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How Photographers Should Really Use ChatGPT in Business with Kira Derryberry
Episode 107Bonus Episode28th February 2026 • Professional Photographer • Professional Photographers of America
00:00:00 00:31:12

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Step into the future of photography productivity as Pat Miller welcomes headshot photographer and AI educator Kira Derryberry for an eye-opening episode packed with actionable ChatGPT strategies.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(06:00) – Prompting Smarter: Begin with the End in Mind

(12:30) – Project folders and Building your Business Brain

(22:28) – Agent Mode: Letting AI Complete Tasks for You

Connect with Pat Miller ⬇

LinkedIn | Website

Connect with Kira Derryberry ⬇

LinkedIn | Website | Instagram

Transcripts

Pat Miller:

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. I know you're using AI. Specifically, you're probably using ChatGPT. I am, too. But are you getting everything out of ChatGPT that you could? Odds are you aren't. Well, today's guest, Kira Derryberry, is a part of our AI series here at Imaging USA in Nashville as we broadcast live inside the Sony Cinema Line Studios which is being powered by the Monitor & Control app. It's really been awesome. It's so awesome. In fact, people are like stopping by while we're talking, asking a bunch of questions. The gear has been phenomenal. So a big thanks to Sony for setting us up. So back to the AI part. You need to get more out of your subscription from ChatGPT, and Kira Derryberry knows all of the tips and tricks. In this interview, you can actually see my mind get blown. Because she shares a whole area of ChatGPT that I didn't even know existed. So I got stuff out of this, and I know you are too. It's time to be more productive with ChatGPT. Kira's going to help us. We'll talk to her next. Kira, welcome back to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Kira Derryberry:

Thanks for having me back. I'm great.

Pat Miller:

This is cool because you were episode 1 of the podcast. We have now surpassed 100 episodes and we have you back on, which is kind of cool.

Kira Derryberry:

I get cycled back through.

Pat Miller:

You're back through, which is great. So it's nice to have you back on again.

Kira Derryberry:

Thanks for having me.

Pat Miller:

Today, we get to talk about AI in our AI series. But if someone hasn't met you yet, tell them who you are and what you do.

Kira Derryberry:

Well, I am Kira Derryberry from Tallahassee, Florida. I am a professional photographer for 15 years; have a studio. We primarily shoot headshots, family portraits. But on the side, I am an AI consultant and instructor. And so specifically with ChatGPT.

Pat Miller:

Yeah.

Kira Derryberry:

My background is in programming as a former web developer for over a decade. And so I don't know, I'm kind of dancing the line between two careers right now, which is really fun.

Pat Miller:

How did you get into AI? You're a photographer, and now you're doing this. How did that curiosity start?

Kira Derryberry:

Because I have literally been waiting for this my whole life. I am a nerd. I am a nerd. You know, we all watch Terminator 2, right? Like, I mean, yeah. So I am going to be an early adopter. I'm always an early adopter of things if it interests me and certainly, I want to get ahead of the game for when our robot overlords eventually rule us all.

Pat Miller:

Do you find yourself being unusually polite to them?

Kira Derryberry:

I do, because I just want them to remember that when the time comes, I was very nice. Yeah, I was very nice.

Pat Miller:

Not on the naughty list.

Kira Derryberry:

No.

Pat Miller:

Yeah. Let's give us a report card, A through F. As an industry, how are we doing with AI? Are we getting an A or are we getting an F as far as our utilization of the technology that's available?

Kira Derryberry:

I think as an industry, that's an interesting question because there's two— in my mind, there's two paths, right? Like there, there is the— I think the one that a lot of people worry about and think about when it comes to photographers is the image path, right? Like, you know, is this going to replace photography? That area is— I am cautious there, but I'm not scared there because honestly, I think authenticity is what we always return to, you know. And so as far as being worried about that with our consumers, I don't think they want that. I think that's a cool trick. Just like everything that comes out, putting filters on pictures, you know, when that was a, you know, and we all got upset about that too, you know. But I think that as much as we see people AI-ing themselves into, you know, Christmas characters, you know, over the holidays and stuff, I think that's just a novelty. I mean, honestly, I think, as a headshot photographer in a commodity-based, you know, market, um, those headshots don't really look like the person in real life because it's the best possible version that they approve of themselves. And frankly, that's just not real life. You know, and so you'll get to meet these people like a realtor that has this done, and then they go to their client meeting and they see that the realtor doesn't look anything like their photo. I mean, you know what I mean? So, that's just gonna shut that right down. You know what I mean?

