108 | 3 AI Systems That Help Female Founders Manage Time, Clients, and Business During the Holidays

Are you actually resting? Or just pretending to unplug while silently panicking about your inbox?

If the holidays have you caught between client deadlines and family obligations, you’re not alone—and you’re not failing. You’re just running a business that needs smarter systems. In this episode of She’s That Founder, Dawn Andrews reveals the 3 AI-powered workflows that helped her compress business chaos into 30 focused minutes—so she could actually enjoy Thanksgiving and keep her business visible, client-ready, and thriving.

You’ll learn the same time-saving strategies Dawn and her clients use to check in once, respond to what matters, and actually be present with the people they love. Even better? These aren’t just holiday hacks—they’re year-round CEO systems in disguise.

Want the exact prompts, templates, and checklists Dawn uses? Grab the free Holiday Systems Pack and join the insider community at: hellodawn.live/insider

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why unplugging completely is consultant fantasy BS—and what to do instead
• The exact AI inbox triage prompt to sort urgent emails from FYIs in 2 minutes
• A plug-and-play prompt to draft 3 essential holiday comms in less than 12 minutes
• How to avoid the Sunday Scaries with an AI-powered return-to-work game plan
• Why these systems aren't just for Q4—they're your new weekly workflow

Resources & Links

•  Join the Insider Community

Related Episode

• EP 101 | Stop Asking Permission to Lead—Just Lead
• EP 102 | 3 Standard Operating Procedures Every Founder Should Build in 30 Minutes (Using AI to Write your SOPs)

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
108 | 3 AI Systems That Help Female Founders Manage Time, Clients, and Business During the Holidays

Let me tell you what's not happening this Thanksgiving. 

You're not unplugging. Not really because you run a client-based business and unplugging completely is consultant fantasy bullshit. 

But here's what can happen. You can go from checking email 17 times a day in a panic to checking once, you can spend 30 focused minutes on what actually matters, and then go back to your family without that low grade terror running in the background. 

That's what AI made possible for me. Today I'm showing you exactly how. 

Hey, hey, hey. You're 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 AI magic.

I'm Dawn Andrews, and today we're talking about how to enjoy the holidays without your business falling apart or your brain running. Worst case scenarios the entire time.

By the end of this episode, you'll know why unplugging completely isn't actually the goal and what compressed focused work looks like. Instead, you'll know the three AI systems. I'm using this Thanksgiving to go from scattered anxiety to one 30 minute check-in and I'll share with you the exact prompts you can copy tonight so that you can test this approach over the holiday and then use it year round.

Let's go. 

Okay, so last Thanksgiving, I actually did unplug. Completely. I was in Mexico with my family. No laptop, minimal phone, fully present. And you know why I could do that? Because business was so slow in Q4 that I had nothing to check, which sounds great, right? Finally unplugging except I was, ugh. I was all wound up the entire time because Q4 had been weirdly quiet, my pipeline was thin.

I'm sitting on a beach in Mexico thinking, what if this is the beginning of the end? What if I come back to January and there's nothing? What if I should be working right now to fill the pipeline instead of pretending to relax? I wasn't anxious about missing urgent client calls or emails. I was anxious about not having enough clients to email me in the first place.

But here's what I had done before I left, and this is what gave me peace of mind. I used AI to set up my marketing to keep running while I was gone. I had social posts scheduled that AI helped me write in my voice and helped me strategically plan out. I had email campaigns going out that AI drafted based on my existing content and had those automated in sending, and I had LinkedIn content showing up so that I didn't go dark for 10 days. 

And honestly, that was the only thing keeping me from straight up panic, because at least I knew that while I was offline, my business was fully visible. And that's when I realized something. 

The problem wasn't that I couldn't unplug, I'd proven that I could. The problem was that unplugging felt dangerous because before that, I didn't have systems in place to keep things moving without me. 

So here we are this year coming up on Thanksgiving, and this year is different because this year business is good. The tide is back in my good sister, and I'm so glad about it. Q4 has been strong and now the challenge isn't, can I afford to unplug? It's how do I unplug when clients actually need me and I can't just disappear two sides of the same coin, right?

So here's what I've learned heading into the holidays this year. AI doesn't just help you market when you're away. It helps you compress your client work so you can check in once, handle what matters, and then actually be present. Not disappearing for 10 days, hoping that nothing breaks, not checking email 40 times and never being fully present with your family, but strategically managing your business in focused pockets so you can protect the time that matters.

And that's what we're building today.

Okay, before I give you the three AI systems. You need to understand why unplugging completely is actually the wrong goal for most of us. Because if you run a client based business consulting agency, work, legal services, creative services.

