How I Use Claude AI in My Creative Online Business with Integrity (And Why It's Changed Everything)

On 6th May I held a get-together for female founders using ai in their business.

I talked them through how I was using Claude ai chats, projects and artefacts.

There were some great links shared and I promised to share the educators I've been learning from too.

Follow up links

• Daily video tips - https://www.instagram.com/itsmariahbrunner/

• Type #claude into instagram and you'll get loads of bite size education.

• AI unlocked summit - next week - https://gemmabonhamcarter.com/ai-unlocked-2026

• An article and Claude educator on Substack - https://taylaburrell.substack.com/p/claude-got-me-3674-new-followers

• An email creator who wants to save you time on Claude - https://thelimitlessjess.beehiiv.com/p/set-up-your-claude-cowork-like-the-top-1-in-30-minutes-3-simple-steps?utm_source=thelimitlessjess.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=set-up-your-claude-cowork-like-the-top-1-in-30-minutes-3-simple-steps&_bhlid

• A more green/ environmentally friendly ai? https://greenpt.com/

• A children's book on ai - https://nosycrow.com/product/university-of-cambridge-think-big-artificial-intelligence/?srsltid=AfmBOortSGqPbgs949mfLfVb7f3FiwsCwzjQKhLxO7r-6cJwliqDsJ8j

I held an informal session recently with a small group of female colleagues to talk about how I'm using Claude AI in my day-to-day business life.

An honest conversation about what's actually working for me as a neurodivergent, multi-passionate business owner who really, really does not want to burn out.

This blog post is the write-up of that session. So if you weren't there, here's everything we covered. Huge thanks to Kate Maines Beasley for partnering me on it. Connect with her here.

First: Why I started using Claude AI

I'll be real - I didn't come to AI tools because I'm a tech enthusiast. I came because I was drowning in the cognitive load of running a business, being the default parent, caring for my husband and young kids and I needed something to help carry some of the weight.

Maths makes me cry. Change overwhelms me. I can't hold all the threads at once. And yet I've built a super successful business I love.

Claude ai has become something close to a business partner that never judges, and doesn't mind when I need to explain something three times before I understand it myself!!

That's why I use it.

And that's the lens through which everything in this post is written.

The three main ways I use Claude: Chats, Projects, and Artifacts

1. Chats - for the everyday stuff

Chats are the open conversations you can have with Claude about anything. I used one on a Friday when I was feeling flat and overwhelmed. I typed something like: "These are the things I want to get done. I don't want to go on my phone. Can you make me a little plan for how to spend my time?"

It knew I'd been dealing with a stressful client situation. It knew I was prioritising SEO, had life admin to do and I was tired. It built me a gentle, realistic schedule that built in time off - it's programmed to tell me to close the laptop!!.

That's the thing because I've uploaded my tone of voice and worked with it for a while, it already understands the context of my life and business. You can always redirect it if it gets something wrong, but once it knows you, it really knows you.

You might use chats for: complaint letters, scheduling, working through a tricky email, asking questions you'd feel embarrassed Googling, or just offloading a brain dump when you need some structure.

2. Claude Projects are where the real magic happens for business owners

This is the feature I'm most excited to share, and the one I spent most of the session demonstrating.

Projects are separate, topic-specific spaces where Claude remembers everything relevant to that area. Think of each project as a filing cabinet that can actually talk back to you.

Here's what I've got running right now:

Website SEO and Podia management

Podia (who I use to host my website) recently rolled out a big update. Change like that can really throw me. So instead of watching hour-long video tutorials and trying to implement at the same time, I uploaded the transcript from their tutorial call and asked Claude to give me the headlines. Just the key changes. Done.

The SEO side of this project has been genuinely revelatory. After six years of thinking I'd been doing SEO correctly on my website, Claude helped me realise that none of my sales pages were being catalogued properly. I hadn't set them up right. Six years. Claude spotted it in minutes.

(So yes if you're a creative business owner and you haven't looked at your website SEO recently, that might be worth investigating.)

Finance and my Magic Number

Moving from sole trader to limited company, registering for VAT at the same time, swapping accountants, and having a bookkeeper go rogue all at once, as a neurodivergent woman who finds maths genuinely distressing was one of the most stressful experiences of my business life.

I've uploaded everything into a finance project: my magic number spreadsheet (c) Gemma Heard, documents my accountant sends me, financial overviews. Claude has already found three errors in the way my accounts were set up. I reflected those back to my accountant, and he confirmed them.

How would I have spotted those otherwise? I wouldn't have. I'm not a specialist. That's exactly the point.

