Read time: about 10 minutes
Here’s what happened in AI for women entrepreneurs this week. Claude’s smartest model got 40% cheaper and faster on the plan you already pay for. ChatGPT learned to finish real work from your phone, by voice. HubSpot showed exactly which part of a page AI search quotes. Alex Hormozi shared a sales test where an AI that asked questions before it made an offer beat the one that pitched everyone.
Below you’ll find what each one means for your business, three tips you can use this afternoon, five tools with step-by-steps, and one small step for the week.
The short version
- Run the long job in one pass. Claude Opus 5.5 costs 40% less to run than Opus 5, writes more than 30% faster, and paid Claude plans got higher five-hour usage limits. Jobs you used to split into pieces may now finish in one go.
- Talk your follow-ups into your phone. ChatGPT Plus and Pro users can now say a task out loud in the Work tab of the mobile app, have it done, and finish it later on the laptop.
- Give your best pages more labelled sections. HubSpot found AI search cited pages with 7 to 15 H2 headings most often, because answer engines quote one section of a page at a time.
- Count the days before you plan your follow-up. Look at your last ten clients and count the days between the first conversation and payment. Build your follow-up around that real number.
- Write your voice down before you hand your writing to AI. LinkedIn now lets members flag posts as AI slop, and it says flagged content gets around 40% fewer views. A one-page Voice Rules document keeps your drafts sounding like you.
What happened in AI for women entrepreneurs this week
Four things, and what to do with each one.
Anthropic
1. Claude Opus 5.5 landed, and it costs 40% less to run
On September 22, Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5. According to Anthropic’s announcement, it performs at the level of its top model on most work, costs 40% less to run than Opus 5, and writes its answers more than 30% faster. Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise plans also got higher five-hour usage limits. If anyone on your team uses the API instead of a subscription, input and output prices dropped to $4 and $20 per million tokens.
I pay $100 a month for Claude and run my AI employees inside it, so for me there was nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. What changed is that the jobs I used to break into pieces, because they hit a limit halfway through, can run in one pass now.
The short version: the smartest Claude got faster and cheaper on the plan you’re already paying for, and you can run longer jobs before it asks you to wait.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
If you’ve been on a free ChatGPT account and decided AI is “fine, I guess,” the math has changed. One paid plan at around $20 a month now gets you a model that would have been out of reach six months ago. Pick one job you do by hand every week (writing your weekly email, turning a client call into follow-up notes) and run it this week. You don’t need to know what a token is. You need to see your own task come back done.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
If your team or your developer runs anything through the API, the bill for the same work just fell by roughly 40%. Ask one question this week: who is watching that number, and when did they last check which model each job runs on? In a lot of six and seven figure businesses nobody owns that, so the older, pricier model keeps running out of habit. It’s a ten-minute check, and any savings come out of tools you already pay for.
OpenAI
2. You can now talk real work into ChatGPT on your phone
On September 23, OpenAI added voice to the Work tab in the ChatGPT mobile app (TechCrunch has the details). Plus and Pro users can say things like “draft that email” or “summarize that thread” out loud and have it done, including building a page, making a presentation, or using the cloud browser. You can switch between talking and typing inside the same conversation. Free and Go accounts get plugins and connected apps, without the voice agent piece.
I dictate almost everything with Wispr Flow, so talking to my tools isn’t new to me. What’s new is that the talking now finishes the job, instead of handing me text I still have to paste somewhere.
The short version: the walk to the coffee shop just became working time, and the work follows you back to your laptop.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You drive between clients, or you walk the dog between sessions, and the follow-up emails you owe people pile up because sitting down to write them feels like a whole task. Try one thing: on the way home from your next appointment, say the follow-up out loud into the Work tab, then open your laptop that evening and send it. One email, one time, so you can feel what it’s like.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You’re in back-to-back meetings and your decisions live in your head until Friday. After every meeting, speak a 60-second debrief into your phone: what was decided, who owes what, and what you’re worried about. That becomes the raw material your assistant or your AI employee turns into the actual updates. You’re already talking all day, and this catches it. A debrief only helps if something downstream knows what to do with it, which is why a written-down business brain matters so much.
