Innovative Ways Solopreneurs Can Leverage ChatGPT and AI

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Is there a hotter topic right now than ChatGPT and AI as a whole? The topic has taken the world by storm. In this episode, Angela Heath gives a unique take on this ever-changing world and how solopreneurs, specifically, can utilize these tools. We discuss:

1. What Angela's unique opinion is on these tools

2. Why solopreneurs should use ChatGPT in their businesses

3. Underutilized ways solopreneurs can use ChatGPT

4. Insider tips to get the most out of ChatGPT

5. What makes a good prompt and how specific you should get

6. Common myths about ChatGPT that are entirely inaccurate

7. Recommended AI tools for solopreneurs besides ChatGPT

8. Legality/copyright/plagiarism - What’s acceptable and what isn’t and whether or not you need to cite your AI sources

Join us in this enlightening episode, as we unravel the endless possibilities AI and ChatGPT offer solopreneurs in their pursuit of success in the modern business landscape.

Connect with Angela Heath

• Connect with Angela on LinkedIn.
• Visit AngelaHeath.com/schedule.

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• ChatGPT

Favorite Quotes:

"Just do it."

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About Angela Heath

Angela is an award-winning entrepreneur who loves everything virtual speaking, small business and AI.  She started her solopreneur journey over 30 years ago when she launched a consulting group.

After writing three books in six years, Angela became a national expert in the field of aging, creating model programs that were replicated around the country. She closed that company when her 12 year old son was diagnosed with leukemia.  She got in the ring with him to fight the deadly disease for 3.5 years.

Angela was then forced to discover ways to re-boot and take her skills online. She wrote a fourth book and launched TKC Incorporated and uses their proprietary simple, AI templates with human oversight, to increase visibility & revenue for subject matter experts, solopreneurs and small businesses.  She helps her clients create profitable books in one month, improve speech performance in one week and produce profitable offers in one day.

Angela is the 2022 winner of the Toastmasters International Video Speech Contest with over 11,000 views of her speech. During her free time she loves a good book, jazz and travel.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Angela Heath (00:00):

ChatGPT AI is a hammer, very much like one. Think about it. We can use a hammer to build a house, or we can use a hammer to bash a head. It's a tool. It's only a tool. It's a very powerful tool, but it's only a tool.

Intro (00:24):

Welcome to the One Person Business podcast, the show for solopreneurs, consultants and contractors who are ready to take charge of their business and reclaim their freedom. Join us as we bring you inspiring stories, invaluable insights and practical strategies from successful solopreneurs and industry experts, empowering you to create a thriving business that aligns with your unique goals and allows you to live life on your own terms. Here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries.

Carly Ries (00:54):

Welcome to the One-Person Business podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries.

Angela Heath (00:58):

And I'm Joe Rando

Carly Ries (00:59):

I am so excited for our guest. We have today Angela Heath. Angela is an award-winning entrepreneur who loves everything virtual speaking, a small business and AI, which is what we're gonna get into today. She started her solopreneur journey over 30 years ago when she launched a consulting group. This is crazy. After writing three books in six years, Angelo became a national expert in the field of aging, creating model programs that were replicated around the country. She closed that company when her 12 year old son was diagnosed with leukemia and she got into the ring with him to fight the deadly disease for three and a half years. Angela, he is good now though, right?

Angela Heath (01:41):

He's perfect now.

Carly Ries (01:42):

Good. That's what we love to hear. Angela was then forced to discover ways to reboot and take her skills online after all of that. So she wrote a fourth book and launched T K C Incorporated and uses their proprietary simple AI templates with human oversight to increase visibility and revenue for subject matter experts, solopreneurs, and small business owners. She helps her clients create profitable books in one month, improve speech performance in one week, and produce profitable offers in one day. I love all of that and I might need to talk to you offline as well. Angela is a 2022 winner of the Toastmasters International Video speech contest with over 11,000 views of her speech. During her free time, if you have that based off of what I was just saying, she loves a good book, jazz and travel, my kind of gal. So, Angela, welcome to the show.

Angela Heath (02:42):

Hello and thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

Carly Ries (02:45):

We're so excited. We are talking about such a hot topic today, but I like talking to you about AI and ChatGPT because you kind of have your own take on it. You're so knowledgeable on it and I know it's everywhere but I feel like you have such a good perspective on how it should be used for solopreneurs. Can you talk about your unique take on AI in general, ChatGPT? Just everything that's going on with AI right now.

