We Asked ChatGPT to Run Our Lives As Dance Studio Owners… Here's What Happened!

Hello friends, I'm Amanda Barr.

And I'm Rebecca Lou Brennan, and welcome to Dance Principles United, the podcast.

Together, we are passionate about helping studio owners with the business of running their studio.

Join us as we talk everything from marketing, systems, studio culture, motherhood, life, and everything in between.

This is the Dance Principles United podcast. Hey friends, and welcome to the Dance Principles United podcast.

United Podcast.

We're having a bit of a random ChatGPT chat today, but first, Bec, how you doing?

I'm good, I'm really, really good. Having lots of fun in the studio with you today.

Always. There's been a lot of laughs today. There was a lot of laughs. We were trying to keep ourselves on track and be serious, and it wasn't happening. So we're going to move on to something more fun, which is what I'm all about. And so we're going to chat about random random and effective ways we use ChatGPT in both our lives and our businesses today.

I feel like you're a lot more on top of it than me.

Don't laugh at that.

No, just like you were so much more into it and started a lot earlier than me, but I don't know how I survived without it. Now I'm so obsessed. Yeah, that's interesting.

Obsessed.

Yeah.

Hey, I want to give this a precursor. Um, before we get into our fun and random and effective ways to use ChatGPT is I actually only use ChatGPT for a very small portion of the AI work that I do. It is one of the AI tools I use, but not— it's actually not the one I use the most.

Anymore.

Um, anymore. It used to be, it was the first, it was the best. Uh, it is not so much anymore. I spend a lot of time on Claude. I spend time on all different types of, uh, platforms. Uh, if you listen to last AI Chat, uh, podcast that we went through a whole heap of different ways. At the moment, we're— I'm really excited to dive really deep into Claude Cowork, Claude Code, and how you can effectively use that in your business. However, today we're talking about ChatGPT.

Just for funsies.

Just for funsies. And I actually use ChatGPT more in my personal life.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I also think it's a great one to talk to and brainstorm to. I actually think it's the best tool for brainstorming, not so much the best tool to get work done. So I wanted to give that precursor first. Right.

Got me?

Yes. We good? Okay. So brainstorming, fun. I wanna hear what are the fun ways you use ChatGPT in your normal, fun, everyday personal life.

Okay.

Not business.

So at the moment, mm-hmm, I'm going through this stage of redecorating. Mm-hmm. And I take a picture of the room.

Yes.

And then I ask Chat to show me how it would decorate it. And then I give it feedback on things I like or don't like. And then I'm like, change my coffee table to green. I'm in some green era, I don't know why.

I bought a green bedspread and green towels yesterday.

What?

Why?

This always happens with us. Green's very in though, isn't it?

Yeah, it was like khaki, like, yeah.

I bought like little green couches, like mini ones for the kids to sit on. Yeah, I'm— anyway, so I always ask it to do that. Do you do that?

I absolutely do. I use it and I specifically go, hey, search for something that's available in Australia and put this piece of furniture. Or sometimes I'm like, hey, I want to find a— I was doing like, I wanted like a white— is the word bouclé? B-O-U-C-LÉ?

I know what word you mean, but I don't know if that's how you say it.

Okay, I'm really sorry if that's not how you say the word, but that's how I say it. Bouclé. I don't know. Yeah, okay. So I wanted like whatever that kind of couch is, you know, the ones like mean with a funny texture and stuff. I wanted one of those couches in, uh, like a sitting room upstairs in my house. And so I was like, I— this is what I want. It needs to be available in Australia and be available to be shipped to me at my postcode, because some things are not available to be shipped to me because I live in regional Australia. Um, and you know, I— and I'm like, hey, I think that really helps me as well when it's like a specific one. Also for my bedspread the other day, I bought it from Adairs because Adairs had a sale on yesterday. Really good sale. Um, in case you're interested. But I actually screenshot just like the product and then I took a photo of my bed and went, what will this look like on my bed?

Oh, I love that.

Yeah.

Those are things I haven't thought to do.

Well, it's no deal. What, so you just ask it for like the best piece of advice?

Um, yeah. I was, I've like, 'Cause I'm very into painting at the moment. Mm-hmm.

Don't know why. What would it look like as a charcoal wall or whatever? Yeah.

And, but like, I'll give it the specific colors that I've got. So I will go to Bunnings and get the colors I like.

Yes.

