The AI revolution isn’t just happening — it’s accelerating. And if you’re still using generic AI tools the same way as everyone else, you’re already falling behind. The real competitive edge today comes from training AI with your own data to create powerful specialty tools that deliver exponentially more value in a fraction of the time.
I’ve spent many hours training custom trained AI assistants that have revolutionized how I, my team and other entrepreneurs and business leaders work. The results speak for themselves: tasks that once took hours now complete in minutes, content that previously required specialized skills now generates automatically, and business processes that demanded constant attention now run with minimal oversight.
This isn’t about incremental improvement — it’s about fundamental transformation. And it’s accessible to every entrepreneur willing to invest a small amount of time upfront for massive returns later.
In this comprehensive guide, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about CustomGPTs, Claude Projects, and Google Gems — the three leading platforms for creating specialized AI assistants. You’ll discover why ChatGPT’s CustomGPTs offer the most flexible sharing options, how to create your own custom AI tools step-by-step, and the strategic applications that will deliver immediate value to your business.
I’ll also share my experience creating VIRALwave™, one of my most successful CustomGPTs that transforms basic content ideas into viral-worthy social media posts in seconds. This isn’t theoretical, it’s battle-tested strategy that’s delivering real results for entrepreneurs just like you.
Whether you’re looking to save time, scale your operations, or create entirely new revenue streams, custom trained AI assistants may represent the single most powerful leverage point available to entrepreneurs today. The question isn’t whether you should be using them, it’s how quickly you can implement them before your competition does.
Let’s dive in.
The Custom-Trained AI Revolution
The business landscape has fundamentally shifted. We’ve moved beyond the era where simply using AI tools gave you an edge. That advantage has evaporated as AI has become ubiquitous. The new competitive frontier? Custom-trained AI that embodies your unique expertise, processes, and brand voice.
Generic AI is like hiring an intelligent but untrained employee. They have raw potential but lack the specific knowledge and context that makes your business unique. Custom trained AI assistants, on the other hand, are like having specialized team members who’ve absorbed your playbook, understand your industry’s nuances, and execute with precision — 24/7, without breaks, at a fraction of the cost.
This isn’t incremental improvement — it’s exponential leverage. And for entrepreneurs and small business owners operating with limited resources, this leverage is game-changing.
Why Custom AI Matters for Entrepreneurs
The math is simple but compelling. Let’s say you spend 3-5 hours training a custom trained AI assistant. That assistant then saves you 30 minutes daily on repetitive tasks. Within two weeks, you’ve recouped your investment. Within a year, you’ve gained back 182 hours — that’s over four standard work weeks of productivity returned to you.
But the benefits extend far beyond time savings:
Competitive Differentiation: While your competitors rely on generic AI outputs that sound like everyone else’s, your custom-trained AI produces content, analysis, and insights that reflect your unique perspective and expertise.
Specialized Knowledge Application: Your business has accumulated valuable intellectual property and domain expertise. Custom trained AI assistants let you operationalize this knowledge at scale, ensuring consistent application across all customer interactions.
Operational Consistency: Custom trained AI assistants don’t have bad days, don’t forget steps in your process, and don’t cut corners when they’re busy. They execute with consistency, every time.
Scalability Without Proportional Costs: As your business grows, your custom AI tools scale with you without the proportional increase in costs that hiring additional staff would require.
The entrepreneurs who recognize and capitalize on this shift aren’t just improving their businesses: they’re fundamentally transforming how work gets done.
The Three Major Platforms: A Strategic Comparison
Three major platforms currently dominate the custom trained AI assistant space: OpenAI’s CustomGPTs, Anthropic’s Claude Projects, and Google’s Gemini Gems. Each has distinct strengths and limitations that make them suitable for different business contexts.
CustomGPTs (ChatGPT)
Key Strengths:
- Most flexible sharing capabilities (can be shared with anyone, including free users)
- Robust marketplace for discovery
- Extensive capabilities including web browsing, code execution, and image generation
- Relatively affordable entry point ($20/month for ChatGPT Plus)
Limitations:
- Potential context window limitations (128K for GPT-4o)
- Less sophisticated project organization compared to Claude
Ideal For: Entrepreneurs who want to create tools that can be widely shared, businesses looking to monetize their expertise through custom AI tools, and teams that need versatile AI assistants with multiple capabilities.
