Many communications professionals start their own businesses out of a passion for helping clients hone their PR strategies, but much of their time is spent managing operations.
In large agency environments, there are typically account managers, project coordinators, and junior strategists who handle tasks such as research and project management. Boutique agency founders, especially those who run their businesses alone, must be responsible for every detail and step of the process.
Adebukola Ajao, founder of BDY CONSULT, uses Google’s Gemini to help prospect and write proposals for new clients. Mr. Simon Simard (BI)
“I independently lead all client strategy, creative direction, marketing execution, partnerships and operations,” said Adebukola Ajao, who founded boutique marketing agency BDY CONSULT 10 years ago.
Ajao told Business Insider that he has been leveraging AI for two years to run a full-service agency as a sole proprietorship without sacrificing quality or responsiveness.
Ajao, along with Ciara Siegel, founder of brand and marketing consultancy CJC, and Lisa Cjensvold, founder of Cjensvold Communications, shared how they are leveraging AI to spend more time making their customers shine.
Improving the efficiency of the proposal process using AI
Ajao’s favorite use of AI is researching potential customers and their industries.
She uses Google’s Gemini to comb through call notes and recordings, work emails, and Google Docs. From there, she shares the potential client’s background and asks the AI to submit a first draft of a proposal using the template she created. This process used to take over a week. Now it takes less than a day, Ajao said.
Read AI is a tool that Ajao uses to record and identify not only what was discussed in meetings, but also how people responded to suggestions. Mr. Simon Simard (BI)
AI also powers suggestions. She uses Read AI to transcribe meeting notes that include insights about the body language of people on the call. If a potential client was highly engaged at one point, she doubles down on that moment in her final pitch. If they ignore it, she reworks those sections before submitting the proposal.
“Even if the client says no, you don’t feel burnt out by spending a week on a proposal. You just work on the next proposal,” Ajao said.
AI helps clients strategic brainstorming
CJC founder Ciara Siegel uses AI to speed up the customer strategy process. Janice Chan of BI
CJC founder Siegel said AI’s strengths in synthesis and pattern recognition have accelerated work on customer strategy. Siegel estimates that a research-intensive process that often took weeks when he first started his business in 2022 can now be completed in a quarter of the time.
She said she uses Gemini to transcribe client conversations and drops them into OpenAI’s ChatGPT along with responses to surveys she sends to clients.
“You might ask, ‘I think the client used this word many times. Can you find out how many times and how they mentioned it?'” Siegel says, adding that it would take hours to do this alone. “This allows us to move more efficiently to higher-level strategic work.”
Siegel said he uses ChatGPT for brainstorming in one-person teams. Janice Chan of BI
Siegel also appreciates the ability to use AI as a stand-in for collaborative brainstorming that large teams might do. As a solopreneur, using ChatGPT’s voice-to-text functionality has become a stand-in for the collaborative mindset.
“Half of the value is not what the AI says back to me, but what emerges when I hear my own thoughts out loud,” Siegel explained. “Having something to react to creates momentum and frees up ideas that have been stuck in your head.”
AI builds a strong operational baseline
Lisa Chensvold used AI to help create a useful client CRM system. Business Insider’s Alyssa Shukar
When Chensvold, founder of Chensvold Communications, started his business in 2025, generative AI was already a reality. She said she was skeptical at first, but felt overwhelmed in understanding the technology and systems for her business and decided to test the tool.
Initially, AI tended to over-engineer solutions suitable for large teams, Tjensvold says. Once she reminded the algorithms that they worked alone and valued simplicity, she said, they became useful partners for identifying gaps in workflows, suggesting tools, and building repeatable systems.
AI also helped Tjensvold create a framework for client onboarding. Alyssa Shukar of BI
For example, when she was struggling to figure out the best way to track leads and customers, she turned to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This helped explain customer relationship management options (many of which were complex) and helped her design a Notion database to use as a “crude CRM.” She also said she is using Claude, Anthropic’s generative AI tool, to cross-check and poke holes in ChatGPT’s proposed plans.
Today, Tjensvold uses Claude to create organized documents, including an overview of her client acquisition and onboarding process, a detailed writing guide, and a weekly checklist of business tasks that can be guided by AI.
“The least creative part of my job is allowing my clients to demonstrate my humanity by using non-human systems to help them build,” Tjensvold said.