Your business doesn't have an off switch, and if it's a service-based business, you might be. The reason that it is on your clients are often on deadlines. They're working across time zones. They're used to fast response times because that's what you've trained them to expect, I imagine, and that's what makes you valuable as a service provider.

And the holidays, don't pause for that. If anything, holidays start to create urgency because everyone's trying to wrap up before year end. So when you tell yourself, I'm gonna completely unplug what actually happens, you either break that promise to yourself and check email constantly and feel guilty the whole time, or you actually unplug and then you spend the holidays anxious about what you're missing, and neither one of those feels great.

So here's my invitation. Here is the potential better goal, compressed focused work instead of scattered anxious work. Instead of checking that email 17 times and handling things in panicked fragments, check once. Pick the time and day that that's happening and let your clients know.

That's when you do it. You spend 30 focused minutes. You use AI to help you organize, prioritize, and draft responses. You review, you decide, you respond. You close the laptop and you're done. The rest of the time you are present with your family.This is not fantasy unplugging, but it is potentially a hell of a lot better than what you did last year. 

So here are the systems, the first system is the AI inbox triage, and this is what turns I need to read and respond to everything into, AI tells me actually what matters. 

And here's how it works. Friday morning or whatever your one check-in day is, you open your inbox, you've got maybe 18 to 25, maybe 50 emails that came in over the holiday. Instead of reading each one and trying to figure out what's urgent, copy and paste all of them into chat. GT or Claude. 

With this prompt, “I'm going to paste X number of emails that came in over the holiday. For each one, tell me the urgency level. Respond today. Respond Monday. FYI Only what they're actually asking for in one sentence. A suggested response if needed in my voice.”

And who else could handle this, if not me? This is a very simple prompt. If you're in Gmail, you can have Gemini review your inbox for you. The reason I like copy and pasting it into chat GPT or into Claude is that you can set the privacy settings so that the machine is not learning from your emails. So from a privacy perspective, I like being able to separate that and not have Gemini crawl my entire Gmail inbox and learn too much about me.

So that's it. That's the prompt. AI can read all of your emails in two minutes or less and give you a breakdown. It'll share which ones can wait, which ones need to be delegated to team, and which ones need a response, and potentially draft the response for you. 

So now, instead of spending two hours reading, rereading, agonizing, drafting second guessing. You spend 25 minutes reviewing AI's assessment, sending the responses that matter, and delegating the things that don't need you, and ignoring the 11 that can wait or even deleting them. So here's a specific example. 

This is what it looked like for a client of mine last month when she was out for a long weekend. She came back to 35 emails. She used this prompt and AI told her that 14 were updates, FYI only, no response needed. Five could be handled by her project manager. Three needed her and one was a scope question.

One was a contract review and one was a client checking in. She forwarded the five to her PM with quick context. She responded to the three that needed to be done and done. Without AI, she told me she would've spent the entire morning in her inbox treating everything like it was equally important because she didn't have the mental bandwidth to triage, and that happens all the time.

Right. We open our inboxes and we get distracted by one thing and go down. I mean, I don't know, maybe you guys don't experience this. I got a little bit of the A DHD, so sometimes when I open my inbox, I'm opening up a doorway to the universe and I am all over the place. So it's really helpful for me to be able to paste that inbox, that grouping of emails into AI and have it triaged for me.

 It helps me stay focused. And this is especially powerful if you're in consulting, agency work or advisory services because your clients are used to fast responses. They're used to feeling like they have direct access to you, and that expectation makes it so hard to unplug because you're always worried, what if they need me and I don't respond fast enough?

But here's the thing, most of the time what they actually need is acknowledgement and clarity. They need to know that you saw their message and what happens next. And AI can help you see that 80% of the messages that you receive don't need your expertise urgently. They need confirmation, delegation, or a, this can wait until Monday response the 20% that does need you. AI can draft those responses so you're not starting from scratch. 

So here's what I'm inviting you to do tonight. Copy that prompt. Test it with your last 10 emails and see how it works, and then bookmark it. Plan to use it Friday morning or whenever your one check-in is. That's your first system. 

The second system is the AI communication drafter, and this is what saves you from spending Wednesday night staring at a blank screen, trying to write professional, but warm out of the office messages while you're exhausted, maybe packing, trying to get your family together to get out the door.

So here's what this does. AI can draft your three critical holiday messages for you in about three minutes each. And what you're looking for it to make for you is your out of office email autoresponder. Your proactive client update here's my schedule, here's what to do if something comes up.

And number three is your team Slack status with decision making guidance. So you might be thinking, Dawn, girl, I can write an out of office message. That's not hard. And you're right, you can, I'm not saying you can't, but here's what actually happens.

