She's That Founder: Business Strategy, Time Management and AI Magic for Impactful Female Leaders

068 | Top 10 Must Have AI Tools for Female Founders

• Dawn Andrews • Season 2 • Episode 68

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I used to wonder where all my time was going — until I realized AI could give me a whole lot of it back.

In this episode, I’m sharing 10 AI tools that save me over 60 hours a month and help me lead, create, and scale with way more ease. These are tools I use in real life — in my business, with my team, and in the messy in-between moments.

This isn’t just about tech—it’s about closing the gender gap in AI adoption and claiming your time back as a founder. No perfection required. Let’s dive in.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

  • The 10 AI tools saving me over 60 hours a month
  • Why women are adopting AI 16% less than men
  • Why AI isn’t about replacing your work, it’s about amplifying your leadership

This episode at a glance:

[1:38] - You don’t have to be a tech wizard to close the gap. You just need the right tools and the guts to use them.”

[1:58] -I was awkward, I was scared, I didn’t know what I was doing. But I just went for it anyway.

[14:56] - The only wrong move is not starting.

[15:48] - These aren’t just tech tools — these are your liberation plan.

[15:52] - This is how you get to sit here with messy hair on a Thursday morning, sharing your wisdom on a podcast. I couldn’t do it without AI.


Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Dawn Andrews:

Dawn. Welcome to she's that founder the podcast where we help female entrepreneurs reclaim their time, grow their leadership and scale businesses that thrive without burning out. I'm your host. Dawn Andrews, business strategist and CEO of free range thinking, and we're super casual today. If you're catching me on video, I'm just chilling in the office. Got the crazy hairdo. We're just relaxing because I want to help you find more time to relax, to have some ease in running your business.

Dawn Andrews:

So in this episode, you'll discover how AI tools can save you 60 hours a month of your time, both in leadership and in actually getting things done. We'll also talk about the mindset shift female founders need to adopt AI with confidence, and I've curated a list of 10 AI tools that can immediately boost productivity and profits in your business. Let's get started. I want to talk about the reality that most of us don't want to admit, and it's about a gender gap. There's a 16% gender gap in AI adoption already, even now, as early as we are in this AI game among women in the same roles as men, men are adopting ai 16% faster than women. They're just going for it. They're giving it a try. And this is not a small oversight, and even though it's a small percentage, it's a double digit percentage that we need to be concerned about, because it's a systemic problem. As female founders, we cannot afford to sit this one out. We cannot.

Dawn Andrews:

But here's the good news, you don't have to be a tech wizard to close this gap, you just need to write tools and the guts to use them. I'm going to get right to it and share the 10 tools that I use every day that have transformed my business. I picked up AI about two and a half years ago. Even before chat GPT launched, I was using a tool called Jarvis to help with marketing copy. I was awkward. I was scared. I didn't know what I was doing. I wanted everything to be perfect, but I just went for it anyway. And because of that, I've been at the forefront of using AI tools and learning new ones and adopting them quickly and integrating them into my business with speed. And it has helped us scale. It's helped me save tons of time. It's helped my team work faster and more efficiently, and it's helped us really create some beautiful things that have made a difference for the business, and we've saved countless hours doing it. So without further ado, let's talk about those 10 AI tools that we're using, some of them every day, multiple times a day, that have transformed our business and helped us scale faster and save countless hours. And here are the categories of tools, their content creation and copywriting tools, audio and video production tools, design and branding tools, research and strategy tools, and then meeting and productivity tools.

Dawn Andrews:

Let's start with the content creation and copywriting tools. You may be working with an agency, maybe you have a copywriter. I find that using tools like clod and chat GPT are like your 24/7 co founders. I use both of these tools to kick start strategies and conversations. I have them help me write complex emails. I have them help me refine content to repurpose content. They help me put together initial draft proposals from conversation transcripts. These content tools cut my creation time by 60% which saves me about 15 hours a week or more, and that means I have more time to service clients, more time to sell to clients, and honestly, more time to have fun creating that makes a big difference for me.

Dawn Andrews:

So chat, GPT and Claude, first two content creation tools, the next one I use a lot is typeset. There are other tools out there that are similar to typeset, like beautiful AI or gamma, pick your poison. But I use typeset because it will help me format ebooks, proposals, decks, presentations really quickly. Typeset, turns around rough drafts and turns them into polished reports in minutes by bringing in all of the content as a document, and you edit the document, which edits the slides. It works so fast. You can set up your own professional templates, and it cuts about six hours a week on document design, and has helped me turn around proposals that look gorgeous with the right content really quickly.

