121: Everyone Has AI. Here's How to Stand Out Anyway (Part 1)

Instagram is filling up with AI-generated content. And as more small business owners and creators start using these tools, one thing is becoming really clear. Everyone is starting to sound the same. So how do you use AI effectively without losing what makes you you?

That's exactly what we're tackling today. This is part one of a four-part series on how to use AI in your marketing as a small business owner. We're going back to the basics, laying the right foundation, helping you avoid common mistakes, and making sure you have what you need to stand out instead of blend in.

INSTAGRAM UPDATE WORTH KNOWING

Instagram just rolled out the ability to reorder your grid posts. To access it, go to your profile, long press on any post, and select Reorder Grid from the menu that appears. You can then drag and drop your posts to change the order they appear on your public profile.

This matters because those first nine posts on your profile often determine whether someone follows you or not. My advice: don't overthink it and don't spend three hours rearranging your feed like it's a living room makeover. But do think strategically about what someone sees within the first five to seven seconds of landing on your profile, and make sure it's positioned to attract your ideal client or customer.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

02:17 Instagram update: how to reorder your grid posts and why it matters

05:24 Why we're in the "Summer of AI" and the perspective I'm bringing to this series

07:16 The real conversation happening around AI in 2026 (it's not "should I use it" anymore)

07:45 Why using AI is quickly becoming the baseline and what the actual competitive advantage is now

08:39 What AI-generated "slop" looks like and why it's hurting the people posting it

09:36 Why AI is making thought leadership more valuable, not less

10:33 Mistake #1: Waiting until you figure it out (the fear and avoidance trap)

13:50 Mistake #2: Using AI to replace your thinking instead of amplify it

15:37 Mistake #3: Giving AI zero context and why this is the biggest reason outputs feel generic

18:49 The mindset shift that changed everything: treating AI like a strategic thought partner

19:17 One action step to take this week: ask AI to interview you before it creates anything

20:39 About the live workshop: Build Your AI Thought Partner

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

1. AI is the baseline now. The question is no longer "should I use AI?" — it's "how do I use it without sounding like everyone else?" The businesses winning right now aren't using the most AI. They're using AI while keeping their voice, expertise, and perspective at the center.

2. AI is making thought leadership more valuable, not less. When everyone has access to the same tools, the differentiator becomes the person using them — your human experience, your lived stories, your opinions, your frameworks. AI can't duplicate those.

3. Mistake #1 — Waiting until you figure it out. AI changes every day and it always will. You don't need to wait until you've taken more courses or listened to more podcasts. The people benefiting most from AI are the ones who start experimenting before they feel ready.

4. Mistake #2 — Using AI to replace your thinking. Asking AI "what should I post today?" and hitting publish on whatever it gives you is why the internet is filling up with content that's technically correct but completely empty. AI should amplify your thinking, not replace it.

5. Mistake #3 — Giving AI zero context. AI doesn't know your audience, your offers, your brand voice, your founder story, or what makes you different. Without that context, you'll get generic outputs every time. The quality of your AI output is directly related to the quality of the context you provide.

6. Build an AI habit, not an AI strategy. Start talking to AI every single day even just on a walk, using the voice memo function. Make it a daily practice and the skill compounds quickly.

7. Ask AI to interview you first. Instead of asking AI to create something, ask it to ask you five questions — one at a time — so it can better understand your audience, your perspective, and your goals. That one shift turns AI from a vending machine into a real thought partner.
   

Links Mentioned:

• Build Your AI Thought Partner Workshop

• Think Bigger: Using AI to Expand What’s Possible in Your Business with Geoff Woods

• Hot Reels — my 12-month Instagram content lab. DM me the word HOT on @elizabethmarberry

• Free DM Automation Guide + 1 Month of ManyChat Free — DM me the word LEADS on @elizabethmarberry

• Free Monetize Your IG Guide

A Truth You Need to Hear:

"The competitive advantage isn't access to AI anymore. The competitive advantage is knowing how to use it strategically without losing your authenticity."

