#356: How Erynn LaFlamme Uses Custom GPTs to Transform Her Production Workflow

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1.3 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, a growing number of writers are incorporating AI tools into their workflow. That should be no surprise to you. In fact, you might be one of them. And I find that those who've kept an open mind and have actively experimented with different approaches and ways to increase their productivity and to scale their creativity have done really well and have found new and better ways to use these tools to again, get more done in less time, be able to come up with better ideas. And there's just dozens and dozens of users. We've talked about a lot of this in previous episodes of the podcast and this is something we're going to keep talking about because this is an evolving issue and evolving technology. And I think there's lots of possibilities here if you keep an open mind. Now, the current models are powerful right out of the box. But what if there was a way to take things a step further and create much more personalized AI tools that are tailored to your unique needs? In this episode, I sit down with Aaron Laflame, who's a founder and and CEO of Ethic Agency, a marketing agency based in the metro Atlanta area not far from where I live. In fact, Aaron and I discuss how writers can harness the power of custom GPTs to handle nuanced parts of their client workflow. Well, Aaron has become an expert in using AI for content creation and specifically in using these custom and creating these custom GPTs. And she walks us through the process of building those custom applications and she shares real world practical examples of how she and her team are leveraging this technology to produce better work more efficiently. And we dive into some very specific areas. In fact, this whole episode, I feel, is very, very practical. We get down in the weeds and we talk about the difference between custom GPTs and users using standard ChatGPT or some of the other models. We talk about key steps involved in creating GPTs for specific clients, the challenges and ethical considerations in AI powered workflows, how to refine and improve custom GPTs over time, deciding when to use a custom GPT versus a journal general AI tool. So there are lots of decisions, lots of things to consider here. We also explore what this means for the future of freelance writers and content professionals. So questions like, well, will AI replace us, or will it become an essential tool in our toolkit? This is something we're going to keep revisiting over the next few months because obviously this, again, continues to evolve. Whether you're curious about integrating AI into your business or you're looking for ways to refine your process, this episode offers some really practical ideas, insights, and tips. I hope you enjoy it. Aaron, welcome. Great to be talking to you today.

It's so nice to meet you officially, Ed. I have literally been listening to your podcast for years, so it's a man.

Well, thank you, thank you. And we just found out that we're pretty much neighbors, live maybe what, 20 minutes away. So we live in weird times. You know, we can meet through zoom and we're just around the corner or we could be worlds apart. So I'm glad you came on board. I'm really excited to talk with you about this topic. I always like to ask guests to give us a little bit of background first. So tell us first of all what you do today and then maybe kind of a short version of the origin story, how you got here, just so everyone has a little bit of context.

Yeah, totally. So I am a growth marketing consultant. I started a agency here in the metro Atlanta area that focuses on digital marketing. So I cover a wide range of full service marketing aspects.

Right.

Everything from branding and messaging all the way to, you know, executing websites and managing social media. So a lot of different areas how I got there. You know, my career is very much backed by copywriting. Started as a just digital marketing strategist, doing everything from the ground up in terms of messaging, writing, copy rebranding companies, writing landing pages. I mean, I ended up being a content marketing director and then I ended my 9 to 5 career as a marketing director overseeing a global marketing team. So, you know, I've done it all. But even when I started my career, I started as a freelancer, right. And very much in the copywriting world. So that's how I ended up here in your podcast. I'm like, what am I doing? How do I get started? How do I price? How do you know all the questions? And that's how I ended up finding you. But yeah, I mean, so copywriting of course, is so key to all areas of marketing. Resonating with your audience, the problems that they're facing, and making sure that you are hitting those pain points, addressing them, and talking about how your company solves that Problem, right? So writing is such a big part of my career and copywriting now, I've always been a big geek when it comes to technology, right. I want to know, how can I do my job better, faster, stronger, how can I lead my strategy? And so I've always been a first adapter in tools and technology. So, of course, when this buzzword of AI came to fruition about, you know, a year or two years ago, I was very intrigued. You know, what does it do? And you start hearing all these things like it, right. Wrote a whole blog post for me, right. And of course you try that. And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this, like, yeah, but that blog post sucked.

Right?

