An introduction to ChatGPT for business

Ever felt overwhelmed opening ChatGPT for the first time, unsure where to even begin?

Are you paying for a subscription but not quite sure you're getting the most out of it, or whether you're even on the right plan?

In this practical session, Emma Michael takes you on a whistle-stop tour of ChatGPT, designed to cut through the confusion and show you what's actually possible for your business.

From choosing the right subscription to writing your first proper prompt, this webinar covers everything you need to hit the ground running with ChatGPT as a business tool.

Topics covered in this session

• How to choose the right ChatGPT subscription for your needs

• How to write beginner-friendly prompts using the RTCCO framework

• How to set up Custom Instructions and Memory for responses that feel personalised to you

• A high-level tour of key ChatGPT features – including Custom GPTs and Agents

About the speaker

Emma is an AI trainer and business strategist and the founder of Emma Michael AI Solutions, a UK-based consultancy helping small business owners, coaches, creatives and service providers use AI confidently and ethically in their marketing and day-to-day work.

She specialises in making AI practical, accessible and genuinely useful for non-techie business owners.

She's known for translating complex tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and other AI platforms into clear, step-by-step actions that save time, reduce overwhelm and protect branding.

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Mark: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Mark, and I will be your host today.

For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the very first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.

I'm really pleased to introduce Emma Michael, who is an AI trainer and business strategist.

In this session, Emma will take you on a whistle-stop tour of ChatGPT, designed to cut through the confusion and show you what's actually possible for your business.

As always, if you have any questions throughout today's webinar, please post them in the chat, and we'll do our very best to answer them at the end of the session.

Today's webinar will be recorded, and we will send a follow-up email with that recording and any additional resources later today.

So, without further ado, over to you, Emma.

Emma Michael: Thank you so much. Hello, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today.

I'm really excited to get going with one of my favourite topics, which is how we can use ChatGPT for our business.

A quick tip for you: ChatGPT actually stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. I know sometimes people call it ChatGBT, but GPT is the correct one.

So, a little whistle-stop introduction to me: I'm an AI trainer, business strategist, and I'm also trained as an ADHD practitioner.

I'm a huge fan of AI, but I'm also very conscious that AI is a tool. Our beautiful brains are still really important in this process, and we shouldn't hand everything over to AI.

AI can be brilliant, but it can also be awful. It's important to know the difference.

One of my favourite tools is ChatGPT, which is what I'm going to be talking about today.

What we'll be looking at is which subscription you should pick, a tour of the features, proper prompting – and I'll explain a little more about that – because prompting really is the key to getting results from any AI.

Whether you use ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, or Copilot, proper prompting will help you. That skill will be transferable to any of those tools, as well as ChatGPT.

And we'll also be looking at custom instructions and memory.

So, subscription types. You've got the very basic free version, which is where a lot of people start. It's the same with many AI tools – they all offer a free version.

Earlier this year, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, introduced a new option, which is an £8 plan. It's a very watered-down version of the paid one.

With both the free version and the £8 version, you will always get an output. But if you've used the free version, you'll know that it sometimes says it has run out of credits, and that can be incredibly frustrating if you're in the middle of something. You then have to wait until the credits reset.

Most business owners that I work with invest in the Plus version because, for £20 a month, you don't get that issue. It gives you enough capacity that you can keep using it as much as you want.

Another popular one, especially when I'm working with more corporate businesses, is Teams.

That is £25, but you need a minimum of two users. So it's great for small teams and businesses that want stronger security.

It's important to know that with the free and Plus versions, you do not get the highest level of security.

What I mean by that is it can train on your data, so you need to go into your settings and tell it not to do that.

Security is always worth checking out. In fact, you can ask ChatGPT to explain the security of the different plans, and it will break them all down for you.

It also depends on what you're putting into ChatGPT. I never put anything in there that I wouldn't perhaps put on Facebook.

So I'm thinking about sensitive data. I wouldn't, for instance, put clients' names and addresses into it because I'm just using the £20-a-month version.

Everybody has to make their own decision, but it's worth considering where your security requirements lie.

Enterprise is the all-singing, all-dancing option. That is £60 per user, and there is a minimum of 150 users. So it's for larger companies. It does give enterprise-grade security and support at scale.

Then there's Pro, which is £200 a month. I genuinely don't know anybody who uses this, but obviously lots of people must.

That really is the all-singing, all-dancing version, but to be quite honest, most of us can do perfectly well on the Plus version.

So, let's have a little look around. Most people, when they start with ChatGPT, use it a bit like Google.

I'll come off screen share and just go into my own ChatGPT to show you what I mean.

What happens is we open up this small context window, and it looks very similar to Google.

When I first started using ChatGPT, I would literally ask it a basic question, and it would produce a response. I'd think, oh, that's incredible.

But what I learned, the more I studied AI, is that the better the context we give it, the better the result that comes out.

We'll come back to that when we talk about prompting.

Some of the things it can do for you – and I've prepared some examples earlier today because, honestly, whenever I train with AI, OpenAI can sometimes go down, so I've learned that you need a backup.