Claude Projects
Key Strengths:
- Massive 200K context window (equivalent to a 500-page book)
- Excellent team collaboration features
- High-quality reasoning and writing capabilities
Limitations:
- Limited sharing capabilities (difficult to share outside your account)
- No public marketplace for discovery
- Fewer integrated capabilities compared to CustomGPTs
Ideal For: Enterprise teams working on complex, document-heavy projects, businesses with sensitive data that shouldn’t be widely shared, and users who need to process and analyze large volumes of information.
Google Gems
Key Strengths:
- Tight integration with Google Workspace
- Specialized Gems types for specific functions (Learning coach, Brainstormer, etc.)
- Advanced image generation with Imagen 3
- Seamless workflow with other Google products
Limitations:
- More recent entry to the market with fewer established use cases
- Less robust sharing and discovery mechanisms
- Still evolving feature set
Ideal For: Businesses heavily invested in the Google ecosystem, teams that need AI assistance tightly integrated with their existing workflows, and users who prioritize visual content generation.
The Strategic Advantage of CustomGPTs
While each platform has its merits, I consistently recommend CustomGPTs as the starting point for most entrepreneurs and small businesses. The reason is simple but powerful: shareability.
The ability to create a custom-trained AI assistant and then share it with anyone (including those using free accounts) dramatically expands your options. You can:
- Create internal tools for your team without requiring everyone to have paid accounts
- Share specialized assistants with clients as value-added services
- Distribute custom tools to your audience as lead magnets
- Monetize your expertise by selling access to your custom assistants
This flexibility creates opportunities that simply don’t exist with the more closed ecosystems of Claude Projects and Google Gems. While these platforms may offer superior capabilities in specific areas, the strategic advantage of CustomGPTs’ open sharing model typically outweighs these benefits for entrepreneurs focused on growth and scalability.
Understanding CustomGPTs (ChatGPT)
CustomGPTs represent the next evolution in AI assistants, moving from generic one-size-fits-all models to specialized tools trained on your specific knowledge, processes, and preferences. Think of them as AI employees you’ve personally trained to handle specific aspects of your business with precision and consistency.
What Are CustomGPTs and How Do They Work?
At their core, CustomGPTs are specialized versions of ChatGPT that you can configure to serve specific purposes. Unlike standard ChatGPT, which draws only on its general training data, CustomGPTs combine that foundation with your unique instructions, uploaded knowledge, and selected capabilities.
The magic happens through a process I call “guided specialization.” You’re essentially telling the AI: “Here’s what I want you to focus on, here’s how I want you to behave, and here’s the specific knowledge I want you to use when answering questions in this domain.”
This creates a powerful multiplier effect. The AI retains all its general capabilities but now applies them through the lens of your specific requirements and knowledge base. The result is an assistant that feels like it was built specifically for your unique needs — because it was.
Key Capabilities That Drive Business Value
CustomGPTs offer several capabilities that make them particularly valuable for entrepreneurs and small businesses:
Custom Instructions
This is where you define the GPT’s purpose, personality, and parameters. Want an assistant that writes in your brand voice? Specializes in your industry terminology? Follows your specific process for analyzing data? All of this gets encoded in the instructions.
Knowledge Files
Perhaps the most powerful feature, this allows you to upload PDFs, text documents, and other files that become part of the GPT’s knowledge base. This can include your company playbooks, product information, industry research, or any other specialized knowledge you want the GPT to reference.
Web Browsing
CustomGPTs can search the internet for up-to-date information, allowing them to complement their training with current data. This is particularly valuable for industries where information changes rapidly.
Code Interpretation
For technically-oriented businesses, CustomGPTs can write, analyze, and execute code, making them powerful tools for development, data analysis, and automation.
Image Generation
CustomGPTs can create images based on text descriptions, opening up possibilities for design ideation, marketing content creation, and visual brainstorming.