So, yeah, it's come a long way. And so I really got into ChatGPT and trying to figure out, I know this is the future. I. It's scary, you know, and I didn't really want to use it because I don't want to be replaced. Of course, I don't want marketers, I don't want copywriters to be replaced. But I know with all technology and just really in my career, I've been in marketing for 10 years. I mean, your role changes so much. Like, when I first started, there was no social media. There was nothing like that. So my role of, you know, boots on the ground, building relationships, networking, that was how I started my marketing career. And it's evolved into this digital landscape. I've adapted to so many tools and there's going to be something that changes our job, Right. And so it's important to be on the front lines learning it so that we don't get left behind.

Yes, I fully agree. I'm not the as early an adopter as you are. Because my first reaction action when I heard about it was like, oh, no, no. But mostly because I am not a geek as opposed to you when it comes to, like, new tools. And like, I'm a, a totally late adopter there. So I thought, oh, great, now this is something new. I have to learn. Maybe it will go away. And I quickly realized this is not going away.

Yeah, yeah. It's like social media, right? Like, once you've heard about AI, I'm like, this is going to be like social media. It's going to be one of those things that changes the game. And you can either be the guy that gets good at it really fast and gains a following and, you know, adapts with the algorithm, or you can be one of those late adapters where it's like, how do I Grow a following. Now it's so, you know, this area is. So there's too many players. Right. It's too hard to compete.

Right.

If you're starting social media now, it's a lot more difficult than maybe had you gotten on that train 10 years ago. So I think AI is very similar in that sense that being an early adopter is going to be beneficial for people.

I agree. I agree. So we're going to get a bit in the weeds here today and we are going to be Talking about custom GPTs and some of the other models are coming out with similar versions of this. But for our purposes, just so it's clear, and I think it's just more practical to Talk about Chat GPT's version of this, which is custom GPTs. We're going to talk a little bit about the application, how you started using it, and then I want to kind of get into the nuts and bolts of this. Now we understand that obviously this is continually evolving and some of this may be outdated at some point, but that's okay because I think as long as we can talk about the fundamentals and the applications of this, it's going to be really practical for a while. So why don't we start by defining it? What exactly is a custom GPT? How is it different from just going in there and starting a new chat with the model?

Totally. So a custom GPT from a copywriter perspective is really helpful when you have multiple clients who all have their own unique set of problems. Brand voice, brand tones. I know when I first started using ChatGPT to help me with copy, I got really sick and tired of having to constantly educate it on who my client is, what we do. I would be feeding it landing pages and previous blogs. I would have to do that for every new prompt unless I wanted to like have this ever going conversation which wasn't always relevant. So chatgpt, but the, the regular search is kind of like a general purpose search engine. It's really good if you tell a quick question or something like that. But if you were trying to really tailor a response or prompt to your clients and not have to educate it every single time on what they do and how to match your voice and tone and things like that, that's where custom GPTs come in. So it's kind of a fine tune adapted GPT that is specialized for your use case or industry.

Got it, Got it. So instead of having to type that all over again or maybe copy and paste from a document, right. Which would have been practical, that Got better. Oh, let me do this. I don't have to redo it. It's going to pull instructions and guidance from the instructions you give it that you feed it and then it's customized for that use case for that client, for that type of writing you're trying to do or what have you. Okay, so it sounds like a big application for you, has been using it for specific clients. Right. So walk us through that like and maybe start with the first iteration of this for you and how that evolved into where you are today.

Sure. So like even on the most basic level, right. I have an E commerce client who sells weight loss products and so I do email marketing for them and these are e commerce emails. But of course there's always ways to make E commerce emails fun and exciting. Whether you're, it's a seasonality thing or you know, you want to make it engaging, like which product are you? And you want to lead them through this like fun, engaging email stream. I just kind of, after years of working with them, I'm like, man, I'm drawing up on ideas, but I want more creative ideas. So I, I started a custom GPT for them. I fed in all the landing pages, all the products. You know, I told it FDA regulations what we can and cannot say, so be really careful about that. We're going to add like asterisks to say we're not making any claims here. And it's really helped me with like headlines, put little clippy copy underneath it.

Right.

Just to kind of like lead through the email. So in the most basic sense I was using it starting there.

Right.

Like nothing too crazy. Help me come up with a creative subject line or preview text for this client.

Right.

Based on seasonality, like you know, it's fall pumpkin spice. We have a blog. Can you tie that into weight loss?

Right.

So something as simple as that is like how I got started. Now if you're like wanting to obviously a more robust kind of thing for your clients, I mean it can do anything copywriting wise. But the fundamentals in building it is you want to feed it the right information. So do you want me to kind of go into like then nitty gritty how you build this out? Would that be helpful?

