Ep 93 -The True Costs of Not Using AI in Your Marketing

Feb 16, 2026

Should You Use AI as a Health Professional?

If you are a health professional running a business, chances are you have mixed feelings about AI.

On one hand, you can see how tools like ChatGPT could save time. On the other, you have spent years training to be careful with your words, protect your professional integrity, and stay within strict guidelines. The idea of handing any part of that over to a tool can feel uncomfortable.

This hesitation makes complete sense. You have worked hard to build credibility and trust. But here is the question I want you to consider. What is it really costing you to avoid AI altogether?

Because in a world where visibility, consistency and time matter more than ever, not using AI in your marketing comes with some very real and often hidden costs.

In this post, I want to explore those costs and show you how AI can be used ethically, safely and strategically in a healthcare business when it is trained properly.

Why this conversation matters for health professionals

Marketing a healthcare business is very different from marketing most other online businesses.

You are not just selling a product. You are building trust. People watch you quietly for months, sometimes years, before they decide to book. They read your posts, open your emails, listen to your podcast, and slowly decide whether you feel safe.

That means consistency matters. Showing up matters. And the way you communicate really matters.

This is exactly why many health professionals either avoid AI completely or try it once, dislike the output, and decide it is not for them. The problem is not AI itself. The problem is how it is being used.

Before we talk about how to use AI well, let us look at the three biggest costs of not using it at all.

The hidden cost of spending your time on the wrong work

Time is one of your most valuable business assets.

If you have ever worked in the NHS, your day was largely structured for you. Patients were booked in, you delivered care, and your income was not directly linked to how efficiently you used your time.

Running your own business is different. Every hour you spend matters.

Now think about how much time you spend each week on marketing. Coming up with content ideas. Writing social posts. Drafting emails. Staring at a blank document wondering what to say.

For many health professionals, marketing is one of the most time consuming and energy draining parts of business. And when you do it all manually, week after week, it quietly eats into time that could be spent seeing clients, developing offers, or simply resting.

The cost here is not just hours. It is mental load. Decision fatigue. That feeling of always being behind.

AI, when trained properly, can take a large chunk of this repetitive work off your plate. Not by replacing your expertise, but by helping you get your thoughts out faster and more efficiently.

Avoiding AI often means continuing to spend your most valuable resource on tasks that do not need to be done from scratch every single time.

The cost of inconsistent visibility and broken trust building

The second cost is consistency.

Marketing is often the first thing to slip when client work ramps up or life gets busy. And if you are running your business alone, something always has to give.

The problem is that the impact of inconsistent marketing is delayed.

You might not feel it immediately, but over time your reach shrinks. Algorithms stop favouring you. New people stop finding you. And those quiet trust building touchpoints disappear.

In healthcare, this matters even more. People rarely book straight away. They need to see you consistently before they feel ready.

Every post, email or podcast episode is a reminder that you are here, credible, and understand their situation. When that disappears, trust has to rebuild from scratch.

When you have an AI tool that understands your business, your audience and your boundaries, you can stay visible even when your energy is elsewhere. You can batch content. You can plan ahead. You can show up without it costing you everything.

Not using AI often means your visibility is entirely dependent on how you feel that week. And that is not a sustainable way to grow.

The cost of falling behind in a changing landscape

The third cost is harder to spot, but it is happening quietly in the background.

Look around your niche. You will probably notice the same names appearing again and again. Posting regularly. Sharing thoughtful content. Being everywhere.

It is easy to assume they are more creative or have more time. In reality, they usually have better systems.

Many of them are using AI. Not lazily, and not unethically, but as part of a wider support system behind the scenes.

AI is not a future trend. It is already part of how many businesses operate, including healthcare businesses. Avoiding it completely does not preserve your integrity. It simply means you are working harder to achieve the same level of visibility.

The landscape is changing whether we like it or not. The question is how you choose to engage with it.

The real risk is untrained AI, not AI itself

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear is that AI is not ethical or safe for health professionals.

In reality, the real risk is using AI without training it properly.

Most people try AI by typing a vague prompt and hoping for the best. When the output feels generic, inaccurate or misaligned, they blame the tool.

But AI needs context. It needs boundaries. It needs to understand your voice, your audience, and the professional standards you work within.

When you train AI intentionally, you are not handing over control. You are setting the rules.

You are teaching it how you communicate, what you will and will not say, and how to support your business without crossing lines. Used this way, AI becomes a tool that protects your energy rather than undermining your expertise.

Training AI to work with your integrity, not against it

Training AI does not mean starting from scratch or adding more work to your plate.

Most health professionals already have a goldmine of content. Emails. Social posts. Client resources. Podcast episodes. All of this reflects your expertise and your voice.

When you feed this into AI and guide it properly, it starts to understand how you think and communicate. It stops producing generic marketing fluff and starts supporting you in a way that actually feels useful.

This is how AI can help you work smarter, not harder. It helps the work you have already done go further.

Building a business that supports your life

The goal here is not to automate everything or remove the human element from your business.

The goal is to protect your time, your energy and your capacity so you can focus on the work that really matters.

AI can support you to show up consistently without burning out. It can help you stay visible while still prioritising your clients, your family and your life outside of work.

Used well, it becomes part of a sustainable business model rather than another thing demanding your attention.

Want help building your own AI marketing assistant?

If you want to see what this looks like in practice, I am running a live, hands on workshop where I will show you exactly how to build and train your own AI marketing assistant.

By the end of the session, you will have a tool that understands your business, your niche and your voice, and that you can start using straight away for your marketing.

You can find all the details and save your place here:
https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/ai-marketing-assistant-earlybird-open