263: Where AI Clones Fit — and Where They Don’t
In this episode of the Creator’s MBA podcast, I walk you through the nuances of where AI clones can add real value—and where they absolutely don’t belong. It’s easy to get swept up in the potential of automation, but being strategic about how (and if) you use AI clones will make or break their impact on your business.
I share real-world examples of when AI clones shine—especially for repeatable judgment calls and implementation support—and when they fall short, like in emotionally sensitive work or when your frameworks are still evolving. If you’ve been curious about whether AI clones are worth exploring, this episode will help you assess your readiness with clarity and confidence.
What You’ll Learn
The best use cases for AI clones in expert-based businesses
Why repeatable judgment is key to AI clone success
When access to you becomes the bottleneck—and how clones can help
Why AI clones fail in emotionally nuanced or exploratory work
The difference between judgment and creation (and why it matters)
The hidden readiness factor most people overlook when building a clone
How to decide if the AI Clone Lab is the right next step for you
If you’ve been wondering, “Is an AI clone right for my business?”, this episode will give you the clarity you need. And if you’re ready to explore building your own, I share more about the AI Clone Implementation Lab I’m hosting in March—who it’s for, and who it’s not.
👉 Hit play now and let’s dig in.
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Just because AI clones are powerful doesn’t mean they’re the right fit for your business.
That’s the conversation I wanted to have in this episode of the Creator’s MBA podcast. We’re seeing a huge wave of interest in AI—especially when it comes to AI clones that can replicate your voice, your thinking, and your expertise. But not every business should build one. And more importantly, not every stage of your business is ready for one.
Let’s talk about where AI clones truly shine—and the common traps I see experts fall into when they try to force a fit that just isn’t there.
AI Clones Work When Your Expertise Is Repeatable
One of the best signals that you're ready for an AI clone is when your work involves repeatable judgment. In other words, you're answering the same kinds of questions over and over again—even if the specifics change.
Think about it like this: you're a strategist who always tells clients, “Before you make that change, check this first.” Or you’re a coach who notices the same decision-making roadblocks show up week after week. You’re not just teaching content—you’re applying judgment that clients need in the moment.
This is where clones can reduce friction. They help your clients apply your thinking even when you’re not right there. Not to replace you, but to reinforce what you’d already say if you were on the call.
When Access to You Is the Bottleneck
Another strong signal for an AI clone? If your clients need your input to move forward, but you just can’t be there every single time.
Maybe you're a leadership advisor, and your clients constantly second-guess themselves between sessions. Or you’re a course creator who knows the content works—but your students get stuck in implementation. A clone can bridge the gap.
These aren't situations where people need new information. They need help checking their thinking, aligning with your process, and moving forward with confidence. That’s where a well-trained clone can be a massive asset.
Why AI Clones Struggle with Emotional or Exploratory Work
Here’s where things get tricky. AI clones are not a good fit for early-stage, identity-based, or emotionally complex work.
If your value lies in helping people figure out who they are or what they want, a clone may feel too limiting. This shows up a lot in deep coaching, trauma-informed work, or early creative exploration. These moments need you. They need emotional attunement, sensitivity, and presence that an AI system just can’t replicate—and honestly, shouldn’t try to.
Even if the advice is technically sound, the delivery matters. And sometimes, human-to-human interaction is the value.
If Your Thinking Is Still Evolving, Pause Before You Clone
One mistake I see often is trying to build a clone too early. If you’re still figuring out your frameworks, revising your approach, or experimenting with new ideas, an AI clone can actually freeze your thinking in a way that feels premature.
Your clone should reflect stable, proven thinking. That doesn’t mean your ideas are static forever—but you should feel confident enough in your frameworks to codify them clearly. If things still feel intuitive or hard to articulate, your energy is better spent refining your body of work first.
Judgment vs. Creation: A Key Distinction
Here’s a question I always encourage experts to ask:
Does my value come more from applying judgment—or from creating something new each time?
If your magic lies in helping people apply proven principles over and over again, a clone might be a great fit.
