TL;DR: Most creators spend 70% of their time making content and 30% getting it seen. The content flood is real, it’s only getting louder — and creating is no longer the hard part. Getting seen is. The 30/70 Rule flips the equation. One piece becomes six. That’s not a hack. That’s a system.

You spent three hours writing that post.

The hook was sharp. The insights were real. The formatting? Chef’s kiss. You hit publish, shared it once to Instagram, and… nothing.

Ma daj. You know this feeling.

Here’s what I learned the hard way: the problem was never the content. It was what happened — or didn’t happen — after I published it.

Here’s a number that should wake you up: over 50% of all new online articles are now written by AI. The content flood isn’t coming — it’s already here. And it’s only getting louder.

Which means one thing has shifted permanently: creating content is no longer the hard part. Getting it seen is.

And yet, most creators — heart-led, talented, strategic — still operate on the 70/30 model. Seventy percent of their time goes into creation. Thirty percent, generously, into distribution. Then they wonder why growth feels slow.

Polako. Let me show you what flipping that looks like.

The 30/70 Framework

The 30/70 Rule: Spend 30% of your content time creating. Spend 70% distributing, repurposing, and amplifying what already exists.

This isn’t about doing less. It’s about doing the right things with what you already made.

Here’s the framework, broken into three moves.

Move 1 — Create Once, With Intention

Your 30% is not for volume. It’s for depth. One well-crafted piece — a Substack article, a long-form video, a cornerstone post — becomes the source. Everything else flows from it.

The question to ask before you create anything: What is this piece really about? What does it bring? What changes for the reader after they read it? If you can’t answer all three, you’re not ready to write it yet.

Move 2 — Distribute Into Every Corner

Your 70% starts here. That one article becomes:

• A Substack post (the original)

• 3–5 Instagram carousel slides

• A TikTok hook pulled from the strongest line

• A Pinterest pin with the key insight

• A short question post that links back to the answer

• A Substack Note with a pull quote

Šest komada od jednog. Six pieces from one. That’s the Balkanish way of working smart.

Move 3 — Amplify, Don’t Just Post

Distribution is not scheduling. Amplification is the layer most people skip entirely. It means:

• Engaging in the comments

• Replying to every share

• Sending the article directly to three people it would genuinely help

• Linking back to it in your next piece

• Letting it live longer than 24 hours

Content that is only published is not content that is working. Content that is amplified compounds.

The 30/70 Cheat Sheet

Here’s your quick-reference. Save this. Screenshot it. Stick it somewhere visible.

What This Changes

When you flip to 30/70, something shifts in how your week feels. You stop the frantic cycle of what do I post today? You stop publishing into silence. You start to see that your best ideas have a longer shelf life than you gave them credit for.

You also start treating your content like the asset it is — not a daily obligation, but a growing library that works for you.

Srce, that’s the difference between a content hamster wheel and a content system.

Your Move This Week

Pick one piece of content you published in the last 30 days that didn’t get the reach it deserved.

Now ask honestly: Did I actually distribute it — or did I just publish it?

If the answer is “just published,” you’ve found your starting point. Take that one piece and run it through the three moves above.

One week. One piece. Six distributions.

Ajde — let’s see what happens. ☕

Tvoja, Anita

The Soulful Balkanish AI Way

P.S. — If you’re thinking “this sounds great but I don’t have time for all that distribution” — I hear you. I’m building a system that makes the 70% almost automatic and you can concentrate on the important stuff. Not ready yet. But when it is, you’ll hear it here first.

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Substack Creator Voice Quiz

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Grab your kava. This one’s playful. ☕

I’ve been thinking about this for a while — how we describe what we do on Substack. We say things like “I write about AI and branding” or “my newsletter covers personal growth.” And it’s fine. It’s accurate. But it doesn’t feel like anything.

So I tried something different. I asked myself:

If my Substack were a café — a real place, with a door and a menu and a smell when you walk in — what would it serve?

And what came out was... honestly kind of magical.

The Idea

Every Substack has a vibe. A rhythm. A thing it does for the people who show up.

Some feel like a morning espresso — sharp, fast, wake-up energy. Some feel like a long Sunday brunch — slow, layered, you stay for two hours. Some feel like a late-night bar — honest conversations you wouldn’t have in daylight.

So what if you turned that into an actual menu?

Your articles become dishes. Your series become house specials. Your free content is the daily coffee. Your paid content is the tasting menu. Your “About” page is the chalkboard outside that makes people walk in.

And the place itself? That’s yours. Your café lives wherever your soul lives. A rooftop in Tokyo. A bookshop in Edinburgh. A beach bar in Bali. A harbour-side terrace in a small Croatian town where the bura wind makes your napkins fly off the table.

Ajde, guess which one is mine 🤓

My Example: Café Nehaj

My Substack café sits on the harbour in Senj, Croatia. Stone walls. A faded awning. The Adriatic on one side, the Velebit mountains on the other. The bura is blowing — always — but inside it’s warm. The menu is handwritten on a chalkboard. The owner (that’s me) is probably in the corner with a third kava, pretending to work.

Here’s what’s on my menu:

☕ House Coffee (free, always)

The Drop — one idea, one shift, every Tuesday. Strong, no sugar, gets you moving.

🍽️ Daily Special

The Gentle Note — a slower, more personal letter. Like a homemade soup that takes longer to make but warms you differently.

🎲 The Experiment Table (seasonal)

Creator System Series — the weird, playful, “wait, I can do THAT?” dishes. Sometimes they work beautifully. Sometimes they’re a beautiful mess. You come for the surprise.

🧁 The Pastry Case (take away)

PromptPower Deluxe, Brand Audit Tool — things you grab on the way out. Practical. Portable. Ready to use.

📖 The Bookshelf by the Window

Marlene & Alberto — my novel. Not on the menu. Just there, if you want to sit and read for a while.

🎵 The Playlist

“Kava, AI i Ti” — playing softly in the background. You don’t notice it at first. But it sets the mood.

Now It’s Your Turn

I made you a prompt. One prompt. You copy it, paste it into your AI of choice (ChatGPT, Claude, Manus — doesn’t matter), answer a few questions, and it builds your entire Substack Brand Café Menu.

The result? A visual, a concept, a way to describe your Substack that actually feels like something. Something you can share. Something people remember.

The MasterPrompt: Your Substack Brand Café Menu

Copy this. Paste it. Let AI guide you through it.

What To Do With It

Share it. Post your café menu (or the visual) in your Substack Notes. Tag me — I want to see where your café lives and what’s on your menu ☕️

Use it. Put your chalkboard sign in your bio. Use your menu descriptions in your “About” page. Let it inspire how you talk about your content.

Play with it. Invite your readers to visit your café. Do a “Coffee Date” in your chat. Make it a thing. Make it yours.

Your Café Is Waiting

Copy the prompt. Open your AI. Answer honestly — and have fun with it. This isn’t homework. This is play.

And when you’re done — share it. I want to see your café. I want to know where it is, what’s on the menu, and what song is playing when I walk in.

Maybe we’ll do a Substack Café Crawl one day. Visit each other’s worlds. Bring our own kava.

One experiment. One prompt. One world.

Ajmo. ☕

Tvoja,

Anita

The Soulful Balkanish AI Way

P.S. — If you missed the last experiment, I built a Creator Voice Quiz that tells you your Creator Voice type in two minutes. Storyteller, Guide, Provocateur, or Dreamer. Take it — and then imagine what kind of café each type would run. The Storyteller’s café definitely has mismatched chairs and a cat.

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Grab your kava. This one’s practical. ☕

You know what I stopped doing six months ago?

Googling “best prompts for [thing].”

Not because prompts don’t matter. They do. But because I realized I was solving the wrong problem. Every time I opened AI and typed a beautifully crafted prompt — and got back something generic, flat, sounds-like-everyone-else — the problem wasn’t the prompt.

The problem was that AI had no idea who I was. Ništa. Zero. Blank slate, every single time.

The Shift That Changed Everything

Prompt Engineering is about the question you ask.

Context Engineering is about what AI already knows about you, your business, your voice, your audience — before you ask anything.

Same prompt. Two completely different outputs. One from a stranger. One from someone who gets you.

Here’s a real example. If I type:

“Write me a newsletter intro about AI tools for creators”

Without context, I get LinkedIn-speak. Polished, generic, could be anyone.

With my full business context loaded? I get something that sounds like me — slightly irreverent, strategic, with a Balkan edge and a coffee reference that probably shouldn’t be there at 11 PM but jebiga, that’s who I am. Because AI knows that’s how I write. It knows who I write for. It knows what I’d never say.

The difference isn’t talent. It’s setup.

The Problem Most People Have

You open AI. You ask something. The output is... fine. Generic. You tweak it. You try again. You add “make it more casual.” Still not right. You give up and write it yourself.

Sound familiar? Da, znam. Me too, for way too long.

That’s because you’re asking AI to guess who you are. Every. Single. Time.

Context Engineering means you tell it once — properly, thoroughly — and then every conversation from that point forward starts at 80% instead of zero.

The starting point? What I call your Business Brain.

The Business Brain: Your AI’s Memory of You

Your Business Brain is a single document that contains everything AI needs to know about you and your business to give you output that actually sounds like you and serves your goals.

Not your CV. Not your LinkedIn bio. The real stuff — the things that make your work yours.

Once you have this, you paste it into your AI’s memory/personalization section (every major AI tool has one — ChatGPT, Claude, Manus, Gemini). From that moment on, every conversation is contextual. You stop re-explaining yourself. You stop getting generic output. You start getting you.

The Business Brain Prompt

Here’s the prompt. Copy it. Paste it into your AI. Answer the questions it asks you. Save the result as your permanent context.

What To Do With It

Once AI gives you your compiled Business Brain document:

1. Save it in your AI’s personalization/memory section. In ChatGPT, that’s Settings → Personalization. In Claude, it’s your Project instructions. In Manus, it’s your Project files. Every tool has a version of this.

2. Update it when things change. New offer? New audience shift? New content format? Update the Brain. It’s a living document, not a one-time thing.

3. Notice the difference. Next time you ask AI to write something — a caption, an email, a content plan — notice how much closer the first output is to what you’d actually say. That’s context at work.

