How to Set Up ChatGPT Projects That Work

If you're using chat GBT now and you're not using projects, you are making AI way harder than it needs to be. You're essentially asking it to remember everything all at once, and then wondering why it's giving you outputs that are kind of confused.

Welcome to the next evolution of the podcast entrepreneur school in the AI era, we are here to figure out how to integrate AI into the business you've worked so hard to build in a way that still feels like you. I'm your host. Kelly Sinclair, award winning marketer turned AI platform co founder, AI has fundamentally changed how I thought about work systems and what's actually possible. This show is about navigating that new reality together. It's going to be a wild ride, my friend, but I truly believe there's a way to leverage AI in a way that's intentional, human, centered and aligned. It's an ongoing evolution. So let's explore because AI may just be the unlock you need to achieve the life first business you truly desire.

Let me ask you something. How many chat GPT conversations do you have going right now? Seriously, go, Look, I'll wait. If you, like most people, you've probably got dozens, maybe hundreds, and they all have some generic generated titles, like marketing ideas or content strategy or business planning. So when you want to pick up where you left off on something specific, you end up scrolling endlessly through your chats, clicking into them just to figure out which was the right one. Or maybe you've got this just one ridiculously long thread that started as a brainstorm about your lead magnet and then somehow ended up covering Client Onboarding, email sequences, your content calendar, and then that random question that you needed to ask as well. And now Good luck finding anything useful in there. Does that sound familiar to you. Here's the thing, chat GPT is incredibly powerful, but if you're not organizing your conversations intentionally, you're making it way harder on yourself than it needs to be, and you're wasting your time searching, you're losing context, and you're getting outputs that feel off because chat GPT is trying to juggle everything all at once, instead of focusing on what actually matters for the conversation that you're having right now. So for me, I basically live when I'm using chat GPT inside of projects, and if I'm having a conversation, it's happening in a project, because projects solve what I see is one of the single biggest problems that most people have with AI, and that is keeping clean context, having it be contained, and keeping it relevant.

Okay, first of all, this was just going to be, like, a cute little thing about Project memory, and then I realized I better, like, zoom out and actually give you the full context of of what projects are and all of the little bits and pieces around why I use them, because I find when I'm talking to other people about using AI, they're not necessarily choosing to use projects. And I'm talking I have to clarify chat GPT projects, which is different than Claude projects. Claude projects are the same as chat GPT custom gpts. Okay, so that's just one high level thing. So first of all, there's this context problem, and really this is like the thing that you need to get good at in order to get AI to create good outputs for you, it's all about context. AI is only as good as the context that it has, and most people don't give it enough context or big. Give it way too much of the wrong context. So when you have one long thread of multiple conversations covering everything from business strategy to meal planning, then your AI is going to start pulling from all of that, and it can really create generic, confused, off brand outputs.

So let's talk about what chat GPT projects are. Projects are workspaces inside of chat GPT that keep your conversations context and memory separate. They're like folders, but smarter. Each project has its own memory, its own uploaded files and its own instructions that you can give it so you can have multiple projects in your chat, GPT interface serving a different purpose, and the key benefit to that is that the context just stays clean and relevant to what you're actually working On. So here's what I discovered just last week open AI recently changed how memory works in projects. Now when you create a project, you have to choose between default memory which pulls from your entire chat, GPT history, or you choose project specific memory which will contain what it pulls from to that specific project. So this setting actually cannot be changed retroactively. So if your projects already exist, they are most likely selected on the default memory, or they converted that way, because that's just what happened recently, and you cannot change them. However, I did find a workaround for this, because, particularly for me, when I am using chat GPT for personal stuff, I want to keep that very much separate. So the workaround is actually to create a new project, select project specific memory, and then you can still move any chats. So all chats can always be moved into projects. So if you start a conversation with chat GPT, just generically, like within the chat interface, you can choose to move that into a project afterwards. So you can also move the chat from a specific project into another specific project.

