AI, ChatGPT and Small Business Owners
Is AI worth using in your Small Business?
Introduction
The age of AI is upon us!
It is time to ask the question: has AI reached a level of maturity to justify its integration into your professional life as a business owner? More critically, can it make a tangible difference to your business?
AI tools are proliferating the internet; there are plenty of shiny new things to look at, a luxury most business owners do not have time for, especially when most of these tools still feel like gimmicks more than game-changers. So instead of introducing you to a range of new tools, I want to show you how you and your business can benefit exponentially from a single tool. A subscription to ChatGPT Plus, will give you access to the best AI tool on the market for small business, GPT-4.
GPT-4 (the latest version of ChatGPT by Open AI) is no gimmick. It has the potential to save small business owners hours of time each week.
How ChatGPT works.
Our human brains are remarkably adept prediction machines. They assimilate real-time data, enabling us to formulate predictions regarding our physical surroundings, social interactions, and intellectual contexts. Large Language Models (LLMs) are essentially computer programmes modelled somewhat like the neural networks in our brains. They process vast quantities of data found on the internet and learn to make predictions based on these extensive reserves of information. LLMs such as Open AI’s ChatGPT are leading examples demonstrating the predictive prowess of such models.
Open AI’s ChatGPT
Since its release at the end of 2022, ChatGPT has impressed with its human like capabilities.
Take for instance the ‘auto-complete’ function as you compose a text message on your phone. It can predict what you intend to type because it has been trained to recognise an extensive vocabulary, log the relative frequency of word usage, and follow the patterns of how words are used in conjunction.
Now, envision a programme that has been ‘trained’ on enormous amounts of internet data. Instead of auto-completing one word at a time, it has the capacity to auto-complete a remarkable 3000 words within a matter of seconds.
“Ah”, you may say, “auto-complete invariably botches people's names and misspells words such as 'to' (two, too). It doesn’t understand my context. There's no way it can be of assistance in my niche business”.
Context is Key
AI + Context = Power
Here, however, is where things begin to get interesting.
ChatGPT proves particularly beneficial for businesses because the more context you give it, the better it is able to respond accurately with answers that can spare you hours of work. While the oceanic breadth of internet data has endowed ChatGPT with extensive knowledge, it is up to you to guide its ability to contextualise by providing a narrow, specific, and clear context.
For instance, you would receive markedly different responses if you asked:
“What are some product ideas for my small business?”
As opposed to:
“I operate a small business that currently sells products for pet hair removal from household surfaces. As my expert business coach and specialist in pet owner demographics and needs, could you kindly propose five products or services that build on our current offering?
The first prompt (a prompt is the textual instructions you provide ChatGPT) would likely yield very generic answers, possibly catering to someone without any specific business idea in mind. In contrast, the second query would likely inspire some thought-provoking ideas that could stimulate strategic thinking for your specific niche.
The following section of this blog will suggest practical ways to leverage ChatGPT across all aspects of your business.
If you would like to jump to a particular section, you can do so here:
Leadership Assistance
Let's face it, running your own business can be a confusing. You're your own boss, which sounds great, until you realise you've got to figure out what every work day should look like. It's all too easy to feel stuck, staring at that daunting blank canvas. And when things go pear-shaped, guess who's left holding the bag? Yep, that's you.
Owning a business is fun… sometimes.
ChatGPT can help on the ‘not-so-fun’ days.
But fear not! Here are four handy ways you can use GPT-4 to make your life as a leader a bit less chaotic:
Turn Mental Clutter into Clear Action
When your mind is a mess, it helps to jot down all the stuff that's taking up space in there. You can spill all your thoughts onto the page and let ChatGPT sort it out. Here's a prompt to try:
"You're my business coach and productivity guru. My brain's a bit of a jumble at the moment. I'm going to unload everything I'm thinking about. Can you then organise this into:1. A table that categorises these thoughts and estimates both their urgency and importance.2. Then, ask me questions to help you turn this into an Eisenhower Matrix."
