29. AI As Your Business Co-Founder (And a Surprise Announcement at the End)

How midlife women are using AI to build side businesses faster than ever, plus a personal announcement you won't want to miss

👉 Grab the free Claude Quick Start Guide here: https://www.theboldbiz.com/claude

If you've been quietly watching everyone talk about AI and feeling like you've somehow missed the boat, this episode is going to change that. Jenny breaks down exactly how she uses Claude every single day to run The Bold Biz, why AI has levelled the playing field for women over 40, and the simple mindset shift that turns AI from intimidating to genuinely life-changing. And then at the end of the episode, she shares a surprise announcement that's been quietly in the works behind the scenes, including a brand new business and a real-time case study you can follow along with.

AI Isn't the Future. It's the Co-Founder You've Been Missing.

Why AI changes everything for midlife women The playing field has shifted, and women over 40 have an advantage they didn't have five years ago. Jenny explains why decades of life experience plus AI is one of the most powerful combinations in business right now.

How Jenny actually uses Claude every week From podcast scripts to email drafts to weekly planning, Jenny walks through real-world examples of how AI works as a thinking partner, not a replacement. No tech background needed.

The mindset shift that matters most The fear that using AI is somehow "cheating" is keeping a lot of women stuck. Jenny addresses it honestly and offers the reframe that finally let her embrace it fully.

Where to start if you're brand new to AI The simplest possible entry point. No paid plans, no complicated setup, no overwhelm. Just one small step.

The surprise announcement Jenny shares the brand new business she's quietly building behind the scenes, why she's doing it, and how you can follow along as a live case study in real time.

Resources mentioned in this episode

👉 Free Claude Quick Start Guide: https://www.theboldbiz.com/claude

👉 Quietly Digital, Jenny's new business: https://www.quietlydigital.co/funnel

👉 The Bold Biz Collective, free Skool community for second chapter women

Keep listening

👉 Episode 28: How to Choose the ONE Side Business Idea That Actually Fits Your Life (The Four-Filter Framework) H

👉 Episode 27: The 7 Fears Every Midlife Woman Has Before Starting a Side Business

Ready to actually start using AI in your business?

The Claude Quick Start Guide is the easiest place to begin. No tech background needed, no overwhelm, just the first few steps to get you confident.

Stay bold ladies! ✨

/Jenny x

Transcript

Main Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if I told you I'm going to build a brand new faceless business right now while working full time? I'm gonna tell you all about it at the end of this episode, but before I do that, we need to talk about the tool that made it possible in the first place. Because honestly, without this, I wouldn't be starting anything new at 52. I'd be exhausted just thinking about it. 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 gonna feel right at home here. So let's dive in.

Episode Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Okay, ladies, today's episode is genuinely one of my favorites to record because we're talking about something that I think has completely changed what's possible for women in midlife who want to build something of their own. And that something is AI. And specifically, I want to talk about AI, not as some scary, abstract, futuristic thing that you need to be a tech genius to understand, but as your actual business partner, your co-founder. The thing that makes building a side business while you're already running a full life genuinely possible in a way that it wasn't just a few years ago. And then at the end of this episode, I've got a really exciting announcement to share with you. Something that I think is going to be a fun thing for us to explore together. But more on that in a bit. Let's get into the AI piece

Why AI Changes Everything for Midlife Women

SPEAKER_00 1:40

first. So I want to start by saying something that I think a lot of women in our age bracket need to hear, and that is this. The playing field has been leveled in a way that it never has been before, and AI is the reason. Because for years, the women who could build successful side businesses online were the ones who had time to learn all the platforms, money to hire help, or backgrounds in marketing and tech that gave them a head start. And for the rest of us, the barrier to entry felt enormous, because you'd look at what successful online businesses required. The funnels, the email sequences, the content calendars, the copy, the branding, and you'd think, who has time for all of that on top of an actual life? And the honest answer for most of us was nobody, which is why so many women in midlife have been quietly sitting on business ideas for years without ever launching them. Because the gap between the idea and what it actually takes to bring it to life felt too wide. But here's what I genuinely believe. And I'm saying this as someone who's been on the internet trying to build businesses for the last four years. AI has closed that gap. Not entirely, you still need to do the work, but it's collapsed the time and skill barrier so dramatically and drastically that women who couldn't compete two years ago can absolutely compete now. And honestly, in some ways, the women in midlife have an advantage in the AI era, because we've got decades of life experience to bring to the conversation. And AI is basically a tool that helps us articulate, organize, and share that experience faster than we ever could on our own.

