Here’s what happened in AI for women entrepreneurs this week (October 1, 2026). Every custom GPT in ChatGPT gets switched off on December 11, so any helper you built there needs a new home. ChatGPT also launched always-on agents called dots, which do the standing jobs you may already have running in Claude. Claude subscribers have a one-time credit ($100 on Pro, $250 on Max) that expires October 7. A new survey says 86% of solopreneurs try AI before hiring anyone, and 65% are worn out from checking its work.
Below you’ll find what each one means for your business, four tips, six tools with step-by-steps, and one small step. Nothing here is on fire. One item has a real deadline and it takes about four minutes.
The short version
- Check your ChatGPT account for custom GPTs this week. You can’t make a new one after October 26, and every one retires on December 11. Your instructions and knowledge files move to the replacement. Custom actions, chat history and sharing do not.
- Claim the Claude credit by October 7. Existing subscribers get a one-time $100 (Pro) or $250 (Max) credit for Claude Code cloud sessions. It takes about four minutes and needs GitHub connected.
- Give AI a standing job, not a question. ChatGPT’s new always-on agents are called dots. The idea works in Claude too: one recurring job, like a Monday morning brief, running without you opening a chat.
- Build a review step that isn’t you reading every word. In a FreshBooks survey, 65% of solopreneurs reported burnout from constantly verifying AI work. A checklist the AI fills in about its own output cuts that down.
- Make AI attempt the job before you hire or buy. Time how long it takes to reach a usable result. Whatever gap is left is what you’re actually outsourcing.
What happened in AI for women entrepreneurs this week
Four developments, told simply, with what to do about each one.
OpenAI
1. Every custom GPT gets switched off on December 11
OpenAI set a hard end date for custom GPTs. You can’t make a new one after October 26, 2026, and every one still standing retires on December 11, 2026. Enterprise accounts with an approved deferral get until February 11, 2027, and that’s the only extension.
What moves to the replacement (OpenAI calls it a plugin): your instructions and knowledge files, which land as a skill and reference files. What doesn’t move: custom actions, so any integration has to be rebuilt by hand, and your conversation history.
Sharing will cause the most pain. The new plugin starts private, so nobody who used the original GPT can reach it until you reshare it. If you gave a custom GPT to your VA, your clients or your students, that link is about to stop working. My own setup runs on Claude, so this one doesn’t touch me.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You made one custom GPT in a burst of enthusiasm last year, named it something like “My Content Helper,” gave the link to one VA, and haven’t opened it since. Open ChatGPT, find your GPTs, and write down every one you made. For each, answer three questions: is anyone else using the link, do you still want it, and does it connect to anything. Then copy the instructions into a document you own (a Google Doc is fine) before December 11.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You probably have several, built by different people, some of them customer-facing. Your real exposure is the sharing reset and the custom actions that won’t transfer. Run an inventory: every custom GPT in the company, who built it, who uses it, what it connects to, and whether it deserves to survive the move. Half will turn out to be workarounds a proper system should have replaced already, which makes the exercise worth doing.
OpenAI
2. ChatGPT got always-on agents
At DevDay on September 30, OpenAI launched “dots,” agents that keep working around the clock from a cloud computer instead of waiting for you to open a chat. Each dot connects to over 4,000 apps and can reply inside Slack, Teams or ChatGPT, and those conversations don’t count against normal plan usage. The first dot comes with Pro and Business Premium, with wider access later.
Shared team workspaces (Space and Pages) arrived too, and @ChatGPT now answers inside Slack and Teams threads.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You’re probably on a $20 plan, so dots aren’t available to you yet, and you don’t need to upgrade. What’s worth taking from this is the difference between asking AI a question and giving AI a standing job. Pick one job you actually have: a Monday morning brief built from your own notes. The same shape works in Claude, which you may already pay for. The standing job matters more than the brand.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You likely have Pro or a Business plan, so you can turn one on today. The risk is pointing it at something that sends, publishes or buys before anyone has checked it. Start with one agent on one read-only job for two weeks: a daily summary of one inbox label, or a weekly report from one spreadsheet. Set permissions to ask before acting. Let it draft only after two clean weeks.