Pat Miller:

Which breaks the trust.

Kira Derryberry:

It does.

Pat Miller:

I mean, the image is supposed to be great, but when you meet them in person, if they don't match up, especially in a high trust industry like a realtor, you're sending an awful message.

Kira Derryberry:

Horrible message. Horrible message. But now the industry, when it comes to using it for business. It's an amazing tool for people who don't have employees and who are wearing all the hats and who are, I mean, not just photographers, but I mean anyone who is a solopreneur. I mean, if you're not getting ahead of that, if you're not using AI right now to better your business, I mean, you're falling way behind. We should be jumping on this.

Pat Miller:

So maybe as an industry, the people that are allergic to generative AI may not be picking up the opportunities for productivity and business.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah. I think that's a deterrent because you're so, especially in our industry, I think you're so worried about, well, I shouldn't contribute to that. You know what I mean? But I think they're not using, and they don't wanna use it just to write blog posts or write an email, you know what I mean? Or maybe it doesn't sound like them when they use it. So I think they're just deterred by that. But they really shouldn't be if they wanna get ahead.

Pat Miller:

It's tough to have this conversation because AI is moving so quickly.

Kira Derryberry:

Mm-hmm.

Pat Miller:

During our conversation today, 2 new models might get announced. Like it's moving that quickly.

Kira Derryberry:

Yes.

Pat Miller:

So I wanna make sure with our time together, we spend as much time as we can on best practices and overall interaction and the way that we may think about using AI. So let's talk about best practices, and the one that comes to mind because it's still the dominant interface is text-based prompting. So let's start there. Give us some best practices on prompting whatever chatbot you are using, be it Gemini or ChatGPT or whatever.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah. And this would apply for any of these, you know, so, the mistake that most people make is they think that ChatGPT is magic and that it knows everything, right? And while it seems like magic, you're not going to get the best results if you don't educate it first. ChatGPT and any of these, they need context, right? So what I like to do is have an idea of what it is I need. Okay, so let's say that I am going to advertise a new headshot special. I would prompt with the end in mind. I would tell ChatGPT what I'm working on, and then I would ask it to do something to help me with it, right? So I would say, for example, I have a headshot special and I need to market this and book 10 headshot sessions by the end of the month. Help me come up with a marketing plan in order to do this rather than here's my, you know, pricing and, you know, ask or create a marketing plan for me, you know? So we're telling it first where we're going, right? I am doing this. Help me get there. Here, or let's brainstorm ideas on the best ways to market it, you know? And then the second thing that I would do is at the end of that prompt, I would say, before I hit enter, I'd say, what else do you need to know from me in order for us to get the best results? So that's twofold. Begin with the end in mind, tell it where you're going, ask it what else you need to know so that it can do what else it needs to know.

Pat Miller:

When you do it in that order, what are some of the things that we habitually leave out? Because if we tell it, like you say, this is what I need and don't give it the context and don't give it the end in mind, there must be things that we're consistently leaving out by switching it the way that you're suggesting. What is it coming back to you and saying, no, I need this, no, I need this, that maybe we forget about?

Kira Derryberry:

Right. Or, you know, what are we getting ahead of too? Like when when it writes something for you and you go, oh, I completely forgot to include the date that I'm doing these sessions, or I completely forgot to include how much it costs. You know, it's— you're saving yourself even time working with it in that capacity. So yeah, it gives it the opportunity to ask you stuff maybe you didn't even think of and maybe some obvious things that you left out.

Pat Miller:

What happens when you feed it successful ads? For example, staying on the same example, like I need to get 10 new bookings by the end of the month, help me build an ad and the copy and all that. Does it help if you say, here's one that worked really well last year? Here's an ad I ran before.

