Sometimes you need some help but you’re not sure who to ask. Your entrepreneur friends are busy, you’re not booked in with your coach for another week, and you’re not convinced your best friend from school will understand your business challenge. How can you get those nudges in the right direction without having to wait?
More often than not, we don’t need to be taught, we need to be guided. The best business coaches know that their entrepreneur clients probably have the answer, they just haven’t asked the questions that retrieve it.
What if an AI model could be trained to ask those questions? What if you could, confidentially, tell an AI model your problems and it could guide you through to solutions, directing its responses and encouraging you to think hard, consider pros and cons and discard options in favor of the way forward that’s right for you?
As AI coaching gets more advanced, test it out with ChatGPT. While it won’t give you a business coach based on the work of a real business owner that inspires you, it can be trained to hold space and encourage you to think for yourself.
Prompting a large language model (LLM) to coach you
Configured with the right words, you can hold a back and forth conversation with ChatGPT or another LLM, as if you were chatting with a real person. Set it up by this starter prompt:
“Hi there! I’m seeking guidance as I navigate my business journey, and I’d love to engage in a conversation with you as my business coach. My business is [briefly describe your business or business idea], and I’m facing some challenges in [mention specific areas or issues]. I believe your expertise can help me gain clarity, develop effective strategies, and overcome obstacles. Can we engage in a back-and-forth conversation where I can share more details about my business, and you can ask questions, confront my thinking and find the root cause of some of my challenges?”
Set the scene by completing the square brackets, then send the prompt and wait for a response. ChatGPT will say it’s ready to begin the conversation, then you can open your floodgates and chat away.
It’s a good idea not to disclose very specific information that can identify you or your business. Keep it anonymous or keep it vague, but give enough detail for ChatGPT’s questions to be useful. Once you’re on a roll you can paste the responses into your files or make a note of the next steps for taking action.
Will AI replace business coaches?
For artificial intelligence to replace coaches, it has to be welcomed by clients. Some are up for giving it a go, but others aren’t sure about the effectiveness of an AI coach and think they will miss nuances like body language and tone.
Regardless of whether coaches are safe from artificial intelligence, they can use it themselves. They can utilize AI-powered coaching to keep logs of their client conversations so a model can suggest new questions, lines of enquiry, or spot patterns they didn’t see. They can expand their content into different formats in a few clicks, they can get ideas for how to attract new clients and how to coach existing clients more effectively.
Even if you’re not convinced that AI coaching can replace in-person coaching, consider that it could supercharge personal development compared with journaling or introspection. At the moment, you write your thoughts and questions into your journal but it doesn’t talk back. You ponder your next move and challenges in your head, but might not reach any conclusions. A back and forth conversation, instead of journaling or pondering, could lead to better breakthroughs on a grander scale.
You’re not asking ChatGPT to solve your problems, you’re asking it to ask you questions so you can solve them yourself.
Use this simple yet powerful prompt to configure ChatGPT to become your AI business coach and see if the practice works for you. While it might not replace the work your real coach can do, it might tide you over until your next session. Use the language model to your advantage and unlock your next level.
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