If You’re Not Using Custom GPTs Yet...Start Here!

Watch the Episode on YouTube

If you've ever wondered how Joe somehow whips up a custom GPT for literally everything, from content creation to arguing with him when ChatGPT gets too agreeable, this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. Carly finally asks the question the whole community’s been thinking: “How is Joe doing that?” And this time, he actually shows us.

Step-by-step.

On-screen.

In real time.

Whether you want a GPT that writes in your brand voice, handles your workflows, or just keeps you honest (looking at you, You’re Wrong GPT), Joe breaks down exactly how he builds them: what’s easy, what you need to prepare, and what most solopreneurs totally overlook.

If you’ve ever said, “I wish a GPT could do this for me…” Good news: after this episode, it can.

FAQs From The Episode

Do I actually need a paid ChatGPT plan to create my own GPTs?

Yes. As Joe explains, GPT creation isn’t available on the free plan. You’ll need the $20/month subscription to access the “Create” option. The good news? If you use even a handful of AI-powered tasks in your business, you’ll easily make that cost back in saved time.

What kind of “training material” do I need to upload to build a useful GPT?

Think brand voice guides, examples of past content, frameworks you use, instructions you follow, or any assets that show how you want your GPT to think and write. More clarity = better output. You don’t need a huge pack of documents, just a few strong examples go a long way.

How do I know what kind of GPT I should create for my business?

Start with the tasks you repeat constantly or the ones that drain the most time: content creation, email drafts, lead gen messages, customer onboarding, proposals, social captions, etc. If you’ve ever said, “I wish someone could just do this for me,” that’s the perfect candidate for a custom GPT.

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out LifeStarr Intro!  

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: Ever wonder how Joe keeps whipping up custom GPTs like it's no big deal? In this episode, he finally pulls back the curtain, and I sit in as a student while he walks step by step through exactly how he builds the tools that power our content, systems, and his favorite, the You're Wrong GPT. If you've been curious how solopreneurs can create their own AI assistance or how fast it really is, you're going to love this episode. And if you wanna see Joe do it in under ten minutes, head over to our YouTube channel for the screen share version. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.

I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.

No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. Joe, I've been meaning to ask you this for a long time. I know that a lot of people in our community are curious about this. You, I feel like, are a GPT creation wizard. for anything we need to do, you're like, oh, I'll create a GPT for that. Oh, I'll create a GPT for this. We even talk about, even in our book, the You're Wrong GPT you created to argue with you, because chat GPT can be very agreeable with whatever you're saying.

Joe Rando: Yeah, it's the best thing I ever did.

Carly Ries: It was so smart, but you're just like, oh, I created GPT for that. And it's just so great. And the question we've been getting is, how is Joe doing that?

Joe Rando: It's not that hard. It's really not that hard.

Carly Ries: Glad you said that. Because I feel like we should show people. So if you are listening to this podcast, Joe is gonna walk you through the steps, but we're also going to show it on the screen. So be sure to go over to our YouTube channel so you can see everything that he's putting up there, which is just The Aspiring Solopreneur. But, Joe, if you can just walk through it.

The other disclaimer we need to make is Joe is using a paid ChatGPT version for this. So, Joe, correct me if I'm wrong, you cannot create a GPT if you're using free ChatGPT. Correct?

Joe Rando: I couldn't figure out a way to do that. It seems to be missing. So, yeah, I think you gotta chip in that $20 a month.

Carly Ries: Okay. So that's our disclaimer. But, Joe, I'm eager to learn. I'm gonna be your student today. Let's see how you do this and hear how you do this.

Joe Rando: So it's, chatgpt.com. You probably knew that. And what we have here, if you look over on the left, panel, is this section under GPTs. These are all the ones I've created, but there's one that says explore at the top. At least that's the way it works this week. And if you go in here, you can, look at all kinds of other GPTs that people have made, but you can click this upper right hand button that says a plus sign and create. So now you're creating a GPT. And what you do here is you can give it a logo if you want. I won't bother with that because it's just to kind of identify it easier. And then you gotta give it a name. I'm gonna name this one, LifeStarr branding expert.  And I'm gonna give it a description. Creates content that matches the LifeStarr brand. Okay. And I'm gonna tell it what to do.

