Founders of boutique PR agencies tap AI tools to write proposals and build a 'scrappy CRM'

• One-person PR firms don't have the luxury of staff to help with admin and prospecting.
• AI tools can help with a wide range of PR agency tasks, so founders can focus more on strategy.
• AI also helps PR solopreneurs with client prospecting and pitching.

Many communications professionals start their own businesses out of a passion for helping clients polish their PR strategies, yet much of their time is spent on operational management.

In a larger agency setting, there are typically account managers, project coordinators, and junior strategists to handle tasks like research and project management. Boutique agency founders, particularly those who run their businesses alone, must take ownership of every detail and step of the process.

"I lead all client strategy, creative direction, marketing execution, partnerships, and operations independently," said Adebukola Ajao, who founded her boutique marketing agency B.D.Y. CONSULT a decade ago.

Ajao told Business Insider that she's used AI for two years to run her full-service agency as a one-person business without sacrificing quality or responsiveness.

Ajao, along with Ciara Siegel, the founder of brand and marketing consultancy CJC, and Lisa Chensvold, the founder of Chensvold Communications, shared how they apply AI to spend more time making their clients shine.

AI for streamlining the proposal process

Ajao said that her favorite use of AI involves researching potential clients and their industries.

She uses Google's Gemini to comb through her discovery call notes and recordings, work emails, and Google Docs. From there, she shares background on a potential client and asks AI to deliver a first draft of a proposal using templates she created. The process used to take more than a week; now it takes a day or less, Ajao said.

AI also strengthens her proposals. She uses Read AI to transcribe meeting notes, including insights into people's body language throughout a call. If a potential client was highly engaged at a certain point, she doubles down on that moment in her final pitch; if they tuned out, she reworks those sections before sending the proposal.

"If a client says no, I don't feel burned out from having spent a week doing their proposal. It's just onto the next one," Ajao said.

AI supports client strategy brainstorming

Siegel, founder of CJC, said that AI's strengths of synthesis and pattern recognition have sped up her work on client strategy. A research-intensive process that often took weeks when she started her business in 2022 can now be done in a quarter of the time, Siegel estimated.

She said she uses Gemini to transcribe client conversations, then drops that, along with the responses to a questionnaire she sends clients, into OpenAI's ChatGPT.

"I might ask, 'I think a client used this word a bunch of times, can you pull out how many or the ways in which they mentioned that?'" Siegel said, adding this would have taken her hours to do on her own. "That allows me to move more efficiently into higher-level strategic work."

Siegel also appreciates being able to use AI as a stand-in for the collaborative brainstorming she would have on a larger team. As a solopreneur, using the voice-to-text feature in ChatGPT has become a stand-in for that collaborative thinking.

"Half the value isn't what AI says back, it's what surfaces once I hear my own thinking out loud," Siegel explained. "Having something that can respond creates momentum and unlocks ideas that might otherwise stay stuck in my head."

AI builds a strong operational baseline

Generative AI was already on the scene when Chensvold, founder of Chensvold Communications, started her business in 2025. She said she was initially skeptical but decided to test the tools when she felt overwhelmed while figuring out her business's tech and systems.

Initially, AI tended to over-engineer solutions better suited to large teams, Chensvold said. Once she reminded the algorithm that she works alone and values simplicity, she said it became a useful partner for identifying workflow gaps, suggesting tools, and building repeatable systems.

For instance, when she was struggling to figure out the best way to track prospects and clients, she turned to OpenAI's ChatGPT. It helped lay out customer relationship management options, many of which were complex, and assisted her in designing a Notion database she uses as a "scrappy CRM." She also said she uses Anthropic's generative AI tool, Claude, to cross-check and poke holes in ChatGPT's proposed plan.

Now, Chensvold uses Claude to help her build documentation that keeps her organized, including an outline of her processes for client acquisition and onboarding, a detailed writing style guide, and a weekly checklist of business tasks that the AI can walk her through.

"The least creative things about the work that I do, I can use a non-human system to help build, so that I can have my humanity show up for my clients," Chensvold said.