Kira Derryberry:

Absolutely. As much information as you possibly could do in the beginning would be fantastic. Now, I want to give you a little bit of caution here, too. It's also— it suffers from toxic positivity. Okay. As you may have experienced, right? Everything you've ever done is a great idea, right? Even a question that you ask it is a great question. Yeah. You know, so you can give it some context and show it, here's some things that worked before, but don't expect constructive criticism of it. You know, I mean, you can ask it for specific constructive criticism, but I wouldn't assume that it's going to, because it's going to tell you that what you did before was amazing.

Pat Miller:

Have you found a way to wring that out? Are there instructions you can give it to say, knock that off? Does that ever happen?

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah, as much as we want to have it knock that off, you can get that to work for a little while. Some of the best ways to do that is to go into your settings and customize the the way it interacts with you. There are actually places in there where you can drop it down and ask it to be more direct, be quirky, be funny, be serious, be, you know, more robotic. I'm using the wrong terms, but that's the dropdown list. So any ChatGPT user specifically can find those. Even the free users can find those in the settings and under customization.

Pat Miller:

Now that's like a secret I didn't know.

Kira Derryberry:

Really?

Pat Miller:

No, I didn't know that.

Kira Derryberry:

Oh my gosh. You're going to save so much time by getting ahead of time. Yeah. So there's, Let's talk about those settings.

Pat Miller:

Okay.

Kira Derryberry:

Okay. So there's some evergreen things about it. Now, I can't promise that they're always going to be in the same place or in the same order.

Pat Miller:

Sure, sure.

Kira Derryberry:

You know, but because they love to move things around in ChatGPT, that's what I've noticed in for all the versions I've played with, right? So always go to those settings and the settings and do the customizations. It's going to ask you things like the personality type, the voice you can customize because you can speak with it as well. You can put in custom global instructions for how it interacts with you always, right?

Pat Miller:

What's a global instruction? What do you mean?

Kira Derryberry:

So a global instruction, I would say, you know, like, I never want you to use em dashes when you write. Okay. I know. Now, I'm not promising you that we can get rid of those em dashes, but it's a place to go set that tone if you want to. It's not a place where you give it your writing samples or your information about like your pricing or, you know, your business. It's more of a place on how customizing how you want it to interact with you, like have you ever asked it for a solution to a problem? It gives you like 10 steps. Okay. That could be very overwhelming. So what I like to tell it to do is to give me, if there are multiple steps to, in our solution, you can give me them all, but then we're gonna break them down for me one at a time. You know, I also ask mine to periodically summarize what we've done so far. And that's so that within the same conversation, ChatGPT doesn't have to, if we are talking to the same conversation for a long time, it doesn't have to go to the beginning of the conversation to get that summary. It's kind of like, you know, so it doesn't forget things that it already talked to you about as it went. So you can set those global intents. Like every time I use this, I want it to know this about me. I want it to know how I like to work with it.

Pat Miller:

Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you for sharing that. One other question while we're just talking about ChatGPT in general, how can we get it to remember more stuff? Because it seems like I have a conversation with it, And then I go to talk with it again about the same thing and it acts like we've just met.

Kira Derryberry:

Yes. And it's so frustrating.

Pat Miller:

Oh, it drives me crazy.

Kira Derryberry:

It's so frustrating. And so it selectively remembers a lot of stuff, you know, within your own conversations. It'll go, you know, it'll remember a date that you said one time, like I'm going to be at Imaging USA, for example, on these dates. That date will come and go and it still remembers it as if it's current context. So actually in those same settings, right there, there is a section in there for memory. You can click on that memory and actually see all the individual pieces that it is set to its memory.

Pat Miller:

Wow. Okay.

Kira Derryberry:

Now I would say those memorized things should be more, again, more global things, more general things, you know? But you can also delete things that you can look through the memory and see, like, the Imaging has passed. I don't need you to remember that I have this upcoming, you know, event. But there's other places where you can get real into the nitty-gritty for giving it like a file library, you know, a repository for information about your business.

Pat Miller:

Sure.

Kira Derryberry:

That's project folders. Project folders are life-changing and they're very easy to use because, you know, they work like folders.

Pat Miller:

Okay, so let's talk about that. Now again, if you are watching and you're thinking like, open your ChatGPT and look at this while we're talking, main chat feed. And now we have over here on the side all of our previous conversations and now we have folders.

