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AI Queens: Smart AF AI Tools, Automation, & Business Tips with Erika Stanley
AI Queens: Smart AF AI Tools, Automation, & Business Tips with Erika Stanley

Stop Burning Through Claude: 12 Smarter Habits for Building with AI

21 May 2026 29:43 Erika Stanley, Branding and AI Strategist

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About this episode

If you've made the jump from ChatGPT to Claude and keep slamming into the token wall mid-project, you are not alone. It's the conversation Erika keeps having at AI Business World, after workshops, and in networking event side chats. Claude is genuinely one of the most powerful AI tools out there right now, but if you don't know how it actually uses tokens under the hood, you'll burn through your usage way faster than you expect.


In this episode, Erika breaks down what tokens really are (think fuel in a gas tank), why long conversations compound against you, and 12 habits you can start stacking today so you can stay in Claude and actually get your work done without bouncing back and forth like a pinball between Claude and other LLMs.


What we cover:

  • The single highest-leverage habit: editing your original message instead of piling on corrections
  • Why every new message in a long chat costs you more tokens than the last one
  • The PDF problem nobody talks about and how to fix it with Adobe Acrobat's AI Assistant
  • One topic, one chat: why scope discipline saves your usage (and the planet)
  • How to use Projects, batching, and smart timing to stretch every token


If you can just do a few of these, it's going to make a huge difference. Once they click and become part of your routine, Claude stops feeling like it's fighting you and starts working like the strategic partner it's actually meant to be.


Mentioned in this episode:

  • Check out Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant: ⁠Get started with AI prompts for Acrobat AI Assistant⁠
  • Sign up for the next AI Queens Buildathon: ⁠aiqueens.com/build⁠


Connect with Erika

  • Instagram: ⁠@erikatheaiqueen⁠
  • Website: ⁠AIQueens.com⁠
  • Mile End Digital: ⁠MileEndDigital.com⁠
  • AI Queens Society Substack: ⁠AI Queens Society

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© 2026 AI Queens: Smart AF AI Tools, Automation, & Business Tips with Erika Stanley. All rights reserved.

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