— Elizabeth Marberry

S3 Ep121 Transcript - Everyone Has AI. Here's How to Stand Out Anyway. (Part 1)

00:00

Instagram is filling up with AI generated content. And as more small business owners and creators start using these tools, one thing is becoming really clear. Everyone is starting to sound the same. So how do you use AI effectively without losing what makes you you? That's exactly what we're tackling in today's episode. The first in a four part series on how to use AI in your marketing as a small business owner.

00:28

We're going back to the basics, laying the right foundation, helping you to avoid common mistakes and making sure you have what you need to stand out instead of blend in. I hope you're excited. Let's go. to strut it a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies.

00:50

I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole lead work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

01:22

Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. You landed on part one of a four part series on AI. That's right, artificial intelligence. And this series is going to apply to you whether you are totally new to the AI world or you've been using it for months or even years. I also wanna note that everything I'm gonna be sharing in this series applies to any AI platform you may be leveraging right now. So whether that's Claude,

01:51

ChatGPT, Google Gemini, whatever is your AI tool preference, this content is going to apply to you. And before we dive into today's episode, I wanna quickly share an Instagram update that just dropped and I think it's actually worth paying attention to. You know, I don't come on here and report every single Instagram update because honestly, a lot of them don't really matter.

02:17

And quite frankly, they're just a distraction to already busy and overwhelmed entrepreneurs and small business owners. So my job is to help you separate what is actually relevant for you so you can focus on the things that are going to move the needle in your business. So this week, Instagram rolled out the ability to reorder your grid posts. So if you go to your profile and you long press and you put your finger down on one of your posts,

02:46

and you long press on the screen, you'll now see an option, a menu pop up, and you'll see an option called Reorder Grid. So from there, you can click on that. It's gonna open up another little window where you're gonna be able to essentially drag and drop your posts around on the feed to change the order of how they appear on your public facing profile.

03:10

And so many people are celebrating. A lot of people have been asking Adam Ozeri, the CEO of Instagram for this feature for a long time. So it's a big deal because those first nine posts on your profile are often what determine whether someone's going to follow you or not. Right. I had Austin Armstrong, uh AI expert on the podcast last week and he said it so well. He's like, if you did a video about cooking and I come to your feed.

03:37

and all of your feed posts are about like your date nights with your husband, I'm not gonna follow you because I went to your account to follow cooking content, not relationship advice, right? So this is a big deal because now we have more control over those first nine posts and really what that first impression is of a potential follower or client. It's gonna be interesting to see how the strategy around this and how this is leveraged.

04:04

My first impressions of how a small business owner might want to use this is let's say you recorded a direct-to-camera yapping video about a workshop that you have coming up or something like that and you want that one post to live more toward the top of your grid. Now you can kind of keep moving it back up to the top until the workshop happens, right? Or let's say that you had a real pop off. Like for me,

04:31

In the last couple of weeks, I've had two reels go viral, which is so fun. And I should say viral for me, because viral is always very relative, right? So if I wanted to, if I thought, okay, wow, I want these two pieces of content that clearly popped off to be more toward the top of my grid, now I'm able to do that. So at the end of the day, you now have more control over what people see first on your grid.

04:57

My advice here, don't overthink it. Definitely don't spend three hours rearranging your feed like it's a living room makeover. It is not that deep, but do think strategically about what someone sees within those first five to seven seconds when they land on your profile and make sure everything is really positioned to attract your ideal client or customer. Okay, now let's pivot and talk about AI. As I'm recording this, are in...

05:24

summer of 2026 in the States here. It's June, kids are out from school. And I don't know about you, but my feed is just blowing up with AI content and also people teaching AI. I was kind of joking with my friend about the fact that I think we're in the summer of AI. Like obviously AI is not new, but it feels like the volume is being turned up on it. And before I get into,

05:52

our teaching for today, I wanna just tell you about the perspective that I'm bringing into this conversation. And that is the perspective of a social media marketer and business coach, right? As a content creator who has posted content every day on Instagram for six years. As a founder of two small businesses that I've grown to over six figures leveraging Instagram. I'm also a mama of two

06:21

and I've been married 16 years. I have a lot going on. And so my perspective in approaching this is all from a standpoint of the marketing brain versus being like this AI tech wizard and expert. I'm all about understanding how do we leverage this modern marketing tool to help us work smarter, not harder, and really at the end of the day, build a successful business.