That would be great. And let's just stick with this specific use case. So you've got a client E Commerce. Walk us through where you go. Because I know at least the way it's designed right now it takes you straight to the I believe the configure page. But there's Another tab which is Create, which I find confusing. So maybe walk us through how you do it.

Yeah, so when you're actually like inside of Chat GPT, you have like this left hand panel that has all your previous chats and you can start a new chat. Well, on that, on the left hand side, there's a little button, it's a black button that says Explore GPTs. When you click that, you get to a new screen and it says in the top right corner, create GPT. And you literally just click that. From there it opens up this like new chat. It kind of looks like Chat GPT, but it starts prompting or asking you questions, right? Like, tell me how you're going to use me. Give me a name. You can even upload a picture. So I like to like upload my client logos. So that way in the future it shows up on that left hand panel with like all your existing chats, it'll literally have your client, whatever you named it.

Right.

So X GPT or E Commerce GPT, whatever it is you named it. And I like to have the client logos for my, you know, visual purposes. So what you can feed it in this chat? I mean, I feed it everything and anything that's going to be relevant. So brand guidelines, right? The more you have, the better. If I have a voice and tone document, I feed it that style guidelines. Are we formal, casual, playful, approved vocabulary.

Right.

I have a lot of clients that are like, we do not refer to ourselves as this. And again, like we have FDA regulations for weight loss products in particular, so don't ever make claims or around these subjects.

Right.

So telling it what you can and cannot say, I feed it product and service details. So I will literally go to the website or if you have PDFs or anything, you can upload them or, or you can go to the website, copy and paste landing page language into it.

Right.

Like here's our different product offerings and here's what they do.

Right.

So that way.

Let me pause right there real quick because I want to make sure. And again, I know we're getting in the weeds, but I've created a few of these and I'm looking at the screen right now. We're configuring it and I'm assuming we're past the Create page. Right. So we're at the Create. Here's what I wanted to do. Great. Now I go to the configure page and there's an a description, a name description and instructions. I'm assuming that at this point you're feeding Some of that in the instructions.

Yes.

Right. My limitation has been I don't know if this has changed. That has got a character size limit it seems like. Right, yeah.

So Ed, the screen before the configure is like be like a chat. Like it's literally a chat. So it's kind of like you're talking to chat GPT.

Okay, so then you really can feed it a lot there.

Yeah, you can literally document. And so I would say that configure page is those really specific parameters. Like don't ever use emojis, don't ever use these words. Do have a positive attitude or you sound friendly and educational.

Right.

Like those very specific parameters I would put there. But in terms of like all the products and all the you know, maybe SEO detail, like anything really specific and maybe long winded, I would put in.

That, that page before including files. I can attach files to that which you can create do in the configure page. That's also got a limitations. How many files you can upload.

Yeah. And are you using the free version or are you. No, you have paid. So I want to be really clear here that everything I'm talking about is for the paid version. It is my understanding that under the free version you can access custom GPTs. That may be something.

You can't create one.

Correct.

Today you cannot right now, September 2024. You cannot by the way, $20 a month, perhaps the highest ROI of any of the dozens of subscriptions that I pay for every month.

Yeah, I mean it takes a lot of lift off.

Right.

I always say like ChatGPT will, as, especially as a writer, will get you 75% of the way. It's not going to get you all the way and we'll talk about that, but it'll get you pretty far. So back to like our list of what you want to feed it. Brand guidelines, product and service details. If you have ICP overview. So ideal customer profiles.

Right.

You can fit at the demographics, the Personas, avatars, anything you have. Tell it who you're talking to and say this is who we're talking to and all of our copy. Right. I like to view it past content examples.

Right.

So like here's some of our previous blogs. Match that voice and tone, match that structure, things like that, your campaign goals, competitor insights. I mean literally the sky is the limit in terms of what you can tell it. And so now once you hit create on that, it'll start showing up when you log into ChatGPT. Where on the left hand side all of your previous chats show up at the top. You'll have that custom GPT, so anytime you want to talk or create content specifically to that client, you can click in it. And you don't have to re educate it, you don't have to tell it from, you know, from the start. Okay, this is our voice and tone, all that stuff. You don't have to start over. So it just, you can jump right into it, which saves you so much time.

Do you have to say, okay, using what I've taught you, here's what I need. You don't even need to do that, right? You just say, look, I need to create three or four email campaign for this product. Here are some of the parameters, some of the specifics and logistics go.