Why This Is the Starting Point

This is Layer 1. The foundation. Once your Business Brain is set, you can build on top of it:

•Project-specific folders for different clients or content series

•Saved writing samples so AI learns your actual style (not just your description of it)

•Format templates for recurring content (so “write a Drop” means something specific)

But none of that works without the Brain. It’s like trying to furnish a house that doesn’t have walls yet.

Start here. Build the walls. The rest follows. Polako — but start today.

Your Turn

Copy the prompt above. Open your AI tool of choice. Answer honestly — not the polished version of you, the real one. Save the result.

And if you want to go one step deeper — if you want to know what your Creator Voice actually is before you try to describe it — I built something for that too. The Creator Voice Quiz gives you your voice type in two minutes. Storyteller, Guide, Provocateur, or Dreamer. It’s the shortcut to question 5, 6, and 8 in the prompt above.

This week’s shift: Stop asking better questions. Start giving better context.

Ajmo. ☕

Anita

The Soulful Balkanish AI Way

P.S. — If you do the Business Brain exercise today, I genuinely want to hear how it went. Hit reply. Tell me what surprised you about your own answers. I read everything.

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We were sitting in a café — my boyfriend and I, the way we do best — when the couple at the next table started speaking English. Irish, clearly. We joined in naturally, the way you do when you’ve lived between languages long enough that switching feels like changing shoes.

And then she looked at me and said: “Are you from Croatia?”

I blinked. “How did you know?”

“The way you say your L’s. It’s very Croatian.”

I laughed out loud. Born and raised in Germany. Schooled in German, dreaming sometimes in German, working every day in English for over a decade — and it’s still there. The L. The Balkan, quietly present even when I’m not thinking about it.

I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since.

Because I grew up with two worlds running in parallel. My parents came from Croatia — both of them, proper Gastarbeiter generation, building a life in a small German town while making sure we never forgot where we came from. Croatian school. Croatian at home. German everywhere else. I was never fully one thing or the other. I was both, always.

And now I write in English. I build my content in English, I talk to AI in English, I think about my business in English — mostly. But underneath all of that, I think in something in between. A kind of language I’ve started calling, half-jokingly, Balkanish. It’s not a real word. I know. But it’s a very real thing.

It’s the moment I catch myself explaining a strategy and saying ajmo under my breath before we dive in — let’s go, no overthinking, we move. It’s the way I approach content planning with the same mentality my mama used to approach a Sunday lunch: nothing goes to waste, everything has a purpose, and you feed everyone before you close the kitchen.

It’s the fact that for me, every conversation about AI and business still starts with kava. Coffee. Not a dashboard. Not a funnel. A warm cup, a real question, and a little bit of time to actually think.

I’ve been leaning into this more lately — the Balkanish-ness of how I work. Because I noticed something: when I let it in, the content gets better. Not more polished. Better. More honest. More me.

AI doesn’t erase your accent. If you use it with intention, it amplifies it. The Croatian L is still there. The ajmo energy is still there. The Sunday lunch logic is still there. Whatever makes you you — that doesn’t disappear when you open a chatbot. It shows up in every prompt you write, every angle you choose, every word you keep and every one you delete.

So wherever you come from — whether your identity shows up in a specific humor, a philosophy you inherited from your grandmother, a way of seeing problems that nobody else in your field shares — that’s not a liability in the age of AI. That’s your edge.

Ajmo. ☕

Anita 🇭🇷

BabicADesigns

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Last Tuesday, I was building a content strategy for a client. The brief was clear, the audience was defined, the goals were sharp. So I opened my system, gave it everything — tone of voice, audience pain points, brand positioning — and let it draft.

What came back was… fine. Technically correct. Well-structured. The kind of thing you’d nod at in a meeting and say “yeah, that works.”

But it didn’t land. Something was missing.

So I closed the laptop, made myself a kava, sat on the balcony for ten minutes, and thought about what I actually knew about this person that wasn’t in any brief. The thing she told me in passing. The way she laughed when she described her audience. The tension I noticed between what she said she wanted and what she actually needed.

I came back, rewrote the whole thing in twenty minutes, and she replied within an hour: “This is exactly it. How did you know?”

I knew because I was there. AI wasn’t.

There’s a version of the AI conversation that goes like this: AI will replace everything. Your creativity, your expertise, your voice. All of it, automated away by something faster and cheaper.

I’ve been working with AI every single day for years. And I want to offer you a different version — not a reassuring lie, just an honest observation from someone who lives inside these tools.

Here’s what I’ve actually noticed AI cannot do. No matter how good the model. No matter how clever the prompt.

It cannot carry your specific history.

Every perspective you bring to your work was shaped by something. The jobs you’ve had, the places you’ve lived, the things that didn’t work and the things that surprised you. When I write about AI strategy, everything is filtered through eighteen years in international business — through export logistics and cross-border systems, through building things in offices in England and France and Croatia with people who saw the world very differently from each other.

AI can write competently about strategy. It cannot write from that lens. Only you carry yours.

It cannot read your specific audience.

You’ve been watching your people. You know which posts got real responses — not just likes, but actual replies. You know what your readers are really asking when they comment. You know what lands and what doesn’t, and you know it in a way no tool can access — because it lives in the pattern recognition you’ve built over time.

That knowledge? That’s the difference between content that performs and content that actually connects.

It cannot make the judgment calls.

When to be vulnerable. When to hold something back. When to say the thing that might lose you followers but deepen trust with the ones who stay. These are not decisions an algorithm makes well. They’re the decisions that build a brand with soul — and they will always belong to the person behind the brand.

So what does this mean, practically?

It means AI performs best when you’re clear about what only you can bring. The clearer you are on your own perspective, your audience, your values — the better AI works as your creative partner.

It’s not a replacement. It’s an amplifier. And it amplifies whatever you give it.

So give it the real stuff.

That’s actually the most freeing thought I’ve found in this whole AI conversation. The investment you make in knowing yourself, developing your thinking, and staying genuinely close to your audience — that’s not wasted effort in the age of AI.

It’s what makes everything else possible.

Ajmo. ☕

Anita 🧡

BabicADesigns

What’s the part of your work you know AI could never replicate? Not the obvious stuff — the weird, specific, only-you thing. I’d love to hear it.

You know that feeling when someone describes you — and you’re like, “wait, that’s not…” and then two seconds later you think, “…okay, maybe that is me”?

That happened to me this week.

With my own quiz.

A quiz I built. With my own questions. Based on my own framework.

And it still surprised me.

Let me rewind.

I’ve been thinking about voice a lot lately.

Not the “find your niche” kind of voice. Not the “be consistent” kind.

The real one.

The one that makes someone stop mid-scroll and think: her. I want to read her.

Because here’s what I’ve noticed — and I’ve been on Substack long enough now to see the pattern:

The creators who grow aren’t the ones with the best strategy.

They’re the ones whose voice you’d recognize even without their name attached.

You read three sentences and you know it’s them.

That’s not a niche. That’s not a content pillar. That’s something deeper.

And I wanted to find a way to name it.

If you’ve been with me on this journey — from Cassette Tapes to AI vibe checks to My baka’s voice showing up at 2 AM — you know this series has been building toward something.

Each piece was a layer.

Where we come from. How we adapt. What stays.

This one is the next step: Who are you when you write?

Now. The inspiration.

You probably already know Pinkie from AI Meets Girlboss. If you don’t — go follow her. She helps creators build recognizable Substack brands using AI, and she does it with this energy that’s equal parts strategic and playful. She’s one of those people who makes you think “why didn’t I think of that?”

Her Substack Runway — the interactive sketchbook where creators generate fashion illustrations of themselves and add them to a gallery — has been everywhere. You’ve seen the posts. You’ve seen the portraits. Maybe you’ve already added yours.

I did mine weeks ago. Loved it.

And then one night — coffee number three, brain still buzzing — I thought:

What if I did something similar, but for voice?

Not what you wear. But how you write.

Not a fashion portrait. But a creator voice portrait.

A way to find out what makes your writing yours — and then generate an AI image that captures it.

So I built it.

7 questions. No fluff. No “pick your favorite aesthetic” nonsense.

Real questions. The kind that make you pause and think before you click.

At the end, you get your Creator Voice type.

I’m not telling you what the types are.

Nema šanse.

(That’s Croatian for: absolutely not.)

Because the moment your result appears — that little “oh” — that’s the whole point. I’m not spoiling it.

What I will tell you: each result comes with a personalized AI portrait prompt. You copy it, paste it into ChatGPT or Midjourney or Gemini or whatever you use, upload a photo of yourself, and generate your own Creator Voice portrait.

Pixar style. Your face. Your energy. Your type.

And if you want — you can upload it to the gallery. Your portrait, your name, your Substack link. All in one place.

Here’s what happened when I took it.

I was so sure I knew what I’d get.

I mean — I wrote the questions. I defined the types. I know myself, right?

Apparently not.

I got a result I didn’t expect.

And my first reaction was: “No way. That’s wrong.”

My second reaction, about thirty seconds later: “…oh. Oh no. That’s accurate.”

My baka would have laughed. She always said I see myself differently than the world sees me. “Ti misliš jedno, a radiš drugo,” she’d say. You think one thing, but you do another.

Turns out, even your own quiz can hold up a mirror you weren’t ready for.

Here’s my card:

Your turn.

Take it. See what comes up.

Generate your portrait if you feel like it. Add yourself to the gallery if you want.

Or just take the quiz for fun and tell me what you got in the comments. I’m genuinely curious.

Find your Creator Voice

One system, one story, one voice at a time. 🧡

P.S. — If you missed the earlier parts of this series:

#1 From Cassette Tapes to AI Tools

#2 The AI Vibe Check

#3 The Night My Grandmother's Voice Showed Up

It was a Tuesday afternoon. I had my coffee. My laptop. And a client — Ingo Schmidt, owner of Frimontage, a staffing and recruitment company — who had just said something that made me put the coffee down.

“Anita, every time I need to send a candidate profile to a client, I spend an hour on it. Every single time.”

One hour. Per profile. For a company that places candidates every week.

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I just thought: we can fix this.

Four Hours. One Working System.

Using Manus — the same AI agent I use to plan my content week — we built FRIMO Recruiting from scratch. A complete lead and applicant management system: live dashboard, candidate pipeline, client management, matching module, AI-generated emails, and a performance profile generator.

The foundation took 4 hours.

Not 4 weeks. Not 4 months. Four hours to go from a blank screen to a working system with a real database, real data, and a real interface Ingo could open on his laptop the next morning.

