Free guide · 22 minute read
ChatGPT and Claude for business owners: the complete beginner guide
For owners, no tech needed. Read the start here, and get the whole guide free.
The plan
- Make a free account on ChatGPT or Claude (just one) and ask it three small questions today.
- Spend 20 minutes telling it about your business, and save that so it remembers every time.
- Give it one real, boring job a day for two weeks: an email, a reply to a complaint, a checklist. Keep doing the ones that save you time.
1. Start here if you've never used AI
If you've never opened ChatGPT or anything like it, this section is for you. It takes five minutes to read, and everything after it assumes only what's here.
What it is. ChatGPT and Claude are AI chatbots. A chatbot is a website or phone app where you type a message (or say it out loud) and it writes back, like texting a very fast assistant. ChatGPT is made by a company called OpenAI. Claude is made by a company called Anthropic. They do much the same job.
What "AI" means here. It means the tool has learned from a huge amount of written text how to read what you write and answer in normal sentences. You don't need to understand how. You need to know what it's good and bad at.
What it's good at:
- Writing a first draft: an email, a job ad, a notice for staff, a social post
- Rewording something you wrote so it's shorter, kinder or clearer
- Summarizing a long email or document into a few lines
- Turning messy notes into a tidy list or checklist
- Helping you think through a decision by asking you questions
What it's bad at:
- Knowing anything about your business that you haven't told it
- Being right every time. It can state something wrong in a completely confident voice. This is the most important thing to remember. Check every fact, number, date and name before you use what it wrote.
- Knowing what's happening today, unless it searches the web (it sometimes does, and usually tells you when)
- Judgement calls that need you: whether to fire someone, whether to take a job, what to charge
It's free to try. Both have a free plan. You don't need a credit card to start. The free plans limit how much you can use it in a day, which is fine while you're learning.
You can't break it. Nothing you type changes your computer, sends an email or spends money. It only writes words back to you in the chat. If an answer is bad, you ask again.
One rule from day one: don't type in private details about customers or staff (health information, account numbers, home addresses, anything confidential). Section 11 explains why and what to do instead.
Words you'll see
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Account | Your login (an email address and password) so the tool saves your chats and settings. |
| Chat | One conversation with the assistant. You can have many, each on its own topic. |
| Prompt | The message you type to the assistant. "Write a reply to this email" is a prompt. |
| Response | What the assistant writes back. |
| Custom instructions | A box in the settings where you describe yourself and your business once, so every new chat already knows it. |
| Memory | The assistant keeping useful facts from your past chats. It chooses what to keep; you can see and delete it. |
| Project | A folder for chats about one topic, with its own instructions and files the assistant reads. |
| Upload / attach | Adding a file (a PDF, a photo, a spreadsheet) to your message so the assistant can read it. |
| Voice mode | Talking to the assistant out loud on your phone and hearing it answer. |
| Free plan / paid plan | Free has daily limits. Paid plans are a monthly subscription with higher limits and a few extra features. |
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More free guides
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Last updated 2026-09-25