Custom GPTs for Clients: How Freelance Marketers Are Building, Pricing, and Delivering Them #279

Traci Howell 0:00 For one of my clients, we were saving them $75,000 a year by adding just these three, three agents. $75,000! Emily Reagan 0:15 Hey, welcome back to the show. I am your host, a fellow a freelance marketer and a fractional CMO, and today, I have brought some of our unicorns in to this podcast to share how they’re building custom gpts and AI agents for their clients in their client work. And this is really to demonstrate that embracing AI can make your business better. It can help your clients, and it’s the way moving forward. And it’s so insightful to learn from other people, what they’re charging, how they’re building it, the mistakes they’ve learned, because this is this is how we get better, right? This is how we shortcut everything. And the fact of the matter is, we are just service providers behind the scenes. We’re not trying to grow this big personal brand. We’re trying to do good work for good clients and make good money. And part of this, in this ever evolving marketing and digital world is using AI and AI can make our lives easier, and it can, it can allow us actually to charge more. So let’s own the title, and let’s talk to unicorns who are building AI in their clients business. I am so pumped today to bring in a couple unicorns from our digital marketers work group to share what they’ve been building for their clients. And this is regarding AI, and it’s because so many people are using AI right now. I have so many people telling me, like, oh, you should really teach your marketing assistants and specialists AI. I’m like, we do. We really do. We’re all independent contractors doing our own thing, really specializing in our services and figuring out how to be more efficient and deliver good work to our clients. So today we have a four unicorns sharing exactly what they built with their client what kind of results, and we’re focusing it today on custom gbts and chat GPT because it’s the one we use the most. There are so many different conversations we can build off of AI. And this is what we’re doing inside our digital marketers work group. So a little highlight of what’s happening, we’re going to kind of go through these four unicorns and have them share. And I hope it inspires you to a not be afraid of AI. I mean, I think we’re past that conversation, but figure out the smart ways to bring it to your client like AI is not taking your job right now. AI is making you better at what you’re what you’re good at is helping you outsource the things that aren’t your strength. It’s helping you be more efficient and more profitable. We’re here to bring it today. Let’s start with Catia. Will you share a little bit about you and what you’ve been working on with your clients? Catia Trooskin 2:32 Yes, I’m Catia Trooskin, and I am a marketing project manager and operations Pro, and I work with marketing agencies, consultants and executive coaches to run their day to day businesses and marketing initiatives. And over the past year, since I learned how to create custom gpts from Emily’s work group, I’ve built so many custom gpts that I have to ask chat GPT what I built. Emily Reagan 2:53 Oh my gosh. Like, how many are you talking like, a hundreds here? Catia Trooskin 2:56 Maybe about 80 or so. I just find pockets of like gaps that can be filled by a GPT, and I built across like sales, marketing and content creation, course creation, knowledge, packaging. And I’ve done anything from like a sales and business development for myself, where it helps me to answer queries or things like that, and also do some research. But I’ve also built some for clients. I have a couple that are interesting. For example, one of them is I work with a funeral industry client, a coach that works with funeral industry clients. So I have a funeral industry marketing bot. I bet you don’t have one. It basically speaks death care. That’s really what they call the industry’s death care. So it speaks that industry, their language, their lingo, everything that they do, and it markets specifically to that industry. Then I also have clients that are change management consultants, and, you know, they work with big corporations, and I have a client that teaches on that. So we have actually created a bot that is trained in educational frameworks, like actual learning frameworks that are used in universities, combined with the change management frameworks and concepts to help her create those courses. So those are just those are the two of the highlights. But I’ve done so many. What I look for is, I look for a gap, where are my clients spending a lot of time on and it may not necessarily be something I’m doing for them, but it may be something that they’re doing on their own, that they’re spending so much time doing, that I can save them time. And I worked with my clients for most of them for over four years, and I really get to know their businesses. So I look for, how are they spending their time? What do they need help with? And how can I build them a bot? And at one point I was building so many bots, it was like, you get a bot and you get a bot, you know, once I learned how to build them with the work group, it really became something that I was obsessed with creating. Emily Reagan 4:41 Oh my gosh, I have to pick on that. So did you first, like, learn this in the work group, or did you take a course? Or, like, how did Catia Trooskin 4:46 The work group. You had someone in from the work group that was teaching it was for a specific purpose. And I was like, Oh, I can do that for this purpose instead. And since then, I’ve been working on just even upping my AI game. I just love learning about it. And I’m going into other AIS beyond chat GPT. So I’m learning, you know, how to, like, create knowledge repositories, and like notebook LM, which is a Google product. I’m learning how to create chat bots, you know, to answer customer service questions and things like that. And I’ve even had clients that come to me and they’re like, Hey, I have this purpose, and I know that you’ve been learning about this. How can I do this using AI? Emily Reagan 5:24 Ooh my gosh. And the fun thing here is, you’re talking about two, like, vastly different clients and industries, and it seems like, like, funeral or change management. And now you step in as an expert, knowing that content, like, think about, like, how fast that puts you inside somebody’s business, able to speak like them, produce, you know, the content for them, the marketing content, and then you’re also crossing over into the operations, the customer service. So what have you learned by doing all of this for your clients? Catia Trooskin 5:54 What I’ve learned their language? Because, like you said, funeral industry and change management, they’re very different. They have their own lingo. They have their own process. Some of it is very corporate, or it’s very industry specific. So I’ve learned how to want to find gaps in what they need done and help them to really be able to serve their clients. How can they serve their clients better? And how can I serve them by serving their clients with just this knowledge? So I really learned about the frameworks and things like that, and I’ve also just learned how to use AI better, and how and how it can things that you don’t even think about, like that you can use AI for. Emily Reagan 6:29 Okay, so tell me, like, what kind of results are your clients getting from this, or do they, and do they, they know you’re doing this on their behalf, right? Catia Trooskin 6:36 Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It’s funny, because when you have a custom GPT, you can kind of see how many uses they’ve gotten. And like, on your end, you could say, you know, it’s been used 100 times. So even though I don’t see what they’re doing it because now that I’m handing it off to them, like, Hey, I know you’re working on this, and I know it’s taking forever. Let’s optimize this and use this bot to create and like, for example, I have a couple of change management clients, but one of them, she does her own content. I just do the implementation. So I’m like, I built her the bot. I’m like, okay, when you need to do content, use this. You need to do marketing materials, use it. So she goes in and she’s like, Yeah, I was using my bot today. So she’s doing it all on her own, and then I do the implementation of, you know, the setups, you know, the emails and things like that. But she’s building out the content, and it saves us so much time. I mean, we’re having these conversations, okay, I wasn’t my boss today, and, you know, it’s just, it’s constant, and I can see how many times they’ve been used, like, this has been used 100 times. This has been used 200 times. So they’re going in there, and I’m just, I just have fun building them, and I have fun having them be able to save time on their own. Even if it does, it’s not something that necessarily affects my time. If it affects their time, it’s a plus for me. Emily Reagan 7:39 Oh my gosh. And you could probably put a number to that, like, Oh, if this average bot you saves, like, a business owner three hours and they’re getting in there that many times, like, now you have, like, a core number that you can turn around and sell this to as a repeatable service. Like, that’s huge. People are all about time saving right now. They’re all about alignment in 2026 doubling down on what’s working and not wasting time. And I think that’s, that’s amazing Catia. Catia Trooskin 8:04 Oh, I love it. And I learned it from the work group, because you always have great courses for us, and it’s amazing to just be able to learn it. And then I was like, This is amazing. What can be done with this. And I don’t think AI is coming from my job at this point. I don’t think it’s a thing, because there’s so much more that you can bring in value. And I think it’s actually helping me with my own time. It’s helping me with clients. I think it’s just a great value, and I love doing it. Emily Reagan 8:27 Yeah, and there’s something to be said when you’re surrounded by people who are doing that work, and you see the possibilities for yourself, or you get the encouragement to jump in and try it, you know, it’s those conversations like, what do you price? What do you package? What are you doing? And you don’t need someone to, like, ordain you some AI expert, like, you can jump in there with a client. So when, when you see that your peers are doing it too. So thank you for sharing that. I think I’ll come back with a few other questions and like, get your opinion on some things. But let’s hear from Traci, tell us kind of custom gbts you’re creating for your clients. Traci Howell 8:56 Well, I’m Traci Howell, and I am a strategic marketing assistant that focuses a lot on copywriting and AI agents, and I work a lot with travel agents, realtors and more like creative businesses, like your artists or your needlepoint type People you know, smaller businesses that need extra assistance on stuff. I’ve done a lot of different types of AI agents, anywhere from like customer service agents to social media marketing type ones. And then I also have that personal assistance, especially for my crafters, where they need another personal assistant to kind of tell them, Okay, you’ve done this stuff. Now you got to do this stuff. But the one I thought was really fun to create was one for a health and wellness guru, and she focuses a lot on specific meal planning type things, and so she was getting bogged down by clients asking her, okay. What is the meal plan idea for this week? What is this for this week? And she found out that a lot of her clients had like, X amount of time because they have kids, they have to go to opera or wherever their kids go. And so she’s like, well, I can’t give them a gourmet meal when they only have 20 minutes. So we created a meal planning agent where we used slack and chatGPT and combined it you have to answer like, a list of questions, like, how much time do you have? How many days you want it? Because you can do it for three days, five days or seven days. And then they answer everything, and it literally just sends them an entire list and gives them the recipe how to make it gives them all the links that they need according to her style of nutrition. So it’s really kind Emily Reagan 10:53 And they’re hitting their their goals too Traci Howell 10:55 Yes. So they’re hitting their goals, and she’s hitting the goals with them without actually having to sit down and look at the meal plan, look at the time. So she told me she would be doing that for about 18 hours a week, and she looks at everything, just to make like she doesn’t even look at it anymore. But initially she’s looking at it for like an hour, because it sent an email to them, and then it sends an email to her, so she knows what the client actually was eating. So when she talks to him, she knows what she’s talking about. So it went from 18 hours to an hour max a week. Emily Reagan 11:34 Oh my god. And if you were to put let’s just for easy numbers, say her time’s worth $100 an hour. You just saved her $1,800 a month, which we know that maybe her, her client work might pay more than that. But like, so you could put, like, a you put a revenue on that, but I also think about how much her capacity increases, and, like, how do you put a dollar amount on that? Because now she could probably double the client she can serve. Yeah, you’re making money, but you’re also helping people Traci Howell 12:01 Relaunched her. That’s what she called it. She relaunched herself, and she took on another 35 real clients. Oh, my God. And she already had 30 before, and that was her Max. Like, she couldn’t handle any more than 30. So taking on 35 is, like, we just, like, doubled plus, you know, like, Rock on. I helped you do that. Yay Emily Reagan 12:23 Oh my gosh, that’s huge. That’s, I mean, unfortunately, like, we’re getting into more of these, like high touch and proximity offers, right? Like we talked a lot about that here in the work group, and our clients want us, and that’s such a good way as, like, the business owner, to put yourself back into it, but be able to serve more in that capacity. So how does that make you feel as like the person behind the scenes? Traci Howell 12:46 That made me feel really good, Because I’m like, I’m not sure exactly how to do that, because I’ve made a bunch of different agents, but I never made one that specialized in, like, meal plans and pulling in her her philosophy and everything. So I’m like, Okay, let’s beta test it with like 10 people first. Like, you know, yeah, is, of course, she has a couple friends that are her clients. And she’s like, okay, let’s test with these guys and see how it works and make sure it works. And surprisingly, it worked amazing. And I’m like, woo hoo. I did it, right? So when I was like, woo hoo, too, for me, and then, more importantly, I was excited that it was working the way we assumed it would work. And then the 10 of them were like, go tell everybody about this. And so we sent it out to everybody, explained how to do it, had the nice little follow up emails, which we did create an AI agent for. So specialized, so an onboarding type agent for people, so that they would know how to do their meal plan, how it would come in, how it’s going to look. And it was all formulated that way. Rather than having to go in and create emails, it just automatically they they put their name in, and it just automatically flows out kind of like an email system, except without the emails. Emily Reagan 14:06 Oh my gosh, that sounds like something every like group, program or live cohort might need. So that’s genius. I haven’t heard of that necessarily being optimized or used for, like, customer retention, so that’s a good idea. The commonality I’ve seen between Traci and Catia so far, is like, you’re able to build many things. You’re able to go into the business and think on your feet and figure out, like, where’s the most time savings, what will be the biggest return? Which is amazing, because I’m sure there’s a million things that we could out of made. It’s just choosing, like, what, what makes the most sense. And this is like a client, core client deliverable. So it makes sense and spending the most time there Traci Howell 14:45 You can build on each of the agents. So, like, some of my clients need just one. That’s all they want is just one. Like I have one client, I’ve built 12 different agents for just because. They’re like, Oh my gosh, this is working so much better. And I’m getting more time back, and I’m getting this, can we take this off my plate now? And I’m like, let me think, how does this roll? And I’m like, yeah, actually, we can do that. And then they’re like, can I just have a personal assistant telling me what I need to do each day? I’m like, Yes, we can build that too. It’s like, we can do whatever you want with it, because basically you just need to have your brain, which is your platform, and then the information that you’re telling it to do, and then their output, which is into like a Excel sheet or an email or whatever your client is preferable. Emily Reagan 15:35 That sounds like a dream for all of us with our like squirrel-chasing clients who are trying to keep focused and, like, get their deliverables in. You’re like, Okay, this is now what you’re doing in your own job, because sometimes comes with a small team, right? It happens on my team too. I’m like, Okay, who needs what? When? Now, like, someone hit me on the head, like, what’s the burning fire so? And then maybe some of, like, the personal therapy and like, cheerleading if they need done in the process. Oh my gosh, Traci, that’s so insightful. I think that it is so interesting that you could take somebody’s core deliverable and turn it into this. And I think more more businesses, we’re seeing them have these add ons with custom gpts. Or, like, I’m thinking about my friend Brenna McGowan right now, who’s like, adding in all this, like, custom gpts for her pre launch program, and how you sort through that content and do the messaging. And like, it’s almost like it becoming expected too, you know, with the course, with the program. So I love that you could get in there and do that, Suze, let’s talk to you and figure out what, what have you done with custom gpts? Suze Lake 16:43 So I have, much like the other girls, made a bunch of different gpts range from anywhere in my clients funnels, and I generally work with coaches and business coaches, so we already know their frameworks. And I, I believe that if you have a framework, you could have a custom GPT that you could deliver to your clients. So working with like right at the top of the funnel, my client is an emotional eating coach, so we created one for her lead magnet, which only solves one problem for her potential clients, to get them into her email list, which then when you’re standing in the cupboard and you’re thinking, I’ve literally just ate something like a big meal I don’t need to eat right now, but here I am in the cupboard. Then she has this GPT, which will help you to pause and actually goes through a little tiny bit of her coaching, just like the first snippet, which would then help you to, like ground yourself, give them an offer, like another solution, rather than, like heading to the fridge, and then sends them back to her coaching. So at the end of it says, like, if this helped you, I’d love to talk to you in the DMs. Send me a message, and so then it sends them back to their Instagram. So that’s like a real top of funnel, easy lead magnet to help her position into sort of like being in 2026 lead magnet, because everybody’s got a collection of PDFs collecting dust in their inbox, right? So that’s a start of it. And then I made like, a few really complex gpts. One of my coaches is a business coach for moms with kids under five. So we have a really complex GPT which helps the moms to decide what to do and like the shit to the fan, the kids are sick, I still need to work. I’ve only got 20 minutes. It’s called the Money Making Moves GPT. So it’s her frameworks put into this complex GPT, and she sells access to it so that when at five in the morning, and you know you’re not going to make it to work today, and you’re like, I need to know what to do with to like, actually make money in my business today, like she’s at your fingertips, basically with your GPT. So those are a few of the gpts that I’ve made Emily Reagan 19:09 That one’s for paying clients, right? Like she is now their coach, like in those moments? Suze Lake 19:13 Yep. So they pay to have access to it, and except just like a one time fee. So then she has, like, basically a digital product that she then sells access to. And then, if they want further coaching beyond that, then they pay for, like, more, more of her coaching. Like, one to one. Emily Reagan 19:30 How does your client or how would you deal with, like, the lifetime access? Is it like a certain limited access? Or, like, what’s the container for that? Suze Lake 19:38 Well, right now it’s like a one time fee. So, like, she you pay for it, and then you have access to it for as long as you want. You know Emily Reagan 19:45 okay, okay Suze Lake 19:46 yeah Emily Reagan 19:47 I always think about, like, what happens when they need to update it? Or, like, build something more complex, or like, what? Like, what’s the promise there? You know? Suze Lake 19:54 Yeah, well, this particular one is, like, got nine knowledge bases. It’s really complex. It took me hours and hours to learn all of her frameworks to then put into this. So, like, that’s the thing with like the other girls that said as well, is like, we know the the nitty gritty nuances of the business and how our clients talk, and, you know, to quote the great Marisa Corcoran, their word bank or their word closet, so then the GPT sounds like the client. It’s not like a robot, you know. It doesn’t sound like like a robot. It sounds like them actually speaking to you. So if we we take the time to create that word closet is like, oh, Emily always says, I don’t know. I can’t think of a word right now, but Emily Reagan 20:44 I don’t know either Suze Lake 20:45 yeah, for myself, like I always say dude, because I’m Canadian, so it’s just like a word that just and Bud and stuff like that is just comes out naturally. So I created my own GPT. So it says those words that I say, you know, and we get to know our clients really closely. So that is a really important part of creating the gpts, is that so they don’t sound like robots. You know, when you’re then going to make the emails that for like, launching or whatever you want everything to sound like it’s coming directly from you. You don’t want GPT slash or something like fluff or whatever, like, who uses the word fluff these days honestly? just gpts. Emily Reagan 21:27 It sounds like this could be a really good add on service, or upsell service for anyone who’s doing an evergreen because, you know, we’re seeing a de emphasis on live launching. And so then I think about like, Well, how do you serve these self serve people who are self paced all the self words right there, and be able to give them access without more time, right? And I mean, that’s a shift I see in my own business, but that’s like one of the real talks of 2026 and so sounds like having like your frameworks in a coaching bot, more or less could be like a great service for a coach, to be able to be in two places at once and not at that high level. You know, I think we’re all over, like, the high ticket, everything Suze Lake 22:08 Absolutely. The thing is, is, like, in some instances, especially with like, a complex GPT, we need to also back it up with a little bit of like, perhaps a little two minute video of like you’ve got this great tool. Let’s help you use it the best of your ability. So here’s some great prompts. Here’s how you can talk to the GPT. Talk to it like you would normally talk. Give it as much information as you can, and it will work for you like an amazing tool. So it’s only as good as the user, but sometimes the users don’t know how to use it. So, you know, I encourage my clients to then, let’s just do like, a two minute video. I’ll tell you exactly what to do for the loom, and then deliver the GPT along with this great loom video that’s saying I’m so glad you have access to me. This is my whole brain. It’s in this digital product just for you. And so the coach is like, Oh, well, pretty much everybody that I work with, the coaches, are all completely at capacity. So they just need me to go, here’s what you say, here’s the video. But you are the face of everything. Like this is all coming from you. This is all your words, and they just need me beside them going, say this, record it. I’ll make it look pretty for you, and then we’ll deliver it in a nice, beautiful little package to all your clients. And they’ll all just think you’re a total rock star, because you are a rock star. But let’s, let’s show you off even more. Emily Reagan 23:33 Yeah. Do you ever see any issues with people actually consuming it like that? That is so smart to think about part of your package is like the user, like onboarding, more or less, right, and making that a good experience. What about, like, getting people to re engage with it, like, after they have Is there, like, any kind of, has anyone thought about that? Or, like, how do you do that in that certain instance? Suze Lake 23:53 Yeah, so, like, you can just easily do, like, a little like, here’s another, like, funnel or sequence, email sequence, saying, Oh, you got this great tool. Are you using it? Did you remember to say this? So you just like, back it up with another email saying the tool waiting for you, you know. Have you thought about asking it this? It could help you with that, you know. And so you have to think about the prompts. It the same way that our social media backs up, you know, other stuff that we do. So basically, when our coaches or the people that we work with want to be completely front facing, they’re the complete expert, and the way that we can help them is by saying, Have you thought about this and this and this, or I’ve already, you know, categorized and indexed all of your frameworks. This is where it fits into a GPT, would have you thought about that, and this is how much money you could make from it, and this is how I can help you with it. And so that’s what I do. Emily Reagan 24:52 Oh my gosh. I love that. I love that you’ve done, like a pre launch one, right? Or a launch content one too, right? Suze Lake 24:58 Yeah. So I was doing. Doing quite a lot of launch assistant work, and got fantastic results from my clients, and I created myself a launch assistant GPT because I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m just spending so much time on this that I had a framework myself. So I created a launch assistant GPT for myself. And then I thought, actually, this is a really cool tool that perhaps I could sell to help other people. If you were thinking of, oh, I wish I could get to a level to hire a launch assistant myself, but it just like the thought of spending that much money, maybe didn’t sue, or your business wasn’t quite ready there, there yet, you can then buy access to my launch assistant GPT, which would prepare you, like the calendar for a start, like, How many times have you sat down? Have, like, worked back seven weeks from this date? And where am I at now? Or six weeks? Or I want to launch a little small thing at the end of the month. Like, where should I be, and what kind of content nurture content should I put out now? Or sort of thing. So that’s what I created for myself, and then now I sell access to it, which is just like fun. I love that. I provide then a little video to say, this is how you use it. Emily Reagan 26:10 That’s so fun because it started with you, like doing it for yourself, and now it became its own offer. You can turn around and sell it to your clients. What’s fun is the next panel that we’re doing is other unicorns about make these gbts for their own, their own business, so yours kind of like crossed over into both. So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. And I was, I was thinking about, like, the engagement of it afterward, and I think you hit something big. I want to reiterate that telling your people what to prompt into it, it’s like, sometimes they need that nudge. Like I think about my fitness pal or my Noom. That’s like reminding me to, like, put my food and log my food in. And you kind of have to do that and maybe have that sequence or that automation. And users probably need examples. I’m sure all of our clients have, like you talked about, like the frameworks and the questions that they would be asking and prompting. So I think that’s like something. It’s an add on. And here’s what I like to do. I like to think about the scope of the project, and then like, the extra and then the real work that goes into it. And it’s not just like, hey, you built this. There’s the like, pre work that we do, there’s afterward, but then there’s also that, I don’t know. In this case, I guess it’s like the customer journey. But it’s so much more than just doing the work of building the GPT like we got to think before. We have to think after the user experience. So that’s, that’s what I’m like, trying to harp on over here. Suze Lake 27:28 Well, actually, Emily, that’s exactly how it started. Was that I was doing emails. I was just indexing emails for one of my coaching clients, and she said, I’ve got so many emails I need to have, like, just like a huge database of what I can reuse here and there. So I did, I think it was like three years of emails where I just was, like this date and what it was about. So I in the Google doc hashtag each of the emails of what it talked about and whenever she was talking about her specific signature course, then it would send me to them. And I thought, actually, this is the start of the knowledge base of the GPT for her. And she, over the years, she was talking about the book that she was writing. So then added that hashtag in of each email that where she talked about the book, so that when she then comes to create the social media content about the book, she’s already got all the emails there, but now that’s in a GPT, it just shoots it up like in minutes, so it saves her hours of work. Emily Reagan 28:34 Oh, my God, that’s freaking brilliant. Do you have any like, testimonials or results from your clients, like talking about using your your work? Suze Lake 28:43 Yeah, Like, the money making moms, especially her clients, are, like, using it all the time. They just like, I can’t believe, like, I’ve just I had 20 minutes and I made money today, but my kid laid on the couch puking. So that’s what’s happening. And then just imagine, like, three years of indexed emails into our GPT to then create the launch already in her, her name, all of her voice. It’s got, like, her word closet in there. I mean, you do the math. Emily Reagan 29:14 I mean, it’s so brilliant. If we were all just that organized when we first started. I mean, I am now, but I think about the beginning of my business. I’m like, wow. Well, it’s a good thing. I’ve evolved a lot too, but, yeah, staying organized. And I always make this joke. I was like, maybe the new age of the marketing assistant is transcripts and digging through content or the best content, and having the brain to pick out the best one too. So great job on that. That was very insightful. Okay, Sara, I would love to hear what you’re creating with custom gpts. Sara Vartanian 29:44 Yeah. Hey, I’m Sara. I’m a launch strategist and copywriter, and I work with coaches and group program leaders who are working towards their million dollar a year, usually on a signature offer. And I use their data and their research and their experiences to create a messaging and sales campaigns. That make their people feel seen, heard and ready to buy. And I’ve been loving custom chatgpt, and maybe that’s something that a lot of copywriters maybe aren’t willing to say, because I know that it has, you know, done things, you know, it’s changed when we’re working and doing it, but I have fully embraced it for both myself and my business and for my clients. So specifically, I’m thinking about, when I’m looking at building the custom touch gpts, it’s like, how do we release the bottleneck? Like, what is the bottleneck here, and how do we use this to bridge over it? So I have, one of my clients is retainer client. She’s like a doctor, so she’s got very highly clinical expertise that, you know, the team and I do not have, like, there’s language he has to use. It’s like, it has to be very specific, and we have to be very accurate. And so generic AI writing does, like, does not work. And if we don’t have the language, it fall everything falls flat. So one of the things that was a bottleneck was, every month, we do, like, a core blog, and that blog forms like the kind of the monthly arc. When we’re outside of a launch campaign, we’ll use that as an arc. We’ll do like the nurturing and maybe mini sales campaigns within it. But we were realizing that the blog post every month had to like, it has to come from her, and it’s all very, very clinical and