Anti-Generic with Anna Powers

AG #004: The Miraculous Middle - How to Use AI Without Losing What Makes You You

• Anna Powers • Episode 4

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0:00 | 22:15

AG #004: The Miraculous Middle - How to Use AI Without Losing What Makes You You

AI split business owners into two failing camps. There's a third path most are missing.


Episode Summary

In this episode of The Anti-Generic, host Anna Powers breaks down the two paths business owners took when AI arrived - ignoring it entirely or outsourcing everything to it - and why both are failing. She reveals The Miraculous Middle, a third approach that uses AI as an amplifier of what already makes you unique, shares the BCG data proving the gap is widening, and introduces upcoming offers to help you integrate AI at every stage.


Question of the Day 🗣️

Which path have you been on - ignoring AI, overindulging in it, or trying to find the middle? Drop a comment below.


Key Take-aways

  • Ignoring AI doesn't protect your business - it quietly erodes your competitive edge
  • Going "novelty drunk" with AI destroys credibility faster than doing nothing
  • The Miraculous Middle uses AI to amplify what already makes you distinct
  • 95% of corporate AI experiments never make it past the novelty phase
  • Good people must learn AI tools - opting out is not a viable solution


Timestamped Outline ⏱️

00:00 - Welcome back to The Anti-Generic
00:24 - Recap of the three forces and three contrarian approaches
01:17 - What to do right now to grow your business
01:41 - The gap AI created in the marketplace
03:04 - Path A: Ignoring AI entirely
04:24 - The BCG study on AI's revenue impact
05:35 - Path B: Going "novelty drunk" with AI
06:38 - 95% of AI experiments never leave the novelty phase
07:01 - Path C: The Miraculous Middle
09:22 - The Stephen Bartlett and Karen Hao interview
10:46 - Why good people must learn AI tools
12:59 - Opting out is not a solution
14:18 - Why Anna is uniquely equipped to help
17:01 - Building a multi-million dollar digital business
19:53 - Upcoming offers to help you integrate AI
21:49 - You have a soul AI can never replicate


Links & Resources 🔗


Connect & CTA 🎯

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🎁 Every week, The Anti-Generic shows you how to use AI to grow your business without sounding like everyone else. Human-first, AI-amplified. Subscribe so you don't miss the next issue: https://www.saraannapowers.com/anti-generic


Credits

Host: Anna Powers © 2026 Sara Anna Powers. All rights reserved.

