Your “Honestly” is Giving Cringe

Last week I attended a TedX Nashville event at which the speaker’s title was “Former Google Evangelist,” and he was there to discuss AI. Plus there was a free book! If you were setting a trap to catch a Kris Fleming, this is the perfect one. I’m a fangirl for Google like your teenage daughter is for whomever they’re doing that for these days. I am fascinated by AI and have some highly controversial ideas about it. And a book?! I am not a sentimental person by nature, and I don’t have attachments to many physical objects, but I love love looooove physical books. I snagged two copies of Be a Sequoia, Not a Bonsai by Nicolas Darveau-Garneau.

His premise was something that I intuitively understood, but had not fully analyzed.

“AI can only amplify what you give it,” so consider carefully what you give it.

By way of explanation, I think we are all well-aware of the preponderance of “content” that is flooding the internet, the socials, and our email inboxes lately. If you are a business owner who is not a good writer, or doesn’t desire to invest the time to write well, that’s completely fine with me. I am thrilled that you have a tool at your fingertips that helps you communicate your message to the masses. In my opinion, this is the exact use case for AI - to remove burdensome activities from humans so that humans can do more and better human-only activities. However, I do highly recommend that you do this with some awareness.

If you’re putting in simple prompts and posting whatever the AI spits out, you’re doing exactly what the vast majority are doing, which decision-makers are now programmed to ignore.

I have not actually tallied, but it feels like four out of every five posts, emails, written communications begin approximately the third paragraph with, “Honestly,” or “To tell the truth.” I am probably hyper-aware of this because I noticed it when I first started experimenting with AI. I have a personal policy, no doubt stemming from previous trauma, that the more someone tells me how honest or truthful they are, the less I trust them.

You see, truthful people don’t have to tell you that they’re telling the truth; they simply do it.

This is why I noticed it so glaringly when I first started experimenting with AI – it was a red flag of potential integrity shortcomings to me before. Now, unfortunately, a perceived lack of authenticity has been added to that.

If you’re going to use AI to help you in your business – and I cannot encourage you strongly enough to do, which is why I am assembling build-along workshops to help you do it well – be sure that it isn’t diluting your authentic voice! Please be very aware that AI can only amplify what you give it, so consider carefully input that promotes not all businesses similar to yours, but exactly your business. When you publish content, in whatever form you do so, ask yourself – or someone who will tell you the truth – if it draws eyes to your content, or diverts them away with its sameness.

Also, if about the third paragraph begins with, “Honestly,” or “To tell the truth,” I have already stopped reading. It could be just me, but I don’t think so. I encourage you to use these tools to deepen the connection with the authentic you rather than the combined average of everyone else.

If you need clarity on how to amplify yourself and your business well, and in the best possible ways, that’s my whole gig. Sign up at The Genius Cultivator Coaching.

PS - SEO is now rejecting the sameness, too. A 500 word blog post about the history of roofing will no longer help your roofing business rank on search engines; in fact it will likely have a negative impact. Human-ness and quality are prioritized in ranking over quantity of keywords.