#106: How 30+ Business Owners Are Actually Using AI in 2026 (Without Losing Themselves)

After spending time with over 30 brilliant business owners at the Aligned AI Summit, it's time for me to spill the beans on the biggest ways people are using AI in 2026 to protect our voice, protect our capacity, and keep our audience's trust. It's about more than pumping out content faster - it's about better systems that keep us human. There were some disagreements too, which I'll share as we go.I’m sharing my biggest lessons from the summit, from putting our unique voice and lived experience first, to building AI systems that take care of the repetitive grunt work and support us when our capacity is low. It’s about staying firmly in the director’s seat: letting AI help with the middle while we bring the ideas, discernment and human magic at the beginning and end. I’m also talking about boundaries, transparency and deciding what we do - and don’t - want AI to touch. Because there isn’t one correct way to use these tools, and we don’t need to keep up with every new development. We can focus instead on where AI genuinely saves us time and energy, while protecting the expertise, trust and connection that make our businesses ours. 🎧 Tune in to hear: Keeping your unique voice human-first  Building AI systems for the repetitive grunt work  Supporting your capacity on harder days  Setting boundaries around what AI touches  Using AI without trying to keep up with everything💭 [01:33] "The people using AI the best are not necessarily the ones using it to publish the most. It's actually about doing things for us so that we have space for the stuff that makes us unique."💭 [03:44] "You can never make up for the gap, which is your personal experience, your unique voice."💭 [09:08] "But you are always the director. You're the visionary."🔗 Links Mentioned:Aligned AI Lab (join on a free 7-day trial)Wispr Flow (affiliate link)The Wispr Flow link above is an affiliate link, which means I'll earn a commission if you sign up. Costs you nothing extra.QUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

I know how to write emails. Emails are literally my thing, and yet sitting down every single week, starting from nothing, and trying to stick to a consistent newsletter-style email felt so big for me that I just didn't do it for so long. What finally changed wasn't just handing off all my writing to AI or being more disciplined. It was making a decision and setting up a system with AI that now makes writing these emails fun and, importantly, consistent.In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes of the AI email system that’s made such a difference for me. From deciding on a repeatable shape for my newsletter to brain-dumping everything I need to promote and letting AI hold the bigger picture, it’s helped me spend less energy making the same decisions over and over again.And this isn’t about AI doing all the writing for me. It’s about creating flexible systems that support the way I actually work, make my marketing feel less overwhelming, and help me stay consistent even when plans change.🎧 Tune in to hear:My repeatable weekly newsletter structureHow I trained AI on my email systemTurning messy brain dumps into an email planUsing AI to reduce decision fatigueCreating flexible AI skills for recurring marketing tasks💭[02:08] "So much of the stuff I struggle with, so much of the stuff I procrastinate on or that takes me a long time or that feels hard, comes down to just making decisions over and over again, which is really, really hard, especially for neurodivergent brains."💭[06:11]  "The great thing about brain dumping is that you don't actually have to be organized and get it all right when you say it out loud. You don't have to say it all in the right order. What will happen is that the AI will repeat it back to you and actually make sense of it and put it all into the right order."💭 [13:04] "And honestly, so much of what is helping me to be more consistent is having these defined skills set up with AI. I make a decision once and then repeat the process every time. These AI systems have helped me be more consistent with my marketing than anything else." 🔗 Links Mentioned:Aligned AI Lab (join by 15 September on a 7-day free trial to lock in the current price)Wispr Flow (affiliate link), the voice tool I use for brain dumpingKit (affiliate link), where I send my emails fromSome of the links above are affiliate links, which means I'll earn a commission if you sign up. Costs you nothing extra.QUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

Most people listening have used AI by now. Far fewer have actually taken something off their plate and left it off - and the gap between those two isn't knowledge. In this episode I'm sharing why we don't hand things over (it's rarely the tech), the thing I avoided for years until I stopped doing it myself, and how to use a week like this to walk away with one real change instead of forty pages of notes.My Aligned AI Summit runs 8–11 September. Free, and it's 30+ people each showing you one thing they stopped doing themselves.👉Free Aligned AI Summit ticketAnd if the summit isn't for you: I'm running the Claude Marketing Roadmap live on Tuesday 8th, 5pm UK / 12pm ET, free!👉The free Claude Marketing Roadmap workshopOr join the Aligned AI Lab free 7-day trial to lock in the lowest price before it rises on September 15th.QUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