Angela Heath (03:14):

I usually say that ChatGPT AI is a hammer. Very much like one. Think about it. We can use a hammer to build a house or we can use a hammer to bash a head. It's a tool. It's only a tool. It's a very powerful tool, but it's only a tool. I get into these debates all the time. Is AI good? Is AI bad? Right now AI is a tool. Maybe some point in the future if we ever get to the point where it's really thinking on its own, let's just look at it as a tool and with that we can use it properly.

Carly Ries (03:58):

Let's get into that. Let's start with ChatGPT. How should solopreneurs be using that for their businesses as a tool?

Angela Heath (04:10):

I think it's important for us to think about that whole sort of journey through being a solopreneur. Everything from coming up with concepts about what we may want to offer in our businesses all the way through to our exit. How are we going to leave that business. Every step of the way, we can use ChatGPT as a tool to help us make some really smart decisions. It can do pretty much anything for us. So yeah, there's nothing in particular that we do that it probably can't help us with. It can help us with the entire journey.

Carly Ries (04:52):

So what would be some specifics be if I'm a new solopreneur and I keep hearing about ChatGPT on the news, I know I can use it, but I don't know how. What are a few quick ways that you would recommend solopreneurs start, if they're looking into it for the first time.

(05:09):

What I would recommend is, we're actually developing a whole suite of, we're calling them generators that solopreneurs can use in order to build their business out. But even without our generators, they can start with something simple like, here are my talents, here's my skills. This is who I am, what could I possibly do with this that is needed in the marketplace? Give me some examples of other companies that have done it and what kind of revenue did they generate so we can get our business ideas out of ChatGPT. Of course it's a tool. We may get five or six business ideas and then we decide what makes most sense to us. Then we tweak it according to our interests, according to our talents, and we can come up with something that has real relevance in the world today. Once we create our own model based on the research it's going to do for us, then we can put that model back into ChatGPT and test it agAIn and start building out all of the components of our business.

(06:25):

I'm in marketing and I keep seeing things like ways to use ChatGPT for keyword research, ways to use it for competitive analysis, content generation but also content idea generation. I feel like these are kind of mAInstream ways that people are starting to use it, but what are some underutilized ways to use ChatGPT that a lot of solopreneurs may not think of? You sAId revenue, like what is their revenue? I wouldn't have thought to ChatGPT what revenue certAIn companies are making. What are some other ways that aren't mAInstream that people should be thinking about?

Angela Heath (07:04):

Think about it, you're in marketing. Typically when you get a new client, what do you do? You help sort of understand what they offer, what their strengths are. You look at the threats and you do the SWAT analysis and then you do a competitor analysis. Everything that we typically pay for with marketing experts in terms of our analysis, we can do through ChatGBT. We are not just going to take it for face value, we're gonna go then and validate it in other places. But it's that whole entire spectrum. I've got a tool that allows people to put in their niche, their location and their offer, and it does a complete competitor analysis. About 30 questions, everything from demographics to psychographics, to buying behavior, to summary of an ad that might work for that particular person.

(08:07):

I'm a writer, I help people to write their books. So when I think about something like that, I can go over to ChatGPT and I can help it write a book with my brand voice so that it comes out and it doesn't sound like a robot. Now I'm gonna take it out of there, take it over to some other tools, make sure we're not plagiarizing, make sure it doesn't sound like a robot, and then I can put it out. Of course, everything we take out of there, we're gonna vet it, we're gonna edit it, we're gonna make sure it sounds like us. But literally I haven't found anything that I need to do with my business that I can't leverage a tool like ChatGPT to help me in some way.

Joe Rando (08:56):

Angela, I have to jump in and ask a question. You're right on the money in the sense of saying you use these tools, you go out and you figure out what you need help with, get the the queries correct, get the phrasing right, get the answers, and then you keep saying the word vet, or review or update. I wonder from my perspective, and I talked about this in a LinkedIn post the other day, that you are going to find a lot of people that do the first part and skip the last part. I really think there's gonna be a whole lot of people that are gonna get worse because of AI because they're gonna skip the second part and they're gonna end up lumped in the middle with everybody else that doesn't do their homework. I just wonder do you agree and if so, what can we say to people to convince them to take that last step?

Angela Heath (09:57):

Joe, you're totally right on. I see this every day. I've been seeing this every day for months. I've seen people come up with an idea. "I'm gonna start a business on commercial pAInting. I always wanted to pAInt." So they go over to ChatGPT and they say, Hey, create me a business on commercial pAInting. And then they start following. It doesn't matter that they can't draw a strAIght line and they don't have the tools and all of that. But yes, absolutely. I have seen some really horrible things that business owners have done where it's not gonna turn out well. Especially when you think about protecting your brand. We don't want to put anything out there that we don't vet. I've seen people who sAId, I want to write a book on X, Y, Z. They go over to ChatGPT, get all this content out and they throw it up on Amazon and they never read it because they think ChatGPT is super smart.

