What Nobody Tells You About Using AI for Your Business

Megan Yelaney:

Hello my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Business not as usual solo episode. Lucky you stuck with me. But I’m coming off of my first of two back to back rehearsal weeks. So I’m doing a musical called Fiddler on the Roof and I’m playing the character Seidel and Fruma Sarah. If you know Fiddler on the Roof, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, you that’s okay. Go Google it.

Megan Yelaney:

But I’m having so much fun and rehearsals are a lot and so fun and I’m really trying soak it all in because it’s going to go by so fast and I don’t know the next time I’ll do another show. My last one was two years ago. I hope the next isn’t that long away. But I’m really trying to soak it all in. Been sleeping in cuz. Been going to bed way later than normal. But it’s been really, really, really fun and just getting me back into that creative feeling. And that’s what the topic of today’s episode is.

Megan Yelaney:

Honestly, I just feel like we’ve got to have a heart to heart about what’s going on. What’s going on in the. The world of AI. Let’s just call it that because it’s AI’s world and we are living in it. I’m kidding, but I’m kind of not. And it’s a little scary and it’s exciting and it’s all these things. So I’m gonna just share my personal journey really quick with AI. And this is one of those episodes that I think is going to stir a lot of great conversation.

Megan Yelaney:

And so I would love to hear your take on this. DM me @meganyelaneyI really just want to have an open conversation about this, but I was, I started to use chat GPT in like very sparingly in 2024. Made like a little bit here and there. But I mean people were using it so much and I was very much like, no, no, no, no, that is hell no. Like I’m not going to use that. Like I’m. I have to write my own content, I have to do my own stuff, right? And I didn’t realize like, oh, you can actually do so many other things with it besides that. That’s just like what I thought.

Megan Yelaney:

I thought that AI was just like trying to take copywriters jobs and everyone was trying to just like shortcut and not actually think for themselves and have an opinion and a thought. And yes, a lot of people do use it for that. But I can promise you, I promise you, promise you, promise you. The people that use it for that, they’re not having success, They’ve probably quit their business by now. If they are literally outsourcing all of their thinking and, and not training their AI to actually have their thoughts and their unique processes, all of that, if they’re just using it to be like, hey, think for me, create my thoughts, they’re not in business anymore. I know that for a fact. So let’s just like throw that out there right away. So I was like very, very little dabbling.

Megan Yelaney:

And then in 2025, definitely started to lean into it a lot more. Created a ton of prompts for clients and it started to become really useful and, and I’ve actually had a couple people on the podcast. I will try to go find some of those episodes. One in particular was with Heather Sager. It was such a great interview and we talked about creative. I think it was atrophy. I think that’s what she called it. But basically when you, it’s like muscle atrophy.

Megan Yelaney:

When you don’t use it, you lose it, right? And so when you’re not using your creative brain, when you stop using your brain and the second that someone asks you a question or you have a question instead of thinking using your brain, you go to chat, you go to Claude, you go ask, hey, client just asked me this, or a DM follower asked me this, or I need an idea for xyz. And you don’t even take a second to think it through yourself. And you just jump right to what do you think that’s really hurting? It’s hurting our brains so much more than we realize and it’s actually quite scary. And I’ve even had like to have heart to hearts with clients. I’m like, hey, I am like now and I’m going to talk about the other side that I’ve experienced. It’s been amazing. I am such a fan of it. To amplify your voice and to amplify your process and your thoughts, but it has to amplify your stuff.

Megan Yelaney:

So you gotta do a little bit of thinking for yourself first and foremost before you go to it. And it’s not even just because, like, you know, we want to make sure, yes, of course, that your ideas are your ideas and coming from like your inner, innermost thoughts. Even if it’s like, you know, brainstormed out with AI, that’s great. But it was more so that it was literally hurting their creative Brain. Like if I was on a call and I would ask them a question, they’re like, oh wait, let me go ask. Let me go see what my chat said. Or let me go see what I’m like, wait, no, what did you say? And what is your. What is your heart? What’s your gut answer? Just answer, what’s your gut answer? And it’s like we, we kind of stop doing that, right? And I’m not pretending I’m not immune to this.

Megan Yelaney:

I started to find myself doing that a little bit and that’s when I really started to reel it in. This was in 2025, like in mid year. It was like around the time I had this Heather on to talk about this. And it was such good timing. And I was like, wow, I think a lot of us needed that because I saw it hurting, hurting my business more than helping at that point because of what I was trying to use it for. I was like, okay, I don’t have enough time. Let me just like plug an old email in and see if it can repurpose that email for a new email. Always sucked.

