092 | The Founder's AI Stack: Tools, Prompts & Automations That Actually Work

You don’t need 17 software subscriptions to run your business. 

You need a simple AI stack that connects your clients, creates your content, and commands your systems — so you stop being the bottleneck and start leading like the CEO you are.

In this episode, you’ll discover how to cut through tool overwhelm and finally build systems that actually work for you. From automation that runs while you sleep to AI that writes in your voice, this is the tech trinity that helps founders scale without drowning in dashboards.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why more tools don’t equal more freedom — and what to do instead
• The CEO Tech Trinity: Connect, Create, Command
• AI-powered systems that buy back your time and reduce founder bottlenecks
• How to choose, cut, and upgrade your tools without breaking your business

This episode at a glance:
[00:00] – The myth of “more tools = more freedom”
[01:45] – The client story that inspired this framework
[03:00] – The CEO Tech Trinity: Connect, Create, Command
[05:30] – Tools that actually work (and which to skip)
[08:45] – Why your tech stack should be a silent business partner
[11:00] – Action steps to cut overwhelm and upgrade one system

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

• Brand Voice GPT Workshop – create your own AI assistant that writes in your voice
• Join the AI for Founders Community on LinkedIn

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.

Transcript

She's That Founder
091 | The Founder's AI Stack: Tools, Prompts & Automations That Actually Work

You have 17 different software subscriptions, three project management systems, and you're still manually copying content at midnight on Sundays. Let's fix this ridiculous situation for real this time. Here's the truth, bomb nobody wants to hear your tech tool.

Addiction isn't solving anything. You're not building a tech stack, you're building a digital junk drawer. It's costing you time, money, and your sanity. 

And today I'm walking you through the CEO Tech Trinity that actually works.

You're listening to, um. And today I'm walking you through, and today I'm walking you through the CEO Tech Trinity that actually works for ambitious female founders who are done playing small and ready to let their business run like the empire it is meant to be.

You are listening to. She's that founder, the show that helps ambitious women stop drowning in decisions and start owning their CEO seat with a little bit of AI magic. I'm Dawn Andrews, business strategist and executive leadership coach, and in today's deep dive, we're cutting through the noise and showing you how to build a tech stack that works for you instead of the other way around.

If you're tired of being the bottleneck in your own business, this one's for you. Okay, so quick reality check. You're not broken. You're not broken for wanting systems that actually work without you micromanaging them. You're not lazy for being exhausted by tools that promise to save time, but created more work. And the world of ai, there are a lot of those right now. And you're definitely not behind because everyone else seems to have figured out some magical productivity formula. 

The entrepreneurial world, has sold you a lie that more tools equals more freedom.

But you've learned the hard way that 17 dashboards don't make you 17 times more efficient. They make you 17 times more scattered. 

This is an ad spot. Quick heads up. If you're tired of tool overwhelm, and you wanna see exactly how other founders are building their tech stacks, come join us in the AI for Founders community. It's free, it's founder friendly, and it's where we share our real behind the scenes what's working, what flopped, and how we're using AI without losing our minds. You can find us on LinkedIn at AI for founders. 

Okay, so lemme tell you this story. This is about one of my private clients. We'll call her Emma. And you know, I'm under NDAs, so I give you my best approximation of the stories without giving away the stories. 

So Emma came to me with the entrepreneurial equivalent of a fully stocked kitchen, but she was still ordering takeout every night. She had all the ingredients for freedom, but she had no recipe to put them together.

She had tools like FlowDesk and Notion, and Jasper and Zapier you name it. But she told me, Dawn, I built this business to have freedom and I'm more trapped than when I had a boss. She was still writing her own emails. She was manually checking her email sequences. She was spending two hours a week copying content from Google Docs into ConvertKit and managing her.

She was manually checking launch sequences from her. Marketing agency. Sound familiar? That pit in your stomach when you realize you've spent more time setting up systems than actually running your business? 

Oh girlfriends. I have been there.

The breakthrough moment came when Emma realized that her tools were running her business instead of the other way around. Her tech stack wasn't the  problem. Her approach was the problem. She was treating her business like she was a high level freelancer instead of the CEO that she already was.

Right? Six weeks later, after we did some of this work, Emma texted me from her daughter's school performance and she said, my email sequence just made three sales while I watched the third grade musical. That is the freedom I was building toward, and that's what we're building today. Your tech stack should be your silent business partner, not your needy ex who demands constant attention.