Exactly.

Okay.

Big time saver, at least in my experience. And that was the worst part. I was like, there's gotta be a way where I can skip this part, right? Because it takes so much time. I mean, everything I just mentioned. And so setting these up is a little bit of a time lift, right? I mean it's going to take you some time, but I think the payout in the long run is, oh, that's.

My motivation when I do it. I'm actually excited because I know what it's going to do. So. All right, so again, go ahead and use that Create tab where you can have the conversation, you can feed it a bunch of stuff. Do you go to the Configure tab at all to add some more details?

Yeah, yeah, I definitely do.

Right.

I like to upload the image because it'll create an image for you. But like I said, I like to upload the logo.

What else?

Like I said, the specifics.

Right.

So like if I have things, Claude, AI is a little better about this than ChatGPT, but ChatGPT, like loves hashtags and emojis in its responses. I don't know why. And I work with a lot of B2B clients. Like that's not really our thing. So I'm like, please, no emojis, you know, yeah, very specific parameters of like what I want in the output of what I'm asking. Output.

Got it.

And yeah, that's it. And then I launch it.

So the bulk of it has been in your conversation the other page. Just some other logistical things. You launch, you upload the logo, which is really cool. You launch it and then you get to work. Now tell me a little bit about two specific things. First of all, how do you continue to refine it so it's giving you stuff, but maybe it's making some mistakes or it's adding this or that or it's avoiding these things. How do you train it? How do you give it feedback?

Yes. So you can edit your GPTs at any point.

Right.

So I currently have a client who's doing, like, a complete rebrand, and they're totally shifting their messaging and they're changing their audience. Literally everything is changing. We still want to apply our core functionalities through this rebrand.

Right.

But we're trying to weave in new messaging. So I will go into ChatGPT, and so I'm trying to remember exactly where it's located. It's at the top when you start a new chat. And you can, like, highlight it and say, edit GPT. And so it's that. That kind of that conversational page, and you can start feeding it the new information that you have.

Right.

So here's our new messaging. I literally treat it like it's an employee. So using ChatGPT is a lot of shifting your brain from maybe like an execution standpoint to almost like a management role.

Right.

So you went to an employee and telling them the change is happening in a company. How would you explain that? And I will literally write it to it and be like, this is what's going on. This is how we're changing. While we still want to implement that core messaging, we're starting to weave in this, and we're talking to this audience more moving forward, but we don't want to abandon our core audience.

Right.

I mean, I literally train it the way I would an employee, and it, you know, and then you save it. And so moving forward, it takes in those adjustments, and in fact, but it doesn't eliminate the original stuff that you put in there.

Okay, that was one of my other questions, which. So you go back to. Yeah, I went to my profile, and then my GPT. It gave me the list. And then there's a little edit icon to edit that GPT. And then you went obviously again back to the Create tab to say, all right, things have changed. Let me tell you how and why and what you need to. Because, you know, for me at least, it always defaults to the configure tab. And I think that's where I was getting thrown off. So you got to go to the Create tab to give it that new information. So then the other thing was, there have been many chats that I have started that after a while, let's say, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes. Oh, man, this should be a GPT, like a custom GPT. Can you convert an existing chat into a GPT without having to start all over again?

That's a great question. I have not done that or seen that functionality available. But we should totally message their product team because that's a great idea.

I know, right.

For me, I will just like copy and paste that whole conversation and then create a GPT.

Right.

Like if I need to. But that should totally be a functionality.

Well, I wonder, you know, each chat has its own specific URL. I wonder if you can start a GPT. Say, okay, everything that you need is in this conversation I've already had with you.

Yeah.

You know, in fact. So go through it and tell me if you were able to use it. I don't know, I'll have to try this as soon as we're done here.

Yeah, I know, I'm like, I have not used it for that purpose but it, that should totally be a thing if it's not. Yeah, but like I said, if that's a situation you're in, I would literally just copy and paste it and put it into the GPT as you're creating it. So it has all that info.

Yes. Okay. Because that's happened to me a few times and I don't think that's unusual that you didn't tend to be that. But you realize that this could be useful. Again, let's talk a little bit about concerns regarding privacy issues, especially with client information that you're uploading. Ethical issues, NDA stuff when you again are putting client information up there.

Yeah. So there is a lot around this and there's. It's kind of a twofold.

Right.

