24. Why Women Over 40 Cannot Afford to Ignore AI

Do you feel curious about AI… but also a little intimidated, behind, or convinced it’s “for younger people” or more tech-savvy entrepreneurs?

In this episode of The Bold Biz Podcast, Jenny explains why women over 40 cannot afford to ignore AI, especially if you want to build a side business with limited time, limited energy, and no desire to do everything the hard way.

This is not a tech-heavy episode. It’s a mindset and opportunity episode.

Jenny shares her own journey from feeling unsure and hesitant about AI to now using it daily as a business partner to save time, create content, plan strategy, and remove the overwhelm that keeps so many women stuck. She also shares a recent real-life example of using AI to create 30 days of Instagram content in a fraction of the time it would normally take. 

💡 In this episode, we talk about:

• Why hesitation around new technology may be costing you time and momentum
• How AI can reduce imposter syndrome and build confidence
• The shift from using AI like a search engine to using it like a business partner
• How Jenny used AI to plan 30 days of content in minutes
• Why AI is a huge advantage for women building something on the side
• How to start using AI today, even if you’re a total beginner
• Why this moment in history is a real opportunity, not hype

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re not tech-savvy enough, too late, or too behind to benefit from AI, this episode may completely change how you see what’s possible.

⭐ LINKS & RESOURCES:

• The Bold (AI) Shortcut FREE Webinar: (May 3rd, 7 pm GMT+1) https://www.theboldbiz.com/shortcut

• Download Free Guide, The Idea Filter
https://www.theboldbiz.com/idea

• Download Free Guide, Done Starting Over
https://www.theboldbiz.com/doneoptin

• Visit The Bold Biz Website
https://www.theboldbiz.com/

• Join the FREE Bold Biz Collective (Skool Community)
https://www.skool.com/the-bold-biz-collective-5477/about

Transcript

Main Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if the thing that has been making you feel behind? The technology, the tools, the constant feeling that everyone else knows something you don't? What if that exact thing was actually designed to level the playing field in your favor? What if the timing of all of this, AI arriving, exactly when you're ready to build something, was not a coincidence, but an opportunity? Stay with me because that is exactly what we're talking about today. Welcome to the Bold Biz Podcast. I'm Jenny Lavalius, and this podcast is for women over 40 who are ready to build something of their own without the hustle, the burnout, or the pressure to be perfect. If you've ever thought it's too late for me, or that everyone else seems to have it all figured out, you're going to feel right at home here. So let's dive

Episode Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:54

in. I'm so glad you're here today because this episode has been sitting on my to-do list for a while now. And honestly, I think the timing of it could not be better. We're talking about AI today. And before you close this episode thinking, oh, that's not for me. I'm not a tech person. I want you to hear me out. Because this is not a tech episode. This is a mindset episode. And it might be one of the most important conversations I've had on this podcast so far. I'm also going to be sharing some very personal stuff about how I actually use AI in my own business every single day, including something I did literally yesterday that saved me what would have been several hours of work. So stick around for that because I think it's going to change how you think about what's possible for you, even if you're working on your side business in the evenings after a full day's work with limited time and a brain that is absolutely fried by 7 p.m. I know that feeling very well. At the end of the episode, I want to tell you about something I'm doing in a few weeks that is very much me practicing what I preach when it comes to doing scary things before you feel ready. But more on that in