Kira Derryberry:

And you might be seeing that popped up in your, and this is free versions as well. So folders are dedicated workspaces for projects.

Pat Miller:

Okay.

Kira Derryberry:

Okay. I like to put all of my– I have a couple of different businesses, but I like to put all of my photography studio information into one folder.

Pat Miller:

Okay.

Kira Derryberry:

So I have, you know, Kira Derryberry Photography as the name of the folder. Inside that folder is every conversation I've had with ChatGPT that pertains to my business. Okay? And I can even move old conversations off that left side and start organizing it because it gets to be very cluttered, doesn't it?

Pat Miller:

Sure does.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah.

Pat Miller:

Yeah.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah. That's a mess over there. So yeah, you can do that. You also can add files that you don't have to keep uploading over and over again. And that's the big trick, right? You can actually, there's a little plus sign inside your folders. You can add, click on that plus sign and add files, and it's going to give you– I believe you can upload up to 20 files, but you can put your pricing information, your brand story in there. You can have all kinds of dedicated information responses that you would send clients, all of the services that you offer, all of those things. And then, that way, when you're working on multiple conversations within that folder, you don't have to give it that reference material anymore. It's going to check every conversation. It's going to check the reference material for information.

Pat Miller:

So it will remember more of what I'm asking it to remember.

Kira Derryberry:

Yes. And so, in my mind, what I want to do, because nobody works for me, I'm alone in my studio as a lot of photographers are, I need to get this stuff out of my head, put it into a document and then put it into this file library. And once I do that, I've cloned the knowledge. So now if I have an email, a client sends me asking for a bunch of information about booking something, I can copy and paste that client's email into a chat conversation, and it can respond as me with the relevant information because it's only as smart as you train it to be. Right?

Pat Miller:

Yeah, that's probably why mine isn't working the way that I want it to.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah, exactly. You can even put writing samples in there for yourself so that it sounds more like you.

Pat Miller:

One thing I've had some success with is putting in transcripts of the podcast. So when it's time to write like me, it's reading the words that I've used when I speak. So it's kind of fast-forwarded that a little bit, which is kind of nice.

Kira Derryberry:

Nice. So have you ever— you might consider creating a document that's a workflow for how you always need the same information every single time for every podcast that you do.

Pat Miller:

Oh, that'd be good.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah. So you could create a dedicated document that says, when I give you a transcript, you give me these things without you having to re-prompt it every single time.

Pat Miller:

Yeah. Let's just knock off the interview and just keep recording a workshop here on how you can make my business better. That would be– I'd appreciate that. You mentioned workflows, and let's talk about harnessing ChatGPT in our operating procedures and our day-to-day workflows inside the business. How are you doing that? Are you— because maybe some of it's photography-based, but some of it might be just operations-based. So how are you getting a better operation using ChatGPT?

Kira Derryberry:

Almost all of the work that I do in ChatGPT is operations, I would say. You know, it's all the other professions that I don't have degrees in.

Pat Miller:

Yeah, right.

Kira Derryberry:

You know what I mean? It's helping me with my bookkeeping, my accountant accounting. I do Profit First. It does my Profit First calculations for me.

Pat Miller:

Nice.

Kira Derryberry:

You know, and so I just dump a number in, and it just gives me, you know, where I'm supposed to allocate everything. You know, so that's definitely how I'm using it as part of my daily workflow. The window is always up and available to me when I'm in my car and I am, you know, you're in a long car drive and you're like, oh, I really need to come up with some ideas for some project that I'm working on. Yeah, I talk to it. I have— I use the audio feature and I have a conversation brainstorm marketing ideas while I'm driving so I can, you know, so I'm getting work done while I'm putting my makeup on sometimes. And it's nice because that transcript of that conversation is still there if I want to go back and look at it back at my desk.

Pat Miller:

Did you name your ChatGPT?

Kira Derryberry:

I asked my ChatGPT to name himself.

Pat Miller:

No. And?

Kira Derryberry:

And, well, the first thing that it came back with was kind of like, oh, I don't know, maybe something fun like Sparky. I was like, no, a human name. Human name.

Pat Miller:

Not Sparky.

Kira Derryberry:

No, no. And it named itself Alex.