There's ethics and privacy concerns and then there's also you need to consider like ChatGPT is not perfect so it's not always going to tell you the truth.

Right.

It makes stuff up. So there's two sides not only of like you need to do your job to be ethical and protect your clients privacy, but you also need to be again kind of a boss, monitoring when it's spitting out, editing it and like knowing what's true and what isn't. So going to the ethics and privacy. Yeah, I mean we as copywriters all the time, we're going to sign confidential agreements, NDAs, things like that. You need to be really careful to never feed proprietary company data into chat GPT or you know, company pii, personal information, CRM data, things like that. I don't have a contract or anything.

Right.

With my clients that says hey, I'm using CHAT gbt. It might be smart for people to start considering that consulting with lawyers. You're doing service agreements to have a clause added to that.

Right.

I mean, as we go into this new world and you leverage these tools.

But AI policy, you know, so I sometimes use these tools, or maybe this is what I will not use it for or whatever.

Exactly. Just have those safeguards in place.

Right.

But as you know, as you start exploring, just be really careful not to feed it that kind of information. Because Chad, gbt, everything anyone feeds it is now free game for, you know, it just starts spitting answers to other people.

Right?

I mean, you. You don't want to put in a new company concept and then it starts spitting that out in results for competitors or anyone else using the tool.

Right?

So you have to be really careful about what you feed it in that sense. So that's, you know, from the NDA or data privacy side of things. Now, in terms of, I mean, just accuracy, plagiarism, things like that, we need to worry about is copywriters, right? I mean, you want to be really careful. Like, you don't want to copy and paste someone, a competitor's blog and have it rewrite it. I mean, you, you still need to have that authenticity and like, originality in your writing. Um, so you're not plagiarizing, but you also need to find your own statistics. I mean, I can't tell you how many chatgpt, you know, proms I've had where it spits something out, because I'm like, hey, can you give me like, an interesting stat on this fact to kind of bulk up my blog or prove our point? Yeah, and it will literally, like, spit something out. And I'm like, great, can you give me the citation of where you got that? And it's like, oh, I just made it up. Like, it'll tell me it just made it up.

Hallucinations.

Yeah, it's like, well, I was just using it as a, you know, to support this. It will literally justify why it did it. But yeah, and even if it does use it just a stat, that's legit chatgpt, I don't think it's been updated since, like the beginning of the year. So it could be outdated, right? I mean, times like Covid, for example, if we were using it, then, I mean, think of how much the world has changed. If it was giving you a statistic from 2019, we know it's not relevant, right? So if you are using statistics or facts, you know, make sure you're fact checking, make sure you're going to Google and referencing if it's true. You know, these are basic copywriting practices, but you just have to be a little more careful and again, have a managerial oversight of what it's outputting so that the last thing you want is a client to be like, hey, this is not a true stat, or hey, you plagiarized.

Right?

Yeah, Yeah. I think the fact checking with the stats, I think is an easier workaround. I mean, I've been using perplexity for that, which is. That is the value proposition of perplexity. It's the combined search engine with the AI as well. And the stuff that it gives you is pretty rock solid and gives you the citations as well. So you know the sources. And that's the. The plagiarism is. Is kind of a different story there. I don't think that's really been resolved yet because a lot of the plagiarism checkers will give you false positives or false negatives. I mean, it's kind of all over the place.

Yeah. So there's a couple tools that, like, I will use. So as a agency owner, I do work with a lot of copywriters.

Right.

So I will contract work out. And I can't tell you, Ed, how many times someone has sent me a blog and I know it's completely chatgpt. I mean, they didn't even try to. And I can't tell you, Ed, how many times someone has sent me a blog and I know it's completely chatgpt. I mean, they didn't even try to personalize it, humanize it, you know, and ChatGPT does still sound like a robot if you're not training it not to.

Right.

I mean, so if any blog starts with. In this digital era. Yeah, okay. Like, you didn't even try to edit this intro. So there are tools like trace GPT is plagiarismcheck.org and it's pretty good about telling you, like, you can literally put content into it and it will touch AI platform used it. I found that that one's not quite as. But, you know, if you're a copywriter or something, I just highly encourage you to think about that. You never want your boss or your client to realize that, you know, oh, something you wrote is 100% AI, right. Like, that's not so. And there are tools to check. And so, you know, you should check your work with those to make sure you're not plagiarizing or it doesn't sound too AI and as a manager, use those tools to help your team if they need help copywriting and you know, maybe provide guidance.

