Every week I read the AI newsletters so you do not have to, and write up only the parts that change something for a woman running a business.
The short version
This week had a theme, and it is a good one. OpenAI spent it putting small-business tools and writing-voice cloning inside ChatGPT, which means the things you have been hearing you should want are now buttons. Read the parts that resonate, close the tab on the rest, and nothing bad happens.
- Connect one tool, not six. ChatGPT opened a small-business collection with 16 plugins in it, including Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Wix, HubSpot, ZoomInfo, Docusign, Mercury, HoneyBook, Dropbox, Slack, Canva, Figma and ClickUp. Pick the one you open every single day and give it one real task from your actual week.
- Write your voice down whether or not you get the new feature. ChatGPT is testing Writing Style, which lifts your phrases and sign-offs out of your own Gmail or Drive. It is being tested inside ChatGPT Work, Free does not get it at all, and it is rolling out to a small group first. Ten emails you are proud of plus five phrases you would never say does the same job in any tool, and you own it.
- Comment on the image instead of re-prompting it. ChatGPT Images 2.5 is rolling out to every tier, Free included. Leave a comment on the image to change one thing and it changes that thing without redoing the rest.
- Ask for four options side by side, never one at a time. Four subject lines, four section headings, four ways to price the same package. Then you point at the one that works.
- Find out whether AI search can see you. Peekaboo, HubSpot’s AI Search Grader and Semrush’s SEO Checker are free. Google Search Console also has a Generative AI tab that most people have never opened.
- Name your fonts. Better prompts never fixed generic AI design. References did. Typewolf, Savee and Variant give the model something real to copy.
What happened this week
Three things.
1. ChatGPT opened a small-business aisle, with 16 plugins in it
On Tuesday OpenAI put a small-business collection in the ChatGPT plugin directory. Sixteen plugins, picked for the jobs that take up most of an owner’s week. Fourteen of them got named. Stripe and PayPal for getting paid. Shopify and Wix for the store and the site. HubSpot and ZoomInfo for pipeline. Docusign for contracts. Mercury for the bank balance. HoneyBook for booking clients. Plus Dropbox, Slack, Canva, Figma and ClickUp.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the SolopreneurYou probably live in two tools, something like HoneyBook and Canva, or Stripe and Dropbox. Connect exactly one, the one you open every single day, and hand it one real task this week. If you book through HoneyBook, ask ChatGPT to draft this week’s client confirmation emails from your actual bookings. You get the win of a tab you did not have to open, and you find out what a connected tool feels like before you spend money on anything bigger.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ OperatorYou have an ops person, a bookkeeper and a CRM, so the plugins are a governance question more than a productivity one. Work out which of the sixteen you would allow, who gets to connect them, and what happens to client data inside each one. Then look at the real gap: plugins act on one request at a time, and nobody has written down your standard operating procedures.
2. ChatGPT is testing a way to copy your writing voice out of your own inbox
It is called Writing Style. You connect Gmail, Google Drive, Slack or SharePoint, and it lifts your phrases, your sign-offs and your capitalization habits into whatever you draft next. It sits under Settings, then Personalization, then Writing style.
Three honest catches. It is being tested in ChatGPT Work and Free does not get it at all. It is rolling out to a small group of users first, so it may not appear in your account yet. OpenAI has not said how long it keeps the samples it reads, or whether they touch training.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the SolopreneurYou are probably on a personal plan rather than Work, so this likely is not available to you, which is genuinely good news. Do the low-tech version. Collect the ten emails and five captions you are most proud of, put them in one document, and write down the five phrases you say constantly plus the five you would never say. That document is your voice file, it works in any tool, and it costs nothing. If you always write “let’s get you sorted” and never write “unlock,” you now have something a model can follow.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ OperatorYou may already be on ChatGPT Work, and your real problem is that four people write in your brand and none of them sound the same. Ask your lawyer or your ops lead the data question first (how long are samples kept, do they touch training), then run it on one channel only, like the weekly customer email. A documented voice standard you own is the asset. The feature is one place to plug it in.