What came after was refinement — adding features, testing, polishing. But the core was running before dinner.

What the System Does

One dashboard. Everything that matters.

Instead of opening five different spreadsheets every morning, there’s one screen:

•164 candidates — 81 active, 15 matched, 6 with open follow-ups

•14 active clients — 58 companies in the database, 40 acquisition contacts

•25 active placements in progress

What needs your attention today? One look, and you know.

Every candidate has a full profile: personal data, skills, availability, documents — and a complete activity log. Every call, every email, every note, every meeting, every reminder. Tracked. Searchable. Never lost again.

The Feature That Changed Everything: Performance Profiles

This is the one that made Ingo go quiet.

A performance profile is the document that gets sent to a potential employer when you’re proposing a candidate. It’s the first impression. It has to look professional, be accurate, and represent the candidate well.

Before: Open Word. Copy the template. Fill in all the data manually. Format it. Check it. Export as PDF. Send. Minimum one hour. Every single time.

Now: Open the candidate’s profile. Click “Generate Performance Profile.” The system pulls all the data — name, age, qualifications, experience, skills, availability — formats it automatically with Frimontage’s branding, logo, and layout, and generates a professional PDF. You can still edit it before sending. But the starting point isn’t a blank template anymore. It’s a finished document.

Under one minute. Every time.

When you’re placing multiple candidates a week, that’s not a small detail. That’s hours back in your week. Every week. For a small company where Ingo is essentially running everything himself — that’s not a nice-to-have. That’s survival.

The Matching Module

Candidates and clients don’t just sit in separate lists. They connect.

The matching module links candidates to open positions at clients — and tracks exactly where each placement stands:

•Profile sent — the client has received the candidate’s profile

•Interview — interview scheduled or completed

•Trial day — trial day arranged

•Placed — candidate successfully placed

At any moment, you can see: which candidates are in which stage, with which client. No more “wait, did we send that profile already?” No more lost placements. No more deals falling through the cracks because nobody remembered to follow up.

AI-Generated Outreach Emails

When a match is found, one click is all it takes. You press a button, and the system generates a personalized outreach email — not a template with placeholders, but an actual AI-written email, tailored to the specific client and candidate.

You review it, adjust if needed, and send. The thinking is already done.

The difference between a template and an AI-generated email is the difference between “Dear [Client Name]” and an email that sounds like it was written by someone who actually knows both parties. That’s what lands in the inbox. That’s what gets a response.

What’s Coming Next: Digital Onboarding

The next step is already planned and the mockup exists.

New employees will be welcomed digitally through a branded Frimontage onboarding page. They fill in their documents online — employee questionnaire, employment contract, important rights and information, document checklist. They sign digitally. Everything lands automatically in the system.

No paperwork. No “please send me that form again as a PDF.” No back-and-forth.

Four steps: Welcome → Fill in documents → Sign → Done.

The concept is ready. The build is next. And I’ll write about it when it’s live — if you want me to.

What This Means for You

You probably don’t run a staffing agency. But I’d bet you have a version of this problem.

A document you recreate from scratch every time. A follow-up that falls through the cracks because there’s no system to catch it. A process that takes an hour and shouldn’t. A client relationship that lives in your head instead of somewhere you can actually see it.

When I showed Ingo the finished system, he said something I keep thinking about:

“Anita, I feel like we can automate so much here that administration gets reduced to a minimum of hours per week.”

And then he said: “That gives me time for what actually matters — sales strategy, client relationships, growth.”

That’s it. That’s the whole point.

Speed isn’t just efficiency. Speed is revenue. When a client calls and needs a candidate today, the performance profile is ready in under a minute. The candidate gets placed faster. The client is happy. The invoice goes out.

This is what becomes possible when you stop using AI just for content — and start using it for the processes that actually run your business.

The question I want to leave you with: What’s the one process in your business that costs you the most time right now? The one you keep meaning to fix?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every single response. And the most interesting ones might just become the next Drop.

And one more thing: the digital onboarding system I mentioned — would that be useful to you? Is digital onboarding something you’re thinking about for your own business? Hit reply and let me know. If there’s interest, I’ll write about it. If not, I’ll cover something else.

Your answers shape what lands in your inbox. That’s how this works.

With coffee and Croatian stubbornness,

Anita 🤍

BabicADesigns

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I want to try something different today.

No strategy. No AI tips. No frameworks. Just a question.

But first, let me tell you where this question comes from.

My baka — my grandmother — passed in 2016. She was 93. And she had this way of asking questions that made you feel like she already knew the answer. She wasn’t asking to learn something. She was asking to make you learn something.

She’d sit in her kitchen — always the kitchen, never the living room, because the living room was for guests and she considered herself the host of every conversation, even in her own home — and she’d look at you over her coffee. Not espresso, not latte, just Turkish coffee, strong enough to wake the neighbors. And she’d wait.

She never rushed. That was the thing about her. In a world that was already speeding up, she moved at the speed of truth.

And then she’d ask something like:

“Jesi li sretna?”

Are you happy?

Not “are you successful.” Not “are you making money.” Not “are you productive.” Not “are you growing your audience.”

Are you happy?

Three words. In Croatian, just two. And suddenly you’re sitting there with your mouth open because you realize you haven’t asked yourself that question in months.

The Questions We Forget to Ask

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. About the questions we never ask ourselves because we’re too busy answering everyone else’s.

“What’s your niche?”

“What’s your content strategy?”

“What’s your conversion rate?”

“What’s your Q2 plan?”

Good questions. Important questions. But they’re all outward questions. They point away from you. They ask about the machine, not the person running it.

My baka didn’t care about machines. She cared about people. And she had this almost supernatural ability to ask the one question you were avoiding.

When my cousin got a promotion and came to visit, beaming with pride, my baka didn’t say congratulations. She said: “A tko se brine za tvoju djecu dok ti radiš?” — And who takes care of your children while you work?

Not to be cruel. To be real. Because she knew that sometimes the thing we’re celebrating is also the thing that costs us something. And she believed you should know the price before you pay it.

The Question I’ve Been Avoiding

I’ll go first. Because I’m asking you to be honest, and that only works if I am, too.

The question I’ve been avoiding is this: Am I building something I actually want, or am I building something I think I should want?

Because there’s a version of my business that looks perfect on paper. The content calendar is full. The products are listed. The automations are running. The analytics are... well, the analytics are what they are. We’re working on it.

But when I sit with that question — really sit with it, the way my baka would have made me sit with it, with coffee and silence and nowhere to hide — I realize that some of the things I’m building are answers to questions nobody asked me.

Nobody asked me to post every day. I decided that. Nobody asked me to have five different content series. I decided that. Nobody asked me to optimize my funnel at 11 PM on a Wednesday. I decided that.

And my baka, if she were here, would look at me over her Turkish coffee and say: “A zašto?”

And why?

Not judgmental. Just curious. The way only someone who lived 93 years can be curious — with the patience of someone who knows that most of the things we rush toward aren’t going anywhere.

What She Would Have Asked You

If my baka could sit across from you right now — in her kitchen, with the good cups, because you’re a guest — she would not ask about your business.

She would not ask about your follower count or your email list or your latest launch.

She would ask you one of these:

“Kad si se zadnji put smijala tako da te boljelo?”

When was the last time you laughed so hard it hurt?

“Tko te zove kad je teško?”

Who do you call when it gets hard?

“Što bi radila da nitko ne gleda?”

What would you do if nobody was watching?

These aren’t business questions. They’re life questions. And in my experience, the answers to life questions are always better business strategies than anything you’ll find in a course.

Because when you know what makes you laugh, you know your voice. When you know who you call, you know your values. When you know what you’d do if nobody was watching, you know your purpose.

And purpose, my baka would say, is the only strategy that doesn’t expire.

Your Turn

I’m going to ask you one question. Just one. And I’d love it if you actually answered — not in your head, but here. Reply to this email. Or leave a comment. Or send me a message. Whatever feels right.

Here it is. My baka’s question, translated for 2026:

If you could only do ONE thing in your business for the next 30 days — just one — and everything else had to wait... what would it be?

Not the smartest thing. Not the most strategic thing. The thing that makes your stomach do that little flip. The thing you keep pushing to “next month.” The thing that scares you a little because it actually matters.

Što bi to bilo?

Tell me. I’m sitting here with my coffee — yes, at whatever hour you’re reading this — and I genuinely want to know.

Because my baka taught me that the best conversations start with one honest question. And the best businesses? They start the same way.

With love and a strong cup of coffee,

Anita

BabicADesigns — Where soul meets system.

P.S. — My baka also taught me that you should never leave a guest without offering them something. So here: if you’re feeling stuck between “what I should do” and “what I want to do,” my Sohana — The Inner Work Muse might help you find the answer. She’s an AI guide I built for exactly those moments. Hop over, if you want to try the 21-day journey. No pressure. Just an open door.

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Sunday night. 9 PM. Third coffee. Laptop open. Couch.

This is the moment most creators dread: the blank screen. The “what am I even posting this week” spiral. The one where you open seven tabs, scroll through three apps, screenshot something you’ll never look at again, and end up watching a documentary about octopuses because — well, because your brain needed an escape route.

I used to be that person. Every. Single. Week.

And then I found Manus.

Not in a “this tool changed my life” influencer way. More in a “I accidentally discovered that my AI assistant could do the thing I hated most” kind of way. Like finding out your quiet neighbor is actually a DJ. You didn’t see it coming, but now you can’t unhear it.

What Manus Actually Is (For Those Who Haven’t Met)

Let me back up. Because when I say “Manus,” some of you might think I’m talking about another chatbot. I’m not.

Manus is an AI agent. Not a chatbot that answers questions — an agent that actually does things. It researches. It writes. It plans. It builds. It creates spreadsheets, websites, presentations, social media content. It reads documents. It analyzes data. It remembers what you told it three weeks ago.

Think of it like this: ChatGPT is the friend who gives great advice. Manus is the friend who gives great advice and then actually helps you move apartments on Saturday.

The difference matters. Because as a solopreneur, I don’t just need ideas. I need execution.

How My Content Week Actually Works Now

Let me walk you through what happened this week. Not a theoretical “you could do this” tutorial. What I actually did. Step by step.

