Episode 24
How Solo Coaches are Using AI to Show Up More & Grow Faster
Feeling like it's impossible to do everything in your business by yourself? You’re not wrong. Unless you're using AI, of course. In this episode of The Solo Coach Podcast, we’re diving into why AI isn’t the enemy of your creativity, it’s your new second brain.
If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, stuck in business growth paralysis, or burned out from doing it all, this episode is for you. We’ll explore:
● How to use AI without sounding like everyone else
● The 5 ways Michelle uses AI weekly in her coaching business
● Why AI helps you be more you, not less
As a solo coach who’s doing it all (or trying to), this episode will empower you to protect your energy, amplify your voice, and finally create consistency that leads to growth.
What You’ll Learn:
● Why it's so important to train AI to sound like you
● The difference between default AI and strategic AI use
● How to repurpose, plan, and publish content with 80% less effort
Resources Mentioned:
● Join the waitlist for Coach Growth Lab – get 50% off
● Subscribe to Michelle's newsletter for solo coaches
● Learn how Michelle is growing her list to 4,000 subs without paid ads on Coach Diaries
Support the Show:
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review! Your feedback helps other solo coaches discover the show and grow their businesses with ease.
Visit the ElevatedMind website for more resources.
Transcript
This is the Solo Coach podcast, where it's all about everything you need
Speaker:to build your business solo.
Speaker:Look, building a business alone can feel almost impossible.
Speaker:There's just so much to get done.
Speaker:That's just your DAO talking.
Speaker:I'm Michelle Sara, and I'm here to talk you through building a one-woman
Speaker:coaching business from the ground up.
Speaker:I'm talking marketing, time-saving systems, AI shortcuts, client attraction,
Speaker:energy, and belief, all to help you find your way no matter your age,
Speaker:stage, or starting point. Ready?
Speaker:Let's get going.
Speaker:Let's get something out of the way right now.
Speaker:Ai isn't the problem.
Speaker:Doing everything in your business yourself, that is a
Speaker:problem, especially today.
Speaker:I know everyone's using AI, right?
Speaker:And yes, it is becoming a constant presence in our
Speaker:everyday lives for most people.
Speaker:If you're not using AI yet, just stick with me here.
Speaker:But trying to be a coach, a copywriter, a strategist, an editor, a content
Speaker:repurposer, a visibility expert, the sales team, and still having a
Speaker:life, that's just too much.
Speaker:Here's the thing, especially today, we are seeing a rise in more and more one-person
Speaker:companies, one-person businesses that are growing with the assistance
Speaker:of technology, AI included.
Speaker:And that's only going to get more and more prevalent.
Speaker:So that's why I encourage to stick with me and listen in.
Speaker:No, AI is not going to replace you, nor is it going to build your business for you.
Speaker:You still have a part in that despite what you hear out there.
Speaker:It's not going to make you sound bland and boring or like everyone else
Speaker:if you know how to train it.
Speaker:It can give you your time and energy back and maybe even your sanity back.
Speaker:But let's dig in a little bit deeper.
Speaker:For coaches like us, this makes a massive difference because we We are
Speaker:solo coaches or solopreneurs.
Speaker:We are doing pretty much everything ourselves.
Speaker:You may have a VA, an assistant that helps you here and there.
Speaker:But for the most part, all of the hats that I mentioned earlier, they're yours.
Speaker:Why are coaches finally saying yes to AI and why you might want to, too?
Speaker:If you're juggling clients and writing content from scratch every week and still
Speaker:trying to figure out what to post on LinkedIn, you don't need more pressure.
Speaker:Or maybe you don't have clients yet, but you're still trying to get
Speaker:all of this content created.
Speaker:Everything that you know helps to give you and gain you visibility.
Speaker:And in turn, clients, you need some support.
Speaker:If you're like most coaches I work with, you're doing everything yourself.
Speaker:As I said, you're writing content, you're showing up on social, you're sending out
Speaker:emails, you're creating offers, you're delivering sessions.
Speaker:You are doing all of this and trying to maintain some sense of balance.
Speaker:And the reality is for a lot of coaches, you have these sprints, where you can push
Speaker:and you do all of this over and over again, and then you just start to
Speaker:wear thin and you start to burn out.
Speaker:And then maybe you get this resurgence of energy and you start again
Speaker:and you have another sprint.
Speaker:But for the long haul, it isn't sustainable.
Speaker:For full transparency, I have one tech VA who helps me from time to time.
Speaker:Although a lot of that stuff, I either have done myself or still do myself.
Speaker:For where you are right now, and is whether you are a brand new coach or
Speaker:you've been at it for one to three years or even longer, just know
Speaker:that you don't need a team.