You sit down to write it and suddenly you're overthinking everything. Should I sound warm or professional? Should I give my phone number or is that opening the floodgates? Should I tell them who to contact? Or will that annoy my team who are also off for the holiday? How do I set a boundary without sounding cold or unavailable?

And 30 minutes later you've written three sentences and you hate all of them, and like, I know you've been there because we've all been there. Here's what AI does. AI gives you a first draft that's 80% there, and you customize that last 20% and you're done. 

So here's a prompt structure I can give you for an out of office message.

And remember, like one of the things that my good friend Elizabeth shares with me, she's the AI expert that we talked about ethics with. she's like, oftentimes with ai, you've gotta slow down to be able to go fast. 

So when I'm sharing these prompts with you. They're more than three sentences, and you think, why am I writing three sentences to write three sentences?

But once you have this prompt down, you can use this over and over and over again. 

Okay, rant over. 

Here's the prompt that I use. “I need an out of office message for Thanksgiving, November 28th and 29th. [For instance] I am a project manager [or whatever your role is] who works with [Your type of clients]. The tone is warm, but with clear boundaries and includes when I'm back; what to do if urgent? who to contact for project questions and keep it under a hundred word”

And AI will give you something like, “Thanks for your message. I'm away with family for Thanksgiving November 28th and 29th, and we'll respond when I'm back on Monday, December 2nd. If you have an urgent question that can wait, please contact team member at email address for project related questions. My team is monitoring. Whatever the team email is, otherwise, I'll get back to you first thing Monday morning, happy Thanksgiving.” 

You can tweak it to sound more like you, you can add your specific details, but it's done in three minutes. Moving on, I did this Monday for three different messages. My out of office autoresponder, three minutes with AI would've been 30 minutes in my ADHD overthinking brain. I did it for my client update email that went out, here's what I'm available, here's what to expect, and five minutes with ai, and that would've been much longer without it. And then my team's Slack status here's how to make decisions without me guidance.

Four minutes with AI, and it probably would've been 30 without it. So total time to set myself up with the messages that would hold me and my team and my clients while I was taking time away, took me about 12 minutes, without AI could have been as much as 90 because I would stare at drafts. 

I would second guess my tone. I would go off on a tangent somewhere with some other email in the inbox. I would get distracted by another project. I don't know if that happens for you, but I'm just saying. Why not just bust these suckers out so that you can have a relaxing holiday time? I mean, this matters so much because if you're in consulting.

Creative services agency work. Tone matters so much in these messages, and you need them to sound like you and have boundaries, but you're not abandoning anyone. You need to sound professional but not cold. You need to sound confident but not dismissive, and that is a lot of emotional labor to manage when you're trying to get out the door.

AI can remove that friction. You get a solid first draft, you adjust the tone, you send it, and you're done. So grab that prompt, customize it for your business, draft your three messages and set them up or schedule them, and your second system is done so that you can kick your feet up and enjoy that Thanksgiving Day football game.

The third system is the AI return from break organizer. And this one might be the most important because it's what actually lets you relax on Sunday. This is what helps with the Sunday scaries. 

So what happens every Sunday before you go back to work after a holiday and may happen for you every Sunday anyway, is that you can't relax, you can't rest and be present because you're really dreading Monday morning. 

You're thinking about that inbox avalanche that might be waiting for you, or a Slack backlog, the 20 things that piled up while you were out and your brain is already trying to triage it. What came in? What's urgent? What did I miss? What broke? Who said something or did something that I didn't want them to say or do?

So Sunday stops being a day off and starts becoming pre Monday anxiety, the Sunday scaries, but here's what changes that. Sunday evening, you run an AI prompt that organizes everything before you sit down Monday morning, you paste your emails, your slack messages, whatever comes in, and AI can help you create your Monday game plan.

So here's what you paste into chat, GPT or Claude on Sunday night. “I'm pasting X emails and messages from the holiday. Create a Monday morning action plan. What needs an immediate response with suggested priorities? What can be delegated with suggested delegation language? What can wait until Tuesday and a time estimate for each category? Format this as a checklist I can work through Monday from nine to 11:00 AM” 

And you get back something like this. “Immediate response needed 60 minutes. Client A has a scope question, needs clarification on deliverable and timeline. Client B has a contract review. Minor edits you can approve today. Number three, team member needs an approval on a vendor invoice for $800. And then delegate a project update, request a media inquiry, a scheduling conflict, and who needs to take care of those. And then in the can wait until Tuesday. A list of FYI updates. Non-urgent questions, routine check-ins.” 

So now when you sit down on Monday morning, you're not drowning.

You're not frantically reading everything, trying to figure out what matters. You have a plan. You knock out the three things you need to do in the first 60 minutes. You delegate the stuff that doesn't need you, and you ignore the rest until Tuesday. It's strategic instead of reactive and all of this stuff, just test it out.