I ran my first summit back in 2022, and I told everyone afterwards that I would probably never do it again. And yet, this year I am back to run my seventh event, running more events than I ever have on the same amount of energy, and this episode - where I'm joined by my business buddy Destini Copp - is a behind-the-scenes look at how and why I'm doing it.I’m sharing what’s changed since that first summit, from treating live events as less of a make-or-break moment to building in more systems, support and downtime around them. I also get into why I keep coming back to live events despite the energy they require - including the list growth, connections, sales and unexpected longer-term opportunities they can create. And, of course, AI has changed so much about what’s possible for me. I’m sharing what I now hand over to AI to reduce the grunt work and mental load, what I deliberately keep control of myself, and how I’m creating events in a way that leaves me with more capacity for the human connection that matters most.🎧 Tune in to hear: Why I keep coming back to live events  Planning events around low capacity  What I’m handing over to AI  What I still keep control of myself  The unexpected benefits beyond immediate sales💭 [12:43] "One of the key things that I took away from our conversations was the fact that I just have to decide that it is not as big of a deal in my head as I was making it."💭 [14:30] "The most important thing for me is that I'm the decision maker, in my business, and I know the vision that I have for my events and like what's the transformation I want people to walk away with."💭 [22:00] "We've got the capacity to connect with people, we've got the capacity to be the strategist in our business rather than being stuck in all the grunt work and other stuff."🔗 Links Mentioned:Get your free ticket to the Aligned AI Summit (8–11 September)Upgrade your ticket with the AI Power PackAligned AI Lab (join on a 7-day free trial)My free community Quietly AmbitiousDestini Copp (her AI in Action Summit lands just after mine, so keep an eye out)Skool, where I run my communities and eventsThe Skool link above is an affiliate link, which means I'll earn a commission if you sign up. Costs you nothing extra.QUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

In the last couple of months, I have run an eight-day sale, launched a brand new membership, and built an interactive freebie that has brought in over 500 new subscribers to my list. All of which has also brought in over 15K extra income in a stretch where getting dressed some days was a stretch. And none of that happened because I am super techy, because I'm really not.So in this episode, I'm sharing with you the four ways I use Claude that made all of it possible without having to be a tech expert.I know AI can feel overwhelming, especially if you're running a business with limited time, energy, or capacity. That's why I want to show you a different way of thinking about it. This isn't about becoming an AI expert or chasing every new feature. It's about teaching AI to support your business in a way that feels aligned, practical, and genuinely helpful.I'll walk you through the four stages that have made the biggest difference for me- from getting AI to sound and sell like me, to creating offers, assets, and systems that free up my brain for the creative work only I can do. If you've been feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure where to start, I hope this gives you a clear roadmap for using AI in a way that supports both your business and your wellbeing.🎧 Tune in to hear:Training AI to sound like youTeaching AI to sell your offersCreating pages, emails, and freebiesBuilding interactive business assetsTurning AI into your business brain💭 [02:50] “Throw neurodivergence, chronic fatigue, unpredictable capacity into the mix, it means that I'm always having to find ways of working that don't depend on pushing all the time or always being on.”💭 [06:16] “But what I hadn't realized was how much that AI could do for me that had nothing to do with posting more content.”💭 [14:10] “The amount of freebies I've been testing and offers I've been testing as a result of this setup— I mean, I told you before, it has definitely made me money and massively grown my audience.”🔗 Links Mentioned: Aligned AI Lab (price rising Friday 31st)Free Claude Roadmap Masterclass Replay (also ends Fri 31st)Episode #93: How Claude Ran My Last SaleEpisode #101: The Biggest Mistake With AI Sales Copy (And Why Voice Training Won't Fix It)My free community Quietly AmbitiousQUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