(10:59):

That's crazy. You've got to vet it. And I agree with you. We're gonna end up with a bunch of AI written books that have no brand value. We're gonna end up with a bunch of people thinking that they're gonna become instant millionAIres because they got a answer out of ChatGPT. It's not gonna work. So those of us who are serious about business, we understand what it takes. We're not gonna make that mistake. We are going to vet it, we are going to put our brand voice in it. We are gonna go over and check the statistics because sometimes ChatGPT has this thing that we call hallucinations where it'll go off on a tangent that doesn't even have anything to do with what you were asking. So if it can have hallucinations, what does that mean? It's gonna create a lot of error. So we have to vet it, we have to.

Joe Rando (12:00):

I've got to tell you a quick story for fun. One day recently I typed in and I asked it, I think I asked it, to write a social media post about why LifeStarr was great for solopreneurs. I didn't give it too much. I gave it something to that level and it wrote this lovely post about how Lifestarr was helping solopreneurs have better nutrition. It went on and on about better nutrition. I could not imagine writing a book with ChatGPT and not reviewing it, that would be just horrible,

Angela Heath (12:32):

Absolutely. One time it had hallucination on me and I felt like ChatGPT was racist. I had it write a bio on me and Carly and Joe, it sAId, I went to Howard University, which is a African American school and it sAId something else about race. I didn't put anything in it about race. It made me a little bit nervous, like how did it start bringing this stuff up? That's not true. But it was embedded in truth. I never went to Howard.

Carly Ries (13:14):

Speaking of vetting and everything, do people need to cite check ChatGPT or do you have to name your source when you use it? If you were using another AI platform to create an illustration or something, do you have to cite your sources with it or can you just clAIm it as your own?

Angela Heath (13:33):

What's going on right now is the wild, wild west. The jury is still out. There is very little case law about what's gonna happen with certAIn citations. We know plagiarism is plagiarism. The people who are doing things very unwise, like they're saying create a song for me in the persona of Elvis Presley or something like that. We don't want to do things like that as business builders. We're not gonna do things like that because our businesses are our own. So in terms of citation, it's all over the place. You may go on one of these tools today and it'll say "everything you take out of this tool is yours. You can use it for commercial purposes and all of that". You may go over there tomorrow and it may say, "everything you generate out of here is ours." I always tell people, if you are worried about that, I think it's really important to make sure you're putting your own content in it.

(14:39):

But you don't want to put anything that is secret, proprietary information in there because we don't even know what's happening with all of this information we are putting in there. Most of them will say you don't have to do citations. Some of the art areas are starting to get a little heat right now. So it's all over the place. What I advise you to do, if you are in an area where you just don't know, I would generate something and in your vault where you keep all of your information, I would just put the date on it when it was created. If something comes up, if they change their terms and now they're saying, oh, you generated this and you didn't give us credit, well you can say, Hey, I cited it then. And you can go back and find out that they didn't require it. When I first started on ChatGPT, it was like, everything is yours, you don't have to worry. There was nothing there. But I just got somebody on it recently and I noticed there were all of these disclosures. There were none of those when I started working on ChatGPT. So it's the wild wild west. Cover your back.

Carly Ries (16:00):

Good advice. Also thinking about ChatGPT and I want to get into myths in a little bit so we don't have to go down the rabbit hole per se right now, but we were talking about competitive analysis earlier and all of that. Is it true, is ChatGPT dated? If somebody were to do a competitive analysis, it wouldn't be from 2023, which is when this is AIring, right?

Angela Heath (16:24):

Right. It is going to be dated. That's part of your vetting. Understanding that right now it ends in 2020. November of 2022 is when we got access to it. But the database is younger. That'd be younger than that. The database itself that ChatGPT is built off of, I think it ended in 2020 or 2021, one of the two. But yes, that's part of our vetting. So when you get anything out of there, you want to go over to the internet and make sure that whatever it's telling you is still current. So yes, you do have to be concerned about that.

