AI Tools for Creators!

“It’s not that we use technology, we live technology.” – Godfrey Reggio

I remember sitting at my desk in 2018, buried under browser tabs, post-it notes stuck across my monitor like digital graffiti, and a growing sense of frustration that no matter how early I started or how late I stayed up, the to-do list never seemed to shrink.

Back then, content creation felt like pushing a boulder uphill, slow, repetitive, and soul-sucking at times.

I’d get an idea, write a rough draft, realize it wasn’t good enough, then get stuck rewriting it ten times.

Research would take hours. Formatting? A nightmare. And by the time I got to the “promotion” part, I was already drained.

Fast forward to today, and that entire process is barely recognizable.

The difference?

I started leveraging AI tools for creators, not just as assistants, but as extensions of my creative brain.

They didn’t replace me. They freed me.

If you’re a side hustler building your dream business while juggling a full-time job or parenting or even just the chaos of life, let me show you how these time-saving tools can give you your time back and help you create smarter, faster, and more consistently.

Let me break it down…

The AI Tools for Creators That Transformed My Workflow

These aren’t just tools I use. These are content tools that rescued me from burnout, creator block, over-analysis, and endless digital clutter.

Back in my early days of building a content-driven side hustle, I wore every hat.

Writer. Editor. Designer. Marketer. Tech support.

There were weeks where I was working 14-hour days, bouncing between drafting a blog post, editing my podcast, tweaking visuals, responding to emails, and still trying to show up online with a smile.

It was unsustainable.

I felt like I was drowning in decisions.

“Should I write this or that? Should I publish now or wait till Monday? Is this headline strong enough? Did I already say this in another email?”

Decision fatigue was real, and it slowly chipped away at my motivation.

Worse, I was losing the joy of creating. The very thing I started all this for.

I remember one night, sitting in front of my screen, staring at a half-finished outline for what would have been my next podcast episode. I’d already rewritten it twice, and my brain felt like mush. That night, instead of finishing it, I shut the laptop and walked away.

The next morning, I opened up a blank ChatGPT window out of curiosity. It was the time when ChatGPT was being rolled out and there was a lot of discussion around its capabilities.

I pasted the outline, added a short prompt: “Help me clean this up and make it flow better.”

And just like that, I saw a spark.

The draft that came back wasn’t perfect, but it gave me a starting point. Something to react to. Something to improve. More than that, it saved me from wasting another night in creative limbo.

That moment changed how I viewed these productivity tools.

Over time, I added more workflow optimization tools to the mix. Some to streamline research, some to improve design, some to help automate tasks I kept forgetting. What I found was this: using the right AI tools didn’t just save me time, they protected my sanity.

They gave me the margin I needed to think clearly. To stay consistent. To avoid burnout.

They created space and in that space, I found joy again.

So, if you’ve ever felt like you’re sprinting on a content treadmill and can’t get off… I’ve been there.

And I want to show you what’s possible when you work with these tools, not against them.

Let’s walk through them by category, with real examples from my day-to-day workflow and how you can apply them to yours.

Content Writing, Ideation and Formatting

Tools: ChatGPT & Claude

These two AI writing assistants have become my go-to brainstorming partners and editing room crew.

I use ChatGPT as my “rough draft” generator. When I’m staring at a blank page, I’ll ask it for headline ideas, newsletter outlines, or even metaphor suggestions. It helps me go from zero to structure in minutes.

Claude is my strategist. It’s better at holding context over longer documents and helps me when I need to connect dots across ideas, like scripting podcast episodes, writing long-form affiliate content, or drafting training modules.

Together, these content tools have helped me publish faster without sacrificing depth or clarity.

How you can use them:

Start by prompting ChatGPT with, “Give me 20 unique content ideas in the [your niche] space.” Pick one that excites you. Then ask Claude to expand it into an outline with 3-5 core points, examples, and a conclusion.

Pro tip: Before you start generating content regularly, take one of your well-written long-form articles, maybe a blog post, podcast script, or detailed email and turn it into a simple style guide.

If you can include multiple such pieces, it will help you create a better style guide. Highlight your tone, sentence structure, commonly used phrases, and preferred formatting. Feed that into ChatGPT as a system prompt, and you’ll notice how much more aligned its output becomes with your actual voice.

Doing this one-time setup can save you hours of editing down the line and makes your AI assistant feel more like a true co-creator than just a tool.

