I want you to feel the permission to not be

everywhere, to be places that feel in alignment and that allow

you to create that space for yourself as a leader in what you

do. So it's not about being everywhere, it's about being

remembered and making an impression.

This is the entrepreneur school podcast where we believe you can

run a thriving business and still make your family a

priority. This show is all about supporting you, the emerging or

early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO,

while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is

Kelly Sinclair, and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who

started a business with two kids under three. I'm a corporate PR

girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life

is too short to waste doing things that burn you out on this

show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business

owners on their journey and learn strategies to help you

grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life

that you want. Welcome to entrepreneur School.

Hello, hello. I'm super excited to have a rant today, because

this is my podcast, and I get to talk about what I want to talk

about, and it's not going to be super unfamiliar to you, but I

am going to bridge in things that I normally rant about and

into AI and the emergence of tools that we can now use to

create as much as we want, as fast as we want. So this is

what's pissing me off right now. I'm seeing things advertised out

there, like you can create 300 pieces of content in a day, or

an entire month of content in 30 minutes and in like, okay, so

you can, but should you? And this comes back to my philosophy

on visibility, and I want to challenge what's being said in

this online space right now, because that rush to create more

faster is exactly why there is so much generic, forgettable,

overwhelming, distracting content floating around there.

And if your strategy is just make more stuff be more places,

then you're just not standing out. You're just adding to the

noise, and I don't think you want to contribute to that,

because it's what's bad about the internet in the first place,

right?

And from a strategic perspective, when it comes to

your visibility for your business, the truth is,

visibility is not about volume, it's about resonance. So you

don't need to flood the Internet, what you need to do is

make an impression, a lasting impact, and whether that's to

five people around a cocktail table at an event or a few dozen

people listening to your latest podcast interview, or hundreds

of people in an audience in front of you. You need a message

that lands. You need to say something that stays in people's

minds and that connects them and makes them remember you right.

So content has to be intentional, grounded in thought

leadership and rooted in your brand, and that's why, before

you even think about asking AI to create content for you, you

need to ask yourself, Am I clear on my message, and do I Know

what I actually want to say? Because more posts will not save

a message that is not landing and better prompts won't fix

something that's not calibrated to you. And don't worry, you can

still use AI. I'm definitely on team. Use AI to help you get

clear on this. In fact, I built my latest tool, the brand

calibrator, to help you do just that. But I want to unpack this

a little bit more so when I first started using AI tools,

and depending on where you are in your journey, maybe this is

your experience now or recently, you're super excited. You're

like, I can just put in an idea or prompt, and it's going to

produce exactly what I want in a fraction of the time that it

would take me to start with a blank screen and start trying to

type something out and refining it and editing and blah, blah,

blah, Yes, true. But you put something in, you wait for the

magic, and then you get meh, right? Like. It sounds okay, but

it doesn't sound like you, and it needs to sound like you,

especially when you're using it for content. You know what I

mean? If it feels flat, it will be forgettable.

So the shift that I want to offer you in terms of how to

approach this with AI is that AI is not a magic wand. It's a

mirror, and what you get out of it is a direct reflection of

what you put in. So if your content feels off or if your

visibility isn't growing, it's not because you need more of it.

It's because you need to get more calibrated. And if AI

doesn't know your brand and your audience and your offers and

your business, then it's going to create outputs based on its

own database of information, just like the general world on

the internet. And you don't want to be that. You need to stand

out, right? So let's talk about calibration for a second. And

what do I mean by that? Calibration is customization.

It's being super clear on your brand, voice, your audience,

pain points, your transformation and how you want to show up.

It's alignment. And when you're calibrating your message first

and then you use AI to help you amplify it, that's when it

starts working, and that's when the Wild Things starts to

happen, where you can actually be posting less, but having it

land more, because now you're not just posting performatively,

as I like to talk about, right? Just to be seen. You're posting

something that hits different. You're not just making noise,

you're creating momentum. So think about this. If you want to

have a litmus test for yourself on anything that you want to put

out there, you need to be asking yourself, Is this making an

impact? Is this really taking a unique perspective or position

and something that I want to stand behind that will maybe

ruffle some feathers, maybe shift somebody's beliefs a

little bit, maybe have put a question in somebody else's

mind, or help them to move through something that they

might have believed before and see something from a different

perspective. That's thought leadership. It is changing

people's perspectives, and this really is just like I've had. I

have an entire episode, actually on thought leadership. I'll link

to it in the show notes, just for more context on this. But my

background is public relations, and that is what we do in public

relations. We help shape a message to create a result, and

that result being a shift in opinion or behavior of a group

of people. So constantly I was working to try and get people to

not hate energy development, that was my job, pipelines and

oil sands and things that can be fairly contentious, and people

can have strong opinions on but sharing information and messages

and opportunities that help them to maybe feel a little bit more

comfortable with it, especially something like that, which is

just like it's part of life, right?

