The Marketing Strategy AI Can’t Build for You

AI is really good at helping you have really

amazing tactics, but the strategy is the problem. Where

it's okay, sure, everybody says I'm supposed to go do all this

guest podcasting, right? But is guest podcasting actually

converting for you?

Welcome to the next evolution of the podcast

entrepreneur school in the AI era, we are here to figure out

how to integrate AI into the business you've worked so hard

to build in a way that still feels like you. I'm your host

Kelly Sinclair, award-winning marketer turned AI platform

co-founder. AI has fundamentally changed how I thought about

work, systems, and what's actually possible. This show is

about navigating that new reality together. It's going to

be a wild ride, my friend, but I truly believe there's a way to

leverage AI in a way that's intentional, human-centered, and

aligned. It's an ongoing evolution, so let's explore

because AI may just be the unlock you need to achieve the

life-first business you truly desire.

Here's the uncomfortable thing about AI in your marketing: it

makes a broken strategy broken faster. And my guest today is

going to tell you exactly where yours is leaking. I'm so excited

to introduce you to my good friend Laura Kendrick. She is an

online marketing strategist and the founder of Cheeky Copy. And

after six years of writing copy and building a brand voice for

online business owners, she now teaches established coaches,

course creators, and service providers how to turn all that

scattered marketing into a smarter, more connected strategy

that actually leads to sales. And her core belief is: if you

don't need more marketing, you just need a better plan. And

we're going to talk today about how AI comes into play with all

of this. Welcome, Lauren.

Thank you, Kelly. I'm excited to be here.

Okay, so you and I are part of a business group

together, and we have had many side conversations and many like

borderline debates about different things with AI as it

has evolved over the last couple of years. So I want to ask you

right off of the hop, like what is the hill that you would die

things change so fast, we have to timestamp all these.

Oh, for sure, for sure. AI is a tool, and it

is a really powerful, amazing tool. But it has serious

limitations, and you cannot use it truly. You cannot use it to

properly grab your brand voice or make your strategy. You can

use it to expand those things. You can get it to use what you

have created to make all of your content a little bit easier to

produce. But those things are not things that it can do yet.

think as deeply with as much nuance as the human brain

requires in order to make that marketing really, really land.

Okay, expand on this, please. Expand on this with examples of

how you're seeing this play out and what people are trying to

use AI for. Yeah. Okay. So let's start with the brand voice

because this is foundational to a lot of people's AI curriculum,

and I don't want to totally sit here and say, "Oh, all the AI

curriculum is absolute crap. No, no, no, no, no, no, not at all.

But a lot of them start with you have to build a brand book and

you have to use AI to do that. Heard if you don't have anything

in place ever and you've never done any of this before, sure,

it is an amazing first step. Rock on, take it. It will take

you from you know the AI like full on slop to a lot closer,

and if that is your first step, it's gonna feel great. But

eventually, you are going to get to a point where you're like,

"This isn't landing. And I can use an example of this where I

actually went through one of those processes out of morbid

curiosity, and honestly, thinking that like, "Oh, maybe

as a copywriter, this could be like a surprise and delight for

my clients if I could build them a brand book on the side and

like hand them all this copy and then hand them this robust brand

book like wouldn't this be so amazing? And I tested it on my

own and I know a lot about my messaging and my brand voice.

I've done the work. Like I've been trained heavily on this

stuff, and I found the process so frustrating it could not get

there, even with being told this is what I do, it just was left,

or like it would it would then like vacillate to the right, and

it just couldn't get it. It was it just could not get to that

nuance when it comes to brand voice in particular. The brand

voice is talking about emotional. States with the brand

and like what you want people to experience, and the problem with

AI right now is that it, if you are familiar with the emotions

wheel, it can only understand the inner circle of the emotions

wheel, and the human experience is so varied that we have this

outer circle that takes these basic human emotions and it

pulls them into such deep specificity where, like, a mad

is not real. Like that's a blanket term, right? That I feel

rage and anger, and you know, it just goes into all these spaces,

and it doesn't understand that you have to name that. You have

to be able to say, my brand is not just joyful. My brand is

very specifically pulling into this space and positivity. And

once you give the AI that, oh my gosh, yes, it can run with it,

but it can't get there on its own.

Okay, so you're talking about

so many things.