Speaker:You can do this.
Speaker:You can do this with the help of AI.
Speaker:Back to my non-human team.
Speaker:There's no way that I could do everything that I do without help.
Speaker:You could keep trying to do it all manually, but here's what I have figured
Speaker:out through a whole lot of trial and error.
Speaker:You don't need a bigger team, you need a better system.
Speaker:And AI is the smartest, simplest system you'll ever use.
Speaker:It doesn't need time off.
Speaker:It doesn't overthink like me.
Speaker:And your vision, that's where you add to AI.
Speaker:It does need direction, and that's why it's so important for you to
Speaker:know how to use AI properly.
Speaker:Ai is great, but it can also be very damaging if you're not careful.
Speaker:And here's what I mean by that.
Speaker:If you are just scratching the surface with AI, you are going in and having it
Speaker:right for you without any specific training around writing in your voice, and
Speaker:it is the generic default voice that you get from, say, ChatGPT or maybe even
Speaker:Claude, then we realize that as an audience, we are more and more and more
Speaker:becoming aware of what that is, what that looks like.
Speaker:We can tell the patterns.
Speaker:You can feel that there's just this sense of something missing.
Speaker:When you feed it, your tone and your phrases and your way of talking about the
Speaker:work, like your truth-tellingness, your clarity-findingness, like my Michelleisms,
Speaker:it can sound like you, or maybe darn close, right?
Speaker:It may not be perfect, but it's close enough that it saves you hours and it
Speaker:gives you a starting point and helps you show up more often with less energy drain
Speaker:and it helps you to be more consistent.
Speaker:Again, the goal here with AI is that it does 80% of the heavy lifting.
Speaker:You're still contributing.
Speaker:You're still the final say.
Speaker:We'll get into that more in a moment.
Speaker:Let's address the fear most coaches have when they're thinking about
Speaker:using AI in their business.
Speaker:But for example, using AI, I write content.
Speaker:So what if it doesn't sound like me?
Speaker:What if everyone knows it's AI written?
Speaker:I don't know how to get it to do what I want.
Speaker:If people know I'm using AI, won't they see me as a fraud?
Speaker:And aren't I cheating?
Speaker:Well, I've had the same feelings.
Speaker:But again, let me tell you what I've learned in this process.
Speaker:I've built my entire business on voice, mine and my clients, in helping
Speaker:coaches like you find yours.
Speaker:So I get the resistance.
Speaker:I mean, I've been a copywriter for over 15 years.
Speaker:Totally valid. It's the last thing any of us wants.
Speaker:If you've been at it a while, you don't want to risk damaging what
Speaker:you've already created.
Speaker:If you're brand new, how will you stand out?
Speaker:If everyone's using AI and you all sound the same, it's like the same
Speaker:problem, just a different source.
Speaker:How do we stand out in our business and not sound like every
Speaker:other coach out there? Well, now we have AI to add to it, right?
Speaker:And that default generic AI voice.
Speaker:So again, how do we stand out and not sound like everybody else at this point?
Speaker:When you take the time to teach AI how you speak, how you think, and how you coach,
Speaker:it becomes a powerful extension of your mind, and it doesn't replace it.
Speaker:It extends and expands your mind.
Speaker:It's like having a second brain.
Speaker:And it doesn't take forever to do.
Speaker:The thing is, You have to start now.
Speaker:And with every single interaction, which I recommend you do daily, even if it's just
Speaker:practicing and brainstorming, you train it more.
Speaker:It only gets better with time.
Speaker:So again, that's why it's so important.
Speaker:If you're not already using AI or at least just experimenting with
Speaker:it, you need to start now.
Speaker:Think of AI as your team member who does 80% of the heavy lifting, and you're still
Speaker:the visionary, you're still the boss, you're still the person who refines and
Speaker:has the final Let me share with you five ways that I use AI in my coaching
Speaker:business every single week.
Speaker:No, this isn't theoretical.
Speaker:I use AI every single day in my own business, and it hasn't
Speaker:diluted my voice at all.
Speaker:Here's what it helps me do.
Speaker:I can turn a messy brain up into a first draft.
Speaker:This is a simple use, but it's a really important one because how long have you
Speaker:sat trying to get an idea down on the paper and flushed out?
Speaker:Whether it's an idea for an email for an article or a video, whatever that is.
Speaker:How long has that taken you?
Speaker:I'll type or voice note a stream of thoughts, half coherent sometimes,
Speaker:sometimes even rantee, and AI helps me shape it into a blog post,
Speaker:an email or offer outline.
Speaker:I still edit the heck out of it, usually, but the starting from
Speaker:zero point, that's gone.
