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Stop Trying to Boil the Ocean With AI · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Kendra Corman.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a coach, consultant, or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there and welcome back to Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot believe that we're halfway through October, which for a lot of you means that you're staring down Q4 and quietly asking yourself, what are you going to do differently next year?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere on that list, I promise, is a line that says something like, figure out AI or how to do AI better, something like that, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to save you some time and probably some money today, because I watch people approach this exact thing the wrong way constantly, practically every day, right?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: They walk in and ask, how can we use AI in our business?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I get it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: It feels productive is the wrong question to ask.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it sends you straight into trying to boil the ocean.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the better question, the one that actually gets you somewhere, is a lot smaller.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to get into it with you here.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't want you to be an AI-first business.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be a problem-solving first business.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there are AI-first organizations out there, and that is great for them.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And for most small businesses and nonprofits, how can we use AI?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is backwards.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It has you shopping for places to jam a tool in, right?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of looking at where you actually are bleeding time and money.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to start with the problem.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Find the note in the process, the hole in the process, the delay, the backlog.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then and only then, ask whether AI can help with it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the answer is just no.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a great answer, right?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because you still solved the problem.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you a real example, one of my favorites.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a client whose facilities manager did something I love.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: She took their standard operating procedure, uploaded them into AI, and asked one simple question.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: How do I make this more efficient?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the twist AI didn't say use more AI.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It actually suggested that they build a SharePoint list with some automations baked in.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not fancy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an AI takeover, just a smarter version of what they already had that saves them a ton of time.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, she's the first to tell you that she's not super techie, but look what AI surfaced.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: It walked into her managed, she was able, sorry, to walk into her managed service provider and she knew exactly what to ask for.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: They built it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Problem solved.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: The win wasn't we used AI.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The win was that AI helped her see the opportunity hiding in a process she ran every day.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're sitting there thinking, okay, fine, where do I actually start?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you the single highest return first project that I point people to.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's to define your voice.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So AI writes like you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is just the one because the number one complaint that I hear about AI writing is it doesn't sound like me or it's robotic.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to write the rewrite the whole thing.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're rewriting everything, you've saved yourself nothing.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you spend up a little time up front teaching your AI your voice, feeding it real samples of how you actually write, suddenly it's handing you drafts you can lightly tweak instead of gut and rebuild.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the time savings live.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I actually built a custom GPT for exactly this.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: You give it samples, it learns your voice, and it hands that back to you.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want it, it's on landing page at kendracorban.com forward slash write, w-r-i-t-e dash like dash y-o-so go grab it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So kendracorbin.com forward slash write like you, and you can get it there.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: This connects to how I work day to day.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: My social posts start with AI, I brainstorm with it, I research what's happening with it, I draft it, and then it all flows into my system to get scheduled.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But none of that works if the writing sounds like a robot wearing in my name tag, right?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about the voice.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: The voice is first.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Everything gets easier after that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to start small and then scale.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the concept I keep coming back to.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I actually ran into it in a book that I'm reading right now for my doctoral program.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Strategic Intelligence by um, I think it's Lise Stradley.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the idea is small, start small and then scale.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: She used Tesla as an example, um, even Tesla, as big and as technical as they are, they don't flip a switch and put AI everywhere at once.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: They piloted it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: They worked on a few narrow tasks first, proved it worked, and then expanded.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if Tesla starts small, you can too, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why it matters for you and me.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you try to do everything at once, you don't finish anything and you can't tell what actually worked.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when you pick one process, run one small pilot for one part of the process, even, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: You get one measurable win.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now you've got proof, you've got momentum, and you've got something to build on.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: One win beats 10 half-started experiments every single time.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to make this doable for you.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your action step for the week.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And notice what I'm not saying.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying go use AI.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to pick a problem, right?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pick a traffic jam, something that takes a ton of your time.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just one, right?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Something that's been nagging you, some process that eats more time than it should.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Then I want you to bring it to AI the right way.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to describe the problem, describe the process and ask it to help you see where the opportunity is, not do this for me, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'm dealing with.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the fix?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to stay open to the answer being something other than AI.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you remember that SharePoint list I mentioned, the goal was never to use a tool.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: The goal was to solve the problem in the most efficient way you can and to actually finish it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: One problem, one small win, and then you scale.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it for today.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: If this got you thinking about a problem that you want to tackle, come tell me about it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Connect with me on LinkedIn over at kendracorman.com forward slash LinkedIn.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It'll take you right to my profile.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear what problem that you're picking first.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for tuning in.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll talk to you next time on Imperfect Marketing.