Don’t fear AI tools — use them to build the life you actually want

When I started using AI, everything changed: my output, my confidence, my career.

I went from working full-time and building content after hours to landing features in Fortune and CNBC, reaching over 140 million people on LinkedIn, and building a business that allows me to do the work I care about — on my terms.

I believe in the power of AI so much, it’s now my mission to help other women understand and use it to build the life and career they dream of. Here’s what trends I’m seeing, especially as it relates to Gen Zers and women in the workplace, and the five AI rules I live by.

The Rise of Accessible Entrepreneurship

I know that a lot of marketers worry about AI tools and how they might impact their careers. But I think there’s a deeper, more significant shift happening.

AI is democratizing access. Now, anyone can build a life they really love, without the gatekeeping. You don’t need insider connections to land a feature or start a business. You don’t even need a team. If you have a strong voice and a clear mission, AI can help you go from idea to execution.

Anyone with a strong voice and a story to tell can build an audience and a business from their laptop.

Let’s say you wanted to start a haircut business. You could literally ask ChatGPT:

• “Help me create a brand strategy, marketing plan, and client onboarding flow for an at-home haircut business for Gen Z women.”

It’ll give you a full outline for a brand strategy, a marketing plan, and more. From there, you can refine the brand voice, design assets with tools like Midjourney or Canva, and generate custom onboarding emails.

In the past, there used to be a big barrier to entry to start a business. You had to have insider knowledge about the finance/accounting piece, or perhaps you didn’t know about marketing and client management. But now AI can help you solve the gaps in knowledge you may have. (Not bad for $20 per month!)

I love the idea of AI leveling the playing field, where anyone who has a good idea can turn that idea into a business or a brand.

We’re in a moment right now where everyone can be a creator, and that’s so exciting to me. Because when you create, you increase your exposure to opportunities. And the more people who have access to those opportunities, the more we innovate as a society.

That’s what AI is doing. It’s removing the friction between idea and execution.

How I Left Corporate and Became a Solopreneur — Thanks to AI

I always knew I was entrepreneurial. But until recently, there were just too many friction points between my ideas and making them real. It felt like I’d always need more time, more budget, or more help.

AI changed that. Suddenly, my nights and weekends became my launchpad. I’d use:

• ChatGPT for brainstorming and strategy.
• Claude for writing support.
• Apollo to find and contact the right people.

So yes, AI literally empowered me to put myself out there and carve my own path. It allowed me to lean into living a more aligned life, and that’s exactly what I want to help other women do too.

Today, I focus on helping women leverage AI to build powerful personal brands around the ideas they care about. I do this through educational content, tech partnerships, workshops, and 1:1 consulting.

It all started with one stat: Gen Z men are 25% more likely to use AI tools than Gen Z women.

It may not sound like much, but it was jarring for me. If young women aren’t using these tools, the gender wage gap — which already spans over 100 years — will only widen. I knew I had to try and fix this.

My Advice for Embracing AI

1. Don’t find a niche. Find a mission.

One of the most helpful ways you can use AI is to craft your own unique message. Instead of trying to “find a niche,” you need to find a mission.

If you find a mission, like climate change or closing the wage gap, then you can become someone people want to rally behind. When AI can handle the grunt work, what you care about becomes your competitive edge.

If you’re a creator or marketer, can you think of something that you care about or a problem you want to fix? Maybe it’s helping women become financially independent or making mental health support more accessible to Gen Z.

Whatever it is, let that mission become the lens for everything you create — from your content to your products to your cold emails.

This is also where I think the future of work is heading, towards more purpose-driven work. (Which is truly a win-win situation!)

2. Use AI to become your own PR team.

This is one of my favorite ways to use AI, and something I think more people should be doing.

With the tools we have now, you don’t have to wait to be discovered. You can literally act like your own PR team. You can research the exact people you need to reach, draft personalized outreach, and actually get results.

Here’s how I do it:

• I use tools like Claude or ChatGPT to do deep research on the top leaders or journalists in my space.
• Then I use Apollo to get their contact info.
• And I’ll have the AI help me write a thoughtful, specific message to that person — one that feels personal, not robotic.

