306. How I’m Leveraging AI—and Helping My Students Do the Same for Their eCommerce Businesses

Back in February of 2023, I released a podcast episode called AI Content Generators: What Are They & How to Use Them Properly. At the time, ChatGPT and other AI tools were starting to take off and were all the rage online. 

I took some time to do a deep dive into them and my biggest takeaway at the time was that while they were helpful as an assistant if you struggle with staring at a blinking cursor, the output still left much to be desired. 

Truthfully, my experience, and that of most of my Lounge members, is that while it can be helpful to get started, creating content that didn’t sound AI-generated was really hard

I found this to be especially true with longer-form content, though it was usually passable for social media captions. And all those perfect prompts everyone was selling on the Internet when they were overnight AI experts, didn’t really help.

Prefer to listen to the episode? Click here.

Using AI Tools to Write Content

Since that episode, I have rarely bothered to use AI in my business, especially in terms of content creation. Mostly because I find it easier to write from scratch than to edit. 

But that all changed, a few months ago when a mentor of mine, who has been digging into AI released a mini-course that taught her students how to train the bot to write content that sounds like us. 

I was skeptical at first, but after working through it I’m pretty impressed with what I am now able to generate through ChatGPT. 

I’ve actually used it to write articles that I include in the Sip, the monthly magazine inside the Lounge Membership. It has also assisted me in some of my podcast episodes but none of those has been 100% generated by AI. 

The best part about the process is that, more than just training the tool to write like me, following her prompts show me how to better utilize AI overall. I’m excited to start developing tools to help you do the same. 

The first tool that I’m creating and making available to everyone will be similar to the one I used to train ChatGPT how to write like me. I adapted the process I learned from my mentor, originally designed for online educators like me, to fit physical product-based businesses.

There are also some tried and true tools and strategies I use when working one-on-one with clients to create their email automations. Part of that project is copywriting and it’s so important that I can write that content in their voice. Having gone through that process with multiple clients and refining it along the way, I was able to tap into that while creating this process for you. I even had a chance to test it out with my most recent done-for-you client and it was definitely a time-saver. 

Overall, it’s a really cool tool and I’m super excited about it. Not only will it train the bot to write like you for the customer you’re trying to reach, but just going through the process will give you insight into how to create better prompts and have better conversations with AI moving forward. 

That masterclass is called the AI Brand Brief and I’ll be releasing it during the Badassery Blitz on December 9th. Current Lounge Members, I’ll be gifting this to you, so you don’t have to worry about purchasing it separately. 

Using AI for Research

Going back to those articles I use ChatGPT to write for the Sip, one of the most important steps in writing those articles is research. Historically, ChatGPT wasn’t always the best for this because it was only trained with information up through 2021. There were some additional updates that were made over time, but now ChatGPT can directly search the internet getting the most up-to-date information possible. It will also provide you with the sources it used to gather that information so you can double-check their reliability. 

If you are going to use ChatGPT for research I do recommend you ask it to focus on recent sources if that’s necessary for the topic as it can sometime give out of date information. For example, I used it when researching statistics for the Holiday 2024 trends episode and sometimes it gave me posts and articles that were a few years old. The other thing you have to watch out for is that while it will put the source within the body of the response, for example at the end of a sentence, sometimes it seems to mix up the content and the source it pulled it from. If you’re just using it for general research that’s not really a huge deal, but if you’re writing an article that you want to link to your sources, just make sure you have the right source for the right piece of information. 

Using AI Tools for eCommerce Analysis

The other way I’ve been using ChatGPT lately is for analysis. The first few times I did this was actually with bills in congress. It was able to summarize the content for me and then answer my followup questions showing me the text in the bill that prompted it to answer that way. 

Seeing how well it was able to analyze existing content, I started thinking what else I could apply that to. I started by creating a workbook for my Lounge Members to help them analyze their facebook ad results. Essentially figuring out why certain copy or images performed better than others. Lounge members, that was shared in the November issue of the Sip, but you can also find it inside the Meta Badassery course. 

Another online educator, Kennedy from Email Marketing Heroes is teaching ChatGPT to write really great subject lines. He will create a subject line on his own, then ask the AI to write a subject line for the same email. He runs them as an A/B test and then submits the results back to ChatGPT and asks it to analyze why the winner was the winner. He said he’s been training it for a few months, and now about 88% of the time, the AI writes the winning subject line. 

This isn’t something I’ve tried yet, but I’m definitely intrigued. I have a lot of my to-do list at the moment, but I’ve got some other ideas on how I might use ChatGPT for analysis, especially when it comes to data analysis… the thing I know so many of us love to do. 

Building AI into eCommerce Courses

My biggest focus at the moment though, is working AI assistants into my courses to help you implement what I’m teaching, faster. 

I don’t want to give all the details away just yet, but for any of my courses that you already own, I’ll be updating them with these AI tools over the next few months. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when they’re available. 

The first one I’m finalizing is for Email Badassery. That’s the course I launched in beta last year during the Badassery Blitz. My goal now is to create AI tools to help you with portions of that course, including writing the actual emails.