Sparklebot — AI-powered Substack support for my members

This one I'm really excited about. I'm in the process of uploading my Substack posts and transcripts into a project, training Claude on my voice and my knowledge, so that eventually my members can download this as a knowledge file, upload it into their own Claude account, and ask beginner Substack questions and get answers that sound like me even when I'm not there.

I've tested a version of this in ChatGPT in a custom GPT already, and it worked well. Claude is more sophisticated, and I think the results will be even better. I'm calling it Sparklebot, and I'll be sharing more about how members can access it when it's ready.

Other projects I'm running:

• Positioning, bio, and messaging work (I dump call transcripts in and pull out what I need to move things forward)

• A personal boiler complaint (don't get me started but Claude helped me build a watertight case using GDPR and Ofgem guidelines, which I could not have done alone)

3. Artifacts - beautiful branded up interactive tools Claude can build for you

This is where things get genuinely exciting, and also where I sound like I know more than I do. Honestly? I was just playing around.

I asked Claude if it could build me a Substack revenue calculator something interactive that would help me work out how many subscribers I'd need at different price points, factor in Stripe fees, look at whether a promotional sale was actually worth it, all of that.

Here's the post on how all that panned out - https://sparkleon.substack.com/p/can-you-really-make-money-on-substack

It built it. A proper, working, branded calculator with three tabs

• Goal

• Revenue

• and Sale

styled in my brand colours, with my tagline on it. I shared it with my Sparkle on Substack members this morning, and it's already getting used.

That's an artifact. Claude uses code to build interactive tools that can be made public and shared. You don't need to understand the code. You just need to be able to describe what you want.

Connectors - Claude talking directly to your other tools

Claude can connect to other platforms so that instead of copying and pasting between them, they actually talk to each other. I've connected:

• Canva - I can ask Claude to build me an Instagram carousel promoting my Substack book, and it goes into Canva and builds the slides. I just tweak and post.

• Stripe - for financial context in my business.

• Google Workspace (Mail and Calendar)

• vidIQ - useful if you're on YouTube and looking for better headlines etc.

There's also a feature called Co-Work that apparently does even more (people rave about it), but I haven't gone deep enough to demo it yet. I'll share more when I have.

An honest word of caution from my colleague Kate

Kate joined the session and shared something really important. She'd recently run an entire task including client emails fully through Claude without reviewing them properly. The tone was off. A client noticed. It caused a real moment.

Her advice, which I completely agree with: Claude is an assistant, not a replacement for your judgement. Always re-read before sending. Don't give it high-stakes, people-facing tasks without checking the output carefully. If your brain is in a fast, hyper focused mode — pause before hitting send.

Use it as a tool that works for you, not instead of you.

Questions from the session

ai summary....

"Can I protect what I put into Claude from being used on the internet?"

This is about open APIs — Claude connects to the tools you give it access to, password-protected, not to the whole internet. If you're concerned about data security, I'd genuinely suggest asking Claude itself to explain it for your specific situation. It'll give you a clearer answer than I can.

"Is Claude more environmentally friendly than other AI tools?"

The ethical debate around AI and environmental impact is real and massive. From what I understand, Claude's offsets compare more favourably than ChatGPT — but I haven't done a deep dive, and I'd encourage you to research it for yourself rather than take my word for it.

"This all feels a bit over my head — where do I even start?"

Start with chats. Pick one thing that drains you — a complaint letter, a difficult email, planning your week — and see if Claude can help. Let it surprise you.

If you're a business owner, explore projects next. You can have five projects on a free account (though you'll hit the conversation limit fairly quickly and it'll encourage you to upgrade to paid).

Search #Claude on Instagram — there are loads of free, bite-sized tutorials there. And please don't feel you need to spend thousands on a course. Everyone is figuring this out as we go, including the people selling the courses.

Why I use Claude the way I do

My goal isn't to be more online. It's to be less online, and more in my life.

Claude cuts through about 70% of what overwhelms me including difficult tasks, things I don't know, financial stuff I can't hold in my head, conversations I'm not sure how to have. It's like a team member I can work with, without the exhaustion I've experienced from actually hiring a team in the past.

I'm a neurodivergent mother running a business I love, and I want it to stay that way. Claude helps me make that possible.

If you've got questions, drop them in the comments or come and find me over on Substack at Sparkle on Substack, where I go deeper into all of this with my community.

Claire Venus is an award-winning Audience Development Consultant and Substack Expert for soulful creatives, authors, writers and female founders. She has grown her Substack presence to 20,000 subscribers across four publications and reached her first £100k year in business in 2024. Find her at creativelyconscious.co.uk