How I Actually Use AI Every Day

SPEAKER_00 3:36

So let me get really practical, because I think AI is one of those things that sounds great in theory, but feels overwhelming when you sit down to actually use it. And the tool I want to talk about specifically today is Claude, which is the AI tool I use for honestly almost everything in my business now. Claude is made by a company called Anthropic. And the reason I love it is that it feels less like a search engine and more like talking to a really smart, calm friend who happens to have read everything ever written and never gets tired or grumpy. You can have an actual conversation with it, you can ask follow-up questions, and you can say, I don't like that. Try again. And it just keeps going. And here are some of the ways I genuinely use it every single week so you can see what this looks like in real life. I use Claude to help me write podcast scripts, including pieces of this one. I use it to draft emails to my list when I've got the idea but can't quite get the words flowing. I use it to brainstorm content ideas when I'm staring at a blank week and don't know what to talk about. I use it to clean up transcripts from my voice recordings into something that actually sounds polished. I use it to plan my weeks, sometimes literally just dumping all my to-dos into a chat and asking it to help me prioritize. And honestly, sometimes I use it just to think out loud, to talk through a problem and get clarity. And the thing is, none of this requires me to be technical. None of it requires me to learn a complicated platform, all of it just requires me to type the way I talk. And Claude figures out what I need. And that's what I mean when I say AI is your co-founder, because if you'd hired a human being to do half of what I just listed, you'd be paying thousands of dollars a month. And now you can have that same kind of support for a fraction of the price. And the quality has genuinely gotten that good.

The Mindset Shift That Matters Most

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Now I want to talk about something I think is really important, because I know there's a lot of fear floating around about AI, especially for women in our generation. And I want to address it honestly, because I've felt some of it myself when I first started experimenting with it. There's a fear that using AI is somehow cheating, or that the content you create with it isn't really yours, and that you're being lazy if you don't write every word from scratch. And I want to gently push back on that, because here's the truth. The content you create with AI is still yours, because the ideas are yours, the experience is yours, the perspective is yours, the voice is yours. AI is just helping you get those things out of your head and onto the page faster than you could do alone. It's a tool, not a replacement. And refusing to use it in 2026 is a bit like refusing to use a calculator because you're worried it makes you bad at math. When actually it just frees up your brain to focus on the bigger questions. And the second piece of mindset I want to mention is this. A lot of women in midlife tell me they feel behind. Like everyone else has been running AI for years and they're just now figuring it out. And that's genuinely not true. The technology is still very new. Most people are still figuring it out. And the women I see thriving with AI are not the ones who started earliest. They're the ones who just decided to start, period, and got their hands dirty. So if you've been holding off because you think you don't know enough or you're somehow behind, please hear me. You're not behind, you're right on time. And the only way to learn AI is to actually use it. Start with one task this week. Ask Claude to help you write one email or brainstorm one piece of content or organize your week and just see what it feels like. That's it. That's the whole entry point.

Where to Start If You're Brand New

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Okay, so practically, where should you start? I'm going to keep this really simple because I don't want anyone walking away feeling overwhelmed. Go to Claude.ai and create a free account. There's no credit card needed for the free version, and the free version is genuinely powerful enough to do most of what I just described. You don't need to start with the paid plan. The free version is more than enough to fall in love with a tool first. And then the very first thing I want you to do is just have a conversation. Ask it something you're working on. Ask it to help you draft something. Ask it to explain a concept you've been confused about. Treat it like a smart friend you're catching up with. Don't try to be impressive, don't try to be technical, just talk to it. And I promise within about 15 minutes you'll start to see what's possible. And if you want a proper walkthrough, I've put together a free quick start guide to Claude that takes you through your first steps with specific prompts and examples, so you're not just staring at a blank chat window wondering what to type. The link to Grabit is in the show notes below this episode.