Something that I've made with AI. I'm like,

okay, let's let's unpack this. I think there's a lot of points

that you made there. One is a like if you have never done an

exercise like identifying your brand voice and brand strategy,

yeah, it's gonna blow yourself off that you can get something

that's gonna read back to you something more than you probably

could articulate yourself. However, you, Laura, are a brand

marketing expert, so you see between the lines, and that's. I

think that's just like a general statement that we need to make

is validating the output of AI is like so

critical. So, I mean, just a slight slide side tangent here

is when you just ask AI for something generically, you will

get an answer, and if you don't have the expertise to validate

whether that answer is good or not, then you might just take it

at right value. So what you're saying here, and what I always

say too on this show, and with what we're calling expert-backed

AI, is that there is a layer deeper for sure. So when it's

trained, it can do a better job.

And I want to like add the caveat to like yes,

I'm an expert in brand voice and messaging and marketing and all

these things, and I understand these things deeply. But I also

want to give to anybody listening to this: you're an

expert in your own business. You understand, like if you're going

through this brand book exercise and it's telling you that this

is my read on it, and you're like, kind of like that's what I

would get close, but not quite. You know, like it would. That's

where it wasn't telling me that I was a truck driver from

Montana. It was, you know, it was like, well, you're kind of

in this vague space, and like yeah, but no. Or they were

getting close to my ideal client, but it's like you're

just kind of a little off center, and the outputs weren't

great. They just weren't right. And that's the thing of yes, I'm

an expert in this, but all of us are experts in our own

businesses. I can't like when I actually will actively when I

used to, I should say, do a brand voice session with

clients, it was about pulling things out of their brains. I

wasn't dictating to them. It was about walking through this

journey with them. So I want to like hand that to you that

you're an expert in your own business and your own people and

your own messaging. It's just sometimes hard to pull that

stuff out. And if the AI is, if you take this first step, you do

the brand book, you're feeling really good about it, and then

eventually you get to a point where either it's not feeling so

good, or you have become more sophisticated in your business,

and you're like, this just isn't nailing it on the head. That's

the time when you go back through and look as a human

being and say, okay, where is it missing the nuance? Where can I

fill in the gaps as the human being who knows the other human

beings who is on the call, and I can hand it all this information

that I'm getting from being on these calls with these people,

interacting with these people, and understanding my business,

and then, oh my gosh, like then you're gonna kick it back up

again, and it's going to uplevel again, and then you're just

going to ooh, you're just riding the waves, and the AI is

starting to sing for you.

Yes, and it's all about those those tweaks and

that awareness, right? I think we should all acknowledge that

there's nothing about AI that we can set and forget at this

point, including how we teach AI to do a good job for us, which

is essentially what you're talking about in terms of having

that brand. I call it brand calibrator trademarked.

Love that.

Seriously, I bought a trademark for it. I was

like, this is important. We need to calibrate AI to our brands.

These are the pieces that need to go in there. Accurate process

for getting that, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the process for

getting that is different, like depending on the expert that

you're working with or whatnot. I have background in brand

strategy too, but and it's exactly like you said. It's

about extracting the things out of the person, right? So. I

mean, I mean, this isn't really what we're here to talk about,

but the whole concept of creating some kind of a

reference file like this, a calibration that just helps you

to get a better output from AI as you're using it. But what I

think you're saying-that's the nuance, and nuance is such a

critical term here, is that as your business evolves and you

become more clear about your ideal client and you learn more

about them and you learn more about their voice and all of

that, that's where AI is now kind of back up at that generic

level, and you need it to go deeper. Yeah,

and those are the things that you can't it

can't do all on its own? Like now, of course, if you are

starting out and you're going to do like voice of customer

research or things like that, AI can't do that either because you

actually need the specific words of your specific people, and

that you can't get through AI. Like, if you're my ideal client,

Kelly, I can't go tell Claude or ChatGPT or whomever to like.