So just thinking about it that way, when it comes to your

thought leadership, that every piece of content that you put

out there needs to be a reflection of your values and

your beliefs, and you don't get that by just using AI off the

shelf. So I think we've been fed a lie as entrepreneurs, a lot of

us are really believing that we need to be everywhere to get

noticed. So you start hustling, you're posting on Instagram,

you're using LinkedIn, maybe you have a Tik Tok account, and

Instagram has like seven different channels, so you have

to do stories, you have to do reels, you have to do threads,

and then you should be on YouTube, and you have to be on

podcasts, and you have to go to events all the things, no, that

is a recipe for burnout. And I say this all the time on the

show too. But if you're new here, I want you to feel the

permission to not be everywhere, to be places that feel an

alignment and that allow you to create that space for yourself

as a leader in what you do. So it's not about being everywhere,

it's about being remembered and making an impression and

visibility without that resonance is really just noise.

You don't need to go viral. You need to create a moment, a

message, something that sticks, and that is where the

calibration comes in. And I think this is something that I'm

really excited about when it comes to AI, I just realized

that I have been, you know, I've been a brand strategist for as

long as I've had a business and my entire. Career has been about

understanding how to communicate a brand, how to talk to the

right people, how to say the right things that they need to

hear in order to, you know, help them with whatever it is that

we're doing.

And brand strategy is a very under, I guess, misunderstood

skill set amongst entrepreneurs, who is the group of people that

I want to help. So I have honestly struggled for quite a

long time in actually showing why you need this. So this

entire conversation that I'm having you with right with you

right now is very much about why you need to have this clarity on

your brand, because it impacts every single thing that you do.

It impacts your messaging, your choices in how you want to get

visible for your business. So we know where you should actually

be focusing, what you need to say, the content you need to

create, what does that leadership look like? All of the

things, even the strategy, like, what should I sell? How can I

sell it? All of those things, they come back to your brand

strategy. And I was out there hanging my shingle as a brand

strategist for years, and there'll be a small select group

of people who understand the value of this right off the bat,

but I never made the connection between who they were in order

to lean into it and really explode in that way. So I

shifted my label. I started calling myself a visibility

coach, because that's like the implementation part, right? Once

we understand our brand, we got to figure out how we're going to

get visible, and so I help people to figure out the right

ways that are going to help you actually get in front of the

right audience of people who actually need your services and

will actually buy from you. And that is all great, but now we

have AI and I can build tools that help you to implement your

brand strategy effectively. So it's like you're still getting

the value of this big picture strategy that's needed. And I

built a tool that helps you essentially build that out

because you need it as a lens and a filter through which

anything that you do with AI needs to run. So when you're

frustrated about AI not sounding like you, AI not understanding

you, it's because you need to train it right. And that's what

brand calibrator does my AI tool, and that is what a brand

strategy is. So we're piecing these two things together to

allow you to really customize your AI experience so that you

can implement and go out and do all of the things you need to

do, save time and have them be more effective because they're

on brand. So anyway, that's a tangent, but I need to share a

little story with you as well, because it's about being

uncomfortable sometimes, because this isn't about yay, we have

AI.

So now I can hide in my basement and I just make like a podcast

pitch every other week, or, you know, record some episodes, or

post some stuff on LinkedIn, and everything's gonna be great. No,

I still think you gotta, you gotta get out there. Obviously,

I'm a big proponent of building relationships, collaborations,

making connections as a visibility strategy, primarily

because then people are going to start speaking about you as

well, right? And last week, I went to a woman in tech

conference in Calgary, and I felt way out of my element. I am

still kind of working on seeing myself as a woman in tech, even

though I am like up to my eyeballs and building a new AI

platform alongside of a partner here and making that all come to

life, I'm definitely have a tech focused business moving forward.

