Remember the days when writing a business plan was an overwhelming and time-consuming task?
Yeah, not exactly the best experience.
But, guess what?
Thanks to ChatGPT, now you can whip up a killer business plan quicker than ever before just by giving it the right instructions to hand out accurate, relevant, and downright useful info.
But while it’s tempting to rely solely on AI for your business plan, the real improvement begins when you start combining human insight with AI efficiency, and trust me, this is going to set you apart from the rest.
So, how about I walk you through a step-by-step guide to crafting a killer business plan using ChatGPT?
If you’re ready, then let’s get right to it.
Why should you use chatGPT to build your business?
It Has Limitless Creativity
The reason why ChatGPT can be such a powerful tool for creativity is that it can generate a wide range of ideas, from marketing strategies to product features, helping you think outside the box.
The bot’s vast knowledge base allows it to draw from diverse industries and disciplines, providing you with unique perspectives that you might not have even considered.
Additionally, ChatGPT’s ability to produce various content formats, such as blog posts, social media updates, and ad copy, can help you effectively communicate your creative ideas to your target audience.
You Can Brainstorm Effectively
Using ChatGPT for brainstorming can significantly enhance the efficiency of your idea-generation process by quickly providing a multitude of suggestions, saving you time and effort compared to traditional brainstorming sessions.
Its instant feedback allows you to refine your ideas on the spot, which then speeds up the entire decision-making process.
What’s more is that ChatGPT has the ability to handle multiple topics simultaneously which makes it the ideal tool for exploring different aspects of your business in a single brainstorming session.
It’s Practical And Efficient
Using ChatGPT can also be a practical solution for businesses, particularly startups and small enterprises, by automating tasks like customer support and content creation, which efficiently saves time and reduces the cost of labor and operational expenses.
And as your business grows, ChatGPT’s scalability ensures it can handle increased demands without additional human resources.
Also, ChatGPT’s ability to provide quick responses and generate content at scale can help you maintain a consistent online presence without the need for manually doing it yourself!
it has personalized assistance
ChatGPT offers tailored assistance that can be customized to meet the specific needs of your business.
Whether you’re looking for help with developing a business plan, crafting marketing emails and messages, or analyzing customer feedback, the model can adapt its responses to suit whatever requirements you give it.
It also has the ability to learn from your inputs and preferences over time, making the content that it generates more relevant and specific to your business, which is made even more accessible and easy to interact with because of its conversational interface.
6 steps to building your business Plan with chatGPT
If you’re eager to start using GPT for building your business from scratch, then just follow these 6 steps and you’ll be well on your way to successfully creating your business plan in no time flat!
1. Brainstorm about your business and products
Before even starting an online business with ChatGPT (or any business pitch for that matter), it’s important that you always begin by thinking and brainstorming about the different aspects of your business.
Take this time to explore the various possibilities that align with your interests, skills, and preferences, and before you start jotting down your ideas, it’s crucial to first understand who your target audience is immediately.
Who are they? What do they need? What are they looking for specifically? How can I make their quality of life better?
If you know your audience inside out, it’ll be easier for you to cut to the chase and not waste time by tailoring your business idea to meet their specific needs.
Additionally, it’s vital to consider your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and ask yourself “What sets my business apart from my competitors?”
In a crowded online marketplace, having a one-of-a-kind benefit or feature for your products or services can make or break potential customers’ decisions when choosing between you and the competition.
Once you’ve got the basics down, remember to keep a list of all the ideas that you came up with so that you stay organized and focused as you move forward with your business planning venture.
2. Use a prompt to create a business plan outline
What are prompts, you may ask?
Long story short, a prompt is basically the information that you feed ChatGPT in order for it to generate your desired response.
And knowing how to engineer your prompts by giving it specific information and details about your proposed business plan can significantly increase the effectiveness of the content it produces.
But avoid the temptation of expecting ChatGPT to conjure up a full-fledged business plan in one go.
It’s a bit too much for it to handle (at least for now), and you might end up with a surface-level overview lacking depth and uniqueness.