Let Me Tell You Where I Started

SPEAKER_00 2:10

a minute. I want to start with a little bit of my own story here, because I think it's important context for everything I'm about to share with you. I've always been a fairly early adopter when it comes to new technology, especially anything that promises to save me time. But when I first started seriously pursuing my side business back in 2021, AI as we know it today simply didn't exist yet. And I remember the frustration so clearly. I had so many ideas, so much I wanted to build and create. And everything, and I mean everything, took so long. Writing content manually, researching things manually, trying to figure out all the technical stuff on my own that was completely new to me, by watching YouTube tutorials at 10 o'clock at night. It was slow, it was exhausting, and there were so many moments where I genuinely wondered if it was ever going to be worth it. And then ChatGPT arrived. And I have to be honest, my first reaction was not immediate excitement. It actually sounded a little overwhelming and frankly a bit scary. I had no idea what it was or what I was supposed to do with it. It was my two brothers, who were both very early adopters of new technology, who basically pushed me to just try it. And so I did. And I remember the moment things started to click. I asked it a technical question about something I'd been completely stuck on. Something that had been sitting on my to-do list for weeks because I just didn't know how to do it. And it answered me in about 30 seconds. Clearly, in plain language, with steps I could actually follow. I've never looked back. Genuinely, that was the turning point, and everything I'm going to share with you today has grown from that one moment of just deciding to try

Why Women Over 40 Hesitate, And Why That Hesitation Is Costing You

SPEAKER_00 4:05

it. Now I want to talk about something that I think is really important to name directly. There's a tendency, and I've seen this in myself and in so many women I talk to, to be a little more hesitant about jumping into new technology. And I get it, I really do. We didn't grow up with this stuff. We've watched platforms come and go, we've seen shiny new tools that promises to change everything, and then quietly disappeared. And we have enough on our own plates without adding yet another thing to learn. But here's the thing. This hesitation, completely understandable as it is, is actually costing you more than you realize. Because every week you wait to start using AI effectively in your business, is a week of time you're spending doing things the slow way, writing content from scratch when you don't have to, doing research manually when you don't have to, getting stuck on technical questions when you don't have to. And for us, women building side businesses around full-time lives and full-time jobs, time is the one resource we have the least of, right? So spending it inefficiently is not a small thing. And there's something else I want to share with you, because it genuinely stopped me in my tracks when I came across it. Research has found that access to AI tools actually reduces the imposter syndrome in women, not just a little, meaningfully. And the reason makes complete sense when you think about it. Imposter syndrome thrives on the gap between where you are and where you think you need to be. It tells you that you're not expert enough, not tech-savy enough, not experienced enough to pull this off. And what AI does is close that gap. It gives you rapid access to knowledge, to drafting, to strategy, to answers, in a way that genuinely makes you more capable. The fraud feeling shrinks, not because your mindset changed, but because your actual capabilities changed. This is a very different thing, and it's incredibly powerful. What AI can do for you is almost exactly what imposter syndrome tells you that you can't do yourself. Think about that for a second. The very thing holding you back is solved by the thing you've been avoiding. This is not a small insight. That is the whole

From Playing Around To Actually Levelling Up

SPEAKER_00 6:37

game. So let me talk about how most people start with AI, because I think a lot of women are in this phase and don't realize there's a whole other level available to them. When I first started using ChatGPT, I was doing what I would call playing around, asking it for ideas, getting it to answer a technical question here and there, maybe having it draft something that I would then completely rewrite anyway. And that's fine as a starting point. It's generally useful. But it is a bit like having a brilliant assistant in your office and only ever asking them to make coffee. The real shift for me came when I started using AI more like a business partner than a search engine. I started asking it to think like a business coach and give me actual strategic advice. I started using it to help me stay on track when I was spiraling between too many ideas, which, if you've listened to any of my other episodes, you'll know is a very real problem for me. There have been moments where I've gone to Claude and essentially said, okay, I'm feeling pulled toward this new idea. Talk me out of it or talk me into it. And it has been remarkably good at helping me see whether something is genuinely worth pursuing, or whether it's just a shiny object syndrome knocking on my door yet again. Which for the record, it usually is. I've used it for strategy around my meta-ads, which I'm still learning and which I found genuinely challenging. I've used it to help me think through my content calendar, my lead magnet messaging, my email sequences, and what I've found over time is that the more I use it within a specific project, the better it gets at understanding my voice, my brand, my audience, and what I'm actually trying to build. It learns. And that compounding effect is one of the most valuable things about using AI consistently, rather than just occasionally dipping in when you're stuck.