Step 1: The Brain Dump (Sunday Evening)

I start by telling Manus what’s on my mind. Not in a structured way. More like texting a friend:

“Okay, this week I need a Drop article for Tuesday and a Gentle Note for Thursday. I’ve been thinking about how I use you for my content — maybe that’s a topic? Also, I have analytics data from Substack, can you look at what’s working? And I need Notes for every day, plus Instagram posts for both articles.”

That’s it. No brief. No project plan. No framework. Just me, talking.

[Screenshot-Stelle: Hier könnte ein Screenshot deines Chats mit Manus hin, wo du die Woche planst]

Step 2: The Research (Manus Does the Heavy Lifting)

Here’s where it gets interesting. I uploaded my Substack analytics — just the raw CSV files — and asked Manus to analyze them. Within minutes, I had:

•A complete breakdown of which articles performed best (and why)

•Open rates, engagement rates, view trends over time

•A clear diagnosis: my personal, soulful articles consistently outperform my strategy articles

•Specific recommendations for this week’s topics

I didn’t have to build a spreadsheet. I didn’t have to do the math. I didn’t have to pretend I enjoy looking at numbers. (I don’t. I’m a storyteller, not a data analyst. My baka — who passed in 2016 at 93 — would have said: “Nemoj reć hop prije nego što preskočiš.” Don’t celebrate the numbers before you understand what they mean.)

Step 3: The Topic Discussion (This Is Where It Gets Good)

Now, Manus didn’t just hand me a topic and say “write this.” We had a conversation. A real back-and-forth.

Manus suggested three options. I said: “That doesn’t feel right. The Drop is supposed to be practical, like a learning tool. Not a think piece.” And Manus adjusted. Not in a “yes, ma’am” way — in a “okay, I understand the difference now, here’s a better approach” way.

This is the part most people don’t understand about working with AI: it’s a conversation, not a command. You don’t type a prompt and get a perfect result. You talk. You push back. You refine. You say “that’s not me” and the AI learns what is you.

My tata — he passed in 2014, a man of very few words — used to say “Ne odmah, nego sad!” Not right away, but NOW. To this day I have no idea what the difference between odmah and sad is. But with Manus, I kind of get it now: the first answer is odmah — quick, automatic. The real answer comes when you push for sad — the one that’s actually right.

Step 4: The Writing (Together, Not Alone)

Once we agreed on the topic, Manus wrote a first draft. And here’s the honest truth: the first draft is never perfect. It’s about 70% there. The structure is solid. The research is accurate. The flow makes sense.

But the voice? That’s where I come in.

I read through it and add the things only I can add: the coffee at 9 PM, the Balkan humor, the moment where I break a serious point with something dry and unexpected. The Croatian words that don’t translate. The čežnja — that ache between longing and homesickness that English doesn’t have a word for.

Manus gives me the bones. I add the soul.

Step 5: The Social Media Content (The Part I Used to Hate)

This is where Manus really saves me. Because after the article is written, I still need:

•12 Substack Notes (morning and evening, Tuesday through Sunday)

•An Instagram carousel or single image post

•Captions for Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok

•A Story teaser

•A first comment for Instagram

Before Manus, this would take me an entire day. Now? Manus drafts everything based on the article. Same voice. Same themes. Adapted for each platform.

I review, adjust, add my touch, and schedule. Done.

[Screenshot-Stelle: Die verschiedenen Social Media Texte, die Manus erstellt hat]

Step 6: The Visuals (Yes, That Too)

Manus can also generate images. For my Substack article headers, I describe the scene I want — “a blonde woman on a Croatian balcony, coffee in hand, looking at the Adriatic, illustrated style, dusty rose and sage green palette” — and it creates options.

Are they perfect? Not always. Sometimes the AI gives my illustrated self brown hair instead of blonde. Sometimes the swan looks more like a confused duck. But it gives me a starting point, and I refine in Canva with my own fonts, my own logo, my own brand elements.

What This Actually Saves Me

Let me be specific, because vague “it saves so much time” claims help nobody:

That’s not a small difference. That’s the difference between content creation being my entire week and content creation being my Tuesday morning.

The rest of the week? I work on client projects. I build systems. I drink coffee. I live.

The Part That Surprised Me Most

Here’s what I didn’t expect: Manus made me a better writer.

Not because it writes better than me. It doesn’t — not in my voice, not with my stories, not with the things that make my content mine.

But because it handles the parts I’m bad at (research, structure, platform adaptation), I have more energy for the parts I’m good at (stories, voice, connection). I’m not exhausted by the time I get to the creative part. I arrive fresh. With coffee. Ready.

It’s like having a sous chef who does all the prep work so you can focus on the actual cooking. The dish is still yours. The taste is still yours. But you didn’t have to chop the onions.

Your Move This Week

If you’ve never tried working with an AI agent (not a chatbot — an agent), here’s my challenge:

Pick one task you dread this week. Not the creative stuff. The admin stuff. The research. The planning. The “I should really organize my content calendar but I’d rather reorganize my spice drawer” stuff.

Give it to an AI agent. See what happens.

And then tell me: What did you get back? Was it useful? Did it surprise you?

I genuinely want to know. Reply to this email or drop a comment. Because the best part of this whole Manus experiment isn’t the time I save — it’s the conversations that come from sharing it.

Quick Drops

DeepSeek V4-Pro just dropped with a 75% discount. China’s AI lab is making serious moves. For creators, this means: more competition in the AI space = better tools = lower prices. The race is on, and we’re the ones who benefit.

Vibe coding is officially a thing. A career coach with zero coding experience built a passive income app using AI tools. Business Insider covered it. The barrier between “I have an idea” and “I have a product” has never been thinner.

Next week on The Drop: How I built a complete lead and applicant system for a staffing agency. With AI. And a lot of coffee. You won’t want to miss that one.

One drop. One idea. One shift.

This week’s shift: The tool is only as good as the conversation you have with it.

Until next Tuesday,

Anita

BabicADesigns — Where soul meets system.

P.S. — Want to see what’s possible when you combine AI tools with real strategy? Check out my PromptPower Deluxe — because the best AI in the world still needs a human who knows what to ask.

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What's your Vibe today? Check it out ✨

I need to tell you about my baka.

Not because this is a nostalgia piece. Not because grandmothers are trending on Substack. But because last Wednesday at 11 PM, while I was rewriting the same Instagram caption for the fourth time — with a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago, because apparently I’m the kind of person who makes coffee and then forgets to drink it — she walked into my head uninvited.

The way she used to walk into our kitchen. Without knocking. Carrying a pot of something that smelled like home.

She said — well, she didn’t say anything. She passed in 2016, at 93, with an opinion about everything until the very last day. But I heard her voice as clearly as if she were standing behind me:

“Zašto se pretvaraš da si netko drugi?”

Why are you pretending to be someone else?

I closed my laptop. I didn’t rewrite the caption. I sat in the dark for twenty minutes.

And that’s when something cracked open.

The Immigrant Daughter’s Content Problem

Here’s something I’ve never written about publicly, because it felt too personal for a “business” newsletter. But I’m done pretending this is just a business newsletter.

I grew up between two worlds. My parents came from Croatia to Germany in the 1970s — my tata from a tiny village called Pandore, up in the Velebit mountains near Senj, and my mama from a small village near Slunj. They brought everything with them: the language, the food, the humor, the stubbornness, the belief that hard work fixes everything and feelings are best discussed never.

And I grew up learning to translate. Not just languages — I speak several — but worlds. At school, I was the Croatian kid. At home, I was the quiet one — I have three sisters, and I was the one my mama could sit on the couch with the words “Ne mrdaj” — don’t move — and I wouldn’t move. Apparently, I didn’t even blink. In Croatia, visiting family in the summers, my sisters and I were Švabice — the German ones. Not quite Croatian enough there. Not quite German enough here.

And online? Online, I was... what, exactly?

That’s the question that hit me at 11 PM.

Because somewhere along the way, I had created yet another version of myself for the internet. A version that was polished and strategic and used words like “framework” and “leverage” and “content pillar.” A version that sounded like every other creator writing about AI and branding.

A version my baka would not have recognized. A version that would have made her walk into my office, look at my screen, and say something devastating in three words — the way only Balkan grandmothers can.

The Three Languages in My Head

I want to try something with you. I want to show you how I actually think — not the cleaned-up version, but the real one.

When I’m working on a brand strategy for a client, I think in English. It’s structured. It’s precise. “Define the core value proposition. Identify the visual language. Build the messaging hierarchy.” Clean. Professional. Useful.

When I’m feeling something — really feeling it, not just thinking about feeling it — I switch to Croatian. There’s a word, čežnja, that means something between longing and homesickness and the ache you feel when you miss someone who’s sitting right next to you. English doesn’t have that word. German has Sehnsucht, which is close but not quite. Croatian has čežnja, and when I feel it, that’s the language it arrives in.

And when I’m being funny — the dry, deadpan, “everything is fine while the house is burning” kind of funny — that’s pure Balkan. That’s the humor I grew up with. The humor of Lepa Brena movies and Audicija and my uncle telling the most devastating story you’ve ever heard with a completely straight face and then asking if anyone wants more rakija. My tata’s village, Pandore — let’s just say it could have easily been called Pijandore. Rakija for breakfast wasn’t a joke there. It was Tuesday.

Three languages. Three versions of me. And my content has been using exactly one of them.

The Experiment

So I tried something stupid. Or brave. I’m not sure which — on the Balkan, those are often the same thing.

I wrote a Substack Note the way I’d actually tell the story to a friend. Not my “content creator” voice. My real voice. The one that switches languages mid-sentence. The one that makes a joke when things get too serious. The one that references my grandmother and Croatian villages in the same breath as AI tools.

I didn’t plan it. I didn’t outline it. I didn’t run it through any framework.

I just... talked. On paper.

And here’s what happened: More people responded to that one unplanned Note than to my last three carefully structured articles combined.

I sat there looking at the notifications and thought about my tata. He passed in 2014, but his voice still lives in my head rent-free. He was a man of few words — the kind who could end an entire argument with one look. When things worked out unexpectedly, he’d just say: “Vidiš?” See? That was it. No explanation. No “I told you so.” Just vidiš, with a shrug, like the answer had been obvious all along and you were the only one who couldn’t see it.

He was also the kind of man who once told me: “Ne odmah, nego sad!” — Not right away, but NOW. I still don’t know what the difference is. Odmah and sad literally mean the same thing. But when he said it, you didn’t ask questions. You moved.