And if you really wanna go deep on this, then we can talk about creating a custom GPT for you that does exactly this with your inbox and your unique people to delegate to the right information, and the detailed information of where everything needs to go. We can build something like that for you. So if you're in consulting or advisory work, this is huge because your clients often assume that everything is urgent.

And when you come back to 25 messages, your brain treats them all like fires. But AI can help you see that actually a majority of those can wait. A few can be delegated and even fewer need you specifically, and that clarity is what lets you come back strong instead of overwhelmed.

So grab those prompts, like bookmark those prompts or grab it out of the transcript. So that Sunday evening, maybe 8:00 PM whenever you do your weekly prep, run it and Monday morning you can walk in organized. That's your third system. 

Okay? Here's what I want you to hear. You are not a bad business owner because you can't completely unplug. Client-based businesses don't work that way. The idea that you should be able to fully disconnect for four days and have everything be fine, that is just consultant fantasy, and that's not real life. 

But you also don't have to spend the entire holiday in a scattered, anxious, half present state where you're checking email and texts and never fully relaxing.

The middle ground is this one focus check-in 30 minutes. AI does the organizing, prioritizing, and drafting, and you review, decide, and respond and close the laptop. That's not perfect unplugging, but it's a hell of a lot better than what you probably lived through last year.

And here's the biggest thing. When you use these systems over Thanksgiving, you realize you can use them year round AI triaging your inbox. That is not just for the holidays. Those Monday mornings you come back to from a weekend and you have a stack of emails waiting for you. AI drafting the communication that is not just out of office messages, that's client updates, proposal follow-ups, team guidance, everything and AI organizing your return. 

That's for every time you come back from a weekend, a vacation, a conference, a packed travel schedule for work, a packed week of client work. Anytime that you're sort of returning to the day to day. 

So this isn't just a holiday hack, this is a business operating system that you're testing during the holidays because you have a strong why right now, protecting time with your family. But isn't that true year round? Once you see how much mental space and actual time these systems give you back, you're not gonna wanna stop using them.

So back to last year. Last year in Mexico, I used AI to keep my marketing running so I didn't feel invisible while I was unplugged. This year, I'm using it to compress my work so that I can check in once, handle what matters, and be with my family. Both versions are about the same thing.

Using AI to create space for what actually matters while you're keeping your business moving, and that's what you're testing this week. 

So quick note, I gave you three AI prompts you can use tonight. The inbox triage, the communication drafter, and the return organizer. But if you want the complete holiday systems pack, including the automated marketing setup that I used last year, the emergency contact protocol, advanced prompt variations for different scenarios.

The return from holiday strong checklist, join the insider experience for free at hellodawn.live/insider. These systems don't just work for the holidays. They work year round. Alright, so let's recap what we covered today. First we talked about why unplugging completely isn't the actual goal. The goal is compressed focused work instead of scattered, anxious work.

Second, I gave you three AI systems, the AI inbox triage. You can paste your emails, get 'em organized by urgency, get suggested responses, and know what actually needs your attention. Number two, I gave you the AI communication drafter so that you can draft your out of office client update and team guidance auto emails in three minutes instead of 30.

then I gave you the AI return organizer. This takes away the Sunday night Scaries AI creates your Monday game plan, so you walk in organized instead of overwhelmed. These aren't just holiday systems.

These are year round systems that you're testing this week because you have a strong why right now . 

So here's what you're doing tonight before you go to bed. It's worth it, believe me. Do a couple jumping jacks and make it happen. Copy the prompts that I gave you. Test the inbox, triage on your last 10 emails and see how it works. Use the communication drafter prompt to create your three holiday messages out of office client update team status, customize them, set 'em up so they're ready to go out, and then Bookmark the return organizer prompt for Sunday evening. In fact, if you want like a really big pro tip, copy and paste it. Put it in your calendar. Whatever time that you usually check in on Sunday nights, you can just copy the prompt right out of your calendar every Sunday night, and by Wednesday you're done.

Your systems are in place. You can check in once on Friday, handle what matters in 30 minutes and actually be with your family. And here's the truth. You deserve to be present with your family and the people that you love during the holidays, not physically there, while your brain is somewhere else.

You also deserve to not feel terrified that your business is falling apart while you're trying to relax. These AI systems don't eliminate holiday work. They compress it, they organize it, they make it manageable so you can be a present human and run a successful business. And honestly, that's what we're all going for. 

So happy Thanksgiving, my beautiful friend. I am grateful you're building a business that matters and makes a difference while also protecting what matters most and protecting your beautiful heart. 

I'll see you next Tuesday for the final November episode, and until then, I'm Dawn Andrews and you're listening to She's That Founder.