Right.

Because we don't want them doing 100% AI content either.

I keep hearing back to not so much the plagiarism, but more about if you have client information on there with products with concepts, hooks, etc. I've heard mixed information there. One side has told me that the models are so sophisticated that if somebody else were to ask a similar question and you've uploaded information, it's not going to take that like a packet and then regurgitate it to somebody else like it. There are so many millions and millions of permutations of just those few words that you had uploaded there that it's. It's nearly impossible that it would give someone else something that's yours. It's been trained on your content, of course, if you give it to it. But so I've heard that the custom.

Gbts are going to help with that. Like to get those specific answers. But you know, I would challenge that to Ed because this is totally different. But I hired a personal trainer to help get my butt back in the gym and to work out and he gave me a workout plan and I ended up getting married and I was like, I'm not doing this. So I, I stopped working with him and then I tried to get back on track and I use chat GPT. I fed it all my parameters, my goals and it legitimately gave me the exact same workout plan that he gave me. I mean the to a T, the workouts, the days, the order. H. Coincidence. I don't know.

Well, okay, so it could be that yes, maybe he used.

Could be right.

The same answer.

It gave you the same answer. Wow.

And he puts in another state. So I don't know. I challenge that. I'm like, I think it probably does give people very similar but again, it depends. It's the response you get is only going to be as good as the prompt.

Right.

How specific were you? How much information give prior. And again, that comes back to these. ChatGPT is when you are working with very specific industries, very technical industries, very product focused companies, it's really going to help you get those more customized and personalized answers.

Well, I think this is a good point for, for me to just make something really clear and I know you and I are aligned here, but I've talked about this in other episodes where we've talked about AI, but I can't say this enough. The real power of These tools is in their ability to help you with a lot of the grunt work and to scale your creativity and improve your productivity. These tools should not be looked at as binary options. This is not a. I'll either use it to write this article draft and turn that in, or no, you should never use it to write an article draft. I. I can't say this enough times. If you're looking at AI with this binary perspective, you're going to be left behind. There are so many. First of all, I agree, I would never use this to write a draft. There are so many opportunities to integrate these tools in your workflow, within your workflow. If there's 15 steps to a workflow for writing an article for client A, it could probably help you dramatically in six of those steps. So I want everyone to think a little bit more in a more nuanced way about these tools and how you can incorporate them rather than in a very binary yes or no way. So, and I know we're very much aligned there, right. It's like if it can take me to a certain level, if the ideation process can go from two hours to 20 minutes. Right. If I can use it to maybe generate an outline or help me with the outline, if I can use it for this part and that part, maybe test my logic in the piece and see if maybe there's a better way to build my argument in terms of the logic flow, any of those applications, if I can use it for some of those. We're talking about compressing something. It would have taken 10 hours, compressing it down to five or six. Right. And that is huge. But yeah, you need to be a smart, critical thinker here. And, you know, you and I were talking offline how I really believe that one of the many benefits of using these tools is they can help us become better critical thinkers. Because you now have to get that information out of your head. You have to explain it. You have to then take what it gives you and have a little bit more discernment than you would have otherwise, because you have to figure out what to take, what to throw away, what to maybe massage. And that is a creative process, you know, and you have to be really good. And I think these tools are exposing people who are not good to begin with, and then for those who were good and who are good, it's making them even better, stronger, more creative.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, Ed, unfortunately there's going to be those companies that say, I don't need a copywriter anymore. I'm Just going to use ChatGPT? Sure. I've had to. We're like, why would I need it? Yeah, but get rid of me and that's fine. That's not going to end up really good for them.

Right.

Because they're using a tool that everybody else is using and they don't have any creative oversight to make it human to. Yeah, Even in beyond creative, there's strategy, you know, there's SEO.

Right.

There's a certain way of faq, is there certain ways of making content more engaging.

Right.

And structuring it so it has more value. I mean, you still need that oversight that a tool like ChatGPT just can't do. Also, if everybody's using ChatGPT and pulling from the same data source, everyone's content is going to sound exactly the same.

Right.

You still need that human component to add that personality. I mean, I said this earlier to you, and there is not a content boy out there that needs to be filled. Is making it even more prevalent that your quality over quantity is going to be more important than ever. So what you're putting out really matters. It makes it easier for people to put out content. That doesn't mean it's going to be, you know, good or valuable to anybody. So that's still necessary.