Speaker:At this point, too, because I use it so much and it has learned so much, that
Speaker:amount of editing is getting less and less and less.
Speaker:But I still have the final say.
Speaker:Now, I can take a single article that AI has helped me to write, and I can
Speaker:repurpose it into a million different things.
Speaker:Maybe not a million, but it feels like a million different things often.
Speaker:This is the second way that I use it is to repurpose everything
Speaker:without doing everything.
Speaker:A single article becomes a newsletter outline, it becomes a podcast episode, it
Speaker:becomes emails for the week, it becomes a YouTube video script-ish.
Speaker:I'm not manually rewrites I'm writing every version.
Speaker:I'm feeding it through my system with AI doing the heavy lifting.
Speaker:Now, the third thing is creating coaching tools and resources.
Speaker:This is pretty big because this is something, one of the first things that
Speaker:really dawned on me as I began to train as an AI operator as well as a conversation
Speaker:design architect, which those titles aren't important to you.
Speaker:But my reasons for doing it is because the point that I realized AI isn't going
Speaker:anywhere and how important it to business growth.
Speaker:One of the things I realized was that all the tools, all the things that I've had in
Speaker:my head that I have wanted to create for clients based on my expertise, I can
Speaker:now create very quickly, very easily.
Speaker:Creating coaching tools and resources.
Speaker:If you need a workbook, do you need a client assessment?
Speaker:How about an exercise?
Speaker:Ai helps me run frameworks I already use and turn them into beautiful
Speaker:client-facing tools like templates.
Speaker:I keep the soul in it, right? That's me.
Speaker:That's my part in it.
Speaker:Ai adds the scaffolding.
Speaker:That helps me to be consistent because, hey, I am only human.
Speaker:I forget things, too.
Speaker:I get busy, too.
Speaker:I mean, that's just the nature of it.
Speaker:The great thing is, is my second brain, AI, doesn't have any of those problems.
Speaker:Number four, brainstorm, offer names, hooks, and email subjects.
Speaker:Again, just really helps me to plug in my frameworks, my strategy, my approach, and
Speaker:then use it over and over again in a split second.
Speaker:So that is invaluable.
Speaker:Number five, plan my content like a strategist without
Speaker:feeling like a marketer.
Speaker:So I give AI the offer I'm promoting, who I'm talking to, hello, client persona,
Speaker:which is something else we can really use AI for.
Speaker:And the message I want to lead with, even if it's a month's worth of content, it can
Speaker:all be created with my client personas, my ideal client in mind, which is huge.
Speaker:Number six, mapping out content plans, creating my marketing calendar.
Speaker:Ai helps me think like a strategist.
Speaker:I feed it my offer.
Speaker:Again, it already knows my audience and my goals and can put it
Speaker:all together in seconds.
Speaker:I literally just mapped out 90 days.
Speaker:This isn't a content plan or a marketing plan, but 90 days because I have
Speaker:a massive amount of client projects and marketing and new launches and even
Speaker:training to do in the next 90 days.
Speaker:So I have that mapped out day by day in two hour blocks.
Speaker:So all I have to do is look look at my schedule for today and what's on my plate
Speaker:and just go buy each block and get it done.
Speaker:Takes a whole lot of mental energy back and a whole lot of stuff out of my brain
Speaker:so that I can actually show up It wouldn't be that momentum force in my business.
Speaker:I know I can hear you now.
Speaker:You say it all sounds great, but I'm not a master designer.
Speaker:I don't know all of these things.
Speaker:And doesn't using AI feel like less personal?
Speaker:Well, only if you let it feel less personal.
Speaker:Again, you are still the boss.
Speaker:You still have the final say.
Speaker:You should be interjecting your expertise, your knowledge, your wisdom, your style,
Speaker:your voice, your uniqueness, and then finetuning it.
Speaker:It does not have to feel impersonal or robotic or bland.
Speaker:It doesn't have to.
Speaker:You can train it to create so much better.
Speaker:Now, you're going act as the trainer, the final say, the master designer.
Speaker:You just have a second brain now that can work faster than you and learn
Speaker:to be very much like you.
Speaker:As I have dug deeper into using AI, teaching how to work with AI, and more,
Speaker:I've discovered that coaches who struggle with A usually follow into two camps.
Speaker:They're using it, but the out-of-the-box versions, that default version I was
Speaker:talking about, and they don't train it.
Speaker:Other than maybe saying who audience is and what their offer is.
Speaker:The other one is that they think it's cheating and therefore use it sparingly.
Speaker:Let me just shed some light on this for you.
Speaker:There are companies like Shopify who are now requiring that every employee
Speaker:use AI in their day-to-day job.
