062 Behind The Scenes of Sarah AI

In this episode, I’m sharing my personal journey through burnout and how it led me to create Sarah AI — a digital tool designed to help healthcare professionals use AI while staying true to their voice and values. I open up about the emotional toll of over-preparing, the disconnect I felt when using AI tools that didn’t sound like me, and how I taught AI to work around me, not the other way around. Sarah AI was born out of a need — not just for support, but for something that could genuinely reflect who I am and what I stand for.

Takeaways

• This episode isn’t about AI trends or flashy tech tools.
• It’s a story about burnout and the spiral of over-preparing.
• I had to teach AI how to fit around me — not the other way round.
• Even with tools, I still felt stuck and emotionally drained.
• A lot of AI content felt polished… but lacked authenticity.
• I found myself editing the soul back in, every time.
• I’m deeply protective of my voice and my values — and I know you are too.
• But AI can be a thoughtful extension of you.
• That’s why I created Sarah AI — so it could become the business coach in your pocket.
• Because using your voice with confidence shouldn't mean doing it all alone.

Lets keep in touch!

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansinbusiness/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

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Discover the 22 steps you need to take (in the right order) to build a successful business so you can earn enough to live the freedom lifestyle you dream of. https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

Work with me:

• Business Coaching: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/mastermind
• Sarah AI: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/offers/AYjozgYc/
• Book a discovery call: https://thechildrensnutritionist.as.me/discovery

Transcript

Welcome along. This episode isn't about AI trends or about techy tools. I've done that already. It's a story. It's a story about burnout, about over-preparing and about what happens when something you once loved, like podcasting, like showing up for your audience starts to feel like another weight that you're carrying. And it's also about what came next. The quiet...

unexpected solution that helped me reclaim my voice and build a digital version of myself that could help me carry the load. In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on how Sarah AI came to be, not as a gimmick, not as a shortcut, not even as a offer to put out to my audience, but as a values aligned, voice honoring, integrity first tool that gave me the space to breathe.

and show it more consistently without burning out. So, sound okay? Let's dive in.

Let me paint a picture for you. It's Thursday night. You finally got the kids into bed and the dishwasher's humming in the background. You sit down, not with a glass of wine or the latest Netflix drama, but to write your newsletter or plan next week's content or finish the thing that's been open in 17 tabs on your computer since a week last Monday. And your brain, it feels a bit like scrambled eggs. It's not that you don't want to show up. You do. You care.

deeply in fact, you've got things to say, you've got experiences to share, you've got a mission that matters. But everything feels heavier than it should, because even with all of the AI tools and the shiny shortcuts being touted online, you might still feel stuck. And it's not because you don't like tech, it's not because you haven't tried.

It's because every time you go to OpenChat GPT or Canva or that fancy new tool someone's recommended, probably me, you're met with that same thought. This isn't what I want. It doesn't sound like me. It's too polished. It's too robotic. It's too American. It's too fluffy. It's too just not me. And even if it does save you a bit of time, you end up rewriting most of it anyway. Tuning the tone.

softening the language, swapping out phrases that just don't feel right to a healthcare professional, you actually end up editing the soul back in because for people like us, clinicians and caregivers and helpers, our work is really very much built on credibility, on connection, on the tiny details that make a message feel safe and real and true. So when AI tools hand you a done-for-you caption,

or a blog post, it might be really efficient, but it's not necessarily honest, not in the way that we need it to be. It's not just time that's being drained, it's decision energy, it's creative bandwidth. It's the emotional cost of trying to sound like yourself in a world that keeps handing you shortcuts that actually don't quite fit. You're already wearing every single hat.

clinician, business owner, marketer, tech support, customer services designer, and now you're supposed to be an editor in chief of a robot? No wonder it feels heavy. Now that's exactly where I was when I decided I needed to do something different. I didn't want to force AI into business.