Actions
More advanced users can connect CustomGPTs to external tools and data sources through API integrations, allowing them to perform actions like checking inventory, processing orders, or retrieving customer information.
The combination of these capabilities creates a flexible foundation that can be adapted to virtually any business need — from content creation to customer service, from data analysis to product development.
Pricing and Accessibility: The Strategic Advantage
One of the most compelling aspects of CustomGPTs is their accessibility. Creating them requires a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 per month — a remarkably low barrier to entry for such a powerful business tool.
This pricing structure creates an interesting strategic dynamic. The investment to create custom-trained AI assistants is minimal, but the potential return is enormous. This asymmetry between cost and value represents one of the most favorable ROI opportunities available to entrepreneurs today.
Even more importantly, once created, CustomGPTs can be shared with anyone, including those using free ChatGPT accounts. This means you can:
- Create tools for your entire team without requiring everyone to have paid accounts
- Share specialized assistants with clients or customers
- Distribute custom tools as lead magnets or premium offerings
- Build a business around creating and selling access to specialized AI assistants
This sharing capability is what truly sets CustomGPTs apart from competitors like Claude Projects and Google Gems, which have more restrictive sharing models.
Creating Your First CustomGPT: A Step-by-Step Process
Creating a CustomGPT is surprisingly straightforward, even for those with no technical background.
Here’s the process I use and teach to entrepreneurs looking to leverage this technology:
Step 1: Access the Creation Interface
Log into your ChatGPT Plus account, click on “Explore GPTs” in the sidebar, and then click “Create.” This will take you to the GPT creation interface, where you’ll see a split screen with a configuration panel on one side and a testing area on the other.
Step 2: Define Your GPT’s Purpose and Behavior
In the “Configure” tab, you’ll start by giving your GPT a name and description. Then comes the most important part: the instructions. This is where you tell the GPT exactly what it should do, how it should behave, and any constraints it should follow.
For example, if you’re creating a social media content generator, your instructions might include:
- The specific tone and voice to use
- Types of content to create (posts, captions, hashtags)
- Content guidelines and restrictions
- How to handle different platforms (Instagram vs. LinkedIn)
- Your brand’s personality and values
Be as specific and detailed as possible here — this is the foundation that will determine how effective your CustomGPT becomes.
Step 3: Add Knowledge and Capabilities
Next, you’ll upload any knowledge files that your GPT should reference. These can include:
- Brand guidelines and voice documents
- Product information and specifications
- Industry research and white papers
- Process documents and playbooks
- Examples of previous work or content
You’ll also select which capabilities your GPT should have access to, such as web browsing, code interpretation, or image generation. Choose these based on what your GPT will need to fulfill its purpose effectively.
Step 4: Test and Refine
The split-screen interface allows you to immediately test your GPT as you build it. This is crucial: you’ll want to try various prompts and scenarios to see how your GPT responds and refine your instructions accordingly.
This testing phase often reveals gaps in your instructions or knowledge base. Don’t rush this step; thorough testing now will save you frustration later.
Step 5: Set Sharing Options and Publish
Finally, you’ll decide who can access your GPT:
- “Only me” for personal use
- “Anyone with the link” for sharing with specific people
- “Everyone” to publish to the GPT Store
Once published, you’ll receive a link that you can share with others, allowing them to use your custom creation.
Case Study: How VIRALwave™ Transforms Content Creation
To illustrate the power of CustomGPTs, let me share the story of VIRALwave™, one of my most successful custom-trained AI assistants.
As someone who creates a lot of social media content, I found myself repeatedly explaining my personality type, brand voice, and what makes content go viral to standard AI tools. It was time-consuming and the results were inconsistent.
So I created VIRALwave™, a CustomGPT specifically trained to:
- Follow proven frameworks for creating viral social media content
- Take an idea and turn it into a viral worthy social post
- Adapt content for different platforms while maintaining consistency
The creation process took less than an hour, but the results have been transformative. What used to take 20-30 minutes of careful prompting and refinement now happens in seconds. I simply provide a topic or concept, and VIRALwave™ generates platform-specific content that sounds authentically like me and is optimized for engagement.