Carly Ries (17:18):

I also want to circle back because we were saying that you want to make sure your brand, your voice, is in everything that you do because ChatGPT will just spit it out. Angela, one of the things I love about you that I learned from a recent presentation that you gave, is just how specific you can get with your prompts and your prompts in ChatGPT can actually help with your brand voice and everything. You can make it sound like you, you can train it to do different things. What are some secret ways to use prompts that aren't so obvious? I know for me, I would've just typed in 20 competitors or 20 companies focusing on solopreneurs, but it could be 20 companies, the size of one to 10 employees, you get so specific. What are some insights for somebody that uses it so much, ways to get it where you want the prompt to really work for you?

Angela Heath (18:15):

Now here's somewhere that very few people, entrepreneurs, probably even know about and they don't visit because usually it's visited by a lot of IT type people, real prompt engineers. OpenAI has a tool, it's called playground. Playground is where you go to play. You can go over there, you can input. For example, I've created my persona and the way I created it, I went over and I trained over on playground. I would say, this is Angela, she's won these awards, she's been in business this long, this is what her customers "say" about her. I can even upload, it just depends on how many people are using it, how much content you can actually upload, because sometimes it'll kick you out, it'll time out or whatever.

(19:15):

So you could play around with the amount of content, but you can actually upload a part of a speech or a part of a white paper or something like that so it gets a better feel for how you speak. You want to train it to your voice, your brand, your goals, your aspirations, your customers and what they say so that the output you get is going to need more custom as opposed to people who don't understand how you train it to your voice. The output they get is gonna be very vanilla. It's going to be in many instances, a one-on-one. And those of us who are in business, most of us would never want to be known for putting something out that has the same voice as everybody else. It's sort of like a one-on-one. You need to train it on who you are.

Joe Rando (20:14):

I did not know that. That's amazing.

Carly Ries (20:17):

Gosh, does your brain just hurt some days? So much is happening so quickly in AI. It's just fascinating to see how quickly everything is changing.

Angela Heath (20:33):

You know, I just took my son out and I was showing him some of the generators that my company has built. I was like, "look at this, look at that, look at this". And he's not in business. He could care less. He's sitting over there like it's Mother's Day, so I'm going to humor her. Yeah, mom, that's really fascinating. But his response is, everything you do, you're always on 10, you're always so happy, you're always so interested. You're always so motivated. And I said, that's because I'm a blessed woman. Most of the work I do, I love, and I love this whole AI thing, but I'm not foolish. I understand there's a dark side and it is not right now because of the tool itself.

(21:25):

It's because of what the people are doing with the tool and what the people will do with the tool. So there's definitely a dark side. I was really excited when the White House came out with their bill of rights around AI because it's not only the dark side of AI, but it's the dark side of that digital divide, which now gets broader. The privacy of people and all of that is all a factor and it's happening so fast. Nobody has time to really build in as many safeguards as we need. So I love it, but I am not foolish about it.

Carly Ries (22:03):

With that, are there any myths that you hear over and over again? I feel like so many people are just making things up and it's hard to differentiate what's true and what isn't. Not just with AI, I guess that's just the world we live in, but are there any things you want to clear up that you've heard that are not true about AI in general?

Angela Heath (22:27):

One of the myths is that people will say, "if you use it, you are going to sound like a robot." That's not true. If you train it, there are also places where you can go and regenerate the same content over. You can tell it to use a more human tone. It is not totally there yet. But with every month it gets better and better with sounding more like a person is outputting the content. So that's one thing when people say, oh, if you use it, you're gonna sound like a robot. The other thing that people say that I don't believe at all is that it is going to take over everybody's job. Nobody's going to have a job, and the government's gonna have to take care of all of us. I don't believe that because I do a lot of speaking around the change in the world of work, and I look at AI the same way we looked at the computer.

(23:39):

Remember the statement, there's going to be a computer on every desk. Everybody was alarmed because they could only think about mainframes and it's impossible to shrink it down to the computers that we see today. People were scared, "oh, everybody's gonna lose their job." When smartphones came out, it was the same kind of reaction because now what we have right now is more powerful than the mainframes of 15 years ago, 20 years ago, in our pockets, in our purses, people were afraid. So every time there's a huge leap in capabilities, there's always this fear. So yes, there are going to be jobs lost, without a doubt, with every revolution in technology, industrial revolution, people lost jobs. Yes, there is going to be a lot more opportunities out there. There are people who are not millionaires today, their businesses will become multimillion dollar businesses because they got into a niche where they leveraged this tool and they just out survived their competitors. So, that's really like a myth, everybody's gonna lose their job. I would just say leverage it, use it. It can be a really good tool to kind of add to your business, pivot your business a little bit so that you stay ahead of the curve. I just think that there is going to be good and bad on both sides.