Marketing
3. HubSpot published what gets a page quoted by AI search
HubSpot studied the pages that ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity actually cite and turned it into a 2026 AEO playbook. The finding with the most teeth: pages with more headings got cited more often, peaking at 7 to 15 H2 headings, because an answer engine lifts one chunk out of a page. The other plays were real author credentials on the page, showing up on LinkedIn and YouTube as well as your own site, refreshing your content on a steady schedule, and FAQ sections with schema.
HubSpot also reported a big jump in its own AI-sourced leads, measured on itself. I’m keeping the tactics and skipping that number. You’ll notice this post is built to the playbook, which is why it has so many clearly labelled sections.
The short version: AI search quotes one section of your article at a time. More clearly labelled sections means more chances for yours to be the one it picks.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You have maybe eight blog posts and a services page, and you decided years ago that SEO wasn’t for you. Pick your three best pages. On each one, break the long middle into sub-headings that match how a real person would ask the question out loud (“how much does a virtual assistant cost” instead of “pricing”), add your name and one line about why you’re qualified, and put a visible last-updated date on the page. It’s about a 90-minute job you do once.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You have a content person and 200 pages, and the question is which ones. Pull your top 20 pages by traffic or by how often they come up before a sale, and score them against the five plays. The biggest win is the refresh schedule. Put one person in charge of a quarterly refresh and give it a date on the calendar. One recurring refresh does more than another 40 new posts nobody updates.
Sales
4. An AI that asked questions before it sold beat one that pitched everyone
In his September 22 email, Alex Hormozi described a sales setup his team has been testing. They trained an AI on 14,000 of their own recorded sales calls, set their follow-up around when deals actually close (day 1, 14, 30 and 60), and tested two paths. The winner had an extra step: people apply, the AI asks qualifying questions by text, and only then does it make the offer. He says he hasn’t scaled it yet because he wants onboarding right first.
I have zero interest in an AI making offers to people without me. My version of the qualifying step is my free AI Employee Discovery Call, with a real human on it (me).
The short version: a text conversation that asked questions before pitching beat the version that pitched everyone straight away. His works because of those 14,000 recorded calls, which is what most people will skip when they copy it.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You don’t have 14,000 calls. You might have forty, and probably no recordings. Take the follow-up timing from this and leave the robot. Look at your last ten clients and write down how many days passed between your first conversation and their payment. A lot of women find their real number is far longer than the three days of follow-up they were doing, and that one number reshapes your whole follow-up rhythm without a single new tool.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You have call recordings sitting in Zoom or Fathom doing nothing. That library is an asset. Before anyone builds an AI salesperson, transcribe your last 100 calls and pull out the actual objections and the actual words your buyers use. That alone rewrites your sales page. If you then want an AI that qualifies before it offers, hold two lines: tell people when they’re talking to AI, and keep a human on anything that touches money. Ask yourself what you’d need to see before you trusted it with a real lead.
Tips you can actually use
Three, all doable in an afternoon or less.
Tip 1. Make the AI interview you before it recommends anything
This one’s from Nate at The Rundown AI newsletter this week. He was trying to decode a phone upgrade offer, so instead of asking “which plan should I get,” he opened a browser agent, logged into his own account, and asked it to look at his actual lines and what he’s paying, read every current promo, explain it back to me, and then tell him what it would do. His point: ask for a recommendation and you get the generic answer. Make it interview you and hand it your real documents, and the answer gets specific to you.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
Your insurance renewal, your merchant processing fees, your software subscriptions. Paste in the actual statement and ask for it, plus anything you’re paying for and not using. If AI makes you nervous, using it as a translator for something that already makes you anxious is a gentle way in.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
Your next vendor contract or software renewal. Same prompt, bigger stakes. Add one line: “Ask me five questions about how we actually use this before you tell me anything.”