But hey, we all struggle with imposter syndrome, right? So I

went, I showed up, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone,

and then what happens is you have to introduce yourself to

people and have conversations and see how that goes. And I was

pleasantly surprised, because when I started talking about how

I help entrepreneurs use AI for marketing and visibility, and

then teaching them how to train AI to sound like their brand.

People are leaning in, they're curious, they're asking

questions. They want to know more, and that's because I have

the clarity right now around what I'm doing, and that creates

sparks. It creates confidence, right? Right in yourself when

you know what you're talking about, or at least you've chosen

a lane, and you don't sound like, Ah, I do this. I'm not

sure whatever, like, and I've been there because this is the

reason why I know this is important. Is when you go out

somewhere and you have to introduce yourself and you're

like, I don't know how to say what I do. Like, how come that

is the hardest question? Like, I really want to know why it's so

hard to explain what we do. I mean, my dad still doesn't know

what I do, but that's okay.

Anyways, the clarity comes from going through the steps. And

those steps are part of the tool brand calibrator. The link to

check that out is in the show notes if you're interested in

learning more. But essentially, it helps you to train AI to

sound like you your content feels like it came from your own

brain and not from a robot. That is the magic right there. It's

not about the tool. It's about how you show up, where you show

up, and what you say when you get there. So, yeah, we're not

going to hide in the basement and hope that clients magically

find you. You need to make those connections. You need to build

those relationships and collaborate, but when you do,

you need to make sure that you're delivering a message that

actually lands right. So visibility without calibration,

it's just noise. It's just busy work, it's performative. It just

makes you feel like you're doing something, but it's not actually

moving the needle. So I challenge you to really question

and put a litmus test and a filter on is what I'm saying and

what I'm doing and where I'm going and how I'm showing up.

Are these all actually aligned with my bigger vision as a

brand?

So if you've been feeling frustrated with your content or

that AI isn't working for you, pause before you ask for another

prompt or try and just explain differently or ask it to be more

friendly, be more professional, get rid of the M dashes like you

got to stop with these basic level prompts. That's not going

to work. You need to calibrate your brand first, because AI is

only as powerful as the foundation that you give it. So

we're not, let's, let's take an oath right now, I will not

contribute to the crappy content on the internet just because I

have a tool that will help me build things fast. I put my hand

up, but I said that, and I was like, Oh, also, I still do

believe that sometimes, like, it's okay, or, you know, at

least I'm putting something out there is better than nothing,

but let's not just, like, put out a whole bunch of crappy

stuff. Okay, you're better than that. You know that? I know you

don't want to do that. That's why you're listening to this

show. And we are going to still leverage AI, because you deserve

to have your time freedom back and be able to make the impact

that you want to make with your business.

So I want to leave you with a reflection question this week,

and I'd love to start a conversation with you over on

Instagram. I'm back in the DMS. You're not seeing a lot of posts

coming out from me, but I will message you. I do love

conversations. If you're on my email list, you'll see that I've

started this new thing where I'm sending out a one question email

every single Friday to create engagement and learn a little

bit more about you and what you're thinking about when it

comes to AI helping me to understand you better. That's

really important. So here's your reflection question. What is one

moment coming up where you want to make an impact, and are you

ready with the message that you want to share? I invite you to

message it to me. I will give you feedback. I am here to have

a conversation. I'm a human person. I'm not a robot, and I

love it when I hear directly from people who are listening to

this show, who are looking for some solutions to the challenges

that we are facing as entrepreneurs, because I

understand you, there are a lot of hats that we have to wear

right to run a business, and if we could just make one part of

that A little bit easier, and for me, that's the understanding

your message and making sure that you're attracting the right

people into your world, then you're going to have more

success as an entrepreneur. And ever since I started my

business, the tagline has been the same, and that is making

your passion a success. And what that means to me is that you get

to do the thing you love to do as much as you want, and make

money from it, and be fully in control of your own time, you

know, not on someone else's schedule. And everything that

you do, most of what you do, the main part of what you do, let's

be honest, we still have to do bookkeeping sometimes. And.

Admin stuff, but the bulk of what you do is empowering. It

makes you feel really good. It helps you help people, and you

love it. And to me, that's that's how we raise the

happiness barometer in the world. And oh, do we need more

of that? So come find me on Instagram, ksco_kelly, DM me

your answer to your reflection question. What's one moment

coming up where you want to make an impact, and are you ready

with the message that you want to share? I want to hear it.