SPEAKER_00

Hey there, it's Anna here, and I am coming back to you with another installment of the anti-generic. So I have been doing a series on three contrarian forces that I see affecting the marketplace right now in the post-AI age or the actively implementing AI age, followed by my three contrarian approaches to handling those converging marketplace forces. So if you missed either one of those installments of this anti-generic series, you can go back. They should be on this on this channel. Go back and watch those because they do give you some background for this video or audio if you're listening to this on the podcast. But right now, you might, if you did catch those, you might have been wondering, okay, that's those discussions have been quite academic. And I've been doing online marketing for 12 years now. I have a legal background to start with. So I can get pretty academic, but normally I'm talking about how do you grow your business? And normally I'm not really speaking in very academic terms. I'm speaking in very practical terms about what you can do now with AI being on the tip of everyone's tongues. What can you do now to set your business apart and to secure the future of your business? So I'm gonna share more about what I think you need to be doing right now to make the biggest positive impact with your business, despite everything that's going on economically in the world. Well, there's a lot going on right now. It's a little crazy, despite everything that's going on and despite AI coming in and being so incredibly disruptive. So what I noticed first was a gap in the marketplace. And when AI became widely accessible to the everyday business owner and professional, which was back in the fall of 2022, of course, these tools existed long before that, but in the fall of 2022, that is when we all got access, either free or very cheap access to these tools. It promised to speed up efficiency. And as all business owners and professionals know, we say often, time is money. So with greater efficiency, you can normally expect greater revenue and profits. And you know, I've run my business like this. I would calculate, oh, if I make those returns instead of sitting down and recording a podcast, I'm costing myself X number of dollars because that podcast is going to be recorded. It's going to reach people who are interested in what I have to say. Some of those people will become clients. So literally, to me, for me to get in my car and go return that order that I no longer want, like that is going to cost me money. And that's how business owners start delegating certain things. So we're always thinking, time is money. Where can we use our most precious asset, which is our time? Like, where can we use that most where it will give the most value? So when AI came on the scene, a lot of people were thinking, great, like AI is gonna give us greater revenue and greater profits, but this is not what happened. Instead of that happening, AI was so disruptive to the market that most businesses took one of two very extreme paths. So I'm gonna talk about both of those and then I'm gonna talk about what I recommend, which hint is neither. So path A was they ignored AI. This this group of business owners, in which I include myself for the first two years after AI became widely accessible. This group thought AI was overhyped and or morally questionable. Some of them, like myself, thought AI would become highly regulated. And so we conducted business as usual and we avoided folding AI into my workflows, into our workflows, products and services. I know I was not the only one of my peers who thought, especially as a writer, um, that AI was something actually really negative. It was something that was gonna diminish creativity. It was hopefully not going to last. Many writers were very skeptical about what AI was gonna do when it first came on the scene and became widely accessible. So the business owners who did that, and I will again include myself, we largely lost major ground over those years ignoring AI and not actually starting to implement it, starting to learn it, starting to master it. There's a Boston Consulting Group study that found a widening AI value gap where leaders' higher investment in AI translates into roughly double the revenue increase versus what they call laggards and 40% more cost reduction. So if you're a laggard in AI, you're not implementing it in a timely manner. You are normally getting only minimal revenue and cost gains. So even if you didn't actually lose profits and sales, you missed a major opportunity to grow your profits and sales if you just ignored AI. Those who refused to become early adopters of AI technology saw a relative drop in both revenue and profitability as compared with their competitors. And they are now finding that they've lost out on several years where they could have enjoyed substantial growth. And this is truly the story in my own business that I talk about freely. I say I was wrong. I did not want to think that we were going to have to adopt AI. I thought it would be heavily regulated. So I avoided it, I resented it, I feared it, and I was wrong. What about the other people? What about that group who took path B, the other extreme? These people overindulge in AI integration. They pulled up to that Thanksgiving table in their elastic waistband, sweatpants, and they said, give me the appetizer, give me the main course, let me have two meats, give me a couple of breads, and let's have the whole buffet of desserts. And obviously that's just a funny analogy. But instead of ignoring AI, this group tried to AIFI almost everything from their internal workflows to their external products and services. And they became what I call novelty drunk, putting AI into all of their processes without any sort of clear strategy or end goal. Those who took this path massively diminished their credibility with their audience and they harmed their reputations. They saw customers and clients move to competitors who still met their demands and hadn't outsourced everything to robots. A Forbes article from August 2025 found that roughly 95% of corporate AI experiments never make it out of the novelty phase. They just burn time and budget. So when companies treat AI like a shiny object, instead of a strategically tested system, they also risk lowering their sales and profitability as they waste their resources on fruitless initiatives. So I mentioned that I have a path now that I recommend you follow. It's the path that I'm on, and I call it the miraculous middle. So what I observed in my own industry of copywriting, messaging, and business growth strategy is that neither of these very extreme approaches has worked out well for founders and executives. When you ignore AI, you're missing out on an impactful tool that your top competitors are absolutely using to grow. But when you rely on AI too heavily, you start to sound like everyone else in the marketplace. AI basically