Book Recommendation: The Practice by Seth Godin – It reminds you that creativity is a discipline. AI tools help you show up more often, so the practice becomes consistent.

Content Curation and Research

Tools: Perplexity & Notebook LLM

If Google is a firehose, Perplexity is a filtered espresso shot.

It delivers context-aware summaries, giving you not just answers but citations, related questions, and emerging trends, all in one interface.

Notebook LLM is like my digital research journal. I use it to capture notes, organize content ideas by topic, and build “knowledge hubs” for future articles or podcast ideas.

It lets me connect insights over time without losing them to forgotten bookmarks.

How you can use them:

Before writing a piece, ask Perplexity: “What are the top trends in [your niche] for 2025?” Copy the highlights into Notebook LLM. Then revisit them weekly to spark new ideas or reinforce your content strategy.

Notebook LLM isn’t just a place to dump text. It supports multiple formats. You can upload PDFs, embed YouTube links, add voice memos, or even drop in screenshots and tweets. This gives your research depth and context.

One of the coolest features?

You can ask it questions later like, “Summarize all the research I’ve done on content repurposing,” or “What’s the difference between these two trends?” It acts like a research partner that remembers everything.

And when you’re short on time, you can ask it to generate an audio or video overview of your saved insights, making it easier to consume your own research while on the go, whether you’re walking the dog or stuck in traffic.

Book Recommendation: Show Your Work by Austin Kleon – Being a curator of ideas makes you more valuable. These tools help you curate without drowning in data.

Image Creation and Editing

Tools: Flux Playground & Canva AI

Visuals are no longer optional. They’re essential. And they used to take forever.

Now, I use Flux Playground to generate branded illustrations and eye-catching assets for podcast episode covers, blog banners, and even thumbnails.

Canva AI takes care of batch resizing, auto-matching brand styles, and using its Magic Edit to quickly adjust elements without having to re-upload everything.

How you can use them:

Design a quote template using Canva’s AI-powered design suggestions. For LinkedIn-specific content, focus on clean, bold layouts with minimal text.

Canva’s smart resize and Magic Design features make it easy to repurpose a single design into multiple dimensions while preserving brand consistency. You can also explore LinkedIn post templates already optimized for visibility and engagement.

When using Flux Playground, the magic is in the prompt. Be specific. Instead of saying “a podcast guest portrait,” try “a stylized vector portrait of a male podcast host with headphones, bold shadows, blue background, minimal line art style.”

The more descriptive and intentional your prompt, the more visually aligned your output will be.

Use Flux to generate brand-consistent visuals of featured guests, tools, or abstract concepts for educational content. Then polish or frame them in Canva to keep everything cohesive. With 2–3 prompt refinements and tweaks, you’ll have a high-quality visual gallery ready to publish.

Video Creation and Editing

Tools: Veo 3, Descript AI & Hailuo AI

Here’s a truth bomb: you don’t need to be a video editor to create high-performing video content anymore.

Veo 3 helps me produce short-form content for Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok by turning basic scripts into visually compelling clips. Its powerful audio engine makes every video sound polished and immersive.

Descript AI is where all the post-production magic happens. I can clean up audio, add captions, trim silences, and repurpose podcast snippets.

And Hailuo AI is brilliant for styling, especially adding subtitles, transitions, and social-ready formats.

How you can use them:

Take a high-performing blog post and use Veo 3 to script a 60-second summary. Veo 3’s AI-powered video generation engine now comes with incredibly immersive audio support, giving your clips more presence, clarity, and energy.

Once the script is ready, I move to Descript, where the real creative flexibility begins. With the Storyboarding feature, I can visually organize my video segments just like working with slides.

It’s a game-changer for creators who think in outlines. You can drag and drop content, layer in B-roll, and sync audio without timeline headaches.

And if you want to repurpose long-form content into shorter pieces? Use Overdub and Overlord – Descript’s automation tools for trimming, reframing, and exporting video snippets for different platforms.

With just a few clicks, you’ll have reels, teasers, or quote cards ready for Instagram, YouTube Shorts, or LinkedIn.

Wrap it up in Hailuo AI, which adds subtitles, color filters, and transitions to make it visually pop and in under an hour, you’ve turned a blog post into a powerful piece of video content.

Book Recommendation: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon – Video is just another canvas for your ideas. Repurpose. Remix. Re-share.