Dawn Andrews:

Now let's talk about the next AI tools that make a difference in our business, audio and video production tools. There are three that we use, one really heavily, and two that I've been experimenting with quite a bit. We're not in full swing with the second two, but we'll talk about them. So the first tool is descript, or descript. I call it descript for anyone who dreads video editing, descript is your video savior. It edits media similar to typeset in a document form, for instance. This podcast that I'm recording right now, I'll bring it into descript. See, I've even changed the way I pronounce it just this time. So I will bring it into descript, and it will give me the picture, and it will give me the entire transcript as if it's a Word doc. So I can cut and paste and move sections around like I would in a Word doc. And it also has some fantastic additional features. It has eye movement tracking. So for instance, I'm speaking to the camera right now, but maybe I look down at the talking points, and it will help my eye line stay with the camera eye line. It has overdub.

Dawn Andrews:

So if I have a flubbed word, or maybe the mic doesn't quite pick up the sound as clearly as I'd like it to, I can overdub without having to open and re record an entire section, and it also has studio sound. So right now I'm in my office, it's quiet. Everything is sort of ideal conditions for recording, but if I need to, I can put on studio sound and be walking around with my phone and recording, and it will drop all the background noise for me, using descript has cut production time by like 70% it's a real deal savings. It can also help us take clips out of this video podcast and turn them into reels or shorts or pull out for a course. It's incredible what it can do and worth every penny.

Dawn Andrews:

So here are two other audio video production tools that I think are worth your attention and time. First is 11 labs. This is an audio production tool, and if you're recording your own voice, or if recording feels like a chore, or if you just have to do more volume and you don't have the time to sit in front of a mic, 11 labs creates professional audio from text, and it can either mimic your voice. You can record and create your own voice profile, or you can use one of its already prepared voices. So if there are instructional videos that you're creating, you're doing trainings for your team. 11 labs. Can be the narrator. I use it for training modules. I've started to use it for Client Onboarding. I've started to use it for many versions of the podcast, even starting to use a little bit for Instagram reels, for the background voices or for the background narration. Just having that saves 12 hours of recording time a month as well, because my team can use my voice profile and take our approved text and create the recording. Pretty cool, right?

Dawn Andrews:

The last audio video production tool I want to talk about is, hey Jen, if you don't feel like getting camera ready, and who does, no problem. HeyGen. You can create the AI version of you and create personalized videos without even hitting record. And to be transparent, I'm in the early stages of using HeyGen, it's a bit of an adjustment sometimes to see the AI version of you delivering a message and to just pull over to the side for a second and talk AI ethics. You need to decide for yourself, for your company, for your team, what your AI use policy is and where you align with AI in terms of ethics. This is just a sidebar, but if you want to talk about that, or if you want an example of an AI use policy. Check the show notes for a link to grab that so with HeyGen, I don't always want to be all put together, and so I'm testing it out. We'll see how it goes, and I'll let you know in a future episode. Okay, there are three remaining tool areas that I'm going to share with you.

Dawn Andrews:

Let's talk design and branding tools. The old school stall. Word that I'm sure most of you are already using is Canva. Some people really like Adobe Express. I never quite got on that train, but I also know that it's a fantastic tool, because one of my business besties is always ringing the bell about it. So if that's something you want to check out, good for you. I just want to tell you about the stuff that I'm using, so that you know that somebody's actually using it and it's making a difference for them. Canva, you already know it. They just did a huge relaunch in March of this year, I think March or April, and it has new features with magic, resize magic, right? There are now Canva apps. It's our favorite, go to tool for brand materials, and saves probably eight hours a week in taking an initial image and resizing it to fit all the different social platforms. We use it to create affiliate assets and podcast guest assets and to resize those quickly. It now has that copywriting, the magic right feature where you can put text in, and it will help you improve it.

Dawn Andrews:

And it has an image creation feature now where you can type in an image prompt, and it will create original images for you, if you're creating decks or any other visual material. It's nice to have your particular version of something right, like your version of the woman sitting at the desk, your version of the coffee cup. You know, one of my creative images that I used was a purple and white striped zebra and roller skates to illustrate a point. If you can imagine an image you want to create and include it in your presentations and in your visual work, Canva has the capability to get there with you. So grab it if you don't already have it. The other design and branding tool. Tool that I really am enjoying is Magi.

