1626: AI Productivity for Entrepreneurs with Donna Blevins

Monday, August 3, 2026

Many entrepreneurs are smart, experienced, and ambitious, but still feel stuck, scattered, and frustrated that their results don’t match their potential. In this episode of Marketer of the Day, Dr. Donna Blevins, a 6'5" former professional poker player, high-scoring basketball standout, stroke survivor, and performance coach, shows how changing your self-talk, daily habits, and relationship with AI can create real breakthroughs in your business and life. She draws on concepts from her book MindShift, where she teaches how to reframe setbacks, focus on wins, and harness the power of intentional language. Donna shares the pivotal story of being told by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that her high school basketball stats made her not just “good,” but a star, even though she’d spent years telling herself she was terrible. That moment shattered her habit of focusing on misses instead of scores, and it mirrors how many entrepreneurs obsess over what’s not working instead of the results they are getting. Donna explains how this kind of negative self-talk quietly sabotages success, and why shifting your internal language is the first step to changing your external results.

From there, Donna gets practical. She reveals her simple productivity framework: finish three small things a day, and plan your business in 90‑day quarters instead of chasing vague, far-off “big goals” you never complete. She talks about her mind shifting process, so powerful she credits it with helping her regain speech three days after a massive stroke, and her exercise to “evict your perfection witch,” freeing you from the perfectionism that keeps offers, content, and ideas stuck in draft mode. You’ll learn why doing things live, iterating in public, and embracing “beta” versions is often the fastest path to a profitable, repeatable offer.

Donna also dives into how she’s using AI as a true virtual assistant, not a distraction. She explains how she trained ChatGPT’s new work feature to understand her voice (“donatize” her content), organize her Google Drive, build course templates, and act as a pocket performance coach for clients, while maintaining strict boundaries so the tech stays safe, useful, and under her control. For entrepreneurs, especially those over 50, who feel overwhelmed by tech, uncertain about their “next page,” or tired of spinning their wheels, this conversation offers a blend of mindset, systems, and AI strategy rooted in real-world experience. If you’re ready to stop overthinking, start finishing, and finally turn your brilliance into bankable results, you’ll want to hear what Donna shares.

Quotes:

"Find three little things that you can finish now. What happens? It changes the frequency, the energy within you, and the frequency around you, because we create the energy around us."

"When you make a goal, sure, look at the big hairy-ass goals, that's fine, but look at something that's three months away. If you plan in quarters, you're far more productive."

"I created a mind shift exercise called 'Evict Your Perfection Witch' because she has taken residence on my shoulders from time to time, and I want to evict her, evict the bitch, that's what I say."