You revised your caption. Again.

Not the first draft. The fourth. You've been back and forth with Claude for 45 minutes.

“More casual.”

“Sound more like me.”

“No, not like that.”

“WTF WHY CAN’T YOU GET IT RIGHT?!?!???”

Until you close your laptop and give up on content for the day.

So much for AI taking work off your plate 🤪

AI can help you step off the content treadmill. You just need to know how to set up the right things in the right order.

Today content takes me two hours a week (instead of 10). I learned how to train AI on my voice, so the back and forth is less. This alone has allowed my creativity to return because I’m not stuck rewriting one caption for two hours.

But I'm still the one prompting. Nothing happens unless I show up and tell AI what to do.

I make content faster than I ever did. But faster isn’t the same as handled.

That’s why I’m building an AI agent to run my content department.

Because I want to use AI to do the things I hate doing, so I can spend more time doing the things I love. And a handful of prompts and Claude skills is not the same thing as a system that can do work for me while I’m living my life.

Welcome to Behind The Build, where I’m taking you behind the scenes of my Content Operating System as I build it in real time.

Behind The Build is what happens when you stop using AI like a tool and start building a system that runs without you. Less Behind the Music cautionary tale, more "here's exactly how I'm doing it so you can too."

The first step to go from prompts you have to manage to AI that does work for you?

A scheduled task.

That’s how I run my AI news search every week. I told AI “take these steps, look for this kind of AI news, and put it into my notion database.”

I set it up once and now it runs without me. All I have to do is choose the news I want to add to this newsletter, and boom, it becomes “Her Power Brief.” (this alone used to take me 5 hours a week. Now it takes minutes).

But I want more. I want a full content department that runs for me. That knows how I write, what my audience cares about, and how I like to make my content.

So I can stay focused on the fun part: my silly ideas, staying in the creative flow, and letting myself be the goof I am.

And AI can handle the boring parts.

I’m building the full system between now and May 28, when I'm giving a talk at Girl Foundry on how to actually get off the content treadmill. You're getting the behind-the-scenes as I build it.

If you want off the content treadmill too…

This is becoming a course. If you want priority access and waitlist-only perks before it opens, get on the list now.

Next week: the mistake I made building my first content skill that wasted weeks of my time. (Spoiler: it's the same mistake you're probably making right now.)

xx

Emily

💄 Canva just dropped a Devil Wears Prada 2 collection and it is giving full Runway magazine. Fashion-forward templates for your inner Andi Sachs.

💄 A 9-gigawatt data center campus just got approved in Utah that would consume more electricity than the entire state does now. We love AI, but is it worth the cost?

💄 Fake AI photos of celebrities at the Met Gala went viral this week, including Lady Gaga in an outfit she never wore and even Katy Perry’s mom was fooled. We are now living in Mountainhead.