Productivity and Organization: AI Productivity Tools

Tool: Notion AI

This one is non-negotiable for me.

Every part of my business lives inside Notion, from content calendars and client proposals to SOPs and podcast scripts.

Notion AI acts like a hyper-organized assistant. It creates action lists from meeting notes, summarizes long discussions, and even suggests priorities based on tags and due dates.

How you can use it:

Create a “Creator Dashboard” in Notion or, go even bigger and build what I call a Creator OS.

This is your digital headquarters where everything lives in one place. Inside your Creator OS, you can create dedicated databases to track:

• Content ideas, outlines, and publishing schedules
• Payment logs and affiliate revenue
• Client projects and communication history
• Personal and professional goals
• Task lists, meeting notes, and content briefs

Notion AI takes this system to the next level. It can:

• Summarize long meeting notes into action steps
• Suggest priority tasks for the day or week
• Auto-tag ideas based on themes or goals

You can even link it with your Google Calendar to manage time-sensitive deadlines, record content batch days, and stay in flow.

Having everything centralized in Notion has saved me from scrambling through emails, documents, and mental notes and gave me the mental clarity to focus on actual creation.

Bonus: Link it with Google Calendar for an integrated creator operating system.

Systems, Automation and Workflow Optimization

Tool: N8N on Hostinger

This is the tool that lets me scale without growing a big team.

N8N is an open-source automation platform. I use it to link my newsletter, blog, podcast, email service provider, and even social media updates, all with minimal intervention.

Running it on Hostinger means it’s affordable, flexible, and fully under my control.

How you can use it:

Set up a flow: When you publish a podcast, N8N can auto-update your website, send a notification to your list, and post the episode to LinkedIn. But that’s just scratching the surface.

There are dozens of pre-made templates you can plug in right away, from automatically publishing YouTube videos, to syncing research notes into Notion, to cross-posting blog updates across multiple platforms.

You can automate repetitive workflows like pulling analytics into a dashboard, scheduling tweets, or even organizing incoming leads from forms. Build once. Run forever and keep adding new automations as your needs grow.

Book Recommendation: Work the System by Sam Carpenter – Automations are not about tech. They’re about thinking in systems, and letting the machine do the heavy lifting.

So, to answer the big question…

Will AI replace you?

No.

But it can amplify you.

It gives you leverage, not laziness. It turns friction into flow.

Each of the AI tools for creators I’ve shared doesn’t just save you time. Instead, they expand your capacity.

They allow you to focus on the work that brings real value.. your perspective, your voice, your storytelling.

And in today’s crowded, noisy world, that is your edge.

Over to you now…

Which one of these tools are you most excited to try?

Here’s your action plan:

1. Choose one tool you’re curious about.
2. Use it to simplify one part of your workflow this week.
3. Reflect on what you saved – time, energy, clarity.

Then let me know. I love hearing what’s working for you.

And if you found this helpful, share it with someone still drowning in digital overwhelm.

Let’s build smarter, not harder.

Because we’re not here to hustle endlessly, we’re here to build with intention.

Recommended Newsletters

Here are few newsletters that I would recommend that you sign up to if you are interested in learning the art of running a side-hustle:

• Write, Build, Scale
• Why we buy
• The Book Bub
• The Stacked Marketer
• The Growth Bulletin
• Unconventional Productivity for Online Business Owners
• Side Hustle Weekly
• The Affiliate Guy
• I will teach you to be rich
• How Brands win
• For the Interested
• Send and Grow

Sign up to these and follow them. You will get a lot of information and content for your blog posts, podcasts and even social media posts.

I will share more such ideas in my future newsletters.

I put in about 18 hours every month to create this newsletter, starting from researching to writing and editing it.

So, If you enjoyed reading this Newsletter, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could recommend it to others. You can send them to https://thegrowthcreator.com to subscribe to it for FREE!

What am I reading?

I absolutely love books and I read a lot.

In fact, I don’t just read a lot, but I also take notes on every book that I read.

I have pages and pages of information in my Notion Second Brain, so that I can find them and use them when ever I need.

I have added some of the newest books that I have been reading, to the Amazon store, so you might want to check it out.

Want to know more about the books I read. You can check it out here!

That’s it for this week!

Do let me know your thoughts, feedback, and opinions about this newsletter.

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If you are comfortable writing a review for the newsletter, you can do that here. Your support would be sincerely appreciated.