One thing you can do is set tasks. All I've asked it to do here is create a task that shares AI news from the UK with me every morning at eight AM.

So whatever is relevant to your business, if you wanted a reminder or wanted it to search for news from your industry, it can then produce a report for you each morning. I find that super helpful.

I also use it for reminders. I've got ADHD, and I can sometimes get really overwhelmed. I find that ChatGPT is absolutely brilliant for that, because it helps me articulate my thoughts.

So if I need a reminder to send a newsletter, create an Instagram post, or do a marketing activity, and I forget because I've got so much going on – like all of us as small business owners wearing lots of different hats – I can ask it to create a reminder.

It will then send me an email. That's a really simple way to use it.

You can also use it for images. Again, I created this example earlier today. I asked it to make an authentic-looking image for a coffee shop social feed.

I told it to act as a lifestyle influencer and be very specific. So I asked for a pair of hands holding a ceramic mug with latte art, wearing an oversized knit sweater, and so on.

What it then did was create that image. Then I asked it to change the colours to red and pink stripes, and it created the updated version.

That's another thing that you can do with image generation.

Let me just go back onto my slide. So, just making sure you can see the slide properly.

You should be able to see the ChatGPT logo and the words call, chat, tasks, agents.

I'll assume that's all okay unless I hear otherwise.

So, we've got a number of different things we can do with ChatGPT. A lot of people will just use it to create a social media post or an email. We've just looked at image creation and tasks.

We can also create a custom GPT. A custom GPT is something I might use for a coach, for example.

If a coach has a framework – perhaps they are an ADHD coach or a mindset coach – and they've got their own process and run courses, we can create a custom GPT and load it with all of their knowledge files.

So let me show you a version of that. In the sidebar, it shows the GPTs that I've created.

You can also go into the GPT store and have a look around. If you click on "Explore GPTs", it opens up a whole new store of GPTs.

What I find fascinating is that they really are hit and miss. For instance, I saw the Canva one and thought, oh, Canva is a trusted brand, that's going to be really excellent. But actually, I found it quite disappointing.

So it's really a question of going through, seeing which ones you like, testing them, and seeing which ones you find useful for you.

For example, if you wanted to do something with video, you could open one of the video-related GPTs.

What it then does is open up and give you a slightly different interface, along with conversation starters. You can pick what you want to do and then run with it.

I'm not going to demo it live because it will run slowly. But this is one I created earlier. It's very specific and looks similar, but it has been built around my business ideas and the wording I want.

A good GPT can take a couple of hours to build because you need to load it with knowledge files. That is how you train it with your data.

So that's just a whistle-stop tour of some of the key features.

Now we're going to look at prompting. This really is the key to getting great results.

We've all been there. We've all treated it like Google. We've all had disappointing results from ChatGPT, and then wondered what all the fuss was about.

So, here are some examples of the kind of prompt a beginner might use – and there's no judgement here because we all start somewhere.

You might type: "Summarise this document for me into five key points." That sounds okay, but it's not really enough.

Or: "Rewrite this email to be more engaging." Or: "Give me five ideas for LinkedIn posts on the treatment of arthritis."

Again, it feels like that should work, but you're going to get a very generic response.

To me, that's one of the biggest problems people have. Because AI is so quick and can give us information so fast, if we don't know what good looks like, then the AI doesn't know what good looks like either.

It is really important to give it more context, and, where possible, an example. So if we treat it like Google, the problem is that the prompt is too short, there's not enough context, and it's too broad and unclear.

To get around that, I use a prompting framework called RTCCO. This is what you should do when you want better results from ChatGPT.

First, instead of typing "Create me a post for LinkedIn", you give it a role. You tell it who it should be.

So you might say, "You are a LinkedIn ghostwriter." Then you give it the task. Tell it exactly what you want.

For example, I might say, "I want you to write me a 600-word LinkedIn article describing the cognitive effects that ChatGPT and AI are going to have."

Then I would give it context. I'd explain my thoughts on the topic and why I was concerned about it.

Then I'd give it rules. So I could tell it what format I want, whether I want it to use a particular copywriting structure, or some other framework.

Then I'd specify the output. I might say that I want it to be easy to read, accessible for neurodivergent readers, and so on.

So I'm giving it lots of useful background, and that massively improves the result.

I've got one prepared that I made earlier, so let me show you the difference. This was my prompt: I asked it to design a strategy to research 10 of the top UK dog influencers on social media.

I asked it to conduct the research, put the results into a table, include columns on their main channels, then draft outreach DMs asking whether they'd be interested in a brand partnership.

I also asked it to include columns in the table to monitor replies and when messages had been sent. What it then produced was this incredible spreadsheet.

It literally went through, found the information, found their social media, email addresses and contact points, and had already written out a message.

The key with that is that you need to make sure the language sounds like you. I would always go in and edit it. I would never take what ChatGPT gives me word for word.

I use my brain first, and I use it to give me an overview or a starting point.

That just shows the difference a really good prompt can make. It will give you so much better output than a generic prompt.

So, another thing we need to know is what ChatGPT actually remembers. ChatGPT has a context window, which we looked at earlier.