Remember: generic in, generic out. Specific in, useful out.
Tip 2. The Loop Method, for a workflow that works some of the time
Also from The Rundown this week, and it’s aimed at a problem almost everyone hits around month three: the AI setup that works beautifully on Monday and produces something odd on Thursday. You have the AI improve its own workflow in rounds, with a review step between each round where a panel of AI reviewers tries to poke holes in it.
Their prompt: “Improve this workflow in 3 loops. Have a panel of sub-agents adversarially review each loop. Done when [your definition of done].” Then you hand it a real piece of work to build with the improved workflow and let it run. They say it takes anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You probably have one prompt you reuse and rewrite by hand every time. Run the loop on that single prompt, with a clear definition of done, like “done when it writes a caption I would post without editing.” You walk away with a better saved prompt, which is the smallest possible version of an AI employee.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
Your team members use the same AI tool and get different quality out of it. Writing the definition of done forces you to put down on paper what “good” means, which most teams have never done. Run the loop on the one workflow your team complains about most.
A caveat: this was written for ChatGPT Work with sub-agents. The idea carries over to Claude, and the exact commands may not, so copy the shape of it.
Tip 3. Write your Voice Rules once, paste them at the top of every chat
LinkedIn added a “Seems like AI slop” option to posts this summer. More than a million members used it in the first two weeks, and LinkedIn says flagged content gets around 40% fewer views (Entrepreneur and TechSpot both covered it). LinkedIn also clarified that one flag mostly shapes the flagger’s own feed, and the drop comes from its AI-content detection as well as member flags. Either way, generic AI writing is getting noticed.
The fix: give the AI three things you wrote yourself, have it write you a short Voice Rules document (things you always do, a banned list of patterns that sound like generic AI, and three sentences only you could have written), save it, and paste it at the top of every writing chat from then on. Mine has grown into a long file of banned phrases and examples pulled from my own edits. Yours can start as one page. I share more of how I use mine every week in Insider Secrets: The AI Newsletter for Women Entrepreneurs.
› How to use this in your work, with examples
For the Solopreneur
You can do this in fifteen minutes. Paste in three of your own emails or captions. When the rules come back, read them out loud. Seeing your own voice described accurately is often what makes AI feel less like a threat to who you are.
For the Multi-Six-Figure+ Operator
You have a team writing in your name, and the inconsistency shows up as a brand problem. Your Voice Rules document becomes a shared asset your contractors paste in, which means it belongs in your operations documentation instead of someone’s chat history.
If you’re thinking “so I’m outsourcing my personality now?”: you’re writing your voice down so nothing can flatten it. You stay the author.
The bigger picture
AI is only worth something once it knows your business
Look at the whole week together. A top model got cheaper. Your phone learned to finish work. A sales test was won by asking questions first. A big platform started flagging generic writing. The generic version of everything is getting cheaper and easier, and the reward goes to whatever is specific to you: your process, your voice, and your clients’ actual words.
Look at how people move through your business. They meet you, warm up, buy, stay, and refer. Most women I talk to are doing fine at the first step. The friction sits between “she likes me” and “she buys,” where a woman comparing options can’t tell you apart from everyone else on paper. The fix is one sentence on your page that only you could write (more on that in this week’s small step).
One repeatable system beats ten tools. If you build one thing in the next two weeks, build the system that captures what people say on your sales and discovery calls. Everyone else is guessing at objection language. You’re sitting across from real people every week, and right now most of what they tell you disappears when the call ends.
Check it against your own energy. Does writing that one sentence feel like a yes in your body this week? If it doesn’t, leave it. It’ll keep.
The one thing not to chase this week: an AI that sells for you. The versions that work are built on thousands of recorded calls and serious test budgets. A rushed one is the fastest way to make a warm relationship business feel cold, which is exactly what most of us are afraid of.
Apps and tools worth trying
Only tools that shipped or were announced this week.
🤍 For your business
Claude Marketplace
A browsable directory inside Claude for connectors, plugins, agents and service partners. Opened on September 23.
