I had a baby in June of 2024.
Becoming a mom while being the sole breadwinner of my family was… a lot harder than I thought. This whole concept of work-life balance? Total bullshit. Especially when you work from home with your toddler playing above your head, throwing things on the ground like a tiny chaos goblin.
I found it instantly hard to stay on top of things. I couldn’t complete tasks at the speed I used to. My brain felt like scrambled eggs most days.
So I was pretty thrilled when I discovered how good ChatGPT had become.
It resolved the creative fatigue I was feeling. No more staring at a blank screen trying to start an email from scratch. No more sitting with my cursor blinking at me while my brain buffered like a 2003 Dell computer. I could create tons of content quickly. Come up with ideas fast. Get unstuck in seconds.
I will be totally transparent with you because I value honesty…
I relied on it pretty heavily over the past year and a half.
Until very recently.
The Moment I Realized Something Was Off
When I was using ChatGPT over time, I started to notice patterns.
The same words kept popping up. The sentence structure felt… repetitive. But I figured it was just doing that with me. I was an early adopter. Not many people were using it yet. So it didn’t negatively impact my business. I still stood out.
But now?
Now everyone is using AI to write content.
And here’s what I’ve started to notice over the past six months or so…
It wasn’t just overusing those words and sentence structures with me.
It overuses them with everyone.
AI has a very specific voice and style. And it’s robotic as hell. Even when you train it to sound like you, it’s still more like the robot version of you. Close. But unsettling.
The Instagram Comment That Made Me Cringe
Recently I was doom scrolling on Instagram. As one does.
I came across a video from this influencer. I’m not going to say names. But he had a bunch of comments, and for whatever reason I clicked in to read them.
And I noticed quite a few comments calling him out.
For using AI to write his caption.
One comment said something like: “Hey dude, I’ve really loved your content, but lately I can tell it’s written by AI and I feel like you have no personality.”
Ouch.
And that’s when it really hit me. There’s this huge pushback happening against AI content right now. People can smell it. They’re getting annoyed by it. And they’re not afraid to call it out.
Nobody Knows What’s Coming Next
The other day on a coaching call, one of my HCA students asked me: “What do you think health coaches are going to sell in 10 years from now?”
Great question.
But honestly? Impossible to answer.
Anyone claiming to know what’s going to happen a decade from now is a narcissist. Even the most experienced marketers and coaches don’t know how to predict a year from now.
I could have never seen where we are today.
A big reason we’re in this current online marketing world is because of COVID. Nobody could have predicted that was going to happen. But it caused this massive influx of business owners and content creators flooding the online space.
There are so many things that can happen in the world that completely shift what’s happening online. Economic changes. Political changes. Technological breakthroughs. Pandemics. Wars. Trends that come out of nowhere.
And now with AI, the speed at which things move is mind blowing.
Even just a few months ago, I was thinking maybe in the future we’d be training AI health coaches. Like AI team members. People could pay a lower price point to interact with an AI version of you. Or a higher price point to work with the real you.
But I don’t know about that anymore.
Because I’m seeing this massive pushback against anything AI.
People are craving the real thing. The human thing. The connection that only comes from another actual person who understands what you’re going through because they’ve been there too.
Why AI Content Is So Easy to Spot Now
AI-generated content is incredibly easy to recognize.
I didn’t notice it for a while. Partly because after I had my kid, I wasn’t doom scrolling much. I was too busy keeping a tiny human alive. No time for social media rabbit holes.
But now that we have childcare and I’m back to my toilet scroll sessions…
I see it everywhere.
That’s AI. That’s AI. That’s AI. That’s AI.
It’s like once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And I’m not removing myself from this conversation. I’ve relied on it heavily. You’ve probably been able to tell that some of my content leaned pretty hard on AI.
I’m stepping back from that now.
I’m Not Saying Don’t Use AI
Let me be clear here.
I’m not anti-AI. I actually think you should use AI. I use it every single day in my business. It’s an incredible tool.
But the way most people use it? That’s the problem.