The ROI has been extraordinary. Not only has it saved me countless hours, but the content performs better because it’s consistently aligned with what has worked in the past. My engagement rates have also increased massively since implementing this tool.
This is just one example of how a relatively simple CustomGPT can deliver outsized returns. The same principles can be applied to virtually any business function where consistency, specialized knowledge, and efficiency are valuable, which is to say, almost all of them.
Strategic Applications for Entrepreneurs
Understanding the platforms is only the first step. The real value comes from strategic implementation: applying these custom-trained AI assistants to solve specific business challenges and create competitive advantages. Let’s explore some of the most impactful applications for entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Time-Saving Applications: Reclaiming Your Most Valuable Resource
For entrepreneurs, time is the ultimate non-renewable resource. Custom-trained AI assistants excel at reclaiming hours from your schedule through automation and augmentation:
Content Creation and Marketing
Content creation is one of the most time-consuming yet essential activities for modern businesses. Custom-trained AI assistants can transform this process:
- Social Media Management: Train a CustomGPT like my VIRALwave™ to create platform-specific content in your brand voice, complete with hashtags and engagement prompts.
- Blog and Article Production: Create assistants that outline, draft, and edit long-form content based on your expertise and writing style.
- Email Campaign Development: Build custom assistants that generate email sequences with your specific conversion frameworks and customer psychology insights.
- SEO Optimization: Train AI to apply your SEO strategies consistently across all content, incorporating your keyword research and on-page optimization techniques.
The key advantage here isn’t just speed, it’s consistency. Your custom AI will apply your best practices every time, without cutting corners when deadlines loom.
Customer Service and Support
Customer interactions are another area ripe for transformation:
- FAQ and Support Automation: Train a CustomGPT on your product documentation, common issues, and support protocols to handle routine inquiries.
- Personalized Response Templates: Create assistants that generate customized responses to common scenarios while maintaining your brand voice and support philosophy.
- Onboarding Sequences: Build AI tools that guide new customers through your products or services, answering questions and providing resources at each step.
- Feedback Analysis: Develop assistants that analyze customer feedback, identifying patterns and actionable insights that might otherwise be missed.
These applications don’t replace human support — they augment it, handling routine matters so your team can focus on complex issues that truly require human judgment.
Research and Analysis
Information gathering and processing is another area where custom AI creates enormous leverage:
Market Research: Train assistants to analyze industry reports, competitor content, and market trends using your specific analytical frameworks.
Data Interpretation: Create tools that transform raw data into actionable insights based on your business metrics and KPIs.
Competitive Intelligence: Build assistants that monitor competitor activities and identify strategic implications based on your business context.
Trend Identification: Develop AI tools that spot emerging patterns in your industry and connect them to your specific business opportunities.
The advantage here is scale — your custom AI can process and analyze volumes of information that would be impractical for any individual or team.
Revenue-Generating Applications: Turning AI into Profit Centers
Beyond saving time, custom-trained AI assistants can directly contribute to your bottom line:
Product Development
Custom AI can accelerate and enhance your product development process:
- Idea Generation: Create assistants trained on your product philosophy and market understanding to generate new product concepts.
- Feature Prioritization: Build tools that evaluate potential features against your specific criteria for market fit and development feasibility.
- User Experience Design: Develop assistants that apply your UX principles to new product interfaces and workflows.
- Pricing Strategy: Train AI on your pricing models and market positioning to recommend optimal pricing structures for new offerings.
These applications compress the product development cycle, allowing you to bring new offerings to market faster and with greater confidence.
Sales Enablement
Sales processes benefit enormously from custom AI augmentation:
- Proposal Generation: Create assistants that produce customized proposals incorporating your best practices, case studies, and persuasive frameworks.
- Objection Handling: Build tools that generate personalized responses to common objections based on your most successful approaches.
- Follow-up Sequences: Develop AI assistants that craft follow-up communications tailored to specific prospect situations and behaviors.
- Sales Coaching: Train AI to analyze sales calls and provide feedback based on your specific sales methodology and success patterns.
