Guides · AI at work
How to Teach ChatGPT About Your Business Once
By Josh Croom · October 27, 2026 · 9 min read
To teach ChatGPT about your business, write five short files once and add them to a ChatGPT project, so every chat in that project starts out knowing you. The files cover how you sound, what you offer, what people ask, your rules and what's happening this quarter, and each one runs about a page.
The same paragraph, pasted again
9:15 AM. The office manager at a heating and cooling company opens a new chat to draft a follow-up email. She pastes in the paragraph she always pastes: who they are, which towns they serve and how the owner likes to sound. It's the fourth time she's done it this week. The draft that comes back still promises around-the-clock emergency service. The company doesn't offer that, and the email signs off like a form letter.
She fixes the email by hand, and tomorrow she'll paste the same paragraph again. The time AI saved on the draft went straight back into explaining the business and correcting what it guessed. A short set of files would have answered all of it before she typed a word.
Explaining yourself to AI takes real time
Glean, a company that sells AI tools, surveyed 6,000 people who work full time on computers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. These numbers are the workers' own estimates, from a vendor's survey.
- 11 hoursa week AI saved themby their own estimate
- 2.3 hoursa week giving AI backgroundout of 6.4 hours of weekly upkeep
- 6,000office workers surveyedin the US, the UK and Australia
A binder of five short files gives ChatGPT that background once, and every chat inside the project reads it without anyone retyping a word.
Why ChatGPT keeps forgetting who you are
ChatGPT doesn't know your name, your town, your prices or how you talk unless something tells it. When nothing does, it guesses, and a made-up price or a service you don't offer can slip into a draft that looks finished. You can paste the facts in every time, but then the time AI saved goes into the pasting.
ChatGPT has two settings that suit this job. Custom instructions apply to all of your chats, and they're meant for what ChatGPT should know about you and how you like it to respond. Projects hold files and instructions for the chats inside them, which makes a project the right home for your business binder.
The five files that teach ChatGPT your business
Write them in this order, because the first one shapes how ChatGPT sounds in everything it writes for you.
File 1
How you sound
Write this one by hand, which takes about eight minutes. Write down three things the owner or director says often: one about money, one about the work and one about the people you serve. Add three words they'd never say, because those words would tell a customer that someone else wrote it. End with one line about who you serve and what those people want.
File 2
What you offer
List each thing you do in the words your customers use, rather than your inside words. Say who each one is for and how someone gets started, so ChatGPT never has to invent a service or a next step.
File 3
What people ask
List the five questions your team answers most often, and mark the ones that already have a written answer. Write the first missing answer today in three lines, and add one more each week after that.
File 4
Your rules
Write down the promises and claims you never make. Add the kinds of information that must never go into an AI tool, like customer names, account details and anything private about the people you serve.
File 5
This quarter
Write down what's happening now: events, dates, this season's prices and services, and the goal in numbers, so drafts can point toward it. Put a date line at the top that tells ChatGPT how current the file is.
Build the voice from your own writing
File one gets better when ChatGPT studies writing you've already done, because your own writing carries habits you'd never think to describe.
Pick three to five things you already wrote, like past emails, your home page or replies to customers. Leave out any sample that carries a name, an account detail or a private number. Paste them in with the prompt below, and then read what comes back the way an editor would. Fix anything that's wrong, and add the result to file one.
Paste this prompt along with your samples. The reply underneath it shows the kind of voice profile a good run gives back.
Here are three to five things we wrote. Read them and write our voice profile: how we sound, the words we use, the words we'd never use, how formal we are, and how we start and end a message. Use only what's in these samples. Don't make up a style we don't have.
You sound warm and direct. You open with the person's first name, give prices in plain numbers and end with one clear next step. You never write 'valued customer' or 'per our conversation.'
Where to put the files in ChatGPT
Keep the master copy in a shared drive your team already uses, never in one person's own account, so the binder stays put when people come and go.
Then bring the files into ChatGPT. A project lets you add files, set instructions for the project and move existing chats into it, so older conversations can join the binder too.
- Make a project in ChatGPT for your business, and add all five files to it.
- Add a short instruction to the project, like this one: read the five binder files before every answer, write in the voice from file one, and never state a price that isn't in file two or file five.
