AI Queens: Smart AF AI Tools, Automation, & Business Tips with Erika Stanley

What if the way you found your next big opportunity was by building the tool that found it for you? That's exactly how this episode came to be. Janay Trevillion — AI educator, travel curator, and founder of Empire Creator Lab — didn't just Google her way onto the AI Queens podcast. She built a Claude skill to find the exact podcasts she wanted to guest on… and AI Queens came back ranked #1. That's...

Everybody wants you to pick a team. You're either all in on AI, building bots before breakfast, or you're all out, swearing a robot will never touch your emails. In this episode, Erika hands you a third option: the grey area. Yes, Erika runs an AI consultancy and uses these tools every single day. And she still thinks your skepticism is valid, smart, and necessary. She walks through the loudest cr...

Queens, this one is all about getting your whole day sorted before you even roll out of bed. Fresh off the Buildathon, Erika walks you through the Claude Command Center she built using Claude co-work. It's one central spot that pulls in everything coming at you, your email, calendar, Slack, Notion, all of it, and uses AI to prioritize your day so you know exactly what to tackle first. If you have...

Queens, I just spent 10 days in New York City, and AI was not just in my phone like usual. It was on every billboard, in every subway car, in the shop windows, and even at the brunch table next to me. The whole trip I kept bouncing between two feelings: is this all hype, or is there real hope here? I think it's both right now, exciting and uncertain at the same time, and I have a feeling I'm not t...

Last week you built your AI COO. Now it's time to meet the other half of your executive team. In part two of this series, originally recorded for Jordan Gill's Systems Saved Me podcast, Erika walks you through building your AI Chief Marketing Officer. Think of her as a marketing powerhouse with decades of experience who just walked in on day one. She knows marketing cold, but she doesn't know you...

You know you need systems. You've maybe even built a few SOPs. But what if you had a team member who actually ran those systems for you, handled the backend chaos, and never asked for a break? That's exactly what Erika is building in this episode, originally recorded for Jordan Gill's Systems Saved Me podcast. It's part one of a two-part series on turning AI from a scary tech tool (or a glorified...

Queens, my guest today is Blume Bauer, a fine arts illustrator, creative business educator, and founder of The Yellow Studio, where she's spent 30 years teaching artists how to turn their craft into real income. Her whole vibe is slow living and big money, and she came in ready to challenge some of the things you might believe about AI and art. Here's the part that got me. Blume teaches artists to...

If you've made the jump from ChatGPT to Claude and keep slamming into the token wall mid-project, you are not alone. It's the conversation Erika keeps having at AI Business World, after workshops, and in networking event side chats. Claude is genuinely one of the most powerful AI tools out there right now, but if you don't know how it actually uses tokens under the hood, you'll burn through your u...

This week, Erika sits down with Jasmine Schwarz, founder of Schwarz Strategic Services and an AI stewardship consultant who helps nonprofits adopt technology responsibly, ethically, and without losing sight of the people they serve. Jasmine came to AI through sociology, healthcare, finance, and nonprofits, and she brings a perspective that cuts straight through the influencer noise. The two of the...

Fresh off the stage at Social Media Marketing World and AI Business World in Southern California, Erika is bringing you straight to the conference floor. In this episode, she sits down with a handful of attendees to ask the one question that matters most: what is the real problem you're most excited to solve with AI when you get back to work? From a restaurant marketer using AI as a strategic soun...

If your AI outputs feel generic, off-brand, or just not quite you, the problem probably isn't the tool. It's the foundation underneath it. In this solo episode, Erika walks through the Brand to Bot Blueprint, the exact framework she runs every single client through before touching a single automation, custom GPT, or content system. Recorded fresh off Social Media Marketing World and AI Business Wo...

You've probably used ChatGPT to write a caption or brainstorm some ideas. But are you actually building with AI? There's a difference, and it's a big one. In this solo episode, Erika breaks down why women entrepreneurs need to stop treating AI like a novelty and start using it as the serious business tool it is. The stats don't lie: women are underrepresented in AI research, underusing AI in their...