After you answer ChatGPT's questions, you'll get a neat table that clearly shows what you need to tackle now, schedule for later, delegate, or chuck out. Not sure what an Eisenhower Matrix is? Check out this explanation by James Clear.
Once you've decided on your focus, let ChatGPT know how many hours you've got for work, and ask it to create a plan for completing this work within that time.
End Today with a Plan for Tomorrow
As your day winds down and you realise there's still loads to do, tell ChatGPT:
"I'm calling it a day and need your help to plan tomorrow as my trusty productivity coach. I'm going to tell you what I hope to accomplish and how many hours I've got for it. Please help me arrange this into a workable plan that fits my time constraint. Then turn this plan into a quick reference table I can easily check throughout the day. Sound good?"
After ChatGPT responds, list out your goals for tomorrow and the time you have to do them. ChatGPT will then put your plan together. Even if you tweak the plan later, you'll finish your day knowing you're ready to hit the ground running tomorrow.
Summarise Long Emails and Notes
Some people just can’t keep it short and simple, can they? Luckily, ChatGPT is a pro at getting to the point. Copy that overly long email and paste it after this prompt to ChatGPT:
"Could you summarise this email from [their relationship to you], please? Give me clear, detailed bullet points and be sure to highlight any actions I need to take."
You'll keep your mind clear and save your sanity.
Coaching and Guidance on ANY Subject
As a small business owner, you need to know a little about a lot!
Here's a cool prompt that prompts ChatGPT to prompt you (stick with me). Basically, it asks you questions to make sure it fully understands your query. This process also helps you clarify your own thoughts. Try this:
"I want you to be my Prompt Engineer. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help me craft the perfect prompt for my needs. Here's how we'll do it:First, you'll ask me what the prompt should be about. I'll give you my answer, but we'll need to refine it through a few rounds of back-and-forth.Based on my input, you'll provide a revised prompt that's clear, concise, and easy for you to understand, and you'll ask me any relevant questions to get more info and improve the prompt.We'll keep this up, with me giving you more info and you tweaking the prompt until I say we're done. Sound like a plan?"
Trust me, once you give this a go, you'll see just how powerful it can be!
HR and Organisational Development
As your business grows, developing and retaining talent becomes increasingly important. Unfortunately, HR compliance and paperwork also increase. Here are three ways to leverage ChatGPT as a HR assistant:
Create a Learning and Development Plan for Staff
Ensuring staff feel sufficiently prepared for their roles is crucial to high performance and staff retention. When staff sense that they're being invested in, they're more inclined to harbour positive feelings towards their workplace.
Invest in your Employees
With the help of ChatGPT…meanwhile, I see this stock photo everywhere… just had to use it.
You can utilise ChatGPT to devise a learning and development curriculum for any of your staff.
Adapt the following prompt to fit the specifics of your context:
“As a [customer service] expert and consultant, assist me in developing a [6-month] learning and development plan for my [relatively inexperienced customer service representatives at a consulting firm]. The plan should involve a [one-hour meeting each week, supplemented by one hour of self-study or homework within office hours]. The primary goal is to [enhance their skills in customer-centric service, ultimately aiming to improve our Net Promoter Score (NPS)]. Please provide all the reading material and discussion questions.”
Quickly Formulate Formal Letters or Policies
While you should strive to have a solid understanding of HR and employment laws in your area, ChatGPT can assist you in creating documents that adhere to these laws.
Request ChatGPT to act as an HR Consultant with expert knowledge of HR law in your location. Specify the document you wish to create and provide as much context as possible (especially the purpose, goal and timeframe).
For example:
“As an AI with HR consulting capabilities, I need your assistance in crafting a [supportive yet firm formal letter] to [an underperforming employee] in my business. The letter should detail our expectations for the [next month, such as no unexplained absences and successful completion of weekly objectives]. It should also clearly outline the potential consequence of [employment termination if performance doesn't improve], while highlighting the availability of support if needed. The letter must comply with [the Fair Work Act of Australia and the regulations in New South Wales (NSW).]”