3. You can fix an AI image by leaving a comment on it
ChatGPT Images 2.5 landed Tuesday. Two changes matter for normal humans. You can leave a comment on the image you generated to change one thing, and it changes that thing without redoing the rest. You can also type @Sketch and draw the layout yourself, roughly, and it uses your drawing as the reference. It is rolling out to every tier, Free included, and generation is up to 50% faster than the last model.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the SolopreneurThe reason you have 40 abandoned AI graphics is that fixing one wrong word used to wreck the whole image. Open the last graphic you almost shipped, comment on the single wrong element, and regenerate. A workshop promo where the date was right and the headline was crooked becomes a shippable asset in two minutes instead of another afternoon.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator@Sketch is the useful half for you. Your designer’s bottleneck is usually that nobody can describe the layout they want. Scribble the layout, hand the sketch in as the reference, and use the result as the brief rather than the final. That cuts a whole round of “not quite” out of your creative process, which is real money when you are paying by the hour.
Tips you can actually use
Small moves, real steps.
Ask for four options side by side, not one at a time
Nate Grahek at The Rundown AI wrote about this and it is the cheapest upgrade in the whole post. The usual loop is one image, feedback, another image, more feedback, and you spend the whole time trying to describe something you have not seen yet. Ask instead for four versions of the same concept: same style, different composition and staging. Then you point at the one that works.
It works for far more than images. Four subject lines, four section headings, four ways to price the same package.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the SolopreneurIf you are the one who goes twelve rounds with AI on a single caption and gives up, learn one sentence: “give me four versions, same voice, different angle, and do not explain them.” Picking your booking-page headline becomes choosing instead of describing, which is much easier when you are tired.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ OperatorThis is how you get your team unblocked without being in every thread. Make it a standard in your documented process: any creative request comes back as four options with a recommendation, never one draft waiting on your approval. It moves you out of being the single point of approval, which is usually where the whole week gets held up.
Find out where your business actually shows up in AI search
The Rundown AI published a two-part guide this week. Part one is the audit and part two turns the audit into a fix list. The free tools they name are Peekaboo, HubSpot’s AI Search Grader, and Semrush’s SEO Checker, plus one setting most people have never opened: Google Search Console, then Search results, then Performance, then Generative AI, which shows your impressions in Google’s AI results.
This is the one I would pick if you only do a single thing from this post. It costs nothing and it tells you something you cannot guess.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the SolopreneurDo it on your own site, in ten minutes. Ask ChatGPT and Google the question your customer would actually type. A Vancouver dog trainer’s real query is “who can help with a reactive dog in Vancouver,” not “dog training.” Find out whether you appear, and who appears instead of you.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ OperatorYou have a marketing team and probably an SEO agency, and very likely no idea whether AI answers cite you. Run the audit, then build the fix workbook. Part two of the guide walks through having AI build it in Google Sheets with owners, due dates and status. Hand it to your team as a tracked project with a name and a deadline.
Show the model what good looks like instead of arguing with adjectives
Better prompts never fixed generic AI design. References did. Three free sites were named this week. Savee is Pinterest for designers. Typewolf shows real brand fonts, so the model stops defaulting to the same one every time. Variant lets you type an idea and scroll options before you generate.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the SolopreneurIf your AI graphics look off and you cannot say why, it is usually the font. Go to Typewolf, pick two fonts you love off real sites, and name them in every image prompt from now on. One change, and your work stops looking like everyone else’s work.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ OperatorYou have brand guidelines nobody follows. Build one reference board per content type (email header, carousel, sales page hero) and attach it to the request template your team already uses. Your brand consistency problem comes down to references, and your team has plenty of talent.
The bigger picture: everything that shipped this week moved into your subscription
Look at what actually shipped. Tool access, inside the chat. Writing-voice cloning, inside the chat. Image editing, for free. Every single one of those moves a capability from something you hire someone to set up into something your subscription includes.
Here is the pattern underneath it. A business is a system of movement: people enter, warm, buy, stay, expand, refer, repeat. All three of this week’s releases land in the same two places, warm and stay. They make follow-up faster and content easier. None of them touch enter, and none of them touch the handoffs between stages, because those depend on knowing how your specific business runs.
