Can you use AI with your emails without breaking client confidentiality?

It's literally the first time in my adult life that I've been able to achieve inbox zero. What it means is providing better customer support and it's costing me less in terms of my own energy. Welcome to the Differently Aligned podcast for neurodivergent business owners. I'm Adina Levy.

I'm an Autistic AuDHDer, business coach, speech therapist, AI fiend, and I run Differently Aligned Business Coaching, and my other business, Play Learn Chat, where I wear my speech therapist and professional educator hat. I support neurodivergent business owners like you, whose businesses have grown into a fabulous, sometimes overwhelming, tangled mess that doesn't quite fit what you need. I guide, teach, coach, and build alongside you, using AI, automations, systematising things to help you untangle your strategy, your business alignment, and your operations.

I'm obsessed with helping you make your business finally work better for you. Everyone is welcome here, no matter your neurotype, your gender, your race, your size, your orientation, and all the other identities that make you you. This podcast is recorded on the Aboriginal lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people the traditional custodians of the lands on which I live, work, and play. I acknowledge any First Nations people listening in.

Hey folks. I have a question from one of the members of my Neurodivergent Business Collective membership, and I will just say, that the doors are opening for new premium members of the Neurodivergent Business Collective on Monday, the 1st of June. go to the show notes if you are interested. I will also tell you about a free webinar that I'm hosting on the 1st of June, which you're very, very welcome to come on this topic of using AI with your emails.

So my member asked, "Is there a way to use Claude AI for my emails without it seeing client confidential things?" I have a little more context for this member. She is in Australia and she is a speech therapist so there are certain confidentiality rules and laws that you will have to abide by depending on where you are in the world, what your work is, and the regulations. I don't know those details about your business.

but I'm gonna be speaking a little more generally today in the podcast. So we're gonna cover briefly what the main considerations are around privacy, confidentiality, security of data when using AI, because they are very real and important things to be thinking about. And for many people, they might be barriers to actually using AI more because you may not understand where your data's going and how to even know if your data is safe or if your client's data is safe. And I'm gonna share with you the two main pathways that you can take to use AI with your emails.

One that is really safe and secure and still very, very helpful and, great for those who are, maybe just dipping your toe into getting AI to help you with some of your business admin in a way that won't compromise client confidentiality. And, if you're getting used to trusting AI with that stuff while you're investigating further, it's a really great starting point. The second way is to use AI in your email inbox in a much more integrated way, and that you can build onto that first layer over time.

So in terms of privacy, confidentiality, data security, these are some of the main things that you need to be thinking about when you're using AI at all when you're connecting any AI platform with any other platform. Connecting Claude with your emails or connecting it to your client management system or whatever that is. You need to be thinking about, first of all, get really, really clear what are the laws, the regulations that you need to abide by in your industry and in your location You need to be across the privacy and confidentiality and security agreements the providers that you're dealing with.

for example, if you're using Claude AI, you need to familiarize yourself. And yes, it can be so boring, but one of those boring but important things in business. Go and read their data processing and handling information. Go and read their security and privacy policies and make sure that you understand what they can promise you.

Now, generally speaking, if an AI platform is free or if you're accessing it on a free plan In many cases, your data that you put into that AI, everything you paste and share and upload, may be sent back to the AI to update and upgrade their models So the AI may continue to get trained on what you share with it. More often than not, when you to have access, so whether you pay for Chat GPT, you pay for Claude or whatever provider you're using You generally have more control over those settings.

So I always recommend to go and check those settings and wherever it's possible, go and turn off the ability to send your data elsewhere to train the AI models You can of course get AI to help you understand and interpret an AI provider's security and data handling policy. Always use the human level of caution to actually double-check things, but you absolutely can get it to help you interpret and understand what that all means, especially in light of whatever your specific scenario is The third piece to be aware of I mean, you should be doing this with any app or platform that you're using at all.

Once you're satisfied that the privacy, confidentiality, and security is gonna be okay for your business, you need to write that into into a privacy policy that people accessing your website, people buying something from you, people who are signing up to be your clients, people who are providing data to you, even if it's just in an inquiry form, make sure that you do have a privacy policy in place that covers What happens with their data? Again, this is one of those parts of business that is, like, pretty boring.

I'll say it, yeah, but necessary. So, get your best snacks, get your best music, maybe get a buddy and body double and just go, "Okay, I'm gonna learn and understand and go and update my policy right now." If you're in Australia, I do also recommend using Foundd Legal. It's F-O-U-N-D-D, double D.

Foundd Legal have really great templates, and I have an affiliate code for that, so I'll pop that into the show notes. They have some incredibly useful templates that can really get you started. Go and check them out. So I think that's covered.