I think about that a lot when it comes to content. We spend so much time planning to be authentic odmah — soon, eventually, when we’re ready. Maybe the answer is sad. Now. Even if it’s messy.

What I Actually Learned (The Un-Framework)

I’m not going to give you “5 Steps to Finding Your Authentic Voice.” If I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that the moment you turn authenticity into a framework, it stops being authentic.

But I will tell you what I noticed. Not as a strategy. As a confession.

The parts of me I was hiding were the parts people wanted to see. The Croatian references. The dry humor. The spirituality. The fact that I sometimes pull a Tarot card before making a business decision — yes, really, and no, I’m not going to apologize for it. These weren’t “unprofessional.” They were the only things that made my content different from the 47,000 other people writing about AI and branding.

My “messy” voice performed better than my “clean” voice. Not because messy is better. But because messy was mine. The clean voice was a composite of every creator I’d been reading for six months. Professional, yes. Mine? Ne. Not even close.

The bilingual thing isn’t a bug. For years, I treated my multilingual brain as something to manage — make sure the English is perfect, don’t let the German structures sneak in, definitely don’t drop Croatian words into a business article. But that mixing? That’s exactly what makes my perspective different. I see patterns between cultures that monolingual creators can’t see. I make connections between a Croatian proverb and a branding principle that nobody else would make. That’s not confusion. That’s range.

The Uncomfortable Truth About “Finding Your Voice”

Everyone says “find your voice” like it’s a treasure hunt. Like your voice is hiding somewhere and you just need the right map.

But what if your voice isn’t lost? What if it’s right there — in the way you talk to your best friend over coffee at midnight, in the stories you tell at family dinners, in the jokes that make your people laugh — and the only reason it’s not in your content is because you decided it wasn’t “professional” enough?

I spent months trying to sound like the creators I admired. And they’re brilliant — truly. But I’m not them. I’m the daughter of Croatian immigrants who writes romance novels and pulls Tarot cards and makes brand strategies that somehow work, and I do all of this while switching between three languages in my head like a radio that can’t find the right station.

That’s not a problem to fix. That’s a voice to use.

My mama used to sit me on the couch and say “Ne mrdaj.” Don’t move. And I didn’t. I was the quiet one. The observer. The one who watched everything and said nothing. Apparently, I didn’t even blink.

Turns out, that’s exactly the skill that makes me good at what I do now. I watch. I notice. I see the thing nobody else sees. And then — when I finally speak — it means something.

I just forgot to bring that into my content.

What Changes Now

I’m not going to promise you that every article from now on will be perfect. I’m not even sure what “perfect” means anymore — probably something a LinkedIn guru made up to sell a course.

But I am going to promise you this: it’ll be me. The real one. The one with the accent you can hear even in writing. The one who makes a čežnja reference in a business article and doesn’t explain it because some things are better felt than translated.

If that’s not for you, I understand. There are plenty of clean, polished, framework-heavy newsletters out there.

But if you’ve ever felt like you’re performing a version of yourself online that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize — onda si na pravom mjestu.

Then you’re in the right place.

See you next time,

Anita

BabicADesigns — Where soul meets system.

P.S. — Next in the Creator System Series: how I’m actually using AI to amplify my real voice instead of replacing it. Spoiler: it involves talking to Manus the way I’d talk to a friend, not the way I’d write a brief. Turns out, AI is better at helping you sound like yourself when you stop trying to sound like everyone else.

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The Soulful Tip Jar 🧡
My Substack will always remain free to read. But if this article gave you a little "aha" moment or made you smile today, or if you just want to support my work without committing to a subscription, you can leave a little something in my tip jar.

Drop Tip in the Jar ✨

Last Tuesday, I was sitting on my couch with my second coffee of the evening — yes, I’m one of those people who drinks coffee at 9 PM and still sleeps fine, it’s a Balkan thing — scrolling through LinkedIn. You know that late-evening scroll where you’re not really looking for anything, you’re just... avoiding the dishes.

And then I saw it.

A post. Simple. No carousel, no fancy graphic. Just a sentence:

“Solopreneurs are running 7-figure businesses with a $250/month AI stack that replaces $800K in senior hires.”

I put down my cup.

Not because the number shocked me. Numbers like that fly around Instagram & Co. like confetti at a Croatian wedding — everyone throws them, nobody cleans up the mess.

No. I put down my coffee because I recognized something in that sentence. Something I’ve been feeling for months but couldn’t quite name.

The Feeling Before the Thought

You know that moment when you hear a song in a language you don’t speak, but your body responds before your brain does? That’s what this was.

Because here’s the thing: I’ve been building my business as a solopreneur for a while now. And somewhere between the Canva templates and the AI automations and the Substack articles, something shifted. Not dramatically. Not overnight. More like the way the light changes in Senj when autumn comes — you don’t notice it until one evening you’re sitting on the terrace and realize the shadows are longer than they were last week.

The shift is this: I’m not just using AI tools anymore. I’m running a business that couldn’t exist without them.

And that sentence — the $250 stack, the $800K team — it wasn’t news. It was a mirror.

What Actually Happened This Week

Let me give you the real picture, because the internet loves a headline but hates the nuance.

This week, the “solopreneur AI stack” conversation exploded. Not because of one tool or one launch, but because of a convergence. Several things happened at once:

The numbers got real. Multiple reports confirmed that solo founders using AI automation tools (think: Manus for research and content, Make.com for workflows, Canva for design) are genuinely operating at a level that used to require teams of 5-10 people. Not in theory. In practice. With receipts.

Google dropped new chips. Google announced its next generation of TPUs — the custom chips that power AI models — at Google Cloud Next. Why does this matter for you? Because cheaper, faster AI infrastructure means the tools you use get better and cheaper. The $250/month stack of today might be $100/month by December.

Apple replaced Siri with Gemini. Let that sink in. Apple — the company that would rather die than admit someone else does something better — quietly replaced its own voice assistant with Google’s AI. When Apple surrenders, you know the game has changed.

The “agentic” shift accelerated. Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork, Anthropic’s Managed Agents, and a dozen smaller tools all moved in the same direction: AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but actually does the work. Not “helps you” do the work. Does it.

The Part Nobody’s Talking About

Here’s where I want to get honest with you. Because everyone is celebrating the $250 stack and the solopreneur revolution, and I’m sitting here with my coffee thinking: Da, ali...

Yes, but.

Yes, the tools are incredible. But nobody’s talking about the weird loneliness of it. The fact that when your AI handles your research, your scheduling, your first drafts, your customer emails — you’re left alone with the one thing AI can’t do: deciding what actually matters.

I had a moment last week. I was using Manus to research a topic for this newsletter. And it came back with something brilliant. Structured. Well-sourced. Better than what I would have found in three hours of Googling.

And I sat there and thought: Okay. But what do I actually think about this?

That’s the real shift. It’s not about whether you can afford the tools. It’s about whether you’ve done the inner work to know what to do with them.

My baka — my grandmother, who lived to 93 and had an opinion about everything until the very last day — used to say: “Nemoj reć hop prije nego što preskočiš.” Don’t say “hop” before you’ve jumped. Meaning: don’t celebrate the tool before you’ve done the work.

She passed in 2016, but I swear she would have looked at all these solopreneurs posting their $250 AI stacks on LinkedIn and said exactly that. With her arms crossed. And then she would have asked if anyone’s actually making money or just making screenshots.

My tata — he passed in 2014, but his voice is still the loudest in my head — he would have said even less. Just: “Vidiš?” See? And that would have been enough. He was a man of few words. The kind who once told me “Ne odmah, nego sad!” — not right away, but NOW. To this day, I have no idea what the difference is. Odmah and sad mean the same thing. But when he said it, you moved.

The Soulful Reframe

Everyone’s asking: “What’s the best AI stack for solopreneurs?”

Wrong question.

The right question is: “What’s the one thing in your business that only you can do — and are you spending enough time doing it?”

Because the $250 stack doesn’t replace you. It replaces everything around you. The admin. The research. The formatting. The scheduling. The first drafts.

What’s left is the core. The taste. The intuition. The weird connection you make between a client’s childhood memory and their brand color. The moment you look at a design and think ne, to nije to — no, that’s not it — and you can’t explain why, but you’re right.

That’s not a $250 problem. That’s a lifetime-of-being-you problem. And no stack in the world can solve it for you.

Your Move This Week

Don’t go shopping for AI tools. You probably have enough.

Instead, try this: Block 30 minutes this week. No tools. No screens. Just you and a notebook — or a voice memo, if you’re like me and think better out loud.

Ask yourself: If my AI handled everything else perfectly, what would I spend my time on?

Write down whatever comes. Don’t edit it. Don’t make it strategic.

That messy, unfiltered answer? That’s your actual value. That’s the thing the $250 stack is trying to free you up to do.

Now go do it.

Quick Drops

A few more things that caught my eye this week:

Claude Mythos 5 exists but you can’t use it. Anthropic built a model so powerful they triggered their own highest safety protocol and decided not to release it. A 10-trillion-parameter model that stays locked in a vault. We’re officially in the era where AI companies build things they’re afraid to ship. Let that sit with you for a moment.

Google vs. Nvidia: the chip war heats up. Google is developing new AI chips with Marvell Technology to reduce dependence on Nvidia. For creators and solopreneurs, this means: more competition = lower prices = better tools for us. The big companies fighting is actually good news for the little ones.

One drop. One idea. One shift.

This week’s shift: The tools are ready. The question is whether you are.

Until next Tuesday,

Anita

BabicADesigns — Where soul meets system.

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There is a strange phenomenon that happens when you build something online. You start with a blank slate, a lot of passion, and a willingness to try anything. You experiment. You fail. You learn. You grow.

And then, if you keep at it, you find something that works. You find your rhythm. You build an audience. You create products. You establish a brand.

But what happens when the thing you built no longer feels like you?

What happens when the strategies that got you here feel heavy, the content feels repetitive, and the systems you created feel like a cage rather than a foundation?

This is the messy middle of success that nobody talks about. It’s the moment you realize you have outgrown your own creation.

The Fear of the Pivot

For the past few weeks, I’ve been looking closely at my own business. I’ve been looking at the products I created last year, the content I’ve been sharing, and the platforms I’ve been prioritizing.

And I realized something uncomfortable: I was holding onto things simply because I had built them, not because they still served my vision or my audience.