Position Descriptions and Job Advertisements
Once you have a template of what you want a position description or job ad to look like, you only need to provide bullet points and ChatGPT will assist you in creating new documents in mere minutes.
First, inform ChatGPT:
“you are a HR consultant, I am going to paste an excellent example of a position description (or job ad) below. Reply by saying “thank you for this example.”
Second, state:
“I am now going to provide bullet points from which I want you to create a new position description (job ad). After I provide this to you, please tell me any details you're missing to complete the task. Once you have all the details you need, please create the document.”
ChatGPT will then ask you questions to flesh out the document, saving you a significant amount of time.
Financial Reporting
You likely already utilise tools that assist you in managing your business finances. But wouldn't it be beneficial to transform a financial statement into a few paragraphs of easy-to-understand prose for a report to stakeholders?
Turn Financial Data into Simple English
ChaGPT can help you write up financial reports.
Thanks ChatGPT!
First, prompt ChatGPT:
“You are an expert accountant and financial consultant. Please take the following report and turn it into three paragraphs of explanation [for the annual report to the board of directors].
Then take a financial statement such as income and expenses for the year. Copy the data and paste it into the ChatGPT prompt box under the prompt above. You'll be able to use this text with minimal or no adjustments.
Marketing
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge the unique way that writing and typing embeds learning and certain types of cognition into our brains. As a business owner, you must be cautious about which writing tasks you outsource to AI, as some writing tasks can contribute to your growth as a business leader.
That said, there are many parts of marketing that become repetitive, and if you're unable to hire a dedicated marketing and copywriting specialist, then ChatGPT can help streamline marketing and copywriting tasks.
Speed up the marketing machine
While I don’t think you should get ChatGPT to do your marketing, it can certainly enhance it.
Here are two examples:
Serve Different Audiences
If you need assistance in re-writing some marketing copy for a different target audience, you can simply instruct ChatGPT:
“Act as my copywriting consultant and expert, please take the piece of marketing below and rewrite it for an audience of [20-25 year olds who have moved out of home, live in Sydney, Australia, and work part-time while studying full-time].”
Then paste the original piece of marketing.
Repurpose Content for Marketing
If you utilise social media as a platform for brand awareness and affiliation, then you can take existing content and ask ChatGPT to repurpose it for a particular social media platform and post type.
Instruct ChatGPT to act as your social media marketing expert, then tell it to transform whatever it is you already have into the medium and style you want, for a specific audience.
For example,
“Act as my social media marketing consultant and please turn the blog post below into a Twitter thread.”
Sales
If you are using a proprietary CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), you may already see AI being integrated with these tools. For instance, some CRMs will suggest a next action based on a recent interaction with a prospective customer.
Here are some additional ways you can utilise ChatGPT to streamline the sales process.
Rapidly generate sales scripts and templates for various scenarios.
Sales benefits from the unique touch of a human being. That said, sales people can benefit from scripts and templates to help them deal with the repetitive. ChatGPT can help!
Get ahead with Sales
ChatGPT can help optimise your sales team and process.
For example,
“You are our expert sales coach. We have the following script to introduce prospective customers to our premium subscription service. Can you write out the five most common objections to purchasing this sort of subscription and then write a unique script responding gently and positively to each of these objections.”
Create a Quick Reference Table of Products and Services for the Sales Team.
New sales team members need to quickly familiarise themselves with the products and services they are responsible for selling. A quick reference table goes a long way to speeding up this process.
Prompt ChatGPT with the following:
“You are our expert sales coach. Can you please create a quick reference table for sales reps to quickly familiarise themselves with our products or services. Below are the product and service descriptions from our website"
Then copy and paste as much information about products and services as possible.
Look for New Customer Segment Opportunities.