- Start every work chat inside that project, so it begins knowing you. If you'd want to find a chat again next month, start it there.
- Put one person's own likes, such as keeping answers short, in that person's custom instructions instead of the shared binder.
Test it with the same question twice
Ask the same thing twice, once in a plain chat and once inside the project, and then hold both drafts up to the signs below. Try this one: write a three-line thank-you to a first-time customer.
Signs of a plain chat
- It opens with something like 'Dear Valued Customer.'
- It thanks them for choosing 'our services' without naming one.
- It hedges, guesses and signs off like a form letter.
Signs the binder is working
- It opens the way your own emails open, from file one.
- It names a service you offer, in your customers' words.
- It ends with one next step, in the owner's own voice.
Mistakes that make the binder worse
- Customer details don't belong in the binder, because it describes your business and never the people you serve.
- Slogans in place of real sentences teach ChatGPT to write slogans, because it copies whatever you give it.
- A binder kept in one person's own account leaves the business when that person leaves.
- A long binder is harder to keep current, and a stale file teaches ChatGPT old prices and dates.
- One person's likes in the shared binder change everyone's drafts, so those belong in that person's own custom instructions.
Update the binder once a month
Give the binder one owner, and put fifteen minutes on that person's calendar for the first Monday of every month.
In those fifteen minutes, the owner fixes what changed and cuts what's old, like last season's prices or an event that already happened. When anyone on the team corrects a wrong AI answer, they fix the binder as well as the chat, so the same mistake doesn't come back next week.
Does your AI know your business yet?
Answer five quick questions about the drafts your team gets from AI today.
Do AI drafts sound like your owner or director?
Does ChatGPT get your prices right without you pasting them in?
Do two people who ask the same question get the same answer?
Is the binder in a shared drive instead of one person's account?
Has someone updated it in the last month?
Your binder is doing its job. Keep the monthly fifteen minutes on the calendar, because a binder that nobody updates starts giving old answers.
You're partway there. Fix the first question you answered No, starting with the file that question points to.
Start with file one this week. Eight minutes spent writing down how you sound changes the drafts that follow it.
Build the binder this week
Tick each one off as you go. Your ticks stay on this device.
0 of 7 done
Put the same words to work in your ads
Files two and three hold the words your customers use, and those same words make strong ads and web pages.
Our guide on how to write Google Ads copy shows how customer words turn into headlines people click, and our search terms study shows what people type before they call or buy. Once the binder is in place, time one job before and after, so you know how much time AI saves your team.
If you'd like to talk about putting those words to work in Google Ads, book a call with Miguel. He'll ask how customers find you today and talk through where ads could fit.
Questions people ask
Can ChatGPT learn about my business?
Don't count on it to remember the right facts from one chat to the next. Write five short files about your business and add them to a ChatGPT project, and every chat inside that project starts with your background.
What should I tell ChatGPT about my business?
Cover five things: how you sound, what you offer, the questions people ask most, your rules, and what's happening this quarter. Keep each one to about a page.
Should I upload customer information to ChatGPT?
Not the private parts. Leave out passwords, card and bank numbers, private messages and any name tied to private details, and write a code like Person A where a name would go. Keep customer details out of the binder too, because it describes your business and not the people you serve.
What's the difference between custom instructions and a ChatGPT project?
Custom instructions apply to all of your chats, so they suit one person's own preferences. A project holds files and instructions for the chats inside it, which makes it the right home for a business binder.
How often should I update what ChatGPT knows about my business?
Once a month. One owner spends fifteen minutes on the first Monday fixing what changed, and anyone who corrects a wrong answer fixes the binder too.
See how we run Google Ads for small businesses
Read next
- Call Log Template: What to Write Down From Every CallA ready-to-copy call log, the one question to ask every caller, and how to sort wrong numbers.
- ChatGPT Custom Instructions Examples: Make Each Fix Only OnceEight custom instructions examples to copy, and a four-line card that carries your fixes into every chat.
- ChatGPT Prompt Templates: Write the Weekly Ask Once and Save ItCopy-ready ChatGPT prompt templates for the jobs you run every week, and how to save each one.