Welcome to Issue 32 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to use storytelling to grow your brand. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

​

Hello Reader,

It was my last day in Oaxaca and I was thumbing through racks of the most gorgeous, hand-sewn dresses in this little side-street boutique, thinking to myself:

I could squeeze just one more thing into my little salchicha of a suitcase, right?

It was the week before Christmas, and my honey and I were indulging in a fancy-free adult holiday while our kids hung out at home with their respective co-parents. (This is the upside of divorce.)

Our agenda included eating, drinking, dancing, exploring, and shopping.

And boy did we shop.

I’d argue that it’s impossible not to in Oaxaca—especially during the holidays when artisans from surrounding villages flood the city’s markets to sell their crafts.

On a mission to stock up on one-of-a-kind gifts, we bargained for bed linens, pillowcases, scarves, jewelry, journals, food, home decor—you name it.

We knew full well we were about to dominate holiday gift-giving while also setting ourselves up for a lifetime of very high expectations. (Because once you hand someone a naturally dyed, handwoven textile straight from an Oaxacan artisan, there’s no going back to a candle from Target.)

What struck me was how everything was unique and imperfect, made mostly by hand and carrying a story. It made it hard to choose what to take and what to leave.

So, by the time I reached this final boutique, I was mostly just browsing.

The shopkeeper, seeing my hesitation, asked, “Can’t decide?”

“Yes. But also, more like can’t fit anything more in my bag,” I laughed.

I commented on how all the stuff in Oaxaca is so beautiful and well-made. She agreed, adding that since moving to the area, she stopped buying things from big stores.

“All my things now have soul,” she said.

"That's what it is," I agreed.

Stuff that lasts. Stuff with meaning. Stuff with soul.

A Good Question

If we can feel this kind of connection to what we buy, why are we settling for anything less in what we say and share?

In case you missed it last week, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, excitedly shared that his company has trained a new model of ChatGPT that’s “good” at creative writing.

This is the first time, Altman said, that he’s been “really struck by something written by AI.” He then shared the output from this prompt: Create a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.

​You can read Chat's essay here. (Go on, I’ll wait....)

I don’t know about you, but I read halfway through this "good" essay on grief and stopped. Not because it's poorly written, but because I know it's created by something that can't feel or understand grief.

The words are right, the descriptions vivid, and the structure sound(ish). But ultimately?

It’s completely hollow.

Just like the mass-produced, easy-to-replace shit you buy at Target, it has no soul and no connection to a feeling human on the other side.

Now, I understand that we all need convenience and ease. And I understand that not everyone has the luxury of resources or time to fly to Oaxaca to buy handmade goods.

But efficiently made stuff is one thing. Efficiently made content that gives us meaning and creates a connection with another being is another.

As one outraged commentator on Altman's post pointed out:

This is the stuff that makes us feel alive.

In our push to make things more efficient, we're making them more meaningless. In business, especially, we're pushed to prioritize efficiency over emotion, speed over soul, and scale over substance.

But just like the Target home goods aisle, where everything is mass-produced and totally replaceable, our algorithm-churned viral content—optimized for reach but devoid of resonance—is replaceable, too.

So, what if instead of using AI to build our brands faster, we used it to help us go deeper?

A Good Takeaway

I think the biggest issue we can all agree on is that by using AI to write for us we're asking it to think for us. And ultimately, that's not the right use case.

As an eternal optimist, I believe we have a huge opportunity to use these amazing technologies to help us become more connected to ourselves and the world around us. And I know I'm not alone here.

Brand strategist Jasmin Bina recently shared an idea that I can’t stop thinking about:

We’re living through peak complexity right now, she argues, and it’s all about to change. AI won’t just replace tasks—it’ll relieve our cognitive overload so we can spend more time reflecting, questioning, and creating from a deeper place.

In other words, AI could give us more room to be more human.

This, of course, has always been the promise of technology. But it feels different this time. And, in my work, I already see how.

AI helps synthesize client calls, distill long-form content into bite-sized insights, and connect seemingly unrelated ideas into fresh perspectives. In my writing, I use it to help make my ideas clearer, more focused, and (sometimes) funnier.

When it comes to telling my stories, I don’t use it to write them—I use it to help me find them. In other words: I use it as a tool for self-reflection and connection.

I start by picking a struggle that my audience wrestles with, then prompting the AI to prompt me with reflective questions that mine for stories of times I felt the same. I then use those questions to find emotional threads, patterns, and hidden memories.

Ultimately, the goal is to explore what's beneath the surface so that I'm not spitting out surface-level stuff along with the rest of the internet.

If you want a starting point to do the same, I love these AI prompts from Patrice Potlzer:

1. In your AI of choice, start with this prompt:

2. Then go deeper:

3. Then ask:

The point is that we can all use AI to make our writing more human and more layered, not less.

Whether it's a dress sewn by hand in a small Oaxacan village or a story shaped by your own lived experience, what's still true is that things that move us aren't perfect or efficient—they're personal.

They carry fingerprints. Perspective. Soul. And that's not something you can automate, no matter how advanced the tools become.

Use the tech. Let it help. But don’t let it replace the human in your storytelling.

Because we feel the stories with no soul. And we skip to the end.

A Few Good Resources

1. Here's another great AI prompt for processing and self-reflection.
2. Tara McMullin sees all this soulless stuff as a product of standardization.
3. What else the future holds is absolutely mindblowing. In case you missed it, Amy Webb's talk at SXSW is now available.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee