His homework from my workshop might be worth $5.4 million dollars.

The workshop homework nobody expected to pay off

Let me back up. I was teaching a two-part workshop on building custom GPTs. Those are versions of ChatGPT you train on your own business and documents. They answer like someone who works for you.

Week one, we plan your GPT, I hand out homework, and week two, we build together.

One of the men in the room wasn’t sure any of it applied to him. He works in about as technical an industry as you can get. He sells materials most companies have never heard of.

Still, he did all of his homework, even from out of the country on a business trip. And in week two, right on the call, his GPT found him a brand new company. It needs exactly what he sells.

His product is rare, so a find like that often turns into a closed deal. This company is not even a year old. The GPT handed him the size, the business details, even the contact info to reach them.

He figured the lead was worth about a million dollars. A couple of minutes later he came back with a more accurate number. It was $5.4 million.

The homework was worth doing.

Why keeping up with AI keeps getting more expensive

Three days before session two, OpenAI changed the rules. On the plans most of us pay for, a GPT you build is now for your own use only. Sharing one with a link moved up to their business plan, the pricier one.

And this is my honest worry with all of this AI stuff. The features don’t wait for us to be ready.

Whatever we’re not using, they take away or move up the price ladder. The cost of catching up keeps climbing.

Make time to play, even when the list is long

So the lesson I’m taking from my own workshop is simple. We have to make more time to play.

It feels like slacking off when the list is long. But playing is exactly how that man found his lead. It’s the only way any of us learn what these tools can do while learning is still ‘cheap.’

If you want somewhere to start, pick a job that lives only in your head. The quote you rebuild from scratch every time. Spend one hour walking ChatGPT or Claude through it, the way you’d train a new hire.

Why the free plan keeps you using AI like a chatbot

And if you’ve been doing all of this on a free plan, it might be time to pay for one. The free versions keep you using AI like a chatbot. You ask a quick question and move on. The features that could actually run parts of your business sit behind the paid door.

I’m thankful I already had my own tools set up, because my GPTs were grandfathered in.

This week, pick one tool, pay for the month, and experiment like it matters.

Things aren’t going to slow down and clear a week for this. An hour counts.