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Hey there. For solo business owners, the AI noise can feel overwhelming, but what you're experiencing might not be the weight of technology, but the weight of change. But here's the good news. For AI solo peneurs in 2026, the real advantage isn't for those that have a lot of tech skills, but for those who value clarity over complexity. Stay tuned.

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From burnout to breakthrough, we'll rewrite your story with AI strategy. Let's amplify your authority.

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Welcome to the Amplify Your Authority Podcast. I'm Marissa Shabrick, your host. Thank you so much for joining me today. And we're going to talk about the AI change and what that means for solo business owners. It could feel overwhelming, but let me tell you this: you have what you need to move forward and adapt because it's not what you think. It's not in more tech skills. It's not in prompting. It's not understanding and testing all these tools. There's something that you already possess inside you that's going to help you adapt to the change we're seeing and leverage AI like a pro. So we see a lot of these tools moving very, very quickly. We get notifications all the time. A new tool for this, a new tool for that. The updates keep moving very, very fast. And it feels like you're on a runaway treadmill trying to keep up and looking for the stop button. But the data shows that AI adoption is accelerating. However, clarity and strategy is still very, very important. And in 2026, the advantage will not belong to the most technological solopreneur, but it'll belong to those who can think strategically and clearly. So let me reframe this for you. I've navigated through a lot of shifts. So I started as a writer submitting articles, then I became a certified copywriter through Ray Edwards. Then that led to coaching, and that led to being a strategy consultant using AI. All of this was a process that felt at sometimes intimidating. I wondered, do I have what it takes? But I remembered to focus on the fundamentals, on the things I already knew that were a foundation and build upon it. That's what we need to do today. It really is about adapting, and AI is the new shift for all of us. It's not going away. And it's something that we as solo business owners who wear many, many hats can adapt without all of the overwhelm. We don't have to follow what everybody else is doing because most people are in larger teams. But you as a solo business owner, you probably only have yourself maybe one or two other people inside your business. So what's actually changing? Let me pull my notes. Okay, AI is not the disruption. We think it is, but it's not. It's change. You know, it's pretty great when we initiate change, but when change is forced down our throat, it makes it really hard because we're already in the groove. We're in the process of doing things, and all of a sudden, this change comes and we have to rethink everything. But here's the good news it could be better for you. So when we see AI and its capabilities now, after what, two, three years, we see now that it's getting better. We see now that it's very user-friendly, we see now that these thinking models can actually work with us, interact with us in a way that we never imagined when he first came out. It's getting better and better. And the more you stick to one tool, the more it understands who you are. So we've seen disruption in the past. There was recession, then there was COVID. Consumer behavior, buyer behavior is always changing. That's why the word pivot comes up a lot. And the way people are delivering products and the type of products. People first said high ticket, then they said mastermind, then they said courses, then they said this and that. And it's always evolving because just life evolves and it evolves when you have an online business. So it's not all AI's fault. Change will come no matter what we see, but at least this change is something that we can sink our teeth into and begin to use it for our advantage and begin to do things that we never dreamt possible. So before AI can scale anything, you should review your fundamentals. And what do I mean by fundamentals? Okay, think about how do you generate revenue? What is your process to generating revenue? Where are the bottlenecks in your weekly tasks that you do? Where are you spending disproportionate time? Where are you spending too much financially? What is the outcome that you're trying to create? All these questions need to be addressed. So you can begin to maybe do an internal audit of your workflows. Some things maybe need to retire. Are the things that you did two years ago, a year ago, still effective for you today? If they are, is there a better way to do it using AI? Why is this important? Because technology, AI, for example, will scale what you clearly understand. If you don't create an internal audit for clarity to reset your goals and reevaluate what you're doing, AI is just going to amplify confusion. And that's not what we want. So, what is the real advantage with AI? Now, you might think that it's maybe advanced prompt engineering, or you might think it's developing AI agents or automation tools or some platform that promises to do everything. Believe me, nothing does everything. But research points elsewhere. World Economic Forum highlights that critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence are a rising skill in an automated economy. Isn't that amazing? That the skills that you possess are the things that are really going to help us use AI wisely. So we can't ignore those skills. We need to double down on those skills. Your advantage is strategic thinking, not technical complexity and not trying to become a better prompter. You need to realize that you have what it takes and you need to use your creativity, your experience, your insights, everything, data, all the analytics that you have, and