Ep 118 ChatGPT or Claude? Which is Best For Freelance Dietitians? PART 1

If you've ever opened ChatGPT, asked it to write an Instagram caption, and then thought, Well... that doesn't sound anything like me, you're definitely not alone.

I hear this from freelance dietitians all the time.

Everyone else seems to be talking about AI as though it's the best member of their team. They're saving hours every week, creating content in minutes and somehow making business feel easier.

Meanwhile, you're rewriting everything ChatGPT gives you and wondering what all the fuss is about.

The truth is, I don't think ChatGPT is the problem.

I think most people are simply using the wrong AI tool for the wrong job or they're only scratching the surface of what it can actually do.

In this post, I want to show you how I use AI for freelance dietitians inside my own business every single week, where ChatGPT for dietitians genuinely shines, and where I'd choose something different instead.

 

Most freelance dietitians are massively underusing AI

 

Whenever I ask health professionals how they're using AI, I nearly always hear the same answers.

"I use it for Instagram captions."

"I ask it for blog ideas."

"I get it to write emails."

Brilliant.

Keep doing those things.

But honestly, that's a bit like buying a Thermomix and only using it to chop onions.

Yes, it works.

But you're missing almost everything else it can do.

AI isn't just a writing assistant.

It can help you think through business decisions, organise messy ideas, analyse your marketing, create client resources, build systems, map launches and even become an assistant that understands your business almost as well as you do.

Once I realised that, everything changed.

 

One of my favourite ChatGPT features is image generation

 

Let's be honest.

Most of us didn't become dietitians because we dreamed about having professional photos taken every few months.

If you're anything like me, organising a brand photoshoot often ends up somewhere near the bottom of the to-do list.

ChatGPT can now generate surprisingly realistic marketing images using photographs of you as the starting point.

Need a professional headshot?

A photo for your website?

Something seasonal for social media?

It can help.

Now, are they always perfect?

Not quite.

Occasionally you'll spot six fingers or suspiciously wrinkle-free skin. (AI does seem to think we're all twenty-three.)

But with a really good prompt, the quality is improving incredibly quickly.

That's why I've created a free prompt guide to help you write prompts that produce much better results.

You can download it here:

 

Voice conversations have completely changed how I brainstorm

 

This is probably one of my favourite ways to use ChatGPT.

I don't sit at my desk.

I don't stare at a blank page.

Instead, I put my headphones in, take Dustin for a walk along the beach and start talking.

I might say:

"I'm thinking about running a workshop for nursery staff but I can't quite work out how to structure it."

Instead of giving me one enormous answer, ChatGPT asks questions.

It challenges my thinking.

It helps me organise ideas.

By the time I get home I've often planned an entire workshop, mapped the marketing and solved whatever problem I left the house thinking about.

It feels much more like having a business meeting than using software.

If you're someone who thinks better out loud than on paper, you'll probably love this feature too.

 

The feature that has saved me the most time: Custom GPTs

 

If there is one feature that has genuinely transformed my business, it's Custom GPTs.

Think of them as specialist members of your team.

Instead of opening ChatGPT and explaining your business over and over again, you create an assistant once.

You teach it:

• Who you help.
• What your offers are.
• How you write.
• What your values are.
• What language you use.
• What you never want it to say.

Then you save it.

Every time you open that Custom GPT, it already knows everything.

I have one that helps me write podcast show notes.

Another acts as my marketing director.

Another helps me think through CEO decisions.

My marketing assistant even understands my ideal client so well that it knows the worries she's having at eleven o'clock at night when she's wondering whether her business is ever going to work.

That initial setup took me an afternoon.

It's saved me hundreds of hours since.

 

ChatGPT isn't just for your business. It can support your clients too.

 

This is where things become really exciting.

Imagine creating a GPT that helps your clients build meal ideas using foods they already have at home.

Or an IBS-friendly recipe assistant.

Or a fertility meal planning guide.

Inside Accelerate I've helped clients build GPTs that support people with IBS, IBD and fertility nutrition.

They're not replacing the dietitian.

They're extending your expertise in a safe, practical way that helps clients between appointments.

It's a wonderful example of how AI for freelance dietitians can improve both your business and your client experience.

 

One thing every regulated healthcare professional needs to know

 

Before you get too excited, there's something really important we need to talk about.

Data protection.

If you're using ChatGPT or any AI platform, you cannot simply upload identifiable client information.

Clinical notes.

Blood results.

Emails.

Discovery call transcripts.

Anything containing personal data.

As regulated health professionals, we have additional responsibilities when handling sensitive health information.

If you want AI to work with real client data, you need the correct business-level subscriptions and appropriate data processing agreements.

Please don't assume that paying for an AI subscription automatically makes it GDPR compliant.

It often doesn't.

Always check first.