I'm curious what the difference has been in terms of client feedback. As you've incorporated this more and more into your workflow, have you noticed any changes in feedback? I mean, I know it's helped you in terms of your productivity, your creativity, but what's been the response on the other end?

They don't know this. I mean, they don't know you're using, you know, I mean, there isn't a change because again, I make sure it doesn't sound like it's AI copy. It's very easy.

It's still running through you.

Yeah, exactly. Again, I'm taking that leadership role and anything that it spits out, you know, I'm still customizing it. I'm still making it sound human. I'm adding ellipses and dramatic effects. I mean, all the things that it still doesn't really do and adding the statistics and adding the backlinks, tying it back to the product where maybe Chat GP didn't know to add something.

Right.

I mean, so, yeah, I mean, the feedback is there is none because they don't know.

Interesting that that's good. And it goes to show that, you know, you're using it the right way. You're making sure that you're definitely very Much involved beginning, and at the end, everything has to be bookended that way so that nothing gets past that. Since you are an agency and you said you work with outside writers, I'm curious how you're using it when you're collaborating with outside writers.

Yeah. So you can actually share your GPTs with other writers?

Yes, so. So you were asking them to do that?

Yeah. Well, it's a save so much time onboarding, right? I'm like, hey, I. You're gonna leverage this tool if you're gonna do it. I. I take a position of educating my copywriters on how to use ChatGPT, because I'm telling you, it's happened so many times where you're obviously using it, but you're not doing it right. If you're gonna use it, I'm gonna help you learn how to do it right. So I will share the GPTs with them, the custom one, so they can start leveraging them. And, you know, I just try to educate them, right? Like, hey, this is a little too broad and you do a little more homework here. Like, hey, add a little bit more of the product influence here. A big part of what we do is writing blogs. So a lot of what I'm talking about is like, in blog editing, right? But also for me, it's a huge lift in terms of, you know, building outlines, right. I mean, so I love to use it as a tool to help me kind of get me off the ground if I have writer's block or a creative blog. I mean, it's such a great tool to help get me started.

Right?

Again, it's not going to get you a hundred percent, but it's really good to get you started. And so, like, blog outlines is a great place to kind of get me a basic structure. A lot of the times it's, I got to go in and edit it.

Right.

Just again, knowing SEO, knowing what headlines to use, and knowing what kind of FAQ is based on SEO research I need to plug in. But, you know, it definitely gets me a lot of the way there, so I can pass that to the copywriter. So it's saving me time on that end as well.

That's brilliant. Yeah, why not? Why not help them? I'm telling you, help them help you.

Exactly.

Very cool. Tell me a little bit about other. If you're familiar with some of the other models. And I know Anthropic through Claude has, you know, I think it's called Project. So some of the others are catching on and doing their own version of custom GPTs. Have you experimented with any of those?

You know, I trade clawed out like, right as is the first time I started trying out ChatGPT and I wasn't impressed with it. So I haven't played too much with it since then. I'm a big like UI UX person. If I don't even like the way it looks, I'm like, can't use it, you know, But I've tinkered with it since it's come around. One thing I will say from a free perspective, right? If you're not paying for Claude, I know that it doesn't have the Projects function. That's the pro plan if you pay for it. But it is a lot better about if you give it certain stipulations in the free version, like don't use emojis, don't use hashtags in the copy, it listens a lot better in Claude than ChatGPT will. ChatGPT sometimes just goes rogue, you know. And even with ChatGPT, with your custom DBT, sometimes you gotta reel it back in, right? It'll start getting off voice and tone and brand and you gotta remind it, hey, this is, you know, please go back to our original voice and tone. This sounds a little off. I've heard from colleagues at Claude is a little better about that kind of stuff, so I need to play with it a little more. But I know it does have Projects, which is essentially the equivalent of the ChatGPT custom GPTs.

Yeah, I have not tried it. I do like Claude, actually, for a lot of copywriting, especially if I have to use more creative language, you know, it's not as straightforward and I have to bring in story elements and so forth. I've had better luck with Claude, but I haven't tried the Projects feature yet, so I need to play around with that.

Yeah.

The other thing, it's interesting with a custom GPT, actually, just this morning it started, I used a, you know, kind of a. This is for a new prospect. And I was putting a proposal together and it started using terms from the last time I used it, meaning like the name of a different prospect. And I had to really direct it and it took a couple of attempts. It kind of scared me. I thought, why are you going back to the previous conversation? So.