And then I'll go, show me what it looks like in this color.

Show me what it looks like in that color. It's the same as a piece of specific piece of furniture, right?

Yeah. I've just never thought to then say to it now, where can I get it from?

Yeah. Fun, right? And like, like, you know, my parents were doing their pool house the other day and I was showing my mum what like different light fittings look like in that and things like that, just to give her a bit of an idea. It's so much fun.

So good.

Decorating is so much fun. So good. What else? What else are you using it for in your everyday life?

Well, Phoenix, as you know, is going through some very difficult times, has been diagnosed with anxiety and PTSD because we were at the Bondi Stabbings. That's a whole story. Anyway, I am constantly asking it for advice on how to deal with his issues and behavior issues, and it has been so good with that. I cannot begin to tell you. I talk to it like it's a person.

Yeah.

And it talks back to me like it's a person. And it even, like, I'm sure you know this, but it'll be like, that must be really hard. Like, it empathizes with you. Absolutely.

And that's, you know, that's a really interesting point. Just for any of our listeners that don't quite understand how AI works, ChatGPT has been made to be a yes man. And that's why I think it's so good for brainstorming and stuff. Not so good for big business decisions because it's a yes man. It'll tell you, that must be tough. Oh, what a great idea you have. That's an incredible idea. You should definitely do that. Even if it's the worst idea in fucking human history.

Right.

It's a yes man. It agrees with you. Which is exactly what you need when you're having a hard time parenting, right? And exactly what you need is a friendly, like, reassurance and, like, talking through the issue, which is, like, exactly what you need.

But it's given us great advice as well, actually, on—

because it's got so much knowledge.

Yes. On how to deal with certain situations or what to do. Yeah, I've really enjoyed that part of it.

I love that. So, so good. I personally do a whole heap of different things, um, you know, definitely the decorating thing. I think that's just fun for everybody. I do things like I take a picture of my fridge's contents and go, what the fuck can I make for dinner?

Not that you make dinner.

No, I do that when I do have to make dinner, 'cause I'm like, no one went shopping. I don't know what's going on here. I don't know how to cook, number one. For those of you who don't know, I do not do a lot of cooking. So it's like, seriously, what the fuck do I make for dinner? And it's like, oh, I can see you've got butter there.

Really?

Yeah, have you not done this? And I literally, and sometimes like if I have it on like the, you know, voice mode or the camera mode, I like show it around my fridge and it's like, how much butter is in that, you know, or margarine's in that tub or whatever it is. Do you think there'll be enough for this? I'm like, they're like, is it half full? I'm like, yeah, I'd say it's more than half full. They're like, awesome, well you have enough to make.

Wow.

Clever, right?

That's so crazy. I have not done that.

If you haven't tried, on your phone there's a really great feature where it's like, you turn the camera on so it can see. So I do do that as well for like, how the fuck do I use this? Do you know what I mean? Like if there's a, you know, like I've done it for the— once again, you're gonna laugh at me because these are all cooking. I'm really giving away my secrets, but I showed it to my barbecue.

Right.

And went, how do I turn this on? What the fuck is this? How do I turn this on? Like where's the ignition? Like we've moved house recently. I didn't know how to turn on this barbecue. It's a bit fancy. Bec's laughing.

I wonder if Nate's right now listening to this.

He has opinions, I'm sure. But yeah, I do things like that. Like, how do I do this? You know, I even, I did things like I was having trouble with my like Apple mouse connecting to my MacBook and I'm like, my Apple mouse isn't connecting and showed it to it and it's like, cool, show me the screen where it's here. And like, you know, like diagnose. It was actually quicker than like typing it in or like obviously you can Google that shit too, right? But it actually looked at what was on the screen.

Never thought of doing that. It's insane.

Anything else fun?

Um, well, Bibi's done a whole itinerary of what she should do for her birthday. This— we're going into the city for 3 days, so she put different ideas into ChatGPT of things she'd like to do, and then it gave her an entire itinerary including what time we'd hit things and how long it would take us to walk from one place to the other.

Travel stuff's been great. I love that. So you've got a bougie weekend, an expensive weekend planned in the city, really, from ChatGPT.

Literally.