Anthropic and OpenAI
3. Your plan now stretches into other apps, and free credit expires October 7
Anthropic took Claude Code cloud sessions out of preview, so Claude keeps working on Anthropic’s machines after you close your laptop. To get people trying it, every existing subscriber gets a one-time credit: $100 on Pro, $250 on Max. You claim it by running /claim-credit or using the claim link, with GitHub connected, and it has to be claimed by October 7. It’s one per account, cloud sessions only, and the credit gets spent before your normal plan usage.
Separately, OpenAI’s “Sign in with ChatGPT” now lets Plus and Pro subscribers spend their existing plan allowance inside 16 partner apps, including Notion and Vercel, in a limited preview. Signing in shares your name, email and picture, not your chats. The weekly cap under Settings, then Usage, divides your allowance between apps instead of adding to it.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
Before you buy another tool this month, check whether one you already pay for now covers it. Open your billing, list every AI subscription, and write the monthly cost next to each. You may find one you forgot you had.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You may be paying twice for the same capability in three places. Run a subscription audit: every AI tool in the business, what it costs, who uses it, and whether a plan you already hold now covers it. If you use Sign in with ChatGPT, set the weekly cap before the first big job so one app can’t drain the allowance your whole team shares.
Research
4. 86% of solopreneurs try AI before they hire, and two thirds are worn out from checking it
A FreshBooks survey run by Wakefield Research, covering 500 solopreneurs (fielded June 22 to July 1, released September 15), found that 86% try AI before hiring someone for a task they can’t do alone. Ninety percent said AI makes it easier for one person to run a business, and 98% of those already using it said it helped them reach a goal they couldn’t have reached otherwise.
The same study found the cost of doing it without a system. Sixty-five percent reported AI burnout from constantly verifying AI-generated work. Fifty-seven percent still spend more than ten hours a week on admin that AI was supposed to take off their plate.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You may be the 65%. You use ChatGPT, you rewrite everything it gives you, and you’re starting to suspect it costs you more time than it saves. You’re not bad at this. Add one review step that isn’t you reading every word: a checklist the AI has to fill in about its own output, a document of your own it has to quote from, or a short list of things it isn’t allowed to guess.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You may be the 57%, with a team. Ten hours a week of admin across three people is a salary. Look at where output currently waits for your approval. Replace the approvals that are really “did it follow the rules” with rules written down once, so the review belongs to a documented standard and not to your eyes.
Tips you can actually use
Four doable things. Pick one.
Tip 1
Run a ten minute post-mortem on your last eight emails before you write the next one
Becky Beach shared this one in her newsletter this week. Most people write their next email off a hunch. Pull the numbers first, then write.
- Open your email platform’s reports for your last eight sends. For each one, list the subject line, the open rate, the click rate, and one line on what the email asked the reader to do.
- Paste that list into Claude with the prompt below.
- Look only at the sends that beat your average. Write down what they have in common. That’s your pattern to repeat.
That last sentence does real work. It stops the AI from inventing a reason for a pattern it can’t see in your numbers.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You send inconsistently and have never looked at your own numbers, because opening the reports tab feels like a report card. Do it once with your own data on screen (Kartra, Flodesk, Kit, whatever you use). Eight sends, ten minutes. You’ll find something true about your list, which feels different from being told a best practice.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You have a VA or a marketing person and nobody owns this. Make it a standing monthly job with a named owner and a one-page output: what beat average, what we’re repeating, what we’re stopping. Add segment-level data, since the pattern can differ by audience.
Tip 2
Write your sales pages so an AI assistant can recommend you accurately
Salesforce’s 2026 holiday retail predictions say AI chat agents will drive 20% of all 2026 holiday ecommerce traffic, after a nearly 200% jump in shoppers using an AI assistant as their first stop between May 2025 and May 2026. That data comes from Salesforce’s own retail customers, most of them far bigger than a one-person shop, so read the size of the jump as a direction, not a promise.