If you’re just copying and pasting from a free version of ChatGPT without any customization…
I guarantee everyone can tell it’s AI.
And I guarantee it says nothing of value.
When you don’t prompt AI properly, you get these vague, fluffy statements that actually mean nothing. They sound nice. But they’re empty calories. Cotton candy content.
You know the type. Stuff like:
“Your journey matters.”
“You deserve to feel amazing.”
“It’s time to step into your power.”
Cool. But what does any of that actually mean? What journey? Feel amazing how? Step into what power exactly?
We want things to be tangible. Emotional. Sensory. Descriptive. Specific.
We want someone reading our content to feel like we’re in their head. Like we’re describing their exact Tuesday morning. Like we know what they were thinking in the shower this morning when they were spiraling about their business.
We don’t want people reading our content and thinking: “What the hell does that actually mean?”
And we definitely don’t want them thinking: “This was obviously written by a robot.”
What NOT to Do With AI
Let me break down the two biggest mistakes I see coaches making with AI.
Mistake #1: Copy and Paste Without Customization
This is the lazy approach. And it will bite you.
You type a prompt into ChatGPT. It spits something out. You copy it. You paste it into Instagram. You hit post.
Done, right?
Wrong.
That content is going to blend in with the 47 million other pieces of AI-generated content flooding the internet right now. It’s going to sound like everyone else. Because everyone else is doing the exact same thing.
You become invisible. Forgettable. Just another voice in the beige wallpaper of the internet.
Mistake #2: Using AI to Source Your Opinions
This one is sneaky. And it’s killing your content.
You cannot use AI to form your point of view. You cannot ask it to give you polarizing takes. You cannot outsource your hot opinions to a robot.
Because here’s what happens when you try…
You get vague nonsense like:
“You don’t need to guess more. You need a plan.”
“You don’t need to try harder. You need strategy without pressure.”
What is strategy without pressure? What does that actually mean? Guess more about what? A plan for what?
It sounds profound. But it’s completely meaningless.
AI can’t have opinions. It can only remix what already exists. And when you ask it for hot takes, you get lukewarm oatmeal.
What Actually Works in 2026
Here’s the thing…
The type of content that’s going to make you stand out right now is opinion-based content. Point of view content. Your actual thoughts on polarizing topics in your space.
And you have to figure out what you actually think.
Not what AI thinks you should think.
Let me give you an example.
Say you’re in the weight loss space. Think about something polarizing and top of mind right now. Ozempic. GLP-1s. Everyone has feelings about this.
What do YOU think about people using Ozempic for weight loss?
Are you completely for it? Totally against it? Do you think there’s nuance?
You need to know your stance. Because that’s what’s going to make people pay attention to you.
Why Repeating Yourself Is Actually Good Marketing
This is where most wellness practitioners freak out.
They think, “But won’t my audience get bored if I keep saying the same things?”
Short answer: no.
Long answer: hell no.
Jana uses this concert analogy that’s absolutely perfect.
Imagine your favorite band is coming to town. You immediately buy tickets. You get all excited. You plan your outfit. You show up ready to have the best night.
What part of the concert are you most excited about?
Is it when they say, “Okay, now we’re going to play some new music from our album that’s coming out in September”?
No. That’s when everyone goes to get drinks or hit the bathroom.
The part you love, the part you paid for, the part that gives you goosebumps, is when they play all their greatest hits. The songs you grew up with. The ones you’ve listened to a thousand times. The ones you know every word to.
That’s what you came for.
Your audience is the same way.
When they hear you say something they’ve heard you say before, they don’t think, “Ugh, I’ve heard this already.”
They think, “Yes, that’s why I follow her. That’s what she’s known for. That’s what I love about her.”
Repetition builds trust. It shows you’re steadfast in your beliefs. It proves you’re not just following trends or changing your mind every week based on what’s popular.
It makes you memorable. It makes you referable. It makes you the person people think of when they need help with the specific thing you talk about all the time.