Megan Yelaney:

Always. Never sounded good. Never sounded like me. Always sounded so AI coded. I would have to spend way more time editing that email than I would have if I just started from my own genius, my own thoughts. And so it started to get me thinking and I actually, it’s funny, I made a post or an Instagram story last week. I think it was like almost exactly a week ago and it was, it was very weird. I think Instagram was glitching because, you know, Instagram glitches all the time.

Megan Yelaney:

I’m pretty sure it was one of those glitch days. But it was kind of funny, the timing of it, because it was about AI and it just popped up for a second. I have to repurpose it. I’m definitely gonna do it as a reel, probably in conjunction with this podcast to promote the podcast. There you go. And I said Saturday morning. It was Saturday morning. AI thoughts.

Megan Yelaney:

Doing a little weekend work, Sprint sesh before all in mom mode, then long rehearsal tomorrow. And can’t help but wonder how many people’s businesses, businesses would fall apart if AI went away. Don’t get me wrong, Bless Claude, because things it can help you organize and do quickly is genius. But I am honestly so glad my business had its initial growth when I couldn’t rely on AI and had to f around and find out with my own brain and biz besties. Sometimes I think we use it a little too much as an immediate Be my brain. And I can see it affecting people’s businesses negatively in those ways. And it’s just funny that it like only let me pop that on for a second. Like, you couldn’t really read the story.

Megan Yelaney:

I was like, does AI know I’m bashing it? Because I love you, AI. I love you in so many ways. But it’s this like, hey, I don’t have a creative brain anymore kind of way that I’m a little nervous about how some people are using it. All that to be said, there are such beautiful ways to use it. So if you find yourself just going right to it and like for writing purposes, and it’s not, you’re not actually like seeing clients come in. Like, if you are using it and you’ve programmed it with your thoughts and your processes and it’s helping you write content and it’s working and bringing in clients, Kudos. Keep doing it like it’s your thoughts and your processes and that’s the hint. That’s why it works.

Megan Yelaney:

I’m probably, I’m very confident, I’m gonna say 99% confident in saying that it’s gonna be very rare that you’re not gonna actually put your thoughts and processes in and it’s gonna give you something good that will actually bring in clients. Because it’s probably gonna just sound very AI coded, right? And we can tell. It’s like pure. People can tell now. It’s so obvious. It’s so, so obvious. It doesn’t mean again, like, you plug it in. I tell my clients all the time, I give them hooks.

Megan Yelaney:

I say plug in these hook prompts, plug in your framework, plug in your ideal client document and your freebie that you’re sending traffic to with some bits of your story. We gotta give it a good amount and then let it go. Let it go to town. Creating those hooks for you because you’ve done all the other work already, right? And even then, though I say, as it’s doing that, go look at those hooks and try to do it yourself. And it’s not because, like, yes, we wanna save time, but again, our. If we’re not actually using our creative brain, we lose it. It’s like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Megan Yelaney:

And so my concern here, more is actually in the quality of coaching that we’re going to give people. If every time, if we’re going to AI for everything, for like our creative, our creativity, even if we have programmed it with our processes, we’re gonna not actually be able to coach our clients as well. Because one of the best reason, one of the reasons when I can, when I know I’m like on with clients and I’m like, oh, I’m in a zone. I’m like in coach mode, like I’m feeling good, everything’s landing, breakthroughs are happening. It’s because I’m in that creative zone. And if I am outsourcing that creativity and I’m like, and a huge part of that is writing my content, creating my content. If I’m constantly, constantly outsourcing that, then I really am not using that muscle. And it’s going to hurt how it’s going to hurt my skills and then that’s going to hurt my clients results and that’s going to just, you know, that’s going to be a downfall obviously.

Megan Yelaney:

So this is where I think it’s a little bit tricky, is like, I get that we are crunch for time. Totally. And I urge you to still set aside like at least an hour, maybe a couple a week that you are just creating. You are just creating. That could be you are writing. That could be. You are podcasting. That could be you are.

Megan Yelaney:

And you’re not podcasting, reading an exact script that AI wrote you. You are writing fresh. Like you are walking and talking. A lot of my clients more verbal, more transcribe their podcast, like whatever it is for you, but you are doing that and letting your actual creativity come. Now, another avenue for creativity could be things outside of just the traditional writing and podcasting and all that jazz. For example, I am doing a musical right now. I am in a show, I’m singing, I am dancing while I’m moving. I’m not a dancer, I’m a mover.

Megan Yelaney:

If you’re in the theater world, you know what that means. Never was a dancer, but I can move. If you make me, I will move. And I will fake it till I make it. But I am an actor and a singer and I am playing. I’m literally playing every night. Last week I went to play, that’s what they call it, a play. I’m literally playing and it’s so freaking fun.

