't really know your audience. You can tell it who they are, but it doesn't know them like you know them, right? And I think that that's important. It doesn't always know the words that they use or what something means to them or what's keeping them up at night. Now you can tell AI, and I do recommend that you do that, but again, it really needs that human input for you to do that part of it, right? Don't just say, who would this be good for? You need to know that. That strategy, that thinking, that core piece really needs to come from you. Let's talk a little bit about trusting myself and what that did. I write most of my emails myself, right? Um, they're definitely AI assisted. Don't get me wrong. Um, it saves me a ton of time on it, especially on some of the drafting. But when I went to AI assisted from AI generated, and trust me, I did some AI generated that were not so good. My engagement went up, results improved. Again, I got business off of those emails. And right now, my email list grows almost every week because and without any promotion, right? I'm not out there saying, join my list here, do this all the time. And it's growing without this promotion because people are sharing my emails. I think AI assisted, not AI generated or AI replaced, right? Um, is really where we need to go. And it's really important because there's so much that you do that you provide the difference on. I see so many people um writing things like this was written by me, no AI. And I'm like, okay, so this was written by me with AI. And it's all about me. And people really can't always tell the difference, partially because I edited it, right? Which is a it's a key important piece. If you don't have time to do something the right way, even if you're leveraging AI, do not use AI. Just do not. It would be better for you to write two sentences than it would be for you to just take some gobbledygook out of AI and copy and paste it. So I want you to really, I'm gonna challenge you to really think about how you're using AI. If you're using it too much, if it's really that crutch for you, could you write anymore if you needed to? Which is a question I do ask myself every once in a while and make sure that I do some writing just to make sure I still can string a sentence together without AI doing it for me. But it should be assisting you, not creating. So I want you to take a take a breath. If you're not using AI, you should be using it. But if you are using AI and you're wondering, are you using it too much? You might be. The real skill is knowing when to lean in and when to step back. Right. And I want you leaning in when it makes sense, when you have the time to edit it, when you have the time to give it all of the information, when you have it time, when you have time to give it your quirks and your voice and all the pieces. But I want you to step back when you don't, when you don't have the mental capacity to edit and review, and you're just trying to get it done hand right. Right. Do it yourself without any AI. So let's talk a little bit about what I want you to do from this, right? Because, okay, Kendra, yes, I might be using it too much, but it's not really affecting me that much. You'd be suppressed. So if you're thinking about it, what I want you to do is audit your last five pieces of content. Are you happy with them? Could you make it 80% better by editing it? Did a human actually look and touch those pieces? Or was it just copy and pasted from one system to another? That's what I want you to look at, right? Because that's what makes us different. And I want you to think about one thing, one example, one story, one testimonial, one something that only you can bring to your marketing this week. Maybe it's a guesting on a podcast, maybe it's creating a video, maybe it's whatever it happens to be, right? What is one thing that you can bring to your marketing and AI can't this week? And I am confident that you're gonna come up with a lot more than one, but I'm only challenging you to one. And then I want you to use AI as an assistant, right? But, you know, we're talking about these driverless cars and things like that, and they're not everywhere yet because I like to have my hands on the wheel. I like to control a little bit more of my brand and where I'm at and where I'm going. And so I do want you to be behind the wheel with your hands on it, steering when it gets off course and just making sure that your brand is you and not something that's AI generated. So, again, if you want to check out the book that I had AI Help Me Write, a link is in the comments, mastering AI in communication, or the description, I should say. Do me a favor and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it because there's a lot of people out there that might be phoning it in with AI. Um, again, yes, it is a little sloppy. Yes, it's tempting. Yes, I've done it before myself. Um, I don't recommend it. And then if you learned something today, and I hope you did, I'd love it if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening and watching. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a great rest of your day.