Episode 64 – The Custom GPT Process That Works Best For Me

In this solo episode, host Cary Weston records from the parking lot during his kids’ sports practices and dives into a hands-on tip about creating Custom GPTs—specialized versions of ChatGPT tailored for specific tasks. Cary walks through the step-by-step approach he uses to build and use Custom GPTs that act like focused digital assistants, whether for writing, proposals, or even acting like an ideal customer focus group. It’s a great listen for anyone who’s curious about going deeper with ChatGPT and turning it into a truly personalized productivity partner.

3 Key Takeaways

  • Custom GPTs = Specialized Assistants: Cary explains how Custom GPTs can be trained to perform focused tasks like writing in your tone, generating proposals, or role-playing as a best-fit customer.
  • Start by Letting ChatGPT Help You First: Before creating a Custom GPT, Cary suggests having a conversation with ChatGPT about your goal and letting it guide you with suggestions and tasks to clarify your needs.
  • Capture, Copy, and Paste: Once you’re happy with the interaction, you can ask ChatGPT to generate the exact configuration text needed to create a Custom GPT—just copy and paste it in. He’s even made a downloadable walkthrough to help with that.

Resource Mentioned In Show

This is the step-by-step custom GPT instructions for the ideal customer set up I mentioned in the show.

Prompt to Help

How to Create a Custom GPT for Your Repeating Task or Problem

If you’re someone who keeps using ChatGPT to solve the same type of problem over and over—this is for you. With a little setup, you can turn that repeated need into a Custom GPT that works like a personal assistant. Here’s how:

Step 1: Start with the Problem You Want to Solve

Open ChatGPT and have a regular conversation about a goal, task, or problem you deal with often.

Here’s what to type:

“I keep [insert your problem or task here] and I’d love to figure out the best way to use ChatGPT to help me with it. Can you walk me through how you’d approach this?”

Examples:

  • Writing weekly social media posts
  • Drafting proposals
  • Creating content for a specific audience
  • Responding to customer questions
  • Thinking through product or service ideas

Let ChatGPT guide you. Keep saying “Tell me more” or “Let’s go deeper on that” until the responses are really dialed in for what you need.

Step 2: Tell ChatGPT You Want to Turn This Into a Custom GPT

Once you’re happy with what ChatGPT has helped you build, say this:

“I want to turn this into a Custom GPT that I can reuse anytime I want to do this task. How do I do that?”

ChatGPT will explain the steps, and give you the details you’ll need.

Step 3: Ask for the Custom GPT Configuration

Now you want ChatGPT to actually generate the setup text that you can copy and paste into a new Custom GPT.

Type this:

“Now give me the specific configuration instructions I can copy and paste into the Custom GPT builder so it knows exactly how to behave and what to do.”

This is the magic part.
You’ll get a detailed block of text that tells your Custom GPT how to act, what to say, what tone to use, and what to focus on—based on everything you just worked through.