 

Better prompts create better results

 

One of the biggest myths about AI is that it's clever enough to read your mind.

It isn't.

The quality of your results depends almost entirely on the quality of your instructions.

That's exactly why I've created my free Prompt Patient guide.

It walks you through the framework I use to help ChatGPT understand:

• what you're creating
• who it's for
• the tone you want
• the evidence standards you expect
• how you naturally communicate

Those small changes make an enormous difference.

Download your free copy here:

https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/prompt-patient 

 

Final thoughts

 

If you've been disappointed with ChatGPT, don't give up on AI just yet.

The problem probably isn't the technology.

It's that nobody has shown you how to get the very best from it.

Used well, ChatGPT for dietitians becomes far more than a content writer.

It becomes a brainstorming partner.

A marketing assistant.

A systems expert.

A sounding board.

And sometimes, the quiet colleague sitting beside you while you're trying to build a business around clinic, family life and everything else on your plate.

Next week, I'll compare ChatGPT with Claude because although I use both every single week, there are some jobs where Claude wins by a country mile.

 

The Master Plan:

Helping you build the business of your dreams. Get your 22 point step-by step workbook here: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

 

Connect with me:

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dietitiansinbusiness/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dietitiansinbusiness

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondtheclinicbusiness

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast

 

Episode transcription:

Tell me, are you using AI in your business, but deep down thinking, is this it? You probably keep hearing everyone raving about AI saying, I couldn't run my business without it. It's basically another member of my team, or it saves me X amount of hours every single week. And meanwhile, you might be sitting there thinking, really? Cause mine just wrote me an Instagram caption that sounds absolutely nothing like me.

Or you've asked it to write an email and somehow ended up spending longer rewriting the AI version than it would have taken you to write it yourself. This is one of the biggest frustrations I hear from freelance dietitians all the time when it comes to using AI. And I think there's a really simple reason for it. You might just be using the wrong AI tool for the job because we're constantly being told to use AI if it's one

big thing, but actually Chat GPT and Claude and there's a whole range of other tools out there that all have different strengths, different features and different things that they are particularly good at. Some are brilliant at brainstorming, coming up with ideas, creating images, helping you think things through. Others are much better when you want it to write content that actually sounds like you

or work with huge amounts of information or get AI to properly understand your brand and your way of working. So in these next two episodes, we're going to be comparing ChatGPT and Claude, the two main players out there at the moment. This is part one. And today we're talking about ChatGPT. I'm going to show you where ChatGPT genuinely shines.

the features that I use every single week in my own business, some of the mistakes that I see people making with it and the jobs I actually wouldn't use Chat GPT for. And then I'll give you some practical things for you to try yourself so that hopefully you can stop getting those, meh, that's not quite what I meant type of AI results and start getting things that are much more useful. And then next week in part two.

We're going to turn our attention to Claude and I'll show you exactly where I think it completely outperforms ChatGPT.

Now, before we get into chat GPT specifically, there's something else I want to point out because I think there's actually two mistakes that freelance dietitians are making with AI. The first, as I said a moment ago, is using the wrong tool for the job. But the second, you're probably massively under using the tools that you already have. And I mean massively. So whenever I talk to dietitians about how they're using AI, I nearly always hear the same three things.

I use it to write my emails, I use it to write Instagram captions, and I ask her for content ideas. And I'm like, yeah, great. Absolutely. Keep doing that. But is that it? That's like buying a really fancy, expensive food processor and then only using it to chop onions. Technically it works. Yes. But we could be doing so much more because AI isn't just a writing tool.

It can help you think through business decisions. It can plan your content. It can analyze what's working in your marketing. It can create client resources, organize your ideas, build systems and processes. And when you set it up properly, it can even start acting like an assistant that understands exactly how you work. So hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll be thinking, I didn't realize it could do that.

And ideally, you'll have a few new things that you can go away and try straight away.

Okay, so as I said, today's episode is all about ChatGPT, the big one, the one with the biggest user base in the world, the one your mum has probably heard of. One of ChatGPT's biggest strengths is its breadth. It can help you with a huge range of tasks across your business. But let's start with one of its newest party tricks. And actually, it's one of its most talked about features nowadays. It can create images.

Now this is a really useful feature for freelance dieticians, especially if you're someone who thinks, I really should get some photos of myself. And then you remember that you actually hate having your photo taken. You don't have the time to organize a brand shoot. Spending a few thousand pounds right now on some fancy pictures just seems a bit superfluous. And the idea of standing in front of a camera, fake smiling for three hours straight fills you with absolute dread.

Now you can upload some photos of yourself and ask Chat GPT to create different versions of you in different locations, in different outfits, in different settings. So instead of needing to organise a full photo shoot, every time you want to create something new, you can create a whole bank of images to use across your website and your social media and so many other places. Now, a little word of honesty here, AI images of yourself aren't always perfect.

