109 | How AI Caught Me Right Before I Broke: A Female Founders Thanksgiving Reflection

What if the tool you keep ignoring could be the thing that saves your sanity next year?

This isn’t your typical "thankful" episode. In this raw and revealing Thanksgiving reflection, Dawn Andrews shares the behind-the-scenes moment she nearly broke under the weight of business, motherhood, and life. What pulled her back from the edge? Three simple (but powerful) AI workflows that helped her breathe, lead, and build again. If you’re over firefighting your way through founder life, this one’s for you.

Want to start next year with systems instead of stress? Join Dawn’s Insider Email List for free prompts, frameworks, and behind-the-scenes strategies that actually work: hellodawn.live/insider

Key Takeaways

• Monday Strategy Shift: How a 15-minute AI session ended the reactive chaos and brought CEO-level clarity to her weeks.
• The GPT That Called Her Out: Dawn shares how her custom AI assistant helped her confront avoidance behaviors and saved her $539 (and a spiral).
• Content Without Burnout: Why her AI-powered content repurposing workflow gave her Sundays—and her family—back.
• The Real Power of AI: When used right, AI isn’t just a time-saver—it’s a truth-teller and a business builder.
• Why Systems Trump Goals: The emotional + strategic case for choosing workflows over wish lists in 2026.

Resources & Links

• Join the Insider Email List

Related Episodes:

• Episode 102 – 3 Standard Operating Procedures Every Founder Should Build in 30 Minutes (Using AI to Write Your SOPs)
• Episode 98 – The AI Content System That Sounds Like You (In 10 Minutes)

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
109 | How AI Caught Me Right Before I Broke: A Female Founders Thanksgiving Reflection

Speaker: Hey friend, it's Thanksgiving morning. I am sitting here with my hot cup of tea, and in about an hour I'm gonna start making the biggest pot of mashed potatoes you have ever seen.

Like there's not a pot bigger than this. In my house, I'm having dinner at one of my bestie's places, and I'm also bringing a salad, which is intimidating because she makes salads that taste like spring crisp, fresh, perfectly dressed, and mine will be. Fine, but before I head into the kitchen, before the chaos and the cooking and the beautiful mess of being with people that I love, I wanna sit here with you for a few minutes because I've been thinking about something.

Frank's dad passed away a few years ago. My kids are getting older soon. They'll be more excited about Friendsgiving than sitting at the table with us. Thanksgiving always falls around my birthday, which makes me reflective anyway. And this year more than ever, I'm present to the fact that moments like today are finite.

So I'm grateful for the people I get to share this day with, for the business I've built and for you listening right now. I'm grateful for something I didn't know I even needed a few years ago. Ai, not in a look at how productive I am, way in a, this might have saved my life this year..

So that's what this episode is. It's short, it's vulnerable, and it's the story of the year I almost broke and the three AI workflows that caught me before I did. Let's talk.

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to, she's That Founder Thursday edition. These are the quick rant kicks in the pants, velvet boot moments that represent me standing in the future, pulling you toward the even stronger, better, more powerful version of yourself with AI as your co-pilot.

Okay, let me take you back to February of this year. January had been a lot. The LA fires happened. We were on hold for two potential evacuations, packing up everything that mattered to us in our house. At the last minute, everybody was on edge. We were worried about neighbors and friends and entire communities burning to the ground.

Then the new administration came in and our world felt chaotic in different ways. Business had been slow. 2024 had been my slowest year on record since I started the business 23 years ago. And January, 2025 wasn't looking much better, but I had started the year optimistic, you know, I was excited, I was strong, I was ready, and then February came and I did something I shouldn't have done.

Maybe I looked at my calendar, not just February. I looked at everything coming between January and July, a marathon in March, relocating my aging mom to LA after an illness. My son graduating high school, my younger son turning 16 taxes. The normal fires that I put out in my business and the abnormal fires happening in the world around me, and I just.

Sat there staring at all of it, knowing that every single month had something major that was going to require me to show up. To hold it together, to be present. And I remember thinking, I need to make space to breathe or stress is going to consume me. That was the moment. That was when I knew something had to fundamentally change about how I was working.

Not, I need to be more productive, not I need to hustle harder. It was, I need to work completely differently or I'm gonna break, or the business is gonna break. And here's what I figured out. And I feel silly sharing this with you guys, but truly. It was three AI workflows that were the difference between breaking and breathing this year.

So let me tell you what Monday mornings used to look like for me. I'd open my laptop and there'd be a pile of emails, dms, slack messages, hopping around from Messenger on Facebook to different social platforms. Things just piled up every weekend and I just start responding whatever was loudest, got my attention first.

And truth be told, I have always been a firefighter in my business running toward whatever's burning, putting it out, and moving to the next fire. It's why I am a fantastic coach for other founders that do this. And honestly, when business was slow, it felt fine. Like at least I was staying busy. Once the world around me got complicated, I realized that firefighting wasn't just stressful. It was capping my ability to grow and capping my ability to remain calm because I was spending every Monday reacting instead of leading, and because I've been goofing with AI since before the beginning, I built something, a Monday morning strategy session, 15 minutes, four AI prompts that help me figure out what actually matters this week.

Does my calendar match my priorities? What should I delegate and what strategic question should I be thinking about? And here's what changed. I stopped starting every week in reaction mode. I started every week knowing what I was building towards, not just the what's on fire today, but what matters for the next six months. And AI doesn't get it right every time. But it helps remove some of the decision fatigue and fog that I can feel when I'm overwhelmed. So that one shift from firefighter to strategist with a tool changed everything about how I lead my business.

Okay, so this is the next AI workflow, and I almost didn't tell you this story because it is so embarrassing and it is uncomfortable and it reveals something about me that I'd rather you not know. But I'm gonna tell you anyway because I think you need to hear it. And if I'm sharing it, I really hope that there's somebody out there that is gonna benefit from this.