So here's what nobody tells you about founder overwhelm. It's not about working harder, it's about working like the CEO you already are. And CEOs don't manually copy content at midnight. 

So let me introduce you to the CEO Tech Trinity connect, create command. 

So part one, Connect. These are your always on relationship builders. And let's start with where most founders feel the pain first. Staying connected with your people without stocking their inboxes. Just trying to maintain relationships, especially in a service based business when you have to turn your attention away from relationships to serve the relationships.

Instead of stocking people's inboxes or abandoning your client work to market or abandoning your marketing to do client work, these are the tools I recommend based on your founder stage. And so I'll share the tool and then I'll share maybe what stage you would be in that this would be the best match for you.

So flowdesk, if you want, ease and beauty. ConvertKit, if you want tagging and segmentation and solid automation. Active Campaign, if you need serious behavior-based workflows and high level, if you're ready to run everything from one platform, email, SMS, landing pages, CRM, and automations all in one place, and PS that's what we use behind the scenes.

But here's what most founders get backward. They think automation removes the personal touch, and so maybe they're reticent to use it or they think that automation should take it all off their plate, which also removes the human touch, so wrong. the right kind of automation, amplifies your personal touch by delivering it consistently, even when you're sleeping andI will be honest with you, this is one of the biggest challenges of my business is maintaining consistency. 

So the goal here isn't to send prettier emails. It's to welcome new subscribers to your substack or your email list, or however you are communicating on the regular with them. Just like you're personally greeting them at your front door.

It helps you stay in their world without being needy, and it helps you sell when the timing is right without feeling like that friend who only calls when they need something. So putting together that automation alone saved Emma about eight hours a week. We set it up once and then we let it run and watched it work, and that's a huge deal in terms of keeping marketing going when you wanna turn your attention to the service of your clients.

Okay, so we talked about Connect, which is the tools and process for staying connected with your clients. 

Now let's talk about Creating. So what's it, what would it be like if you had a 24 7 copywriter who actually gets you? And if you've worked with marketing agencies, there are some fantastic ones out there and there are a lot of not so  great ones.

Ones that just don't quite hit the mark, they're serviceable that get the job done, but they're not really channeling the you of you into the marketing mix. So this is where founders waste a lot of time. Either by copywriting themselves or rewriting the copy that they have copywriters write. 

So I don't want you to be sitting at a blank page or waiting for inspiration to strike at 11:00 PM or having to go back over and rewrite something that you've already spent good money on.

So here's what I use and recommend, chat GPT for daily prompts and for repurposing content. I use Claude for really heartfelt messages, I find that it's more emotional. I definitely use custom GPTs or projects in Claude to match my voice and tone using all of my knowledge docs. 

And this is something that you can do. You can create a brand voice, GPT, if you wanna take our brand voice workshop. If you're new to all of this and don't feel very confident with prompting, you can use Jasper if you want faster social and blog ideas. Jasper's great, but just as a caveat, I find that you'll have to do a little bit more rewriting over the top of that.

And then you can also use copy AI if you like, working from templates. So if marketing is really not your bag, you're not interested in learning more about it or becoming an expert at it and you just need something simple to be done, copy AI is great for that. So the real win in using these tools for creating isn't just speed, it's alignment because when you're writing tools sound like you, delegation becomes 10 times easier.

If you have a custom voice, GPT, your team can run your copy through that GPT and edit it to where you just need to do a quick pass or a quick read, and it's good to go. That's what we use over here. You're not training a team member to write like you. You're giving them a tool that already does and does it consistently and repeatedly.

So with this part, with creating, here's what doesn't work. Generic AI prompts that make you sound like every other business person on LinkedIn. Your AI should write like you. After three cups of coffee and a good night's sleep, sharp, authentic, and impossible to ignore.

You should be able to drop your voice prompt in and let AI be your first draft partner, not your replacement. 

Okay, so now that you know what to do and what not to do, we talked about connect. We talked about create. 

Now let's talk about the third C Command. This is your business nervous system. This is where it all comes together.

It's what you've been dreaming about when it comes to automation, and this is where mind pal. It's M-I-N-D-P-A-L. Mind Pal can become the star of the show. I'm sure on other podcast episodes, you've heard me mention multi-agent workflows. This is the platform where I build them. 