So this is what I would do, and what I did do, actually for my personal project, once I discovered this memory thing, so I created a new project called Personal dash private so that I would remember that that was the one that had the project specific memory setup, and then I went and moved any personal chats that I wanted to maintain over into the new one, deleted the rest and deleted my old project. So that is your workaround. So now, why would you use a project versus a custom GPT or a bot? So this is definitely where people can get confused, and I just want to share, like my perspective, there's no right or wrong really with anything when it comes to AI, but this is, this is how I do it, and this is the way that I think through it. So for me, custom gpts or bots are for repeated specific tasks with a more defined output or predictable output. So for example, you create an email writer bot that follows a specific format. Every time you go into that bot, you drop in your ideas for your emails, it produces you the email based on the templates your brand, voice examples, and the things that you've given it or for podcast, show notes. This is a really good one where you create a bot that knows to take your transcript and translate that into show notes based on the template examples that you have given it same structure every episode creates very consistent outputs for you. This is super helpful for task related things.

An important note here is that custom gpts do not have memory. They do not remember past conversations that you've had with them. This is one of my biggest frustrations. Personally, it's actually one of the impetus for starting the new platform that we're building. I was talking to Andrew, who's my business partner now, and I was like, I am kind of getting frustrated that I have a bot to help me with podcast topic planning or content strategy, content planning, and it just keeps giving me the same ideas every time. And the reason for that is because he doesn't know which ones I've already chosen to do or not do. It doesn't remember those things. It just goes, Oh, you said your business is about this. This is who you talk to. These are kinds of topics that you want to do, sure, and that's great once maybe twice. But when you get into like, multiple weeks of podcast planning, you're like. This is not giving me anything fresh and new, and so that's why I choose to use projects sometimes instead of that, and also why, in our new platform, our bots have memories. So just keep that in mind for future. So projects, to me, are for ongoing conversations within the same context. It's not necessarily about a repeated task, but it's more like a theme for evolving your strategic thinking. You're not looking for the same kind of output, but you're having conversations that build on each other. So here are some like contrasting examples to help drive this home. You might have a custom GPT that helps you write LinkedIn posts in your voice. But in a project, you might actually talk about content strategy and ask it to help you brainstorm your content strategy, refine your messaging, and do that over multiple conversations as a pro tip, though you can actually pull your bots into your projects.

So this is another thing, and so a way to help, like, chain together multiple bots, again, something that we're solving in our platform. It's technically called multi agent orchestration, but we call them bot squads on the platform, and so that's the ability to have one bot talk to another and things like that. But it's also a way for you to bring in one bot and have it have the context of the conversation that you're having within the project. So you might have the conversation. Let's just play this one out about content strategy and then be like, great. I'm into this strategy tag in my LinkedIn bot and have it write a post for you.

So I want to share a couple of examples of how I'm using projects in my business. So here are three. Number one, the one I use most often, honestly, is my business strategist project. The purpose is for strategic planning, business model development, market validation, competitive analysis, all the things that you really have a hard time doing yourself, you need, like that feedback from something. So this is really one of the best ways for me to use AI. What I have included is I've uploaded a lot of resources that I have from accelerator programs, the way that they teach how to start a new company, how to look at market research frameworks, how to pull together competitive analysis, unique sales positioning your proposition, all that kind of stuff. I put in the in the instructions that I wanted to push back on my thinking. So it says something to the effect in there of you are a critical thinker who is not here to simply stroke my ego. I want objective advice. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I had to put that in because, you know, the default of chat GPT is like, you're so strategic. Congratulations on thinking like a strategist. Wow. I love that idea all the time, which is great. But you also want a little bit of like the devil's advocate. Can you please challenge me like this is something that I really wanted to make sure this project would serve for me. So now I have this ongoing, evolving conversations about strategy, without it pulling from unrelated context and with it having that lens on