06:50

without spending every waking hour behind a laptop doing things that we don't enjoy or it's not our zone of genius, right? And a year ago, the conversation was more around the lines of, should I be using AI? Today, that's not really the conversation anymore. Today, the conversation is, how do I use AI in the most...

07:16

streamlined and strategic way for my brand, for my business, without sounding like everyone else. And that is what I want to talk about because I think most business owners are making a really big mistake. They think the goal is to use AI and understand all of these different tools. And I don't know about you, but my grid again is filled constantly with, oh, here's a new video tool, here's a new...

07:45

Photo tool, here's this, here's that. And there's so many distractions right now to our already overwhelmed brains. I don't think the goal is to become masterful at all of the different AI tools and the AI conversation because it is a big one. Using AI is quickly becoming the baseline. The competitive advantage isn't access to AI anymore. The competitive advantage is knowing how to use it strategically.

08:13

and knowing how to use it without losing your authenticity, right? And what makes you different online. Because let's be honest, social media is starting to fill up with a lot of AI generated content and slop and it's not the good kind, right? The AI fluff and the content that sounds polished but somehow says absolutely nothing and there's no depth. There's no like fully fleshed out thoughts, right?

08:39

and you've seen it, you start reading a post and within three sentences, you know exactly what happened, right? Like someone copied and pasted a prompt into ChatGBT and hit publish and the words are technically correct, the grammar's fine, but it feels very empty, right? There's no depth, there's no perspective, there's no lived experience or stories or voice or personality, right? And the crazy thing is that the people publishing that content often think they're saving time.

09:07

but what they're actually doing is blending in. The key to being successful at marketing your business on social media is the opposite of blending in, right? It is standing out. And the businesses that are winning right now aren't the ones necessarily using the most AI, they're the ones using AI while keeping their voice, expertise, experiences, and opinions at the center of everything they create.

09:36

That's why I don't think AI is replacing thought leadership. It's making thought leadership even more valuable, meaning your thoughts. You are the strategic thought leader and AI is your strategic thought partner. And that concept, by the way, I learned from Jeff Woods. He has a fantastic book called The AI Driven Leader. I've had him on the podcast before. You can go check that out.

10:04

And I want to say that one more time because I really wanted to land. AI is not replacing thought leadership. It's making thought leadership more valuable. Because when everyone has access to the same tools, the differentiator becomes the person using them, okay? And your ability to connect the dots and think strategically behind the scenes that nobody else sees. You have your human experience that AI can never.

10:33

duplicate or replicate. So let's talk about why so many small business owners and entrepreneurs are frustrated with AI right now and explore three big mistakes with the hope that if you're in these, I can help you to move through them or avoid them altogether. Mistake number one is you're waiting until you figure it out. This is the fear and avoidance bucket, right?

11:02

I don't know about you, but I've definitely experienced this before. Recently, Claude Cowork has been top of mind for me, agentic AI, you know, going beyond just prompting AI and actually having the AI complete tasks for you and all of these things, like a whole nother level of leveraging it. And I definitely had these thoughts in my head where it sounds a little bit like this. AI changes too fast. I'll learn it later.

11:31

I don't have time. I don't know where to start. It feels overwhelming. And well, all of that is true, right? AI is changing every single day. And I know you're busy and I know you have a on your plate, but we have to stop treating AI like some future problem that we'll solve when we have more time, right? And it's funny, I don't know if you've heard that quote and I don't know who said it, but it's like, how you do one thing is how you do all things.

