The Trust Gap AI Is Creating for Small Businesses

AI is changing how people trust businesses. As more content begins to feel automated or overly polished, audiences are starting to question whether there is a real human behind the brands they encounter online.

In this episode of Honest Brew, we talk about the growing trust gap that AI is creating and why authenticity is becoming more complicated than it used to be. When everything looks perfect, audiences often become skeptical, which ends up pushing many businesses back towards more human and relatable ways of showing up.

We explore why imperfect content can sometimes build more trust than polished marketing and how showing the real side of your business may matter more than ever in an AI-driven landscape.

During the conversation, we also referenced the viral “perfect morning routine” video from Ashton Hall, which sparked debate about performance culture and the pressure to appear flawless online. 

https://www.tiktok.com/@ashtonhallofficial/video/7468783674603998495

If you're building a business right now, this conversation will help you rethink what authenticity and trust actually look like today.

Related Episode Mentioned:
Beyond the AI Hype: Ethics, Authenticity & Your Business Future
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2547110/episodes/18454214

A candid conversation between three seasoned business women who've been in the trenches of entrepreneurship. We bridge the gap between the glamorous just market and sell advice and the reality of what it takes to build a sustainable business. While most business content focuses on marketing, branding, OR operations in isolation, we bring all three worlds together. Because your brand culture needs to live in every system you create, your operations need to support your brand promise, and your marketing needs the infrastructure to deliver on what it sells.

We're here for the solopreneurs ready to grow beyond themselves, the partnership survivors rebuilding stronger, and anyone tired of business advice that treats branding, marketing, and operations as separate planets when they're part of one ecosystem.

HOSTS

Cheale Villa, Visual Caffeine, visualcaffeine.com / Monique Johnson, MoJo Design, ...

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

AI has shook us. That's the one part AI don't want to touch.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Girl, you're getting away from being human.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Before you had had high quality production, Barry Jeff kissed. Now it's let me. How do we show up authentically? Just be relatable.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

I just don't really see AI being able to.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Welcome to Honest Brew. Unfiltered Conversations on Business Growth. We are here for the solopreneurs, ready to grow beyond themselves. We're three business owners tackling the messy middle where branding, marketing, and operations collide. Because Band Aid Solutions won't build the businesses you actually want. I am Show with Visual Caffeine.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

I'm Monique of Mojo Design. And I am Sarah from Indigo Elephant.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

And today we are in a place of noticing something. We are noticing how the AI existence is really causing a rift in trusting businesses at all. When an email sounds too polished, websites feel templated, templated, you start wondering if there's actually a real person behind the brand you're looking at. As AI becomes more prevalent in business and also becomes better at faking it, there's a grown trust gap that is happening. If you're a small business owner trying to stand out, there is a problem. So we're diving into what trust actually looks like now. How brand voice, your marketing presence, and your operational systems all have to work together to prove you are the real deal. You are a real human company. AI can fake one of those things, but can't fake all three. Let's spill the tea. I just want to start with that TikTok channel or Instagram channel that it's an influencer that is totally AI created. I feel like that's it's disgusting. And I feel like we were doing the balance on this, it stands as the way extreme, right? And then there is the people who aren't touching it at all. Just want to gauge where you guys stand on all of this.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

I mean, for me, and I'm always the same message over and over about being true to yourself and authentic, consistent messaging, that you're always talking about yourself in the same way and you're relaying the same messages in your world. And that's like on all of your marketing, like social media, website, every communication, blog, articles. And I think that's something that that AI can never fully achieve. When you're when you're building your own brand, you're bringing in people that are like-minded and interested in not only what you offer, but your own values as well. I just don't really see AI ever being able to develop that deeper relationship with the their community. So for me, that's like a really important thing to, you know, as we're in 2026 and AI is becoming more and more relevant, just deepening your relationship with your world and your community.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

I'm taking this a little in a different direction because when I was able to step away from the holidays and kind of consume more than create for platforms, it's awful now that when I read a post, I'm like, AI wrote this because there's certain tells in it. And it's like that's where I feel like with the trust things, we're all starting to sound the same. Even if our branding looks different, even if like how my onboarding is, we're all starting to sound the same. And then with the advancements and like the photos or the videos, it's creepy, y'all. I don't like it. Like that's the one part of AI don't want to touch at all. And I found even with talking with clients with rebuilding the trust with their audience, it is going back to like writing content themselves, like using AI to help them brainstorm, maybe do an outline, but then they type it out in all its messiness. Because I honestly have a lot of, I don't want to say respect because that's not the right word. I love when I see an error in someone's newsletter. Or like on their site, I'm like, girl, yes, like I also make these errors. Like I'm not perfect. Like that makes me feel like we we're all a little messy. We all got stuff going on where we're not perfect. When I'm seeing perfect everything, it makes me question. And I feel like AI is making it quote unquote easier to come off perfect when we're not. And so that can be scary when it comes to making a large investment, listen one.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

You both brought things that point to paths. One is authenticity has become meaningless. So what does authenticity mean? It means that we go a little further away from polished. Like a trend right now is that the views on videos on YouTube are doing better if they have very minimal, if nothing, polished. So it's like a dude walking in the woods talking. It's you know, the three of us just sitting here in our offices talking. Like it's not the fancy cut-ins and all of this because even if it wasn't AI that did it, people just have an apprehension, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