Nobody has written that down for you. What you do after you meet a woman at a networking event. How you want your inbox handled. How your bookkeeping gets done. How one video becomes three reels. A plugin directory structurally cannot sell you that, which is why a tool with no instructions is one more thing you are paying for and avoiding.
So if you want one thing from this week, run the AI visibility audit on your own site. It gives you a receipt in week one, and it is one system you can run over and over rather than ten tools to learn.
What not to chase this week: Meta’s Muse agent. It books, fills forms and pays, it requires a payment card before you can start even on the free tier, it is US only, and Meta’s own staff reported it disconnecting without explanation and uploading sensitive data without asking. Let other people be the test group. Also, do not go building your business around the ChatGPT plugin aisle. Use it to feel what a connected tool is like, not as a foundation.
Apps and tools worth trying
Only the ones actually named in this week’s reading.
🤍 For your business
Recordly, free and open source
A screen recorder that does the post-production for you. You record, and the same app adds the auto-zooms, the cursor polish, a styled frame and a webcam bubble, then gives you a drag-and-drop timeline to trim. MacOS 14 and up, Windows 10 and up, Linux. No seat to pay for, 26k stars on GitHub.
This is the one I would actually pick up. I demo live software constantly, in masterclasses, in class recordings, in my program portal, and polished screen recordings are usually a paid tool plus an editing afternoon.
› How to do it, step by step
- Go to the repository at github.com/webadderallorg/Recordly.
- Open the Releases section on that page and download the build for your operating system. Take the packaged build, not the source code zip.
- Install it, then grant Screen Recording permission. On a Mac that lives in System Settings, Privacy & Security. Grant Camera and Microphone too if you want the webcam bubble and your voice.
- Record one short real thing, about three minutes. Walk through the process you explain most often to a new client.
- When you stop, the auto-zooms, frame and cursor polish are already applied. Use the drag-and-drop timeline to trim the dead air at the start and the end.
- Export, and compare it honestly against what you would normally ship. If it is close, this replaces a paid tool and an editing session.
One caution worth naming: the license is AGPL, which is fine for recording your own videos. It is not a redistribution question for you, since you are using the app rather than shipping its code.
ChatGPT Images 2.5, already in your plan
You already pay for this one, so it is a new habit rather than a new expense. Comment-to-edit and @Sketch, rolling out to every tier including Free.
› How to do it, step by step
- Open ChatGPT and generate an image, or upload one it made for you before.
- To fix one element, leave a comment on the image itself rather than typing a new prompt. Point at the wrong thing and say what it should be.
- Regenerate. Check whether the rest of the image held still. Do that three times on the same image. If it survives three edits without drifting, trust it.
- For layout control, type @Sketch and draw the arrangement you want, roughly. Boxes and squiggles are enough, and it uses your drawing as the reference. Try the message box first.
- There are templates for posters and merch if you want a starting frame rather than a blank one.
🌴 For your clients
The ChatGPT small-business plugin collection
Sixteen plugins in one place. Fourteen were named: Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Wix, HubSpot, ZoomInfo, Docusign, Mercury, HoneyBook, Dropbox, Slack, Canva, Figma, ClickUp. She will see the other two when she opens it.
› How to walk a client through it, step by step
- On the call, have her open the plugin directory in ChatGPT and find the small-business collection. She browses, you stay quiet for a minute. Let her recognize her own tools on the list.
- Ask one question: which of these do you open every single day? Not which sounds useful. Which one she actually opens.
- Connect that one only. Connecting six is how this ends up unused.
- Have her authorize it in her own account, with her own login, while you watch. Never type her credentials and never take them from her.
- Give it one real task from her actual week. Real invoice, real client, real message.
- Ask her whether it saved a tab switch. If yes, connect the second one next week. If no, stop, and you have learned her real bottleneck is somewhere else entirely.
Say the data thing out loud before she connects anything. A plugin can read inside that tool, so if the tool holds client information, that is a decision and not a default.