There is a profound fear in pivoting. We worry that if we change our message, we will lose the people who followed us for the old one. We worry that if we retire a product, we are throwing away the time and effort it took to create it. We worry that starting over means admitting we were wrong.

But starting over isn’t a failure. It’s an evolution.

The Courage to Edit Your Business

Think about a beautiful garden. A master gardener doesn’t just plant seeds and walk away. They prune. They weed. They cut back the dead branches so the healthy ones can thrive. They sometimes uproot entire sections to make room for something new.

Your business is a garden. And sometimes, the most soulful thing you can do is to take a pair of shears to it.

It takes courage to look at a product you spent weeks creating and say, “This is no longer aligned with who I am today.” It takes courage to look at a social media strategy that is technically “working” and say, “This feels exhausting, I need to change it.”

But that courage is where the magic happens.

The Freedom of the Blank Slate

When you give yourself permission to edit your business, you reclaim the freedom of the blank slate. You aren’t starting from zero—you are starting from experience. You are bringing all the wisdom, the skills, and the intuition you’ve gathered along the way, but you are applying them to a vision that actually excites you now.

For me, that means simplifying. It means focusing deeply on this Substack as my home base. It means retiring products that feel outdated and creating new ones that solve the problems my audience is facing today. It means embracing a visual identity that feels elegant, strong, and deeply personal (keep an eye out for a certain graceful bird making an appearance soon).

It means building systems that support my soul, not just my bank account.

A Gentle Question for You

If you were to look at your own business, your own projects, or even your own daily routines right now… what is one thing you are holding onto simply because you built it?

What is one thing that feels heavy, that you could gently let go of to make room for something new?

You have permission to change your mind. You have permission to evolve. You have permission to start over, right in the middle of your success.

Because the most beautiful things are rarely built on the first try. They are built, edited, refined, and rebuilt until they finally feel like home.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What are you currently editing or refining in your own work? Hit reply and let me know—I read every single one.

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What's your Vibe today? Check it out ✨

We’ve all been there. You spend weeks building the perfect funnel. The lead magnet is flawless. The email sequence is a masterclass in copywriting. The automation is running smoothly in the background.

You launch it. You wait. And… crickets. Or worse, you get the downloads, but nobody buys the next step.

For a long time, the digital marketing world sold us a dream: “Set it and forget it.” Build the machine, and the machine will do the work. But here is the honest reality I’ve learned from building my own systems and helping others do the same: People don’t buy from machines. They buy from people.

When we over-automate, we strip the soul out of our business. We create a sterile, transactional environment that feels cold. And in a world where AI can generate a thousand emails in a minute, a cold, transactional funnel is the fastest way to be ignored.

The “Identity Split” in Your Funnel

Think about your own experience as a consumer. When you download a free guide, what makes you actually read it? What makes you trust the person who wrote it enough to buy their course or book their service?

It’s not the design of the PDF. It’s the feeling that the person on the other side actually understands your specific, messy, human problem.

The biggest leak in most funnels isn’t a broken link or a bad subject line. It’s an “Identity Split.” Your social media presence might be warm, inviting, and soulful. But the moment someone enters your funnel, they are hit with aggressive, generic sales copy that sounds like a tech-robot wrote it.

The disconnect breaks the trust.

The One Human Touchpoint You Need to Add Back

You don’t need to tear down your automations. Automation is beautiful—it gives us our time back. But we need to use automation to facilitate human connection, not replace it.

Here is the one touchpoint you need to add back into your funnel today: The “Unscalable” Welcome.

Instead of sending a generic “Here is your download” email, try this:

1.The Soulful Hook: Start the email with a genuine, personal thought. Why did you create this resource? What was the messy middle you were in when you figured this out?

2.The Direct Question: Ask them one specific question that requires a reply. Not “What do you think?” but something like, “What is the one thing you are struggling with right now when it comes to [Topic]?”

3.The Promise: Tell them you actually read every reply. And then, actually do it.

When someone replies to that first email, you have moved them from a “lead” to a “human.” You have started a conversation. And conversations are where real business happens.

The Strategy Behind the Soul

This isn’t just about being nice. It’s highly strategic.

When you invite replies, you are training the email algorithms (like Gmail) that your emails are important and wanted. This drastically improves your deliverability for future emails.

More importantly, you are gathering real-time data on what your audience actually needs. You aren’t guessing what product to build next; they are telling you in their replies.

Your Action Step for This Week

Take 15 minutes today to review the first email in your main funnel. Read it out loud. Does it sound like you? Does it sound like a human being talking to another human being?

If it sounds like a sterile tech-robot, rewrite it. Add your soul back in. Ask a question. Invite a conversation.

Because the most powerful system you can build is one that makes your audience feel seen.

If you are ready to build systems that feel as good as they perform, I’m working on something new. It’s a way to get the exact brand foundation and digital ecosystem you need, without the overwhelm. Keep an eye out for the “Soulful Brand Starter Kit” coming soon.

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Welcome back to the Creator System Series! In the first part, we took a little trip down memory lane—from mixtapes on cassette to the AI tools of today. We talked about how systems and tools might change, but the intention behind them always stays the same.

Today, we’re getting a bit more playful.

When I work with creators, I quickly notice one thing: everyone has a completely different way of handling systems, content, and AI. Some have a perfectly color-coded spreadsheet for everything (and probably alphabetize their spice rack). Others have 500 open tabs and just hope for the best. And then there are those who let AI do all the work and wonder why their latest post sounds like a corporate robot trying to sell insurance.

That’s why today, we’re doing the ultimate AI Vibe Check.

Find out what kind of creator system type you are and which AI tool is your absolute “soulmate” to take your business to the next level.

Ready? Grab a coffee (or matcha) and keep track of your answers!

Question 1: You sit down to plan your content for the week. What actually happens?

A) I open my meticulously crafted Notion dashboard, cross-reference my quarterly goals, and spend three hours adjusting the column widths. I write exactly zero posts.

B) I stare at a blank screen until the panic sets in, then I aggressively scroll through Pinterest for “inspiration” until I end up looking at recipes for sourdough bread.

C) I don’t plan. I just let my 14-step n8n automation scrape the internet, feed it to an AI, and schedule it. I haven’t written a word myself since 2023.

Question 2: What does your relationship with AI look like?

A) It’s basically my therapist. I tell it my deepest fears about my niche, ask it if my tone is “too salesy,” and then ignore its advice anyway.

B) We are in a toxic relationship. I give it a terrible, one-sentence prompt, it gives me garbage back, and I complain that “AI just doesn’t get my vibe.”

C) I speak to it exclusively in complex, multi-layered prompt frameworks. If it uses the word “delve” or “tapestry,” I immediately delete the chat and start over.

Question 3: Be honest. What is your biggest “content sin”?

A) I have 47 drafts sitting in my folder waiting for “the right time.” Spoiler alert: The right time was six months ago.

B) I post three days in a row, feel like an absolute content god, and then completely ghost my audience for three weeks because I “need to recharge.”

C) I spend more time building the system to post the content than I do creating the content. My Zapier account is a work of art; my Instagram grid is a ghost town.

The Reveal: We See You.

Tally up which letter you chose the most!

Mostly A: The “Paralyzed Perfectionist”

You love structure, depth, and making sure everything is just right. Your content is probably amazing, but nobody knows because it’s all locked in a Google Doc titled “Ideas_Final_V4_ActuallyFinal.docx”. You are standing in your own way because you think every post needs to be a Pulitzer-winning masterpiece.

Your AI Soulmate: ManusAI (As your autonomous executor).

You’ve outgrown basic chatbots. You need an autonomous agent like ManusAI that doesn’t just chat, but actually does the work. Give it your messy, overthought brain dump and let it autonomously structure, format, and prepare the final piece. Stop overthinking and let Manus execute. Hit publish before you have time to regret it.

Mostly B: The “Chaotic Muse”

You are driven entirely by vibes and caffeine. When inspiration strikes, you are a force of nature. But consistency? Never heard of her. You treat your content calendar like a loose suggestion, and your audience never knows if they’re getting three posts today or radio silence until next month.

Your AI Soulmate: KlingAI & Midjourney.

You are visually driven and hate staring at blank pages! Use AI to generate aesthetic, scroll-stopping visuals first. Once you have the vibe right, the words will follow. (Also, please build a simple “Idea Dump” folder on your phone so you have backup when the muse decides to take a vacation).

Mostly C: The “Frankenstein Automator”

You love efficiency so much that you’ve automated the soul right out of your business. Why write a heartfelt caption when a bot can do it in 0.2 seconds? You’ve built so many workflows that you’re not entirely sure what’s posting where anymore. Your audience wants to connect with you, not your perfectly optimized funnels.

Your AI Soulmate: n8n (But with a heart).

You already have the tech down. Your next level is to make your automations actually sound human. Spend less time building new Zaps and more time training your AI models on your actual brand voice. Add a little soul to that server room before your audience thinks you’ve been replaced by a toaster.

So, which one are you? (And yes, it’s okay if you felt personally attacked by more than one of these).

Whether you’re overthinking every comma, riding the chaotic wave of inspiration, or automating yourself out of a job—the perfect creator system is the one that actually gets you to hit “publish.”

Speaking of vibes... if you need a little playful guidance for your day (and not your content strategy): In yesterday’s edition of The Drop, I introduced my new Vibe Check Oracle. It’s a fun, interactive little app where you draw a card to get your daily dose of inspiration and discover exactly what kind of energy you should bring to your day. It’s basically a magic 8-ball for your soul. Definitely check it out!

The Drop | I cheated on ChatGPT with Manus

Until next time,

Anita 🧡

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Let’s be honest for a second.

We all have that one tool we’ve been loyal to for ages. For me, it was ChatGPT. We spent hours together. We brainstormed, we wrote, we strategized. It was a solid relationship.

But lately? The spark was gone. It felt a bit... predictable.

Everyone in the creator space is currently screaming about Claude. “Claude is the new king!” “Claude writes better!” I tried it. It’s fine. But it didn’t give me that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling.

And then, I met Manus.

Why Manus is different (and why I’m slightly obsessed)

Here is the thing about most AI tools: They chat with you. They give you text. They give you code. But you still have to take that text or code and do something with it. You have to be the builder.

Manus doesn’t just chat. Manus builds.