So here, I'm gonna say, I want you to create social media posts, blogs, and articles that match LifeStarr's brand. Conversation starters is, I guess, something that it will kinda show that they could ask. I don't really need that, but I'll just say, what are we making? And down below, I can upload files. So I'm gonna click on that, and I don't know if you can see the files search, but I'm gonna go down here.

I'm gonna look for a file here that I call our current brand. And I'm gonna upload that file, and then I can choose a recommended model. What that means is, GPT our 40 , which is the older one. Now they have a five pro and a five I'm thinking. The problem is, I think the four o is free.

Five is available on the $20 a month plan, and, the pro and or maybe it's the thinking is only available on the expensive plan, the $200 a month plan. So I'm gonna leave it at no recommended model. Let them use the one that they prefer. Not really gonna share this with anybody outside of the LifeStarr family because, I don't want other people making our content to our brand. So now we've got the capabilities.

Web search is obviously a useful one. Canvas, if you've used that, it kind of overwrites itself as you work. So you're not using this whole long screen and having to scroll back. So if you create a document and then say, I wanna fix this, it'll rewrite it over. And image creation is nice.

I don't need any code for this. and then create a new action. I'd explain that, but I don't really know what it is yet. I think it's got something to do with being able to log into things on authentication, but I haven't used that. So here, I've basically created a simple GPT, and I could go to the upper right, and click create.

And then I have the choice for how this is gonna be used. So I can share it only with myself. I can give it to anyone with the link, and I can give it to the GPT store and try to sell it. I've never done that. I don't do that because all of my stuff goes to creating content for LifeStarr and for our members.

This one, I'm gonna leave anyone with the link because I'll probably share it with Carly and Stacy and some other people. So I click save, and it's thinking. And here's the link that I could share. I'll get that later. I gotta go to view GPT and close that little box.

So what are we making? we are making create a blog article on making a GPT. Let's get real meta, and it will come back.

Carly Ries: And for people that are listening, he just typed that into, the normal prompt box in ChatGPT

Joe Rando: Using this particular GPT. And it's writing a very nice little blog. I mean, I would definitely want to edit this, but it's a nice little start. I probably would have given it much more seed material than that, but I don't wanna take the rest of the day doing this. but, yeah, it just cranks out a nice little blog, which I can then, copy and edit to make it work. Now the last thing is when you wanna get to your GPT, you're gonna look in the left column, And as you scroll down, you'll see LifeStarr branding expert. You'll see it twice because I actually created this before, but in my screen.

But yeah. And then you just look there, click on it, and it'll create a new well, if you go and create a new chat, and then you go back to it, you can then create a new conversation. So that it'll be there for you anytime you need it. So that's really it. Like I said, not hard. the main thing is to think through things , the training material is obviously critical. You have to have good training material. Thinking through the instructions and that kind of thing is really, really important. But, you can also use ChatGPT to help you create training material for a particular GPT that you're making. So sometimes I would go in and say, hey, This is what I wanna do.

This is all the kind of things I'm thinking. Can you turn that into training content? And, let me just go back here. If I go back to, edit this GPT again, you can see here in the instructions, I can put a lot of material in here. We could put a lot of details about what to do and not to do, and ChatGPT is really good at creating those instructions if you give it kind of an outline.

So that's the last I think that's maybe the last hack that I would be able to share in terms of doing this. So that's the basics. Go out there, crank out something cool, and, let me know if you can make something neat and and wanna share it.

Carly Ries: Awesome. Joe, thank you so much. That's really helpful. And to follow just to see what you've been doing because, like I said, he seemed to crank these out quickly. And as our listeners and viewers saw, that took less than ten minutes.

Obviously, some prep work would have to go into the documents you upload and all that. But to actually build the GPT does not take that long. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, leave that five star review, share this episode with a friend, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube.

And we'll see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. 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 conversations at community.lifestarr.com.