Megan Yelaney:

And I cannot tell you the last couple weeks I’ve been rehearsing for a few months. We started rehearsals the very end of March, early April. So I guess it’s only been like six weeks. It feels like it’s, it’s just gone crazy fast. But the last week and this week are like boom, boom, boom. And then we’re in into the actual shows. We open and it has Brought back so much of that feeling of creative, like the creative spark that I really needed outside of just my business. And I’m telling you, it’s helping my business.

Megan Yelaney:

It helped me show up last week. Funny enough, in a very, very busy week, I had a lot of sales conversations last week. I was in a lot of conversations around people joining my TDE program. We have three new people. Welcome, welcome. About continuation. Bunch of new people or not new. Bunch of clients.

Megan Yelaney:

Continue about my mast had someone just sign up for my Mastermind, securing their spot early. Like all of these incredible conversations, lots of them. And I was able to really. And I’m not saying you need creativity to have sales conversations, but kind of, because a huge part of what I do is I help them see how this program is going to help them and how I see it working for them. And that takes my creative brain. So so much of that happened last week. It was a lot of that kind of conversation. And I swear the show helps me with that.

Megan Yelaney:

Even though it was a little bit tiring of a week, it really helped me, like, be in that zone. And now here is where AI is amazing. So I do something with a lot of my potential clients, a lot of people who are very on the fence. I will send them a breakdown of my process. So I will literally lay out, I have three phases in my distinctive edge program and I will lay those out in a document and I will show them exactly how I see this fit fitting into their business. So where I see us really zoning in each phase of the process and I will walk them through that and I will record a loom and I will send that to them. Now this is where I. AI again, is amazing.

Megan Yelaney:

I used to have to do all that all myself. I would type, type, type, type, type. And I’m not saying it would take me forever, but it took me a good chunk of time. And so I instead go into Claude and I. I use Whisper Flow now, which is just life changing, life changing. So great. So I just press the FN key on my computer because the Whisper FL plugin is on my computer. And I voice note everything that we have talked about.

Megan Yelaney:

And I say, okay, here is where they’re at. Here’s where they want to go. Here’s why I know phase one is going to be great for them. Here’s what I see us doing in phase two. Here’s specifically how phase three will help them. And I just voice note everything. And then I created a skill so that it formats it in a certain way that goes through my three phases and it bloop. Pops it into a beautiful branded doc with my colors and then I record.

Megan Yelaney:

So it doesn’t. I’m not saying it saves me a ton of time because I’m still spending the time voice noting, but way quicker than typing. I don’t have to format it to look pretty. It makes it look all beautiful. And then, boop, it’s done and I get to record it. So probably saves me maybe 10 minutes, which adds up when you’re doing a lot of those, right? I think I sent like five or six last week, so that saved me about 30 minutes, which time is money, my friend. That adds up. And so that’s a great example of like, okay, this is a really great way to use it.

Megan Yelaney:

Another thing that I’m using it for as an example is I have been plugging my podcast transcripts. Definitely will do it for this one into Claude. And I created a Claude Skill content to blog creator because I really wanted to start blogging. My SEO girl, Brit, has been on me about that, and I know I have so much content I can repurpose. And so I say, okay, great. Here’s my literal words in a transcript. Can you write a blog based on this? And I created the skill so that I. I plugged in other blogs that I really like.

Megan Yelaney:

I. I said, here are all my lead magnets. Let’s pick the best one pertaining to this. Here’s a ton of client case studies. Let’s pick the best one pertaining to this. And based on my transcript, it creates the entire blog. And Brit, who also listens to the podcast because she helps with the editing with the the SEO show notes. Um, so it’s kind of inceptiony right now.

Megan Yelaney:

She was reading the blog over as my SEO girl to give me feedback, and she’s like, this is so creepy how much this is you, because it is me. It’s my transcript of my podcast. So it’s literally me just rewritten. And now that is something. As a great example, I want to start blogging. I already used my voice and my genius and my thoughts to go through this podcast. I don’t need to sit down and write it in a slightly different way. That’s where the time can be saved by having a cloud skill creating the blog for me.

Megan Yelaney:

And boom, we’ve been weekly blogging, baby. That is a great example of using it right? There are so many ways that you can use AI in It’s Wild. And I’m going to definitely have people on about how to use it. In all these cool ways because there’s just. It’s pretty, it’s pretty crazy actually what it could do for you. And it’s so exciting. And here is the crux of it. I took so much time to plug.