While you may know your existing customers intimately, you may not know much about other potential customer segments. You can use ChatGPT to analyse a customer segment and suggest where they feel they have needs and pain points that may be related to your offering.
"We currently sell consulting services to small business owners who are looking to utilise AI in their business processes. We want to understand the needs of cafe owners in more detail and look for how our offering could overlap with their needs and pain points. As our expert business and marketing consultant, could you please provide an analysis of how our business could serve Cafe owners?"
Customer Service
Again, if you utilise any online customer service tools, you may have noticed AI is being integrated into their functionality, seeking to reduce the load on human customer service and minimise wait times for customers.
Serve customers faster and better
Use ChatGPT to improve your customer experience.
Here are some ways ChatGPT can be utilised to enhance your customer service:
Analyse Customer Feedback
If you have access to written customer feedback, you can simply paste that into ChatGPT and then write the following prompt above the feedback:
“You are our customer analyst. I need you to take the customer feedback below and do the following:- Create a one paragraph summary of the feedback - Create 5 points on what customers appreciate - Create 5 points on what customers dislike - Create 5 action points for increasing customer satisfaction.”
If you only have a small amount of feedback, you might prefer to do this manually, but if you have a large volume of feedback, this approach can save you a considerable amount of time.
Knowledge Base Creation and Management
GPT-4 can assist in creating and managing a knowledge base by drafting articles based on common customer inquiries and answers. Simply find a few exemplary responses from you or your customer service team and upload the queries and responses to ChatGPT after the following prompt:
"Act as our Customer Service Consultant. Draft a knowledge base article based on the customer queries and responses provided below.”
IT
If you're a small business, you might not have access to dedicated IT support. ChatGPT can step into several IT functions.
Fancy your own IT Helpdesk?
ChatGPT can step into the gap.
IT Support and Troubleshooting.
Need help with a technical glitch with a particular piece of software or problem with your laptop? This prompt can save the day:
“You are our IT support guru. I will tell you what I think the problem is in layman's terms. You will then tell me what the solution may be, then ask followup questions so that you can offer a more precise solution. You will keep doing this until a solution works for me.”
Set Expectations Before Starting an IT Project.
You may need to hire external IT help to implement an IT upgrade or project. ChatGPT can be utilised to create a clearer description of your scope of work and project timelines based on the resources you are willing to invest.
You could type into the GPT-4 prompt:
“You are an IT consultant, my small [consulting business] needs to [upgrade its website]. [Provide specific requirements and budget - I want a complete makeover including copy, media assets, hosting, SEO etc my budget is $10000.] Can you turn this into a project plan so the work could be contracted out in parts, with a realistic timeline?”
How to get Started with ChatGPT-4
Getting access to ChatGPT Plus is straightforward:
Sign up here. Or google:
Sign up for ChatGPT Plus.
You will then need to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus for one month, which will cost you $20 US. I know we don’t like to pay for things… but this is a bargain! And you can cancel after a month if you don’t think so.
Yes, you can use the free version ‘ChatGPT-3.5’, but the level of ‘reasoning’ that GPT-4 is capable of makes it worth the small monetary investment.
Once you get access, don’t overthink using it, try some of the prompts suggested in the article, invent your own… get to know GPT-4 as if you were getting to know a personal assistant.
When an executive first gets an executive assistant, there is initially a period of relationship building and exploring how this new relationship can maximise productivity and effectiveness. Expect the same as you learn the capabilities of GPT-4.
Summary
Leveraging the power of OpenAI's ChatGPT-4, small businesses can revolutionise their operations. From developing HR policies, decoding financial reports, crafting effective marketing strategies, streamlining sales processes, to boosting customer service, and troubleshooting IT problems, AI steps in as your versatile personal assistant. Embrace this transformative technology to supercharge your business growth, and navigate the AI-integrated future confidently.
Want more help?
If you would like to talk more about leveraging the power of AI in your business, why don’t you drop me a line, I would love to help you out.
