Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:00]:
After spending time with over 30 brilliant business owners at the Aligned AI Summit, it’s time for me to spill the beans on the biggest ways that people are using AI in 2026 in a way that protects our voice, protects our capacity, and keeps our audience’s trust. It’s not just about more content faster. It’s about better systems that keep us human. And there were some disagreements as well, which I will share as we go. Welcome to the Soulful Sales Show, where we talk about building Believing in the value of your offers, getting them in front of your right people, and selling more of what you do in your unique way. Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Soulful Sales Show. So I recently wrapped up the Aligned AI Summit. I had over 30 business owners as part of it.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:00:49]:
We had a bunch of live sessions. We talked all week long about how they are actually using AI in their businesses, the things that they love about it, the things that they are worried about it. And I wanted to give you a snapshot of the AI picture as I see it now, after speaking with all of these brilliant speakers and attendees as part of the summit. Now, I know that a lot of us have concerns and fears around AI. I definitely am very careful about maintaining our unique voice and teaching that still. I think that that is still the biggest factor in helping us stand out, and AI is only making more and more of us sound the same. And that really one of the big lessons from the summit is that the people using AI the best are not necessarily the ones using it to publish the most. It’s actually about doing things for us so that we have space for the stuff that makes us unique.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:01:45]:
So let’s get into my top 5 lessons from the Aligned AI Summit. So lesson number 1 is kind of what I was already just saying, but your voice is the thing that should stand out first and foremost. The AI tools we are using are secondary to that. And Becky Beach put it really well as part of the summit when she said that our lived experience is the one asset that no model is trained on. And it’s really, really true. Everyone has access to the same AI. Not everyone has access to the same experiences, the same philosophy, the same unique magic. That is what will help us connect with our right people, to help people relate to us, to see what’s possible and all of that good stuff.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:02:32]:
And one of the great kind of rules that came up, it came up from several speakers, was that it’s a really good idea to start everything from your point of view, the human, let AI fill in the middle stuff, and always check it from your point of view as the human before you put it out there. So this really is, in terms of content that we are writing, really, really helpful when you are creating content like email newsletters, blog posts, podcasts, whatever, to think about your new unique point of view, to think about your experience, to think about your story, to think about, you know, client examples that you can use, and put those things in there first before letting AI fill in the blanks, right? Because I don’t know if you have ever tried to write full content with AI. You probably have. Most of us have. But it cannot know those things. It just can’t, no matter how well we train it on our voice, no matter how well we take out the obvious AI isms, which I definitely, you know, support my clients with inside the Aligned AI Lab, and I do myself again and again. And yes, again and again, because it is not perfect and it needs retraining and reminding. No matter how much of that stuff you do, you can never make up for the gap, which is your personal experience, your unique voice.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:03:50]:
So really, really helpful. And one of the best ways of doing this is to use voice. So use voice mode in your AI tool of choice. I use WhisperFlow. I love it. It works across apps and do a brain dump. Talk about your day. Talk about what’s been going on.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:06]:
Talk about your experiences. Talk about why you are writing this thing now or creating this thing now, or why you were thinking of your audience at any time, right? And then weave that in to whatever content you are creating. And yeah, I started as a copywriter in 2008. So writing is a thing for me, but the kind of writing that I was doing then was very much removing my personality. I was copywriting for other people. I was also personally terrified to show up as myself. But I honestly think the exact opposite is what is needed in the AI era. Now obviously most of you listening will have a personal brand.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:04:44]:
Some of you might not. That’s okay. But we still need heart and soul and a stance and values and unique experiences. And all of that is more important than ever in the AI era. So that was lesson number 1: human first, AI second. Lesson number 2 is to build systems. So I know a lot of us have been used to using AI prompts, telling it what to do, asking it how to do things. You can get really far using prompts.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:05:14]:
The problem with this is that you will often repeat yourself, the AI forgets, or you lose track. It’s really hard to keep track of a bunch of prompts. So the whole point of making— the whole point of using AI is to make your life easier, not to give you something else to keep track of, which is where the idea of AI team members, AI employees come in. So we had a few speakers talk about this, but basically thinking about tasks that either you are avoiding, that you are always starting from scratch, where AI might be able to do some of it but gets it wrong, and turning them into automated systems. And the way that you can take AI from something that helps you come up with ideas and content to something that actually does something for you is through using connectors, MCP connectors in your AI tools. These work across the board in AI tools. And if you’re wondering if there is one available, just search for your software name plus connector or software name plus MCP, and you will find that your AI can directly connect with different systems. So for example, mine connects with my Kit account where I do my email marketing, connects with my Airtable— probably one of the most helpful connectors that I have— can connect with Gmail, can connect with Google Drive, all of these things.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:06:28]:
And we’ll talk about the risks associated with that later because that was one of the other key points. But yeah, basically let AI do the boring stuff. Let AI take over that boring grunt work for you, and then you will have more time and capacity for doing the stuff That only you can do, that unique magic. And actually, lesson 3 in my notes, I realized I already covered this in lesson 1. So you are the bookend, the human first, AI in the middle, human at the end. But yeah, let me add something to that from my notes. So basically, you, the human, need to be checking things, but you can also build systems into AI to check things for you as well. So going off the back of what I’ve already shared in this episode, it’s not just about creating these automations and letting them run without ever looking at them.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:07:17]:
You can schedule regular tasks to firstly check that they are up to date, whether they need updating based on any of the conversations you’ve been having with your AI. You can have special skills that will catch any mistakes that keep coming up. So, for example, in one of the talks, we had the idea to create a skill that when you correct AI, this skill recognizes the kind of terminology that you’re using to correct it and says, okay, what do I need to pay attention to here? And what do I need to update going forward to make sure that this mistake doesn’t happen again? So yeah, human, machine, human, but also building in automated systems to correct the way that AI has learned your brand, your voice, the way you write, the way you think, the way you do things. But I will say, that the way you think is another really important human part of this that we don’t want to be outsourcing to AI. I don’t know if you have ever gone into an AI chat for ideas and brainstorming and come away feeling totally overwhelmed and actually unsure what to do, even though the AI can tell you exactly what to do. The problem is it will be guessing at the best things you should do. It will be telling you 50 ideas when you only need one to run with, and it also doesn’t know the heart and soul of your business goals, of your audience, what you prefer working on. You know, it will sometimes give us ideas that actually don’t suit our personality, that don’t suit our current capacity, that don’t suit our clients, that we don’t really want to do.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:08:55]:
So the strategy piece— yes, you can strategize with AI, and the more that you train it on your business, the way that you do things, the types of offers you run, the things that work best for you, the better that strategy will be. But you are always the director. You’re the visionary. So much of what came up in the summit, and it’s really, really important to remember when you are using AI, is that AI is gathering all the information from all the places and coming out with a guess, an average of that information, what it thinks will be helpful for you, what it thinks you want to hear, and what it thinks is a good answer. And, and it always gives us a good answer, right? But to get great answers out of it, you need to train it well, and you absolutely need to be using your human discernment. I also personally train my AI to push back on my ideas so that we can get into a bit of a dialogue and really dig in further than that first surface-level answer as well. So yeah, just a few tips there for keeping it human and keeping your unique magic in the things that you are doing with it. So lesson number 4, this was a really, really powerful part of the summit, but building systems on your good days that will be there for you on your worst days.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:10:11]:
So I’m always banging on about this, but AI— there’s so much noise out there about AI helping us to do more, to create more, to be more productive, and all of that stuff. In some ways, I feel like the productivity conversation is going a bit backwards because of AI, but one of the reasons why I am so excited about using AI and so passionate about it, despite, you know, the fears and concerns, is that it helps with my capacity. As a low-capacity, chronically ill, neurodivergent human, AI is such an essential tool for to help me keep things going on my worst days. So we had a few different speakers talking about this, but what is really, really helpful is to— and I guess if I was going to give you a tip, it’s to, when you are talking with your AI tools, coming up with ideas, always give it a check-in on your energy level, which is really, really helpful. And You can also brain dump with it ways in which you can. So let’s just say, for example, you, you can talk out loud again. I would use voice mode for this because it takes less capacity to do it and it makes it so much less overwhelming. But I would do a brain dump of all the things that I’m working on in my business, all the things I do on a regular basis, all the things that rest on my shoulders, my team’s shoulders, the things I’ve got half, half scheduled with AI, the things that AI helps a bit with, but I do most.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:11:36]:
I would just brain dump it all. It doesn’t have to be in any specific order. It can be messy, and that is actually the beauty of these kind of brain dump voice notes is that they can totally be messy and you don’t have to do the figuring out. And then let AI find the gaps in your processes that if you couldn’t show up would stop things. Let AI notice what the bottlenecks are and you plug them one at a time. And you do this stuff on your good days when you have the extra capacity to spare on the systems to set yourself up for the hardest days in your business. All right, I also talk about this in terms of being able to show up and sell when you’re not there. So for example, for me, using AI to help repurpose past content, to schedule things in advance, to create launch pages, all of that stuff in a more automated way is really, really helpful for scheduling launches out ahead of time so that you don’t have to actually be there physically selling while the launch is happening.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:12:38]:
You can even train AI team members that help your clients and members. You can train AI chatbots on your methodology, on the contents of your offers, on customer support issues, all of that stuff to help show up and answer questions when you can’t. You can use it as— one of the examples that came up in the summit was to triage your inbox. To help you know where to prioritize and where to let go. There are so many different ways in which you can train your AI and build in systems to help you with your capacity. Of course, lots of them are covered in the summit, but like I said, you can totally do that messy brain dump voice note, and I’m sure that you will find many of— many helpful gaps to plug in your own systems in your business. And then lesson number 5 is the having boundaries around what you use AI for and what you don’t, and also being transparent about that. So we talked a lot about different people’s feelings on AI.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:13:39]:
Definitely some of the speakers find it easier to hand over more to AI, some of them are more cautious, and that’s absolutely okay. One of the things that came up that I found was really, really powerful was making your stance on AI clear, you know, having a values check on your website that includes your use of AI. Really, really importantly, you also want to be adding AI to your legal documents. There are templates to help you do this if you need it. You can add AI disclaimers to your content, to your offers. You know, when— if you’re doing events like mine where you have speakers come in, adding clauses to do with how you’re going to use the content in AI there as well. Really, really important. And also deciding what you will never let AI touch.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:14:26]:
So for example, Um, some of the speakers talked about using AI in their offers to help people figure out what it is they need help with. Doing that much with AI, with, with like an AI roadmap tool or an automated audit or something like that, being very upfront that it is AI, and then bringing that information to the human call so you have a starting point, so you’re not starting from zero and the client’s not like, oh, I don’t even know what to work on. AI has helped them get to a certain level of understanding what it is that they want to work on, and then you, the human, will guide them with your human expertise. Also, really importantly, a point that came up is if people are paying for your expertise, then don’t be outsourcing that to AI. But you can add tools that help people actually use your content. I’ve been doing this a lot in my memberships. I teach it in the Aligned AI Lab, which by the way is at ruthpoundwhite.com/lab. I’ve created tools to help people not have to start from scratch with the things that we cover in there, which my members are really loving.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:15:30]:
Some of our speakers talked about using, uh, trackers in terms of keeping track on— you could do this with coaching, with courses, with group programs, letting people note down their wins, having interactive workbooks, that kind of thing. It’s not outsourcing your expertise, it’s just allowing people to more easily use what it is that they have signed up for. So those were the kind of core 5 themes and lessons from the summit. But something that I also wanted to bring up was that we had speakers who use AI in different ways and have different boundaries with the way that they use it as well. And that is okay. There were some speakers who are automating a lot more and some speakers who are very, very cautious about what they automate. And it also comes down to your level of practicing this stuff. I don’t call myself an AI expert, but I use it a lot.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:16:22]:
I use it for a lot of my tasks, and a lot of that is to do with my capacity, like I said, and I feel more and more comfortable trying different things. However, there are still some things in the Summit that I had never even thought to do, and it makes sense that it takes time for me to feel comfortable to fully implement those new ideas, right? And for some of us, we’re really conscious of not letting it connect to our data, not giving it access to Google Drive, for example, where our files are and all of that. So you need to just draw the line where you personally feel comfortable. Of course, there are also ethical and environmental concerns. It’s something that I’ve looked into. I’ve personally decided that, well, for one, according to my research, the way that most of us are using AI is really a drop in the ocean in terms of sending chat messages compared to other lifestyle factors. For example, You know, air travel, and specifically, this is a really big one, eating beef. So we all have our own personal preferences in terms of where we draw the line in terms of these environmental factors.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:17:27]:
I choose not to eat beef, for example. You may not, and that is okay. But I wouldn’t— I would look more into the statistics there. The thing about this is it’s really complex because AI is not going anywhere. AI is built into everything we are using. When I am recording this episode, AI is built into the recorder I’m using. We can’t avoid it. It’s not up to us as individuals to hold the weight of the way the world is changing totally on our shoulders, but that is a bigger conversation.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:17:55]:
I guess where I stand is that AI is here. It is not going anywhere. And that using it is giving me a leg up in a way that I previously felt disadvantaged because of my capacity. And I am very thankful for it in that way. But you draw the line as to how much you use it, what you give it access to, and all of that stuff. There is not a correct way to use it. AI is actually a tool, much like money, for example. It is not bad, it is not good, it is a tool, and we get to decide how to use it.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:18:26]:
There is also no keeping up with AI, by the way. Like I said, I use AI a lot, but I still didn’t know all the stuff that the speakers were sharing. All of the speakers I spoke to shared the same sentiment with me as well. There’s no keeping up with it. I don’t believe that it is actually very helpful unless you want to be the AI expert, and even then I think it would be difficult. I don’t think it’s that helpful to learn the ins and outs of the technicalities of AI. I think it’s more helpful to be asking ourselves, what am I doing? What is taking up my time and energy that I could better spend elsewhere? And how can I use AI in those places? Which is why I’m always talking about AI taking over the grunt work of my marketing. It’s not just about writing, it’s about Doing the things, creating the pages, all of that stuff.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:19:10]:
And yeah, that is definitely the most productive way that I use it. I don’t need to understand all of the technicalities to get really powerful results out of my AI. So yeah, they were my top lessons from the summit. I hope that you have found that helpful. I definitely saw overall that there was a huge shift from this year. Since last year, where this year is way more about automating really specific tasks that we do in our business again and again, which I was all just loving all of the examples that our speakers shared. The summit is over now. You can’t access the presentations for free, but you can come and join in the fun in the Aligned AI Lab.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:19:50]:
So if you want to learn some of these ways to actually implement AI into your business without having to learn all the ins and outs of the tech of AI, more learning how to direct it as a marketing team member, then go to ruthpoundwhite.com/lab. You can read more about the Aligned AI Lab. There’s also a free 7-day trial. And yeah, we are not keeping up with AI. If I run this summit again next year, I’m sure that there will be massive changes again that we cannot predict right now. It is both exciting and scary at the same time. And this is the way it goes with technology, and we’ll have to wait and see what happens. But in the meantime, make the most out of it for the way that works best for you.

Ruth Poundwhite [00:20:32]:
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Soulful Sales. If you have a moment to rate and review, know that it really does make a difference. And if you would like to carry on the conversation, then you can connect with me in the free community at ruthpoundwhite.com/community, or my personal favorite, join me inside the Soulful Sales Society membership at ruthpoundwhite.com/membership. And keep doing what you’re doing because your work really does matter.