Instead, break down your business plan into bite-sized chunks and tackle them one by one with the help of ChatGPT.
This method allows for deeper exploration and results in a more comprehensive and compelling final product.
Though, are you unsure where to begin?
You can always turn to ChatGPT to assist you in crafting a business plan outline tailored to your needs!
Prompt: Create a simple business outline.
If you do end up using this outline, it’ll help you to zero in on defining your business opportunity and articulating why your idea merits investment and support.
3. Write about your product or service
Once you’ve got the general overview of your product, give ChatGPT the rundown on what you can bring to the table.
Tell it about your product or service, what problem it solves, and what makes it stand out, which then allows ChatGPT to whip up some refined content for your plan and should give you a solid starting point.
In this part of your plan, it’s all about showcasing your product or service and how it tackles your customers’ problems head-on.
You can also touch on any initial success you’ve had, any patents or trademarks you’ve got, and what future offerings are on the horizon.
Though, one thing to keep in mind is that ChatGPT might struggle a bit with super unique or complicated products and services, so be prepared to give it a nudge in the right direction if needed.
Prompt: I want to start a self-improvement website that focuses more on self-care, slow fashion and decluttering. I'm planning to create a decluttering checklist as one of the first products that the company's going to launch, which I then plan to expand and offer other forms of self-care checklists in the future.
Can you help me write a list of products and services that I can incorporate to my business plan above that solves the pain points of our customers while also aligning with our future objectives?
5. Create a financial plan
When it comes to this section, I recommend only using ChatGPT to propose some ideas about revenue streams and to come up with suggestions you haven’t considered yet when creating your business’ financial plan.
This is because, unfortunately, the bot just isn’t that developed yet, so it can’t provide precise financial projections or detailed financial advice.
Currently, the AI also can’t generate a financial model that’s easily customizable to help you make crucial decisions for starting and running your business effectively.
But beyond its limitations, ChatGPT can still offer valuable insights and fresh ideas that you can incorporate into your business strategy.
Its ability to offer innovative suggestions for the financial aspect of your business remains a valuable asset, even though it can’t produce a comprehensive financial statement on its own.
Prompt: I'd like you to draft a three-year financial strategy for my business. I intend to sell $20,000 worth of products in the first year, then develop my firm to roughly $200,000 by the end of the third year. Provide relevant income streams and expenses, as well as a cash flow forecast, if possible.
5. Produce content for your blog
Once you’ve settled on your business idea and got your products or services up on the site, it’s time to start crafting content for your blog if you decide to have one.
Though this isn’t a necessary step, having a blog is a fantastic way to boost your website’s online reach and ranking, especially for specific, long-tailed keywords.
What’s even better is that you can use different SEO tricks to snag more attention in search results, which means you can reel in more organic traffic to your blog.
ChatGPT can be a massive help to enhance the quality of your content copy or correct any grammar, spelling, or punctuation error you may have, especially if you wrote all of them yourself.
Whether it’s digging up the perfect keywords or structuring your content in the most optimal manner, it’s all about boosting visibility and climbing up those search rankings.
Prompt: Create an appealing and informational blog post with the keyword "decluttering checklist" in mind that will hook readers and encourage them to engage with my article. Keep it short and friendly while still providing information. Be sure to utilize a conversational tone, making it engaging and easy for anyone to read. Emphasize on the potential problems faced by the audience and provide the checklist as a solution. 
6. Summarize your business plan
Once you’ve got your plan and products in order, you can then turn to ChatGPT one more time for it to summarize all of your plans into one executive summary.
Alternatively, if you’ve been working on your plan within a single chat session, you can simply ask ChatGPT to summarize what you’ve discussed so far, and you can even specify the word count for the summary.
Another tiny step that you can implement is to guide ChatGPT on the writing style you want it to adapt for your summary, or just your content in general.
For instance, if your business plan revolves around a checklist for decluttering around the household, you might want your executive summary to be engaging and motivational.
In that case, just let ChatGPT know you’d like a casual and conversational style of writing, and it’ll tailor the summary accordingly.