like case study based, and she was spending a lot of time trying to, like, translate it to us, and then, or, you know, we weren’t doing great first drafts. It was, like, really tricky. And then so she started trying to write it in chat to GPT, and it was just taking her a really long time, and it was taking away from, like, money generating activities that she could be working on. And she is still practicing. She has a course, but she also still practices on patients like she still works. So her time is very scarce for the business, and she has to really protect it. So we thought, okay, how can we protect this? How can we protect this? So what I did was I created a custom chatgpt for her blog post. I started by making a brand voice guide really specific to the blog post. So analyzing, like the voice patterns, the transitions, the CTAs, the way she starts the blog post, the way she likes segues into things I train the chat GPT on past blog posts, looking at specifically, like top performing ones. So looking at okay, like at our Google Analytics, which blogs actually did the best and have the most traffic so that we can like, Let’s do more of that, the voice patterns, like the style, the ones that had a lot more feedback on it. And so I created chat with you based on that. So of course, like the blog post playbook, the knowledge base, and now the result is that the client instead of spending hours writing, can now, like, speak the essence of her ideas into the chatgpt. So she speaks into it now, and she’s able to, like, get a really, really strong first draft dramatically faster. So she’ll speak it in, she’ll read it over, and she usually does, like, one more go at it, but just voice editing the draft that comes out and then passes that over to me, and that has, like, not just solved, like the writing problem, but like a massive, like cognitive load and time problem. So now she feels like she can get faster to the revenue generating stuff that only she can do, like course creation and like other offers she’s trying to work on, or other training she’s planning for, like, her large lunches, and this can get off her plate faster. And then to me, I can now understand what she’s talking about, and I can form the monthly arc from there, because I have a really solid base to go from. And I can dig into her other content to add, like, you know, build from there. Emily Reagan 33:37 I’m just thinking about, like, the funeral chat GPT and like, this is so technical and you can’t afford to mess it up. You know, it’s in the medical space that you can’t fake it. And so I feel like these GBTs almost allow our- us to clone our client for us, so we can do our work faster, because you said that unlocks the entire content for the month that the team is waiting on. And so, I mean, how many times have our client said, like, I need another me, and we need the other me that’s like, the brain, right? Like, it’s the content, it’s the frameworks, it’s the coaching, it’s that lived experience. So great job. Like, tapping into that. I also love how, like, super specific it was to a problem within the business, because we can think, we can think through that. And anything else you’ve created, like for this client or other clients, it might help. Sara Vartanian 34:29 Yeah, I’ve also created a newsletter, chatgpt specifically, my client was always like, she wants to do her own editorial at the beginning of the newsletter, and then I build the rest of it on, like, the other pieces coming, the salesy pieces and things. But she was like, honestly, waiting till last minute every single week. And it was becoming a thing. And we realized that it was like, it’s just like, she got stuck feeling right. And so we tried all the things, like, I’ll slap you on Monday with a reminder, and you’ll like, you could just audio it, and it just wasn’t working. And then. She would try to chat GBT herself, like, again, speak into it, and it was coming back sounding very much like chatgpt and not very much like her. So I created her just like a brand voice chatgbt. So again, analyze like she has a huge library of a podcast. So pulled top podcast episodes and the ones that also had, I want to say, like her lore in it, like her stories where she told her signature story. So I looked, and I went through a podcast and pulled all those ones that I knew really were, like the story should keep coming back to the ones that she had a lot of good feedback on again, like those top ones. And I used that to form like a brand voice guide behind this chatgpt. And so that way I just gave her a basically, like it was like her name, GBT, so that she feels that she can speak into it, and now it comes back sounding like her in like a really solid first draft. So same thing, and then she can pass that editorial over to me, and it’s no longer a bottleneck of us trying to scramble to get the newsletter out. You know, 7pm the night before, which was like, causing everyone stress. We all know that, but we also weren’t like having to let in it. But now doesn’t like, it’s not generic either. Now, like, it really generally sounds like her, and sometimes, if she just sometimes, will even say something like blah, blah, blah. Or, like, fill in this thing about my story, or, reference the job I had, and it’ll pull up some of that, like Laura stories that are from her signature ones that she always is coming back to. And that’s been really helpful. Emily Reagan 36:31 I think there’s a couple things here. One, it always goes back to Google Analytics. So thank you for pointing out, like the blog stats, the podcast stats, but I’ve done that anytime I’ve had an interview with someone, and I’m like, Oh, I told a good story in there. I’m like, this is building up not just my word bank, but it’s my story bank, because chat GPT will hallucinate. It will make up stuff, unless you explicitly tell it not to. It will make up testimonials. And so it does need those real, raw stories that take some time in those emotions and the details to get out of our clients. So I still laugh that we’re like, transcript gatherers, but like, You’re being so smart about the story that you’re gathering, and then you can always have the side conversations with your clients. Like, I know for some of mine, with the email, I’m like, Okay, tell me about a time when blah, blah, blah, and yeah, but it’s funny that that was holding her up so much, and yet a custom GPT can save so much time for her. It’s so funny that that, like, unlocked it. It wasn’t a bunch of reminders. It was an easy way for her to, like process incompletely and have a finished product spit out. Right? Sara Vartanian 37:39 It’s much better now, because no one’s all waiting on it and stressing on it, like we’re all happy. So I feel like, Emily Reagan 37:43 Yeah, that part too Sara Vartanian 37:44 GPT is like, unlocks those bottlenecks so well if, when you pinpoint what they are, you’re like, Okay, how can I make this very specific to this problem we can come back to and solve? Emily Reagan 37:55 I also start thinking about, like, the quality of clients that we all want to work with, and we want the client who has a backlog of content, like, that’s also what I’m hearing here. You can’t go do this if there’s nothing, if they’re new, and it’s easier if they’ve been on podcasts, if they have their frameworks, if they’ve done the client work. And so for those of us, I mean, I think there’s, like, a readiness factor there, but like, I would have that in my onboarding. I’m like, How much, how much digging do we have to do here? Are you even also, are you organized with this ahead of time, right? Because that will make your job easier. Okay, I’m curious. I I’d like to go around and just like, have a conversation about this in general with the gpts. But, like, one big question that I’ve had is ownership. Who’s owning it after you build it? Are you guys specifying this in contracts? Like, have you given it over to your clients? Like, does anyone have any thoughts here? Anyone been screwed over here? Or, like, wish they would have done something different, just thinking in terms of people listening and what they can glean from your experience? Traci Howell 38:52 I haven’t had any issues with it, but I also, when I do the contract, I have a specific contract that’s specifically for building out AI agents that says what we’re building and how many, and all, all of that good stuff. And so basically, how I have it set up is I have, like, their flat fee of what they’re going to be charged for the agent, and then it’s theirs after that, like, once it’s built, it’s theirs, okay, but I do offer what I call a maintenance package, because AI is changing all the time. So even though we built something like for the meal plans, I’ve updated it six times so far, just because of how AI is changing and the verbiage needs to be changed and things like that. And then, as we all evolve in our businesses. Some of how we process things changes too. So we definitely want to have that kind of flowing with how you’re building your business. So I offer that at a set rate for maintenance. So it’s like, I’m going to be there to help you if there’s glitches, but in all of my AI agents, i. Build in a a tracker. So if there’s a glitch in it, an email gets sent to the client that says, hey, something is messed up in your it sends it to me too. If they have a maintenance package Emily Reagan 40:11 Is this like when, when it’s delivering to one of their clients? Traci Howell 40:15 Yeah, when it’s delivered, it’s like an error message that they get that, hey, something messed up so that it, it kind of tells them that, hey, you have to contact me again unless you know how to fix it. Like more work for me. So basically, it’s kind of like a steady retainer afterwards, because nobody’s gonna want to go in and try to figure out what I just did for them. Yes, that sounds but it just takes too much time. And I do not offer to explain how it’s set up, like I set it up. I say this is how it’s set up, generally, but I don’t go in and to the specifics or any of that. So unless they want to learn how to manually do it themselves, good luck, because a lot of them are very specific. Otherwise, that maintenance package is just kind of that retainer where we verify, I give them how often it’s being used by their clients, all the analytics that go with it, you know, stats and numbers that people like. So that’s how Emily Reagan 41:22 I think that’s reassuring to to know somebody will can come in and like my messaging is evolving, my audiences, or I have a new way of tracking macros, I don’t know. And so I think that’s assuring, and I think that’s what makes us different than anyone on Upwork. It’s like it’s not a one and done. Thank you, ma’am. We’re here in the long haul, and we we charge for it, because we know, we know the worth of our work here. But that’s, I think, what clients are looking for, like that longer term support and knowing that they can reach out to you and you can control that. But Speaker 1 41:52 Exactly, I also built out like an ROI calculator, because some of them do get more