These applications don’t replace salespeople — they make them more effective by ensuring they consistently apply your best practices.
Client Deliverables
For service businesses, custom AI can enhance the quality and consistency of deliverables:
- Report Generation: Create assistants that transform raw data into polished client reports following your specific formats and analytical approaches.
- Strategy Documents: Build tools that generate customized strategic recommendations based on your methodologies and client information.
- Implementation Plans: Develop AI that produces detailed implementation roadmaps incorporating your best practices and experience.
- Training Materials: Train assistants to create client-specific training content that reflects your expertise and teaching approach.
These applications ensure consistent quality across all client work while reducing the time required to produce deliverables.
Consulting Services
For consultants and advisors, custom AI creates new service opportunities:
- Diagnostic Tools: Create assistants that analyze client situations using your proprietary frameworks and methodologies.
- Custom Analysis: Build AI tools that apply your unique analytical approaches to client data and scenarios.
- Implementation Support: Develop assistants that guide clients through implementing your recommendations, answering questions and providing resources.
- Ongoing Advisory: Train AI to provide continuous guidance based on your expertise, creating a scalable way to maintain client relationships.
These applications allow you to package your expertise in new ways, reaching clients who might not be able to afford your direct time.
Internal Efficiency Applications: Optimizing Your Operations
Beyond customer-facing applications, custom AI can transform your internal operations:
- Meeting Analysis: Meetings consume enormous amounts of time in most businesses. Custom AI can help extract maximum value:
- Transcript Analysis: Create assistants like my Meeting Transcript Advisor that identify action items, key decisions, and follow-up requirements from meeting recordings.
- Sentiment Analysis: Build tools that evaluate the emotional tone of meetings, identifying potential issues or opportunities that might otherwise be missed.
- Summary Generation: Develop AI that produces concise, actionable summaries of lengthy discussions, focusing on what matters most.
These applications ensure that meeting insights aren’t lost and that commitments are tracked and fulfilled.
Project Management
Project execution is another area where custom AI creates significant leverage:
- Task Prioritization: Create assistants that apply your specific criteria to prioritize tasks and allocate resources.
- Progress Tracking: Build tools that monitor project status and identify potential issues before they become problems.
- Resource Allocation: Develop AI that optimizes the assignment of team members to tasks based on your knowledge of their strengths and workloads.
- Risk Assessment: Train assistants to evaluate project risks using your experience and risk management frameworks.
These applications help ensure that projects stay on track and that potential issues are identified and addressed proactively.
Knowledge Management
Organizational knowledge is often scattered and underutilized. Custom AI can help:
- Documentation Creation: Create assistants that transform informal knowledge into structured documentation following your standards.
- Knowledge Retrieval: Build tools that make your collective expertise easily accessible, answering questions based on your internal knowledge base.
- Process Optimization: Develop AI that analyzes your workflows and suggests improvements based on your business priorities.
- Institutional Memory: Train assistants to preserve and apply historical knowledge about clients, projects, and decisions.
These applications help capture and leverage your organization’s collective wisdom, reducing dependency on specific individuals.
Training and Onboarding
Bringing new team members up to speed is often time-consuming. Custom AI can help:
- Personalized Learning Paths: Create assistants that generate customized training sequences based on role requirements and individual backgrounds.
- Interactive Guidance: Build tools that provide real-time assistance as new team members learn your systems and processes.
- Knowledge Testing: Develop AI that assesses understanding and identifies areas needing additional focus.
- Continuous Development: Train assistants to suggest ongoing learning opportunities based on your development frameworks and individual performance.
These applications accelerate the integration of new team members and support the continuous development of existing ones.
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Coming in July: Part 2 of Train Your AI, Transform Your Business
Come back next month for Part 2 of Train Your AI, Transform Your Business where Jonathan will dive into best practices for creating effective custom-trained AI assistants, monetizing your custom-trained AI assistants and the competitive advantage of custom-trained AI assistants.
For ongoing insights, tutorials, and case studies on leveraging AI for business advantage, subscribe to Jonathan’s YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@jonathanmast_withai
