Hi all, I am relatively new here and new to using AI. At almost 60, tech is not my strong skill. That being said, I am not new to business operations and sales. In the past year I have opened two businesses of my own. The first, I paid an outside legal firm to set it up with thousands of dollars in associated costs. The other I did A-Z as described below. I only paid the Gov't fees. It took me about 3 hours in total. Good Luck! How To Start a Small Business in 2025 (With ChatGPT As Your Co‑Pilot) You don’t need to wander around in the dark to start a business. Here’s a practical, step‑by‑step roadmap you can follow and document inside a ChatGPT “project” as you go. 1. Create Your ChatGPT Project 1. Open ChatGPT and create a new Project using your future business name (or a working title if you’re not sure yet). 2. In your first message, do a full brain‑dump: Prompt you can use:“Act as a startup co‑pilot. I’m creating a new business. Here’s my brain‑dump of what I want to build: [paste everything]. Help me organize this into a clear plan with next steps and questions I should answer.” 2. Build a Simple Expense & Budget Spreadsheet Before you spend real money, track it. 1. Open Google Sheets or Excel. 2. Create columns for: Date, Vendor, Category (legal, domain, branding, software, etc.), Amount, One‑time vs Recurring, Notes. 3. Log every expense as you go. Prompt you can use:“Create a starter expense and budget template in table form for a new small business, including typical early costs like state filing fees, domains, trademarks, software, and marketing. I’ll copy this into Google Sheets.” 3. Name Your Business & Secure Your Domain You want a name that: - Is easy to say and spell - Has an available .com (or good alternative like .ai, .io, etc.) - Isn’t obviously in conflict with an existing brand in your space 1. Brainstorm 10–20 possible names with ChatGPT. 2. Check domain availability on sites like GoDaddy, Porkbun, or Namecheap. 3. Expect to pay roughly $10–$30/year for a standard domain.

Everyone loves the victories. No one loves the chapters where nothing works. No traction. No proof you’re on the right path. No one clapping. Just you… doing the work… wondering if any of it matters. But here’s the part people miss: These “impossible” chapters are where you build the actual advantage...the resilience, grit, clarity, and skill set that make you look “overnight successful” later. The chapter isn’t the problem. Your expectation that it should feel good is the problem. Keep moving. Let your actions drag your emotions along for the ride. Do the reps when it’s boring, lonely, or unclear. Because this is just one chapter. And if you quit here, you never get to the part where it all pays off. Take one small action today...especially if you don’t feel ready. That’s how you separate yourself from everyone who’s still waiting for the “right time.”

Please see an update for me this morning in the comments. This disaster is going to make me a much better founder. I got up at 3:45 AM today to begin rebuilding my company. Original post follows: I’m standing here writing this in tears, and I want to give a very sobering warning to anyone who is considering upgrading from ChatGPT plus to a business Team’s account on ChatGPT. There is a a glitch that was unknown to me before I started this process, but is apparently well known in the open AI developer community that all of your data is deleted when you migrate it and you can’t get it back. Everything I’ve been building for months is just …. Gone. Other than what I had saved and backed up in my personal files, my entire ChatGPT history has been zeroed out, and it really hurts because this was like my external brain for both home and my business that I’m building. Open AI acknowledged that their company documentation failed to include a warning that all of my personal data would be deleted and everything that I have been working on since day one in my accounts has been deleted, and there’s nothing I can do to get it back even though I followed their exact instructions on merging my personal and business accounts, to the letter. I just paid $618 to upgrade my account to two seats on a business plan and merged the data from my personal account to my business plan. Within a minute or two of that transaction going through as I was following the step-by-step worksheet that ChatGPT itself printed out for me. My accounts froze, and I had to log out. I logged back in everything was blank. When I used my previous emails that I had my accounts tied to to log back in ChatGPT opened free tier accounts using my business email that I just paid $618 to open my business account on. I’ve escalated this to ChatGPT Support and they were extremely unhelpful. Basically they said sorry it’s a known issue and there’s nothing we can do. I was planning on shipping a product today using the ChatGPT business plan because it offers a secure link so that I’m not sending out raw proprietary JSON code.