Kathy McShane is Empowering Women Entrepreneurs 50+ to Embrace the Future
On a recent episode of The Debbie Nigro Show, I was thrilled to welcome back longtime friend and unstoppable force in women’s entrepreneurship, Kathy McShane. Kathy is the founder of Ladies Launch with AI, a three-time business founder, and the former head of the U.S. SBA Office of Women’s Business Ownership.
These days, she’s on a mission to help women—especially over 50—leverage AI to start and scale businesses faster, smarter, and with more confidence.
“AI doesn’t have emotions,” Kathy emphasized. “And women often run their businesses emotionally. AI gives them a clinical lens to evaluate what’s working and what’s not.”
She busts the myth that AI is just for “young tech guys,” and reminds us that many women over 50 are not only capable of mastering AI—they’re perfectly positioned to lead the next wave of entrepreneurship.
Kathy and her team at Ladies Launch with AI help women build full business plans, marketing strategies, pricing models, and websites using AI—in as little as 10 weeks! Plus, they offer a free 30-minute consultation to ensure every woman’s business idea gets the thoughtful support it deserves.
Want to turn your great idea into a real business? Kathy says now’s the time: “Women 50+ are going through life transitions and saying, ‘This is MY time.’ AI can help them make the most of it.”
Check out my full conversation with Kathy McShane Founder Ladies Launch with AI on the podcast replay of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show and get ready to launch your next chapter—with a little help from Kathy and your new robot friend!
If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below.
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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
0:00:00
(Speaker 4)
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show!
0:00:32
(Speaker 1)
Alright, so, as with AI, you got to start somewhere and who knows where it’s going to take you, but hopefully some place great after you enjoy my next guest today here on the Debbie Nigro Show. Big story today out in, actually it was in the last couple of days, Fast Company Magazine. Feeling like you’re not keeping up with AI, you’re not alone. Of course, you’re not alone. There are people who are like obsessed and businesses that have totally implemented and
0:00:53
(Speaker 1)
there are people who are still staring at their screens, okay, going, I don’t know. So I got a kick out of reconnecting with a wonderful gal pal entrepreneur that I’ve known for many, many years. When I saw her start posting on LinkedIn about entrepreneurs and AI and how she’s teaching, in particular, women, I’m like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to get Kathy on the show. Kathy McShane, who you’re going to meet in a second, is the founder of Ladies Launch with AI,
0:01:19
(Speaker 1)
three-time business founder, former head of the US SBA Office of Women’s Business Ownership, lifelong advocate for women entrepreneurs, and my gal pal in business. founder, former head of the USSBA Office of Women’s Business Ownership, lifelong advocate for women entrepreneurs and my gal pal in business. Hey Kath, welcome. Hey Debbie, how are you? Good to hear your voice. Oh Kathy, you used to sit over here next to me in the studio, we smiled. You know, we go so far back that I’ve been your fan longer than I think most people. That’s a good thing. Yeah, it’s a good thing. You’re still in
0:01:46
(Speaker 1)
Washington DC? I’m still in Washington DC, yes, loving it. Yeah, that’s suiting you, man. I know you helped a lot of women over the course of your efforts, 150,000, you know, no small number. You trained them, you mentored them, you helped get them funded. Now, you tell me and everybody that’s paying attention to you that you are showing women how AI can help them grow their businesses, their entrepreneurial ventures, smarter, faster, and with more confidence
0:02:14
(Speaker 1)
and take the fear out of it. And I saw all the blogs you wrote. Can we just talk about each one individually because I think each one has some points?
0:02:22
(Speaker 2)
Sure.
0:02:23
(Speaker 1)
Yeah. Number one, why women should embrace AI to start or grow their businesses? Address that. Well there are a
0:02:30
(Speaker 2)
number of reasons but the one that I feel is the strongest which I don’t think people think much about is AI doesn’t have any emotion. We as women and we as women entrepreneurs really take our brands very personally. So we don’t always look at things as clinically as we should. So if we use UI to help AI excuse me to help us look at businesses, they look at it, it looks at it very clinically. Yes, no, this is perhaps a problem, this is something that you should pursue. And I
0:03:06
(Speaker 2)
think that is one of the major, major reasons women should use it. They should not be frightened of it, they should really look at it as a colleague.