Cuey, free tier then $18.99 a month
A prompt library with a comparison habit. In the Chrome add-on, you run the same prompt through ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini side by side and keep whichever answer holds up. Free covers five comparisons a day.
Useful mostly for the client who is convinced she picked the wrong tool. Let her see three answers to her own question and the argument tends to end.
› How to do it, step by step
- Go to cuey.io and sign up with an email. It wants that before it shows you the product.
- Install the Chrome add-on. Look for the install link on the site.
- Be signed in to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in the same browser before you test, in case it runs through your own logins.
- Paste one prompt she uses constantly. A client-email template is the honest test, not a clever riddle.
- Run it, read the three answers next to each other, and keep the one that survived.
- Watch the counter. Five comparisons a day on Free goes faster than you would think, and you want her to hit that ceiling before she pays anything.
Peekaboo, HubSpot AI Search Grader, and Semrush SEO Checker
The three free AI-visibility checks named in The Rundown AI’s guide this week. These are the tools that let a client see her own AI search problem rather than take your word for it.
› How to run the audit with her, step by step
- Before any tool: look her brand up in Google and in ChatGPT, on the call, and note which sources get cited in the answers. This alone is often the whole revelation.
- Run her site through Peekaboo, HubSpot’s AI Search Grader, and Semrush’s SEO Checker. The guide describes all three as free audits. If any of them asks for an email to show results, use hers, not yours.
- Open her Google Search Console, go to Search results, then Performance, then Generative AI. That tab shows impressions in Google’s AI results. If she does not have Search Console set up, that is the first fix and it is free.
- Write down the questions her actual customer would type. Real ones, in customer language, not industry language. A handful is plenty.
- Check each of those in ChatGPT and in Google. Record who gets cited when she does not.
- Turn the gaps into a tracked workbook with owners, due dates and status. Part two of the guide walks through having AI build it in Google Sheets.
Build an Instagram carousel from a folder of her own photos
There is nothing to sign up for here. It is a workflow, and it uses two things a client may already pay for: the ChatGPT Google Drive connector and the Canva plugin.
› How to walk her through it, step by step
- Have her put the photos in one Google Drive folder. One folder, nothing else in it.
- Turn on the Google Drive connector in ChatGPT and give it access to that folder.
- Turn on the Canva plugin too. That is the step that takes the design from passable to good, and it means the result comes back editable inside Canva.
- Prompt it roughly like this, which is the real prompt with her topic swapped in: “You have access to some of my photos in that Google Drive folder. Based on that, can we create an IG carousel post like the highly engaging ones people create these days, on the topic: [her topic].”
- Then brand it: give it her logo and her colours and ask for it branded but clean.
- The first pass will be a draft. The follow-up prompt that fixed it, word for word, was “I don’t want a draft. I want the actual carousel.” Tell her to expect that step so she does not quit at the draft.
- Open the result in Canva and fix the two things only a human would notice.
ChatGPT Writing Style, ChatGPT Work only
Clones a writing voice from Gmail, Drive, Slack or SharePoint. Settings, then Personalization, then Writing style.
› How to do it, step by step
- Confirm she is on ChatGPT Work. If she is on Plus, stop here and build her a written voice file instead. That version works everywhere and she owns it.
- In ChatGPT, open Settings, then Personalization, then Writing style. If it is not there, she is not in the rollout group yet. Nothing is broken.
- Connect one app only, the one she genuinely writes in. Usually Gmail.
- Have her draft one real email with it, then read it out loud. Out loud matters. Her ear catches what her eye forgives.
- If it sounds like her, keep it. If it sounds like a polite stranger, disconnect it and go back to the written voice file.
Not sure where to start?
Recordly. It is free, it is one sitting, and if you demo anything on a screen for clients it is the only tool in this whole post you probably do not already have a version of.
This week’s one small step
Run the free AI visibility check on your own website
Ten minutes, no card, no signup for the first half. Google your own business, then ask ChatGPT the question your customer would really type, and write down who gets cited instead of you. Then open Google Search Console, Search results, Performance, Generative AI, and look at the number.