You might occasionally get the strange hand that looks like you've got six fingers or the slightly odd facial expression or something that just looks a little bit too AI, you know, the wrinkles and the freckles have just gone. Now, of course, the biggest factor in getting good results is the prompt that you give it in the first place. So the more specific you are about what you want it to do, like the style and the lighting and the

colours and your facial expressions or even the purpose of the image, the more useful the results tend to be. And you're going to hear me say this often throughout this series, AI is really only as useful as the instructions that you give it. And actually, before I move on, I've made this quite easy for you because I've put together a free PDF that shows you exactly how to structure a really high quality prompt.

so that AI understands what you're trying to get it to create, who it's for, the style and the approach that you wanna take with it. So whether you are creating images or you're just writing social media posts or emails or client resources, it's gonna help you get much better results from both ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and pretty much all of them. And I've linked it in the show notes for you to grab.

So the first chat GPT advantage over Claude is image generation. Chat GPT can create an image for you and Claude can't. But that is just the beginning.

Now this next chat GPT feature is something that I genuinely don't think enough people know about. And it's definitely up there with one of my favorite features. You can actually talk to chat GPT and I don't mean dictate a message and wait for it to type one back. I mean, you can have an actual back and forth conversation with it. I use this all the time when I'm out walking on the beach. put my headphones in, I start walking and I just talk. I might say something like,

I'm thinking about running a workshop on fussy eating for nursery staff. I've got few ideas, but I've got no real idea on how I want to structure this. Can you help me? And then chat talks back. It doesn't just throw a huge answer at you and say, I hope that helps. It will ask questions. It will challenge your thinking. It'll help you work through ideas and it'll organize everything as you go.

So I'm walking along and getting my steps in. I probably look like I'm having a very serious conversation with myself. And actually I'm having a business meeting with ChatGPT. And if you're anything like me and think better out loud than you do staring at a blank page and a blinking cursor, this is brilliant. You can leave the house thinking, I've got an idea somewhere. And by the time you get home, you could have a workshop outline, a load of marketing ideas and a plan for your next offer.

And you've got your steps in win-win. Now, technically Claude has voice too, but, this is a big, but the experience is quite different. Chat GPT is so much like a real conversation. You can interrupt it. You can change direction. You can go off on a complete tangent, which I'm very prone to doing, and it can keep up with you surprisingly well.

There's very little lag and the whole thing just feels natural, almost like you're on a phone call. Claude's voice experience, well, that's much more basic. It's essentially dictating and transcribing what you say. So you don't get quite that same natural back and forth. So if you're someone who loves to talk ideas out and brainstorm while you're walking or simply cannot think properly until you've said something out loud,

then this is another area where I think Chat GPT really shines.

Okay, moving on. Now this next feature is by far my favorite and it's something that's actually massively changed the way that I work in my business over the last couple of years. And that feature is custom GPTs. So if you don't know, a custom GPT is basically a mini AI assistant that you set up to do one particular job for you. So normally you open Chat GPT, you're starting from scratch. You have to explain who you are.

who your clients are, how you like things to be written, what you do and what you don't want it to say. And then five minutes later, you're thinking, didn't I literally just explain all of this to you yesterday? Why haven't you remembered? So a custom GPT means that you only do that piece of work once. You create an assistant for a specific job. You give it very, very clear instructions. You upload the information you want it to work from.

and you tell it how you want it to behave and then you save it. And from that point forwards, every time you open that particular custom GPT, it's already briefed on the information you've given it and the rules and boundaries you've set for it. And what's great is you can have loads of custom GPTs for all different aspects of your business. So I've got custom GPTs for turning transcripts into podcast show notes.

I've got one for writing sales scripts when responding to DMs. I've got one that acts like my marketing director. One that's my CEO strategy partner when I need to think through the bigger business

decisions. Each one has a specific job. It's like having a whole team of specialists on hand.

And if you're thinking, hmm, that sounds a bit techie, Sarah, I promise you, if you can upload an attachment to an email, you've got the technical skills that you need to build a custom GPT. It is super simple. Let me give you my favorite example of a custom GPT. So I've got one called my marketing assistant. And honestly, I absolutely love this thing. It probably knows my business almost as well as I do at this point. It knows my offers. It knows my pricing.

It knows my brand stories. It knows my client stories and testimonials, all anonymized, obviously. And it knows loads of other contexts that normally just lives inside my head. But the really clever bit is, is what it knows about my ideal client. It knows what she's worried about. It knows what she desperately wants and the things she tells herself at 11 p.m. when she's lying in bed, unable to sleep. And most importantly,

It knows the actual language that she uses when she talks about her problems, as well as the objections she has before making a buying decision. And then there's one more layer that I add. I give it a linguistic analysis of how I actually speak and write. So it doesn't just know my business and my ideal client. It knows exactly how I sound.

