How Solopreneurs Should Actually Be Using AI (Hint: Not Just Prompting)
A beginner-friendly workflow for writing your newsletter with AI — without losing your voice
You’ve probably heard it a hundred times by now: “Just use AI to save time.”
So, you open ChatGPT. You type something in. You get something back. And then... you spend the hour or more tweaking it, rewriting it, wondering why it doesn’t quite sound like you.
Sound familiar?
Here’s what nobody tells you: prompting is not the same as using AI strategically. And that one distinction? It’s the difference between AI feeling like a helpful assistant and AI feeling like a part-time job.
The Difference Between Prompting and Building a Workflow
Prompting is asking AI a question and getting an answer. It’s useful. But it’s also a one-time transaction — you ask, it answers, you move on.
A workflow is different. It’s a repeatable sequence of steps where AI handles specific parts of a bigger task — consistently, every single time. You set it up once. Then you run it over and over.
Think of it this way.
Prompting is like asking someone for directions every time you need to get somewhere.
A workflow is like saving that route in your GPS.
Same destination. Completely different experience.
Meet Maya (She Was Doing It the Hard Way)
Maya is a health coach and solopreneur. Every week, she sits down to write her newsletter and stares at a blank screen for 30 minutes before she even types a word.
She’d tried AI. She’d typed things like “write me a newsletter about stress and gut health.” The result was... fine. Generic. She’d rewrite most of it anyway. It didn’t feel worth the effort.
What Maya was missing wasn’t better prompts. She was missing a workflow.
Here’s what changed when she built one.
A Simple Newsletter Workflow (No Tech Skills Required)
This is a beginner-friendly, 5-step workflow Maya now runs every single week. The secret ingredient? A Claude Project — and if you haven’t set one up yet, stay with me, because this is the thing that changed everything for her.
Step 1: Set Up Your Claude Project Once (You + Claude) A Claude Project is a dedicated space inside Claude where you store your brand context permanently. Maya set hers up in about 10 minutes — and she never has to re-explain herself to Claude again.
She fed it five specific things about her brand. Not a random bio. Not a generic description. Five intentional building blocks:
Who She Helps — a clear, specific statement about exactly who she serves and what she helps them do
Content Pillars — the core topics her newsletter always lives inside
Writing Style — the structural rules Claude follows every single time (short paragraphs, no jargon, conversational tone)
Voice DNA — the essence of what makes her sound like her and nobody else
Voice Attributes — the specific feeling her words should leave in a reader
That’s it. She typed it once. Now every conversation inside that Project starts with Claude already knowing who she is, who she serves, and exactly how she sounds.
No more starting from scratch. No more outputs that feel like they could belong to anyone.
(If you’re wondering how to build your own five elements to create a Claude Project — that’s exactly what we dig into inside Content Confident, a program I’m developing to teach solopreneurs and small business owners how to set up and use a Claude Project like a pro. I’ll be running a beta round at a discounted price very soon — stay tuned!)
Step 2: Capture Your Raw Idea (You) Before touching AI, Maya jots down 3–5 sentences in her own words. What’s the topic? What’s the one thing she wants her reader to walk away feeling or knowing? This takes her 5 minutes. That’s it.
Step 3: Drop It into Her Project (AI) She opens her Claude Project — not just a regular chat — and pastes her rough idea. Because the context is already saved, Claude immediately gets to work without her having to set the stage. She picks the subject line and the outline she likes best and moves on.
Step 4: Draft With AI, Edit with Your Voice (Both) She asks Claude to draft each section one at a time — intro, main content, closing. Then she reads it out loud and rewrites any sentence that doesn’t sound like her. This usually takes 15–20 minutes instead of 1 or more hours.
Step 5: Final Polish (You) She adds one personal detail — something that happened that week, a client win, a moment that made her laugh. That’s the part AI can’t give her. And it’s the part her readers remember most.
The Real Shift
Maya didn’t find better prompts. She stopped treating AI like a magic answer machine and started treating it like a thinking partner with a specific role inside a process she owns.
Her newsletter now goes out every week. Consistently. Without the Sunday night dread.
That’s what a workflow does. It takes the decision fatigue out of creating — so you can focus on the part only YOU can bring.
Now I Want to Hear from You 💕
Here’s my question for you this week, and I genuinely want to know:
Where are you getting stuck with AI right now?
Is it the blank page? Getting content that sounds like you? Not knowing where to even start? Something else entirely?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every single response — and your answer might shape the next issue. 🙏
Until next time — keep building, keep creating, and remember, you don’t have to figure this out alone. ✨
♻️And if this changed how you think about content creation, hit “Restack” so other creators can create their own content creation workflows. ♻️
P.S. In my last post, I shared a FREE copy of Your Voice DNA Starter Kit — but I forgot to include the link to a beautifully formatted Google Doc that stores your Voice DNA info. (If I do say so myself 😄) The good news? It’s in there now. If you want both the Starter Kit AND the Google Doc, just grab the updated version here → Your Voice DNA Starter Kit.