6 interesting ways entrepreneurs can leverage ChatGPT to streamline their businesses

Ever since ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI in November 2022, it has been making headlines, and for good reason.

Compared to chatbots of the past like Evie and Cleverbot, ChatGPT is much more advanced. It uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 family of large language models and is shockingly good at holding rather intelligent conversations, to a certain extent.

Did you know: GPT-3 refers to Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.

Thus, understandably so, unlike with the typical chatbot, most people now see ChatGPT as a a capable tool with many use cases rather than just a source of entertainment.

If you’re intimidated by the thought of venturing into this new space, or are at a loss for ideas on how to use it, though, here’s a non-exhaustive list of ways you can leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities to streamline your work.  

1. Get it to “act” as an interviewee, client, or any other role

One of the key things about ChatGPT is that the power lies in the user’s prompt. The more specific you get with your prompt, the better the results are going to be. This means you should set clear parameters such as the number of words you want and the kind of tone you want, for example.

Another way to get a more personalised answer is by asking ChatGPT to “act” as a certain character or role.

This means you can ask them to act as an interviewee with specific experiences or skillsets to help you prepare for interviews.

Or if you’re an entrepreneur, you can even get them to act as a potential investor to practice your pitch and answers to hard questions. Here’s a conversation I had with ChatGPT after asking it to act as a critical investor, with the green icon being ChatGPT:

2. Have it write and edit lines of code

For those who don’t code but need a few simple lines of code quickly, ChatGPT is going to be your saviour.  

In ChatGPT’s own words, “As a language model, I have been trained on a wide variety of text, including programming languages and code.”

With that said, ChatGPT also makes a disclaimer that its ability to write code depends on the complexity and specifics of the task and the language.

“The task requires specific library or framework, I might not be able to generate the code, if you give me a clear instructions and examples, I can help you to write code snippets or even complete programs.”

I asked ChatGPT to write code for a landing page that introduces me and link to my LinkedIn page. Although I asked it to use pictures of flowers as the background, it randomly chose a picture of office workers from Unsplash, but told me I could change it myself.

A limitation I found though was that it was unable to extract information from my LinkedIn page, even though it’s able to summarise any readable content in a webpage (more on that later).

Instead, I could manually copy the information I wanted to include and paste it into the code, or describe to ChatGPT what I want the page to say.

This can be ideal for business owners who want to create a simple webpage prototype for their business, though don’t expect a very professional and polished result that you’d want to actually show to customers.

3. Brainstorm ideas for marketing campaigns and social media content

This might be one of the most obvious uses of ChatGPT, but it’s way too useful not to mention.

Brainstorming ideas can be an extremely challenging and tiring task. By telling ChatGPT about your business and what you want to achieve, it will be able to answer with a list of suggestions for marketing campaigns.

These can help businesses execute their marketing with a fresh new approach, or at the very least provide some leads for potential ideas.

You can also ask ChatGPT to help write captions or generate ideas for social media content in general.

4. Generate templates for terms and conditions, invoices, and more

ChatGPT is able to provide a variety of templates and also fill them out for you so long as you prompt it to do so with all the necessary info. This includes templates for emails, contracts, and invoices.

However, do note that these only serve as starting templates, and you should still get approval from professionals.

Business owners who have ever struggled with writing terms and conditions for their websites will also find ChatGPT to be very helpful.

You can ask it to provide templates for terms of service, privacy policies, cookie policies, copyright policies, and more.

5. Polish the style and tone of your writing copy

This function is particularly useful for those who don’t have a strong command of the English language or just want to have a second pair of eyes to go over their work.

I had ChatGPT rewrite a few paragraphs of my experience at Slow Dine, a pop-up dining event by UNPLUG. Prompting it to use flowery and descriptive language. Here is my writing:

Showing up at Fittie Sense Cafe in Bangsar on a rainy Saturday evening, we were greeted and seated by Najmia Zulkarnian, the co-founder of UNPLUG.

The tablescape immediately captured my attention. Dressed in a forest green tablecloth with coral-toned detailing, the table was set with beautiful wares, most notably the copper jug and coaster.

From a pamphlet, we learnt that the copper jugs and coasters are from Meraki Copper, a homegrown brand selling copper homeware handmade in India. The tablecloth and napkins were handmade traditional handblocked batik fabrics from Nysakapas.

Now here’s ChatGPT’s rewrite, without any edits made by us:

Stepping into Fittie Sense Cafe on a dreary Saturday evening in Bangsar, we were warmly greeted and escorted to our table by Najmia Zulkarnian, the charismatic co-founder of UNPLUG. As we settled in, my gaze was immediately drawn to the stunning tablescape before me. A rich forest green tablecloth, adorned with delicate coral-hued detailing, served as the perfect canvas for the beautiful wares that adorned it. Of particular note were the elegant copper jug and coaster, which caught my eye with their gleaming sheen.

As we perused the pamphlet on the table, we learned that the copper jug and coaster were crafted by Meraki Copper, a local brand that specializes in creating handmade copper homeware in India. The tablecloth and napkins, too, were crafted with care and attention to detail, made from traditional handblocked batik fabrics by Nysakapas. Each piece was a unique and beautiful reflection of the artisanship and care that went into its creation.

Are you impressed by ChatGPT’s response?

6. Summarise just about any text-based info for easy and quick digestion

We’re all pretty busy people, and there’s probably something that you’ve been meaning to read up on, but have kept putting off for a lack of time.

To stay up to date with trends and news relevant to your business, you could send ChatGPT a link to an article or document and ask it to summarise it.

If you tend to be a very wordy writer, you can also use this function of ChatGPT to shorten your texts. This can help business owners when trying to write short and succinct copies introducing themselves or their brands.

Lots of ideas, but not all good

The ways you can utilise ChatGPT are undoubtedly extensive. This makes it a powerful tool that might be scary to some.

But it is still far, so far from being capable of replacing what people can bring to the table, with their contextual knowledge, lived experiences, and emotions.

Although it attempts to emulate the above well enough to answer your every prompt, the more you use it, the more obvious it becomes that its responses follow a template-like presentation, making them quite formulaic.

If you’re looking for really innovative ideas, you would not find them through ChatGPT, unless you know very little to nothing at all about something, at which point anything else would seem innovative.

At its current capabilities, it can still serve as an assistive tool to polish ideas and their execution, but you’ll get as good as you give.

Something to be careful about ChatGPT is that it isn’t always accurate, and we found in our testing that it oftentimes will fill the gaps with totally fabricated information in an attempt to answer your prompt.

As long as you’re aware of its limitations, then it’s possible to masterfully utilise ChatGPT to the best of its abilities.