It’s an autonomous AI agent. You give it a vision, and it opens a browser, writes the code, sets up the server, and actually creates the thing for you. Right in front of your eyes. It’s like having a brilliant, slightly caffeinated developer sitting next to you, turning your wild ideas into reality in minutes.

I didn’t want to build another boring CRM or a complex funnel to test it out. I wanted to build something that feels like us. Something soulful, slightly playful, and completely unnecessary but absolutely delightful.

Enter: The Vibe Check Oracle ✨

I asked Manus to build a tiny, interactive web app. No coding from my side. Just a prompt describing the vibe, the colors, and the humor I wanted.

But I added a twist: I wanted it to be personalized, and I wanted people to be able to download their result to share it on Instagram Stories.

Less than 5 minutes later, this existed.

👉 Click here to draw your personalized Vibe Card for today

(Go ahead, try it for fun. Enter your name and see what you get. My vibe today was: “Anita, your vibe is: A romantically distracted time-traveling artist who lost their wand but found a really good playlist.” Accurate.)

The Playbook: How to build your own Viral Mini-App with Manus

The real magic isn’t just that this app exists. The magic is how easy it was to create.

As creators, we often get stuck because we have a great idea for an interactive tool (a quiz, a calculator, a fun generator), but we lack the technical skills to build it. Manus completely removes that barrier.

Here is the exact step-by-step process I used, so you can build your own.

Step 1: The Vision

Before you open Manus, you need to know what you want. Keep it simple for your first try.

•What does it do? (Generates a random, funny sentence based on three categories).

•The Viral Element: (It asks for a name to personalize the result, and includes a “Save to Share” button so people can post it on social media).

•How should it look? (Soulful, minimalist, using my brand colors: #FAF9F6 for background, #D4A373 for accents).

Step 2: The Prompt

Manus needs clear instructions. Here is the exact prompt I used to generate the Vibe Check Oracle:

“I want to build a simple, interactive web app called ‘The Vibe Check Oracle’.The Functionality:

1.First, show an input field asking for the user’s first name.

2.Then, a button that says ‘Draw a Vibe Card’.

3.When clicked, it should randomly generate a sentence combining three elements: an adjective, a character, and a situation.

4.The result should say: ‘[Name]’s Vibe: [Generated Sentence]’.

5.Add a ‘Save to Share’ button that lets the user download the card as an image (using html2canvas) so they can share it on Instagram Stories.

The Content:

•Adjectives: A caffeinated, A slightly feral, A deeply soulful...

•Characters: fairy godmother, main character, overthinking poet...

•Situations: who lost their wand but found a really good playlist, currently negotiating with the universe over a matcha latte...

The Design: Make it look beautiful, modern, and soulful. Use a soft off-white background (#FAF9F6), dark grey text (#2D2D2D), and a warm caramel accent color (#D4A373). Use elegant serif fonts for headings and clean sans-serif for text. Include my brand name ‘BabicADesigns’ at the top.”

Step 3: Let Manus Work

Once you hit enter, Manus takes over. You can literally watch it create the project folder, write the React code, install the necessary libraries (like html2canvas for the image export), style it with CSS, and launch the server. If it encounters an error, it reads the error message and fixes it automatically.

Step 4: Share it with the world

Manus gives you a live link that you can immediately share with your audience. No complicated hosting setups required.

The Strategic Shift for your Business

Why does this matter for you as a Soulpreneur or Creator?

Because interactivity builds connection, and personalization drives virality.

Instead of just giving your audience another PDF to read, you can now give them an experience that they actually want to share with their friends.

•Are you a business coach? Build a “Pricing Confidence Calculator” that exports a beautiful summary of their new rates.

•Are you a spiritual guide? Build a “Daily Intention Generator” that creates a personalized graphic for their lock screen.

•Are you a copywriter? Build a “Hook Idea Spinner” that gives them 3 custom hooks based on their niche.

These tiny apps are incredible lead magnets. They are highly shareable, they provide instant gratification, and they position you as an innovative leader in your space.

The landscape of AI is shifting from generation (give me text) to action (build this for me). Manus makes that possible. And it’s incredibly fun.

Have you tried Manus yet? Or are you still loyal to ChatGPT? Let me know in the comments, and tell me what Vibe Card you drew today!

☕ The Soulful Tip Jar

If this little app made you smile today, or if my content helps you navigate the wild world of AI with a bit more ease and soul, you can now buy me a matcha (or a coffee).

No pressure, just a gentle invitation to support the free content I create for this community.

The Soulful Tip Jar ✨

Stay soulful,

Anita

I have a confession to make.

For the longest time, I thought everything I created for my business had to have a strict, measurable ROI. Every post needed a call-to-action. Every email needed to drive conversions. Every piece of content had to fit perfectly into a meticulously planned funnel.

If it didn’t directly contribute to the bottom line, it felt like a distraction. A waste of time.

But recently, I realized something important: When we optimize every single second of our creative output for efficiency and profit, we slowly drain the soul out of our work. We become content machines instead of creators. We lose the spark that made us want to start our own business in the first place.

This week, I decided to break my own rules.

Instead of building another strategic lead magnet or writing a highly optimized sales sequence, I built something completely different. I built a tiny, slightly unhinged, deeply soulful web app called “The Vibe Check Oracle.”

It doesn’t sell anything. It doesn’t solve a complex business problem. All it does is give you a funny, personalized “vibe” for the day (like “A caffeinated forest nymph who lost their wand but found a really good playlist”).

And you know what? Building it was the most fun I’ve had in weeks.

It reminded me of a crucial truth that we often forget in the hustle of entrepreneurship: Playfulness is not a distraction. It is a vital creative strategy.

When we allow ourselves to play—to create something just because it’s fun, beautiful, or silly—we open up new pathways in our brain. We reconnect with our intuition. We remind our audience that there is a real, breathing, joyful human behind the brand.

In a digital world that is becoming increasingly automated and optimized, playfulness is the ultimate pattern interrupt. It’s how we stand out. Not by being louder or more strategic, but by being more human.

So, my gentle invitation to you this week is this: Where can you inject a little more play into your business?

Maybe it’s writing an email that has absolutely no point other than to make your readers smile. Maybe it’s designing a graphic just because you love the colors. Maybe it’s building a silly little app that tells people their daily vibe.

Whatever it is, give yourself permission to create without an agenda. The ROI of joy is immeasurable.

With love and a playful spirit,

Anita

P.S. If you want to see what happens when I let myself play, keep an eye out for next Tuesday’s edition of The Drop. I’ll be sharing the “Vibe Check Oracle” with you—and showing you exactly how I built it using AI, without writing a single line of code. It’s going to be a fun one.

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Let’s be honest for a second. Most of us didn’t start our own business to work 60 hours a week, constantly glued to our screens, playing the role of creator, customer support, tech admin, and marketing manager all at once.

We started because we wanted freedom. Creative freedom, financial freedom, and time freedom.

But eventually, almost every successful creator, coach, or service provider hits what I call the “Messy Middle.” It’s that frustrating phase where you are finally making money, but your business only runs if you are running. You become the biggest bottleneck in your own company.

I was reading a fascinating case study this week that really made me pause and reflect on this. It was about a woman named Winnie Wu.

What I love about Winnie’s story is that she isn’t a classic online content creator. She runs multiple brick-and-mortar health clinics. Yet, she managed to build a 7-figure online ecosystem—selling courses, retreats, and coaching—and she does it all while working just four days a week.

Her secret? She stopped trading time for money and started building a system.

If you are feeling stuck in the messy middle right now, here are three strategic shifts from her approach that can completely change how you sell your digital products or services:

1. Stop Selling Features. Sell the Transformation.

Your customer doesn’t want to buy a “12-week video course with 40 modules and 3 PDF workbooks.” In fact, that sounds like a lot of work. What they actually want to buy is the result. They are buying the feeling of peace, the time saved, or the confidence they will have after working with you.

The Shift: Take a hard look at your current sales pages. Are you listing features, or are you painting a picture of the transformation? Focus 100% on what your customer’s life looks like after they experience your offer.

2. The Magic of “Conditional Access”

The biggest threat to your online courses or memberships isn’t the price; it’s overwhelm. When customers get overwhelmed, they abandon the course, and they rarely buy from you again. Winnie uses a concept called “Conditional Access” in her courses. This means the next module only unlocks once the previous one is completed.

The Shift: Guide your customers step-by-step. Don’t just dump information on them. Curating their journey reduces the drop-out rate, leads to actual results, and ultimately brings you the best, most authentic testimonials.

3. Optimize Your Checkout (The Hidden Revenue Lever)

This is where most entrepreneurs leave so much money on the table. Someone decides to buy your entry-level product (let’s say, a $27 guide), they check out, and the transaction is over.

The Shift: The moment a customer is checking out—when they already have their credit card in hand and trust you enough to buy—is the perfect time to offer a logical next step. This is called an “Order Bump” or an “Upsell.” For example: “Add my matching Canva templates for just $19.” This simple tweak increases your average order value effortlessly, without you having to spend a single cent more on marketing.

The Soulful Tech Stack: How to Actually Build This

Strategy is beautiful, but it’s useless without the right tools to bring it to life without causing you tech-headaches.

For her entire 4-day-CEO ecosystem, Winnie Wu uses ThriveCart.

I’ve been watching ThriveCart for a long time in the creator space. It is widely considered the gold standard, and for good reason. It’s not just a simple checkout page; it’s an entire infrastructure for your business:

•It has a built-in course platform (”Learn+”) so you don’t need a separate tool to host your digital products.

•It handles global taxes automatically (which is a massive relief).

•It makes setting up those highly-converting order bumps and upsells incredibly easy.

•It handles split-payments and payment plans seamlessly.

But here is the absolute game-changer: Unlike almost every other premium tool on the market that charges you hundreds of dollars every single month, ThriveCart currently still offers a Lifetime Deal. You pay once, and you never have monthly subscription fees for your checkout and course platform again.

If you are at a point where you want to professionalize your business, automate your sales, and finally step out of the messy middle, this is one of the smartest investments you can make.

👉 You can check out the ThriveCart Lifetime Deal right here (*Partnerlink)

ThriveCart Lifetime

🎁 A Special Gift From Me:

If you decide that ThriveCart is the right move for your business and you purchase through my affiliate link above, I want to help you hit the ground running.