What is Kelly Sinclair thinking right now? And if it could give

me an answer, that would be terrifying. Like decide to

rethink humanity in my no because I do I do tell it

everything fair, but it's those things of we have to ask the

people the questions, we have to listen, and yes, we can feed

that information to our AI and get so much insight. Like it can

dig through, but also there's a moment of double check it. Of

course, it hallucinates. It's if you were, I would recommend if

you're going to do things like that, do it right after the

call, so it's fresh on your brain. So like when you're

pouring through the output that AI gave you about a transcript,

you can sit there and go, "Oh yeah, we did talk. Oh yeah, that

was so important. Versus like, "Wait, what? Like we didn't talk

about that. Where did you get that from? Without having to

individually pour over, like print it out and highlight it,

like we used to have to do back in the pre AI days. But those

things are really important to understand. You're getting it

not from a generic like because AI can go, of course, search the

internet. It can give you basic information. Sometimes that

information is helpful, but you're not going to be able to

dial in your marketing and your strategy to your specific people

unless you're hearing from your specific people because context

matters, nuance matters. There's so many different pieces of this

puzzle that you just can't get from the old Google search or

the old. You know what I mean? Like you never could get it from

there. It was just a kind of additional layer on top, and now

AI is able to do that in a much more robust way. But it's still

not as good as having a couple of conversations or listening,

like really listening to what's coming up when I'm talking to my

people. What are people replying when I send out an email? What

are they responding to? That is just gold, and AI can't do it.

It can sort it. It can categorize it. It can record it.

It can't get the information for you though.

Okay, I'm trying to decide whether we should talk

about you. You decide. Here's your two options for the next

signal that you need to do this work, or order in

which this kind of has to happen because there's clearly a step

by step path to getting the right results, and it's not and

and we're just talking about not how to manipulate your AI to do

this for you, but how to actually get that marketing

strategy and your messaging locked in so that everything

else becomes easier.

Let's talk about the signal because I think

that's an interesting one that people aren't talking about.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the signs that you need to do this kind of

work and think about the strategy and spend that time

there is okay. I think it's we're living in a really

interesting time where there's so much information that is at

our fingertips. And like I remember the '90s when people

were talking about we're in the information age. Like we didn't

have shit on what we have now. Like it is just amazing, right?

So we have all this information, and we have people who are

innovative and creative as all get out. Like they, we have

stay-at-home moms who are changing the marketing space.

Like it is unreal, and it is really cool. But it can also get

super overwhelming because you're sitting here trying to

like, okay, how do I get the algorithm on Instagram to do

what I want it to do, but then also that's different than the

algorithm on TikTok. So how do I make that work? And then I'm

told I'm supposed to be podcasting over here, or guest

podcasting, or you know showing up on this stage, or doing

blogs, or SEO, and it just like oh my god, like your head just

wants to explode. And even if you're doing all these things,

and even if you're using AI. To make it easier, because AI does

make it easier to show up on all the places with a cohesive

message. If you're feeling this sense of like, oh my god, or

overwhelm, or not wanting to show up in particular places, or

honestly sitting here volleying against the people who are

saying to do one thing or the other and being lost in that-any

of these things tells you that you really have to stop and do

this work. That you need to think about really strategically

about who your people are, where they're showing up, and yes,

they might be showing up on multiple platforms, and there

might be nuance to the types of people, or the types of buyers,

or like what specifically you're selling on different platforms.

And AI makes it so you can have sophisticated marketing strategy

and talk different things on different platforms, which is

amazing. And you can do it as a solopreneur or a really small

team, which is freaking rad, but AI can't do it for you because

if you walk in and tell AI like I need a marketing strategy that

just blows up my platform, it's going to tell you some like

crazy. It'll be relatively generic, and it'll be something

that probably says show up on 50 different websites, and then

you're just sitting there going, like, "Oh my god, this is what

I'm already doing, and it's not working.

I want to support what you're saying by, I

mean, we are building a brand new platform. I am like at stage

founder beta clients, you know, and it's so tempting when you

get doing fun things, playing with AI. You're like, ooh, and I

can create a skill that will build my YouTube things, and

I'll put it here, and I'll do that, and and I'm doing all

those things. Like I have had to ditch you. I kept saying, like

when Fable Five came out, I'm like, I went in the bender,

oh, I got an idea, and like getting it to do, I'm like, can

you please do this while I go to sleep? Try to sleep because I

needed to plug it over there. But that to say is that I

constantly find it challenging, and I'm sure everybody does, to

pull back to, okay, who are the actual humans who are using Wave

right now? Why are they using it? What are their like? What

can we learn from them? So how can I get that like voice of

customer research, that market research out of the people who I

already have, so that I am using actual data and information to

make decisions about how we move forward instead of just my gut,

which I love. I love to trust my gut. All the things, yeah.

There's there's certain things where you should do that.

It's and that's the thing. Like I feel like we

all, many of us, I should say, entrepreneurs, we do that stuff

now. AI'S just made it so much easier to dig in where we want

to learn and and add and all the fun stuff. And I'm all for it.

