What women are actually using Claude for
From expense trackers to chiefs of staff, I asked founders, consultants, and writers how they’re really using AI in their everyday work.
If your algorithm is anything like mine, you’ve probably been inundated with reels and TikToks of people claiming Claude is basically running their entire lives. For a while, I watched them with curiosity while also feeling overwhelmed by how fast everything seemed to be changing.
Should I be doing more of this? What even is this?
There’s also been so much discourse around whether we should be participating in AI at all… real concerns about its environmental impact, discourse on the internet about whether women should embrace it or reject it entirely, and valid arguments about the ways it can cause harm. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I still feel conflicted about where all of this is heading.
I couldn’t quite figure out how to have a strong opinion on something I didn’t fully understand. As a self-employed person and a team of one, the promise of becoming more efficient at work isn't something I can afford to ignore — and for better or worse, I don't think AI is going anywhere.
But I think there's a real difference between using AI to be more efficient and using it to think for us.
Last month, I stopped overthinking it and signed up for Grace Clarke’s class in NYC, AI for Normal People to learn about Claude from a real person. Grace is brilliant and shares her knowledge so openly, and I loved that the room was filled primarily with other women (many of them self-employed) all figuring this out together.
That experience made me realize I was less interested in the discourse around AI and more interested in how people were actually using it, so I reached out to a handful of fellow Substack writers building businesses and creating things to ask: what are you actually using Claude for?
Whether you’re already deep in it or have been avoiding it entirely, here’s what women using it have to say.
Kate Citron
Freelance Marketer & Brand Strategist
The workflow that changed everything: “I have Claude do competitive brand research and analyze customer survey results, which has saved me a significant amount of time on strategy projects — but good output requires good instruction. I’ve found Wispr Flow so helpful for this type of work. I can talk through feedback instead of typing out detailed notes, which sounds small but really helps me move fast and provide better direction. It’s replaced hours of manual research, combing through survey data in spreadsheets, and the slow back-and-forth of writing everything down.”
If you’re just getting started: “Pick an annoying weekly task and see if you can hand it off. I track all of my time religiously (whether I need to for clients or not), but pulling a clean weekly summary from my time tracker tool was shockingly tedious. Now Claude does it every Friday morning and I get the full picture back without doing anything.”
Her best hack: “I used Claude to build a P&L for my S-Corp taxes this year and it saved me a ton of time. If you’re a freelancer or run a small business: do not spend a Saturday wrestling with spreadsheets when Claude can do it in 20 minutes.”
Grace Abbott
Brand & Marketing Strategist & Founder of How to Go Freelance
The workflow that changed everything: “I’ve been using Claude to build SEO pages on my website! I didn’t fully know how to do this correctly, so what’s really fun is I’ve been learning as I go and feel like I’m picking up a new skill. Here’s my process: I use an SEO platform (I like Ahrefs and Answer the Public) and I grab the most relevant keywords people are searching for about freelancing (which is the focus of my brand). I put the screenshots of those pages into Claude so it has all the details. I like the Chrome extension ‘Go Full Page’ — it takes a screenshot of the entire page for you! Next, I took my entire library of content (workshop copy, Substack, articles, etc.) and feed it to Claude, and then I have it help me grab chunks of my content (that I’ve written vs. Claude) and help me organize pages that hit the SEO benchmarks. Then I build the page on Squarespace, and Claude walks me through how to submit it to Google for indexing, checking that everything is right with the code on the page, etc.! After I’ve built my page, I’ll put it back in Claude for a final check. I love using it this way because instead of having it write my words, I’m using it as a coworker that helps me learn something new!”
If you’re just getting started: “Get on Claude, give it your to-do list, and ask it which items it can help you do faster. Then keep asking clarifying questions to understand the process. I like using it as a teacher/coworker on how to get things done, because it makes me feel empowered that I am learning.”
Her best hack: “I’ve also been using it to ‘vibe code,’ which means it writes CSS code for me that I put into the code blocks on my Squarespace site. I have been building websites and managing dev teams for the last 10 years, so I do have the language to communicate clearly on how to make website changes: it’s like I’m managing a dev team.”
Alexandra McCann
Senior client partner at Reddit
The workflow that changed everything: “Honestly? I built a website. I don’t code. I’ve never been trained. And yet I have a fully functioning Brand Substack Directory live on the internet, which I’ve also updated multiple times since launch, all built with Claude. It started as a spreadsheet I was using to track the brands and founders I was covering on Substack, and at some point I asked Claude if I could turn it into an actual site. Turns out: yes, with a very patient back-and-forth and a willingness to copy and paste error messages, you can. It replaced the version of me who would’ve pestered my husband to build it... or just not done it at all. It really opened my eyes to how much was now within reach, that I genuinely couldn’t do on my own before.”
If you’re just getting started: “The biggest unlock for me was learning to give Claude as much context as possible up front. Who you are, what you’re trying to do, who it’s for, what you’ve already tried, what you don’t want. The more it knows, the more useful it becomes. I think many people treat it like a search bar and get search bar answers back. Also, start with whatever you’ve been putting off because you think you don’t know how. I had no idea how to build a website. I simply started by asking very basic questions until it eventually got me there.”