It has now been upgraded and works using tokens. Just think of tokens as chunks of information.

If you give ChatGPT a really, really long prompt, and then keep asking it questions in that same thread, it can start missing information off.

So I would always open a new chat window and copy and paste important information across, because otherwise you can run out of tokens, and that can be a bit of an issue.

You can also get ChatGPT to remember things. If you go into your settings and then to Personalisation, you can change its characteristics.

I've put in custom instructions. So I'm telling it what voice I want it to use, what tone, what style and what structure. I recommend that you go in and do that. For example, I tell it to avoid using em dashes, and I tell it not to use emojis.

You can also check your security settings, log out of devices, and review your notifications. This is also where your tasks are stored.

So it's worth going through each of these settings and just making sure that everything is as it should be.

You can add apps now too, so you can connect things like your Google Drive. That's a useful feature.

Then there's memory. You can tell ChatGPT that when you type certain things in, you want it to remember them.

So if you've got your business details, your website, your marketing strategy, your brand voice guide, or your ideal client guide, you can feed that into ChatGPT and ask it to remember it.

You can also do that by loading files onto it. If you click the plus button in a new chat, you can add a file.

You can upload a document, and it will then have all that information available to work with. That's why I said you can add your brand voice guide and other key documents.

We've looked at custom instructions, context windows and memory. We've also got agent mode.

Agent mode means that instead of just being generative AI – where it creates content for you – it becomes agentic AI, where it goes and does things for you.

That spreadsheet I showed you earlier is a good example of that. It went away and did that work for me.

The beauty of it is that you can leave an agent running in the background. You don't need to keep it open. You can leave it to work for 20 minutes and then come back when it's done. That's a really powerful tool for things like research.

I think you only get that in the paid version – the £20-a-month one – and not in the free version.

The difference between a custom GPT and an agent is that the agent is autonomous. It can make decisions and take actions, and it will stop at critical points to ask for approval.

So I know that when I put something into it, it will come back and check with me and say, "Did you mean this? Do you want me to do X, Y, Z?"

Then I can either agree or disagree, which is really useful.

So, what we've learned today is: which subscription should you pick, a whistle-stop tour of the features, how to do proper prompting, and how custom instructions and memory work.

Thank you for listening. You can find me at emmamichael.ai on Instagram, and that's also the address of my website.

So let me hand it back over.

Mark: Thanks, Emma. Perfectly timed as well, so brilliant stuff, and thank you very much.

Lots of positive responses in the chat already, which is always good to see.

Emma, what are the most common beginner mistakes you see businesses make when they start using ChatGPT?

Emma Michael: Not fact-checking.

What AI does at the moment is hallucinate. What I mean by that is it can make things up.

There was a case, I think in 2022 when ChatGPT first came out, where a lawyer in America was really excited to test the new technology.

He went into ChatGPT, cited a case he was working on, and asked it to find some case law, which ChatGPT did. Amazing.

He then took that to court. The judge said, "That's not a ruling I'm aware of. You need to go and look into this." Long story short, it didn't exist.

We need to remember that these bots are sycophantic. They are designed to please us. That's why you'll often get very flattering or overly agreeable responses from ChatGPT.

The key is to challenge it, iterate with it, and go back and forth. But yes, hallucinations and not checking the facts can be a really big problem.

Mark: That's really interesting, actually. I'd never thought of it like that, but it makes complete sense.

And you touched earlier on the different pricing plans. Can you tell when you've outgrown the free plan and should look to upgrade?

Emma Michael: Yes. With the free plan, it's when it tells you that you've run out of tokens or credits and won't let you do any more.

So you could be creating a 30-day content plan for Instagram, and it's halfway through it, and then it comes up with a message saying, "Sorry, you have to wait X number of hours before I can continue."

That's really frustrating.

I also find that the paid version is an investment because, for me, it can be such a time-saver. For £20 a month, I genuinely see it as something you can almost train to act like a member of staff.

It's getting that good now, as long as you know how to use it properly.

With custom GPTs, for example, you could train one for marketing, one for LinkedIn, and lots of other use cases.

Mark: Great. Someone in the chat has just asked how do you decide which one to start with? Which one is the best all-rounder? And a follow-up question: why ChatGPT rather than something else?

Emma Michael: It's really personal preference. I use all four, but then I'm an AI trainer, so I'm testing all the time.

What I did personally was test them all to start with.

Copilot, at one stage, was really poor. It had a big update, and I still didn't like it, so I didn't want to use it.

That said, in some businesses, they use it because it's built into Microsoft, and it's seen as a trusted brand.

Will it get better? Yes, of course it will. But they were a bit slower off the mark.

I tried the same prompt in three versions of each tool to see which gave me the output that felt most like me. That's how I made the decision.

I do go between Claude and ChatGPT quite a bit because Claude is more human-sounding and better for long-form content.

There have also been some big upgrades to it recently. It can do agentic AI as well, just like ChatGPT can.

I think everyone just needs to try them and find which one suits them, because it will be different for all of us.

Mark: That brings us to the end of today's session. Emma, huge thanks, and thank you to all of you for joining today's webinar.

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