assess and begin to do an internal audit to see what it is that you need to do to move forward and how can AI support you. So let's break down some of these skills. And I'm breaking it down into five skills that actually matter in your business. The first one is clear communication. Now, communication has always been important. Whether you have a team or it's just yourself or you're trying to communicate to your audience. Communication is huge. Whether you're doing video, whether you're doing written articles, or if you're training or you're coaching, communication is important. But now the bar has been raised even higher when it comes to AI tools. We need to communicate clearly to the tool that we're using so it understands. AI loves and needs clarity. It does. Otherwise, all the answers are going to be very vague. You need to articulate what it is you're trying to accomplish. And AI will help you with this. So when you're using an AI tool, you need to master your messaging, your communication. Not so much think about the prompts because then you can get stuck trying to figure out how to create the perfect prompt. One of the things I love to do is just use the microphone on Chat GPT and just begin to rant, just begin to talk to it, explain what I'm trying to do, my heart, my frustration, the things I see, the things that piss me off, the things that I want to change. And I explain who I'm trying to serve. And I explain, already giving it the knowledge of my business and who I am and my voice and all of those things. That's a given. You got to give it some knowledge so it understands you and your business. But I begin to do that so that it understands where I'm coming from. And it can begin to help me in the ideation of something that I'm trying to solve. And it can give me some suggestions and I can ask it to ask me questions. And that way it really becomes a dialogue with AI so we can fine-tune some of these things that we're trying to accomplish. Now, notice I'm not saying go get this tool. I'm not saying go ahead and use this prompt. I'm saying first think about what is important about your business. Is there something that's not working? Mention that. Do I need to retire this? Is there a better way to do what I'm doing? And it will begin to give you some insights. And all of a sudden, now, because you have experience, because you have skills, because you have insight, you're able to take that information and begin to think about a better way. Not just solely taking what AI says to do, but using your brain, using your experience to figure out a better way of doing your work in 2026. So it is more about number two, critical thinking. Critical thinking is really, really important. AI predicts plausible language. It predicts things based on what you give it. So it's not always that accurate. You always have to give it pushback. So you want to verify anything that it says is truth. So you want to create a dialogue or create something. You want to check it, you want to question it, you want to edit it, you want to give it pushback. You want to say, where did you get that information from? You want to ask it, what qualifies you to tell me this? Is this something that you research? And with research, you want to make sure it is researching something that is relevant and current for today, something that's not older than maybe three to six months. And you want to use, like in Chat GPT, you want to use either the deep research or the web research because just going into Chat GPT isn't enough. You want it to go into web search or deep search. So you want to be able to figure out where is this coming from? Where's this data coming from? So you can see. Because maybe it came out of some article that came out, you know, back in 2008. Who knows, right? And you don't want to adjust your business based on old information. So you want to see, is it accurate? Does it align with your goals and what you want to do? If you're writing an article, does it align with your voice? Did you give it your voice tone and style? Is it helpful? Will it truly help me with the bottleneck I'm experiencing or will it help me serve my audience better? You want to use your critical thinking skills to analyze, to evaluate, to question, and to help problem solve and eventually help you make better decisions about your business. That's why critical thinking skills are really, really important. The third thing that really matters is workflow development. Now, here's what's happened because AI has been kind of like a novelty. A lot of solopreneurs miss this, and it's so important. Most of them use AI during busy seasons or busy moments in their week to draft an email or to fix an article or to summarize a meeting. But the real leverage comes from building repeatable systems. For example, I created an app. Now I didn't even know what vibe coding was. I am not a programmer, but I was able to use a tool, lovable, and create an app because I wanted to track what I was doing day to day for an entire month. And it gave me charts, it gave me kind of a summary of where I was spending my time. That data helped me understand that there was a bottleneck. I was spending too much time in content creation. So then I was able to go with AI and figure out a better way, a better workflow, a better method of creating my weekly content. And I was very satisfied with it. Then I asked it, well, how do I do this in a practical way? And I was able to create a workflow just using ChatGPT, using Notion, where I have templates for every aspect of my content creation, and then using Claude for polishing up anything that is like an article, because Claude is very good at writing narrative. So with those three tools, and it really goes very rapidly, I'm able to go into ChatGBT with two projects, do research in one and content creation in the other, and call upon these templates that are in Notion by just giving it the title of the template. It creates what I need. And if I do need to go into YouTube, it'll do