How to Build a GPT That Works Like You, Not Just Talks Like You
Everyone’s talking about custom GPTs. Fewer are building ones that actually reflect how their brain works.
As AI tools flood the market, it’s easy to create something that mimics your voice. But if you’re a CMO, founder, or GTM leader, what you actually need is leverage. A digital twin GPT that scales your judgment, not just your style.
This isn’t about novelty. It’s about operational edge. When done right, a digital twin GPT becomes part of your system: drafting POVs, enabling teams, refining messaging, and accelerating decisions.
I built my own last year and have been refining it ever since. It started as a content assistant, but quickly evolved into something more strategic. A tool that mirrors how I think about GTM clarity, team enablement, and AI in execution. It now drafts positioning, critiques messaging, synthesizes research, and even helps onboard collaborators faster. Like any system, it gets sharper the more you use it.
Here’s how to build one that actually works.
Why Digital Twin GPTs Matter
A true digital twin isn’t just a writing assistant. It’s a reflection of how you think, prioritize, and communicate. It understands not just what you say, but why you say it.
For marketing leaders, that means:
Scaling your POV without scaling your calendar
Giving teams access to your thinking in real time
Operationalizing your values and standards across content, strategy, and enablement
When used well, it reduces bottlenecks, raises the floor of execution, and frees you up to focus on the parts of leadership that can’t be delegated.
What You Actually Need to Build One
1. Inputs that reflect your voice and values Most people train GPTs on tone samples. That’s not enough.
Pull together:
Strategy decks you’ve built or reviewed
Messaging docs and narrative frameworks
Past content (blog posts, interviews, ghostwritten pieces)
Internal emails or memos that reflect your decision style
This is about giving the model a rich, strategic substrate. Not just teaching it how to write like you, but how to think like you.
2. A strong positioning layer Before anything else, define what your GPT stands for:
What’s your lens on the world? What are the core beliefs it should reflect?
Who is the target audience? What assumptions should it make about them?
What topics, tones, or tropes should it avoid entirely?
The clearer the positioning, the more usable the GPT becomes across your content and ops workflows.
3. Clear use cases Don’t build for everything. Build for what matters:
Drafting LinkedIn posts, responses, and blogs
Summarizing strategy docs or meeting notes
Creating team enablement briefs or onboarding content
Coaching newer marketers using your frameworks
Start narrow, prove value, and expand from there.
Tools and Setup: How to Build It
Use OpenAI’s Custom GPT builder. When prompted:
Upload your docs and reference files
Write a system prompt that outlines your tone, audience, beliefs, and structure
Set clear instructions for how it should respond (for example, “be strategic, not hypey,” “avoid futurist buzzwords,” etc.)
Test with real-world tasks like drafting a POV on execution velocity, refining messaging for a CMO audience, or writing a comment on a LinkedIn post
You’re not building a chatbot. You’re building an extension of your GTM system.
How to Actually Use It
Here’s where most digital twins go unused. They’re built for vanity, not utility.
The best ones integrate into workflows:
Reviewing or redlining team drafts
Drafting first passes on comms, posts, or strategy notes
Acting as a sounding board before meetings or pitches
Enabling your team with distilled versions of your thinking
You can even pair your GPT with SOPs, templates, and sales narratives to make it a living part of team onboarding.
The more context it has, and the clearer the boundaries, the more reliable and valuable it becomes.
Something to think about
You don’t need a GPT that sounds like you. You need one that thinks like you, so your team can move with clarity, speed, and alignment.
Done well, a digital twin isn’t a gimmick. It’s a competitive advantage. And yes, my E-bot helped me write this article.
