How are real side hustlers and entrepreneurs are using AI to work smarter, save time, and make more money?
Last month, I asked Side Hustle Nation email subscribers: “How are you using AI in your business?”
The responses were awesome, revealing 8 key categories where entrepreneurs are leveraging artificial intelligence to scale their side hustles.
Listen to Episode 677 of the Side Hustle Show to discover how Side Hustle Nation is using AI to:
- speed up content creation and marketing
- get strategic business coaching on demand
- create and design profitable digital products
- automate workflows and save hours of manual work
Sponsors
- Mint Mobile — Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month!
- Indeed – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post!
- OpenPhone — Get 20% off of your first 6 months!
- Shopify — Sign up for a $1 per month trial!
1. Content Creation
Content Generation
Jane Havens (Center for Pediatric Sleep Management): uses AI to generate rough drafts for social media posts and email newsletters, as well as to build outlines for her Becoming a Sleep Consultant podcast. She feeds ChatGPT a few bullet points and asks for suggested flow or interview questions.
Fun win: Someone actually found Jane’s sleep consultant certification course because they asked ChatGPT which course they should take, and it recommended her program.
“It’s giving me just a rough draft, so I’m not starting entirely from scratch,” she shared.
Akila Palaniswami (Patupleats.com): uses Uber Suggest’s AI Writer for SEO-friendly blog structures, then writes the content personally. Her workflow:
- Use Uber Suggest AI Writer with keyword research to get content ideas
- Ask AI to choose blog titles and subheadings for SEO-optimized outline
- Write the actual content under each subheading in her own words
- Edit with Hemingway App (targeting readability score under 8)
- Repurpose the same content into social media carousels and newsletters
“I already received compliments about how easy it is to read and digest my writing on LinkedIn and Medium,” she explained.
Kathleen Celmins (Glow Social): Built an entire platform around AI to solve a pain point for local businesses. They use AI to deliver daily content ideas and voice-matched posts tailored specifically for service businesses like dentists, real estate agents, and home service pros.
We’re not just generating generic AI content, we’re using AI to create authority building posts that match each client’s unique brand voice,” she shared.
Their approach saves users 5–10 hours per week on social media management while maintaining a strong, consistent presence.
2. Marketing, SEO & Discoverability
You’ve created the content. Now how do you get eyes on it?
Marie McMahon (JPHandyWoman.com): Uses AI to write sample testimonials for existing customers. She includes personalized info in prompts like: “Please write a positive testimonial for a recurring home maintenance business written by a busy doctor with two young kids…”
When she sends testimonial requests to customers, she includes the AI-generated sample. Since it’s personalized, customers frequently think “This is totally me!” and copy-paste it into Google My Business or other review sites.
Brooke McMichael (BlueWillowEmbroideryDesigns.com): Optimizes her Etsy listings with AI-generated titles, descriptions, and tags for better SEO.
Her process:
- “Give me an Etsy title for my listing of X, make sure it’s optimized for SEO”
- “Give me a two-sentence listing description using the titles and keywords”
- “Give me 13 tags based on the description and title, separate with commas, make sure tags are 20 characters or less”
Courtney Stich (Seaside Creatives – Pinterest Marketing): Uses ChatGPT to create SEO keyword descriptions for Pinterest pins.
Her prompt structure:
- “Create an SEO keyword pin description for [topic]. Include highly targeted keywords such as [keyword 1], [keyword 2], [keyword 3], etc. Also add in a CTA that reads [your call to action].”
ChatGPT often bolds the keywords in the output and adds additional hashtags based on those keywords.
3. Business Strategy, Decision-Making & Personal Development
Business Coaching & Strategy
Doug Collins (homebusinesstaxsecrets.com): Uses AI as a strategic business coach to brainstorm ideas, map launch strategies, and run SWOT analyses. He prompts ChatGPT to act as a strategic business coach with deep understanding of his business, marketplace, and ideal clients.
He also has it take on the role of his ideal client to review ideas, offers, sales pages, and emails for fresh audience-based feedback.
Personal Development
Mark Larm: Uses AI for personal transformation, creating his own “round table” of the greatest minds for daily motivation. This led him to realize: “I never prompt engineered the inner voice inside my head.”
He developed this concept into a book called Your Great Reset and a YouTube channel focused on building firm foundations.
Josh Thorpe (Author, AI for Students): Employs AI as a thinking partner and conversation partner rather than just a content generator. Uses it as a practice audience and stage to think on when no human is immediately available.
“It doesn’t matter if AI is giving me really perfect, intelligent answers… it’s more important what thinking I’m doing. The act of having this interaction stimulates my imagination.”
4. Product Creation and Design
Becky Beach (coachbeckybeach.com): Creates and sells digital products using a three-tool workflow:
- ChatGPT for product ideas, content outlines, spreadsheet formulas, listing descriptions, and social media copy
- MidJourney for beautiful themed artwork and illustrations
- Recraft.ai to turn visuals into print-ready designs
The whole process from idea to live product takes just a few hours.
