A client once told us: “I tried ChatGPT. It gave me such boring text I had to close the tab and I never went back.”
Fair. That’s the experience most beginners have. You ask a quick question, get something flat, and assume the whole thing is overrated.
When we sat down together, we asked her to show us exactly what she had typed. It was one line: “Write an email to my client.” Not a single piece of context. No examples of her writing style. Just that one oversimplified line.
We tried again. This time, instead of starting from scratch, we grabbed two emails she had already written that show her warm, clear, personal voice. We dropped them into ChatGPT with a follow-up:
“Here are two examples of how I normally write. Draft a short email offering a new service for my client [client details} to solve their problem of [client problem] in this same tone.”
The difference was immediate. Was it a perfect draft? Of course not. But it started to sound like her.
We don’t recommend that you approach these AI tools thinking you are going to press a magical button and then hope for brilliance to appear. You need to shape the conversation. As we shared in AI Quick Tips #27, you don’t need to restart every time. Just use follow-up prompts to help you build, add context, and then let the tool adjust until it’s close to what you’d actually say.
If you’ve ever felt like ChatGPT writes in “robot voice,” a simple fix is to show it what good looks like.
The easiest way to do that? Capture your voice in a style guide.
We built a Writing Style Guide Template that helps you document your tone, voice, and even examples of your writing. Once you have that, you can literally feed it to ChatGPT.
No More Guessing
If you’d like a way to practice without the guesswork, the Free ChatGPT Kickstarter Email Course is a good starting point. Short lessons. Real examples. No jargon.
Because the difference between “useless robot” and “helpful assistant” often comes down to one thing: whether you’ve shown it your style.
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