What if the problem with AI isn't the technology itself, but how little we know about our own thinking? In this episode, Erika sits down with Vanessa Chang, self-described champion of "unhyped AI insights for overthinkers." Together, they dig into something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough: the relationship between self-knowledge and how well (or badly) AI actually works for you. This o...

If you're running a business, managing a household, and trying to keep up with everything in between, chances are your brain is doing a lot of heavy lifting that it shouldn't have to. Erika gets into exactly that this week, sharing the real story behind a system she built inside Claude that has genuinely changed how she starts her day. This isn't a pretty dashboard. It's not a color-coded widget s...

If you've been thinking about adding AI to your business, this episode is your permission slip to slow down first. Rachel Njiru, founder of Kavoo Studio, is an AI strategy and governance consultant who works in some of the most complex, regulated industries out there. And her number one message? AI amplifies everything, the good and the bad. So before you automate, you've got to know what you're a...

64% of teens are using AI. But only half of parents know about it. High school teacher, AI consultant, and mom of three Stacy Kratochvil joins Erika to pull back the curtain on what's actually happening with kids and AI right now, and why the answer isn't to ban it. This conversation goes deep on digital literacy, confidence, and what it actually looks like to raise kids who use AI well. Whether y...

Anne Murphy, founder of She Leads AI, joins Erika for a conversation that goes way beyond AI tools. Anne brings three decades of fundraising experience for STEM research and a laser focus on one big idea: women's wealth generation is the foundation of global prosperity, and AI is the biggest opportunity we've ever had to make that real. One of the first myths Anne busts is one a lot of us carry ar...

If you've been wondering whether it's time to make the switch from ChatGPT to Claude, Erika gets into exactly that this week, and she's not just talking about features. There's a political and ethical dimension to this conversation that's hard to ignore, and it ties directly into why Anthropic has earned her trust as a company. But beyond the values alignment, Claude has genuinely changed how Erik...

AI policy sounds like something that happens in boardrooms and Capitol buildings, far away from your actual life. But Daisy Thomas, Director of Advocacy and Policy at AI Salon, is here to blow that myth wide open. Her own road back to public service started with a custom GPT she built based on Alexander Hamilton, and it reminded her that regular people, especially women, have more power in shaping...

You don't need a stack of expensive subscriptions to build something powerful with AI. Lauren Irving, quality and training manager at Zinnia and head of education and community at Women Defining AI, joins Erika to break down how she transformed a team of 12 with nothing more than ChatGPT and Google Apps Script — and why going deep on the tools you already have beats chasing every shiny new one. Ke...

There's a version of using AI that makes you sharper, faster, and more confident in your work. And then there's a version that quietly hollows out the expertise you've spent years building. Pia Silva, founder of No BS Mastery, TEDx speaker, and author of the brand new book Scale Solo, joins Erika to get real about the difference and why it matters more than most people realize. Key themes from thi...

This year's Super Bowl wasn't just about the game or Bad Bunny's halftime show. It was about AI companies spending roughly $80 million to tell you that AI is officially mainstream. At least 10 AI commercials aired, each one revealing something different about where we are culturally with this technology, and where it's headed. From coding wars between OpenAI and Claude to business replication tool...

We didn't get trained for this. Our generation grew up trusting the six o'clock news and checking out library books... and then social media exploded, AI-generated images flooded our feeds, and suddenly we can't tell what's real anymore. But here's the truth: you're not dumb for getting it wrong. You just didn't get the digital literacy training that kids today are learning in elementary school. I...

Meet Lauren Shaw and Lauren Capwell—the powerhouse duo known as "The Laurens"—who've spent three years building a high-ticket empire while traveling the world as full-time digital nomads. Lauren Capwell brings her Stanford aerospace engineering background (yes, she literally built and launched rockets), while Lauren Shaw closed over $5 million in high-ticket sales after building a global hula hoop...

If you've been wondering whether creatives can use AI without compromising their integrity, this conversation with Angela Mondloch from Saffron Avenue will change everything. Angela is a brand designer with nearly 15 years in the industry, and she's not afraid to challenge the narrative that AI has no place in creative work. Instead, she's using it strategically to elevate her client work, streaml...