Anthropic says the Marketplace brings plugins and connectors, agents and products, and service partners into one place, with more than 2,000 connectors and plugins to choose from, including Google, Microsoft, Notion and Salesforce. If you already pay for Claude, this is the easiest way to connect it to the tools you use every week.
› How to do it (step by step)
- Open Claude on your desktop or at claude.ai.
- Click the Skills, Connectors or Plugins tab, then the “+” button, and choose “Browse” to open the directory. Claude’s help article walks through it. It may still be rolling out, so if you don’t see it yet, it isn’t you.
- Start with the connectors and look for anything you currently copy and paste by hand between two tools.
- Add one connector. Give it a week before you add another.
- Point the project or AI employee you already use at the new connector, instead of building something new for it.
Tesseract, by Mirage
A free video suite built for an AI agent to drive. Mac, Windows and Linux.
Tesseract puts video editing, motion graphics, compositing and sound in one project, built so an AI agent operates it and you give the creative direction. The engine itself is free. You pay for whatever AI you point at it. I record videos and turn them into reels, and that process is still mostly manual for me, so this one is on my list.
› How to do it (step by step)
- Go to mirage.app/tesseract and download the desktop app for your computer.
- Install it and open a new project.
- Connect it to your AI. Follow their current docs for this step, since the setup depends on which AI you use.
- Start with one job you already do by hand, like cutting one long recording into three short vertical clips with captions.
- Watch what it produces before you trust it with anything you are about to post.
It runs on your computer as a desktop app, so a browser chat on its own cannot drive it.
🌴 For your clients
Easy ones to walk a client, a team member, or a friend through.
ChatGPT Work, by voice on mobile
Talk a real task into your phone and have it done. Plus and Pro plans.
The single easiest thing to walk a nervous client through, because she already knows how to talk.
› How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- Have her open the ChatGPT app on her phone and check she is on a Plus or Pro plan. Free and Go accounts do not get the voice agent piece.
- Go to the Work tab.
- Tap the voice option and have her say one real task out loud. Pick it for her the first time, something like “draft a follow-up email to the woman I met at Tuesday’s networking event, warm and short, asking her to hop on a connection call.”
- Have her switch to typing inside the same conversation to correct one detail, so she sees she is not locked into talking.
- Later that day, open the same conversation on her laptop and finish the job there.
- Debrief with her. What you want her to walk away with is the feeling of having finished something while walking.
Gemini connected apps
Google added 14 more apps you can pull into a Gemini chat.
Google’s new list includes Airtable, Linear, monday.com, PandaDoc, Wispr AI and Zoho on the work side, and Adobe, Picsart, Squarespace and Webflow on the design side. A woman running her whole business in Airtable or monday.com can now ask questions of it without opening it. One catch for my fellow Canadians: most of these are limited to US users, English, and personal Google accounts for now.
› How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- If she has client data in that tool, have the privacy conversation first.
- Have her open Gemini and go to settings.
- Find the connected apps list and turn on the one app she checks most. Just one to start.
- Sign in with her own login when prompted.
- Back in a chat, type @ and pick the app, or just name it in the sentence.
- Ask the question she would normally open a tab to answer, for example “what is overdue in monday.com this week?”
The Humanize Writing skill in ChatGPT
A built-in skill that rewrites AI-flavoured drafts. From The Rundown’s guide this week.
They also suggest a style instruction for anyone who finds AI writing too fluffy: “Write in Technical English. Use ASD-STE100 as a style reference.” When you teach this one, say it this way: a generic humanizer makes writing sound less like a robot, and it still won’t sound like her until she adds her own Voice Rules (Tip 3 above).
› How to walk a client through it (step by step)
- In ChatGPT Work, go to Settings, then Plugins, then Skills.
- Turn on Humanize Writing.
- Have her write a first draft of something she actually needs to send this week.
- Type /humanize-writing and put the two versions side by side.
- Ask her one question: “does that sound like you, or does it just sound less like a robot?” Most women can tell instantly.