but I did want to teach it how to fit around me. And that's how Sarah AI was born. And in this episode, I'm lifting the lid, not just on what Sarah AI does, but actually why I built her and how she helped me and how she helped me reconnect with my voice and the surprising relief that came from finally letting go of doing it all myself. And then in the forthcoming episodes, I'm going to take you behind the build. I'm going to walk you through the exact

process that I use to create her step by step so that you can create your own version of an AI tool with your own expertise, even if tech gives you the hives. So whether you're a dietitian like me or a physio with a membership or a psychologist building a course, this next part will be perfect for you. But before we go there, I want to talk about something most people don't.

what it really feels like to use AI inside a values-led business, because even when it works, it can feel a bit like a betrayal, because you didn't become a health professional to churn out clickbait or pump out pretty posts just to keep up with the algorithms. You built your business on meaning, on nuance, actually, on trust, on knowing the power of the right words said in the right way, especially in health, where safety and empathy and tone

matter more than ever. So when you see other people using AI to pump out 30 pieces of content a day, there is a bit of an internal pull, isn't there? On the one hand, wow, imagine the time that that would save. But on the other, that doesn't feel quite right for me. And because no one else seems to be talking about this in the middle ground, the bit in between total rejection and blind adoption, you start to feel that maybe you're the problem here. Maybe you're not efficient enough.

Maybe you're clinging to old school ways and haven't just moved with the times. Maybe you're too sensitive or too thoughtful or too professional to keep up. But let me be really clear here, you are not the problem. You are protective over your voice and your values as you should be. And honestly, this degree of discernment, this is a strength because what's really at stake here isn't just speed or productivity, it's trust.

In the back of your mind, you might be thinking, will your words still feel safe and credible if a client finds out that they were AI assisted? Will your peers think that you're cutting corners? Will you still feel proud of the work or does it feel like outsourcing your expertise? Will you still be HCPC compliant? And maybe the most worrying thought of all is, if AI can do my job faster, do I even still matter?

These are massive questions and you're not wrong for asking them, but there is another way, a way to work with AI, not as a threat or a useless time suck, but as a thoughtful extension of you, something that holds your voice, something that honors your ethics and actually gives you more freedom to be present with your clients, with your family and with your mission. That's what I set out to create when I built Sarah AI.

And you can build your own version to a values aligned, clinically competent companion trained on your words, your tone, your clinical expertise, your frameworks, your methods and your evidence base. So let me walk you through exactly how I did it step by step and how you can start building your own version, even if tech makes you feel a wee bit twitchy.

So it was October 2024. I'd been podcasting every single week for six months. I'd only missed one episode. And that was the week my daughter was rushed into hospital. Now, if you're a parent, you will know what a week like that was like. But what I didn't realize until afterwards was how close I was to burnout. Because behind the scenes, I'd been scripting every single word of every single episode, not just notes, not just outlines.

full on scripts and I told myself it was about professionalism. It was about preparation. It was about doing things properly. And that belief had been reinforced a couple of years earlier by a public speaking coach that I'd worked with who'd said, confidence comes from being prepared. And for a long time, I thought I was just doing this to be prepared, being the best business coach any clinician could ever encounter. But really,

I was over preparing in the name of perfectionism. And you know what? It was absolutely exhausting. So fast forward a couple of months, early 2025, and I'd just started a new mindset and life coaching certification. Hello, imposter syndrome. Let's just do another course because I wanted to support my accelerate mastermind clients better, not just with strategy.

and marketing and business, but with the mindset blocks that come up so often when you start growing a business. So as part of this new certification that I was doing, we did an exercise to identify our own limiting beliefs as participants. And wouldn't you know it, that same belief showed up again. I can't go live. I can't deliver new trainings unless everything is scripted to the letter.

And when I traced it right back, it went right back, actually way back to my early childhood, I'd always been referred to as the shy kid for as long as I could remember. We even moved house so I could attend a smaller secondary school in Newcastle because my parents were worried that I'd get lost in the big comprehensive. So I grew up carrying this subtle story about myself that I wasn't very confident.

that I felt that I needed to work harder in order to feel ready and that if I wasn't fully prepared, I was going to be judged or I would get it wrong. And here I was all these years later at the age of 49 with a podcast I had dreamed of launching, beginning to dread creating new episodes because the process was no longer joyful. It was actually really heavy and it was unrelenting.