The details of that are gonna be so unique and specific to you, but these are the main areas you need to be across: knowing what your requirements are, knowing what the situation is with any app, and then informing your clients or your customers or prospective customers about that. Let's now get into the two pathways for how you can integrate AI into your email workflow with and without including the full client shebang, names, emails, et cetera. Now, the pieces of pathway one are still the pieces that are the foundation of your pathway two.

So it's not really one or the other. If you are new to using AI to help you with emails, or if you have very strict privacy conditions and data security conditions that you need to uphold, you probably wanna start with one. If you're not sure yet and you haven't taken the time to really understand what are the - requirements that you need, and taken the time to read those very boring but important privacy and data handling documents from the AI providers you're considering, then, start with pathway one.

So what is pathway one? This is the copy and paste situation. You're gonna create these building blocks that teach your AI, "This is how we do things in my business. This is how we write emails."

But not just that, "This is how our policies go," which mean that when an email is being created, it's not just in your voice, but it's actually relevant to the real situation. You are gonna teach it, "Here are the main links in my business," so that when somebody emails to say, "I forgot, where is the link to your booking calendar?" You, the human, don't have to go and find it and paste it in. Mm-mm.

Your AI system knows that information and can pull all of that stuff together I prefer Notion as the hub and the home for all of this. There are other options, and there's lots of pathways to it. But I absolutely can, help you a lot with the Notion way of doing this. Your AI system is gonna know your FAQs, like what are the common questions that people ask you?

And here's the thing, you don't have to sit there and think, "Ooh, what do people ask me a lot?" You build it over time, and you build it by watching what are the emails that come in, and each one that comes in think, "Oh, is this happening fairly often? Great, let's document this in our FAQ." You're gonna have templates, like a bank of templates.

It can be just one, two, three, or 20. It depends on what's going on in your business. And again, you're gonna build that over time, and AI is gonna help you build that template bank. You don't have to do everything yourself.

You create the structure. In fact, I create the structure and give it to you at the free webinar on Monday, the 1st of June. Go and check the link in the show notes. I'm teaching my AI method for neurodivergent business owners.

And I'm calling the webinar From Inbox Chaos to Inbox Zero, 'cause this is literally what I've been living and experiencing, and so delighted to hand over the knowledge and the tools and Notion templates AI prompts you can use with any to help you get your system started. So you can build these building blocks in what I call this pathway one. You've got this background information of this is how I do business, and this is how I do emails Part of that as well is documenting rules for how you want your emails processed.

So I've got a lot of rules, and I'm gonna give you the outline of what is a sort of simplified version of that. But you and your AI together build onto that as you process emails and as you understand, oh, okay, this is what I wanna do with that type of email. I need that kind of thing added to my calendar. I need that kind of thing forwarded to my practice manager.

I need a question posed to me so I can think about it, There's so ways it can go. Your own business is gonna be very unique to you, and and you don't have to sit there and think, "What are my rules for email?" You build it over time, and I give you the structure for that So once you've got these building blocks started, it gets easier and easier and easier. Every week that you're processing emails, it gets better because the documentation gets better, because the set of rules gets clearer.

And because your template bank and your FAQs gets clearer and more comprehensive as well. It's a really, really, really cool experience You've got your building blocks. A new email comes in. You then, in pathway one, copy that email into the AI, and you remove the client name, and you remove any identifying anything that's like, a date of birth, an address, anything like that, and you can then get your AI to suggest a reply.

You then copy that reply back into your email and send it off. It is a few more clicks. It is a few more steps, but, that's okay. It's still gonna be a ton easier than you or, your admin thinking every time you get an email, "What do I need to say?

How do I need to write it? Where's the thing? Where's the link? H- what's our policy?

How do I word it better?" All of that stuff. AI will still handle it for you. You just have to copy and paste it But this can be a fabulous starting point, and this can help you build the trust in your processes and in the systems that you've built to help take that load off you.

I recommend for most people, do start there. But if you're keen and you've checked the privacy and security, confidentiality of all the platforms that you intend to use, you can take that next step, pathway two, which is connected access getting AI to literally be in your inbox and to be helping you right there and then. It can be done in an agentic way, so it's automated. For a while I was using this and I may return to it at some point what is cool in that method is an email comes in and your little AI agent robot is processing it as the email comes in and it's doing the actions.

I don't let AI send emails for me. I do let it draft for me, but I don't let it send emails for me. I still like that human check. And that's a trust thing.

Maybe over time I will for some types of emails let it send a very procedural kind of email for me maybe. it's not a blocker to me. Having all those other steps done, things like added to my calendar or a task added to my task list Or a long email kind of interpreted for me into like five bullet points that I can then process, oh, what was the point of that or what do I need to respond to? All of that is just so, so helpful and it shortcuts the whole process of doing emails.