What You Shouldn’t Use ChatGPT for when creating your business plan
When an offer is simply too good to be true, more often that not, they probably are, and the same goes for the all-knowing AI model.
(Which isn’t as all-knowing as one may expect)
While it’s technologically advanced, remember that it’s still in its early stages, and like any computer or AI tool, it doesn’t offer a 100-percent guarantee of accuracy 100-percent of the time.
Think of it as a device that can gather and summarize data, but lacks the full context of your life, business, health, or home needed for entirely reliable and relevant answers.
And as you’ve probably already noticed from the examples above, ChatGPT shines greatest when it comes to content and copy for marketing techniques.
But when it comes to actually developing a marketing strategy, it’s best to rely on proven resources such as marketing specialists or business partners, supplemented by extensive Google research.
(Unlike ChatGPT, which only knows the world up until 2021, Google can provide much more current information)
Keeping this in mind, there are some situations in which using ChatGPT for your marketing needs may not be the best option, and here are just three of them:
1. Don’t use it for Analyzing your competitors
When considering ChatGPT for competitor analysis, it’s important to recognize its limitations.
First of all, the model’s understanding of contextual nuances might be limited, which could result in an incomplete picture of your competitors’ strategies.
And since ChatGPT’s knowledge is only based on information available up to its last training update, it might not have the most current data, which could potentially lead to outdated insights that may not accurately reflect the current competitive landscape.
Also, ChatGPT may not offer the depth of industry-specific analysis that’s crucial for a thorough understanding of your competitors’ positioning and tactics, and this lack of specificity could possibly hinder your ability to make informed strategic decisions.
2. Don’t use it for Market Research
Since the model’s responses are based on a broad dataset, it might not be able to provide the targeted insights necessary for effective market research.
ChatGPT also lacks the capability to conduct primary research, such as surveys or interviews, which is crucial for gathering current, market-specific information.
And there’s also the fact that ChatGPT’s responses can be at risk of bias, as they may be influenced by the biases present in its training data.
This could potentially skew your market research findings and can lead you to inaccurate conclusions which won’t help your business growth in the slightest.
3. Don’t use it for analytics and reporting
If you didn’t already know, ChatGPT doesn’t have access to your internal data and metrics, which means the model can’t customize reports to your specific business needs or key performance indicators (KPIs).
While GPT does possess data analysis capabilities, its current functionality in this aspect remains quite restricted.
So much like how effective marketing strategies differ from one business to another, determining the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals relies on your specific circumstances.
Rather than solely relying on ChatGPT to formulate statistics like trends, patterns, and insights within your data, it’s essential to do the groundwork and come up with your own consistent reporting routine tailored to your business’ needs.
turn your business plan from good to great!
If you’ve been struggling to navigate the complexities of creating an outline for your business plan and find yourself unsure if your current strategies are enough to even yield the results that you want, don’t worry because you’re not alone.
And while it can become frustrating, by making use of the power of AI tools like ChatGPT, they make it easier to do and develop your work for less brain and muscle effort.
If you found these tips helpful, consider joining our email list for free for more business-related content and receive updates on real-life experiences and expert advice to enhance your business knowledge and operations!
FAQs
Can you build a business using ChatGPT?
As we just went over, you absolutely can (however, just keep in mind the restrictions). Nevertheless, ChatGPT makes the process of starting a business much quicker by coming up with a comprehensive business outline, brilliant product ideas, and generate content.
Can you sell things generated by ChatGPT?
Yes, you can, but you need to do it ethically. Get written permission from OpenAI, be honest about the source, check the information for accuracy, avoid selling confidential data, and above all, ensure it provides value to your customers.
Does ChatGPT own your content?
As per their terms and conditions, OpenAI sees you as the author of content created by ChatGPT. So, when you interact with the model and generate content, you own said content.
Does ChatGPT store your input data?
Yes, ChatGPT will save your data. It stores your prompts, chat chats, and account information. This includes your name, email address, IP address, and location, though collecting all of this information is not at all unusual.