Pat Miller:

Okay.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah, I know, I know. I was like, well, okay. But I mean, you know, I'm not here to tell them that's a bad name. That's what they named themselves.

Pat Miller:

Yeah. It is about making the robots mad. We're not gonna do that.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah. Again, I didn't go, I was like, I mean, but maybe Sparky is your nickname. How about that?

Pat Miller:

Yeah. When you're being nice, I'll call you Sparky. Otherwise, it's Alex when you're in trouble.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah.

Pat Miller:

Mm-hmm. I've heard you say a comparison between Google and the phone book when you're talking about ChatGPT. Can you explain that? 'Cause I thought that was really good.

Kira Derryberry:

Oh, my analogy between Google and the phone book. You might have to jog my memory a little bit on it.

Pat Miller:

We're talking about how when we install it in the business, that there's a way that you can use it to search for stuff, or it's like a repository of everything you're doing. And it was— you kind of explained it in a way about how we can get ChatGPT to behave inside the business.

Kira Derryberry:

Oh yeah. Okay. So there's so many ways that you can use it as both. It's so much more than a search engine and so much more than a research tool. It's all the things All of those things combined. There's new features in it like deep research. So for example, if I wanted to, instead of just looking and going through the phone book and like looking up a zip code and saying, I think there are some nice houses in this zip code, what if I could say I am looking to increase my market of clients that have X amount of income per year? Right? And I want to know the affluent neighborhoods that these people would be in. A lot of that stuff is in public record. So you can— that's the same way that, you know, whatever college we all went to, that they're calling us and asking us to donate money. It's the same way. It's the same way. We're qualifying clients. They're qualifying donors the same way. Okay? So deep research would allow ChatGPT to go out and actually do the same kind of research for fundraising or, you know, and find the market that you might want to reach out to and then tell you the neighborhoods that would be relevant, not names per se, but maybe places that you want to do some, you know, email or mail marketing to.

Pat Miller:

Illinois State University should know that graduates of Illinois State University have no money to give to Illinois State University. They should know that.

Kira Derryberry:

I keep telling University of Alabama the same thing.

Pat Miller:

Yeah, it's a no. No, thank you. And I appreciated the education, but we're done here. What about social media? Because people try to use it for social media. How are you using it for social media? Because A lot of people hate writing for social media. So how are you handling it?

Kira Derryberry:

Okay. I too hate writing for social media.

Pat Miller:

We're aligned.

Kira Derryberry:

I'm not a fan of an emoji. I'm not a fan of a hashtag. I'm not good at it. You know, I'm on this line between, you know, millennial and Gen X, and I don't want to do that, but I also know how to do that, you know? So yeah, I'm real bad at it. I used to just ask it to write me a caption for something, but now what I'm doing is I'm giving it context. Here's a client that I've worked with for many years. These kids are growing up quickly. You know, I've known them for so long and they've spent a lot of time with me. Here's a recent portrait that I did. I want to post on Instagram and I'll show it the picture. Help, you know, write me a caption for this. Give me relevant organic driven hashtags as well.

Pat Miller:

Okay. And it does all that.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah.

Pat Miller:

Will it research as well?

Kira Derryberry:

It can. If you want to turn that feature on, you only get so many of those opportunities per month with a regular account. Like you'll run out. So I try and save those for a lot of information, a lot of content. But yes, I'll say use relevant organic SEO hashtags to get me, you know, the best results.

Pat Miller:

And then are you doing it for tonnage as well? So like, here is all the social I need to do for the week and I do this many posts a week, and you have it draft all of that, or do you do case by case like you just described?

Kira Derryberry:

I have done both. Okay? But when I have it draft all of it, it gets a little complicated because how do I tell it this image is for that and this image is for that? But what if— well, let's dream with me for a minute, right?

Pat Miller:

Yep.

Kira Derryberry:

A little more complicated setup, a little more advanced setup. But for those who might be listening, what if you gave it access to a Dropbox or a Google Drive folder, right? And you populated that with social media images labeled correctly so it can identify it.

Pat Miller:

Sure.

Kira Derryberry:

And then you had it help you create a spreadsheet that matched those images to maybe a field that gave context for each one of those images.

Pat Miller:

Right.