So project number two that I use probably second most frequently, is called speaking prep. So this is for preparing for speaking engagements, whether that's summits or podcasts or in person speaking opportunities that I might have. It helps me to refine talk titles, to write pitches, to write summaries, to help me actually fully expand and create those presentations. And what I have uploaded there in terms of like, the files that it has for its specific project context, are a playbook on creating high converting talks, some past presentation examples or transcripts from podcasts that are like really on topic for me, and what I want to talk about right now, I have a number of different versions of my speaker bio and some positioning. So some are for podcasts. Some are more casual, etc. I often go into this chat and just get a new version of my bio written like every time, just because I'm tired of hearing the same one all the time. So I'll just get it to write a new version within the context of whatever it is. It's for short long for somebody else to read first person, third person, whatever. So I. I love this project because it keeps everything all together, and I'm able to this has been really important for me, especially with the shift into all of the AI stuff, being able to, like, clean out things that are about, just about visibility and what I was talking about primarily before, and shifting it into what I am doing now. So it's really good to have this as a project I find.

And then the third one like I mentioned, is personal. And this is one where I want to keep it very private, locked down, just separate, because I use chat GPT for lots of personal things, honestly, as a side note, for meal planning and stuff like that. If I just am, like doing a recipe, I will often just click the temporary chat or delete the chat right away afterwards, because I don't need it, saving memories of how I made a spaghetti squash dish last week. That's irrelevant. I just needed to do this thing and then have it go away. So I really just want to keep this personal one like about vacation planning and birthday party planning. I did a for my husband's 40th I did a Jeopardy game with all these categories of fun facts about him, and so that's really important to not have that bleeding into the memory about me, because I don't want my chat GPT thinking that I like rocks and cars and am a tall person fun times with the Jeopardy game.

Okay, so let's do a quick overview of how to set up a project. So it's really simple. You don't even need me to be video casting this. You just go to the left hand side of your chat, GPT. You click projects. You click Create Project, you name it something specific and relevant, and you choose that memory setting. So you select project specific. If you want this project to be truly contained, make sure again, that you do this right off the bat, because it will tell you right there, when you click on it, that this cannot be changed later. You upload reference files, add any documents, playbooks, frameworks, examples that you want it to reference. Definitely consider your brand. Calibrator here, client, personas, past, work examples, SOPs, bios, etc, and then write some clear instructions. Again, I just look at those instructions as the context, like lens that I wanted, how I wanted to interact with me in that context. I wanted to be a professional speaking coach, or I want it to be a business strategist. And if you don't know how to write these instructions, pro tip, start a new chat that says, This is what I want you to do. What? How would I frame that as instructions within the context of this project? And then you can copy and paste the response so you tell it exactly how you want it to behave. You can be specific about tone approach, what kind of thinking you want. So that's where the idea is around. Challenge my assumptions, be direct, be concise, use storytelling in your responses.

And then when you're having your conversations, you can think to how to adjust this over time if you're not loving the way that it's giving you outputs, do you need to adjust the instructions or the context of that project in order to help you get better at what you want it to do. All right, a couple of tips around managing your projects. I would highly suggest reviewing your project chats regularly. If you have a lot of chats stored in there, maybe do an audit occasionally, and think about if you need to delete or archive any irrelevant conversations so that the memory stays clean. Don't be afraid to start fresh. If a project feels cluttered, create a new one and move over what is only still relevant, and then naming is really important, so you want to make sure you name it clearly, so you know which ones to go back to using specific names in your workspace. Marketing Strategy is much more clear than work stuff. Obviously.