But if your genius is in creating something brand new every single time—a custom solution, a creative breakthrough, a brand-new idea—then a clone might not serve you well. Clones are built for consistency, not originality. They’re more compass than muse.
Ready for an AI Clone? Clarity Comes First.
AI clones require clarity. You have to be able to explain how you think, not just what you do. And that’s a big leap for many experts. If your process is mostly intuitive or hard to describe, you might feel frustrated trying to train a clone to mirror you.
That doesn’t mean your work isn’t valuable. It just means it may not be the right time—or the right tool—yet.
An Invitation: The AI Clone Implementation Lab
I’m running a focused AI Clone Implementation Lab this March—and it’s intentionally designed for a small group of experts who are ready to codify their thinking and deploy it into a working clone.
This is for people who already have a defined body of work. It’s not for folks still discovering what they believe or how they teach. And it’s definitely for people who care deeply about boundaries, ownership, and clarity.
If that sounds like you, I’ll include the link to learn more in the show notes.
Final Thoughts
AI clones aren’t for everyone. But when they do fit, they can be a game-changer—reducing friction, supporting implementation, and giving your clients access to your thinking even when you're not in the room.
The key is knowing when to say yes—and when to wait. And that clarity? That’s leadership.
Let me know if this episode sparked any thoughts or questions for you. I’d love to hear what you're exploring.
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Transcript: Where AI Clones Fit — and Where They Don’t
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Creator's MBA podcast, your go-to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desk, constantly live launching, or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today.
[00:00:30] Hi there, Dr. Destini Copp here, and welcome back to the Creator's MBA podcast. I'm super excited that you are joining me, and in this episode, I want to talk about where AI clones actually make sense in your business and when they really do not. Because by now, if you have been listening to this series, you can probably see the potential.
[00:01:00] You understand what an AI clone actually is. You understand why traditional courses struggle so much with implementation, and you understand why experts are cautious about control and their intellectual property. But seeing the potential doesn't mean that this is the right move for your work. In fact, I think one of the strongest signals that someone is thinking about AI responsibility is their willingness to say, "This isn't for me," or "This isn't right for how I work," or maybe, "It's not yet."
[00:01:45] So in this episode, I want to give you a way to decide where an AI clone fits, and just as [00:02:00] importantly, how to recognize when they do not. So let's start with the good fits.
Where AI Clones Work Best
AI clones work best when your expertise involves repeatable judgment. That means that you see the same types of situations over and over again, even though the details change, so you can recognize some patterns. You know what matters most and the questions that you're getting from your clients and students, and you often find yourself giving the same guidance. You just might be tailoring it just a little bit.
[00:02:45] Here's what that looks like in real life. For example, there may be a consultant who reviews proposals or strategy, and she keeps saying things like, "Before you change [00:03:00] anything, check this first," or "This is where people usually overcomplicate things." Another example would be a coach who gets the same stuck points from clients every single week—not because her customers are lazy, but because certain decisions are really hard to see clearly from the student's point of view. Another example would be an educator whose students don't need more content; they just need help applying the same principles to very different situations. In those cases, what the value is, is judgment, and that's where an AI clone can help.
[00:03:45] Another strong fit is when access to you is the constraint. If your
[00:04:00] people need your input to move forward, but you really can't be there every time that they get stuck, an AI clone can reduce friction without replacing you. For example, a leadership advisor whose clients are second-guessing themselves between the sessions, or a strategist whose audience emails them with variations of the same "Am I thinking about this right?" type question. Or a course creator who knows how their material works, but they see students get stuck when they try to implement alone. In these situations, the clone isn't there to teach something new. It's there to help people [00:05:00] check their thinking before they get stuck, and that's a very different role than a chatbot or some type of content generator.
