“Do you use ChatGPT to write your newsletter?”
That’s a question I’ve been asked twice this week. The answer is simple – no, I write it myself.
But…I do use ChatGPT for a bit of help.
For example, I like to dictate my newsletters – saying them out loud so they flow naturally and sound more chatty. (It also saves me staring at a blank page for an hour waiting for inspiration – the “record” button adds a bit of pressure to get started.)
ChatGPT then tidies them up – I ask it not to change the words, but just to sort the grammar and formatting.
And, while I’m usually fine with writing (saying?) the content, I sometimes get it to help me with titles, which I can find trickier.
So, what do we actually use it for?
Before I go any further, let me say this – if you’re going to use ChatGPT regularly, make sure you’re on a paid plan. At JDA, we have the Team plan, and each of my team has a subscription. The benefits are twofold:
- You always get the newest, best version with all the bells and whistles.
- Your data is protected. Anything we put into ChatGPT stays within our JDA team. We even have a data contract with them to cover this, and when you look at all of the security certificates they have, it’s safer than pretty much every software you use already.
So, here are some of our main uses:
- Meeting notes – all our Zoom calls are recorded, and the transcripts go into ChatGPT for summaries and action points. Handwritten notes can also be added – Chat can read my writing…which makes it officially cleverer than me. These are then added into a central “Bible” for each client, which makes preparing for future meetings much easier.
- “Projects” – I love Projects in Chat, essentially folders where it refers to everything else in the Project when answering a query. As an example, I use it to summarise my coaching sessions, Mastermind days with Entrepreneurs Circle, and Mastermind meetings with other accountancy groups I’m part of. With ChatGPT “Projects”, I can keep all these transcripts in one place within Chat and it refers to the other files in the project before answering. For example, when it summarises a new meeting and generates action points, it will pull out recurring themes from other meetings saved within the project. (Or remind me “you’ve discussed this thing is 7 meetings…and still not done it!)
- Meeting prep – for new prospects, Gareth has a prompt that pulls together background information from Companies House and the prospect’s website, plus industry insights. It even suggests good questions to ask…and sometimes makes me look clever (no easy task!).
- Blogs – while I write this email myself, we get given some blog content as part of subscriptions we have and Gareth runs them through ChatGPT to put them into our style before putting on the website.
- The team’s day-to-day – whether it’s answering tricky tax questions, checking data, or helping with Excel formulas, ChatGPT often saves time. Recently, the team have been experimenting with Agent mode too (ie where it can actually do tasks on the web or in Excel), though we’re still at the early stages with that.
All of this is stuff we’ve always done…but ChatGPT can do it lots quicker. Therefore, it frees up the team to do things that still need a real person, for example meetings and phone calls.
One important thing to remember, though, is that ChatGPT isn’t a replacement for an expert adviser.
Someone said to me ages ago that it’s “expert at everything…but not quite as expert as someone who does that thing every day”.
It’s brilliant at answering questions, but context matters. A couple of clients have asked it tax questions directly and ended up with the wrong answer, simply because they didn’t know what follow-up questions to ask.
It’s the same when we use it internally – it still needs reviewing, the same as we would review one of the team’s work before sending it out.
So that’s how we use it. For me, it’s a tool that makes life easier, saves time, and helps me focus on the important stuff.
And I’d love to hear from you – what clever uses have you found for ChatGPT?
Cheers
Jon
PS I’m still waiting for ChatGPT to do Anna’s paper round with her and let me have a lie in