Megan Yelaney:

Well, there’s two, two things. First, I took so much time to train it with my processes, with my approach, with my stories, with how I coach with so much stuff that anything it spits out is truly my brain. It really, really is my brain. And I’m going to tag her down below. But shout out to Nicole Nieves. She did a really incredible cloud workshop that I shared in last week’s episode with my mastermind. And she actually created a bot that I gave my clients called Ask Edge. Such a cool name.

Megan Yelaney:

And the feedback’s been ins like, meg, this is freaky. It’s so you. It’s like so helpful. It sounds just like you. Because she tirelessly trained it to be me. She plugged in as many loom transcripts. I mean, I gave her, I gave her access to my loom and so she went to town. All the loom transcripts.

Megan Yelaney:

My, my transcripts from my videos and all my homework documents. Like it is trained so much in this program and my process and my thoughts that it truly is becoming me now. It doesn’t replace me. Obviously clients are not going to not use me. But it’s a perk. It’s an added perk as a active client, right? And so that’s one is I really, really trained it. And that takes time. And that’s something that, I mean, I was definitely like, oh gosh, do I have to really do this? Oh my gosh.

Megan Yelaney:

But it’s one of those things. If you spend the time, it’s going to make everything else easier. It’s like setting up any system. We don’t want to do it, we whine about it, we complain about it. And if we just take the frickin hour and do it, it’s going to save us so much time. And so that’s one thing. And it’s one reason I loved working with Nicole. And I wanted her to come into our mastermind.

Megan Yelaney:

She’s a brand strategist, so she doesn’t come at it as a typical like AI person would, who’s just selling AI. She doesn’t even sell this stuff yet. I’m telling her she should, but it’s. She came at it from a. You make it trained in truly your thoughts and your processes. Right? Because it, it’s not. We don’t want this to be like, go search on the Internet for all of these things and be my brain. No, no, no, no.

Megan Yelaney:

You have your brain. You plug it into it and then it can amplify it. Right? So that’s number one. And then number two is what I was saying before is I always, always make sure I have creative time. So a couple examples. My podcast, I don’t know if you can tell, but I do not have notes. Okay, that’s not true. I have notes.

Megan Yelaney:

I have no scripts. I never script. And no shade to anyone who scripts like, especially if you’re writing it yourself. But even if you’re not, that’s totally fine. I understand. Not everyone is comfortable. I. If I could just podcast forever.

Megan Yelaney:

That’s my favorite thing to do. I tangent. Yes, all the time. But, you know, it’s why you love me. I know it. So podcasting. Huge way. Huge way.

Megan Yelaney:

I stretch my muscle. I stretch my muscle. Well, I guess stretch, flex the muscle of creativity. Huge way. Another thing, I write my weekly Edge newsletter completely without AI every single week and transparency. I once tried to. And I plugged in my old newsletters and I said, oh, let me see if I can have. If I can train a Claude skill to write my newsletter.

Megan Yelaney:

And I plugged in my. My old newsletters and I tried. And it’s just the way this newsletter is structured is so personal. It’s like current things that just happened in my life and current things that are happening in my business and current client wins that. The amount I’d have to feed it to write for me was like, so against the point. And then I’d have to. I. I tried to do that and then I edited it and I timed it.

Megan Yelaney:

I’m like, this take me longer. This is so ridiculous. What? No. And then I had to step back and go, Megan, this is like my favorite thing every week besides my podcast is writing that newsletter. The weekly Edge has become something that I know my new. My newsletter subscribers love or my email subscribers love. I love genuinely writing it. Like, I wake up, it’s the first thing I do on Monday morning.

Megan Yelaney:

It really sets the tone. I do pretty much every Monday morning. I write that at like 5:30am and then at 6:30 I go and I work out. And it’s like my. I love. I love the workout I do on Mondays. So it’s like a reward. It’s like, you finish your newsletter, go get a good sweat on, and I watch reality TV while I work out.

Megan Yelaney:

So it’s a little reward for myself. But I love Starting my week like that, I kick my week off with a creative burst and I do it only and that like those two things. Training it and then also writing myself, having my own self write my entire newsletter. It’s not that like it can’t structure it and help you, you know, set the system up and like something that’s repeatable, like you can brainstorm in that sense. But the actual like thoughts are mine every single week, right? Everything. The entire newsletter is written by me. And so, I mean, all of my emails are too. Because I, again, I.

Megan Yelaney:

I just haven’t even even training Claude in me. Like my brain, it’s still. I don’t know, there’s something about it. I’m like, that’s still not. It’s not me, it’s just not me. If it comes from an audio transcript, I find it much better. Like the blogs like really are me because it’s truly from an audio transcript. So it’s a little different.