Joe Rando (25:23):

Angela, I really think that you're absolutely right. We don't lose the jobs, but the jobs change. I always think back to a guy I knew. He was a leading authority on the gyroscopic compasses or guidance systems. Then we invented G P S satellites and all this authority was useless. There was nothing else to do because we didn't need those gyroscopic guidance systems anymore. So it's always important, like you're saying, to make sure you're incorporating this stuff enough to keep ahead of the curve or you can become irrelevant. There will be a job that opens up, but you won't be qualified for it,

Angela Heath (26:14):

Yeah, It's in every industry. This is just the speed of business and AI has made it even faster.

Carly Ries (26:24):

We've been talking a lot about ChatGPT and how you can use that for your business and to adapt. What are some other tools? 'There are so many AI tools now, it's not just ChatGPT. What else do you recommend other solopreneurs use?

Angela Heath (26:40):

There are tools for everything. I don't really have the most favorite tools anymore because they're changing so fast. I try to test certAIn tools. But put it this way, if you think about anything in your business that you want to beef up, perhaps you haven't done. A lot of times solopreneurs may not have their finances dialed in and some kind of workflow that makes sense for them. So whatever area you need to work on, there are tools for that. To say which ones are the best, I don't even say that anymore because I can tell you something today, and by the time this airs, there'll be something else much greater that everybody will say, wow, she didn't even mention. So I can't say that. But what I will say is there are tools for everything. I have a friend who's in the travel industry and he was talking about some of the futuristic tools that'll be coming out within the next year for travel, where you could just say, I daydream of, and AI will go and create your entire proposal for when you leave, where you leave, where you go, activities you do, and it's all there.

(28:04):

You will have three packages, A, B, and C that are custom to you. So I just basically would say anything, any task that you're doing, I would look to see if there's an AI tool to help me do this quicker and more efficiently because there probably is. Now the cost might be an issue because some of this stuff is legacy and some of it is enterprise. So the cost may be a factor depending on where you are with your business. But if you're struggling with something, look for an AI tool, just do a search.

Carly Ries (28:44):

Fair enough. Do you know when your tools will be available?

Angela Heath (28:48):

They're gonna be available in aboaut three weeks. I'm gonna let you try out the client avatar. I'll send that to you to test. This is a really cool, and since you're in marketing, I'd love to get your feedback.

Carly Ries (29:00):

I would love to. Angela, you are focused on helping solopreneurs be successful. So I have to ask, what is your favorite quote about success?

Angela Heath (29:10):

You're gonna laugh at this because this is not typically a quote about success, but I'm gonna say "just do it". I see so many people who are brilliant, who have so much to offer in the marketplace, but they never step out because maybe they don't have the confidence, maybe they had believe in some myths. They think, oh, you gotta have a million dollars to start a business. Whatever it is, just do it. Does it have to be perfect? No. You make it as excellent as you can at the time, and you just put it out there and you test it and you bring it back in and you massage it. You get user feedback. Just do it. You'll never know until you do it.

Carly Ries (29:59):

I should have said "what's your favorite success slogan?" I love it.

(30:10):

Where can people find you if they want to know more about what you do, if they want to know more about where they can find these, this technology that you're working on, all of the above,

Angela Heath (30:20):

They can find me over at angelaheath.com/schedule and they can get 30 minutes with me for free. We can talk about any of their AI tools and aspirations that they like to. That's angelaheath.com/schedule.

Carly Ries (30:40):

Perfect. We will include that in the show notes. I think I speak for both of us when I say this has been fantastic. It's nice to have a one-on-one conversation about everything that's going on right now. It's been so helpful for me as solopreneur and I just know it will be helpful for our listeners as well.

Joe Rando (31:00):

Really helpful information. I can't keep up with it and do everything else I'm supposed to do. So this was a great investment of my time just to learn this stuff from you. So thank you.

Angela Heath (31:11):

I thank you guys too. I love what you're doing. I've been a solopreneur my entire life, even when I had my consulting group, I worked with contractors. I still work with contractors, so I don't want employees at this point. So what you do is so important because most of the entrepreneurs in the country don't want employees. So thank you for what you do

Carly Ries (31:40):

And thanks for that tie in to my closing. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe. If you want to know more about what we do, visit lifestarr.com where you'll find more information about our community, our resources, and our app that is coming out within the next few months. Angela, thank you so much and we'll see all of you next time.

Closing (32:06):

You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At Lifestarr, we're creating a one-person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.