keyword search. Or if it's an article, I can take it into Claude and I can edit it. But all of this is a system. You just follow it and it makes it so much easier to create it. And that only happened because I was able to track what I was doing with an app that I created. And I do not know how to program. I am not a programmer. And I didn't even know what vibe coding meant. It just means you just talk to it and tell it what you want and it creates all this code for you. Isn't that crazy? So I was very happy with the outcome, and I'm using that now because I'm on YouTube now. And I was really resisting it because YouTube is very, it's not that it's complicated. It it felt to me time consuming, but this helped me cut some of the time. And so when you do an internal audit and when you look strategically at what you need to retire, what you need to improve, in my case, improve the workflow of my content creation, then you will see the results. Then you will see that you have time for other things. Then you will see that you're not spending as much time in content creation and you can use it for other things or end the day early if you want to. So it's not just tool usage anymore. It becomes an infrastructure, which is so much better. Okay, number four is the editorial judgment. You need to judge the output. You need to be the key person that decides whether this is good, bad, horrible, start over again. Now, I used to edit a copy when I was helping Ray Edwards with up-and-coming copywriters. I would help train them and I would help them with their copywriting lessons and I would review and critique their copy. When I looked at it, I didn't just correct it, I explained why something wasn't working and why we needed to maybe wordsmith it a little better. And so when you have output from AI, when you have a certain skill, you're able to see what others don't see. And so you're able to see why something doesn't work, even though it looks polished, you're able to see that's not going to resonate with my audience. Or that opening is not a hook, or that structure is way too long. You're able to see what others don't see because you know your audience so well. So you need to be that editor that judges the output and explains to AI why it's not working, why this is not a good idea. So it continues to learn. So the reason why this is important is because the content you put out there, you're really trying to build trust with people. That's all that marketing is. That's my simple definition of marketing. It's a process of building trust. And so the content you put out needs to be, for lack of a better word, authentic. And it's based on your communication, which we mentioned earlier. And you want to be very human to human when you communicate. That means you want to share lived experiences, you want to provide value, you want to share perspectives, you want to share maybe an experience or an insight, you want to use a little bit of storytelling. This is what makes it human. So being that editor will help you look at things and say, this sounds just like everything else that I've heard. I want to rewrite this. And then you train AI to help you with that. So before you publish, you're asking yourself, does this support my audience? Does this sound like me? So you have to wear that editor hat and begin to judge whether the content is ready for publish or not. So if not, you need to go back and refine it. Number five is strategic restraint. Now, this is something that I'm putting under scale, but it really is overcoming FOMO and not really leaning into all of the push marketing that appears on your inbox, really focusing on a few tools and doubling down on it and learning all its features because things are changing and there's going to be lots of tools coming out this year. Lots of things coming out that sounds fantastic. And I'll suggest, I'll give you a suggestion on what to do for your business because I'm not opposed to a new tool. I just have seen too many people bombarded by so many things, and they think, oh, if I don't get this, I might miss out. Or, oh, they have a deal and a discount on this. I better get this. Or, oh, this is lifetime access. I better buy this. And they're buying these things and talk about cognitive overload. It's a lot. That's why inside my AI lab for solopreneurs, I do a lot of the research for those people inside my membership. And I explain to them, you know, why I choose certain tools and why these tools can do 90% of their work. And then I ask them, what are you working on so that I can give them recommendations and reduce that cognitive overload. So you need to overcome the FOMO. This is least discussed above anything else because it's really a mindset challenge. You need to realize that you're going to integrate very slowly and you're going to improve what you're already doing, and you're going to maybe do an internal audit and you're going to add very slowly things that make sense for your business. So there's dozens of AI tools that do similar things. So you don't want a bunch of tools that overlap. So how do you choose? Okay, you don't start with thinking of like what tools should I get? You should think of what outcomes do I want. So consider what you're presently doing. And if there's room for AI to help you with this, you can begin to do the research. You can use AI to do research. I just you simply use ChatGPT, Deep Research, and I explain again. I use the microphone. I love using the microphone to explain what I'm trying to do. And a lot of times I get a comparison. I say, this is what I want to do. And I will simply talk to the microphone and I will say, okay, this is what I want to accomplish. I want it very user-friendly. I don't want to spend a lot of time. This is for this type of project. Let's just say it's YouTube. It's for YouTube. I tell it how often I'm going to be using it. I'm going to create three or four videos that are this long, and I'll say 15, 20 minutes. I want to be able to accomplish