Shopify also opened checkout to AI agents this week. The pages that get recommended are the ones written clearly enough for an assistant to summarize correctly.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You don’t sell physical products, so skip the shopping part and run this on your Work With Me page. The last instruction flags vague claims. You may find six sentences on your own page that promise nothing specific. It takes fifteen minutes and it’s likely your best page afterwards.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
If you sell on Shopify, check whether your store is in the set that AI agents can check out from, before an agent order turns into a chargeback conversation. Then handle the listings in volume: build one skill that holds your brand voice and your buyer’s language, and run every listing through it. With the holidays coming, October is the time.
Tip 3
Make AI attempt the job before you hire or buy, and time it
This one comes from the FreshBooks research, and it’s the cleanest decision rule of the week. Before your next hire or tool purchase, ask AI to attempt the task first, then time how long it takes you to reach a usable result. If the remaining gap is still big, that gap is what you’re actually outsourcing, and now you can describe it.
If you’re already in the 65% worn out by checking everything, using AI less rarely helps. Building a review step that doesn’t sit entirely on you does.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You’re about to spend $800 a month on a VA for your inbox and your social captions. Run the test on one week of both and time it. You may find the captions are mostly handled and the inbox needs judgment you can’t hand over yet. That turns the hire into one specific job, which is how you end up with a VA who works out.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
Write it into your hiring process. Every proposed role gets a two week AI attempt, documented, before a job description is written. You’ll likely kill a role or two and sharpen the rest. A role you don’t fill is six figures over three years, and the documentation you produce becomes what your next real hire is trained on.
Tip 4
If your content is beautiful and rare, double the volume instead of polishing
Natalie Ellis of Bossbabe called this the precious content trap this week. Every piece is beautiful, and it takes so long to make that by the time you post, nobody’s there. Her line was “Perfect but rare will always lose to good but consistent.” Her challenge to her list was to double the content they create and loosen their grip.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You’re probably the precious content woman. Doubling your output sounds like working twice as hard, so don’t start there. Find one thing you already made that nobody saw: a client voice note, a long caption you wrote once, a talk you gave. Build one small repurposing path from it. Volume without more creating is the version you can actually do.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
Your issue is a bottleneck, not perfectionism. Content waits on your approval, so volume caps at your attention. Write your brand voice and your non-negotiables down once, give the content role authority to publish inside those rules, and keep your own approval for pieces that make claims or offers.
The bigger picture
A helper with no written instructions was always going to stop working
The custom GPT shutdown is a good reminder of something I tell women all the time: a tool with no instructions written down is one more thing you pay for and avoid. Most of the custom GPTs retiring on December 11 were built in a burst, shared once, and never documented. When the platform changes, there’s nothing to move.
The fix is the same every time. Write down how your business actually runs: what you do after you meet someone at a networking event, how you want your inbox handled, how you turn a video into reels. Keep it in a document you own, outside any one app. Then any tool from any company can be pointed at it, and you can rebuild an AI employee in an afternoon. That’s what we build together in the AI employee build-out and inside the Freedom Business Society.
One thing not to chase this week: learning a second platform’s version of something you already run. If you have a standing job working in Claude, an hour spent recreating it in ChatGPT dots will feel like staying current and produce nothing new. If someone you work with needs dots, help her with that as a paid session.
Apps and tools worth trying
Only what was named in this week’s emails, split by who it’s for.
🤍 For your business
Claude Code cloud sessions, with the one-time credit
Claude keeps working on Anthropic’s machines after you close your laptop, and every existing subscriber gets a one-time credit to try it: $100 on Pro, $250 on Max. Deadline: October 7.
How to do it (step by step)
- Work out which plan you’re on. I pay $100 a month, which is the Max tier, so mine should be $250. If your billing says Pro, yours is $100. Check before you assume.
- Connect GitHub to your Claude account if it isn’t connected already. The credit requires it. If you’ve never used GitHub, make a free account first, which takes about three minutes and needs only an email.
- In Claude Code, run the command /claim-credit. The announcement also offered a claim link. It’s one claim per account.
- Claim before October 7. The credit covers cloud sessions only and gets spent before your normal plan usage, so it’s extra.
- Spend it on one long job you keep postponing: a full website audit, a big data clean-up, a batch of client deliverables.