Mind Pal lets you run multiple agents at once and it lets you assign specific roles to those agents like copywriter, editor, or strategist. It gives each agent context and goals, and you can launch full content campaigns from one dashboard. It's like giving each of your team members an AI assistant who knows exactly what to do and delivers it instantly.

No more quick questions that derail your entire afternoon. And then you can use tools like Notion or Clickup for storing SOPs and prompt libraries. We actually use Airtable for this. We've built a custom Airtable. You can use Loom for asynchronous delegation, so you can create video SOPs and pass on directions and information to your team through video.

And you can use Zapier or make to automate review notifications. So when it's time for you to look at some content you can have it pushed directly to your Slack channel or to your email. So the stack that I just shared with you today doesn't just streamline, it frees you to do the CEO work that only you can do.

So if I were building a new founder's tech stack from scratch today, I would use high level for email my CRM, and for automations. I actually even use it for courses and quizzes and so many other things.

I would use chat, GPT and my brand voice, GPT, for writing, along with Claude for more emotional writing and also just to crosscheck. I would use Mind Pal for executing larger projects that require multiple agents. I would use Airtable for team ops, but if you're not an Airtable person, notion is fantastic and It's an easy onboard, and then that's it. Four tools, lean. Powerful and delegatable. So again, high level chat, GPT Mind Pal notion done. 

So let's do a little implementation reality. Check and address the elephant in the room. So you're probably thinking, this sounds great, Dawn. I love it, but I don't have time to set this up.

Well, here's the mindset shift that changes. Everything. You don't have time not to set this up. So whether you're the one that does it, you task a team member with it, or you hire us to help you every week, you're spending manually doing what these systems could handle is a week. You're not scaling, you're not leading fully, you're not building the business and building relationships that let you watch those third grade musicals.

So start with one piece. Pick the biggest time drain in your week or the biggest time drain in your team's week, and have them pick that and it's usually email or content creation and automate that first. 

Don't try to build Rome in a weekend and here's permission you didn't know you need it. It's okay if your first automation isn't perfect. It really is. Done is better than perfect. An imperfect automation is infinitely better than perfect manual labor. 

Picture this, you wake up to a notification that three new clients signed up overnight. Your email sequence nurtured them from stranger to buyer while you slept. Your content calendar is full for the next month and fully aligned with your business goals because your AI assistant batch created it in your voice on Tuesday and you spend your morning on strategy calls, not answering quick questions, your afternoon is free for the CEO work that actually moves the needle. And when your daughter has a school play, you go because your business runs without you having to run it all the time.

This isn't a fantasy. This is what happens when you stop collecting tools and start commanding systems because your business should enhance your life, not consume it, and the right tech stack makes that possible. 

So if you wanna stop Googling best AI tools at 11:00 PM and actually build a custom AI assistant that sounds like you and saves you hours, every week we're putting together a brand voice, GPT workshop.

It'll be coming up very soon. Watch your email and in that workshop, you'll create your own custom GPT that writes in your voice, understands your business, and becomes your always on copywriting partner. Check the show notes and grab your spot@freerangethinking.com. At hellodawn.live/workshop.

Come join us. Make your custom GPT. Okay, let's recap the CEO Tech Trinity Connect. AI can be your always on relationship builders that nurture without being needy. Create, AI can be your 24/7 copywriter who actually gets your voice. Command, AI can be your business's nervous system that runs the show while you're leading it.

And you know, I like some action steps. So here are two actions you can take this week. I mean, bonus, you can just jump in this workshop and get it done. Or I want you to audit your current tech stack. 

What's actually buying back your time? Like if you give up another tool, what makes it better for you?

Saves you some money, saves you some time. It's probably just sitting there, not even being used. And then which of your tools are just giving you another dashboard to ignore? Cut 'em. Let 'em go. 

Number two, choose one, upgrade one. Choose one area to upgrade your email automation, like maybe your welcome sequence, AI writing or content creation or workflow delegation, and implement that and test it before you add anything new.

And if mind pal's calling your name, stick around. I'll be sharing a full mindpal use case episode soon. 

So my good woman, remember, you are not behind. You're just human. And humans deserve systems that actually work. And if today's episode help you realize you're not the problem but your approaches, do me a favor and hit that follow button.

Leave a review or share this with the smartest founder you know, who's still copying content at midnight, and then join our AI for Founders community on LinkedIn at AI for Founders. 

This is how you scale with systems, not spreadsheets. I'll see you next time, Lovies.