takes your voice and it averages you out. And we all know that average simply does not cut it in today's marketplace. So what you want to do instead of fumbling down path A or spiraling out on path B is to walk with purpose along path C, which is what I call the miraculous middle. You do need to use AI, but you need to use it as an amplifier of everything that already makes your voice and your business unique. So I saw this gap in the marketplace that all the business growth and messaging specialists I followed were either completely anti-AI or they were totally gung-ho to the point of removing as many human inputs as possible. And I don't believe that either of these extreme approaches actually works. And they certainly don't work long term. So the miraculous middle is where we take your unique perspective, your language preferences, and your worldview, and we train AI systems to be able to collaborate with you effectively and efficiently. This is the only way to keep you ahead of the advancements in your market and niche, and yet still you stay anti-generic. And that's a term that I coined that I'm using to talk about how you need to be showing up in the market to win and to achieve long-term growth. You've got to be anti-generic. You have to stand out. You cannot sound like everybody else. And since I haven't seen anyone in the messaging and copywriting space making offers that both incorporate the use and benefits of AI and also encourage you to retain the special human perspective that sets you apart from everyone else, that is what all of my current offers are geared toward doing. I take a human-first approach. So there is a fascinating interview that I stumbled upon yesterday between entrepreneur Stephen Bartlett of Diary of the CEO and AI journalist Karen Ho. I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. It's H A O. So it's around the ultimate mission of those in charge of the most prominent AI startups. And I highly recommend that you just type in to your browser of choice or your AI tool of choice, Stephen Bartlett, Diary of the CEO, Karen, H A O interview and take a listen to it. It's definitely worth a listen. So basically, what they're talking about is the people who are running these huge tech companies who are building out all these different AI tools, what is their ultimate goal? And it's a fascinating conversation. It's very enlightening. Again, highly recommend that you check it out. Almost certainly, this is what I think, almost certainly, there are bad actors at or near the top of some of these tech companies whose goals in promoting these tools absolutely are nefarious. I think if you don't believe that, you're being incredibly naive. So that's my belief. You may or may not share it, but that's the perspective from which I'm operating, is that there are absolutely people at the top of some of these companies whose goals are not pure. Some might even go so far as to argue that AI is being built to fully replace humans. I've seen some very prominent people in the internet marketing space talking about how I saw one business leader talking about how there will be no jobs in the future. So people are taking this idea and extrapolating it out almost to infinity. So this idea that AI will be built to replace humans, that's something that we've seen in science fiction movies, right? It never seems to work out well for us humans. So how do you use something ethically that you're concerned or possibly you feel conflicted about it because you're concerned that it might be out to actually destroy you? It's anti-human. Should you, does that mean you should ignore the tools altogether and just give up your business and get left behind? Because the reality is if you're unwilling to learn these tools, you will get left behind. Maybe not this year, but in the next five to 10 years, you will get left behind. So do you just ignore it and just say, like, I'm a rebel, I'm not doing it? I don't think that's the way. My goal is to get smart entrepreneurs and professionals who actually care about doing work that improves people's lives using these tools in effective and strategic ways. I don't want people burying their heads in the sand and saying, everybody's great all the time and everybody who runs it is great. I don't think that's true. I again, I think that would be very naive to believe. But my goal is to get smart people actually using these tools effectively and using them to run their businesses more efficiently and to get better results for their clients. We have to ensure that good people who actually care become knowledgeable about the impact of these tools if we have any hope of preserving their positive aspects for future generations. So, my perspective on this is even if there are some bad actors at the top, like let's get good actors in the game. Let's get good people who care about their clients and customers, who care about their societies and their world. Let's get good people using these tools. Let's build wealth together and move up to the top so that these bad actors have someone to challenge them. That's my perspective. And that's what I'm going after. We cannot leave this technology purely in the hands of bad actors, which is what so many misguided business owners who don't want to participate in a system that undoubtedly does have some negative consequences. That's what they think we should do. Opting out just is not an effective solution. Learn to use the system effectively so that your business can not only survive but thrive. That is the only way that you will continue to have a powerful voice in the marketplace. And with power comes influence. My mission is to help grow businesses by strategically integrating AI tools into their workflows, their processes, and their offers. But I only want to work with and equip professionals who advocate for guardrails around these tools so that we as a society can get the positive benefits of the technology while curtailing as many of the negative consequences as possible. In other words, the AI is everything. Crowd is not who I am personally here to serve. I'm here for the founders who know that AI is the future and they want to learn how to steward it as a resource within their business. And if that is you, I am so glad that you are still watching this video or listening to this audio because you are my people. I am your people. We have found each other. Here is why I can help. So it's one thing to merely be able to observe a gap in the marketplace. That doesn't mean that someone is actually equipped to fill that gap. So in case you're new to me, you just stumbled across some of my content, I want to share why I am uniquely equipped to help you navigate this very tricky path right now. When it comes to helping business owners and professionals maintain a human-first, AI-amplified perspective on growing your reach and impact, I have built the expertise and I have gained the credentials to support my clients in a way that