And I'm I'm with you. Like I've done all those things as well.

It's like I have to rein myself back in. But the catch is too,

as you're building these things, yes, AI can write you amazing

show notes for your podcast that are, you know, follow the best

practices and do the things and make it so you don't have to

think very hard about it, and that's amazing. And you can get

it out there. It can help you strategize these pieces. But

then at some point, a your AI becomes exactly what we were all

doing before, where we were all sitting pre AI, sitting there

going, "How do I show up on all these places really well? And AI

is doing the same stuff, but it's not necessarily connecting

it really well. So it can dig really deeply into how to

harness YouTube, but also if you talk to any like YouTube expert,

they'll say like it has its limitations, right? And but then

the question becomes, how are you actually connecting YouTube

to potentially podcasts to potentially trying to get found

through AI and or SEO? How do you connect that to how you're

actually converting. How do you connect that to the emails

you're sending out if you're doing that? How do you connect

it to your social media? And then at the end of the day,

we're sitting here asking ourselves, "Well, should you be

on any of these? And that's a question the AI really can't

answer. Yes, if you ask it, it will give you an answer. But is

it the right answer? Because it's like how AI works is not.

It's not asking you. It's not going through all the nuance of

your life, your business, all of that stuff. It's going based on

what it understands as broad marketing strategy, and that

may. Or may not land for you because there are absolutely

people who can get away with, and I'm like, there are going to

be people who are going to take me to task for saying this, but

there are people who can get away without having an email

list and have a booming, amazing business, and there are people

who can get away with having a booming business without social

media, and others who can't, and I can't tell you if that's you

without a deep conversation, and you might know with that same

deep conversation. But I can sure as heck tell you, your AI

does not know that you have to tell your AI that, and you have

to connect all the dots and find out what's worth it to you

because AI is really good at helping you have really amazing

tactics, but the strategy is the problem. Where it's okay, sure,

everybody says I'm supposed to go do all this guest podcasting,

right? But is guest podcasting actually converting for you? And

how do you make it convert? And how do you connect that into

what? How? Like how? What is the path that when you do this that

people come on, and why are you doing it? And what about the the

host when you're guest podcasting? Does that person

really deeply matter to your business or not? Or is it just a

like thank you for your audience? This is like I'm

really just selling to your audience, or is like do they

play a big role? And that like these are all questions that

your AI can't answer for you.

I love this, Laura, because I have my

background is all in marketing, and I was working with people on

marketing and visibility. And I totally agree that the

disconnect is that most people don't understand the difference

between tactics and strategy, they say I need an Instagram

strategy where Instagram is just a tactic, like on its own. And

so, like all of those things that you listed off there, and

I'm sure you would agree with the statement of everything

works and everything doesn't. Sure,

the thing that makes it work is how it's applied to your

specific business and how you actually execute on that. So

speak speak more to the strategic side. Like let's say

okay, we've we've talked about AI enough. Like we don't need to

like do that anymore. Let's talk about marketing strategy and how

to create a good marketing strategy, and what are the

pieces that are needed? Obviously, a great human

marketing strategist would be a great piece. I mean, I'd always

recommend. Yeah, but besides that, like, speak to that. So, a

great marketing strategy for okay for many of the people who

are listening to this? Where a lot of us are solopreneurs or

have really small teams, so it's really starting with one person.

So, and I'm speaking to that right now. And of course, you

can expand

it out to be bigger companies, of course. But

speaking to that specific crowd, a great marketing strategy

starts with you. It starts with the founder, or very

specifically, what has intentionally been like what

part of the founder has been bled into the business and now

is the brand. So it starts with you. It starts with your

capacity, how you actually want to show up, where you want to

show, because those are elements that matter. Honestly, it

doesn't matter if your entire community is on Instagram. If

Instagram makes you want to like throw your head through the like

plate glass window every morning when you get up, or like you

have real ethical issues with social media or whatever, like

whatever is coming up for you, that's a problem that needs to

be addressed. And then I would say you shouldn't be on there.