Claude Code is the developer-facing side of Claude. If step 2 or step 3 doesn’t match what you see on screen, stop. The credit is worth four minutes of looking, not an hour of fighting it.
Jaste
A clipboard for Mac that reshapes whatever you copied to fit wherever you’re pasting it. Free beta.
How to do it (step by step)
- Go to jaste.app and download the free beta.
- Check your machine first: it needs macOS 14 or later and Apple silicon. Windows and Linux are listed as coming soon.
- Install it, then grant clipboard permission when macOS asks.
- Copy something from one place and paste it somewhere with a different format, a Google Doc into an email, say, and watch what it does with the formatting.
- It’s version 0.1, so treat it as an experiment and keep it out of client work. Clipboard history stays on your machine and images never leave it.
🌴 For your clients
If you coach, consult or run a team, these are the ones worth showing the women you work with. Each step-by-step is written so you can walk someone through it.
Google Vids
Free 1080p AI video generation with any Google account, at vids.new. No card needed.
How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- Have her open vids.new in the browser she’s already signed into Google with. No new account and no payment screen, which removes the two things that usually stop her.
- Start with one scene, not a whole video. Have her describe something she actually needs: a 10 second opener for her reels, or a short visual for one offer.
- Show her the extend feature. She can lengthen a scene and the lighting and the characters stay consistent. Inconsistent lighting between clips is what makes AI video look amateur.
- Set exact clip lengths instead of accepting the default, so the clip fits the platform she’s posting to.
- If she has older AI clips that look rough, run them through the upscale option.
- Tell her up front: every clip carries an invisible SynthID watermark, and heavy use will push her toward a paid plan.
Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS, inside Google AI Studio
Describe a voice in ordinary words and Google builds it. You can also clone one from a 30 second sample with consent, then direct the delivery line by line: pace, accent, where to push. It works in over 100 languages.
How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- Go to Google AI Studio and sign in with her Google account.
- Have her write one paragraph describing her brand’s voice in a few simple words. Skip adjectives like “professional.” Describe it: warm, unhurried, a little dry, sounds like she’s explaining something to a friend over tea.
- Generate the voice from that paragraph, then save the paragraph itself. That text is now her narrator and it’s reusable.
- If the delivery is off, direct one line at a time. She can specify pace and where to emphasize instead of regenerating and hoping.
- To clone her own voice, she needs a clean 30 second sample and her own consent. Never do this with anyone else’s voice.
- A lighter version is built into Google Vids, so if she’s already making video there, she can use it without leaving.
ChatGPT dot
OpenAI’s always-on agent, rolling out to paid Pro and Business Premium users. If you already run this pattern in Claude, these steps are for walking a client through it.
How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- Check her plan first. Dots are on Pro and Business Premium at launch. If she’s on Plus, stop here and do the same job in Claude instead.
- Have her open the ChatGPT desktop app or the web version. A dot can’t be created on mobile.
- Leave local-computer access off for the first test. Everyone skips this step and it matters.
- In the mobile app, go to Customize, then Custom rules, and select “Ask” before taking action. Keep sending, publishing and purchases outside the task entirely.
- Use the + to attach her own project notes, then prompt: “Use only [FILE] to prepare a morning project brief. Cite the source for each fact. Reply here only.”
- Check the facts in that first brief with her: owners, dates, anything it couldn’t confirm. She learns what to look for.
- Before she schedules anything, attach an update that changes a deadline and ask for a revised brief. A smooth first answer tells her nothing about how it handles a change, which is where these tend to fall over.
- Once a one-off brief passes, ask for a weekday brief at 8:30am and manage it under Scheduled.
Circle, with Circle AI
An all-in-one platform for a community, live events, memberships, payments and emails in one place. Circle AI builds the setup from a sentence of description. It’s being promoted by affiliates right now, so read the enthusiasm accordingly. It suits a client who keeps saying she should have a community and never starts.
How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- Start the free trial at circle.so.
- Have her describe what she wants in one or two sentences, in her own words, and let Circle AI build the space, the programs and the member access from that.
