How AI is Impacting Coaching in 2025 + Helpful Ways to Use it!

Let's take a look the future impact of AI on the coaching industry, using UK fashion vloggers as our jumping off point to keep things fun...

Helloooo!

If AI is on your mind, I see you and WELCOME.

It’s on my mind too, and I went from never using it to being on 3 different AI specific platforms just today.

I mentioned that I have worries about AI and its impact on our brains as humans in my last mailbag post, but it’s here.

*Speaks softly to self* It’s here to stay.

I guess the new internet has arrived.

And, to some degree we’ve got to get on board (repeating this to myself daily).

So… I wanted to talk about what I’m seeing, and also update what I think the near-term impact will be on coaching.

Finally, I owe you a look back at June in my business, and I’ll put that in at the end of this article. June was both a busy and a slow month. I know! I’ll explain.

So, let’s talk about:

*Fashion vloggers and AI (it’s relevant, I promise!)
*The good news for us as coaches re: AI
*Ideas for using AI from me and other coaches in our chat - yay chat!
*What I’ve been up to in June! (If you love behind-the-scenes, this is for you!)

Fashion vloggers and AI

I admit, one of the ways I relax is to watch fashion vloggers in the Cotswolds.

I love the English countryside (I lived *waves hands* in the UK twice), I enjoy soothing, low stakes fashion, and sometimes I need style ideas. Also, I’m entertained by people who own chickens.

I follow Josie Irons, who seems delightful, and her video last week looked normal. It was a wholesome Cotswolds vlog of shopping and gardening. But she mentioned that this video had a dark secret.

Obviously I had to watch it.

Here it is if you are curious:

The video opened normally enough, but as I watched the first 10 minutes things seemed more stilted than usual.

It was *almost* right, but something was slightly off.

If you guessed “She used AI because this article is 100% about AI so this isn’t much of a secret here, Christie” I applaud you!

You are correct.

She did use AI, though not in terms of the footage itself.

She used AI to title the vlog, plan it, script it, even create recipes and specific content for it.

She shot the AI version of the video, and then did a break down behind-the-scenes of everything that she did, prompts she used, and how it all felt.

Note: She shared that she hasn’t been using much AI, so this was her first big foray into trying it.

Her takeaways were interesting, while she found it helpful in terms of choosing a title, brainstorming ideas, and writing the show notes, she felt it lacked a certain humanity and connection.

And she was RIGHT.

It just felt off to me as a viewer.

And *very* interestingly, she said it was more work to film than normal. She felt stilted and overly scripted, instead of being in flow.

Someone else I follow in the online marketing space recently said something similar: That while AI can do 70-90% of many things, there’s a percentage of human that can never be replaced, and you’ll notice the missing humanity.

The good news for us as coaches

I think that this is good news.

AI is changing fast, and the LLMs are becoming more powerful and useful every day.

But: they are not human.

I’ve been saying for about a year that as AI becomes more prevalent, we’ll crave more human connection, not less.

I predict communities and in real life activities - which you will know are real because you’ll literally be there and that will be comforting - will become bigger draws.

So that leaves us, as coaches, in a good place for now.

And our services may become more valuable (here’s hoping!).

Being seen, being heard, being held accountable (heck, just being held!). These are things AI can’t do in the same way that humans can.

So remember that as you market, as you do sales consults, as you speak about your business.

Your energy, your passion, your voice, your humanity is IRREPLACEABLE.

And even if you do use AI a lot, there’s still a percentage that doesn’t work without YOU.

So be careful how you use it in your marketing and educations systems especially. It’s hard to warm up to a coach if something about them just feels… off.

For example: Remember when studios were making movies with cartoons that looked almost human? But not quite, so it was creepy instead of cute? The “uncanny valley” of Tom Hanks in Polar Express? That. That’s the danger of using too much AI as a coach.

Okay, I’m off my soapbox.

*hops down*

And, since this is an article about AI, I guess I need to get around to sharing what I and other coaches have been doing with it recently. 😉

Ideas for using AI from me and other coaches

Here at Coach Pony I’ve been using it edit landing pages and offer upgrades to improve conversion, update sales page copy, and edit *some* sales emails and images (I write all emails myself if you’ve ever read our free Couch School or this very Substack! But there are some sales emails I’m testing by running the existing emails through AI, to see if it can write better, or - honestly - more succinctly, than I can).

So far it has been a real mixed bag.

Some copy it’s written I have liked.

Other times I’ve tried prompt after prompt and gotten mostly generic swill in return.

Last week I used Storybrand.ai to help with some updated brand messaging for our services, and honestly - a lot of it was mediocre. The framework was helpful, but the end result on messaging needs a LOT of work.

The thing that’s been most useful re: AI for me is to update our messaging to reflect what’s happening in the world right now. AI is able to give me a great jumping off point on some of the copy, and that has been helpful.

Other things I’m thinking of using it for are creating an AI bot with my voice inside our Build a REAL Business program - like an answer vault or FAQ assistant- for questions. I think that could be a way to help them make more progress (though we’ve got a lot going on right now, so this is a a project that is not coming soon).

And, I’ve been playing around (maybe too much?) with AI invented images for some upcoming events (we’ve got an awesome new Bootcamp coming up in September on Niching. You heard it here first!).

As you can imagine, these images involve food:

I also polled the paying subscribers to Coaches and Cashmere via our chat (thanks! And feel free to join us!)

And they shared that they are using it much like I am, though with a few more fun ideas. Like so:

1. Content strategy planning and posting schedules

2. Email subject lines and preview text

3. Blogging meta data descriptions

4. Outline creation for proposals to new places (a corporate client, for example)

5. Making small website edits, like adding code for confetti if someone takes a specific action

6. Cheerleading! This one is more specific to ChatGPT, which seems like one of the nicer LLMs. I can report that Gemini is very direct, and never tells me I’m doing a good job. *sigh*

And one more totally random but fun idea that I saw which was not from a coach, but from Bobbi Brown, the makeup artist - was giving AI an image of yourself as a young person, and asking it to plan out your life.

