06: ChatGPT & AI: Exactly How I'm Using it to Boost Creativity & Save Time as a Solopreneur

AI Won’t Replace You—But It Can Be Your Best Sidekick

Feeling overwhelmed by just the thought of using AI? You’re not alone! In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I’m diving into how AI—especially ChatGPT—can become your ultimate business sidekick. From brainstorming Instagram post ideas to writing captions, emails, and even blog posts, AI can help you save time, spark creativity, and stay consistent—without losing your unique voice. I’m sharing exactly how I use AI in my daily workflow, how to create your own personalized AI assistant, and why this tool is a game-changer for solopreneurs. Ready to streamline your content and work smarter? Tune in now!

Check out the full show notes for this episode here.

📌 Things I cover inside the episode:
✨ How AI can help you save hours on content creation without replacing your creativity.
✨ The step-by-step process to creating your own AI assistant inside ChatGPT.
✨ How I use AI for brainstorming Instagram posts, email subject lines, and podcast topics.
✨ The biggest AI mistakes to avoid (and how to keep your content feeling authentic).
✨ My favorite ways to repurpose content using AI—so you’re not always starting from scratch.

📌 Resources & Links Mentioned in this episode:
🔗 Try ChatGPT’s Custom GPTs
🔗 Explore Google’s Gemini AI
🔗 Studio Pizza Productions (Podcast Editing, tell Scott I sent you!)
🔗 Work with My Podcast Coach, Anna Dearmon Kornick

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

Be sure to hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" so you never miss an episode!

Transcript

  📍 AI is not going to replace your creativity. But it will absolutely become like your very best sidekick that you can lean on, especially in those times of month where you're just tapped out and you cannot think of ideas,  I have a very interesting topic today that is insanely trendy, um, and that is the use of AI in your content creation, or heck, even in your just like day to day life as a solopreneur.  So I'm sure you have, like me, felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day to create your content. Run your business and, you know, all those other personal life things, kids, doctors, appointments, kids, sports, like I'm all over the place.

You're far from alone if you're feeling like you could use a little help in your back pocket, right? And that's really how I approach AI or the use of tools like chat gbt or gemini Which is google's answer to chat gbt, basically um I was slow to do this, but I have honestly started using chat gbt in my business  Every day,  I would say the tab is open every single day, and it's been quite a game changer for my creativity and productivity.

So today I want to share exactly how I'm using it. Maybe you're like me and you know, again, everyone's talking about AI and especially chat GBT. And I just honestly felt pretty overwhelmed and it felt a little like, not shady, but like, what is this all about? You know, and, and I started to be able to recognize certain headlines or especially like program names or course names.

that use chat GPT. Like the word mastery. I just cannot with that word. Like now that I say you're probably going to see it everywhere. And if you used it, listen, you do you, but like to me, that is like quintessential chat GPT. So there's definitely a way to use it. Um, that can just make it feel more like you are more personalized to you.

And that's actually what I'm going to share today. So I want to share how to use it so that you can save. A lot of time spark some really creative ideas and help stay consistent in your business or in your newsletter each week or in your content creation without burning out. Because let's be honest, like we only have so many ideas in our brain and so much room to get all the things done that we need to do.

  📍 So common solopreneur struggles, obviously juggling content creation, marketing, admin tasks. Um, and I know it can all feel overwhelming and hey, I can also feel overwhelming and impersonal at times, but when used really strategically, it can become a quite a powerful assistant.  Speaking of the word assistant, I hired a podcast coach.

Her name is Anna. I will link her in the show notes. She is a time management coach, but also, uh, her and her husband, Scott, who edits my podcast. And again, I'll put their information below. It's pizza production, but they're amazing. And I was on a call with her before launching my podcast. And she was like, have you created a GPT or an assistant in, in a chat to BT yet?

And I was like, Uh, you can hear like the record scratch. I was like, what? She was like, oh yeah, I have a podcast assistant that I created in ChatGPT and I was like, what are you talking about? So she took me over to ChatGPT and when you're on that home screen, you can click on a button on the left, or not a button, but a menu option that says explore GPTs.

And if you click create, you can actually create your own assistant within chat GPT. So she had created a podcast assistant. I now have created a podcast assistant. I have also created a copywriter, a strategic, authentic, witty copywriter for my Instagram captions and my newsletters. And I'm about to create a third assistant to help me with my membership.

Okay. Help me come up with ideas for challenges or ideas for posts to help out my, my people inside of the content coven. So what it is, is that chat GPT saves all this information that you put into it for these assistants. Now I'm going to call it my assistant, but it's technically called a GPT in chat GPT.