So we're actually going back words because it's a way for you to trust the authenticity of it. The other thing is that I've noticed even when I write something, if I put it in grammarly, it will bring some AI tells into it, but it's not been written by AI, right? It's just been corrected. But we have like copywriters and stuff, and that can be difficult because I've even had where somebody thought AI wrote it and it was actually solely my copywriter wrote it. Even like people thinking something is AI, sometimes it's not. I saw um a really interesting video, and it was uh it was an animation. They came on and they said, Everyone is accusing us that this was AI that created this. And they went in and showed the the physical, physical paper they painted this animation on. Wow. Some people are just freaking good. I mean, they're really good at their crap. So that's the sad side of this. Is sometimes there is this you're so good that people think that your stuff is AI and it actually is not. That's one. But then there is like, how do we show up authentically and not have people suspect us? No, no, the third one is perfection. And the fact is that we internally know there is nothing human that is perfect. I think we have an internal knowledge, all of us as humans, kind of like you think of a dog knows another dog is a dog. We know when another human has created something. No matter how much someone wants to make it perfect, it will never be perfect if it was a human that created it. There's always gonna be some fumble, right? So I leave all of that to you, ladies.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think showing your humanity across the board is really important. And that could be in showing bloopers, your silly mistakes that you made or how you got to where you are now. I don't want to say shine the light on imperfect things, but I think there's a space for that in this time. It's just showing that you can't do everything exactly perfect every time. Just it's just not human to your point, Shell. Um, so I think it's okay to have a photo once in a while. Here's an example. I just thought of this, Shell. Hope it's okay to bring it up. Um, I recently went on a trip to visit my family. And um, in my monthly newsletter, I like to show kind of like behind the scenes, like what's going on in my life right now, where did I go recently, etc. And I realized that all the photos I took from that trip were horrible. And Shell beautifully said, it doesn't matter because it's showing those are what real family photos look like. It's not like the perfect sunset with the glowing light on everyone's faces and they're perfectly smiling. It might be my nephew standing in front of a weird statue making a face. So I just think that I, in my design mode, was like criticizing that how bad the photos were. But at the end of the day, I think it's just showing the realness.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

It's making us relatable again. Like that's what I love seeing. Like, I love seeing behind the scenes. I love seeing how you go about doing a landing page because I work with this woman who's a camera confidence coach, and her evolution with being on YouTube is completely different. Before it was you had had high quality production, you're in an office space, very clean, very like chef-kissed. Now it's let me grab this little label microphone, put it on a whisk, and let me tell you about my day, or an uncut YouTube video of like, hey, let's build a sales page together. That makes me so much more invested because I feel seen by them compared to say Leela Hermoti is a really good example. Hers is very clean. She's very put together. Her office is very set. I don't relate to that. I will bypass that video. But if she did a vlog talking about the same thing, I would eat that up. So I feel like it's us being messy again and being okay with mistakes, being able to show behind the curtain a bit more because they are probably going through the same struggle that I am. I'm just not sharing it. But if I do share it, they'll be like, oh, she does this too. Like I'm not alone. And I'm in this time of recording or whenever you're listening to this, we don't want to be alone. We want to feel seen. We want to be in community. We want to find our people who get it, even if it has nothing to do with business.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And I think that I know my pillar for my company for 27 years has been authenticity. And I know that Monique has as well. I think that I have always appreciated what you're pointing to, Sarah, even before AI. Because it was real. And to your point also, AI has shook us. I'm just gonna give it creds. Creds to the AI, shaken our human bottoms because the influencer culture and everything being so high production and whatever was completely out of control and creating a complete society of narcissism. So true. And thank you, AI, for showing how true it can get. Blah blah, we don't want to be there. So I do want to point to that we did have an episode where we talked about how to ethically use AI. And I think that it would be a good episode for you to jump to, and we'll put it at the end of this in the YouTube sense. Uh, we can put it in the window that you can watch it. But what we're pointing to here is when, girl, you're getting away from being human. So, what are ways? I think that what we are coming to here is in looking at your own business, what are ways that you can bring your humanness? Still take advantage of how AI maybe be supporting you, being more efficient. That's okay. This isn't a bash against AI. AI is bringing us present of making sure that we're still showing up human and we aren't getting so caught up in the hustler game here that we, you know, have this pressure, like invisible pressure to keep up and be in this kind of appearance and be in this kind of unrealistic polishing. I'm gonna link below. I don't know if anyone is listening here has seen it, but it was this gentleman who is a big muscular guy, and he's showing all this sequence of how his like morning routine goes, and it's the most absurd thing you have ever seen. It just shows, like, yeah, there's gonna be people who love that and wish they could be like that guy and all that stuff. There's also probably more of us that call BS on it that actually look at him negatively. So we want to make sure that we aren't being that guy. And with that, last sips.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

What we hope we take from away from this conversation is just be relatable. Be you. If there's a spelling error, the world's not gonna end. It's about being authentically you. And it's not about going through an extreme of, no, I can't use AI ever again. It's using discernment. Where is it serving you? Where is it hindering you? What feedback have you got from your audience? Is there anything that's giving you the ick? Those things will help you then discern how you want to show up authentically, what you want to do that might be against the grain even more, but it's you. When people buy, they're not buying your services, they're buying you, your stories, your relatability because there's plenty of people who do stuff on go high level, but people come to me because of me and my energy. The same with Monique and the same with Shell. Our relatability is what made this podcast possible.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Thank you. That was amazing. I'm going to leave us with a quote You don't have to be perfect to be trusted. You have to be consistent, honest, and human. And thankfully, those are the things that AI still can't fake. Have a great day, and I hope this served you.