How to Use AI Without Losing Your Creative Edge

I’m writing this coming off my first of two back-to-back rehearsal weeks for Fiddler on the Roof. I’m playing Fruma Sarah, staying up way past my normal bedtime, sleeping in, and having the most fun I’ve had in ages! My last show was two years ago and I’d forgotten how much I needed that creative jolt outside of my business.

The wildest and most unexpected part? The show is making me better at my job. And that is making me realize a thing or two about creativity when it comes to business. Not just what we can do to tap back into our creativity, but also what our reliance on AI has taken from us.

After all, it’s AI’s world and we’re all just living in it. I’m kidding. Kind of. It’s scary and exciting and everything in between, and I’ve watched it both help and hurt businesses over the last two years—including my own. 

So let me walk you through what I’ve learned, because there’s a version of using AI that grows your business and a version that hollows it out, and the difference is much smaller than you’d think!

I Resisted AI in My Business for a Full Year

Back in 2024 I dabbled with ChatGPT maybe a handful of times, and mostly I was a hard no. I thought AI was just trying to take copywriters’ jobs and let people shortcut their way out of ever having an original thought.

Plenty of people do use it exactly that way. And I’ll promise you this: the ones who outsource all of their thinking, who use AI as “hey, be my brain,” they are not having success. Most of them have quit their business by now. I know that firsthand.

In 2025 I leaned in hard. Built a ton of prompts for clients and started finding lots of uses for it. But somewhere mid-year I caught myself on a call asking a client a question and hearing, “oh wait, let me go see what my Chat said.” And I thought, “No. What’s your gut answer? What does your heart say? Just tell me.” 

And she couldn’t because she’d stopped reaching for her own brain first.

What is ‘Creative Atrophy?’

I had Heather Sager on the podcast around that same time and she called it ‘creative atrophy.’ It’s muscle atrophy, but for your brain. 

When you don’t use it, you lose it. The second you have a question and jump straight to Claude instead of thinking it through yourself, you’re skipping the rep. 

And this wasn’t just showing up with clients—I noticed myself doing it too, mostly when I was crunched for time and would plug an old email in to repurpose it. It always sucked and sounded AI-coded. It never sounded like me, and I’d spend more time editing it than if I’d just written from my own genius in the first place.

The Saturday Morning Instagram Story AI Didn’t Want Me To Post

Funny story. About a week ago I put up an Instagram Story on a Saturday morning, mid weekend work sprint before switching into full mom mode. It said, basically: “can’t help but wonder how many people’s businesses would fall apart if AI went away. Bless Claude for how fast it helps you organize and get things done. But I’m honestly so glad my business had its initial growth back when I couldn’t lean on AI and had to figure it out with my own brain and my biz besties.”

Instagram glitched and only let that Story stay up for a second. Nobody could really read it. And I laughed, because I was like, does AI know I’m bashing it? 

I love you, Claude. Truly. But I’m nervous about the “I don’t have a creative brain anymore” way some people are using you.

My Fear With AI and Coaches

My deeper fear goes way past content and into how I coach. When I know I’m in the zone with a client, breakthroughs landing, everything clicking, it’s because I’m in a creative flow state. Writing my own content keeps that muscle warm. 

So if I outsource all of my creativity to a bot, my coaching gets worse, my clients’ results get worse, and THAT is the actual downfall. A clunky email is annoying, but a dulled instinct costs you your whole business.

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The Two Rules That Make AI Help Instead Of Hurt

Everything I’ve figured out about using AI for your business comes down to two things…

1. Train Your AI So Deeply That Whatever It Produces Is From You

I took time to feed AI my processes, my stories, my approach, and how I coach. So when it spits something out, it’s me—NOT a generic coach.

Shout out to Nicole Nieves, a brand strategist who ran a Claude workshop for my mastermind. She built a bot for my clients called Ask Edge, and the feedback has been “Meg, this is freaky, it sounds just like you!” Well, it’s because she tirelessly trained it. 

I gave her access to my Looms, my video transcripts, my homework documents, and she went to town. It’s trained so heavily in my process and my thoughts that it’s become an added perk inside my program. 

It doesn’t replace me. In fact, clients still want me. The bot is a bonus and the reason it works is that it’s built on my brain, not the internet’s.