[00:05:15] Another place that an AI clone fits well in your work is when you need to support your clients and students with ongoing implementation and not one-time learning. If people return to you repeatedly to refine decisions, maybe check priorities, or they need to reorient themselves when things go awry, that is where courses, PDFs, and templates tend to break down. A clone, however, in this context can act more like a decision support layer than a teaching tool. They're not there to say, "Here's the answer," but they're there to guide them and say, "Based on how I think about this problem, here's how I would approach it." And that's [00:06:00] what the distinction is.
Where AI Clones Do Not Fit
Now let's talk about where AI clones tend not to fit, and this is where things can go sideways. So I want to go into this in a little bit more detail.
AI clones are a poor fit for exploratory or early-stage work. So if your value comes from helping people discover who they are, what they want, or what direction feels right, a clone might feel a little limiting to them and not helpful. This can show up a lot in identity-based work, early creative exploration, or where there's open-ended ideation. An AI clone is not good at helping in these types of situations.
[00:06:45] Another bad fit is when your thinking is actively [00:07:00] changing. So if you are still questioning your own frameworks, you're revising your philosophy, or you're experimenting with new approaches—all of that's perfectly fine—but encoding all of that thinking too early can freeze it. I do see this mistake a lot. People want to capture their expertise before it's actually stable, and that can create a lot of pressure. Clones work best when your thinking is already coherent and when you have a proven success record there.
[00:07:30] Another important boundary is around emotional presence. Think about therapy, sensitive coaching, or deeply interpersonal or trauma-informed work. Those rely on human attunement in a way that a system cannot and [00:08:00] should not try to replicate. Even if the advice itself is sound, the delivery and your human involvement matter too much. So that is a boundary that I would respect there.
[00:08:15] Another misconception that I want to clear up is that AI clones are not designed to be creative, original, or surprising. They are designed for consistency. So if you want that brainstorming or that ideation, there are better tools out there for that, and I personally create custom GPTs for that type of help for my students. A clone is more like a compass; you're guiding people on a proven framework. If you expect the clone to invent [00:09:00] that framework, that's not going to happen here.
Assessing Your Readiness
So here's one of the most useful questions you can ask yourself: "Does my expertise rely more on judgment or on creation?" If the value lies in applying principles thoughtfully and consistently over time, a clone may be a good fit for you. If the value lies in creating something new every single time, it's probably not a good fit for you.
There's also a readiness factor here that doesn't get talked about enough. AI clones require clarity. You need to be able to explain how you think, not just what you do. And if your expertise is mostly intuitive and hard to articulate, that process can feel frustrating instead of being supportive. [00:10:00] That doesn't mean that your work isn't valuable; it means that this may not be the right format for you yet. And there's one last boundary that I want to talk about. If you're tempted to use a clone to say things that you wouldn't feel comfortable saying directly to a person, I would put a pause on that. The goal here isn't distance or depersonalization. It's consistency and access within those appropriate limits. So if something needs human responsibility attached to it, I would say it should stay human.
The AI Clone Implementation Lab
Now I want to talk a little bit about "The Lab"—the AI Clone Implementation Lab that I'm going to be doing the entire month of March. It is intentionally narrow and it's not designed for everybody. I have designed it so it's small, structured, and really [00:11:00] focused on people with a defined body of work. It's for experts who are ready to formalize their thinking, not discover their thinking.
It's also for people who care about boundaries. If you're excited about AI and you've been nodding your head along thinking, "Yes, this sounds like it's perfect for me," I think that is a very useful signal for you. And if you're hesitant or you're skeptical, that's not a problem either. It just means that you're really thinking about this very carefully, because AI clones are not something that you would want to go in and build just for the sake of building it. You want to make sure it's a good fit, because when it's a good fit, it can dramatically reduce friction in your business and improve implementation. When they don't fit, it can create confusion with your customers and your clients.
[00:12:00] I think knowing the difference is very important. So if you are asking yourself, "Destini, this is all good, but I'd love more information," I have written a lot of articles about this on my website. I'm going to include some of those links in the podcast show notes. If you're curious about the Lab, I'm going to put details there too, with a very clear explanation about who it's designed for and who it's not.
Thanks so much for listening, and have a great rest of your day. Bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.