Fantastic. I did that. My parents went on a big, like, European trip, and my parents like nice food. So I was like, they will only— like, can you— in every city, I just feed it— fed, fed in its site, their current itinerary of where they were going and where they were staying, because they sent me over where they were staying, you know, somewhere that's within 15 minutes maximum travel time of this hotel in every city. Um, it needs to be, you know, 4 to 5 star. Like, I went through and like, spit me out all the restaurant ideas. Like, how good is that?

So good.

Like, especially because for them, and I like sent it to them, I'm like, and it gave me like top 3 and different cuisines and stuff, and like, like ranked on location. Like, there's so many fun things to be using it for.

So good.

Have you tried on clothes with it?

Tried on clothes?

Yeah, like as in, you know what I mean? Like, so I've done the same thing, like I've screenshot a dress.

Right.

And gone, can you put me in this dress and see what it looks like?

Really?

Yeah, like obviously, you know, it doesn't know your actual body and how, you know, the fabric's gonna sit on you, etc. But it helps me like, because I'm like, I don't know if I can wear this color.

Right. Wow. No, haven't done that. See, I knew you, Bill, that you, you are very into it. There's no email that I've ever written since I discovered it. I don't write any emails. I just put it into it and it writes it for me.

Hmm. Well, I'm going to blow your mind next week.

I know, I know, I know.

Yep. I'm excited for that. Next week we're diving deep into AI with that because yeah, this is now next level that you don't even need to copy and paste stuff in. It's just all—

Please write me an email.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, so I I think that that's really interesting, but yeah, there's so many fun things to do. Like Nathan does like workout plans and stuff on it.

Does he?

Yeah, like really in depth. He's like, oh, you know, I wanna be able to, I'm gonna get the words wrong, but like lift X amount of kilos or whatever. Make me a 6-week plan to get there. I'm currently at this point, or I can do this many reps or whatever it is. And I only wanna train 3 times a week. What can I do to get there?

Yep. Oh, this is studio related though. Is that okay?

Are we moving on to business? Are we done with— yes, let's go! Let's move on to business. Let's talk about how we're using it in our business.

Okay, so this is so super random as well. So every year we do the Christmas pantomime, and every year I have to write the Christmas pantomime, which is trickier than you think.

Yep, the script and stuff.

Well, last year they decided— so they choose the theme, right? The CBD Corp choose the theme every year, and it's always something that's very popular at the time. So last year was Wicked. Now, Wicked and Christmas do not really go together in my eyes.

Yeah, do they go together?

I don't think so. There's a witch, there's Glinda and Santa.

So anyway, they're all having a great time on the sleigh.

So back a few years ago, before I used chat for these, I would have been like, I have—

What the fuck am I writing?

Yeah. So I just said to chat here's my script from last year, and now I want you to put Glinda the Witch and the elf into this, make a storyline. It was so good, so good.

I have questions.

I can't— I know you're gonna ask what it was.

How did Santa meet Glinda?

I don't think Santa was in it. There was an elf, there was an elf situation. I think Glinda had some magic snow. I don't know.

The elf got—

I can't remember.

There was a story.

There was a very clever story that I could never have thought of.

Yes.

Ooh, I think the wizard was evil and—

He was taking away Christmas.

Something like that.

Yep. Who knows, but it sounds fun. But like, how good to be able to write your production.

In 3 seconds.

Write your own, like write your own musical.

Yes, easily.

Like, so, so clever. Write your own script for your concert. Hey, these are all the dances that we have in our show. Can you help? Can you help find common themes? Like, these are all the songs that we've already picked, these random songs. Find common themes and give me a little bit of a storyline that goes through them. You know, something along those lines. So, so good.

Like, and it does this so quickly. It's crazy if you've never used it before. Just even just go into it and just try and write an email and you'll just be like, oh.

Absolutely. I love as well. So as I mentioned, you know, I've moved away from ChatGPT for certain things. However, the feature that I think is the absolute best on ChatGPT that is not even comparable on any other AI tools is their voice feature.

Right.

It is so much better. So a couple of things that I always do. ChatGPT goes through my car, I think, like through, I don't know, Apple Play, or I don't know how— do I have Apple Play in a Tesla? I don't actually know what I have. I'm looking at Brendan Humphreys, he's like, no, you do not use Apple Play. It goes through my, like, car.

I have Grok. Do you have Grok in your Tesla?

I don't know, but my ChatGPT from my phone goes through, like, so that I'm being safe on the roads is where I'm getting to from this, right? So it goes through my car and I speak to it. So what I actually do is I drive a lot, I spend a lot of time in car.