Here’s what happened when she did, if you are curious!

Behind the Scenes of Coach Pony in June

Honestly, I’m kind of bored talking about myself, after 6+ months of doing these monthly lookbacks.

I’m also desperately in need of a vacation, but sadly for me, that’s still several weeks away.

(How do I know? I’m more grumpy than usual. Live image of me below):

But I know seeing inside a successful business can be super helpful (I try and peer into other businesses all of the time!) so I’m *hoping* you aren’t bored of me.

Anyhoodle, I’m working on a LOT of things right now, like getting ready for a brand new launch style and new offer ahead of our September Build a REAL Business enrollment, and I’m going to tell you about all of it…

…a little later 😉.

For now to keep it a bit more focused, I wanted to talk about the BARB Fast Track delivery. How did it go?

If you want to know more about the BARB Fast Track or refresh your memory on why we did this particular launch, read last month’s look back here.

Basically we accelerated access to our signature program, Build a REAL Business aka BARB, and gave everyone access to the first 9 weeks of content in 4 weeks.

I have long resisted this, as I know it would be impossible for folks to keep up as BARB is ROBUST and the work takes time. Given that, I didn’t want new students giving up because they felt behind or overwhelmed.

But it’s the #1 most asked for thing from prospective clients - can we open up the program any faster? (Note: new clients quickly stop asking). So to counteract my worries I offered more support to help them through the Fast Track month and spent a lot of time messaging that “there is no behind in BARB” - they have a year of access (yay!).

As predicted, no one kept up with the program. I did weekly office hours, and it was clear by the questions that after the first week no one was moving at the same speed the training was unlocking. No surprise! It’s a lot! And some of the work takes time to implement - for instance, we ask our students to do interviews in their chosen niche to test it - and it takes time to find people and set up those interviews.

But the good news is that my messaging was working overall. I think the students do understand that they have plenty of time to go at their own pace, and I hope the extra support at the beginning helped get them off to a strong start.

I’ll have to watch how it unspools in the coming weeks now that the extra month of Fast Track support is over, but we do continue to offer weekly support, so I am not too worried.

How did it feel from my end?

I really love answering questions in the group, but I’ve never done two calls a day before in BARB.

And since I was already doing multiple Q&A calls on the same day, which makes it hard for me to do any deep focus work, I also scheduled more outside meetings on the Fast Track call days just to get all of my people work done as efficiently as possible.

All this combined lead to me falling asleep early every Thursday night, and feeling a bit more tired on Fridays.

I’m an introvert and draw energy from myself and not others, so people make me tired.

Fortunately, I never have meetings on Fridays and doing the bonus calls later in the week allowed me to recharge over the weekend.

Will we do the Fast Track again?

Probably, but we’ll see.

I do want to see how soon this batch of students completes the first phase of the program and graduates into Phase 2. The most important thing for me is that their businesses grow.

But from my end, I enjoyed the extra Office Hours a lot! And now that we’ve made all of the back end tweaks, it will be easier to launch and implement this version of the program again next year.

So, maybe watch this space…

Are there any changes we would make?

In terms of scheduling and support, I don’t think so. The timings of both the bonus calls and the regular support calls worked fairly well.

The one big change I would make for me, however, is to have my summer vacation start next week, instead of several weeks from now.

Launches are tiring, and this launch had extra delivery and effort.

Plus, 2025 is exhausting from a news perspective, so yes - I’d be packing for a trip right now if I had thought it through. April/May me was more optimistic about how I’d feel in this moment, but you live, you learn.

So, if you ever do something like this in your business, think through how the extra work will affect you, and plan for some rest to make sure you recharge!

The rest of June

June was a big operational hygiene month for us as we updated some old assets, did planning for the summer and fall, got our ducks in a row for our next few marketing efforts, and worked on boring stuff like email list cleaning and re-engagement.

If you have any email list hygiene to do, now is a good time!

I also harvested my potatoes (I’m obnoxiously smug!), and then ate said potatoes with plenty of butter.

I also ate some butter lettuce I’ve grown (who AM I?), and spent a lot of time wishing a few new plants would grow faster to cover our back fence more quickly.

And I got our garden furniture in better shape. I was totally unaware I could buy replacement cushions for one of my outdoor couches that were much better quality than the originals, because I live under a rock, but now I know! So, I’m living my best garden life.

Finally, I checked in on my word of the year, which is COMMUNITY.

I’ve really focused on building community this year, and it’s a slow but happening process where I’ve been pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

I joined a new business mastermind to continue to build and grow my business community.

I continued coaching high school lacrosse to keep my “run around and have fun” community going.

And I’ve thrown a tea party, a first for me, and am planning an upcoming Bastille Day party (love a party with champagne and revolution!), and *in general* trying to host more events.

Having a word of the year is so so SO helpful. It is a quick hack for decision making - because I can always ask myself “how is this bringing more community into my life?” anytime I have a choice to make.

If you posted in our beginning of the year chat with your word, how is it going?

And…that’s it! I feel like I’ve gotten so boring! Soon I’ll be telling you about the birds I’m watching (On that note, have you seen the hummingbirds in my garden? 😉).

And that’s it! How are you using AI? Feel free to share in the comments. Also, if you have Fast Track questions for me on anything I shared, put those in the comments as well!

And if you are not a paid subscriber yet, for the love of chocolate join us.

It gives you a chance to get your business questions answered by me in a monthly mailbag, plus you get a big deep look behind the scenes every month at my business - much of which is stuff coaches NEVER share.