expensive, and people are that’s not, you know, price, price. It’s like, okay, but look at here. Let me show you here. We’re putting this here. We’re putting this here. And for one of my clients, we were saving them $75,000 a year by adding just these three, three agents, $75,000! and they only gave me, like, 15,000 so you’re still saving $60,000 guys. Emily Reagan 42:23 And it’s not just saving they’re making money too. Now they have something they can sell Traci Howell 42:28 Exactly. So Emily Reagan 42:29 Oh my gosh Traci Howell 42:30 kind of having that background of, hey, yeah, I know I I just gave you a huge number, but look at it. It’s really not that big. When the grand scheme of things, Emily Reagan 42:41 yeah, yeah. Also, if we have to over explain AI to certain level, Traci Howell 42:44 Oh yeah, yeah, Emily Reagan 42:48 okay Traci Howell 42:49 I put it into simplified like, Okay, you’re not going to be using a VA for this or a VA for this, or you’re getting rid of your Upwork people for these five things. And we just built you one item. Is like, Oh, that makes more sense. So, Emily Reagan 43:06 yeah Traci Howell 43:06 People are visual. Emily Reagan 43:09 I love that. I want to ask a couple questions about selling this or offering as another package. But does anyone have anything to add about ownership or the copyright of it? Suze Lake 43:19 No, I did the same as Traci is that I created it and then handed the ownership over and then offered the same, like a package for maintenance and a package because it’s like they’re ever evolving tools. They don’t they do need topping up and looking after, you know, like, just like all of our products, no matter what kind of product you’re selling, it will be that. Emily Reagan 43:40 It’s the maintenance, it’s the website maintenance, it’s the content, it’s the email at all, and it can all break. Sara Vartanian 43:47 Sara, what about you? I want to add that, like most of my clients, I’m on retainer with, so I create the assets, they keep the assets that’s part of our contract, nothing in it is like I don’t put any of my frameworks or copy templates or frameworks in it. If I was that would be a separate thing where I think I would charge like, different kind of access for it’s all built from their IAP. I do obviously have my playbook, the knowledge file, way that I do things. I don’t pass them over my template or framework for that. But I was like, I fill it in, and it’s in their chat GBT, so they could go look at it, of course. But I’m working with them on a regular basis overall. So if there’s a little bit of maintenance, I’ll do that. But so far, even to my retainer clients, we have, like, paid a separate chat GPT building fee, because it’s outside of the scope of what like our contract would be, which would be more like sales campaigns. So we’re like, Okay, this is a really great idea. We want to build it, but it’s extra. Emily Reagan 44:40 Yeah, I’ve also seen language about being able to sell it on your own. Like, if you were to, it’s almost like, if you did the templates or did work inside the client, and then they turn around and sell it, that’s not okay unless you’ve given them the right to sell it. So like, pay attention to that language, which I think it’s interesting, because we see this move, like Suze was talking about a move into. More lead magnets featuring AI and small, tiny offers and products featuring AI and like, coaching bots and all kinds of things like that that are also turning into paid products. So if you’re the one who built it, I would say, like, pay attention to that. I felt like there was other language I saw about you’re not allowed to, like, go back and, like, deconstruct it and steal the frameworks and and that makes sense. Sarah, why you wouldn’t give yours, but it can be a blurry area of like, what is my IP and what is like, common marketing knowledge? And I think that’s always been a hard it’s been a hard line for me to walk inside people’s teams and training team members. Sara Vartanian 45:38 I find the same thing as just like a creative and a writer, because in the end, it’s like, well, the way I architect your launch campaign, I probably have the framework I follow every single time, but it’s different, unique to you. Yeah, that is always a tricky area. We have to sort of play it by case by case. Emily Reagan 45:55 Yeah. And I think that’s so good to like, hear from others. You’re like, maybe I have thought of that. Maybe I haven’t. But I always say, like, trust your gut if it doesn’t feel good, if you’re building up resentment, like there’s there’s something to explore there, and maybe, like, put up a boundary and put up a price tag. Have any of you sold a custom GPT as, like, an extra service? I mean, I think a lot of us are in retainer clients here. But how has that worked? What have you learned in that process? Suze Lake 46:19 That’s how pretty much all of mine have worked out is that I started off working as like marketing assistant, and then I saw where my client was at capacity, and also they were like, because I also work in like sort of strategy. So it’s like my new official title is AI operations strategist, because I don’t want to hide that I’m using AI in my business because it is helping me and being another coach, but I’m strategizing with it, and I then use your frameworks within AI, but how I’ve worked out my prompts and whatnot Anyway, so working with like as a marketing assistant slash strategist, then finding a place where AI can fit in with their business, so that they can, sort of like be more 2026 and not 2024 you know. And so I started off with one project for a particular client as, like, creating the graphics and workbook and whatnot for launch that she was doing. And then on the back of that, at the sort of debrief after the launch, was like, I’d love to keep working with you. How could you work with me? And I said, Well, actually, I saw this hole where you could, you know, really position yourself in in 2026 way, especially going forward. And we were working in September, so it was sort of like already planning for 2026 that way. And that’s how I sold her a GPT. And I will say it was two different, or maybe even three different quotes at the time, because it was like, This is what you get just for the GPT. This is what you get for me to, you know, do this part as well, and then this is how you could have, like, ongoing retainer. And, you know, we’ll work with it more and more ongoing. So I wasn’t in charge of selling it and marketing it, but that’s how, like, using all of this expertise on what you’ve taught us in the work group into being able to be a marketing strategist for the products that were created as well. So it’s just like adding the next level. And I always like, go back to the baseline of what you taught us, of like, How can I Emily this? How can I be a unicorn in this way, and not just like a regular, a regular, you know, marketing assistant? Emily Reagan 48:41 Yeah, I love that. I’m like, really curious where our our jobs and titles are going to shift with AI here. And I’m not afraid of it, but it’s almost like, if you can do this high level AI work, I see all, all of you shifting out of any kind of implementation, posting type of work. Not to undermine that, but it’s like, All right, now you’re truly doing higher level and I know AI operations agencies, AI marketing agencies, that charge 1000s of dollars to do what we’re doing for our clients. And so I just like encourage all of you to think about that, like, Where can I go with this? But always unicorn it. I like it. Unicornize it. Catia, what about you? Are you offering this as like a standalone service at all? Catia Trooskin 49:24 No, that’s something that I’m looking to do in the future, but right now, I work mostly on retainers, so I’ve made it part of just my value and what I offer them. And what I love about it is that as their businesses change, we can always go in and update anything new, like if they have new brand language, we can go in and update and it just, it’s an overall value and a service that I provide right now, it’s where I’m keeping it, but I’m looking to definitely start doing my own gpts that I sell and, you know, to provide to, you know, other service providers. So one of the things that I do is, you know, I’m really into the operations aspect of my client. As businesses, and how I do things, and, you know, the customer service and how really, to work with these clients. And I want to build products that also help other service providers service their clients in the same way, you know, some things that come as easily to one person don’t come as easy to another. And I really want to package, like my own framework that I will put into a GPT and provide as a service. Emily Reagan 50:20 Oh my gosh, I love that. Well, everyone should have at least some kind of some kind of consultation button up. I’m hoping people listen to this and they’re like, Oh my gosh. Emily’s unicorns are doing this this whole time. And I just need this to be more forefront and obvious, because we are like the thinkers and the strategists inside the business. So what about tips for, like, selling this? Or, I know, you know, Traci talked about the ROI calculator, but I think most of our clients are like embracing AI. But is there anything you will learn like adding this on? I know for me, my last CMO client, he didn’t care that I did things with AI, and we had to, because we had a very slim team, and as long as we got the the voice, right. We got the stories in there. We got the the, you know, the promo emails and the sequences all done, like it was fine, but he would always ask me, because I think he was curious. And at first I was like, oh my god, does he hate it? Why is he asking? But I know he actually appreciated that, because it showed me spending more time on high level stuff, which I know as the client, like, I don’t want things to take too long and feel like I’m getting invoiced, ridiculous about the numbers or something that should go quick, like, podcast show notes. Like, we don’t need to spend hours on that anymore, right? Like, those days are done, and getting that, you know, first draft and all that, we’re all familiar with that. But I’m curious if anyone has come across help for selling it, showing the ROI or showing that you’re the service provider to do this, because I don’t think there’s enough people doing the custom work out there. But any thoughts? Catia Trooskin 51:52 Yeah, I think what I’m learning is that customers are hungry for this because they don’t have the time themselves to really dig into and learn the platforms. So you know, early on, when chatgpt first came out, however long that was, there was a lot of hesitancy to using it, and now it’s much more accepted. But I think what’s important is they don’t have the time if they’re serving their clients, they’re working with corporations, they’re working with funeral homes, they’re working they don’t have the time to learn all of this tech and all of anything. New. It’s moving so fast. You have new platforms. You have changes that are constantly