Solo PR Founders Use AI to Handle Admin Work, Focus on Strategy
Three boutique agency founders-running their businesses alone-have cut proposal writing time from a week to a day or less by using AI tools like Google's Gemini and ChatGPT. They also use AI to speed up client strategy work and build operational systems that would normally require a full team.
Adebukola Ajao, who founded B.D.Y. CONSULT a decade ago, handles all client strategy, creative direction, marketing execution, partnerships, and operations herself. She has used AI for two years to run her full-service agency without sacrificing quality or responsiveness.
Proposals in a day instead of a week
Ajao uses Gemini to research potential clients and their industries, then asks the tool to draft proposals based on templates she created. The speed gain is significant: what used to take more than a week now takes a day or less.
She also uses Read AI to transcribe meeting notes and capture body language cues. If a prospect was engaged at a particular moment in a discovery call, Ajao doubles down on that section in her final pitch. If they tuned out, she reworks those parts before sending.
"If a client says no, I don't feel burned out from having spent a week doing their proposal," Ajao said. "It's just onto the next one."
AI as a brainstorming partner
Ciara Siegel, founder of CJC, uses AI to speed up client strategy work. Research-intensive processes that took weeks when she started her business in 2022 now take roughly a quarter of that time.
Siegel uses Gemini to transcribe client conversations, then feeds that data along with client questionnaire responses into ChatGPT. She asks it to pull patterns-how many times a client mentioned a particular word or concept, for example-work that would take her hours to do manually.
As a one-person team, Siegel also uses ChatGPT's voice-to-text feature as a stand-in for collaborative brainstorming. "Half the value isn't what AI says back, it's what surfaces once I hear my own thinking out loud," she said. "Having something that can respond creates momentum and unlocks ideas that might otherwise stay stuck in my head."
Building systems from scratch
Lisa Chensvold, who started Chensvold Communications in 2025, initially felt skeptical about AI. She turned to it when overwhelmed while setting up business systems and technology.
AI initially over-engineered solutions suited for large teams. Once Chensvold told the tool she works alone and values simplicity, it became useful for identifying workflow gaps, suggesting tools, and building repeatable systems.
She used ChatGPT to map out customer relationship management options and design a Notion database as a "scrappy CRM" for tracking prospects and clients. She uses Claude to cross-check ChatGPT's proposals and poke holes in them.
Now Chensvold uses Claude to build documentation that keeps her organized: client acquisition and onboarding processes, a detailed writing style guide, and a weekly business task checklist that the AI walks her through.
"The least creative things about the work that I do, I can use a non-human system to help build, so that I can have my humanity show up for my clients," Chensvold said.
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