When you use my link, you will automatically receive access to Sanaya, my Signature Business Muse completely for free as a bonus! It’s the perfect pairing: ThriveCart gives you the robust technical system, and Sanaya (your AI business partner) helps you map out the exact strategies, content, and messaging to sell your offers soulfully. (The bonus delivery is set up automatically, so you’ll get an email with access right after your purchase).

Stop trying to do everything manually. Build the system, and let the system do the heavy lifting.

Stay soulful & strategic,

Anita ✨

The Niche Advice We All Hate

Every business coach, every marketing guru, every YouTube video tells you the exact same thing: “You need to niche down.”

They tell you to pick one topic, one micro-audience, one specific problem to solve. If you are the “AI person,” you can’t talk about spirituality. If you are the “design person,” you shouldn’t talk about complex tech automations.

For a long time, I tried to listen. I tried to put myself into a neat little box so people would understand exactly what I do in one sentence.

But honestly? It felt suffocating.

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The Corporate Flashback

This feeling of being “boxed in” isn’t new to me. I remember back when I was working in the corporate world, at a company called Vermop. In corporate structures, you are assigned a department. You are the marketing person, or the sales person, or the tech person. You stay in your lane.

But I never could. I was always looking left and right. My old boss there actually noticed it. She sent me to trade fairs and gave me projects outside my department because, as she put it: “You look beyond the edge of the plate.” (Du schaust über den Tellerrand hinaus).

That was a compliment, but it also made me realize something crucial: I don’t fit into corporate structures. I don’t fit into a single department. There are simply too many things I am interested in, too many things I can do, to just be one thing.

The “Chaotic” Reality of Being Multi-Passionate

I was born in 1983. I grew up analog. I have a deep nostalgia for cassette tapes (which is why I once wrote a whole newsletter about the journey from the cassette deck to modern tech).

But I also grew up with technology. I’ve probably owned 18 different mobile phones. I love experimenting with AI. I remember the early days of AI, making those clunky, funny Christmas videos where I pasted my family’s heads onto dancing elves. It wasn’t professional, but it was playful.

I am a techie. But I am also deeply spiritual.

I am highly strategic. But sometimes I just want to be fluffy and write a novel (yes, I wrote a novel!).

Sometimes I want to build complex n8n automations, and sometimes I just want to make a cute Pixar-style love story video with Kling AI just for the joy of it.

For a long time, I thought this made my brand chaotic.

The Realization: I Am The Brand

Then it hit me. The people who follow me, the people who buy my products, they don’t just buy a “niche.” They buy me.

They are interested in the tech, yes. But they also wonder: What else is she doing?

When you limit yourself to just one topic, you are hiding the best parts of yourself. You are hiding the human behind the screen.

I finally decided: I’m just doing my thing.

I am the brand. I am the niche.

If I feel like writing a deep, spiritual Substack newsletter today, I will. If I want to share a hardcore AI tutorial tomorrow, I will.

The Permission Slip (Call to Action)

If you are reading this and you’ve been struggling to “find your niche” because you have too many interests... stop looking.

You don’t have to choose between being professional, soulful, chaotic, or structured. All of it is your brand.

Some people will love it and stay. Some people will want a clean, predictable corporate box, and they will leave. And that is perfectly fine.

Stop trying to fit into a department. Look beyond the edge of the plate.

Just do your thing.

Over to you: What is something you love doing that totally “doesn’t fit” your official niche? Let me know in the comments!

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✨ Drop a tip in the jar

For the last two decades, the game was simple: if you wanted to be found online, you had to win at Google. You learned about keywords, backlinks, and domain authority. You optimized your website, wrote blog posts, and fought your way to the top of page one. We all knew the rules of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Those rules are quietly being rewritten. And if your business relies on being found online, you need to pay attention.

Welcome to The Drop ✨, where we break down the strategic shifts that are shaping the future of business. Today, we’re talking about the biggest change to search in a generation, and what it means for you.

The End of the Ten Blue Links

Have you noticed it yet? You go to Google, you ask a question, and instead of just getting a list of websites, you get a direct answer, written by AI, right at the top of the page. This is what Google calls “AI Overviews.”

Instead of sending you to a website to find the answer, Google is finding the answer for you and presenting it directly. The result? Fewer clicks. Significantly fewer clicks.

For years, the goal was to rank on the first page. Now, even if you rank number one, the AI might answer the question before anyone ever scrolls down to your link. This is a fundamental threat to any business that relies on organic search traffic.

But it’s also a massive opportunity, if you know how to adapt.

From SEO to AEO: The Dawn of Answer Engine Optimization

SEO was about convincing a search engine that your website was the most relevant result for a keyword. The new game is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). It’s about convincing an AI model that your content is the most accurate, authoritative, and useful source of information to answer a question.

Your goal is no longer to be the #1 link. Your goal is to be the cited source in the AI’s answer.

When an AI answers a question, it often includes a link to its source. That link is now the most valuable piece of real estate on the internet. It’s a direct endorsement from the AI itself. So, how do you get it?

How to Become the Source AI Cites: 4 Practical Steps

You don’t need to be a tech wizard to win at AEO. You just need to shift your mindset from pleasing an algorithm to genuinely answering questions with clarity and authority.

1. Answer the Full Question, Not Just the Keyword.

Old SEO was about targeting keywords like “small business marketing.” New AEO is about answering full questions like, “What is the most effective marketing strategy for a new online coaching business with a small budget?” Your content needs to be structured as a clear question and a comprehensive answer. Use headings and subheadings to break down the answer into logical parts.

2. Structure Your Content for Machines, Not Just Humans.

AI models love structured data. This means using clear formatting: headings (H1, H2, H3), bulleted lists, numbered lists, and tables. When you spoon-feed the information in a structured way, you make it easy for the AI to understand and cite your content. Think of it as creating a well-organized filing cabinet for your knowledge.

3. Write with Authority and Specificity.

AI models are trained to identify and prioritize authoritative sources. This means:

• Go deep: Don’t just scratch the surface. Write comprehensive, in-depth articles on the topics you know best.

• Be specific: Use data, examples, and case studies. Instead of saying “automation is helpful,” say “automating my client onboarding with Zapier saved me 5 hours per week.”

• Have a clear point of view: Don’t just aggregate information. Provide your unique perspective and analysis.

4. Build Your Authority Hub (This Is Where Substack Comes In).

AI models are looking for a central place where you consistently publish high-quality, in-depth content on a specific topic. A random collection of blog posts isn’t enough. A dedicated publication, like a Substack newsletter, is the perfect tool for this. It signals to the AI that you are a serious authority in your niche.

The Future is Answers, Not Links

The shift from a search engine to an answer engine is happening right now. You can either ignore it and watch your traffic slowly decline, or you can embrace it and become the trusted source that powers the next generation of the internet.

Start by changing how you think about your content. Stop writing for keywords. Start answering questions. The future of your business might depend on it.

Have you noticed AI answers showing up in your Google searches? How do you feel about this change? Let’s discuss the future-proof our businesses together.

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There’s a myth sold to us in the online business world. It’s the myth of the linear path. The one that goes from A to B to C in a straight, predictable, and ever-upward line. It’s the story of the entrepreneur who had it all figured out, who launched with perfect clarity, and who never once looked back.

This is bullshit 😅

My journey, and I suspect yours too, has been anything but linear. It’s been a beautiful, messy, and often confusing spiral. It’s been a series of experiments, pivots, and late-night “what am I even doing?” moments. For a long time, I thought that was a sign I was doing it wrong. Now, I’m convinced it’s the only way to do it right.

This is the gentle note I wish someone had written me when I started. This is what nobody tells you about building a business while you’re still figuring it all out.

The Myth of “Having It All Figured Out”

The pressure to launch with a perfect brand, a flawless strategy, and a five-year plan is immense. We’re told to niche down, to define our ideal client, and to build a perfectly structured product suite before we’ve even made our first sale. But clarity doesn’t come from thinking; it comes from doing.

You don’t find your voice by sitting in a quiet room and journaling about it. You find it by speaking, by writing, by creating, and by seeing what resonates—both with your audience and with your own soul. You don’t discover your perfect niche through market research alone. You discover it by working with real people and finding out whose problems you love to solve.

My own business is a testament to this. BabicADesigns didn’t start with a grand plan. It started with a single digital product, then another, then an experiment with AI, then a pivot into coaching. Each step informed the next. The “plan” was only ever visible in the rearview mirror.

Iteration Is the Real Strategy

For years, I was obsessed with getting it “right.” I’d spend weeks perfecting a sales page, only to realize the offer was wrong. I’d map out a year’s worth of content, only to have the algorithm change or my own interests evolve.

What I’ve learned is that iteration is the real strategy. Perfection is a myth. The goal is not to get it right the first time. The goal is to get it going.

• Your first launch will be clumsy. Do it anyway

• Your first 10 blog posts will probably be read by no one but your mom. Write them anyway.

• Your first product will not be your best. Create it anyway.

I always love to say this: Rome wasn’t built in one day either 😊 So, like we Croatians say “pomalo” - one day at a time. My grandma also had something good to say, but I will share this in one of my other newsletters.

Each action is a data point. Each “failure” is a lesson. Each piece of feedback is a gift. The most successful entrepreneurs I know are not the ones who had the best initial plan. They are the ones who were the fastest to adapt, to learn, and to iterate.

Permission to Be a Work in Progress

This brings me back to the idea of permission slips, a theme we explored a few weeks ago on SoulSync Monday (This is my weekly carousel post I share Mondays on my Social Media Platforms). The most important permission slip you can give yourself is the permission to be a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.

Your audience doesn’t need you to be a finished product. They need you to be a trusted guide, one who is perhaps just a few steps ahead on the path. They connect with your humanity, not your perfection. Sharing your process, your experiments, and even your doubts doesn’t diminish your authority; it deepens it. It makes you real.

Right now, I’m experimenting with this very platform, Substack. I don’t have a grand, year-long strategy for it. I have a 4-week plan. I’m testing, I’m learning, and I’m seeing what feels right. I’m figuring it out in public, with you.

And that feels more honest, and more powerful, than pretending I have all the answers.

So if you’re in the messy middle of building your business, if you feel like you’re making it up as you go along, I want you to know: you are not behind. You are not doing it wrong. You are right where you need to be.

You’re in the process. And the process is the point.

This was a more personal one. If it resonated, I would love to hear your story. What are you figuring out in your business right now? Reply to this email or find me on Instagram.

Your story matters.

Love,

Anita

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