So it starts there. It starts with how the business wants to

show up, where they want to show up, but then it also has to fold

into where are the humans? Are your people actually like? And

not only the humans, but where are the humans that are going to

buy from you? Because this is a problem with social media right

now, where there's a lot of people who are being told you

need to be on this particular platform or that particular

platform. Like two years ago, the platform Dujour was

Substack. Okay, great, but are people who are actually going to

buy from you on Substack? And if the answer is yes, wonderful,

run full on, like run, figure it out, go for it. If they're not,

why are you there? If you're on Instagram and there are you have

10,000 subscribers, not subscribers followers on

Instagram, but none of them buy for you from you. Okay, I want

to ask like a couple of questions: Is your purpose for

being on Instagram to actually get buyers? Because if that's

the case, then you're on the wrong platform. Because if

they're not buying from you, that's a there's a disconnect in

some capacity that needs to be addressed. Either the content's

all wrong, the strategy's all wrong, or like they're just not

there. But also, are you using Instagram for another purpose?

What. Is that purpose? Because sometimes Instagram matters

because it is a kind of it is a vanity version that people can

easily see of what size is your platform, which that can open up

doors. So if you have an enormous platform over there,

maybe you don't care if people are buying from you, but you

want to get your butt on the like you know social media

marketing stage. Okay, well, they're looking for people with

big followers, and that's an easy way that they can see that.

So, okay, that might be a way to create that. But I don't know.

Like, you have to ask yourself those questions: How are you

actually using this platform, and is it a value to your

business? And mixing that with what are the business goals? So,

are you trying to create this huge platform, or are do you

have the kind of business that only needs like 10 people to buy

from you each year? Okay, if that's the case, why are you

dancing on TikTok and Instagram? Like, have a conversation. Like,

this is not the path. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

the The feeling of I need to, I should. The shoulds that we do

to ourselves all the time because we just get sucked into

like peer pressure. Truly, like in and like applies to AI for

sure. Like I should learn how to use all these things. I'm. I

feel like the word overwhelm is absolutely so relevant to just

how everybody feels about everything all the time. The

world and homeschooling your kids, Laura, and like starting

all these, like starting a contract. But also, I need to

maintain my marketing and do this and do this and do this and

yeah

and you know what's really fascinating too is

a lot of those shoulds are coming from people who built

their own platforms and businesses in a different

marketing space in a different time and are also in a different

phase of business and then spouting like what they do now,

and we're all walking around like you know, soaking it up,

going, "Oh my god, yeah, okay. So I need to post on Instagram

50 times a day in order to do the things, and I can make a

million dollars. It's like sure, but that person's walking

around; they already had a million dollars. They have a

million dollar team who's actually doing that stuff for

them, so they're not doing it solo. And by the way, they made

their multi-million followers in the time where it was really

easy to build multi millions of followers on Instagram. It is no

longer easy to do that. The platform has changed. The

audience has changed. The kind of culture of the world, like

the climate, has changed, and people interact with all that

stuff differently. So, all the shoulds you have to like. It's

kind of like when you're taking in news sources these days. It's

the consider the source, consider their perspective

before you tattoo it on your heart, and maybe it is the right

perspective for you, and that's fine. Then tattoo that on your

heart and run with it. But you got to kind of stop and think.

Like, okay, do I actually have that kind of capacity? Do I want

to go all in? Is that the right choice? Is this person like? Are

they spouting something that resonates with me and how I want

to be in my business? And also, does it make sense for the size

of my team, my like budget for ads, like things like that. You

got to stop and think about it. I I love

that. I was thinking about that this morning

because, first of all, I just discovered who Jesse Jean is.

Like today, today years old. Do you know the yapping channel?

Yes.

Now as soon as you put it in that context, I'm

yes aware. Yes.

So she just-I just saw a video that she posted

that was like, "I'm gonna break down what happened because,

like, six months ago, I was making $7,000 and I just made

seven and a half million. Like, what just happened? And she's-I

liked it because she was very like authentic about it and

everything, but it still got me thinking. As much as that can be

so exciting to hear, be like, "Oh my god! Like I want to

follow that. Obviously, like if it worked for her, it could work

for me. I had to tell myself, "No, stop! Like stop trying to

find a solution from somebody else, and I want to know what

you think about that. In terms of just like, I love it. I love

the whole expert economy. Like that's who my clients are too.

So to be clear, when you learn something and you have a way of

doing something and it works and you want to teach it to other

people, like yes, please Do that, and also as the person

trying to decide who you want to follow and who you want to learn

from, and who is the right fit for you. Like, there's a lot of

layers to that decision-making process, right? And so, just

what do you think about the whole concept of frameworks and

like? Following other people's strategies and trying to apply

it, like tell me all the the the stories making down on you.