It was that moment, the moment that I realised that if I'm going to keep on doing this, I need help or I need another way. And maybe you've had a moment like that too, a moment where something that used to energise you suddenly feels like another massive weight on your shoulders, where you catch yourself wondering, can I really keep doing it all like this? So if that sounds familiar, you're not alone here. And that's where the idea for Sarah AI actually came from.

And when I started building her, even just gathering my old content, I felt this shift. It was like maybe for the first time in a long time, I didn't have to do it all alone. I could create something that worked with me and not against me. So at first I did what I always do. I went on a load of courses, some of them brilliant, some of them a total waste of time, but one of them showed me how to create a custom GPT.

And I was hooked. Another taught me the power of the quality of the knowledge files that go into your custom GPTs. And so I started gathering everything that I had. I pulled transcripts from every single video inside of my Accelerate curriculum. Every workshop that I'd ever meticulously scripted, every Q &A session transcribed.

every podcast episode published. I took all the materials from my Mindset For Business Success course. And because we are healthcare professionals, I also gathered our professional standards, the nutrition and health claims regulations, and I even added done for you email sequences from my copywriter, the exact kind of material that I would probably share with my clients. Thousands and thousands and thousands of pages, years and years and years of work.

all poured into one custom, private version of ChatGPT

and I called her Sarah AI. Now the early versions were a little bit clunky. Sometimes she'd throw in a load of emojis that I would never use. Sometimes she would offer to turn a blog post into a Canva graphic, which wasn't really helpful. But I kept refining her instructions line by line until the responses started sounding like me, actually like me. Warm, strategic, and importantly, compliant.

compliant with the way we have to practice as registered healthcare professionals and clinicians. And once I cracked it, I realized Sarah AI wasn't just useful for saving time in my business, she could be useful for yours as well.

And

the next thing I did was I invited my Accelerate client just to test her out. So they started asking questions, using her for blog drafts, building launch plans, strategizing in order to make an extra 40K next quarter. And the feedback, honestly, it was better than I expected because Sarah AI became the business coach in their pocket. She can now write marketing content that actually lands with their audience using my formulas.

She can draft emotionally intelligent sales emails that coach your reader from browser to buyer. She can plan out entire sales campaigns from pre-launch content, email sequences, social media posts that support the whole thing. She can even analyze your data and help you iterate for the next time. And now she's been launched to the public. Well, just my colleagues actually, other registered healthcare professionals

because I created her for people who aren't quite ready to hire a business coach, but still need coaching level support so that they can get guidance built on evidence, on our ethics, on my experience. It's still really early days, but I truly believe that this could be a game changer for us as registered healthcare professionals because AI is not about replacing your voice. It's about helping you use it more confidently.

more strategically and more consistently, and of course, without burning out in the process.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I want that, not just the content support, but the lightness, the breathing room, the ability to sound like myself without burning out, then Sarah AI might be exactly what you need. It's a custom built business support tool that I've created for registered healthcare professionals like you trained in my frameworks, in my tone, in my clinical integrity, so that you can create aligned, emotionally resonant.

marketing without spending hours staring at a blinking cursor on a blank screen. And it's available now as a membership for £49 a month with no tie-ins or contracts. You can try it, you can test it, you can make it your own. The link to join is right there in the show notes. And if you're curious about how it works, about the techie bits, the uploading, the instructions, the files, don't worry, that's what I'm going to be walking through in an episode week after next.

And actually, if you're curious about how to build your own GPT, a one that's designed specifically for your clinical content, your expertise, your specialism, your programmes, or your members' questions, that's exactly what I'm going to be covering very, very soon. So until then, I hope this episode has given you the permission to just imagine something a bit different, a business that supports you back, one where your voice doesn't have to be perfect, but just present.

See you next week.