5 Things AI Can’t Do (That Make Your Business Magnetic)

Why the most powerful coaching and healing work will never come from an AI prompt

There’s no shortage of hype about AI right now.

And to be honest? I get it.

I’m discovering new and exciting ways to use AI in my business every week. And the more I work with it, the clearer I become about what it can’t do.
Not technically, but soulfully.
Not what it lacks, but what it will never have or hold.

You see, the work I do with my clients (and the work many of my clients do as well) lives in a space AI can’t reach.
In healing, in discernment, in depth, in subtlety.
It lives in the moments of courage where your heart pounds and you wonder, “should I have sent that email?”
It lives in the genuine connection, like when someone sends you a message letting you know your message inspires them.
It lives in the embodiment where this logical marketing tactic doesn’t feel right for you.

That’s the real human stuff that can’t be automated.
And that’s exactly why your business can be magnetic because you’re able to lead in the places AI will never go.

What AI Is Good For

Before I go further, let me be clear: I’m not anti-AI.

I am aware of the variety of concerns, including but not limited to energy consumption, ecological damage, intellectual property theft, identity theft risks, dissolution of capital-T truth. I’ve been a skeptical and conscious consumer, but a consumer nonetheless.

I’m not here to shame or side-eye anyone using AI and I’m definitely not interested in being the messenger you shoot for my use of the tools. I appreciate the time it saves, and I’m grateful for the ways it helps me structure my thinking and overcoming the blank-page.

For many coaches and healers, AI can act as:

• Thought partner to help check your assumptions

• Brainstorming buddy when you’re stuck in your head

• Content assistant for making sense of raw voice notes

• Efficiency tool to get admin off your plate and stay in flow

• Prompt generator to help you articulate thoughts you haven’t fully fleshed out yet

Even in 2023 (and given the advances since then, this seems like lightyears ago) a survey by GoDaddy suggested that 49% of small business owners were using AI tools in their businesses, primarily for writing content, automating tasks, and streamlining admin.

It’s not inherently impersonal or unethical to use AI. Let’s be honest a lot of digital tasks are being supported by AI whether you know it or like it. Automatic captions and transcriptions are exponentially easier with AI. The key is in how you use it and especially what you don’t hand over.

Because if you’re not careful, it’s easy to start outsourcing more than just tasks. You start outsourcing your voice. Your vision. Your knowing. Your truth.

And that’s where the real risk to your business begins.

Image emphasizing the risks. Created with Dall-E

What AI Can’t Do (and Never Will)

There are parts of your business, indeed they are the parts of you, that AI will never be able to replicate, no matter how much money billionaires spend on advancing the tech.

Here are 5 of them:

1. Hold space for someone’s truth

AI can write brilliant prompts and help you ask better questions.
But, it can’t hold silence without rushing to fill it. It cannot track tone, energy, or emotion in real time.
It can’t sense the difference between breakthrough and shutdown. It cannot sense the protective wave that just rose up. It cannot sit with someone’s grief, shame, or tenderness and hold it with compassion.

And if your work centers around trust, transformation, or relationships this isn’t a minor limitation.
It’s the entire fucking point!

Your presence is the alchemy.
The safety you create is what makes transformation possible.
Not even the best prompt can replace that.

2. Offer lived experience or intuitive wisdom

AI doesn’t know what it’s like to build a business while managing emotions and navigating complex interpersonal relationships.
It doesn’t know how it feels to worry about being rejected or to pluck yourself up and continue to believe in your offer after being rejected. It doesn’t carry your story, your values, or your way of moving through the world.

It can reference those things.
But it doesn’t know them.

You do.
What gives your work power isn’t how clean your messaging is.
It’s the depth of experience based on what you’ve lived through and the care with which you translate that into your work.

3. Create safety in your nervous system

Perfect messaging isn’t a cure for visibility wounds.
No single tool can do the emotional and somatic work of helping you feel safe enough to be seen.

AI can polish your copy.
But it can’t make friends with the voice inside that says “What if I’m not good enough to make this business work?”
It can’t regulate your nervous system after you get a nasty comment.
It can’t rebuild self-trust when a launch doesn’t go the way you hoped.
It can’t make you feel like you’re not alone on this trek.

That’s your work. And what I’ve recognized is it isn’t optional. It’s what allows you to keep showing up in your business without shutting down.

If that’s something you’ve been craving, keep reading - I’ve got something for you at the end of this essay.

4. Build real trust with other humans

AI generate a welcome email sequence and it can mimic warmth.
But it doesn’t care.

It can’t discern between a hesitant client who’s scared vs. one who’s not a fit.
It can’t know when to slow down or ask a different question.
It doesn’t know how to attune in a moment of rupture or initiate repair.

Trust is a felt experience built over time, in micro-moments of honesty, curiosity, vulnerability and care.
That’s relational. And it’s irreplaceably human.

5. Tell the truth in a way only you can

AI can sound like you.
It can remix your past content, borrow your tone, maybe even write something that “feels close.”

But it doesn’t carry the discernment between an uncomfortable truth and an overused cliché. It doesn’t feel what’s urgent to say and what needs to wait. It doesn’t know what you’re ready to say (or what you’re still finding the courage to say).

You hold a universe of contextual factors and awareness of what matters to your people. What they are aching to hear.

Your discernment is irreplaceable.
And your embodied truth is what sets your work apart.
That’s not a limitation, it’s your edge.

The Deeper Risk

The real danger with AI isn't that we’ll use it poorly.

It’s that we’ll use it too unconsciously.
Too eagerly. Without noticing we’ve stopped thinking for ourselves.

We sacrifice depth for efficiency. We sacrifice the challenge of wresting with an idea for the ease of having the task completed.
Without realizing we start to lose our meaning, our voice, our nature.

When we rely too heavily on AI, our message may feel safe, but it will also be oh-so-forgettable. Because it will have lost all the messy nuance that comes from being a person in the world.

The risk is…
You may gain attention, but without building trust.
You may sound polished, but not convicted.
You may move fast, but without direction.
You may save time, but you lose texture.
You may be visible, but not recognized.

Where This Leaves Us

This isn’t a call to abandon AI.

I’m all for using tools that support our humanity, not replace it.Don’t be lulled into thinking speed is more important than sincerity. Because the business you’re building, the one that’s rooted in real presence, deep service and true integrity can’t be automated.

It needs you in it. We needs you to be the conscious creator. And the truth-teller.
In a world obsessed with optimization and artificiality, your clients NEED you to be a trusted source of what’s real.

A Final Reflection

If you’re using AI, use it well.
Because the heart of your business, the energetic vibration that creates resonance and calls people into transformation is powerful and magnetic.

Don’t doubt that.

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