this, this, this, and this. These are the tools I already have. I don't want to double on any tools. What is the best tool that I can use for this outcome that I want? And then it'll give you some suggestions. And you can even go deeper with that and have it create a chart. And I did this recently, and I had it do deep research on something I was looking for, and it had to do with images, creating AI images. And I asked it to create a comparison. And then ChatGPT gave me deep research. It looked like a lot of text. Well, I took that document and I put it into Claude and I said, please make this really simple, create it into a chart and give one prompt for every tool that's mentioned here. And it created a beautiful, beautiful chart that was simple to scan and read. So you can mix and match some of these tools depending on what you need to do. But my point is, you're able to get consumer rating, price comparison, use case, anything that you think would help you make a decision on a tool. Notice I'm not responding to all of the push marketing that comes my way. I'm thinking, this is what I'm working on today, this is what I need. What's out there that I can possibly use? And then when you do decide on one, try the free trial if they have one, and then just do a monthly subscription and test it to see if it works for you. Now, if you're worried about, oh gosh, another tool, learning curve, it's never been easier to learn how to use anything. I mean anything, even at home. You know, I was looking for apps on my different TVs that I have. I have a TV in the bedroom and I have a TV in the living room. And sometimes finding certain apps are so hard. And I just took my phone, I took Chat GBT, and I opened up the camera and I said, I need to find this app. Where the heck do I go to find it? And it looked at my TV and it gave me a walkthrough. I went upstairs, they did the same thing, it gave me a walkthrough because they're different TVs. And so I was able to find the apps much faster because it already pointed me in the right direction. Something Is broken at home, or you don't know how to do something, it can help you with that. So nowadays, you don't have to go to a forum, you don't have to fill out a ticket, you don't have to go to a chat bot. You can use AI to figure out how to do something step by step. My favorite tool is perplexity. I use that. It helps me a lot with research because I can research all day long and I do a lot of research. And I love perplexity. And so I use perplexity for that and for how-tos, it's great for that. But I also love comparing it with deep research with ChatGBT and sometimes combining it. So there you have it. So nowadays, when you're thinking about tools, don't worry. AI can even help you and teach you how to use it. And there's other tools that can teach you how to use tools as well. So let's bring it all back to a close here. You want to lead your AI transition with clarity. Clarity. Step one, identify your bottleneck. And then if need be, track your time for a couple of weeks and see where that bottleneck is if you're not sure. Number two, decide or determine the desired outcome that you want. So maybe you want to reduce content production time by 20%, or maybe you want to increase revenue by 20%, whatever that might be. Then number three, map the workflow. What's the process you're going to use? Where do you start? Where do you end? Can you create a system? Systems are always mentioned, and I don't think people understand the impact of a system. When you think of McDonald's franchise, the product wasn't the burger. The product was McDonald's franchise in selling it to other people that wanted a turnkey business. And what they sold was their proprietary process, their system into doing everything from making the burgers and the french fries and everything that anyone without skill could do. That's how clear the system was. So that the product wasn't the burger, the product was the franchise. So systems, we've heard of it, we've heard of blueprints, proprietary information, but sometimes we hear it so much we have kind of like are numb to it. The systems are really important in our business. So I just wanted to cover that because number three, map the workflow or create a system. People might think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I already got that already. But it's important to rethink that and revisit it to see if it can be better. Number four, research tools based on function, not popularity. So I want you to just think about what you need and research really, really well using AI. And step five, test one tool inside one workflow. AI should support you and not create more overwhelm. And it should support your strategy so that you can begin to do other things that maybe you haven't had time to do within your business. So bringing it all together, the AI Solpreneur of 2026 will prioritize clarity over complexity always. So in closing, I just want to let you know we are all in transition, AI transition. This is all new. We're seeing lots of things coming out. AI is accelerating, it's everywhere. I had a doctor's appointment today, and the doctor was saying to me, Oh, hang on a second, I got to turn on my AI tool so I could take notes. It is everywhere, my friends, and it's not going away. So AI is accelerating everywhere. Don't lose your creativity. Continue to practice critical thinking skills. Design your workflow. Give AI pushback. Think through what you've done and do an internal audit of your business. Let AI scale what you do well and let AI help you with what you don't do well. That is sustainable growth. So if you like this podcast, I would love it if you would rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. And you can always check it out on YouTube. It's on YouTube. And I would love to hear back from you and let me know what you think. And if there's something you'd like me to discuss in a future episode, please let me know. I'd be happy to do that. Until next time, take care.