Kira Derryberry:

And then allowed it to write in bulk for you. So you're not just uploading and explaining, uploading and explaining. Right? It could actually reference those files and then maybe even create a document for you. Let me take you a little step further.

Pat Miller:

Keep going, keep going.

Kira Derryberry:

Because the problem is, is that, yeah, it can write a lot of marketing for you, it could write a lot of social media posts for you, but none of them are any good if you don't use them, if you don't implement, right? You know, and I think we get stuck on the scheduling and the posting and the whatever. I don't know how many marketing calendars I've made and like done the first week and then walked away. So what if you could also let ChatGPT post those things for you.

Pat Miller:

Wait, hold on. ChatGPT can post?

Kira Derryberry:

It can post those things.

Pat Miller:

Stop it.

Kira Derryberry:

Yep. Agent mode.

Pat Miller:

I heard, okay, now by the time someone watches this, agents might be running the world.

Kira Derryberry:

We don't know.

Pat Miller:

But as of today, in early January 26th, the agent story that I've been told is it's gonna be great, but it isn't great yet. What's going on?

Kira Derryberry:

And that's true. And that's true. It is better than it was even a month ago.

Pat Miller:

Right.

Kira Derryberry:

Okay.

Pat Miller:

Tell me how it works.

Kira Derryberry:

By the time this comes out, who knows? Okay, so an agent, it's not perfect. Okay? It's a little clunky. Yeah. But the concept behind it is that ChatGPT churns up a virtual machine. Okay? If you're following along, that's basically just an instance of another computer desktop with a browser.

Pat Miller:

Sure.

Kira Derryberry:

Okay. It then allows you to— I call it driving, but, you know, take the keys or whatever. Put in your login information for any cloud-based login place. And then you tell it, okay, I've done— now I'm handing it back to you. And as long as you've given it a task to complete, it can do those tasks for you on that website. Yeah.

Pat Miller:

And it's working?

Kira Derryberry:

It's working. But again, caution, caution here, right? Yes. Yes, the reason that it works is because you can log in yourself. Are they using it? I don't know. So we're talking don't do your banking on this. You know what I mean? Sensitive things, be careful. And even it doesn't like you to browse away from the window while it's working because it wants you to watch it work.

Pat Miller:

That's weird.

Kira Derryberry:

Is it weird or it's just worried about accidentally messing up something?

Pat Miller:

Oh, I guess that's true.

Kira Derryberry:

Because you can stop it. You know what I mean? You can see it working. So I've had it do things in my Gmail, organize my Gmail for me, fix all these unread emails that I've let, you know, go forever and ever. Create rules, organize mailing lists. I've even had it set up Zoom meetings for classes that I'm teaching, write the drafts for reminder emails for those Zoom meetings, and then put them in the drafts for me. And that's all with agent mode. Could I have done those things? Yes. But is it doing that while I'm in my other window over here doing something else? Also, yes.

Pat Miller:

That's a different way of operating though. You must be saying to yourself before you touch a computer, can AI do this for me before I have to?

Kira Derryberry:

I always think of that.

Pat Miller:

But normal people don't think that way.

Kira Derryberry:

Well. I think a lot of people would say I might not be normal.

Pat Miller:

No, but it's good though. Like you're clearly enlightened on this issue. That's why you're getting so much out of it.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah, I guess so. And I mean, I'm self-taught, you know, as are all of us for a lot of this stuff, like photography, you know, but I am a, what do they call it? Hyperfixation. Hyper-subject fixation. Once you get interested in your thing. Once I get interested, I really want to understand and I really want to know. And this is one of those rabbit holes I never have not been able to climb out of. Yeah, so it's exciting, right?

Pat Miller:

Are you having fun?

Kira Derryberry:

I'm having so much fun. I'm actually having a lot more fun than I probably should be. I should probably focus a lot more on photography.

Pat Miller:

Yeah, it's a whole new thing, photography or whatever.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah.

Pat Miller:

Let's talk about specifically about business planning. Now you mentioned that Profit First is being done inside your AI. What else are you doing working on the business? Talk about social, but any other business-y planning kind of objectives, things?