And so what that means is whenever I ask for something, the first draft is already about 90 % there. Now, of course, building a marketing assistant GPT didn't just take five minutes. It took me about three hours, probably an afternoon to build properly, but it saved me many, many, many more hours since that. Trust me. And if you're thinking,

Ooh, Sarah, I want one of those. Well, I actually recently ran a workshop for some of my clients where I showed them exactly how to build their own marketing assistant and get all of this information into it properly. And you can build the whole thing in an afternoon. So if you do want access to that workshop, just drop me a message and I'll send you the details. Now, another fantastic thing about this feature is custom GPTs aren't just something that you use for yourself. You can use them.

for your clients too. So inside my Accelerate program, my clients get access to a whole library of GPTs that I've created. Now that includes my profitable niche generator tool, my sales page writer tool, my market research assistant, my GDPR compliance document generator, and loads more. I'm currently midway through building a lead magnet strategist GPT, which will literally write your lead magnet for you.

Why I do this? Well, because I know that they can help my clients get results much, much faster. There's a huge difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. And one of the biggest reasons why people don't move forwards with their business is because life gets too busy. They might learn something from a course and then not have time to implement what they've learned. And this is where my custom GPTs close that gap because they actually help you get the work done.

and quickly. Now imagine what this could look like in your own freelance practice. Just as one example, you could create a GPT that helps clients build their own meal plans based on their clinical condition, their dietary preferences and family circumstances. Now, of course, this would still be general education. It's not personalized advice or a replacement for you as a dietitian. But imagine giving clients an interactive tool based on your expertise.

something that they can use at 9 p.m. when they're stuck for ideas for tomorrow's packed lunch, something that lets them take a photo of what's in their fridge and get an idea for tonight's dinner that matches with their nutritional needs. I recently helped one of my dietitians inside Accelerate create a GPT for her clients that generates symptom-specific, IBS-friendly meal ideas. I helped another create a fertility menu planner

And another made a real symptom specific IBD meal planning GPT that adjusts for whether their client is experiencing a flare up or not.

Some of them sell these as low cost offers and others reserve them for their existing clients. So it's completely your choice, but there's so much flexibility and loads of options with this. And because it's a new way of delivering a service, you will stand out from everybody else. Now, of course, this kind of thing needs the same level of clinical consideration as any resource that you create, whether it's a diet sheet or a handout.

You are providing the GPT's brain and knowledge base. The custom GPT is literally just the format.

Now, before we wrap up, there's one slightly less exciting, but very important thing that we need to talk about when it comes to using AI in your business. And that is data privacy, data protection. the free and some of the paid versions of AI tools are not GDPR compliant.

You cannot process other people's data, any data. But this is actually especially important as dieticians because we work with sensitive health information, which holds its own next level special category data protection processing rules. So as a general rule, don't be putting things into AI like client records or clinical information or symptoms or blood results, or actually anything that could identify a client into an AI account. And remember,

It's not just obvious clinical information, even a name or an email address or a feedback form or a discovery call transcript. This is all personal data. If you want AI to work with real data, for example, your inbox and your calendar and client communications like DMs from Instagram or WhatsApp, or actually any other system that contains personal information, you need to be using the appropriate

business level subscription and data processing agreements. So for instance, ChatGPT, it has to be the business or the enterprise versions. Claude, it needs to be Claude Team or Enterprise. So don't just assume that because you're paying for an AI subscription, your data is automatically covered. In most cases, it's not. So go and check. Look at the provider's data processing arrangements, their privacy settings,

terms and conditions and look for a DPA, a data processing agreement and make sure you understand exactly what it is that you're agreeing to. And then the second most important thing is knowing how to get the best out of these tools. And a big part of that comes down to how you use them. It's fair to say that this is where the skill lies in using AI. And it's actually what I've been nerding out over the last two years about.

And that's why I've created this simple prompting structure for my clients. And I want to share this with you too. I've created a free PDF so you can try this out for yourself. And it shows you how to write a really high quality prompt for AI so that it properly understands precisely what you need it to do. The exact audience that you need it to speak to the boundaries you set the evidence standards that your content needs to follow. And of course, exactly how you speak.

These details are what takes you from generic AI waffle to responses that actually feel relevant, that accurate, and much more like something that you'd create for yourself. So if you want to get better results from ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or whichever tool you use, you can head to the show notes for this episode to grab that free PDF. So there you have it.

ChatGPT is a great tool for things like creating images, brainstorming ideas through real-time voice conversations and building custom GPTs that can become your own personal business assistance or tools for your clients. But do make sure you come back for part two because that's where we're putting Claude under the microscope next. And I have to tell you, I am in love with Claude.

Bye for now.