I just kind of thought of another example I wanted to share too. I have run two bundles now, and I used a project to manage those bundles. So one project for both of them, because I thought, you know, once I create all of the documentation and everything for the first one, I'm only going to need to say here's the new context of what the new bundle is, the new dates, what it's called, how many people are in it, all those kinds of things, and then have the project recreate and reproduce the things that it has already done. And that didn't work perfectly, I will say. Say that so within the bundle instructions and documents I've uploaded, like templates of things. But what did work really well is that I would then upload, say, the entire list of like, I have one document that has every email that I sent out about the first bundle, and I'm saying now I want you to create the same things, but for the second bundle. So then I would upload that, and it would convert it, and it was magic. So imagine like being able to fill in your own templates in like 15 seconds. So, so helpful, so fast. So that was just another way that I used a project that keeps like it knows what it's trying to do because it's it's creating emails about a bundle. It's talking to contributors. It's also talking to people who are signing up for that bundle, etc. And so that is another way that I have used projects specifically.

So what becomes possible when you start using this structure, you're going to get better outputs. Chat. GPT is actually going to understand your business, your voice, your audience, and you're going to get more consistency, because you're not re explaining yourself every single time you get strategic leverage, and you're using AI as a thinking partner and not just a task assistant. And then, of course, the time savings, the good stuff comes faster, because that context is already there. And I think for me, it's an awareness that that memory builds over time inside of a project, your projects get smarter. They get more aligned with how you actually work, and you will see that happening when you're having chats inside of projects, instead of just starting a new chat every single time.

Okay, so here is what I want you to take away from this episode that became much longer than I was expecting it to if you're using chat GBT now and you're not using projects, you are making AI way harder than it needs to be. You're essentially asking it to remember everything all at once, and then wondering why it's giving you outputs that are kind of confused. It's like asking your entire team, but you really only want to ask one person, but you didn't direct the question at one person. If that makes sense, like that's an analogy I just came up with. Projects will help you solve this. It's saying, Okay, I'm going to the one person about this kind of strategy, this kind of expertise, this way of thinking, and you're grouping your people like that. Projects could be looked at like different team members with different strategic backgrounds. They'll help you get clean, contained responses. And I want to remind you as well that one of the main differences between projects and custom gpts are that projects allow for that ongoing, evolving conversation, whereas a custom GPT is more for repeated specific tasks. Both are useful and they both have a place, but they don't really interchange.

So my challenge to you is to go set up a project in chat GPT this week, pick an area of your business where you're constantly re explaining yourself to chat GPT, so maybe it's like content strategy or client communication or planning of some kind, whatever that is, create a project for it. Make sure that you choose whether or not you want project specific memory or general memory. I would honestly start by trying project specific. It really helps lock it down. And honestly, when projects first started, they said that's what it did naturally. They said the default was that a project would not spill into the rest. And then something happened, and it did start doing that also.

One last thing, pro tip, if you do AI, if you do AI, to write client materials, you should have a project specific memory project set up for each of your clients. This will help keep their brand intact and separated for you. When you are working on their stuff, make sure that you're writing clear instructions and giving it good context files, and then you can start using it. I promise the outputs are going to be better. You're going to see more relevant, more aligned stuff coming out of chat, GPT and over time, your project's going to get smarter and even more useful because the memory is building in a way that actually serves you. So if you found this episode helpful, please share it with another business owner who is trying to figure out how to use AI in a way that actually makes sense. We are. All navigating this together, and the more we can share what's working, the better off we all are, and I will be excited to, one day soon, have a very similar conversation with you with respect to how all of this stuff works on the new platform that we are building, that you get to hear about very, very soon. Oh, the teasing and the suspense is killing me. I was telling some of my friends in a co working sort of scenario that we have named our platform and that I'm not telling, I'm not telling the name until the whole thing comes live. So stay tuned, because it will be here very soon. You will get to hear it. You will be one of the first to hear it. If you are a podcast listener, thank you for being here. I will see you in the next episode.

Thank you for listening. If this episode got you thinking about how AI is impacting your business and what it might look like to integrate it in a way that actually fits. I'd love to help you think that through you can book an AI strategy chat using the link in the show notes. It's a space to talk about where you are, what's shifting, and how to move forward with intention. And if this episode was helpful, please share it with another business owner who's navigating this evolution too, and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next.