And Now, the Announcement

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Okay, so I told you at the start of this episode that I had something to share with you, and now we're at the moment where I get to do that. So I want to set the scene a little bit, because the way this happened is genuinely a perfect example of everything we just talked about. AI as your co-founder, AI as your thinking partner, AI as the thing that helps you see what's actually possible. Here's what happened. I woke up yesterday morning, just a totally normal Saturday, and I sat down with my coffee. And I had a thought experiment I wanted to run with Claude. I said, Can you pretend that I don't have the bold biz and I don't have my Swedish brand that I've been running since January? And just imagine I'm starting from zero today, knowing everything you know about me, my skills, my background, my interests, and my limited time. What kind of side business would you recommend I start? And it gave me a list of ten suggestions, and most of them were genuinely interesting, but two of them really lit me up. And so I just kept going with the thought experiment. I said, okay, what would this look like in a year? How would this develop? How could I tie it into the bold biz? What would it take to make this work alongside everything else I'm doing? And by the end of that morning, ladies, I had a whole new direction. I genuinely couldn't believe it. I went to bed Friday night feeling a little stuck, a little unsure of what's next, and I woke up Saturday with a brand new business mapped out. And the thing that made the difference was sitting down with Claude and just thinking, brainstorming with Claude and just brainstorming together. So everything I talked about in this episode, all of those benefits of AI as a co-founder, this is the absolute proof of it. Because I wouldn't have seen this direction sitting at my kitchen table on my own. I needed something to bounce ideas off, something to expand my thinking, something to take what was in my head and turn it into a real plan. And AI did that in a single morning. So here's what I'm going to build. It's a brand new business called Quietly Digital, and the website is going live this week at quietlydigital.io. And what it is, is a faceless tech and AI services brand for coaches, consultants, and service providers who want to grow their online businesses but don't want to spend their evenings wrestling with the tech side. Basically, I'm offering a done for you system.io funnel setup, which is the platform I've been using and absolutely loving for the past five years. And later in the summer, I'll be launching a Teach Claude mini course that goes alongside it, teaching the same audience how to use Claude to write their content and run their business going forward. And the reason this is so exciting for me, and the reason I'm sharing it with you here on the podcast, is that I've decided to build Quietly Digital completely in public as a live case study for the bold bus audience. Meaning, you get to come along for the entire ride. You'll see what it actually looks like to start a brand new business at 52 while working a full-time job with two kids. You'll see what I'm doing each week, how many hours it's taking me, what's working, what isn't, what surprises come up, what I'm learning, what I do differently. The whole thing. Honestly, honorly, week by week. But here's what I know, ladies. Most of you don't need another person telling you what to do in theory. You need to see someone actually doing it in real life, making the messy decisions, hitting the obstacles, working it out as they go. And that's what I'm going to give you with this. It's the case study I wish someone had given me four years ago when I was starting out and constantly wondering if I was doing it right. And the name quietly digital, just to explain the choice quickly, came from this idea that you can build a side business in midlife without being loud, without taking part in hustle culture, without grinding yourself into the ground or being in everyone's face all the time. You can build something quietly, steadily, on your own terms, in the pockets of time you have around the rest of your life. That's the energy I want this brand to carry. And that's exactly the way I'm going to build it. I'm not setting some aggressive overnight goal, I'm not running ads, I'm not trying to go viral, I'm just going to set things up properly, talk about it honestly here on the podcast and on YouTube, take on my first few clients at a founding rate, and grow it organically over the next year. The long-term goal is to get to $20,000 or $30,000 a month, but that's a year-long arc. Not a week, not a next week arc. And you're going to see every step of it. So that's the announcement, ladies. Quietly Digital, building it in public, a real-time case study you can follow along with. If you want to see the brand and check out the founding client offer, the website is QuietlyDigital.co

Episode Outro

SPEAKER_00 14:41

and you'll find it linked in the show notes. It will be live in a couple of days. And if you know any coaches, consultants, or service providers who've been struggling to get their funnel set up, please do send them my way. There are only three founding client spots at the lower rate. And here on the Bold Biz, nothing changes. I'm still here every week, still showing up on YouTube, still teaching you what I'm learning, still building this community. Quietly Digital is just an additional layer that gives you a real-world example to learn from. And if you want to be part of the conversation as I build this, come join us inside the Bold Biz Collective, my free school community where I'll be sharing some of the behind the scenes that will make it into the public content. The link is in the show

Main Outro

SPEAKER_00 15:29

notes. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. And if this episode resonated, I'd love for you to follow the podcast, share it with a friend who might need it, or leave a review. Because it really does help more women find the show. And if you want to keep the conversation going, come find me inside the Boldbiz Collective. The link is in the show notes. Until next time, stay bold, ladies!