One of our favorite things about being in business is the opportunity to get to know others in business – and that includes some who are just starting their journeys, and showing the world that they are likely to make an impact for years to come.

That’s a pretty good description of Sophia Eusebio, who came across our path as a result of hers and Michelle’s mutual involvement with the Troy Chamber of Commerce’s Young Professionals group.

As marketing specialist for Troy-based Office Express, Sophie is pursuing a deep understanding of every aspect of marketing, so she can provide her employer more value and position herself to deliver great results for years to come. As a young person with a creative mind and an enthusiastic heart, she clicked with Michelle instantly during a meet-up at Barnes & Noble, and our network of friends expanded by a very joyful factor of one. So we knew you would enjoy meeting her too, which is why she is this month’s guest on Six Questions with Dan and Michelle!

We do get a bit weary of constantly dealing with the pros and cons, highs and lows and ups and downs of AI. In just about every newsletter, we would rather talk about something else. But you can’t ignore it when you’re in our business, and we think something is worth pointing out, considering the discussions we took part in this past week.

First, there it was on LinkedIn: A few people in our business. One making the claim that “there are two kinds of marketing professionals . . . those who embrace AI and those who will be left behind.” Nothing like appealing to people’s sense of FOMO.

Then there was the guy who took a bit of a lighter touch but nevertheless chastised writers who don’t at least embrace AI as a “useful tool.”

So here’s where we are on it. First – and this will be our position forever – we do not use AI for one word or one symbol of writing. Ever. Forever. Every word that comes from us is written by us.

Second, about AI as a “useful tool.” We don’t need it to suggest ways to word things because that’s what we do and it’s who we are. We are writers. We can do it better and always will.

As far as informational research goes, we recognize that just about any online research is utilizing AI to some degree. Even if all you do is Google a term, the first result you see will come from Google’s AI. So unless you stop Googling things, you’re at least exposing yourself to what AI has to say. We’re not going to go out of our way to avoid that.

But we also took some wisdom from an interview we did last week with our client Steven Panovski, who pointed out, “If everyone online says the sky is green, AI will say the sky is green.”

Because AI only “knows” what it can snoop out of what others have said.

It’s artificial intelligence. It mimics the sensation of knowing. It performs an amazingly quick aggregation of what’s online and presents you with a summation of it.

So let us ask you a question: If you want to offer content that makes the case that your insight is worth investing time into and that’s why you do business – why would you use AI to gather or present that insight for you? It is nothing more than the collective wisdom of the masses, aggregated and packaged in the way that others present things.

Our job in producing marketing content is to make the case for you and tell the world what’s special about who you are, what you know and what you do. How long would we last as your marketing content firm if we sat down with you and said, “Our strategy is to make you sound exactly like everyone else”?

We wouldn’t last long, nor should we.

Yet that’s exactly what AI does. The research it does tells you the same thing it tells everyone else. The “writing” it does sounds exactly the same as it sounds for everyone else.

Why would you want that? Because it’s easy? Because it’s fast? Because it’s free? (It’s actually not free, but that’s another topic for another day.)

Our role is to present you to the market in a way that will make you stand out.

Another client recently gave us a very nice compliment, noting that when we write profiles of their team members, we actually interview them, find out unique things about them and use that information to write interesting, engaging profiles.

He said: “Other content firms we worked with just looked at their resumes and put together a few bullet points.”

Of course. Because we’re trying to show your market that you’re special. If you really want to trust an imperative like that to a soulless machine that can be convinced the sky is green if it hears enough people say so, then we wish you well.

But we promise you this: North Star will really understand you, and what we write on your behalf will reflect that.

We have news to share! Nothing earth-shaking, but good stuff, and then again do you really want the earth to shake? If it does, we don’t want to be responsible for it.

But we’ll take responsibility for this:

The Royal Oak Downtown Development Authority worked out a deal with Angie to do several months of special features through our client Today Magazines, where Angie serves as editor in chief.

The Detroit Tigers have renewed their agreement with Michelle for her to return for a third season as host of Sunday Kids Day. (Seems like the most obvious decision ever to us, but hey. Maybe the Tigers will start taking our advice on pitching changes.) If you attend any Sunday home game, you can catch Michelle and the rest of the Party Patrol starting about 90 minutes before game time next to the Big Cat Court.

Now in his eighteenth year writing for DBusiness Magazine, Dan had the opportunity to write 10 of this year’s 30 In Their 30s profiles. The likely publication date for the annual 30 In Their 30s feature is May.

Michelle had a wonderful experience attending the Christian Business Networking event in Troy on February 27. Among those she connected with were a consultant who helps people connect to God in the course or running their businesses, and a wildlife trapper who is committed to always keeping the animals alive.

Not all writing requires a keyboard. Several clients have recently taken advantage of our help handwriting notes to their clients, connections and networks. People receive these notes via something called the United States Postal Service. It’s pretty retro. And it stands out for the personal touch in a world careening headlong into AI, algorithms and automation.

We’re working through the Gospel of Mark at the moment, and we came to one of the more vexing exchanges between Jesus and Peter in Mark 8:27-33. First, Peter gets an A+ for being the first of the disciples to correctly identify Jesus as the Messiah and the Christ.

But moments later, when Jesus is trying to explain to the disciples that he’s soon going to be killed, Peter rebukes him for saying so, prompting Jesus to respond, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

That cannot have felt very good for Peter, who was probably thinking, Just a minute ago I’m on top of the world because I figure out that you’re the Christ. Now I’m Satan?”

But here’s the thing. Jesus wasn’t saying that Peter is Satan. He was correcting a worldly misconception about the mission of the Messiah. Israel had been under the oppressive hand of other nations for centuries – the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and now the Romans. The expectation of most Israelites was that the Messiah would merely restore Israel to independent nationhood. From that perspective, it would make sense that Jesus being killed was the last thing Peter wanted to see.

But that wasn’t the full mission of the Messiah. It was to free the entire world from the slavery of sin and death, and to open up the possibility of eternal life. Israel’s suffering under the rule of other nations was just an archetype for the real problem – that the world was suffering under the rule of Satan because it had drifted into disobedience to God.

So in saying “Get behind me Satan,” Jesus was rebuking Satan for misdirecting Peter into a wrong understanding of what the Messiah was to do and why.

Eventually, as we see in Acts 2 and Acts 3, Peter comes to understand this very well and teaches it to the others. But he needed a pretty stern correction from Jesus to help him get there.