So. I have this decision making assistant. It's a custom GPT that knows my business, my goals, my patterns, my values. It's like having a strategic thinking partner available 24 7. I don't have a co-founder to bounce things off of, and so this is my co-founder. And the other day I asked it a question, a totally reasonable question I thought.

I said, “For my business, do I need the LinkedIn network and Job Finder feature?” And here's what it said back to me. I'm gonna read you part of the conversation that I had with this GPT because it's important. It said this is the exact same pattern in all caps. “Do I need this feature? What about another tool? Should I upgrade this thing? The answer is no. In all caps, you don't need LinkedIn premium features.

You need to post content. Free. Respond to comments free. Send dms to people you're already connected with, free. All of that is free in all caps on LinkedIn. What's really happening right now? You're asking me about tools because you're avoiding the one thing that will actually move your business forward.

Reaching out to real humans and asking them to work with you or refer you. This is textbook A DHD, avoidance behavior Research tools feels productive, optimize systems, feel strategic, learn new features, dopamine hit. Actually send the email. Scary. You have a thousand people on your email list. You have however many connections on LinkedIn.

You have 20 plus years of referral sources in your network. You don't have a tool problem in all caps. You have an execution problem and you're using tool research as a way to avoid execution because execution feels risky. So here's what I want from you. Stop asking me about tools. Tell me what you're actually afraid of, then send the damn email.”

This is the dressing down I got from my decision making custom GPT that I built. And do you wanna know the truth? The really uncomfortable truth? It was totally right. And I also haven't sent all those emails yet.

I closed my laptop. I felt seen. I felt called out, and I felt scared. Not because my AI was right. I'm not afraid of tools, I'm afraid of rejection. I'm afraid somebody's gonna say no. I'm afraid I'll confirm the story I've been telling myself about why business was slow in 2024, but here's what's different now.

I have a system that calls me on my shit, and I will send those emails before this episode airs. Not because I'm suddenly brave, but because I built a thinking partner. A community who won't let me hide, and that's what AI actually does when you use it well. It doesn't just make you more efficient, it makes you more honest with yourself.

 And you know what? It saved me 539 bucks on a LinkedIn premium subscription that I didn't need. But more importantly, it saved me from another week of avoiding work that actually moves the needle. Okay. One more story and then I'm gonna tell you what to do with all of this. Picture this, it's early morning before my family wakes up, still in my PJ's, sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop because I pulled it outta my office thinking I'll just knock this workout real quick.

I'm trying to do this before everybody wakes up. I'm trying to organize and complete 20 social media posts for the month, photos, videos, captions, coordinating everything, making it all perfect, of course, and I did it. I got them done, but I spent more time on those posts than I did with my family that day I thought that was a winnable game. I thought if I just powered through, I'd get ahead. It was not a winnable game. It took most of the entire day. I was creating content from scratch every single day.

Different content for different platforms. I was exhausted. And honestly, most of it was not very good. So now in the world of AI, I built something different.

I built myself a content repurposing system. AI that takes one piece of core content and turns it into 6, 7, 10 other formats without me needing to create everything from scratch. One great podcast episode becomes a LinkedIn article, an email, Instagram posts, carousels, everything without me sitting at my kitchen table in my pajamas, sacrificing my family time.

And this was the first workflow I built last year, and it changed everything because I was able to give that task to my team completely. I know that the quality was excellent because it was based on my actual words and content. I went from spending hours daily, weekly. Spending a total of three hours a month and the quality went way up, not down because I was focusing my creative energy on one great thing from my heart, speaking to the people that matter the most instead of 17 mediocre ones.

I got my Sundays back, I got my family time back, and I got my life back. So those are the three workflows that have saved my money this year, the Monday morning strategy session, so that I could stop firefighting and start focusing on what really mattered, the decision making assistant that calls me out when I'm hiding instead of doing the scary work and the content repurposing system that gives me back hours and hours each week and over the month to let me focus on what I'm really good at.

I don't need to be a content expert. These three workflows didn't just make me more productive. They made me more honest, more strategic, straight up, calmer, and more present with my family, and now more capable of handling a year that could have broken me. And if I could tell January dawn anything, it would be to build these first.

Everything else can wait. So here's what I'd like you to sit with today while you're with your family, while you're making your own version of the world's biggest pot of mashed potatoes. If you could give your January 20, 26 self one system, not a goal, not a strategy, a system, what would change most about how you work?

Because here's what I learned this year. Goals without systems are just wishes, and I'm done wishing I'm building. Maybe you need Monday mornings that start strategic instead of reactive. Maybe you need an AI thinking partner who calls you out when you're avoiding the real work. Maybe you need to stop sacrificing family time for content that isn't really even working.

 Pick one. Build it in January, master it with your team in Q1. And next Thanksgiving you'll be building from an even stronger foundation. Not because you worked harder, but because you worked differently. So. Now if you want help building workflows like these in your business, join my insider email list every week.

I send prompts, frameworks, and real examples from my business that you can actually use. No fluff, no theory, just the stuff that works and it's free.

It's at she's that founder.com/insider. And honestly, if you join today, you'll start getting emails in your inbox that will help you build 2026 different than 2025 systems instead of just goals strategy instead of just firefighting.

So jump in, start next year different than you started this one. And if you do send those scary emails, let me know what happens, because I'll be sending mine too. All right, levy, that is it. That's the episode. Go make your potatoes, eat salad that tastes like spring. Be with your people. Hug them extra tight because these moments are finite.

And when you're ready to think about building different in 2026, you know where to find me. Happy Thanksgiving. I'm so grateful you're here. I'm Dawn Andrews, and you're listening to She's That Founder.