coming out so they don’t have the time. So I’m actually learning that. They’re coming to me and they’re saying, Hey, I know you’ve been learning about this. I know you’ve been working with this. How can I do this faster? So that’s what I’ve actually found. I think early on, there was definitely a hesitancy, but I think that that’s gone now that clients realize that it can save them time, it can make their work better, and they really want a unicorn that knows how to do this so that they don’t have to do it and they don’t have to, like, you know, do all the learning behind it, and then you help them implement and make their businesses and their time be better used. Emily Reagan 52:56 Okay, question, I can’t help it, but on your services page, is it clear that you offer AI right now and that you own this? Because you guys are all rockstars Catia Trooskin 53:05 Definitely not, but I’ll put that on the list Emily Reagan 53:08 Room for improvement like aI savvy unicorns are in demand. I mean, you just said it. You said the words and it’s the better quality time saving clients who value time. Traci Howell 53:18 The one I’ve noticed is that a lot of people need to kind of have your hand held, like, you know. They know they need it. They know it’s going to benefit them, but they’re still like, I don’t know about this. So having the patience to kind of sit back and go, Okay, this 20 minute conversation just turned into an hour because we had to kind of go through all of these little things and get all of those little nagging moments out of their head. And it also proves that you know what you’re talking about. You know what you’re going to be doing for them. They know what they’re going to get. They have no doubt how awesome you are going to be at the end of the conversation, right? So that’s one thing I had to kind of sit back. I don’t like wasting time on Zoom or, you know, I have better things to do than sit on Zoom and explain something to somebody, like, I know what I’m doing, just let me do it, you know? And then it’s like, Wait, if I can’t explain that to them, then I’m no better than they are with all the questions in their head. Of course they’re not going to get me to do this for them. So that’s something I learned, is kind of stepping back saying, Okay, I have a five year old, so everything’s like, Okay, talk to them as if you’re talking to Harley, who’s five, and they’ll understand it for you and and that’s not supposed to be a dis or anything. It’s just sometimes you have to dumb it down so that they get the concepts behind it, even though you’ve made it so simple that it’s really a lot harder than what you just said Emily Reagan 54:50 Yeah, that’s how they use it, time over, you know, time after time and how that just, like, compounds. So yeah, I like this spicy version of Traci here. She’s like, I don’t have time for this, and I don’t have time for you, we’re using AI over, done, moving on. Traci Howell 55:06 I like, just get to the point. Let me finish it. Yeah, let’s go. Let’s, let’s read this out. Emily Reagan 55:12 Yeah. What about you Sara? I’m sure you have thoughts as a copywriter and knowing sales. Sara Vartanian 55:17 For sure. So one of the things I’m working with clients on is creating their a yes dossier GPT, I call it so like, what is the things that make people say yes? Because I find, like so many of my clients, I’m sure we cannot relate to this, are sitting on these gold mines of like, customer research and feedback and in their surveys and their onboardings and all the replies they get, and they’re not utilizing it enough. But then every single time when they go to start a launch or, like, what should we what angle should we take? Or why didn’t that hit as right as we wanted to? Or what should our launch event be about? And it’s like all buried within that messaging, because if we just again, tuned into our customers more, we would have so many answers. So what I’ve been working with my retainer clients right now is creating their yes dossier, chatgpt, where we, like, are pulling all of these surveys and things like that and parsing it through the GPT, sort of helping have, like, again, like, what’s in the hearts and minds of our customers? Like, what’s the heartbeat? What’s going on? What are they talking about? And then after every launch, or, like, big kind of campaign doing like, another, let’s say, upload, or, like, kind of a quarterly basis. So it’s because those are kind of when we have either sales campaigns on a quarterly basis, so that it’s constantly feeling really updated. And when we’re wondering, okay, like, will this resonate with our clients, or what’s on their minds right now? Or what, how are things changed from last year till this year? When we’re looking at, like, launch over launch, like, why did this launch feel different than last year’s launch? Well, what’s changed? Like, what are they talking about that’s different, so that we can be really responsive to what’s going on, and then also, like, forward planning to learn from that. So that’s what I’ve been working on next with them. Emily Reagan 56:51 Oh my gosh, that’s brilliant, especially as things like shift so much like this year, like, that’s been the whole conversation. And I was just listening to a podcast about that this morning in the gym. It’s like your messaging gets stale and it’s such a slog sometimes to update it. And as you were talking, I was like, Oh my God, I want a testimonial gathering one, you know, that’s the slog. And like, no offense to my team, who, I don’t know if they’re gonna listen to this, but they’re not great at it, like they’re not great at it, and it’s like, I have to do it to get the best thing. And that’s something that’s a must, and then it would go into the thing you’re creating. Sara, I’m like, thinking about all these, like, little marketing things that are hard and they must do and they make a difference. Traci’s like, I won’t write down that idea. Sara Vartanian 57:33 Yeah, for sure. Like that social proof we need, and then how can we use that to create case studies? Because again, with that whole trust reception conversation that’s been happening in that we’re in the market right now, and people need them to feel closer to the customer. It’s like, how can we use that information better? Because I think we aren’t using it to the fullest value it can, and it could help us so much more, but we have to. But there’s, it can feel so overwhelming, right to go through it all like surveys, and it’s, it’s been very manual in the past. I know that’s for me as like a copywriter, has been very manual. And now that speeds up my time. But also for clients, like having this yes dossier, kind of chat GPT, this the spot for them to go look at their whole team. Can look at like the customer service person can look at it too, like even formally, you know, answers to questions that are coming up, or the client, the founder itself, can be, like, understanding what’s going on with my, my people right now. And, you know, would this offer resonate? Like, where is this landing? So it’s a bit of a gut check situation too. Emily Reagan 58:30 Oh my gosh, that’s so brilliant. I’m curious. Do you all have like, a price point for what you would sell these gpts that, I mean, I know they’re so varied, but like, Okay, what would be the floor for someone listening to this, like, I wouldn’t do it for any less than this. Like, what kind of rates do you see out there? Or you feel free to share your own Traci Howell 58:48 I have different packages because I I do have an agency, and so we do, like, just you tell us what to implement, and we’ll just go schedule it for you, and then it kind of goes from there. But for the AI agent, I have one other assistant who is also certified in it like I am, and we start at about $2,500 for one agent. And of course, if it’s a smaller agent, it might be smaller than that, but usually it runs around the 2500 mark. And then it also depends on how many agents are getting, what they’re needing and and things like that. So in my package, it clearly states, you know, it’s all custom based is going to be specifically for your business. It’s not a one size fit all. It’s not one of those plug and plays. It’s literally customized and specific strictly for your business. So it’s a one person show operation kind of thing. So it’s all clearly stated in there, at least, I think it is. And that’s where restart is, starts at about 2500 and then for the maintenance one. And it’s about 10% of that, so depending on what it is Emily Reagan 1:00:04 Okay, cool. And you probably have, like, limited scope or hours on that maintenance Traci Howell 1:00:09 Exactly, yeah, and if they want more assistance than that, then, then it’s all custom based, again, but those are, like, the bottom lines that we kind of let people know this is basically what you’re going to be looking at. Emily Reagan 1:00:25 I mean, I think that’s fair. That’s like, you know, the hours, the time that went into that, and what it can return on the client. That’s, that’s very fair. I’ve seen some for much less. But like, there’s also the price perception of that. But like, the keyword is agent and custom, right? And I know people can buy the DIY courses. There’s some, there’s some people teaching it. They’re giving out, you know, pre made bots and whatnot. But I think we’re all past that. Like, as Sara was saying, like, if your messaging isn’t dialed in, like you’re not winning in 2026 it’s got to be so dialed in to work now. And with the way buyers are, and the way, like this market is can be very saturated in the E learning space, especially, but that’s so fun. It makes me want to just, like, build those build them for clients too. Sara, what about you? Sara Vartanian 1:01:11 For my retainer clients, like the one I did the the blog post one on, I just did an, like, an add on for her to her project. So I did $1,000 just because there’s, like, a simple one, we’re already working together on a long term basis, Emily Reagan 1:01:25 There’s no like onboarding. There’s no access. Sara Vartanian 1:01:27 I know her stuff. I just did dive in and I did it. But then for people, I’m building the yes dossier messaging GPT one for I’m doing that at like, a $5,000 floor, and part of that is because I’m also doing messaging research for them before, like, a lot of them haven’t, like, set up the survey and haven’t installed, like, the questions across their business for collecting this information well enough. And there’s also, like, the parsing through the testimonials and tidying it up. So it’s not just the builds, it’s it’s actually setting up, like the back end infrastructure to say, here’s where we need to collect these data points, and I’m gonna look at what you already have, and then we’re gonna tidy it up, and then actually start making it work for you, like now and in future. Emily Reagan 1:02:07 And that is why I have never called myself a copywriter, because it’s so much more than writing. It’s everything Sara talked about. It’s like the systems together the VOC and it’s, it’s pretty intense when you do it right. Sara