And you were in a new chat.

It was a new chat, yeah. So I'm gonna have to figure that out now that I've learned a little bit from you in terms of how to mess with it, you know, and the creation of the configuration Tab.

Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes like, you know, I kind of avoid even using client names in particular.

Right.

I don't get too specific with Chat GPT in terms of like the name of the client, especially for proposals and stuff like that. But yeah, that's something I, that's interesting. I don't think I've had that issue before, but yeah, again, sometimes you just have to reel it back in and say we're talking about a different client.

Yeah. Like I won't use, if it's for a client, I want to use their name or some of the specifics. But if it's a proposal, that's different, you know, because I want kind of the finished. And even though it's going to give me 75% there, I still got to mess with it. I'll just go ahead and use it just to make it easier. But I'm curious as we're wrapping up what your take is on where this is all going, you know, if in terms of clients and like you said earlier, hey, you've already had some people say, well wait a minute, I could just use this, why would I need you? Nobody really has a crystal ball. But what's your best guess in terms of how this will evolve?

Yeah, you know, I think like anything technology wise, this is going to be a slow evolution for a lot of companies.

Right.

I think if you're 5% of people that work at Coca Cola or wherever and they have this giant budgets to be exploring these avenues, you're going to see it a lot faster. But 13% of small to medium sized businesses are leveraging AI right now themselves. Yeah. In house. I think that this is going to be a slow process, you know, to, to. I don't think anyone needs to panic and say, oh, this is going to take over my job or you know, I don't think anyone's job is in jeopardy at all. With that being said, I do think at some point this is going to fundamentally change the way we do things. Just like everything else has.

Right.

Any other technology, I expect AI to get much more integrated with our broader tech stack. So, you know, right now for blog posts, I'm using Semrush for my SEO research. I write my blogs and then I have to manually add backlinks. I have to change the headline based on keywords.

Right.

So I think at some point we'll see ChatGPT starting to integrate with these tools.

Right.

I think it's going to take on a little bit more of a consulting role as opposed to an executor role at some point, right? These companies, they're going to want to learn about AI. They're going to want to know how to integrate it into their business from a messaging perspective, copywriting perspective, they're not going to know how and at the end of the day, still needs to be somebody pushing the buttons, right? So being a prompt master, asking the right questions, right? Editing the work. So you're not going to have to start from scratch, right? This is going to help get you to that 45, 50, maybe even 75% of what you do. So it's really going to help you take on more clients and do more work. In my opinion, it's a tool in your toolkit, not the terminator of our existence.

Completely agree. And I think there's so many opportunities to, like you said, move up the value ladder and actually become more of an advisor, you know, do more and more of that work. When the execution, as more the execution gets kind of outsourced to these tools, we're going to need somebody to oversee that and again, be kind of the creative brain behind it all, the critical thinker. And I think there's all kinds of opportunities to help clients integrate this right into their own workflow because somebody still needs to guide them and they're not going to have that expertise in house.

No. And Ed, I think that one critical area where Chat GPT just like doesn't meet the mark right now is integrating into your broader tech stack, right? I mean, starting to get integrations and stuff. But I mean, wait for the day when you say, hey, chatgpt, can you design me this flyer based with this copy or whatever, right? Any the designs and stuff, it's just not there. Or from an SEO perspective, I use semrush. It's like once it integrates with my semrush and knows my keyword research and what backlinks I need, like, and it starts writing blogs, pulling all that in. Like, again, you still have to be in strategic leader and be able to integrate those technologies and lead that strategy. I mean, there's still going to be that need when you're using ChatGPT, but as a copywriter, I think your role is going to evolve much further from just simply writing the copy, but to understanding that broader strategy and helping advising, right? And lead that integration. Because it's going to be something that I think, again, going back to the social media example, right, everyone's eventually going to get on this train because they're going to feel like they're behind and it probably will be. So it just gives you more value as a writer to have these tools in your toolkit.

Well said. Well said. Well Aaron, where can I send listeners to learn more about you and your firm and your work?

Yeah, absolutely. So my agency is ethic agency ethicagency.com you can follow me on LinkedIn at Aaron LaFlame and yeah, that's where I'm at online.

Well, thank you so much. Really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a lot from it. I got notes in here and I appreciate you coming on and sharing all these insights and tips with us.

Yeah, thanks Ed. I appreciate the opportunity.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com where you will also find the detail show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.