- Fix the voice afterwards. Anything generated from one sentence will be close but generic, and editing is faster than starting blank.
- Invite the first 20 people who already buy from her, not her whole list. Twenty people who trust her is enough to start.
- Give the space one job for the first month: one conversation thread and one live call. A space with eleven empty rooms looks abandoned.
I haven’t verified Circle’s pricing beyond the free trial, so check it before you quote a number to anyone.
Not sure where to start?
Claim the Claude credit. It takes four minutes, it’s money sitting on a plan you already pay for, and it’s gone after October 7. If you don’t pay for Claude, open ChatGPT and look at your custom GPTs instead. Everything else here can wait until next week without costing you anything.
This week’s one small step
Claim the Claude Code credit before October 7. Four minutes, free money, done.
Then, when you have a quiet twenty minutes and a cup of something, open ChatGPT and look at your list of custom GPTs. Write down what you made and who you shared it with. You have until December 11, and a short list now means no scramble later. I send this kind of round-up every week in Insider Secrets, my newsletter, and you can read earlier weeks in the blog archive.
Questions women entrepreneurs are asking about this
When do custom GPTs stop working?
Custom GPTs can’t be created after October 26, 2026, and every remaining custom GPT retires on December 11, 2026. Enterprise accounts with an approved deferral get until February 11, 2027. Your instructions and knowledge files move to a replacement plugin, but custom actions and conversation history don’t.
Will people I shared my custom GPT with still be able to use it?
Not automatically. The replacement plugin starts private, so everyone who used the original, including a VA, clients or students, loses access until you reshare it. Plan to reshare it as soon as you move your instructions across.
How do I claim the Claude Code credit?
Connect GitHub to your Claude account, then run /claim-credit in Claude Code or use the claim link. Existing subscribers get a one-time credit, $100 on Pro and $250 on Max, and it has to be claimed by October 7, 2026. It covers cloud sessions only and gets spent before your normal plan usage.
What is a ChatGPT dot?
A dot is an always-on agent that keeps working from a cloud computer instead of waiting for you to open a chat. Each one connects to over 4,000 apps and can reply in Slack, Teams or ChatGPT. The first dot comes with Pro and Business Premium, so a $20 Plus plan can’t use one yet.
How do I stop spending hours checking everything AI writes?
Build a review step that isn’t you reading every word. Give the AI a checklist to fill in about its own output, a document of yours it has to quote from, and a short list of things it isn’t allowed to guess. In a FreshBooks survey of 500 solopreneurs, 65% reported burnout from constantly verifying AI work.
Want help building this into your business?
I wanted to create a platform for women founders and leaders in business to learn about and discuss AI, so we as women can streamline, save time, grow, and scale. The Freedom Business Society has two sessions a month.
- The build session (second Wednesday, 1pm to 4pm Pacific): one topic, one AI employee, or one task taken off your hands, built together start to finish, and you leave with an installation package including prompts and skill files.
- The mastermind (fourth Wednesday, 1pm to 3pm Pacific): a monthly call for women anywhere from AI curious to AI expert, sharing the exact workflows we’ve built.
You get a written report after every session. These sessions are practical, honest, never arrogant or condescending.
Founding rates start at $177 a month for the Mastermind on the annual plan ($197 month to month), and Mastermind + Build is $357 a month on the annual plan ($397 month to month). The next build session is October 14 and the next mastermind is October 28. You’re welcome at one mastermind as my guest before you pay for anything.
ABOUT MARYBETH WELTY
Marybeth Welty is a business coach, systems strategist, and founder of Women Entrepreneurs Who Travel and Sustainable Lifestyle Solutions. She has spent 19 years traveling between the US and Canada and across 11 countries, building and running her businesses from villas, co-working spaces, cafes, and everything in between.
These days she builds AI employees: the assistants, planners, and follow-up systems that run the parts of a business that used to take up a founder’s whole week. She helps women entrepreneurs put those systems, their offers, and their mindset together so they can work from anywhere and actually enjoy the life they built the business for.
Follow her on Instagram @marybethwelty, or come join the free Facebook community, Women Entrepreneurs Who Travel.