Her best hack: “Use Claude as an editor, not a writer. I’m wordy by nature. I’ll paste in a draft and ask what to cut, where I’m repeating myself, and which paragraph is the weakest and why. It’s brutal in a useful way if you ask for it (and it’s pretty much always right about what I should cut). Also: the ‘explain it back to me’ trick. When you’re working through a tricky idea, have Claude paraphrase what you just said. If the paraphrase is off, you haven’t figured out what you actually mean yet. And when you’re stuck on a decision: ask it to challenge your thinking. It helps clarify your thought process and identify roadblocks you may not have seen otherwise.”
Jenni Condon
Founder, Studio JKC
The workflow that changed everything: “The most useful things for me have been on the back end of building a business — the operational stuff that’s easy to put off. One example: I’m a one-woman interior design business and I had not tracked a single expense since I started. Receipts were sitting in a Gmail folder untouched. I linked Claude Cowork with my Gmail, asked it to go through that folder and build me an expense tracker, and it did it in minutes. Something that would have taken me much longer and honestly would have kept getting pushed off. Now at the start of every month I just ask Claude to refresh the tracker and it saves the file in my folder of choice. That’s it!”
If you’re just getting started: “Give Claude as much information on you as possible. Send it your past writing or work samples, talk to it in your own voice (I love Wispr Flow to talk instead of type), ask it to interview you. This is so important to do upfront so the work Claude does for you actually sounds and feels like you!”
Her best hack: “I know it can feel overwhelming to know where and how to start. I would simply ask: what is something repetitive you do weekly? Or something time consuming that you wish you didn’t have to do or dread doing? It can be for work or your personal life — things like meal prepping, reporting, organizing calendars. I guarantee something comes to mind immediately. From there, put Claude to work on that task so you can spend time doing the things you actually want to be doing.”
Taylor deDiego
Founder of Beauty Work Friends, Beauty Brand Strategist & Copywriter
The workflow that changed everything: “I created a Chief of Staff that helps me manage Beauty Work Friends’ projects and my time more effectively. I’m an idea queen and often have several big projects I’m bringing to life at the same time, while also managing day-to-day tasks like: social content, virtual and IRL events, chatting with applicants, connecting with members, etc. I dealt with serious burnout last year from stretching myself too thin, and now I have an AI employee who gives me a morning brief on my priority tasks for the day and the week ahead, and what’s coming up soon after. Very few things fall through the cracks now. Best of all, it helps me prioritize rest. A few Fridays ago, all of my priority tasks for the week were done and it told me to take the day off entirely. I was shocked and relieved. A previous version of me would have just started checking off next week’s to-dos, but my Chief of Staff knew to encourage me to rest and pick back up with a fresh POV the next week. It’s easily the best thing I’ve built for my business. And my life.”
If you’re just getting started: “Claude can answer any question you have about setting things up or why things are breaking down as you use it. If you’re lost or frustrated, tell Claude and ask it to help you. It’s incredibly meta, but it works.”
Her best hack: “Set up a Chief of Staff skill — it’s game-changing. I told Claude I wanted to set up a skill to help me manage my work and my time, and asked it to interview me about everything it needed to know about my business, the way I work, and what I needed the most support with. After I connected it to my personal and business calendars, emails, important files (like our marketing and Substack calendars, and project tasks), and my community manager’s tasks, it had everything it needed to give me a detailed briefing each morning on my day and the week ahead. In fact, it reminded me today that I needed to get this response to you.”
And me? Here’s what I’ve been doing with it.
My best hack: Working across multiple clients means my brain is constantly jumping from one thing to the next, and without a system keeping me honest, the newest email in my inbox tends to grab my attention instead of the most important one.
I asked Claude to build me a client dashboard that pulls from my emails, client calls, and to-do lists and organizes everything by client and deadline. I’m still someone who writes things down in a notebook, but this gives me a daily audit of what actually needs my attention. More than anything, it helps me stay focused on what matters most instead of reacting to whatever lands in my inbox first.
If you’re just getting started: If you're feeling overwhelmed by all of this, start small. Ask Claude to interview you about your work, your routines, and the things that tend to pile up on your list. Begin with Chat, and move into Co-Work once you get more comfortable. If you’re not sure how to prompt Claude, you can tell it what you want it to do and ask what information it needs from you in order to be able to do that task.
Reading all of these back, I kept noticing that the thing being handed off was almost always the thing we'd been avoiding (or the thing that would have taken hours of manual work and serious brainpower to do alone). The task that felt outside our skill set, outside our interest, or that just kept sliding to the bottom of the list.
I still have a lot of questions about where AI is heading and what we’re opting into.
But something Grace said in her workshop has stuck with me:
Now that Claude exists, “I don’t know how” feels a little less permanent, because Claude can help show you.
I find something genuinely inspiring about that.
If you’re using Claude in a way that’s changed how you work, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I have a feeling there’s a part two here.
Thanks for reading Taking Shape. If this resonated, you can subscribe below to follow along or find me over on Instagram. I’ll be launching 1:1 office hours soon — if you’re interested, send me a message or email and I’ll be in touch when they go live.
And as always, I love hearing from you — in the comments, in replies, or simply by tapping the heart.
LOVED THIS!!! The only kind of AI content I actually want to read :)
Loved this article, so many great ideas! I built a setup wizard for anyone to create their own Chief of Staff - its free and up on my substack now 🤍
I also included details about the user’s personality and Working Genius, as well as an option to include menstrual cycle tracking. I wanted my CoS to be strategic about managing my workload according to my energy levels and she’s been very helpful!