Vartanian 1:02:21 Yeah. And so much easier, though now with the chatgpt you, like, go through it, Emily Reagan 1:02:24 true, true. I like using AI, like, go through, like, large amounts of data, and this makes my life so much easier when it comes to even the stats. I know it’s not great at math, but the stats, the repeating patterns. I mean, I did that with my freelance job report. I was like, what are the top jobs? What are the top tech? What is everyone asking for? And you can do that with messaging surveys, which is just genius for those same patterns. Suze, what about you? Suze Lake 1:02:48 Yeah, so mine’s the same. It’s $2,500 to start with, and then you get a 30 day sort of, here it is, test it out for 30 days, and I’ll do any edits within those 30 days. And then there’s like a complete handover date. And then, however, they want to have it afterwards, like, if they just want to, like, Okay, thanks. I’ll deal with it. That’s fine. And then there’s like a maintenance package, if they want. So that’s for, like, the more complex GPT, but if you wanted, like, the lead magnet GPT, that would, like, solve one problem for your audience that is 297, first, like, just solves one problem. It directs everyone back to, like, your primary social or your email or whichever. And again, I always do like, a 30 day buffer so that you could like, Oh, this is, this does not sound like me at all, because it happens, right? We know that GPT is hallucinate and whatnot. So just for my own peace of mind, I want to make sure that they get like, a 30 day this isn’t working for me sort of thing. And then I can, like, regroup if I need to I haven’t needed to. And then I just wanted to build on what you said about like, people are busy and stuff like that. It’s just that pretty much everyone that we work with, they’re all completely at capacity. And so they don’t want this headache. They started their business for this like to do serve this one audience on one thing, and they just want to do that. And the reason why they take us on board in the first place is because they don’t want to do the back end stuff anymore. They’ve already moved past that. So, you know, they are smart. They could do the gpts by themselves, but they don’t want to. Emily Reagan 1:04:26 Yeah, yeah. And we also know that the maintenance that comes with it, like all the tech is in my head. I don’t have someone who can come and help me when it breaks, and it’s usually that moment that bites me in the butt. It’s like, I might have time on Friday, but I don’t have time after that, and so could just be like another selling point I had written down as one of my questions the revisions process. I feel a lot of shame, because I was working with somebody on a custom GPT, and the revisions weren’t going well, and I know a lot of it was me not being organized with her at the beginning, and I’m gonna send an email after I record this podcast and follow up with her, I was struggling with that, and I needed to be clear about what I needed, and we were trying to do too much with one thing. And so I own that, but, like the revision process, it was really frustrating for me, because it required so much more for me to sit down. And it was almost like the ownership was back on me to run through all the different, you know, permutations of this GPT and results, and I was like, I actually didn’t have time to do that, and that’s where I feel a lot of guilt, because here I was like, I want the end result, but I didn’t have time to set her up with the permissions and the information that she needed to be successful. And then I got some things back that needed my TLC. It just it was how it was. So I felt really guilty about that. I also realized I needed to own it, and I need to be able to add to it, but I’m also like, the weird client, like I’m the weird marketing client, so I’m probably not easy to work with, but I’m curious about the revision process, like, how we could have avoided that, and I think I’ve like, hinted at, like, I could have been more organized. The intake, could have been more clear. But is there anything you have learned in this process. So if somebody was starting to do this, what mistakes can they avoid? Suze Lake 1:06:05 For me, with my my clients were really specific. I was like, no emojis or no red hearts, you know. And sometimes I don’t know about you, but for my chat GPT, sometimes it shoots out stuff like that. You think, where does this come from? So building that sort of thing in was really important. And like with a lot of the sort of testing phase or the beta phase, it’s like the little nuances and sound bites that we want to be baked in to these custom gpts don’t come out until someone else tests it, because we’re too close to it. And so it’s important to have that little bit of beta testing part, and yeah, and that part just only came with experiences like, oh, yeah, I learned that. And just, I think, always be open to learning and open for like, a little bit of criticism, I suppose, delivered in the right way, obviously, but you don’t know until you start doing it, really. Emily Reagan 1:07:01 Did you have the client test it themselves? Or, like, I’m sure you were, like, testing as well. I think that’s what I needed. Like, hey, and I can’t help but share my experience, right? Because I think it was a learning lesson. Of course, as I do the client work, like, make it even 10,000 times worse in my head. But like, I think I needed to be like, hey, schedule four hour. Like, not really four hours, but scheduled two hours to go through this and walk through different examples and, like, the bad one and the good one. Suze Lake 1:07:29 Absolutely, like, that was thing. That’s where it got from there to here, or whatever, here to there. Is that it has been through all this trial and error and being open to going, actually, I think I can create this thing. Are you open for it? And it was like, okay, yeah, I did it, and it was amazing. And then, you know, learned that I handed over this GPT, and then she had no idea even how to use gpts. Or, now we’ve done this so many times, it’s like, she’s had no experience with chat GPT before and didn’t know how to do the prompting. Or this other client was, like, really good with chat GPT, but did it in this other way. So then there was that’s why I like to back up with this part of you, if you’re selling this digital product to other front facing clients, make sure that they have this sort of baseline thing. This is how you use it on a little loom video and a nice little package for them to have front facing to their clients. And then you to have it for your client to say, this is how to get the best results for it, for this thing that I made, like, how to use your tool. Emily Reagan 1:08:30 And I think I feel like I’m roasting myself. Give them a timeline. You have seven days. Like to Suze Lake 1:08:36 Yeah Emily Reagan 1:08:37 right. Like, you have seven days. I was in the middle of a launch zone, yeah. Like, I should have thought about it. But like, in the beginning, I wasn’t a client you should work with, like, make sure your client has time to invest in that. And maybe, like, that’s a case where, like, Sara, you have, like, the ongoing client, where you know each other well. Maybe it’s not even an issue because you know them so well Suze Lake 1:08:56 Yeah. But like, how refreshing is it that even, like, at your expert level, Emily, that you’re still always like learning. No, you really are. Like, we learn from you all the time. But like, that is what this podcast is about, isn’t it? So that we can, like, help other unicorns be better unicorns and like, you know, that was like a new skill that you you’d had of creating gpts for your client. So it’s all just about, this is what it’s all about. I think. So I think thanks for sharing that with us. Emily Reagan 1:09:27 I have a lot of thoughts on that too, but it’s like, it’s almost worse when your client does know, like, I almost prefer the clients, but don’t know. That’s why I have to laugh at myself. But like, it goes back to what we’re talking about all of you, the time saving, like, you need a body double, and this will help, but you do have to have the initial time to onboard, to test and to deploy. Sara, what do you have thoughts on this? Sara Vartanian 1:09:51 Yeah, I love what Suze was saying about having, like, giving them the loom and having them be prepared. And I want to just build on that a little bit too, from like, beginning, when you’re saying with the onboarding. Emily, I think like setting the expectations for our clients to know that like AI is not like a magic it’s a mirror, right? So whatever we’re going to put in, we’re going to get out, and we’re going to keep improving that and like, helping them just set that expectation. And then the other thing would say is that, like, what I’ve given my clients and what I’ve taken from my copywriting work is giving them, like a guide to good feedback. So when they’re giving me feedback, it’s like, here’s what is helpful, productive feedback, which is going to make this mirror better, and that we can actually improve and and here’s what it doesn’t look like, so that we can actually be more efficient on both ends with our time. So they can give me back what I need, and I can actually take something from what they’re sharing and make that improvement. Emily Reagan 1:10:45 Oh, my God, I’m glad you said that. And I see copywriters do this the best with their copy process, but the GPT process was difficult. It was like, Well, where do I do it? How do I say it? Like, I didn’t have those guidelines. So I am learning through this process with you all. It was hard to be like, well, this, this is a weird response, and this is a weird response. It’s like, I couldn’t just reply to a loom, you know, it was so much more than that. So God, that’s like, that’s really rock solid. To bring that up. Traci, do you have thoughts about it? Traci Howell 1:11:13 The only thing I was gonna say is, a lot of my reviewing, they don’t ever go on to chat GPT, so, like, they’ll either use telegram or pine cone or slack or click up, or whatever their choice of platform is that they’re using, and that’s when they try out, like the entire system. And so they never have to actually get on a chat GPT or anything like that. So they’re seeing the end results. And so some of my loom is more like, hey, just go here, and this is how it’s going to click up, and it’s going to go here. And then they tell me if the messaging is correct or anything like that. And then I go in and readjust any of the verbiage in GPT or Grok or wherever I use the wherever we needed to use it. So, Emily Reagan 1:12:04 oh my gosh, yeah. Traci Howell 1:12:06 On, on my reviewing. Emily Reagan 1:12:09 Cool, any thoughts on, like, getting testimonials on this kind of work? because I could see, I could see the client that’s like, I we talked about a little bit, like, how do you put an ROI into the work that you just did. Like, we talked about calculating the time saved. Like, is there any other insight that you have to share? Traci Howell 1:12:27 I asked