Speaker:We are using AI everywhere, and we know we are using AI everywhere.
Speaker:So let go of any concern or fear that it's cheating and you don't want anyone
Speaker:to know that you're using AI.
Speaker:It's the opposite now.
Speaker:It's like, what?
Speaker:You're not using AI? Are you crazy?
Speaker:So let go of that if in fact that is something that is on your mind.
Speaker:As far as using it, the out-of-the-box version, that default version, which is
Speaker:very bland and is easily perceived as AI written and can be damaging to you and
Speaker:your business and your brand, then it's your responsibility to learn how
Speaker:to train AI to be more like you.
Speaker:Whether it is your expertise, your wisdom, your frameworks, the structures you use,
Speaker:the systems you use, the way you write, doesn't matter.
Speaker:It is now your responsibility to train it.
Speaker:Here's what I know.
Speaker:The coaches who learn how to train AI to match their voice, and as I said, bring in
Speaker:their own knowledge and expertise, frameworks, et cetera.
Speaker:They create more content more consistently without burning out.
Speaker:They're showing up more, they're getting more visibility, and they're
Speaker:getting more clients.
Speaker:They sell more because they're not stuck in what do I say mode, right?
Speaker:They reach more people because they can show up across platforms without
Speaker:adding hours to their week.
Speaker:They're still writing, they're still showing up, and they're still connecting.
Speaker:They just have a super smart and affordable team now, a nonhuman team.
Speaker:So it's you times 10.
Speaker:And using AI doesn't have to be something that dulls your creativity.
Speaker:It actually should be something that enhances your creativity.
Speaker:And that comes through understanding exactly how to use AI, how to train it.
Speaker:Remember, you're in control with AI.
Speaker:A hundred % believe you're actually freeing up your creativity.
Speaker:This is what has happened for me.
Speaker:You can do all the things you wanted to do but didn't have the time or bandwidth, or
Speaker:maybe even the actual know-how, you can learn things through AI's assistance
Speaker:10 times faster now, if not more.
Speaker:When you use AI write, it helps you to write faster, repurpose smarter, be more
Speaker:visible, and protect your precious, precious, precious mental energy.
Speaker:So you can focus on coaching, creating, and taking that vision that's always
Speaker:been in your head and making it real.
Speaker:If you've been feeling overwhelmed trying to do it all or stuck in
Speaker:visibility paralysis, AI can help.
Speaker:Not by doing all the work for you necessarily, a lot of it though, but also
Speaker:by doing the heavy lifting and working side by side with you.
Speaker:You just have to know how to use it right, or as I say, use it in
Speaker:a growth-driven way.
Speaker:Honestly, it's no longer a matter of if AI will become a part of your day-to-day,
Speaker:it's a matter of if you'll take charge and leverage it the right way to grow faster.
Speaker:I'm launching something called the Coach Growth Lab in July.
Speaker:We're in 2025.
Speaker:And inside members will be able to join me for a marketing, what's working for
Speaker:coaches now call with Q&A, an AI lab where we will build and learn
Speaker:together, and a co-working session that's strictly for implementation.
Speaker:So you're going to get the training on marketing and on learning
Speaker:what's working for coaches now.
Speaker:You're going to learn how to use AI, how to train AI and build live.
Speaker:And you are going to have an opportunity to show up and work together with others
Speaker:who are working on very similar goals and just have something there
Speaker:to help you get consistent.
Speaker:We are launching this next month, so I'm inviting you, if this is of interest to
Speaker:you at all, if you're just curious to see what it ends up becoming,
Speaker:to join the waitlist.
Speaker:The link is below.
Speaker:What happens when you join the waitlist is if you're on that waitlist before we
Speaker:launch, you get a 50% off discount code that you'll be able to use every single
Speaker:month for as long as you're a member.
Speaker:So go ahead and get on the list because there's no obligation, but at least you
Speaker:won't miss out on the discount code if you decide that you do want to join.
Speaker:Hey, thanks so much for joining me for the Solo Coach podcast.
Speaker:It means so much to me that someone out there is listening.
Speaker:Now, if you know it's time to do something different about your business, and you
Speaker:know if it is, consider joining me for my Happy and Successful Business Mastermind,
Speaker:where you can get clarity, support, and a plan.
Speaker:I'll leave details in the notes below.
Speaker:I also want to share a free resource for you.
Speaker:If you haven't already subscribed to my newsletter, Find Coaching
Speaker:Clients, I encourage you to do so.
Speaker:I'll deliver to your inbox tips and strategies that make finding coaching
Speaker:clients for your business much easier.
Speaker:I'll see you next time.