I’ve used this exact workflow to get features in magazines like Fortune and CNBC. Instead of waiting to be discovered, I’ve learned how to reverse-engineer the algorithm.

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I created content referencing top articles, tagged the journalist, and got on their radar. That visibility led to real connections and real opportunities.

So much of this used to be manual, like digging through LinkedIn Sales Navigator or cold emailing from scratch. Now, you can ask AI:

• “Who are the top 5 journalists covering women in AI and entrepreneurship?”
• “What are they writing about lately?”
• “Help me draft an email that connects my work to theirs.”

It’s changed the way I think about outreach and visibility.

3. Send the boldest emails of your life.

I have a rule: If the email doesn’t make my palms sweat, it’s not bold enough.

When I say bold, I mean both in terms of the person you’re reaching out to and the thing you’re asking them.

In the past, sales has been a numbers game, but now outreach is about personalization. AI is helping me create personalized emails at scale.

AI has helped me write these big, bold, audacious emails — and I’ve been shocked to see what people will say yes to. It’s helped me coin what I call the silver platter method. Essentially, with every outreach, my goal is to present an opportunity on a silver platter, so it’s impossible to say no to.

So instead of sending a vague message and hoping for a follow-up call, I lay it all out:

• What the collaboration or pitch looks like.
• What’s in it for them.
• How I’ll make it easy.

I want it to feel like an easy yes on their end. This approach has landed me podcast invites, speaking gigs, complimentary hotel stays, press features, and opened doors I didn’t think were accessible. And the truth is, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to pitch half of those ideas if I didn’t have AI helping me shape and refine the message.

4. Create custom tools for different goals.

If you’re just using AI for one-off prompts, you’re missing the insane value it can offer you as a solopreneur. I’ve learned to create custom projects for literally everything in my business. I’ve even got a GPT trained just on my LinkedIn content. So when I need post ideas, headline tests, or feedback on a draft, I can go straight to that.

I have another one trained on my business backend — kind of like an assistant that knows my tone, my offers, my goals. I’ll ask it questions like,

• “What’s a better way to explain this offer?”
• “Can you draft a checklist I can give a client?”

You can do the same with marketing, sales, or client work. The possibilities are endless.

These tools are powerful when you feed them the right context. And the more you use them, the better they get. You’re essentially building a support system without hiring a team.

What’s so cool to me is that AI gets better the more context it has. So the more you train these tools on your business — your values, your voice, your systems — the more personalized and useful they become.

5. Use AI to build confidence, not just content.

When you’re building something new as a solopreneur, it’s easy to get insecure or question what you’re doing. Sometimes, I’ll second-guess an idea and whether it’s something worth pursuing.

I have a custom GPT that knows my mission and my story. It knows me on a good day and knows me on bad days when I might need a pep talk. Sometimes, the difference between having the confidence to share a certain post is going to ChatGPT with a prompt like “Hey ChatGPT, I’m sad today. Should I still post this?”

And it’ll respond, “Yeah, you’re doing great. You’re just in your head right now. You should post that; it’s great.”

I also see a lot of Gen Z women who are starting off their careers and feel a confidence gap. AI can be so helpful in giving you the confidence that you should be sharing your stories and expertise.

Why I Believe This Is the Moment to Build — and AI Can Help You Do It

One of my favorite things about AI is what it makes possible, especially for people who’ve traditionally been left out of the conversation. More people are writing newsletters on SubStack, posting on LinkedIn, and building communities around the issues they care about. AI can help them create the content or free up their time so they can invest more in their area of interest.

If you’re mission-driven, if you’ve got something to say, if you’re ready to show up — AI can help you do that faster, louder, and with more clarity than ever. Instead of fearing how AI might change the marketing world as you know it, I hope you feel empowered to use it to build a business that you truly love.

My whole journey, from corporate to solopreneur, has been driven by three things:

• A belief in myself.
• A mission I care deeply about.
• And smart, consistent use of AI tools to help me go further.

And now I want that for more women, more Gen Z leaders, more underestimated creators. You can either sit on the sidelines while other people run with these tools … or you can start using them to build something of your own — something that actually reflects your values, your story, and your vision.