I talk about niching constantly. Like, ad nauseam. Sometimes I want to barf because I’ve talked about it so much.
But you know what? My posts about niching are always my highest-performing content. And sometimes I literally repost the exact same post from two months ago, and it takes off again.
Because people still need help with niching. And if they’re still following me, it’s because they still need what I’m talking about.
Jana made another point that really stuck with me. Sometimes people hear your message 10 times, but it doesn’t click until the 11th time because something happened in their life that made them finally ready.
Maybe they had a rough day. Maybe their symptom flared up. Maybe they’re just at a different emotional place than they were the last time they heard you say it.
If you hadn’t repeated yourself, you wouldn’t have been top of mind in that moment.
So yeah. Repeat yourself. Often. Without apology.
Your audience isn’t bored. They’re being prepared to buy from you.
How to Actually Use AI the Right Way
Now let me tell you how to use AI without destroying your business.
Step 1: Train It in Your Voice and Style
This is something I help my HCA students do. We train something called a Custom GPT.
You can do this in ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI writing tool. Basically, you provide it with all the details to train it to sound and write like you.
Your tone. Your vocabulary. Your weird analogies. Your sense of humor. Examples of your actual writing. All of it.
This takes time upfront. But it’s worth it.
Step 2: Use the Output as a First Draft Only
Even with a trained AI, you’re never just copying and pasting.
I’ve done this in the past. I’ve learned the hard way. When you just copy and paste, it still sounds like everyone else.
So treat whatever AI gives you as your first draft. Your starting point. Your rough sketch of the bigger painting.
Then you work with it.
“Can you give me 10 alternative ways to start that email?”
“Can you change that paragraph to be more specific?”
“Can you make this sound less like a robot wrote it?”
Go back and forth. Refine it. Get it closer.
Step 3: Take It Out of AI and Rewrite It
Here’s the crucial step most people skip.
Even after you’ve worked with AI to refine the draft… you’re still not done.
Copy it out of AI. Put it in a Google Doc. And rewrite it.
Change words. Change the sentence structure. Add in your own examples. Your own metaphors. Your own analogies. Your own lived experiences.
Take that draft and make it undeniably yours.
This is where the magic happens. This is where your content goes from “sounds like everyone else” to “holy shit, are you in my brain?”
Here’s what I do…
I’ll read through the AI draft and ask myself: Where can I add a story? Where can I add something weird or funny? Where can I reference something specific from my life or my clients’ lives?
Maybe AI wrote: “Many coaches struggle with consistency.”
And I’ll rewrite it as: “You’ve posted three times in the last month. Two of those posts were quotes you found on Pinterest at 11pm because you had nothing else. The third one got two likes. One was your mom.”
See the difference?
One is forgettable. The other makes someone snort-laugh because they’ve literally done that exact thing.
This is the difference between content that connects and content that gets scrolled past.
Step 4: Have AI Interview You
Here’s a sneaky trick that works really well.
Instead of asking AI to give you opinions, ask it to extract your opinions.
Type something like: “I want to make a post about [topic]. Can you interview me to extract my opinion on this?”
Then use the little microphone feature and just… talk.
Verbal diarrhea into the mic. Say what you actually think. Don’t filter it. Don’t try to sound smart.
AI will take your rambling and help you shape it into something usable. But the opinions, the perspective, the hot takes… those came from you.
That’s the content that’s going to hit different.
Words and Patterns AI Overuses (Watch for These)
Let me give you a cheat sheet of things to watch for.
I have a list of probably 50+ words that AI tends to overuse. Here are a few examples:
- Spiral
- White knuckling
- Game changer (I’m actually pissed about this one because I used to love that word)
- “And the kicker is…”
- Spoiler alert
- Unlock
- Quietly
- Delve
- Realm
- Leverage
- Navigate
If you see these words showing up constantly in your AI output, that’s a red flag.
The Em Dash Problem
AI loves the em dash. That long dash. It uses it instead of periods. Instead of commas. Instead of just… ending a sentence like a normal human.