Make sure to check out Becky’s full episode on The Side Hustle Show to learn more!
Dr. Nathan Tymann (SchoolApplicationsPrep.com): Uses multiple AI tools for course creation:
- ChatGPT for research and writing first drafts of course scripts
- Pictory to turn scripts into micro-learning lessons
- Kahoot to stitch lessons together and create interactive assessments
- Magic School for more precise prompting
- Blooket for gamified quizzes for younger students
Douglas Clark: Discovered the “exhilaration” factor of AI – not just time savings, but the momentum from getting past the tedious parts to focus on creativity.
Tiana Morano (Long-Term Care Provider Guide): Used AI to script an entire course for nurse practitioners in long-term care settings, making almost $3,000 since February 2024 using Camtasia and Teachable.
5. Technical & Development Solutions
John Bardos (CreatorBoom.com): Uses AI for various technical challenges:
- Redesigning HTML newsletters by feeding full HTML to ChatGPT with specific instructions
- Converting video files to audio using FFMPEG based on AI instructions
- Building a business directory with Make automation that summarizes websites and takes screenshots
Sean McGregor (nocodestr.com): Sets up AI fields in Airtable to automatically generate content from transcripts. His workflow:
- Records video in Loom
- Loom AI creates transcript
- Airtable AI fields automatically create SEO, blog posts, Facebook posts, YouTube descriptions, etc. from the transcript
“It gets rid of the blank page effect… I’m not sitting there stressed about how to get started.”
6. Automation & Workflow Enhancement
Kel McIntosh (Najeroux.com): Combines AI with automation platforms, using voice-to-text prompts on phone that trigger AI workflows in the background, creating client tasks, content drafts, and scheduling social posts without touching a keyboard.
Also uses AI to help clients with digital cleanups and decluttering, turning days of work into hours.
7. Legal and Administrative Support
Billie Jo Konze (BillieJoVO.com, audaciousaccountability.com): Uses AI to scan agreements and flag potentially problematic clauses for voice acting jobs where hiring a lawyer wouldn’t be cost-effective.
Also uses AI to craft professional-sounding emails and help with negotiations, plus organize goals into clear, bite-sized tasks using tools like Goblin.tools.
Specialized tool: Positron – scans voice recordings, compares them to PDF scripts, and flags every flubbed line, missed section, long pauses, or big breaths, cutting quality control time in half.
8. Data Processing and Analysis
Tina Imperial (99 Wings): Uses Google’s Notebook LM to streamline marketing research by creating consolidated summaries from multiple sources (articles, videos, Google Drive notes).
Key features:
- Automatically cites where each piece of information came from
- Creates audio overview that sounds like two podcast hosts discussing the summary
Kyle Jennings (kylewrites.com): Analyzes large sets of customer reviews to extract patterns and insights.
Process:
- Aggregate hundreds or thousands of customer reviews into a Google Doc
- Upload to ChatGPT and ask for key insights:
- Top words and phrases customers use to describe the brand positively
- Top reasons customers prefer this brand over competitors
- Key emotional drivers that caused purchases
- Pain points and problems the brand solved
This reveals what customers actually care about versus what brands highlight in their marketing.
Key Takeaways & Trends
- AI as augmentation, not replacement: Most users enhance their work rather than replace their expertise
- Democratizing expertise: Levels the playing field for individuals without specialized training
- Focus shifting to higher-value work: AI handles routine tasks so users can focus on creativity and strategy
- Integrated tool ecosystems: Users combine multiple AI tools in workflows
- Breaking through barriers: Helps overcome personal limitations like language barriers, ADHD challenges, and technical knowledge gaps
- The “exhilaration factor”: Getting past tedious parts creates momentum and excitement for creative work
Bottom Line
Don’t get overwhelmed by all the possibilities. Pick one tool, dedicate time to experimenting with it, and build it into your weekly workflows.
The goal isn’t to automate everything, but to free up mental space and time for the high-value work only you can do.
Episode Links
- CreatorBoom.com
- Center for Pediatric Sleep Management
- Patupleats.com
- Glow Social
- JPHandyWoman.com
- BlueWillowEmbroideryDesigns.com
- Seaside Creatives
- homebusinesstaxsecrets.com
- coachbeckybeach.com
- SchoolApplicationsPrep.com
- nocodestr.com
- Najeroux.com
- billiejovo.com
- audaciousaccountability.com
- 99 Wings
- kylewrites.com
- Hemingway App
- Goblin.tools
- Positron
- Make.com
- Pictory | My Pictory Demo and Coupon Code
- ChatGPT
- Google’s Notebook LM
- Uber Suggest
- MidJourney
- Recraft.ai
- Airtable
- Zapier
Want More Side Hustle Show?
- Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
- Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
- Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.
The award-winning Side Hustle Show is a
Top 10 Entrepreneurship podcast
with over 1,300 5-star ratings!
Listen in your favorite podcast app or directly in your browser.
No responses yet