My membership sales page sat on my to-do list for over a year. I knew it wasn't good enough, and I still couldn't make myself start it. Then I started training Claude properly, and it went live in an afternoon.Since then, I've created more than ever. More freebies, more tripwires, an eight-day sale built in hours, and a brand-new membership. I can trace over $15k to the work AI set up for me. My brain hasn't magically changed, I promise you. What changed is that AI made everything more doable and I stopped having to ration ideas.In this episode, I’m sharing how I use AI to reduce overwhelm, carry more of the mental load, and help me test ideas quickly without handing over the heart, strategy, or creativity behind my business. This isn’t about creating more for the sake of it. It’s about removing the barriers that make good ideas feel too big to begin.🎧 Tune in to hear:Reducing executive-function barriers with AITesting ideas quickly and affordablyTurning audience data into stronger offersTraining Claude on your business and brandKeeping your voice, values, and vision💭 [01:16] "Now, I have always had more ideas than I could ever take action on, and I'm sure a lot of you listening to this will relate. And there have always been a lot of offers I've never made a lot of upgrades in my business. I've never gotten around to, and quite honestly, a lot of that has been down to overwhelm and not knowing where to start and everything taking me so long."💭 [10:54] "But adding Claude, trained on my brain and business, into the mix has been the extra element I needed to make it all come together, and for me to really feel like when I open up my computer, I know what I'm working on, so I'm not spinning my wheels. And I get on with it."💭 [15:29] "I do not hand over all of the thinking and all of the decisions and the heart of the messaging to my AI. I use AI as a brainstorming partner and I use it to do the grunt work of like creating the pages and stuff, but I definitely bring my values, my voice, my strategy, and my ideas so that it is still very me."🔗 Links MentionedFree workshop: The Claude Marketing Roadmap for heart-led online offer creatorsAligned AI LabEpisode #93: How Claude Ran My Last SaleMy interactive AI sales kit freebieSoulful Sales SocietyQUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

There's something I've been noticing about marketing copy lately, especially when it's written with AI. And even when AI has been trained really well on our voice. The copy is fine. It's just bland. It's boring. And there's no compelling reason in it to actually buy. So this episode is about how we fix that.Even with a well-trained AI, I've realised that sounding like me isn't the same as knowing what's actually worth saying. AI is brilliant at listing features, but it often misses the emotional connection, the real reason someone would feel excited enough to sign up or buy. In this episode, I'm sharing the simple shifts I make to turn "fine" copy into copy that genuinely connects.Whether you use AI for your writing or prefer to write everything yourself, these ideas will help you create marketing that feels more human, more compelling, and much more likely to inspire action. I'll walk you through the practical filters I use to strengthen every sales page, email, and opt-in page before it goes out into the world.🎧 Tune in to hear:Why voice training isn't enoughFeatures vs compelling reasons to buyFour copy filters that boost conversionsWriting in your buyer's own wordsCreating copy that speaks to skim readers💭 [01:37] "It will probably be costing you sales and you might not even know it."💭 [03:00] "But when you train AI on your voice, you're training it how to write and how it should sound, but you're not trading on what's worth saying."💭 [15:49] "Just remember to always push AI on whether the content and the sales copy is effectively conveying the outcome and the desire and giving people a genuine reason to buy versus just listing boring features."🔗 Links Mentioned:The Aligned AI Lab (price goes up July 21st)The Funnel DiariesStrategic Freebie BuilderThe Soulful Sales SocietyQUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

We've still got half of this year left, and I know how easy it is to get to July, to feel behind, to think about the goals you haven't made happen, to feel like the year is running away from you and that you've missed your window. But you haven't. There is still so much time. The only question is what you're going to make happen with it.In this episode, I'm inviting you to pause before rushing into more doing. Instead of letting pressure, comparison, or the stories in your head shape the rest of your year, I want to help you reconnect with what truly matters, clear the mental clutter, and remember that your next six months don't have to be defined by your last six.I'll guide you through a future self visualisation designed to help you reconnect with possibility, alongside practical encouragement to move forward with clarity and intention. My hope is that you leave feeling grounded, inspired, and ready to recommit to the goals that matter most to you in a way that feels aligned and sustainable.🎧 Tune in to hear:Future self visualisationLetting go of feeling behindRecommitting to meaningful goalsClearing mental clutterAligning mindset with practical action💭 [00:13] ''Making the Most of Your Year: "There is still so much time. The only question is what you're going to make happen with it."💭 [12:19] "It's so easy to give up on things that aren't happening quickly enough, but we have so much time and we are all on a unique journey. You've just got to keep choosing what it is that you want, keep tuning into what it is that you want and keep choosing it again and again."💭 [13:16] "We're going to find the one change that could make the biggest difference to your sales and I've got a few extra levels depending on what your capacity is right now to help you glow up one of your offer sales pages going forward for the rest of 2026."🔗 Links Mentioned:Mid-Year Sales Reset Get It Done Week (free trial offer ends 13 July)Aligned AI LabSoulful Sales Society MembershipQUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