no one else in the world can. My professional background is in law, and I continue to hold active licenses in both Mississippi and Tennessee and have held those since 2009. So just do the math. It's a lot of years. I understand how to read regulations and portions of the United States code pertaining to intellectual property. And I am closely following the impact of AI on copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of IP, which I believe are going to deeply impact business owners and specifically workers in knowledge type careers. So in the digital courses, coaching, mastermind community, everything that unfolds around the legislation around AI and also the jurisprudence or the court cases around AI is going to be extremely relevant to how you use it in your business. I am someone who has built a three plus million dollar digital business. I actually grew my copywriting business to six figures while I was still practicing law full time. And then when my digital business was making multiples of my law salary, I decided, well, I should probably do this digital thing full time because it is making so much more money than practicing as an attorney. And I've kept my law licenses licenses active because I think that's a very useful background to have as a business owner. And I want to be able to continue to access the knowledge that we have access to as attorneys, to be able to learn things that apply to businesses in the real world. So that's like the trick, right? Because you can have all the theoretical knowledge in the world. If you don't know how to apply it to a tangible concrete business, then it's not really that relevant. And that's what I think I bring that's a little bit unique is that I have a theoretical knowledge and I have the background of practicing as a litigator, but I also have the very hands-on, get your hands dirty knowledge that you get when you found a company and you grow it from literally zero dollars all the way up to multiple millions of dollars. I uh built my multiple seven-figure business in the digital space. So I am intimately familiar with marketing strategies and how to craft a specific blueprint for each promotion or launch to appeal to your unique audience across the channels where your ideal client spends their time. I had a program called the Clickworthy Copywriting Certification that just that one offer brought a million dollars in revenue into the company. And I have supported clients who are New York Times best-selling authors, who run eight and nine figure digital companies in creating huge positive impacts with online launches. So that's the playground I've focused a lot of my time in is the digital online knowledge information arena. I am a people first person. So when we talk about what's your view on AI and humanity, I am people first all the way. I love getting to know people all around the world. It's why I lived in both Argentina and France during my undergrad years, and why I spent a year as a rotary ambassadorial scholar to Switzerland. Plus, um, that year I actually did a year of Swiss law school taught in French. So I have always valued speaking the language that other people speak because I think the more languages you can speak, um, the better you can understand different personalities, different sets of experiences. And we all get to work together, right? Ultimately, I think business is about people helping people find solutions to problems. So when you grow your business, what that means is you are helping more people find better solutions to bigger problems. I'll say that one more time. When you grow your business, you are helping people find, you are helping more people find better solutions to bigger problems. So really, if you want to be in business, you you need to be a people first person. I am. I believe people matter and I don't think we're replaceable by technology. And then there is the nerdy fact that both my father and I are in Mensa, and I was trained from a young age to look at everything really deeply and to observe every argument objectively for flaws or holes. So my just natural background is to be very inquisitive and curious about anything that's going on around me. And I think that puts me in a very unique position to be able to help other business owners navigate problems that you're facing in your business because I'm able to really get a high-level perspective on lots of little things. I'm also super detail oriented. When I was a lawyer, there was one time I had 72 cases on my roster, all with their own set of moving deadlines and managed it just fine. So I'm very detail oriented, and that is a very helpful trait that you want to have in a business advisor, someone who understands the details but can also zoom out and see the big picture. So in the coming weeks, if you stick around, which I hope you will, you'll see me roll out a suite of offers to help you no matter what stage of the AI journey you're at. I will be supporting clients within a low-ticket self-study program on training your AI tool of choice to actually sound like you, which will let you write your marketing messages 10 times faster, but still retain that unique perspective and worldview that makes you you. I will be working with a few clients in a private done with you intensive where I will build your anti-generic brand brain with you in Claude, and you get access to me for writing reviews and support for an additional month after that intensive. I will also be putting together a small group sprint where we bolster your sales in a crowded marketplace by up-leveling your offer, nailing your marketing channel, and training one specific AI tool to support your workflows. And finally, I am rolling out brand new strategic advisory services where we will work together long-term in a one-to-one format so that you have support to set and hit your biggest goals. I'm super excited about that. Um, that will be for the more established business owner or professional who is already taking massive action but wants an experienced partner to bounce your ideas off of and guide you as you move forward. So I will share specific details about all of these offers in the coming weeks. But the biggest thing that you could do for me right now is either drop a comment below this video or if you're listening to the audio, email me at Anna at Sarah AnnaPowers.com and let me know which of those offers sounds most appealing to you because I'll be rolling them out in the order that I see the most demand for, that the most people are saying, yes, that's something that I'd really love to have right now. So just let me know which one feels like a fit for you. And remember, you have a soul and a spirit that AI can never replicate. We train the tools to work for us. We do not work for AI, it works for us. master it. It does not master us. I am always rooting for your biggest success. Thank you so much for joining me here at the anti-generic and I'll see you again next week.