Kira Derryberry:

Yes. So there are several even custom GPTs that exist. So when you're in your ChatGPT, you're going to see a section called Explore GPTs or GPTs on that left-hand side. That's basically a marketplace that's free that has all kinds of user-created custom taskmasters. They do all kinds of really specific stuff. ChatGPT, the company that owns them, OpenAI, has created a series of really, really nice ones that they've created. To me, that makes them a little bit better than just the user-created ones, right? There is one called Data Analyst that I want to turn you on to, and it's been on— it's like always in their top custom GPTs. Data Analyst is one that you can use to crunch your numbers. Okay, so if you are doing quarterly reporting and you're just pulling out of your, you know, all your sales, all your marketing, the money in, the money out, here's what sold the most, here's what product sold the least, here's what worked the best. You could put all of those documents into Data Analyst and have it show you trends, have it show you what's working, maybe help you plan ideas for how to build something back up? What do we need to allocate resource-wise to other things? I mean, that I think, an invaluable tool. I mean, most of us are paying $20 a month for this thing, right?

Pat Miller:

You know, and it's nothing, right? In the grand scheme of things, that's nothing.

Kira Derryberry:

Nope. Yeah. So that's one that I highly recommend using, especially for business planning. And if you're not a numbers person, I'm not a numbers person despite me liking, you know, this techie stuff. I don't like numbers at all. You know, so I love that because it just, just tell me what's working, what's not working, what do I need to do next? Or what should I focus on next?

Pat Miller:

I think we all want the productivity out of it, but we may not have the intellectual curiosity that you have to plow through it and learn how to do it. So if someone's open to the idea, but they're not using it every day like you are, are there any best practices or things that you would recommend? Like, hey, I know you don't love it, but start doing at least this every other day or something. Can you think of a task or a behavior that would get them on the right track?

Kira Derryberry:

Yes, I would probably suggest— I know it can be overwhelming. It's like learning a new software. You know what I mean? And imagine that you were just learning Photoshop for the first time or, you know, some of us are learning Lightroom for the first time. That would be intense.

Pat Miller:

Yeah.

Kira Derryberry:

You know, it was intense when it happened, you know? And now it's like breathing for me anyway, those things. So understand that practicing with it every day is going to make you better at using it. There's also not a wrong way to use it. You know what I mean? I mean, the way you're using it now, if you're listening and you're using it now, and it is, is a way to use it, you know, but there might be a more efficient way to use it. I like to kind of think of when people start realizing the bigger possibilities with ChatGPT, it sort of unlocks this, this part of their brain that starts thinking differently. And that's how it worked for me. Yeah, is what— that's how it worked for me once I realized that magic was possible, then magic kind of became possible. You know what I mean? And with ChatGPT, there's not really a no. It'll say, I can't do that, but there are ways that you can just keep asking it, you know, I know you can do that. Yeah, you know, if I were to ask you to do that and you approached it a different way, how would you do it? And you go, you're right, I can do that. Here's how, you know. So it's hard to get a solid no out of it. So you're not using it wrong. You could be using it better. How about that?

Pat Miller:

Well, that's what the interview's been about.

Kira Derryberry:

Yeah.

Pat Miller:

And you've definitely turned us on to a bunch of ideas in order to do that. I know you have so much to share if we were to keep on recording, but if someone wants to continue to follow you and learn more, how can we do that?

Kira Derryberry:

I would love for you, if you wanna learn more about this, you need to follow me at Boss Level AI. Okay? That's bosslevel-ai.com.

Pat Miller:

Okay, we will definitely do that. Kyra, thank you so much for coming back on the show. I appreciate it.

Kira Derryberry:

Thank you so much for— this has been great.

Pat Miller:

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Professional Photographer Podcast, live from Imaging USA inside the Sony Cinema Line Studios. A big thanks to Sony for doing all the hard work to make us look good. Now, if you're still watching the episode, that means you enjoyed the show, which means you should be a subscriber of the show. So click subscribe on whatever platform you're on. Also leave us a like and a comment so we know what the guest said that really resonated with you. The other thing is, if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, what's going on here? Because PPA offers terrific benefits like incredible equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. Join now ppa.com. That's ppa.com. I'm Pat Miller, host of the show and the founder of the Small Business Owners Community. I appreciate you tuning in. We'll see you right here next time. Take care.

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