If your offers have felt harder to sell lately, that's not a sign your business is broken or that you need to throw it all out and start over. The stuff that's actually working right now is so much simpler than we make it. In this episode I'm sharing the five shifts I'm seeing in the offers that are actually selling in 2026.I want to reassure you that you don't need to burn everything down or create a whole new business to keep making sales. The online world has changed, but that doesn't mean your offers have stopped being valuable. Small, thoughtful tweaks can make a huge difference, especially when they help your offers feel clearer, more actionable, and more human.I'll walk you through the five elements I'm seeing in offers that are genuinely working right now, from creating a clear transformation to building an offer ecosystem that supports both you and your clients. My hope is that you'll come away feeling encouraged, inspired, and ready to make one simple change that helps your offers sell with more ease.🎧 Tune in to hear:Clear transformations that build trustTools over information overloadSimple implementation supportHuman connection in the AI eraBuilding a connected offer ecosystem💭 [01:45]  "Buyers are getting slower to decide. I don't necessarily mean that they take longer, but they probably do need more information and more trust in your offer than they would have needed before."💭 [12:29]  "You will usually sell more offers and feel much calmer about selling when you have a connected ecosystem of offers."💭 [15:58] "Offers work best when they're part of an ecosystem and what you really want is to know that you have a path when people come in through a free offer, when they take a low ticket offer with you or take a next step with you and get a clear win where you want to direct them to next."🔗 Links Mentioned:Soulful Sales Society free trial (the mid-year Sales Refresh Get It Done Week starts soon)Aligned AI Lab (free up your capacity with AI for marketing)Funnel Diaries (see what's working to grow my recurring revenue behind the scenes)QUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.

I took a $27 offer and turned it into an average sale of nearly $300, without changing the offer, the price or the traffic. In this episode I'm walking you through exactly how, because it comes down to a key sales number that most people aren’t paying enough attention to.If you've ever felt like low-ticket offers require endless traffic or huge audiences to generate meaningful income, this episode is for you. I'm breaking down the concept of average order value and sharing the simple funnel tweaks that can dramatically increase what each sale is worth, without changing the offer itself.I'll walk you through the different pieces of a higher-converting customer journey, including order bumps, upsells, and how I use them in my own business. Plus, I share real examples from recent launches and sales campaigns to show how small changes can create a much bigger impact on your revenue. 🎧 Tune in to hear: What average order value really means  Simple order bump strategies  When and how to use upsells  Increasing revenue without more traffic  Lessons from my own funnel experiments💭 [00:00]  "I took a $27 offer and turned it into an average sale of nearly $300 without changing the offer, without changing the price or the traffic."💭 [09:43] "Don't just look at the front end sales, but divide the total money made in your launch by the total number of sales and then you will get the average order value."💭 [10:21] "I made over a thousand dollars thanks to the order bumps and upsells on my offers. So an extra thousand dollars in my Black Friday sale because of thinking about my average order value."🔗 Links Mentioned:Soulful Sales Society MembershipRuth’s Birthday Sale (including the behind the scenes funnel diaries)Last week’s debrief episodeQUICK LINKS:👋 Join the free Quietly Ambitious community on Skool - for heart-led business owners who want to sell without the hustle-bro energy, with soulful AI support.✨ Start your free trial of The Soulful Sales Society - where heart-led offer creators build a sales ecosystem that keeps selling, even when they can't show up. Monthly challenges, live coaching, AI tools, and a community building sustainable sales together.🤖 Browse the Bot Shop - AI tools for course creators and coaches. From writing welcome sequences to planning flash sales to building your own AI tools. Works with Claude and ChatGPT.