I actually like the em dash. But AI has ruined it by overusing it so much that now it’s a giant neon sign screaming “THIS WAS WRITTEN BY A ROBOT.”
The other day, someone sent me a DM asking something personal. I could tell they used AI to help them write it. Which I get. It was vulnerable. But the message was absolutely stuffed with em dashes.
And even though I wasn’t judging them, my brain immediately flagged it as AI content.
Use real punctuation. Periods. Commas. Ellipses. Arrows. Whatever. Just use the em dash sparingly.
Sentence Structure Red Flags
AI loves short, bite-sized sentences. Which is fine for marketing copy. But it overuses them constantly.
It also loves to start multiple lines the same way:
“You’re doing this. You’re doing that. You’re struggling with this. You’re dreaming of that.”
Again, nothing wrong with parallel structure occasionally. But when AI does it three or four times in one email, it’s a dead giveaway.
And the classic AI structure: “It’s not this, it’s that.”
“It isn’t failure, it’s success in disguise.”
“You’re not broken, you’re just learning.”
Beautiful sentiment. Totally overused. Mix it up.
You Still Need to Learn How to Write
Here’s the uncomfortable truth…
You cannot use AI to replace actually learning proper messaging and copywriting.
Direct response copywriting is writing in a way that makes people want to take action. It’s been around for over 100 years. And it’s what we’re doing in our marketing every single day.
You need to learn this.
Not because AI is going away. It’s not. It’s here to stay and it’s only going to get more powerful.
But because if you don’t understand the fundamentals of good copy… if you can’t recognize what makes someone stop scrolling… if you don’t know what triggers emotion and action in your reader…
Then you have no way of knowing whether AI gave you something good or something terrible.
You’re flying blind. Trusting a robot to do something you can’t even evaluate.
Because if you outsource everything to ChatGPT without understanding what good copy looks like… you won’t be able to recognize when AI gives you garbage.
I see this all the time with my students. We help them set up their AI copywriters. And sometimes the first output is super bad. Vague. Generic. Meaningless.
If you can’t recognize that it’s bad, you’re going to post it anyway. And then you’re going to wonder why nobody’s engaging. Why nobody’s buying. Why your content feels like it’s disappearing into the void.
Learning to write well is one of the highest-leverage skills you can develop as a coach. It pays dividends forever. And it makes AI actually useful instead of just another way to create forgettable content.
The Bottom Line: Be More Human
Here’s what it comes down to.
You still need to be human.
It’s exciting to have these tools at our fingertips. AI has helped me save so much time. It’s made researching things easier. It’s literally helped me survive the journey of being a new mom while running a business.
But we cannot let it replace our humanness.
What people want more and more of… what I think there’s going to be higher and higher demand for… is human connection.
Not just in your coaching program. In your content.
We have to bring the humanness back.
We see this pattern in humanity all the time. Something new shows up. We swing to one extreme. Then we correct back to the middle.
That’s what’s happening right now.
We got these AI writers and went: “Oh my god, this is amazing. We’re going to use it for everything.”
We swung so far in one direction. Everyone copying and pasting. Everyone sounding the same.
And now people are like: “That’s AI. That’s AI. That’s AI. I’m so tired of this.”
We’re correcting back to the middle.
AI is a tool. An incredible one. But it cannot replace your point of view. Your opinions. Your hot takes. Your philosophy. Your weird sense of humor. Your lived experience.
Those things are yours.
Don’t let a robot steal them.
Ready to Build a Business That Actually Sounds Like You?
If you’re a health or wellness coach who’s been relying on AI a little too heavily… or you’re scared to use it because you don’t want to sound like a robot… or you just want to learn how to create content that actually connects with real humans…
Inside Health Coach Accelerator, we help you nail your messaging, find your voice, and build a business that feels like you. We even help you set up a custom AI copywriter trained in YOUR voice and style… the right way. So you get the speed and efficiency of AI without sounding like every other coach online.
Apply for HCA here and let’s make your content sound human again.