- Then show her what her own Voice Rules document does on top of it.
The Rundown also describes a more technical version that uses a terminal command. Skip that one with clients.
Not sure where to start?
If you already pay for Claude, start with the Marketplace. Five minutes, no new subscription, and it adds to what you already run instead of adding one more tool to your life. Browse the connectors and see whether anything replaces something you currently carry between two tabs by hand.
If you live in ChatGPT, start with voice in the Work tab. Say one follow-up email out loud on your next walk and send it that evening.
This week’s one small step
Write the one sentence that sets you apart from everyone else offering what you offer
This week’s step is a thinking step, and it takes about fifteen minutes with a coffee.
Everything generic just got cheaper and faster, for everyone. So write one sentence, in your own words, that a woman reading your page at 11pm with three tabs open would understand immediately. Name how you do what you do, because that’s where your difference lives. Mine names private sessions and writing down how your business already runs before we build anything.
Don’t wordsmith it. Don’t open Canva. Write the sentence, sit with it for a day, then decide whether it goes at the top of your sales page.
If your gut says no this week, that’s a real answer too.
Questions women entrepreneurs are asking about this
What is Claude Opus 5.5, and do I have to pay extra for it?
Claude Opus 5.5 is the newest model from Anthropic, released on September 22, 2026. If you already pay for a Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise plan, there is nothing extra to buy. Anthropic says it costs 40% less to run than Opus 5, writes more than 30% faster, and comes with higher five-hour usage limits on those plans.
Can I use ChatGPT by voice to do real work on my phone?
Yes, if you are on ChatGPT Plus or Pro. Since September 23, 2026, the Work tab in the ChatGPT mobile app accepts voice, so you can say a task like drafting an email or summarizing a thread out loud and have it done. Free and Go accounts get plugins and connected apps, without the voice agent.
How many headings should a blog post have to get cited by AI search?
HubSpot’s 2026 AEO research found citation rates peaked for pages with 7 to 15 H2 headings. AI search engines quote one clearly labelled section at a time, so more descriptive sections give them more to lift. Pair the headings with real author credentials, a visible updated date, and an FAQ section.
What is a Voice Rules document?
A Voice Rules document is a short file that tells an AI how you write: the things you always do, the patterns you never want, and a few sentences only you could have written. You build it by giving the AI three pieces of your own writing, then paste it at the top of every writing chat so your drafts sound like you.
Does LinkedIn penalize AI-written posts?
LinkedIn added a “Seems like AI slop” flag in the summer of 2026, and it says flagged content gets around 40% fewer views. LinkedIn also said a single flag mostly changes the flagger’s own feed, and the drop comes from its AI-content detection as well as member flags. Writing in your own voice is the safest approach.
How long should I keep following up with a potential client?
Base it on your own numbers. Look at your last ten clients and count the days between your first conversation and their payment. For many service businesses that window runs several weeks, so plan your follow-up across the whole of it instead of stopping after a few days.
Come build one with us
I wanted to create a room where women founders and leaders in business can learn about and talk about AI, so we can save time, grow, and scale together. That’s the Freedom Business Society, and it meets twice a month on Zoom.
- The mastermind (fourth Wednesday, 1pm to 3pm Pacific): women anywhere from AI curious to AI expert, sharing the exact workflows we’ve built, screens and all. Practical, honest, and never arrogant or condescending. You get a written report after every session.
- The build training (second Wednesday, 1pm to 4pm Pacific): one AI employee or system built together, start to finish, and you leave with the installation package, including the prompts and skill files.
The Mastermind is $177 a month on the annual plan, or $197 month to month. Mastermind + Build is $357 a month on the annual plan, or $397 month to month. Your founding rate holds for as long as you stay. Want to see the room first? You’re welcome at one mastermind as my guest before you pay for anything.
Rather have one AI employee built around your business, one-on-one? That’s the AI Employee Build-Out, four private sessions, and it starts with a free 30-minute discovery call.
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.