The Thing I Did Yesterday That Blew My Mind

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Okay, so I want to share something very specific and very recent, because I think it illustrates better than anything I could explain in theory just how much has changed. Yesterday, I was thinking about my Instagram content for the next 30 days. Now, if you've ever tried to plan 30 days of content manually, you know what that involves. Coming up with 30 ideas that are varied and relevant and on brand, writing 30 captions, figuring out 30 visual concepts, thinking about the mix of promotional content versus value content versus personal content. It's a project, a real multi-hour project. And doing it after a full day's work when your brain is completely running on fumes is genuinely painful. So instead, I opened up Claud Co-Work, which is an AI tool that can actually access other apps and do things on your behalf. Not just answer questions, but actually take action. And I asked it to go into my Notion calendar and schedule 30 days of Instagram reels for the bold biz, including a visual or video concept for each one, the overlay text on the video, and the caption, with a good mix of content promoting my free lead magnets, my webinar, my podcast, and my community. A few minutes later, I go into my Notion Calendar, and there they are. 30 posts, planned, written, and ready for me to review. Not perfect, they never are straight out of the gate, but honestly, probably 90% of the way there. Close enough to my voice, hitting the right topics, and structured the way I would structure them myself. And what I then got to do, instead of spending five to ten hours creating all of this from scratch, was just sit down for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, read through all of them, tweak things here and there that needed tweaking, and call it done. That is the shift I want you to understand. You're not replacing yourself. You're not handing your brand over to a robot. You're taking the heavy lifting of starting from a blank page completely off your plate, and spending your precious limited time on the things only you can do, which is adding your perspective, your stories, your voice, and your heart. The parts that actually make the content yours. And the more I use Claude within my bullbiz, the more it absorbs. It's learned how I write, how I talk. It's learned my brand voice, my messaging, what I care about, who I am, who I'm talking to. So every time I use it, the output gets a little closer to what I would have written myself if I had the time. It's genuinely one of the most useful things that's happened to my business in years.

What This Means For You If You Are Just Starting Out

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Now I want to talk specifically to the women who are at the very beginning, because I think there is sometimes an assumption that AI is for people who are already running established businesses, people who have content to repurpose and audiences to manage, and complicated workflows that need streamlining. And that's just not true. If you are at the stage where you're still figuring out your idea, AI can help you think through it. You can literally describe your skills, your experience, your interests, how much time you have available, and what kind of life you want, and ask it to help you identify which site business models might suit you. You can use the idea filter, my free guide linked in the show notes, alongside AI to work through your options faster and with more clarity than trying to do it alone. If you have your idea, but you're stuck on the technical side, how to set up a landing page, a sales page, or how to write an email sequence, how to structure an offer, AI can walk you through all of it step by step, in plain language, at your own pace, and with infinite patience and zero judgment. It will never make you feel stupid for asking a basic question. It will never sigh at you for needing to ask the same thing twice. That alone is worth so much. And if you're at the stage where you're creating content but finding it exhausting and inconsistent, AI can become your content engine, not your ghostwriter, your engine. It generates the starting point, and you bring the heart and soul. Alex Ormozzi, who has built multiple businesses and is one of the most practical business thinkers I follow, talks constantly about the leverage that comes from systems that don't require your constant manual input. AI is the most accessible version of that leverage that has ever existed for someone building something small and scrappy on the side. A woman with a laptop, a few hours a week, and the right tools can now do what used to require a full team. That is not an exaggeration. That is just what's true

