Need some creative help with 3D type typography in Illustrator

This isn't really a software problem I'm having but more so a creative issue and I don't know where else to turn. 

I'm working on a project and so far have made it here

I followed this tutorial to get the text in that perspective. Basically what I did was created the grey platform, and cut up the top into three sections for each word to fit. 

I typed out the words and selected object, envelop distort, make with to pobject. I eventually got to the first image above. But somethings bothering me.  The M and the N (first and last letters in million) are too squished horizontally and by my eye I think they should be much wider and take up more space than the middle letters. I would also like to have less space between the letters in "making" and "the". Basically I want to stretch the letters horizontally, independently, but still retain the perspective. 

Problem is I don't know how to do that and have been trying different methods to do so. After getting the words into perspective I created outlines of them so they were no longer text objects. So then I could freely manipulate the shapes but the perspective wouldn't "stick" and I would maybe have to eyeball where the points and angles of each letter should go in perspective. 

One thing I just tried that I was sure would work was to break up the perspective box into individual spaces and do the process for each letter individually.

but when I do, the letters are wacky

So now I'm stuck and don't know the easiest way to go about this. It seems like a simple enough problem. But I don't have the design accumen to hand draw serif text in perspective and then copy it in illustrator. Maybe I'll just suck it up and go with what I have now.

If anyone is to have any ideas and would like me to provide some files, I can do so. 

Thanks for reading!