11:59

And I find that some of us are really good at just convincing ourselves that we have to wait until we have it figured out or we've done enough courses or we've read enough books or we've listened to enough podcasts before we take the action, right? Successful entrepreneurs build massive companies and brands because they take those small 1 % upgrades every day, right? And so,

12:27

What I want you to hear is that the people who are benefiting most from AI aren't necessarily the smartest or most technical people, but they are the people who start experimenting before they feel ready, just like Instagram, right? I tell people, stop letting all of your content sit in drafts in your camera roll. Just start posting it. I promise it's not that precious. Just start getting it out there, right?

12:50

And as you do it, the quicker you take action, the more information you'll have and the better you will become in a shorter amount of time, right? So here's what I want you to take away from this, right? You don't need necessarily a different AI strategy right now, if this is you, if you're struggling with this, I wanna wait till I figure it all out. You need to create an AI habit. You need to figure out how to work AI into your daily workflow of your life.

13:21

And I'll give you an example. I scripted this podcast episode that I'm recording for you right now on my walk this morning. And I've been, of course, ruminating on it and thinking about it and kind of going back and forth. But today I had some really clear downloads about what I wanted to share with you. And I spoke, I used that microphone feature in chat. And I just spoke into it and I said, these are all of the points that I want to make sure I'm making. And

13:50

I don't do that every day when I go on a walk. Sometimes I leave my phone at home and completely unplug, but I am talking to AI every single day. It is a habit, just like brushing my teeth. So if you are new in this space, I invite you to think about how can you integrate AI into something that you're already doing every day. Mistake number two is you're using AI to replace your thinking, okay?

14:16

So while some people are avoiding AI altogether, know, head in the sand, other people have gone completely the opposite direction where they're asking AI, what should I post today? Or write the email or write the caption and then maybe a little bit of editing, but not much and then they hit publish. And that is why the internet is filling up with AI fluff, right? And my core belief that I wanna say again is that AI is not

14:44

replacing your leadership, it's making thought leadership more valuable. So the businesses that win are gonna be the ones using AI while keeping their expertise, perspective, and personality at the center and not outsourcing those things to a tool. I was at a conference recently and there was a new speaker there. She was lovely. And understandably, she was very stressed out about building her first slide deck for her first speech. And I was sitting with her and she said, yeah.

15:11

I prompted AI and I said, hey, I'm speaking at this conference about this thing. Help me to build out my slide deck. And she kind of told me high level what she told it. And she said the output was just god awful. And she was like, okay, AI is not up to speed yet. And it was just really hard for me. I just had to bite my tongue. And of course, no judgment, I'm giving her love. She's a newbie in the world. But that's a great example of...

15:37

someone kind of going off on, my gosh, AI is just crap, without really understanding how to leverage it as a thought partner. And that is definitely a skill that you need to be investing in this year. Mistake number three is you're giving AI zero context. This is where this conversation gets really practical. So imagine hiring a brilliant copywriter and on their first day, you say to them,

16:06

Okay, write an email to my list about this offer, right? They don't know, they're not clear on your target audience, they're not clear on your brand voice, you didn't give them any written examples, you didn't integrate any actual client or customer success stories, there's no clear positioning of why you're different in the market. And then this assistant comes in and writes this email and it's not very good, right? That's how a lot of people use ChaiGPT or Claude, right?

16:33

And maybe you've done this yourself where you asked it to write a caption or you asked it to brainstorm some content ideas or some hooks for your reels. And the first output came back and you thought, oh, wow, this is amazing. And then five minutes later, you're editing everything, rewriting everything, deleting half of it, trying to make it sound like you. And eventually you're wondering, wouldn't it have been faster just to do it myself? Like I've heard people say that where they're like, wait, I tried to do it, but it actually ended up taking me longer.

17:02

Does that sound familiar? If that's you, the problem isn't AI. The problem is that AI doesn't know enough about your business to give you consistently great results, right? AI doesn't know your audience. It's not clear on your offers or your products or services. It doesn't know your founder story. It doesn't know your client or customer success stories. It doesn't know your values, the mission of your company. It doesn't know

17:30

your previous expertise and your unique positioning in the market. It doesn't know the mistakes you've made. It doesn't know the lessons you've learned. It doesn't know what makes your approach different from everyone else in the industry, right? And yet most business owners are expecting it to produce brilliant marketing copy and content. So the quality of your AI output is directly related to the quality of the context that you provide. And that is so critical.

17:59

So the real opportunity here is I want you to treat AI like a strategic thought partner. And that shift changed everything for me. Last year, Chad JPT notified me that I was in the top 5 % of users, okay? And not because I'm a tech nerd, not because I'm interested in becoming an AI expert, but because I became obsessed with figuring out how to work smarter.

18:24

The difference was that I stopped expecting AI to magically know my business and instead I started teaching it and training it, giving it context and helping it understand how I think, who I serve, what I sell, what I believe, my frameworks, the language I use, the stories I tell. And once I did that, everything changed, right? The quality of the output improved dramatically. The brainstorming got so much better.

18:49

the content, the hooks, the captions, the emails, the blog posts, the podcast transcripts, everything got better and the speed got better. Like things started to take way less time. So before I tell you what's coming in this series in the next coming weeks, I wanna give you one action step from today's episode. This week, I want you to stop asking AI to create and start asking AI to ask you questions.

19:17

So instead of saying, this is a hook that's working, reverse engineer it for my business, for example, I want you to say, hey, I am wanting to create a hook in this formula for my business. Before we write anything, I want you to ask me five questions, one at a time so you can gain a better understanding of my audience, my perspective, and my goals for this post, right? And then the AI will interview you.

19:43

And that one shift will blow your mind. It will immediately turn AI more into a thought partner instead of this cheap vending machine that's just giving you the same outputs it gives everyone else. Over the next few weeks, we are going to go deep into really the foundations of how to get AI set up to support you in your business. I'm gonna talk about this foundational document that I have built that helps AI become a true thought partner in my business.

20:13

and it saves me five to 10 hours a week. And I'm gonna walk you through some of the ways I use AI every single week to save time, create content, market my business, and of course drive sales. Because the goal isn't to let AI replace your thinking, the goal is to really have it amplify your thinking, right? If you love today's episode, I wanna personally invite you to my live workshop. It is called the Build Your AI Thought Partner.

20:39

And I created this workshop because I kept seeing business owners fall into one of two camps, right? They're either avoiding the AI altogether, because it feels overwhelming, or they're using AI every day, but getting still generic results that don't sound like them and don't reflect their expertise and really are not helping them to stand out on Instagram or online. This workshop is different because I'm not gonna teach you a bunch of random prompts that you're gonna forget a week later.

21:07

I'm gonna help you build a reusable document that trains AI on your voice, expertise, audience, offers, so it can become a true thought partner in your business. And by the end of our time together, you'll have the foundation of that document started and a clear understanding of how to use it to create better content, market your business faster and save you hours every single week.

21:32

And most importantly, you'll learn how to use AI without sounding like everyone else on Instagram using AI. Because I don't believe the future belongs to people who use the most AI. I believe the future belongs to the people who learn how to combine AI with their unique expertise, experiences, and perspective. And that's exactly what we're gonna do together. You can grab your ticket at elizabethmarberry.com slash AI dash hub.

22:02

That's Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y.com slash AI dash hub. I'll also pop that link in the show notes. And if you're not already following me on Instagram, what the heck are you doing? Hop on over there, give me a follow at Elizabeth Marberry. Send me a direct message. Let me know how you're leveraging AI, what questions you have. I wanna make sure I'm serving you in this series. So my DMs are open, don't hesitate to reach out and.

22:28

absolutely don't forget to check out the workshop at elizabethmarberry.com slash AI dash hub. I cannot wait to support you and dive deeper into how we can leverage AI in growing our businesses. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today and I can't wait to start it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business.

22:56

then you're gonna wanna grab my free Monetize Your IG Guide, where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies. That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my Monetize Your IG Guide.

23:20

If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.