The Moment In History We Are Actually In

SPEAKER_00 13:59

right now. I want to zoom out for a second and say something that I think is really important, because I don't want you to hear this episode and think, okay, that's interesting, maybe I'll look into that at some point. I want you to feel the actual urgency of this moment. We're living through one of those genuinely rare shifts where the rules of what's possible completely change. And those shifts don't happen often. The internet was one, social media was another one, the smartphone was one, and every single time one of those shifts happened, the people who got in early, who were willing to learn before they felt ready, who tried things before they were polished or perfect, those people built enormous advantages. And the people who waited until they felt more comfortable or until it was mainstream, until everyone else was doing it, those people spent years trying to catch up. AI is that shift happening again, right now. And the beautiful thing, the thing that makes me genuinely emotional when I think about it, is that this particular shift is one where the advantages flow disproportionately to people who were previously at a disadvantage. To people who did not have big teams or big budgets, to people who were doing everything alone in the margins of their day. To women over 40 who are finally ready to build something but felt like the window had closed. The window has not closed. The window has just been completely redesigned, and it is wider than it has ever been.

How To Actually Start If You Have Not Already

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Okay, so I don't want this to be one of those episodes where you feel inspired and then have no idea what to actually do next. Let me give you something concrete. If you've never used AI before, or if you've dabbled but not really committed to it, here's where I would start. Go to Claude.ai and create a free account. Just start having conversations with it. Ask it things you're genuinely wondering about for your business. Ask it to help you think through your idea. Ask what you should do first, ask it to explain something technical that you've been avoiding. Just start talking to it the way you would talk to a knowledgeable friend. The biggest mistake people make with AI is treating it like a Google search, typing in a few keywords and hoping for a useful result. It works so much better when you give it context, tell it who you are, and tell it what you're building. Tell it who your audience is and what you're struggling with. The more context you give it, the more useful it becomes. Think of it as briefing a new colleague, not querying a database. And then, once you've got the feel for it, start using it consistently in your business. Pick one thing, just one, where you're going to let AI do the heavy lifting this week. Maybe that's drafting your first Instagram caption. Maybe that's writing the description for your lead magnet. Maybe that's generating a week of content ideas so you're not staring in a blank screen on Sunday night. Pick one thing, do it, see what happens. I promise you you will not want to go

The Webinar, And Why I Am Doing It Scared

SPEAKER_00 17:22

back. Now I mentioned at the start that I had something to tell you about at the end, and here it is. On May 3rd, I'm running my very first live AI webinar, and I want to be completely honest with you about how I feel about that, which is excited and absolutely terrified in roughly equal measure. I have never done a live webinar before. I don't know exactly how it's gonna go. There is a very real chance I'm gonna be awkward and fumble over my words and hit the wrong button at some point, and generally be imperfect in many ways. And I'm gonna do it anyway. Because everything I've said in this episode, and in the last one about being a beginner, about doing things before you feel ready, about the only way to get good at something being to actually do it badly first. All of that applies to me too. I do not get a pass on this just because I'm the one with the podcast. I have to live it too, and so I am. The webinar is free, it's 60 minutes, and I'm going to be showing you real practical ways that I use Claude in my own business, including some of the workflows I talked about today, so you can see them in action rather than just hearing me describe them. If you're an AI beginner, or if you've been curious but not sure where to start, this is genuinely designed just for you. No tech background required, no prior experience needed. Just you, your laptop, and a willingness to try something new. The link to sign up is in the show notes below the episode. I'd love to see you there, and I'd especially love for you to see me be a little bit imperfect and keep going anyway. Because that's what we're all doing here, isn't it? We're all just showing up, figuring it out as we go, and trusting that the doing will make us better. That's the whole thing. That's all it

Episode Outro

SPEAKER_00 19:18

ever is. We are in one of the most exciting moments in history for women building something of their own. And I genuinely believe that the women who lean in right now, who are willing to try before they feel ready, are the ones who are going to look back in a few years and be so glad they started when they did. Now you have everything you need. Now go use

Main Outro

SPEAKER_00 19:43

it. Thank you so much for listening to the Bold Bis Podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show, share it with a friend, or leave a quick review. It helps more women find the podcast. Stay bold, ladies, and see you next week. Bye for now.