them how much time they were using, like, on such a project, and then how much time it’s taking them after I’ve implemented it, or they’ve implemented it, really, when I’m done, like the 18 hours versus the one hour a week. So that’s, that’s what I look for. And then with a lot of the analytics and stacks and all that, you can kind of get the pricing and find numbers. Eventually, I found that it takes about six months to actually see that. Okay, this is the this is your ROI. This is what we’re getting each month, and it usually is about six months. So it’s kind of nice, because it’s pretty quick, quick return in a way Emily Reagan 1:13:10 Yeah, and like you’re setting the expectation, and then, you know, gathering that data, like the 18 hours in your intake form, or in the project kick off. Get the before. We always kind of forget to get for like data. Traci Howell 1:13:21 Yes, yes, definitely, because then they’ll be like, Oh, I didn’t use that much time. And it’s like, I know you’re lying to me, because they don’t Emily Reagan 1:13:31 I remember you crying Traci Howell 1:13:32 how much, how important it is. And it’s like, okay, no, I know that’s wrong, so definitely Emily Reagan 1:13:38 Oh my gosh Traci Howell 1:13:38 put it on the intake form. Emily Reagan 1:13:40 This is so insightful. I love these conversations where we get to learn insight to like, building the work, delivering the work, because that’s a big part of it, communicating the value. Have any of you learned any I don’t know. I’m gonna put this out there like crazy, lessons in doing this for a client, but like you would like someone never to repeat again? Suze Lake 1:13:57 I didn’t do the 30 day thing first, which is why it’s come out, you know? And it was just like, I felt like I delivered it, it was done, and then had to go back, and I feel like literally, everything that I’ve done, that I do now is because I learned not to just hand things over like I do the loom video, because I didn’t do that before and needed it, you know. I created the launch assistant GPT for myself because I was wasting time, you know. I tested it with my friends. First they didn’t get it without, like, so that they didn’t get the video, you know. So they were like, I don’t get this. And then I was like, oh, it’s easy. So it made sense to me. But when I was just like, try this thing out, they were like, What? What do you want me to do with this? You know, so I think that sort of feedback and the testing counts for a lot, and talking to our friends, like using the work group in that way, like I have made some really awesome friends with the work group, and we meet every month, just like to talk about everything. Lives and work group nerding out stuff, so our marketing assistant stuff and test each other’s stuff so so that we can have that, you know? Emily Reagan 1:15:09 You just like, fast tracked it for anyone listening. So thank you. Like all of you, this has been so helpful, so insightful. I’m proud of all the work you’re doing. Thank you for coming on the show. I’m going to put links to all of your businesses in the show notes, if anyone’s listening and like, hey, my client needs this. We have unicorns who can build AI agents for you, custom gpts, and then connect, tag us on social media and let us know what you’re going to be able to implement right away from this show. So I hope everyone’s feeling encouraged. In the next episode, we’re going to talk to other work group members who have built gbts for their own business, because we all struggle with our own marketing. And again, everything we talked about today applies to ourselves when it comes to saving time, not overthinking, not doing things at the last minute and all that. So I’m really curious what people have come up with. I do have one last question, and this is like self serving. Are you building the gpts in your own accounts? Are you building it in your clients? I guess that was one tactical thing. I think somebody would ask me. And if you think of anything else I left off, like just add to this closing. Traci Howell 1:16:12 I have them in both. So I have some clients that they don’t want to have to remember another new password or anything like that. So I have a fee so that they’re paying for the fee of it, basically. And then I have some clients that have their own, own everything. So I have this mentality where I’m here to help make everything simple for the client. So I’m going to do whatever is easiest for them. And it’s, I mean, I’m still being compensated appropriately for it. So I don’t care if it’s in mine or if it’s in theirs, so it just kind of what my clients are asking me to do. Emily Reagan 1:16:50 Yeah, it’s like their project management tool, if they’re not going to use one, or they’re married to one, like we can’t force them Traci Howell 1:16:56 Exactly. So I just kind of go with whatever, and I’m not going to say, Oh, well, I’m not going to do something for you just because you don’t want to have a password. That just seems silly to me. Emily Reagan 1:17:06 Yeah, Catia. I bet you’re with your retainer client. You’re probably building it inside their account. Catia Trooskin 1:17:11 With custom gpts I’m building within mine and sharing with them. As far as there’s a couple that I’ve been requested to build, which are, like, have wrappers and like, logins and things like that that’s going to be built into their accounts. They’ll be handling that. So depends. It really depends on what it is, whether it’s going to be within just a simple custom GPT, or if it’s going to be beyond that, they’ll pay those portions and be in their accounts. Emily Reagan 1:17:36 Is there anything you think I missed out that I should add? Suze Lake 1:17:38 I would say that like, because of the like, trust recession and people having more discernment about how they’re spending money and like, because I work with coaches, everybody wants more proximity to the coach. They want to feel like they’re getting as close to them as possible. So if we’re creating things that can like, shorten that time, shorten that the know, like and trust factor, which is what our social media is always trying to create anyways, if we can do that for our clients with a custom GPT, which will get their brain sort of digitized in some way that helps them create the trust with their you know, ideal client faster, which then eventually creates more money and all that. And, like, we just want to shorten time, and that’s how we can use AI right now Catia Trooskin 1:18:31 I think you touched on this. It’s like custom gpts are the new lead magnet that be on a PDF. Like, I, I have so many like, because I’m like, Oh, let me, I’ll download that. Let me check it out. Let me figure out what’s happening out there. And I think that’s the new thing. And it’s like, and you see in in even bigger programs, like, I know, like, Amy Porterfield has her bot within her stuff. Like, you know, it’s like, it’s just becoming, it’s like, it’s almost a necessity now. Emily Reagan 1:18:56 Agree. Agree. Traci, what about you? Traci Howell 1:18:58 I was gonna say the only thing that I don’t think many of us really touched too much on was, like, the intake form, or what to actually ask on the form? I thought initially, oh, these basic questions are going to be good enough. And then I’m like, Oh, wait, I’m calling somebody. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, because it’s like, those weren’t actually the questions I needed answered. So having those really detailed Intake Forms is really important to begin with, so then you don’t look so stupid, like, luckily, it was a retainer client I had, and we’d been working for like five years together. So I call them like, I’m an idiot. I don’t know what I’m asking you for. So these are the actual questions I need, and they were perfectly fine with it, but, but I mean, if that was somebody completely new, I’d be I’d be so embarrassed. I’d be like, Oh my gosh, I just charged them this much, and I’m asking them for different questions, because I didn’t know what I was doing, you know? So that’s the only thing Emily Reagan 1:19:57 That’s why I made fun of myself as the client. Right, that’s why I made fun of myself as a client. I was like, I was not ready, and so you got to, like, you got to scoot those people out, but probably having an intake form for this specific project, not like your general one, but that’s, you know, what I do is I assign a specific intake form. So putting thought into that awesome. Is there one question that you are like, this is the meatiest question I need to add? Traci Howell 1:20:23 I actually had them give me, like, a brand guide and their voice and and stuff like that. I was like, Oh, I know enough about their stuff. And then I’m like, Oh, wait, I don’t know anything about anything when it comes to building this. So even if you’ve been working with a client for a long time, it’s having it like front and center, going, Okay, this is here. This is what we’re doing. It’s really helpful. Yes, yeah. What about you, Sara? Sara Vartanian 1:20:51 I’m just gonna say that I feel like we touched on it overall. But just the idea that, like, we don’t need to be scared of these changes. And I know that we often can feel like that. I know, as a copywriter, at first, I really was all these changes doesn’t mean our clients won’t need us. It just as you were saying, like, it up levels us and allows us to be more strategic with them. And the fact is, we create these things for them, which is very strategic, and then they come back and they want to help, and there’s still actually opportunity for retainer work and ongoing work with them. But also it frees that clients revenue up, maybe again, if they’re, if we’re doing like a show notes one, or a blog post one, they’re not now paying for that. Now they can actually maybe hire us for something else. It’s, it’s actually more needle moving in their business. So it doesn’t, it’s not an end of our income. I think that people are worried about. It’s a it’s just a different way of growing and that we can embrace it and still, you know, make great money and still be strategic, and actually, again, really like, be high level partners for our clients. Emily Reagan 1:21:48 Everybody wants the better quality client, right? Like, we’re all after that sweet spot of like, doing good work for good people at rates that feel good. And the fact of the matter is, both clients, those clients want and need AI, and are already embracing it and seeking it out. So all of us are going to go update our services page and add AI into that, and we’re going to close out the podcast on that, because it was beautiful. Thank you all so much. I’m so proud of the work you’ve been doing. I hope that you book more work. I hope that other freelancers are referring your names. And this is just the epitome of what we do in the work group. It’s helping each other grow our own businesses, getting insight to lessons learned, to how we work with clients, how we deliver to clients. And it means the world that you’re so willing to share it with my podcast community. So thank you!