If you would rather finish the week holding something, download Recordly and record three minutes instead. Either one is a complete week. Doing both is not required, and doing neither is survivable.
Questions women entrepreneurs are asking about this
What are the ChatGPT small business plugins?
They are a collection of 16 plugins OpenAI grouped together in the ChatGPT plugin directory in September 2026, picked for the jobs that take up most of a business owner’s week. Fourteen were named publicly: Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Wix, HubSpot, ZoomInfo, Docusign, Mercury, HoneyBook, Dropbox, Slack, Canva, Figma and ClickUp. Once you connect one, ChatGPT can read and act inside that tool while you are chatting with it, so drafting an invoice or sending a contract happens in one place instead of three tabs.
Can ChatGPT copy my writing style?
Partly, and not for everyone yet. A feature called Writing Style is being tested inside ChatGPT Work, where you connect Gmail, Google Drive, Slack or SharePoint and it copies your phrases, sign-offs and capitalization habits into new drafts. It is rolling out to a small group of users first and the Free tier does not get it at all. OpenAI has not said how long it keeps the samples it reads or whether they touch training, so treat a client-confidential inbox carefully.
How do I check if my business shows up in AI search?
Start by asking ChatGPT and Google the exact question your customer would type, then note which websites get cited in the answers. Three free tools go deeper: Peekaboo, HubSpot’s AI Search Grader, and Semrush’s SEO Checker. For your own measured data, open Google Search Console, then Search results, then Performance, then Generative AI, which shows how many times you appeared in Google’s AI results.
Do I need a paid ChatGPT plan to edit AI images by commenting on them?
No. ChatGPT Images 2.5 is rolling out to every tier including Free. Comment-to-edit lets you mark one element on an image and change only that element, and typing @Sketch lets you draw a rough layout for the model to use as its reference. Generation is up to 50% faster than the previous model.
How many AI tools should I connect at once?
One. Connect the tool you open every single day, give it one real task from your actual week, and only add a second once the first one has genuinely saved you a step. Connecting six at once is the most reliable way to end up paying for something you never open. If the first connection does not save you anything, your real bottleneck is somewhere else, and finding that out is worth the ten minutes on its own.
Is a free screen recorder good enough for client demos?
Recordly is free, open source and adds auto-zooms, cursor polish, a styled frame and a webcam bubble while you record, which covers most of what a paid tool does for client demos and course videos. It runs on MacOS 14 and up, Windows 10 and up, and Linux. The trade-off is that the polish is automatic and therefore opinionated, so if you want your zooms in exact places you will move them yourself on the timeline.
Come talk about this with other women who are building it
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. That is the Freedom Business Society. Two Wednesdays a month, live on Zoom.
The mastermind runs the fourth Wednesday, 1pm to 3pm Pacific. Two hours for women anywhere from AI curious to AI expert, sharing the exact workflows we have built. Practical, honest, never arrogant or condescending. A written report goes out after every session.
The build training runs the second Wednesday, 1pm to 4pm Pacific. One topic, one AI employee, or one task taken off your hands, built together start to finish, then an hour of Q&A and implementation where you build yours with me still on the call. A different system every month. You will need basic Claude or ChatGPT experience and a paid account, since the free version will not work for this.
Mastermind only is $197 a month, or $177 a month billed annually, or $1,997 paid in full for the year. Mastermind plus Build is $397 a month, or $357 a month billed annually, or $3,997 paid in full. Your founding rate is held for as long as you stay. The standard for entry is ambition, not revenue, so if you want to grow, you qualify.
You are welcome at one mastermind as my guest before you pay for anything, so you can see the room for yourself. Guests come to the live session only, so there is no report and no replay. The next mastermind is Wednesday, September 23.
If you would rather have it built with you instead, the AI Employee Build-Out is four private Zoom sessions where we write down how your business actually runs and then build the employee that runs it. I also send a free weekly email, Insider Secrets: The AI Newsletter for Women Entrepreneurs, and you can read the last edition of this roundup or the rest of the blog any time.
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.
Keep reading: AI employees for women entrepreneurs: what they are and how they work.