Dawn Andrews:

If you use stock photos a lot, for instance, if you're in fashion or retail and have to have multiple product images from different angles, different sizes, different uses, Magi is your friend. It creates branded visuals in seconds that can save you 10 hours a week and give you a consistent visual identity. I've been using magi to duplicate myself instead of spending a bunch of time doing a full marketing photo shoot, which I will still do, by the way, like I just want to make sure that everybody's clear that these are not replacing core expenditures that I'd be making in my business foundational expenditures with other creatives still doing that and the world requires a lot more than my budget for my business provides. I can't do a marketing photo shoot each week or even each month. So when it comes to creating those in between assets, I'm using magi to duplicate myself, myself in a plane, seat, myself in another location, walking on the beach. If I can't get to the beach and don't have a selfie to do it, I can use magi to help create that design and branding tools, Magi and Canva.

Dawn Andrews:

Now let's talk research and strategy tools. The research tool that I use, two of them actually perplexity, instead of digging through 20 tabs on Google for research, I can get reliable cited insights instantly using perplexity. It's like Google on steroids, and that saves me 10 to 12 hours a week just on research, if I'm preparing a podcast, if I'm looking into doing my homework on a client before we start working with them, or after we've started working with them. Perplexity is a godsend. Alternately, chatgpt also has a deep research function. If you have the $20 Pro Plan, which I highly recommend you pay for, you can use the deep research function and do a deep dive on a business or a topic that's meaningful to you for research, perplexity, and then occasionally deep research on chat, GPT. And then the strategy tool that makes a difference for us is mind pal. It is like having a whole team in your pocket. You can use it to run market research workflows. We use it to repurpose content. We can put in one podcast link or YouTube link and pull out multiple pieces of content from it, you can save hours per project, and it enables us to take on more clients because we're using it for instance.

Dawn Andrews:

We use mindpal right now to search for potential collaborators and partners for us. We use it to help us generate testimonials and do outreach. We use it for repurposing podcast content. And you can customize and build a workflow, a multi agent AI workflow for your needs, for your team. It's incredible stuff, and it's sort of next level AI, just to be clear. So if you're just starting to dabble in where AI can intersect and make a difference in your business. Start with those first tools. I mentioned chat, GPT and Claude, just to get warmed up. Okay?

Dawn Andrews:

And then the last tool, a meeting and productivity tool, Otter, if you are tired of taking notes on calls in real life, Otter captures, transcribes and summarizes meetings and action items, and that has freed up hours and hours and hours each week and boosts our meeting productivity. People can replay back certain sections. They can jump in the transcript to see and review particular parts of the meeting, and you can export the transcripts to use in other AI tools. So for instance, I'll meet with a potential client, recorded on otter, take that recording and immediately turn it into a draft of a proposal that would have taken easily four hours in the past to review all of my notes, synthesize them and get them into a usable draft of a proposal. It's a huge time savings, and it's an accurate time savings.

Dawn Andrews:

It's taking the words straight out of the conversation and getting them into a usable format, super helpful, right? 10 tools, 10 tools we're using for real, for real in our business that are making a huge difference for us, and there are a few more, but those are the top tools that give us the biggest time savings with the least amount of distraction. And if you're not trying them or checking them out or having your team try them or check them out, I strongly recommend that you do here's the real kicker with all of this, this isn't just about the tools, it's about your mindset. Studies show that women spend 25% more time on admin than men, and that's hours that we could be spending as leaders of our companies on vision, strategy and scaling, perfectionism and hesitation are the real bottlenecks here.

Dawn Andrews:

So start messy, pick just one tool and start playing around. The only wrong move is not starting. Yeah, I hope you start having fun with these tools. It is amazing what's possible. Here's a quick recap of what we covered. We already discussed that there's a 16% AI gender gap in adoption of AI men adopt it 16% more than women, and it matters because it's putting us behind. And the more women who avoid AI, the more AI becomes biased towards a male point of view, which that I cannot abide. We also talked about the 10 tools that save you over 60 hours monthly. And then my call, my request, my permission for you to shift from perfectionism to action. Get messy and let AI help you clean it up and do it quickly, because the faster you go from ideation to action, the faster your business grows.

Dawn Andrews:

These aren't just tech tools. These are your liberation plan. This is how you get to sit here with messy hair on a Thursday morning ready to share your wisdom on a podcast. I couldn't do it without AI next steps. If you really want to get into this further, you can join our free LinkedIn group AI at work and connect with other female founders using AI to lead better and scale faster. Let's close the gap together. Y'all.

Dawn Andrews:

Thanks for listening to she's that founder, subscribe, share and leave a review if this episode sparked new ideas or helps you feel more empowered, you've got this, and I've got your back, if it's aI delegation and all the things that it takes to be a female founder that is successful in this world. I am here for it, and I'm here for you. See you next time you.