0:03:15
(Speaker 1)
Oh that’s important. I’m laughing to myself because I do use AI and I know it’s as good as the instructions you feed it, but I of course always throw in dumb stuff like, oh I’m sorry to bother you, oh listen instructions you feed it, but I, of course, always throw in dumb stuff like, oh, I’m sorry to bother you. Oh, listen, could you help me with, you know, could you just, like, I throw the emotion in like,
0:03:31
(Speaker 1)
like it matters. It does not matter to the communication, so thanks for reminding me. Kath, the top five myths about AI and why women entrepreneurs should ignore them.
0:03:42
(Speaker 2)
Let’s go through the list. Well, the one again that I think is just so overwhelming is the fact that most women, again not all, really feel that it’s for young people and particularly young guys and AI is all about them and you know they got to be sitting back in their chairs with their t-shirts on having a grand old time but it really is not. AI is a tool and just as we as women have many many things that we manage throughout our lives, this is a tool that really makes managing things easier. So the
0:04:21
(Speaker 2)
biggest thing about in terms of, is the fact that women absolutely should embrace AI. And you just made a comment about how you chat with it almost, you know, oh would you please or don’t bother me? I did that in the beginning and then all of a sudden I said, wait a second, this is really supposed to make me more efficient. And you learn very quickly that again no motion, put in what you want, it’ll give it to you and the secret to that by the
0:04:51
(Speaker 2)
way is to be very careful about what instructions or queries you give AI because when I first started it I got back these crazy responses. Well it had nothing to do with AI. It had totally to do with the crazy questions I was asking and I probably had a whole bunch of please and I’m sorry to bother you and would you be willing and blah blah blah blah blah blah.
0:05:17
(Speaker 1)
Can I make you some meatballs? You know, if you just hurry up with that.
0:05:21
(Speaker 2)
So AI is an amazing amazing amazing tool and please any women out there particularly women over 50 don’t feel it’s only for the younger generation because I will tell you I often work with the younger people, it’s not my business but I love to mentor and you’d be surprised at how challenged they are with AI. Much more so than women 50 plus. We just don’t give ourselves enough
0:05:51
(Speaker 1)
credit for what we know or how to manage things. I will tell you I am blown away by how much time AI is saving me now in particular areas of my broadcasting business where it would take me forever, still takes me a long time, to take an interview like we’re doing right now, live on the air, and get it into a MP3 and then a transcript and then the blog and the pictures. I still go through all those processes and they’re still long, but there are some aspects
0:06:23
(Speaker 1)
of it like transcription. Oh my god I still have to listen through the entire thing and pick out the key points now. I have a transcriber, you know powered by AI I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s everything we talked about in two seconds, right? So that saves a ton of time and then I sometimes use it to help me summarize My own, you know long-windedness. All right. What am I trying to say here? Can you say it in less words? And yes, so there’s lots of ways it helps me. And you want to be really clear that you’re teaching,
0:06:50
(Speaker 1)
and I think this is fantastic, in particular women entrepreneurs over 50, what they need to do to learn this, because they are poised, as you said, to lead the next wave of entrepreneurship. Why that demographic?
0:07:04
(Speaker 1)
Why are they so teed up, Kath?
0:07:07
(Speaker 2)
Well, they’re teed up because many of them are going through transitions in their life. You know, good ones, bad ones, challenging ones, but they have so much experience and they frankly don’t know where to put it. You know, they have all this energy, this insight,
0:07:24
(Speaker 2)
and they just say, okay, wait a minute, this is my time, I want to do something that I want to do, not what my kids wanted, my you know, my partner, my spouse, it’s my time now and they are just so poised to take all of that experience and put it to work. talking through what their challenges were, what their business ideas were, partnering with other women in our groups and now with AI, we do a number of things. One is to teach them how to use it, you know, forget about the thank yous and please and all of that, get to the point, really tell them how to do an
0:08:21
(Speaker 2)
inquiry properly but we also if we find, we find some women who’ve had an idea for two years and they just haven’t been able to move it along, they’ll come to us and we’ll actually write the business plan for them, the marketing plan, the social media plan, we’ll set up their website, their social media plans as I but I don’t know how you put something into AI and it comes back. How do you determine whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea? And therefore I think you
0:09:11
(Speaker 2)
do need to work with people who have that business experience and I’m gonna overlay something else, we’re not emotional about it. We are there to really help people to very quickly and efficiently start a business or expand a business.
0:09:28
(Speaker 1)
And your professional estimation, somebody comes to you with the idea that they’ve been pushing around their desk for two years and they go, okay, Kath, let’s go. From start to finish, how long, with your help, could they launch this business?