For my existing Email Badassery students, you’ll get access to that as soon as it’s ready. I’ll make sure to let you know when they’re available. 

If you haven’t gotten your hands on that course yet, but you’re interested in revamping your email automations next year, you’ll have a chance to snag Email Badassery at a special price during this year’s blitz so keep your eyes peeled for that. 

Creating Custom GPTs

Another feature of ChatGPT specifically that I’ve been testing out are custom GPTs. These are pre-set tasks that you create and save so you can process them with the click of a button. For example, the articles I mentioned for Sip magazine. I created a custom GPT where all I have to do is give it an outline of the article I want to create and it writes the article for me. I don’t have to give it any direction about how I want the article written, because I’ve already done that and basically stored it in this custom GPT. 

There are also pre-built GPTs that other creators have made that you can use. These can be a little hit or miss. While your ChatGPT account will commit your brand voice to memory, you don’t have any insight into how that GPT was trained, so it can sometimes create unexpected results. 

For example, I’ve used a few different GPTs to help me write code but some of the ones I tested out were clearly created for developers, and I got more helpful results just in a regular chat. 

I’ve also been messing around with some custom GPTs that I can share with my students who are trained on certain frameworks I teach, etc. This is proving to be a little bit harder because GPTs work best when they’re focused on doing ONE thing vs. having multiple steps. Plus, you have to have the paid version of ChatGPT to create or use them. At $20 bucks a month, it’s not super expensive, but still. For my client or student-facing things I’m going to focus more on step-by-step prompts vs. custom GPTs. That said, you can easily create them for yourself if you want to. If you are going to do that, remember they work best when each GPT only has one task to complete. 

Tips & Tricks When Using AI Tools Like ChatGPT

As I’ve mentioned, I’m going to be releasing a few different tools and things to help you better utilize ChatGPT, but in the meantime I wanted to give you a few quick tips that you can use to start getting better results starting now. 

Break Large Tasks into Smaller Steps

My number one tip is to not try and do too much at one time, and break your tasks into smaller steps. Just like your custom GPTs work best if they’re meant to do one task, the same is true when you’re having a regular chat with the bot. 

Not only will the bot give you better results, but it also makes it easier for you to edit and refine the results as you go. 

You do still want to keep the entire project in one chat, as the bot can build off previous responses, but you want to control the ask and the response as much as possible.

Give the Bot Feedback & Ask for Alternatives

That leads me to my second tip which is to give the bot feedback as you go. If you make any edits to the output ChatGPT gives you, I recommend you feed those edits back into the chat so it can learn your preferences. 

You can also ask for adjustments or alternatives along the way too. For example, if you’re writing a subject line for an email you can ask for 3 more alternatives. If you’re writing a social media caption you might it tell it to add a call to action at the end. You can also ask it rewrite the content in a more playful or professional tone, depending on what you’re trying to create. 

Sometimes it will give you two different responses side-by-side and ask you to pick your favorite. Most of the time I end up mixing and matching the two versions taking parts from each one. In that case, I’ll usually feed the new version I created back into the chat to let it know. 

Once you do have a final response that you like, make sure you hit the thumbs up at the end of the response so it knows it did a good job. 

Make Sure it Knows Who Your Customer Is

You’ll also want to make sure ChatGPT knows who your customers is, who are they writing this content for. Developing this is also going to be part of the AI Brand Brief, but you can easily get started with a few sentence blurb about your ideal customer. 

Be Mindful of the Memory

Before you start using the tool, make sure you have your memory turned on. That’s in your account settings, I think it’s turned off by default. Based on your conversations, ChatGPT will decide what it thinks will be useful for future conversations. When it does that, you’ll see a memory-updated notification as it’s thinking through the answer. You can also tell it specific things you’d like it to remember. 

Your memory will eventually get full, though you have complete control over what is stored there. For example, after testing out some of my processes with my most recent client’s business, I went in and deleted any memories from those chats so it didn’t mess with any responses for my own content. 

As you’ll see with the AI Brand Brief masterclass, I also recommend you store any training information outside of ChatGPT so it can be easily referenced and fed back into the tool. While in most cases you won’t need it, it’s definitely helpful to have since the memory space is limited. 

It’s Not Great at Everything

It’s also important to remember that ChatGPT isn’t good at all things. For example, I don’t love it as much for coming up with marketing campaigns or promotions. While it can be good to get some ideas and spark some creativity, sometimes the recommendations it gives you are better in theory than in practice. 

For example, I’ve had some students tell me they got an idea from ChatGPT to run a different deal every Friday for the month of November. In my experience, those kinds of promotions don’t yield good enough results for the amount of work and effort you have to put into it and I recommended she stick to a simpler strategy of offering a promotion over consecutive days. 

I may change my mind about this at some point, but right now I find it best at research, content creation and analysis. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, getting great results does take some practice. But admittedly I’m much more sold on it than I was a couple of years ago. I’m definitely excited to keep exploring its capabilities and creating tools to help you be more efficient in your eCommerce business.