So it just makes it so much easier I literally can get to inbox zero daily. If not daily, it's every few days I just pop in and do those last few little bits that I need to do, last checks and a few edits and off I go. Done. It's literally the first time in my adult life that I've been able to achieve this.

And what it means, it's not just like an arbitrary, oh, inbox zero. What it means is providing better customer support and I'm providing the kind of care and help that I want to and even some cherry on top help. Like I'm able to reply more to things I wouldn't have even necessarily responded to previously And it's costing me less in terms of my own energy. So, yay!

Good. Win all around. My current setup is I have Notion AI, not AI agents at the moment. I've turned that off 'cause it does cost extra, and I don't actually have a current requirement for, like, immediate actions.

It was nice to have things like drafted and dealt with, and when I looked at my inbox, it was already half dealt with. That was actually not needed, in my current mode of business. So what I do twice a day, I chat with my Notion AI, and I've set up a skill, which is a whole, like, instruction that says, "Do this with my inbox. , Here are the rules to follow."

I trigger it, and then it suggests what to do with all the bits and pieces. It does some actions automatically things like drafting something if it's quite simple, or archiving certain types of emails. other things, it will then have a chat with me, and I can very quickly say, "Ooh, let's say yes to this person So it takes me four seconds to write that. Then the draft is sitting in the inbox for me, and it looks lovely, and it's in my voice and my tone, and that's probably another 30 seconds to go and send it.

That kind of connected AI is so, so, so helpful if it's the right thing for your business and the policies and also your level of trust in AI. I hope this chat here has gone some way to reassuring you that there are different ways. It's not all or nothing, and you can start with pathway one, and all of those building blocks are the same building blocks you then need to run pathway two. If they're in place, you actually can then just connect AI to your inbox, and pathway two then is ready to go because you've already created the rules.

You've already shown it the templates and the voice and the tone, and you've got your links, and all of that is there This is very dynamic. It's gonna change over time, and it's endless, the options available to you in how you do this. I love Notion for storing all of these building blocks and creating them, and chatting with Notion AI that then has the knowledge of my business. It's all there.

It's not seamless. I sometimes have to give it a nudge to remind it to go and look at the rules and actually follow the rules, and then it reminds itself and does a better job. I will hope that over time the rule following will go a little bit better. For now, I take a bit more responsibility, I think of it as, me babysitting the AI to just check that it's doing the job it's supposed to.

But it still creates so much more ease I find it really exciting to think about how much better it can be in the future. But what's even more exciting is how much better your work life can be right now with just putting some of these building blocks into place, and documenting, and gathering, and having a process how do I get AI to help me build this system? I would love to teach this to you. I hope you'll come along to the free webinar on Monday, the 1st of June.

From Inbox Chaos to Inbox Zero: The AI Method for Neurodivergent Business Owners. If you're listening and that has already passed, please go to the link in the show notes anyway, and you'll see what else is available, how I can support you. And as I said, I am opening doors for the Neurodivergent Business Collective premium membership, opening on Monday, the 1st of June. Doors closing on the 10th of June, 2026.

This is really deeply thought out refresh of what goes on in the Neurodivergent Business Collective. It is group coaching to help you put systems, AI, and strategy into your business across all levels of business, but with this sort of systems thinking AI forward approach, which is how my brain ticks and where I love to guide and coach people. So you're gonna get access to group coaching. Fortnightly, we have sessions.

They're live. The teaching and training part of it is recorded, so anyone can catch up And the live part active coaching, question, support, guidance to build the things that I'm teaching you. Each month, we have a theme, and we're starting with emails. So we're gonna do the intro, next Monday on the free webinar, and then you may wanna join us.

And those next two sessions, those fortnightly sessions, we're gonna keep going and go deeper into, teaching, and coaching, and body doubling, and helping you create your system that works for you, that will support you to get your emails tamed with the help of AI. And after that, we keep going into other monthly themes, I so excited to be guiding neurodivergent business owners in this new refreshed version of the Neurodivergent Business Collective that is so much deeper. We're gonna have so much more time together, and I… Oh, yeah, very excited.

I could keep going. I'm not going to. I hope you'll join me for the webinar. go and register.

If you can't come live, the recording will be sent to you, and you will get the templates, and resources, and prompts that I share as well. And I hope this has been really useful for you to see the potential, the different pathways of how you can get started with AI in your inbox Come and find me on Instagram. I am @differently.aligned, and all the links you need are in the show notes.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for looking after yourself and your brain and looking for your path to a more aligned business. Have a fabulous day.