0:09:42
(Speaker 2)
Well, we actually launched, Ladies launched with AI in eight weeks. And that was from writing down what the concept was through our first social media campaign. But we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted. Some women don’t. However, we, you know, I mean, I probably wouldn’t commit to two months, but I would probably say 10 weeks we can do that.
0:10:09
(Speaker 1)
That’s pretty cool.
0:10:10
(Speaker 2)
It’s very, very cool. And I’d love to say it’s because I’m so brilliant. It’s just that I’ve gotten really good at how to use AI and overlay my business experience.
0:10:20
(Speaker 1)
So business or marketing plans, market research, customer insights, business coaching, strategy sessions, AI training and tools, these are all things that you offer instruction on. Those are your services, social media plan development, who doesn’t need that, pricing analysis and strategy, and you offer a 30-minute free introductory consultation, which I think is really lovely.
0:10:39
(Speaker 3)
We do.
0:10:40
(Speaker 2)
Yeah. And we do that for a couple of reasons. One is we want to make sure the person really does have an idea. We don’t want to just take their money and run. So we offer them 30 minutes. We’ll go through an exploratory with them.
0:10:54
(Speaker 2)
We’ll tell them, you know, without doing the market research, whether we think it’s an idea worth pursuing. And then if we agree that it is, then we go to the next step. Usually my next step is to really flush out what the business proposition is. And I like to do some market research. And it’s just, it used to be $100,000, $200,000
0:11:18
(Speaker 2)
to do market research, and it’s just not that anymore. We can pretty much sum up the market potential very quickly and
0:11:25
(Speaker 1)
inexpensively. Wow, I can’t imagine that your SBA background hasn’t played right into this moment. Tell us about that experience real quick. That was a great
0:11:36
(Speaker 2)
experience. I actually ran their office of women’s business development and every year we worked through our partners with 150,000 nonprofits to help women launch or expand their business. And what was really amazing, people would say to me, how can an entrepreneur go and work for the federal government?
0:11:56
(Speaker 1)
I know, I was thinking about you.
0:12:00
(Speaker 2)
And I think about it too, Debbie, but what happens is, I mean, first of all, I didn’t go in there thinking I was gonna change the federal government. I went in there thinking and knowing I was gonna do the best I could for the women that I wanted to support.
0:12:14
(Speaker 2)
And to think about the resources that the government actually does put against that segment, it’s pretty amazing. And if you’re an entrepreneur who’s always looking for the next two cents here or there, you got this money and you’re like, man, I can really use this money very efficiently and not blow up, you know, the federal
0:12:33
(Speaker 2)
government. So it was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful experience for me.
0:12:39
(Speaker 1)
Loved it. Okay, so now here’s my question as head of the USSBA Office of Women’s Business Ownership. Did you learn the access to the funding and can you translate some of that knowledge to the modern-day female entrepreneurs you’re trying to help? Because it always comes down to women trying to access funding that seems to be less available for women business owners than it is for male business owners.
0:13:04
(Speaker 2)
And you know, it depends on what the the funding is Debbie, but through the federal government there are any number of sources where grants are issued to these not-for-profits that are their charter is to help women and particularly underserved women and that was the group that I from NABO, the National Association of Women Business Owners, through SPANX. SPANX has a wonderful grant program for women. There’s so many resources out there, but women just aren’t oriented to think that way.
0:13:58
(Speaker 2)
Men always are, and I’m not being negative about men. They just think differently than we do.
0:14:03
(Speaker 1)
Yeah. Okay. Well, this has been an extraordinary reconnect. I’m thrilled to find you at this moment in your entrepreneurial journey. If you guys have missed tuning in at the right time, I’ll be posting the podcast of this live interview with my friend and formidable entrepreneur, Kathy McShane, founder of Ladies Launch ladies launch with AI her website is ladies launch with AI Calm and Kath. I couldn’t welcome you at a more fortuitous time. Thanks so much for stopping by and best to you
0:14:33
(Speaker 2)
You too Debbie. Bye. Bye. Goodbye
0:14:36
(Speaker 1)
Where’s all that money? She’s talking about I gotta go start getting some grants. I wonder if I can call Spanx I have enough for them in my draw More to come here on the Debbie Nigro Show. Welcome you back on a Monday morning. It’s always tough to get started Nigro Show. Welcome you back on a Monday morning. It’s always tough to get started but we’re bringing the energy. Let’s go. Come on.