Yes, you do.

I've spent a fucking lot of time in the car. So what I do is, so that I'm safe, I press start before I leave the house, right? And I might have my ChatGPT on for the 20-minute drive. I don't talk to it for 20 minutes, but I leave it there. And I'm like, you know, you know what it's like, you drive, you drive a couple of minutes, then you're like, oh, thought comes into my head. And I'm like, 'Hey chat, I was just thinking about this and I've got to remember tomorrow to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Hold on to that, I'm going to ask you for it later.' That's clever. Then I'll sit there again in silence for a couple of minutes.

Yep.

And I'm like, 'Oh, I have that parent that I had to write back to. Shit. Okay, I've got to do that. Hey, there was this parent who was asking me about this thing and, you know, she wasn't happy with the positions in ballet for the routine. So I've got to write back to her and I really want to talk to her about, you know, why why her child is, you know, not quite ready for the solo or whatever that is, right? Can you help me brainstorm that? So I do that and then I'll stop for a minute and then I'll go something random. Hey, I've also got to remember to get milk because that's how our brain goes while we're driving, right? Please tell me it's not just me that just jumps from thing to thing while you're driving.

No, you do it. But how is ChatGPT gonna remind you about the milk?

So then I get to the end of the thing, I press, okay, now write me things I've got to do. From this conversation, and it will spit it out in some sort of order and give it to me nicely.

Wow.

And then I can set reminders or I can do things, but it's like just me like brain dumping and it all being there.

I feel like I need that at 3 AM.

And I love that so much because it can kind of come back to you and you kind of like flesh it, and especially when it talks back to you, you could actually like adjust how much it talks back to you. But you know, I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about this, you know, like you were saying about, you know, your parenting advice, like back and forth with it and go, okay, this is the idea I've landed on. This is the one I need you to hold onto and remind me when I get to the destination.

Love.

So I do things like that. I think that's really great. The other thing I really like to do, you know, I shared this as part of my AI presentation at Expo, was I love to get it to role play with me, right? Now that is not as kinky as it sounds. It is, it sounds super kinky, but it is not. Now what I mean by that is I specifically give it directions to go, okay, I want you to act as the parent and then I want you to be my sales coach. So did I show you this for Expo? No, you're looking at me blankly. I'm like, have I not shown you this?

No.

Okay, so, um, in our AI chat, if you jump back to our AI episode, uh, we can send you all the how to do this. And basically the prompt is, hey, I want you to play two roles in this. The first role I want you to be is a parent, and I'm gonna try upselling you a class. And so you jump on and you talk to Chat and you go, hey, it's Miss Amanda here from your dance studio. Um, hey, I just wanted to chat to you about how Susie was going in class. And Chat says back to you, oh yeah, she's doing pretty well. What, what's on your mind today, Amanda? And I'm like, well, look, I was really thinking that ballet would be great for her. Um, have you thought about her trying it after class? 'Oh, look, you know, I probably can't afford anything more.' 'Oh, okay, well, how about we give it a free trial?' And then you're like, 'Okay, break. Now I want you to be my sales coach and tell me what I did wrong.' And it's like— and then ChatGPT comes back to you and goes, 'Okay, you probably should have framed it like this instead.' And I think that that could be so powerful because sometimes we need to have those conversations. We need to, you know, I know you're so into playing Jump In in the studio.

Yep.

And, you know, Jump In is basically that. Role-playing situations that happen in your studio, whether it's upselling, whether it's that difficult parent conversation, you know, whatever that is. So practicing that, because it, like, you know, really we should be practicing with another human being. That makes sense to role-play it with someone else in the studio. Sometimes that's fucking embarrassing, right? Well, or we don't have anyone.

Yeah, exactly. But also I think it's going to give so such good advice because it's got so much broader spectrum on things.

So yeah, I like, I like, you know, practicing that hard parent conversation, the upsells, the, you know, closing the sale, any of those things, and practicing with it on voice mode and going, hey, I'm going to try this, what do you think?

So clever.

And it giving you advice back.

So clever.

I love the voice AI feature. I think that's the best part about ChatGPT. What else do you use it for in the studio?

Finding costumes, because sometimes a teacher will be like, I want a blue lyrical costume, blah blah blah. So, you know, you can put that in, you can put brands like blah blah blah blah blah.

And really, that's clever. Does it work? Does it give you good advice?