Example of Using AI with New Leads

When someone’s on the fence about my program, I send them a Loom breaking down how I see all three phases of The Distinctive Edge fitting their specific business. 

I used to type all of that out by hand. Now I get some help from Claude! I open Claude, use Whisper Flow to voice-note everything (where they’re at, where they want to go, exactly how each phase helps them), and I built a skill that formats it into a beautiful branded doc in my colors—then I record. 

This workflow with Claude saves me maybe 10 minutes each, and I sent five or six last week, so call it 30 minutes back! Time is money, and that adds up fast.

Example of Using AI with Content Creation

Same with these blogs, actually! I built a Claude skill that turns my podcast transcripts into blog posts, because my SEO gal, Britt, has been on me to start blogging and I’ve got years of content to repurpose. 

She read the first one to give me feedback and said, “it’s SO creepy how much this sounds like you!” Of course it is! It’s my transcript, my words, repurposed for a blog post! I already did the thinking when I recorded the podcast, so I don’t need to sit and rewrite it from scratch. More time, saved!

2. Protect Your Creative Time Like It’s Sacred

Even crunched for time, block at least an hour a week where you’re purely creating. Writing fresh, podcasting off the cuff, walking and talking your ideas out loud until something clicks. Generating content yourself, with your brain—not reciting a script a bot handed you.

Example of Content I Still Create Myself—With No AI

My podcast is that for me. No scripts, ever! I tangent constantly, and you know that’s why you love me. That’s one way I get to flex the muscle.

My weekly Edge newsletter is the other one, and I write every word of it myself. In full transparency, I once tried to train a Claude skill on my old newsletters to write it for me. It took longer than writing it fresh (because the newsletter is so personal and so tied to what literally just happened in my life and my business that week) that feeding it enough context defeated the whole point. 

Then I stepped back and remembered that this is my favorite thing I do every week besides the podcast. I write it at 5:30am every Monday, then reward myself with a workout at 6:30 while watching reality TV. It kicks off my week with a creative burst! Why would I hand that off?

Creativity for Business Owners IRL

Creativity doesn’t only live in writing or marketing your business. Mine is currently coming from singing and moving on a stage every night. 

That show is the reason I showed up so well during a wildly busy sales week where I welcomed three new people into TDE and had someone secure a Mastermind spot early!

Selling well takes a creative brain because so much of what I do is help someone see how the work will actually change their business. The stage kept me in that zone!

The Real Danger Isn’t AI. It’s Not Knowing Your Edge.

If someone asked you right now, “why should I hire you over the other fitness coach, the other business coach, the other copywriter I just found,” could you answer it quickly?

If you can’t, that’s what you fix before you let AI anywhere near your brain. Because AI doesn’t create your edge. It amplifies whatever you feed it, and if you feed it nothing distinct, you get distinctly nothing. Generic, AI-coded content that everyone can now spot in a second.

About 85% of the time, when I see someone stuck at a plateau, it’s because their edge isn’t locked in. 

You know the feeling. You go to hit publish and there’s this low-grade dread. You get “you’re so relatable” comments, but nobody’s in your DMs asking to work with you. You look at your own content and think, “I sound like every other coach.”

In 2026, AI can produce content that sounds exactly like yours in 4 seconds flat. The gap between knowing your edge and not knowing it is getting more expensive every single month. The people growing with AI aren’t winning because of the tool. They already knew their edge, and the tool just expanded it.

The more AI seeps into every facet of our lives, the more people are starving for real and authentic. I saw it front and center at my retreat, all of us craving in-person connection, tears, vulnerability, honesty, laughter. AI kind of numbs you out, and people are feeling the absence of vibrancy. 

So the coaches who share vulnerably and take you on a journey are exactly the ones who’ll stand out. I love my Claudette (I stole that from Nicole and it’s genius!). And I need real human touch—so does your audience.

Ready To Get Crystal Clear On Your Distinctive Edge

If any of this hit a nerve, especially that “I can’t tell my content is mine” feeling, Grab the Business Story Blueprint. This resource walks you through how to pull out the moments and messaging that make your content unmistakably yours.

You need authentic content to stand out and the best place to start is with your story.