Okay. And by the way, I finally caved and you have to pay for this feature, it's 20 a month but I am telling you if I went back to day one of my business and I still wasn't making a dime, I would invest in this to save time, especially when I had multiple jobs and was running the creative bodega because again, this cuts down on my time so much, it's insane, okay?

So when you create this GBT, you're going to have a left side of your screen where you configure the assistant or create it, and the right, which is your preview screen, which is where you're asking it to do things for you or asking questions, right? So on the configure side, you can give it a name, you can give it a description.

So again, I named mine Cass. She's a witty, authentic, strategic copywriter for Instagram captions and newsletters. And then I gave her instructions, right? So I told her I want to her to embody the voice of a savvy 40 something mom who knows how to craft compelling content that converts while keeping it all relatable and fun.

Okay, so you can actually on the configure side say.  Ask me the questions you need to know to help me configure this copywriting assistant for my business, right? So that's me like I don't even know what to put in here oftentimes, but you can tell it that you can say Ask me the questions that you need to in order to make this the best copywriting assistant for my business, right?

And it'll ask you. So that's what I did. And then I just started answering all its questions. And that goes into this instructions area,  Then there's conversation starters that you can customize. So if you're doing the same things over and over, like I need you to help me come up with a creative caption.

For this Instagram post like you can save that and I'm finding now that I've been doing this for about three weeks There are things I'm asking her to do over and over and yes, she's definitely a she in my book and uh, it's just really a lot easier if you save those conversation starters, so Again, this is called a GPT in ChatGPT and it's essentially an assistant and you can again decide like what types of assistants you need.

So again, I've got a podcast assistant, I've got a witty, authentic, strategic copywriter, and I've got a membership assistant that helps me come up with membership strategies and ideas. So those are the three I've got. And I, honestly, at this point, even just three weeks in, I'm not quite sure what I would do without them.

So, here are some of the things that I am having it help me with. Obviously, this is like probably the most general one, but I use it to help me come up with Instagram post ideas. Or podcast topics and email subject lines. So oftentimes, when I'm done writing my email intro or the three ideas that are inside my newsletter to help you like grow your business or come up with content, I'm highlighting those, copying them, pasting them inside a chat GPT and I say, this is what's inside my newsletter this week.

Can you help me come up with email subjects? Because I have said this a million times, I suck at words, like, and I really suck at subjects. And I, and some people are probably listening to this and they're like, no, you don't. Well, maybe it's just really hard for me and you don't realize it. But I love how it does this for me.

And it comes up with all these email subjects. It comes up with like nine to ten or you can even tell it come up with ten and it will and Then I read through them and some I'm like, I would never say that or and some I'm like, huh I kind of like that, but I would swap out this word or I would do this So anytime chat GPT is giving me a solution or an answer I am 1 trillion percent putting my voice to it or editing it in a way That sounds and feels like me.

I am never taking it verbatim You will never see me copying and pasting and using it verbatim because honestly you guys Like I think you can just tell when people do that and it doesn't feel real and it doesn't feel authentic And it doesn't resonate with me I don't know about you, so instead of staring at this blank page and trying to Come up with Instagram post ideas.

I'll be like, give me 10 Instagram post ideas for service based solopreneurs, right? Enter and then boom. And again, this is through my assistant. So it remembers me. It knows who I am. It knows who my ideal client is. It knows my tone of voice, right? It knows everything about my business. So it's not just going to like throw out 10 Instagram post ideas for like a massage therapist.

No, it's going to come up with ones that make sense for me. And it does. It does. And it's insane. And again, I would have sat here scratching my head or going down rabbit holes for way too long. It's like embarrassing to tell you how long I've done that. And here this gives it to me in moments. So I'm just kind of cutting out that struggle, if you will.

Um, I use it to help me write captions, emails. And show notes for this, this show right here, this podcast, right? So I will have it craft engaging captions. Um, it'll streamline my email marketing for me or even just summarize podcast episodes. So I'm now writing a blog post that's associated with my podcast.

I will take when this is over, when this podcast is done, I use Descript to record my podcast. I'll get the whole transcript, copy, paste it, put it into chat, and say, can you create. A 1500 word blog for me using this transcript  and you guys, it takes less than a minute. It spits it out for me. I copy paste that.

I put it into Podia where I host my website and I host my blog and I just turn on some calming focus music and I start editing what it's created. Again, to sound like me, to be structured in a way that I would do it.  It's just, oh my god, it's just so easy, and if you're not using this, you just have to start trying to.

