Getting Started with ChatGPT
ChatGPT for Beginners: A Plain-English Guide for People Who Run Companies
ChatGPT for beginners, in one paragraph: create a free account at chatgpt.com, then have your first conversation about one real task from this week—a draft email, a document to summarize, a plan to outline. This guide walks through that first conversation step by step, plus the three habits and four copy-paste prompts that make the tool stick.
1-on-1 with Pete Enestrom, on your actual work
Written by Pete Enestrom
Yale & Columbia, ex-Microsoft & Intel — 1-on-1 AI coaching for executives
Your coach’s background
If you've never opened ChatGPT, this guide is for you. Not a version of you who's “into technology”—you, as you are, running a company or a division, with a full inbox and no interest in becoming an AI enthusiast. Nothing here assumes you've used an AI tool, and nothing asks you to care how the technology works under the hood. You only need to know how to type an email.
Here's my one bias up front: skip the “testing” phase most beginners start with. Asking ChatGPT for a limerick or a trivia answer teaches you nothing. The fastest way to learn this tool is to hand it a real task—something you actually owe someone this week—and let the stakes do the teaching. That's how I start every executive I coach, and it's how this guide is organized.
What follows covers your first week only: account setup, your first real conversation, the three habits that matter, and four prompt cards you can copy verbatim. When you're ready to build ChatGPT into a full working week, my ChatGPT for work guide picks up where this one ends. And if you've been weighing a course, the honest answer is that you don't need one to begin—this page and an hour of practice will get you there.
Getting started with ChatGPT: your first conversation in five steps
Everything below works on the free plan at chatgpt.com. Set aside twenty minutes; you'll finish with a real piece of work done, not a demo.
Create a free account (about 30 seconds)
Go to chatgpt.com and sign up with your work email, or continue with a Google or Microsoft account if that's simpler. There is nothing to install—ChatGPT runs in the same browser you're reading this in—and the free plan is genuinely enough to learn on. Don't think about paid plans, model names, or settings yet; none of them matter in your first week.
Pick one real task from this week
Open your to-do list or your sent folder and choose something you actually owe: a follow-up email you've been rewriting in your head, a long document you need the point of, a decision you've been circling. Real stakes produce real learning—when the output matters to you, you'll immediately see what's good, what's off, and what to ask for next.
Brief ChatGPT like a capable new hire
This is the single biggest unlock for a beginner. Before the ask, give ChatGPT the same context you'd give a smart person on their first day: one line about who you are, one about who this is for, and what a good result looks like. Then paste the material—the email thread, the document, the notes. A one-line prompt gets a generic answer; a three-line brief gets a working draft.
Treat the first answer as a first draft
ChatGPT's first response is the start of the conversation, not the end of it. Reply the way you would to a person: “shorter,” “less formal,” “the second paragraph misses the point—here's why.” The third version is usually where the value is, and getting there takes two minutes of typing, not two days of redrafting.
Save what worked before you close the tab
When a prompt produces something you'd actually send, copy the exact prompt into a notes file. Do this from day one and within a month you'll have a small personal playbook—your email prompt, your summary prompt, your prep prompt—and each one gets sharper every time you reuse it.
What are the three habits that matter?
Most beginner advice drowns you in features. Ignore the features. The people who get real value from ChatGPT in their first month share three habits, and none of the three requires anything but a browser and a few minutes a day.
The first habit is context. ChatGPT knows nothing about your business until you tell it, so every useful conversation starts with a brief: who you are, who the output is for, what good looks like. The second habit is draft-then-refine. Beginners accept the first answer; practitioners treat the first answer as a rough draft and push back once or twice, which is where the quality actually lives. The third habit is saving what works—a prompt that produced a result you'd send is an asset, and keeping it in a notes file means next week's task starts from your best version, not from a blank box.
Notice what's not on that list: clever phrasing, technical vocabulary, or any understanding of how the model works. Every one of the three habits is a management habit you already have—briefing people well, giving feedback on drafts, and keeping what works. ChatGPT rewards the same instincts a good executive already practices.
Your first week: four prompt cards to copy
Copy these prompts verbatim, replace the brackets with your material, and adjust the last line to taste. One card per day is a good pace for week one—by Friday you'll have four finished pieces of real work.
I run [one line about your company]. I need to reply to this email: [paste the email]. Draft a reply that [what the reply must do—e.g., says no politely but keeps the relationship warm]. Under 150 words, plain language, no corporate speak. Then give me one shorter alternative.
The “one shorter alternative” line doubles the value. Comparing two drafts teaches you what you actually prefer faster than any tutorial.
Here is a [report / contract / board pack / article]: [paste the text]. I'm a [your role] and I care most about [what you care about]. Summarize it in five bullet points, then list anything in it that could affect a decision I need to make this month. If something is unclear, say so rather than guessing.
That last sentence gives ChatGPT permission to say “I don't know”—which is what makes its summaries trustworthy.
I'm thinking through [the situation—e.g., whether to raise prices on our service contracts]. Here are the facts: [a few lines]. Don't give me a recommendation yet. First, ask me the five questions a good advisor would ask, then list three options I haven't mentioned, with one risk for each.
Asking for questions before advice is the highest-leverage sentence in this guide. Steal it for every hard decision.
I need to create [a project plan / a talk outline / an agenda for our leadership offsite]. Audience: [who it's for]. Constraints: [time, budget, headcount—whatever applies]. Give me a first-draft outline with sections and rough timings, and flag the two or three decisions I need to make before this is final.
A rough outline in ninety seconds beats a blank page every time. Your judgment is the value; the blank page was the bottleneck.
What should a beginner ignore in week one?
Almost everything else. The model picker, the settings menu, the app store full of add-ons, the debate about which AI tool is “best”—none of it matters until you've had twenty or thirty real conversations on the default setup. Plenty of people will also tell you that you need to learn “prompt engineering.” You don't. Prompt engineering is a job title for specialists; what you need is the ability to brief clearly and give honest feedback, and you've been doing both for decades.
The one thing worth deciding early is what you will and won't paste. Treat anything you put into ChatGPT as shared with an outside vendor: fine for drafts and material your company's policy allows, not for personal data or anything under NDA unless your company has a written policy that permits it. The privacy guide on this site walks through the settings in plain English when you're ready.
Where do you go after the first week?
Everything on this page, you can do alone, for free, this week. A lot of people should stop there for a while—self-teaching absolutely gets you fluent at the basics. The ceiling I've watched executives hit comes around month two, when the generic prompts are running and the question shifts: which of your workflows—the way your firm writes proposals, prepares for board meetings, follows up after sales calls—should be rebuilt around these tools, and in what order.
That's the point where a human teacher—not an AI coach bot, not another video course—earns its keep. In a 1-on-1 session we open your real workload, find the hours ChatGPT can genuinely hand back to you, and build prompts and habits around your business, your voice, and your risk tolerance. This guide is the map; the session is walking it together on your terrain.
1-on-1 coaching
Want a teacher, not another tutorial?
Guides get you started. A 1-on-1 session gets you fluent—built on your actual work, at your pace.
Your coach
Coached by Pete Enestrom
Yale and Columbia grad, former Microsoft and Intel, and a venture-backed exited founder. Pete has spent the last four and a half years going deep on every major AI tool, and he teaches the way operators learn: on your real work, at your pace, with nothing assumed.
Common questions
Straight answers, the way I'd give them across a table.
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