No, you cannot templateize somebody else's

business and put it on top of yours and expect the exact same

success. Yes, you can take the strategy and fold it in and run

with it, and like yes, the algorithm works that way and all

the things. But by the way, as everyone's capturing this, guess

what Meta's doing behind the scenes? Changing how the

algorithm works to benefit them, because they're a business and

they want to make more money, so they're in control of that, and

they can change it at any time. So this trend will go away, and

that will no longer work at some point, or it will certainly work

a lot less. The first person to capture it is, of course, going

to get the most momentum, and you will never be able to

recapture that exact momentum. But also, again, the audience is

different, the business is different, the person is

different, the context is different, all of it is

different. So you cannot just copy and paste the things and be

like, oh, this is going to be exactly the same. I also like. I

know we all want that magic pill. Like, of course, I'm the

same person who's looking at the things and being like, oh god,

this like exercise program. What are the results? Because I need

those results and I need them fast, right? We all do this

stuff. Yeah, but at the same point, there is no magic pill,

and I would be, I would be so curious to talk to her once she

has some distance between this about the emotional toll that

that exponential financial growth has taken on her and her

family, because it's not an easy thing. And we all sit here and

go, like, wouldn't it be amazing to win the lottery? But the

statistics on the lottery are fascinating. The people who win

the lottery within, I think it's like three to five years, they

are usually in financially worse situations than they were before

they won the lottery, and it's because they don't have the

emotional capacity to hold that amount of money, and it is

traumatizing in a very interesting way, and it is

trying. So it's that thing of like, yeah, these stories are

amazing and cool. We probably can't recreate them step by step

by following their thing, but then also it comes to the

question of, do you want it? Do you want that like thrown into a

space that is a whole nother set of things, or do you want to

creatively be in your on your own path, doing your own thing

and finding ways to yes, like okay, yapping challenge, okay,

so I can understand that talking at my phone in this way, the

algorithm likes that, okay, cool, so I can take that

strategy, that tactic, I should say, and fold it into my

Instagram strategy to try and get the reach. But also, you

have to stop and ask yourself: Do you just want a million

followers? Because the interesting thing is, the people

who can make seven and a half million dollars on Instagram in

six months are the people who are able to sell the Instagram

strategy. I'm not selling an Instagram strategy, so I have

faith that I can't make seven and a half million dollars on

Instagram in the next six months, just because that's how

it works. The people who, by the way, the reason why you can make

that amount of money on Instagram is because you are

literally meeting the person in their actual pain in the space

that they are feeling that pain in that moment, and if you hit

them with the right messaging, they're going to be like, "Yes,

I need that right now, and so they will click and buy. But

most of us don't have that like that magical kind of little

platform in these social media platforms, so it's harder to

kind of push through and get them into that space to be able

to feel and move. I feel like I just hit you with so many things

in that. Yeah, I'm like, how do we how do we not bum everyone

out? Sorry, everybody, it's hard to be an entrepreneur.

I think okay, but we'll laugh about it because

it is true. It is, but it becomes lighter

when you can pull back from that crap. You

know,

I think that's what you're. That's what I want

you to like. You know, summarize to end is like, it's first of

all the strategy is about the why. It's about the purpose.

Like, why are you doing the things that you are doing?

You'll feel better, and you'll probably have more momentum, and

you'll probably create more success for yourself when you

feel aligned with the actions that you're taking. All of those

actions related to the types of marketing that you actually want

to do, that you will actually do, and that are actually

shipping instead of just being ideas that you're brainstorming

inside of an AI platform.

Yeah. So that's the superpower in all of this.

Like the moment I felt like, oh yeah, like this is my business

and this is fun, and. This is amazing. Is when I stepped into

things and made them my own. So it wasn't just and like of

course it. You know, I did a summit, and it I was not the

first person ever to do a summit, but I did it my way.