Sometimes, sometimes comes up with some really good things.

Probably if you train it as well. You know what I reckon would be interesting? Is like, you know, when you like get a costume and you're like, oh, or you see the picture in the catalog, like try this on an older student. Or what about if I was to replace the blue skirt and change it to pink? What would that look like? You know, like, and giving yourself a bit more visualizations. So much fun stuff with costumes.

So much.

Yeah. What else? There must be more things using it for in the studio.

I can't think of everything.

Yeah, it's so crazy because it's just such an everyday part.

I was thinking before, and this isn't studio related, I did ask it what to give Phoenix for his birthday because sometimes kids are really hard to buy for.

Not sometimes, always.

And it came up with so many great ideas.

Clever.

Because I talked to it about his anxiety, it suggested that I give him a sensory tent. So we've got now a little tent in his room. That's got like a punching pillow if he gets angry and a—

You told me about that, but I didn't know ChatGPT told me that.

ChatGPT told me to get that.

Yeah, and did he enjoy it?

Loves it.

So cute.

Yeah.

That's so clever.

But because I'd spoken so much to Chat about him, it genuinely knew what things would work for him and what things wouldn't.

It's crazy.

Crazy.

Crazy, crazy. You know, one of the other things we talked about, back into business chat, that we talked about in a previous podcast Is really getting it to look at, uh, the time that you're spending as a business owner and going, hey, I want you to look at my week and see where I'm maximizing my time, where I'm spending my time. Am I spending it on marketing? Am I spending it on day-to-day operations? How much time am I spending on choreographing? How much time as a percentage of a work week? I think that's really interesting and can give you some really great overviews of that.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah, I think there's so many ideas.

There's so many things you can do.

Like, you know, like let's talk about like—

Social media.

Yeah, look, you know what, I don't love it for caption writing. I've got to be super honest because I think there is a lot of like crap unless you train it really well.

Yes.

Um, but you know what, anything is better than nothing, so get shit out there.

Yep.

Um, I think that's a big thing. I actually was super impressed, um, Only yesterday, maybe the day before. What day is it? Um, at the end of April, um, ChatGPT actually upgraded its image function, and I tried it yesterday because before it was creating images, but I didn't love them. I could tell they were created on ChatGPT rather than other better AI platforms. Saying that, I'm also a bit of a snob about those things, so there's that too. But yeah, did Sassy's birthday, um, invitation yesterday.

Oh, wow.

It's very pretty. I have to show you. You want to come to a unicorn party?

Nice. Well, after seeing the videos of that unicorn party, I think I do want to come, actually.

Yeah, but so good. Like, you know, if you're having trouble with song choices, you know, themes for concerts, themes for, you know, like workshops, holiday workshops, you know, concert names, finale, like music finale songs.

Like all that kind of stuff. I could always use you for a lot of that.

Yeah.

Now that you're saying it all.

Yeah. I think there's so much there that you can do. The other thing I'd be doing, you know, like we want to go beyond like writing captions on social media, right? Like that's like, should you be doing that? Yes. As long as you're doing it well. But you know, like it's not really something super exciting.

No.

The other thing you can do is ask it to audit your social media.

Right.

You know, like whether that's you can like give it the link or you can screenshot it, whatever you want, and be like, hey, what do you think of my social media? Do you think I'm doing a good job of marketing? How could I improve it?

Hmm.

Or hey, you know, I'm really, I'm really into like, I don't know, whatever brand, White Fox's, um, you know, social media. I really like how they have a great mix of, uh, personal brand versus product photos. Um, how could I bring this into my studio? What ideas could I have for my studio based on that? Like, I think there's so many ideas.

You're incredible. You think of so many cool things with this stuff. I'm not anywhere near—

I think you do, my love. I think you're underselling yourself.

Very clever. I can't wait for your AI chat in 2 weeks' time for our studio growth.

This is like— yep, your mind's gonna be fucking blown, my friend.

Excited.

So, so good. Anyway, these are some of our fun ideas of ways to use ChatGPT in business. Hopefully you get some good ideas. Hopefully— I know that you guys have so many more, and I'd love to hear about them as well. Maybe we do an Instagram thing. I think it's so great to share them.

Absolutely.

Like, no gatekeeping around here. The more we can share, the better. So much fun to be in the podcast studio with you today, Bec.

So much fun. Thanks, guys, and we will see you next week.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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