And yes, listen, you could use the free chat GBT option, but it runs out of memory, and it ends up forgetting who you are. And I didn't want to have to start over every time I was asking it a question. This solution This GPT slash assistant solution in CHAP GBT is just insanely,  insanely incredible. That, I just, I don't know how else to say it.

some other things that I will have it do to me, I will have it turn my podcast script into multiple Instagram posts, right? Or I'll take my podcast script and turn it into a newsletter intro for that week. Um, If you're on LinkedIn, you could have it turn it into a LinkedIn article. And this is where like long form content of some kind will help.

And listen, I'm a hypocrite. I am three and a half years into my business, and this is the first time I've ever had long form content. So I'm not over here like, you know, I've got YouTube and long form is. It's what it sounds like, long. It's a YouTube video, it is a podcast, it is a blog, right? I'm all about the short form.

So the short form is Instagram, right? Everything is short and, uh, doesn't take that long to get through, right? That's been my jam. But I am now exploring the world of long form content through podcasts and through blogging and The verdict's not out yet. I'll let you know how it goes, but I'm very excited about it.

But it's really helpful if you have, um, a long form content of some kind to use as inspiration inside of your GPT. Um, another thing I use chat GPT for is re Repurposing content without completely reinventing the wheel, right? So again, turning a script, a podcast script into multiple Instagram posts, or I will take an Instagram post that did really well.

I can screenshot  or even just drag in the images from a carousel post. Just the images, right? The final carousel post. I can drag it in. To chat GPT and I can say, can you use this to come up with a podcast outline or can you use this to help me come up with my three ideas section for my newsletter?

Right? So you're just like,  I had a boss that used to say like, you know, how much more juice can we squeeze out of this? Like, and that's basically what you're doing, right? You're taking one concept and you are just like  utilizing it in every single way possible. Right? And you can, again, even ask ChatGPT.

Say, I'm not sure what other types of content I can get out of this post or this transcript. Can you give me some ideas? There's just really no reason to sit and struggle anymore, to be super honest.  There is an answer, there is someone to help you, there is an assistant out there that you only have to pay 20 a month for, think about it that way, like, and listen, I love a good copywriter, don't get me wrong, I've hired a copywriter to write my entire website, like, I'm all about them, but for these day to day sort of things in content creation,  ChatGPT does a pretty good job.

Pretty darn good job, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I've even had it outline a sales page before. And I just put in ideas. So let's see, um, not the sales page, I'm not gonna talk about that right now. But I read an intro in my newsletter every week and I don't know, it's probably like 50 to 100 words. 

I'm not great at estimating that so if I'm way off just ignore me, but sometimes I'm like I just want to talk about how my kids had this lacrosse game this weekend and how I saw this happen out on the field and I heard these mothers react this way and it was really you Like disheartening, and then I want you to link it back and kind of loop it back to this bigger concept of not judging people, um, on the Internet or on Instagram, right?

I can say that much. That was barely anything, right? I'm just, I'm just freestyle typing this out. And then I let ChatGPT take that information. And make it into like this beautiful intro that makes sense and loops it back to the overall bigger picture. And that's something I struggle with a lot. I struggle with words.

I'm such a visual person and I can design in Canva all day long and it looks like the bomb. I'm not going to lie. But when it comes to the actual words that go into. Posts or captions or newsletters like that's not my jam So me being able to just loosely type out like hey, I was thinking about doing this Post and here were some ideas that I was thinking about.

Can you flesh this out for me? Can you create ten slides for me with the text carrying across all ten slides?  And it doesn't You guys, like it, it does it.  You have to explore this. Okay. With overcoming creative blocks. It's just this like thought partner in your back pocket where you don't have to feel stuck anymore, right?

So that is my experience with AI and chat GPT. Um, I've told you from the beginning, like I resisted this for a long time. I saw the chatter. I was curious about the chatter, and then I decided I should start sort of poking around. But then again, when my podcast coach, Anna, showed me this GPT slash assistant option, my world kind of exploded.

And I was like, okay, now I understand how this can really work for me. So biggest takeaways, AI is not going to replace your creativity. But it will absolutely become like your very best sidekick that you can lean on, especially in those times of month where you're just tapped out and you cannot think of ideas, you cannot think of how to loop a story back to a bigger picture message, right?

Like that's a big struggle for me. Um, and listen, why don't you challenge yourself this week? Try using ChatGPT for just one task. Whether it's brainstorming post ideas, coming up with a content posting schedule for you, drafting a blog post, or helping you repurpose content. And let me know how it goes. I would love for you to DM me at the period creative period bodega with your best AI tips.

Like I know I'm not using this to its fullest and I guarantee there's people listening to this and they're like She could do so much more with that  And I wouldn't be shocked but go ahead and dm me. Let me know your best AI tips. I would love to hear them. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope that I have helped you save a  ton  📍 of time with these tips today.

And I really hope that you take the time to explore what chat GBT or AI can do for you and your business.