Like I took the suggestion of what do you think about doing a

summit, went huh, and took other people's tactics and went. Okay,

I like this piece. I like this piece. I like this piece. It's

kind of like honestly, I equate it to planning a wedding. You've

been to a million weddings. You've seen a million weddings

on TV, but it's not your wedding. But then once you start

to plan your wedding, you stop and you go, okay, Kelly had like

this great little gift that she gave. I'm gonna do that, but I'm

gonna do it like a little bit differently. And my dress is

gonna be so me, and I really want a band, and I really want

it in a venue that feels like this. And then suddenly you show

up on this magical day, and it is yours, and it feels so

fricking awesome, and it's your people in the room, and you just

have the best time. I hope, and all the things are amazing, and

businesses like that too. Once you're able to start seeing,

okay, I get these people are experts in their spaces, and I'm

going to take the things that I can learn from them, and I'm

going to piecemeal my own little puzzle together, and I'm going

to make it work for my business and me. And I'm going to leave

some of the crap on the table and say like, "That's not for

me, or "That doesn't quite fit. And that's when you're really

stepping into your empowerment as a business owner, and that's

when you start to run of like, it's that that image of like you

know I have of like walking into a room with like the wind in

like the white suit with the wind blowing, you're like I own

this space, you know, and it's like your hair is blowing, and

it's like this is mine, and that feeling is so fricking good, and

it can't come from copying. It comes from yes, playing, making

mistakes, all the things, and using your AI tools, but it

comes from building your own strategy that is simply yours.

Amen, sister. Like yes, that is, and I hope

that everybody heard that the way I did, which is screw what

everyone else is doing. Like take the inspiration, be

inspired by the fact that it is possible. Like that is the only

thing that we really need to see from other people that it is

possible to make a life work the way that you want it to work,

where you can homeschool your kids and you can go to all of

the hockey games and soft live at a softball diamond for three

months like I did, and that is what I really care about. And

yeah, I would freaking love to also build a company and sell it

for like $100 million. I would love to do that, and people do

that. So since people do that, therefore I know it's possible.

I don't have to be like, who did that? How did they do that? What

exactly steps that I need to take to do that. It has to be

filtered your own way. The only thing that can really drive you

through this crazy friggin' mindfuck that entrepreneurship

is on a daily basis is to stay grounded that you're on your own

journey. Because when we look too much out here at what other

people are doing or what we can ask AI for ideas all day, and it

will constantly give us. I just finished reading. Oh my gosh,

the gap in the game, and that concept of always be measuring

backwards. Because if we are measuring out against what other

people are doing, we're always we're always seeing how we're in

a gap that we are not completing this. We didn't do this, and I

didn't do that, and I haven't achieved this yet, and all of

the time, like that's that is the mindset work that needs to

happen to allow you to have that. Oh, I love that like

vision of walking through the door with wind blowing, and

you're like, I love it here. My place. These are my people.

It's my wedding. My house.

Yes. Yes. Yes. That's for everybody. This is

mine.

No, I think it just comes down to just owning

your own space, and everything you said is so true that we're

the comparison game, which we're biologically predisposed to

compare, but we can also put it into check and just recognize

I'm comparing right now. No, I am not Kelly Sinclair, and my

business is different. And I am like there are going moments I

sit there go, oh yeah, Kelly's amazing, and you know just

fawning all over it. And at the same point, though, it's like

amazing for her. Take the inspiration, take the little

like glow of like, ooh, she did that right. I could fold a move

like that into my business, and that would feel really juicy.

And not the I have to do it because everybody's doing

podcasts, or everybody's on Instagram, or everybody's on

Substack. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Is it the right

move? And by the way, we all have a backlog in. Brains of all

the moves we want to wish you know all the things we could be

doing, and we're like one day I'll start a podcast, one day

I'll start a YouTube channel. Okay, fine. Those one days it

might come, it might not, and that's okay. They backlogs are

backlogs, and sometimes things go to die there, and sometimes

they move into reality. But it's the thing of will it build your

house, your wedding, your game, your you know, like all the

things we talked about? That's all that matters.

I love that. What a great permission slip to

end with, Laura. Where can everyone get more of you?

Oh my gosh! Well, I am @cheeky copy.co, so

you can find me there. And if you want to think a little bit

differently about marketing and think about how you can actually

build real human connection and thoughtfulness into your

marketing, I made a nice little private podcast for you called

Welcome In. So it's at cheekycopy.co/welcome-in, and it

talks all about how to fold in humanness and hospitality and

caring into marketing at scale or at small?

Just fold it in. You just fold it in. Fold it in,

David. What does that mean? Okay, bye.

Thank you for listening. If this episode got you thinking about

how AI is impacting your business and what it might look

like to integrate it in a way that actually fits, I'd love to

help you think that through. You can book an AI strategy chat

using the link in the show notes, it's a space to talk

about where you are, what's shifting, and how to move

forward with intention. And if this episode was helpful, please

share it with another business owner who's navigating this

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