Megan Yelaney:

And all that to be said, those are the two main things that I think have been making AI help my business and my clients businesses versus hurt it. But the biggest thing I will say right now is if you don’t know what is unique about you, if you don’t know if someone said, why you? Why should I hire you over that other person? If you’re a fitness coach, why should I hire you over that other fitness coach I just found? Why should I hire you over the other business coach I just found? Why should I hire you over the other copywriter? Why should I hire you over the other website designer? Could you answer that like, quick? Could you answer that quickly? If you can’t, then that’s what you need to get real clear before you start to use AI because or you’re already using it, obviously before you really use it for your brain again. We don’t want it to be your brain. We want to plug your brain into it. Because I am seeing this so big right now. If you do not have a point of view, have a perspective, this is really what’s probably creating a. I’m not gonna say probably. This is what is creating a gap between where you are and where you want to go in your business.

Megan Yelaney:

If you’re like stuck at a plateau, I will so much of the time, I’d say like 85% of the time I see it’s because you don’t have this locked in. You don’t have your edge on lock. And it’s one of those, like if every time you go to hit publish on A post. You kind of have this like low grade dread. Is this actually doing anything? And you get those you’re so relatable kind of comments, but you’re not actually getting people DMing you to work with you. And you look at your content and you’re like, okay, if I’m being really honest, I can’t really tell that that’s mine. Like, how is that different than someone else’s? And you have that like nagging sense. I want you to go to the Show Notes right now and listen to Main Character Energy.

Megan Yelaney:

If you have not already registered for the podcast, it’s not the registration really, it’s just an opt in. I created this seven part series, it’s completely free. It’s a private podcast called Main Character Energy and it’s literally to help you start to fill that gap. Because again, if you do not in 2026, AI can produce content that sounds exactly like yours in literally four seconds. It’s scary, the gap. Not knowing what your unique process is or what your story is or what’s different about you and how to actually talk about that. That gap is getting more expensive every single month. You cannot keep having that gap as AI takes over because you’re gonna get lost in the sauce.

Megan Yelaney:

You’re just gonna get lost. And I’m seeing that the people who are really growing with AI and are using it to expand themselves, it’s because they already have an edge. They already knew their edge. You need to know that, you need to have that unlock. Otherwise you’re going to lose it and you’re going to get lost. And I don’t say that to Fear Monger. I say it because it’s just true. I’ve seen it.

Megan Yelaney:

I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen people rely so much on AI and it hurts them so much. They’re getting less and less engagement because they don’t have a clear edge. Their edge is not clear. I do not know why them over someone else. I don’t see the proof of it. I need to know why you and show me the proof. Right, and in this seven episode series, we are going to walk you through all of that so that you can start to put those pieces together and go, okay, I get it, I see it.

Megan Yelaney:

I understand what I have to work on. So make sure you go to meganielandy.com main-charprise-energy if I said that too fast, the link is in the show notes. Start listening. You’re already on a podcast app, so go listen. It’s gonna be so clarifying, because as we talked about in this episode, AI is not going anywhere. It is. It’s kind of scary. Like I said.

Megan Yelaney:

I keep saying that, but it is. It’s so exciting and so scary. But it doesn’t have to be as scary because, again, this is not something that AI can do for you or replicate. And this is why you’ll still see, like, people who don’t necessarily use AI as much as maybe you, but are really succeeding is they have this on lock so much. And another thing I will leave you with is as AI gets so just in our lives, every second, all the time, people are really starting to crave real. Like, I saw that at my retreat. I saw it front and center. It was like we were all so craving that in person connection.

Megan Yelaney:

And just the realness, like tears and vulnerability and honesty and laughter. And it was just like, oh, yes, this is what we were missing, right? People are really craving that because AI kind of numbs you out. And it’s like, oh, my gosh, I feel like I’m missing vibrancy in my life. I need real human conversation. Love my robot. Love my Claudette. She’s amazing. And I stole that from my friend Nicole.

Megan Yelaney:

She said, Claudette, and I was like, genius, genius. Love it. And I need that real human touch. And so people who lean into that, who share vulnerably, who take you on a journey, go back and see a couple episodes ago about a video series. That’s the kind of stuff that’s gonna stand out. That’s what’s gonna stand out. People want the real. They are craving it.

Megan Yelaney:

And this series is gonna help you get there. So make sure you go to the link DM me if you have any questions. I would love to know your opinion on all of this. It’s very juicy, and it’s just gonna continue and continue and continue. So now is the time to nail this down. Nail down your edge. Be able to say without a shadow of a doubt what is unique about you and why people should hire you over someone else. All right, I’ll see you in the series and I’ll see you in the next episode.