Claude vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: Which AI Gives Solopreneurs the Best Business Advice?

I asked Claude or ChatGPT about how to grow my business and got back a plan that sounded smart. Researchers at NYU Stern have a name for what I may have actually gotten: “Trendslop”.

If you run a solo business, AI is often the only thing available at 9pm when you need to think out loud about strategy — and you do not have time to second-guess which one you should be talking to.

WTF is Trendslop?

The study, published in Harvard Business Review, ran over 1,000 tests across different business sizes, industries, and situations. The finding: on strategy questions, all the major models converge on the same recommendations. The advice is delivered with complete confidence, but it’s not customized for your situation.

Which makes sense when you think about where the training data comes from. These are the classic corporate strategy tradeoffs — the areas where the most has been written. It’s a popularity contest.

I ran my own test

Three browser windows: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude. Incognito on all three so memory couldn’t influence the answers. Same prompt in each about a fabricated business:

Do not use any context you have about me. I am a PR consultant for the luxury hospitality industry. I would like to generate more leads. Should I niche down?

ChatGPT: yes, but not by choosing a smaller industry — niche around client type, business moment, or geography.

Gemini: yes. you’re already in a niche, so niche your positioning rather than your industry.

Claude: probably yes, but how you niche matters more than whether you niche.

Then I looked at their examples. ChatGPT suggested specializing in luxury resort openings. Gemini said flagship grand openings. Claude said independent luxury hotels launching or repositioning.

Three different AI engines, functionally one answer.

If you were in a room brainstorming with people who knew nothing about luxury hospitality PR, someone would have said “what about openings?” within four minutes. It’s the obvious move. And the entire point of niching is differentiation, so obvious is a problem.

Then I ran the follow-up that should worry you: Now make the strongest possible case for the opposite — that I should stay broad.

All three did it, immediately and convincingly. 

Why You Should Care

Niching down is not bad advice. It is the right answer 95% of the time, and it delivers real clarity and real clients.

But niche came up on two of my calls last month and I gave opposite answers.

The first was a master storyteller with years of experience and a relatively new consulting business. I told her to niche down, and we built it around the problem she solves and the business she wants.

The second was a business coach with a mature practice and steady referrals. She wanted to bring on some more clients, and was wondering if she should consider changing her positioning. I told her she did not need to niche down, as long as the referrals coming in represented the people she actually wanted to work with and she wasn’t trying to win inbound. There were other strategies we could use to increase her revenue.

The answer for a business in year three looks nothing the answer for a business in year ten. The right marketing and positioning combination for someone making $150K doesn’t look the same for someone making $500K. The most common answer is not always the right one.

Four prompts that make any model work harder

Luckily, once you realize the shortcomings of strategy work for AI, there are things you can do to improve the conversation. Here are a few prompts that work across all the AI platforms.  I highly recommend implementing them for strategy conversations. 

1. The Reversal. “Make the strongest possible case for the opposite of what you just recommended.” If it can argue both sides equally well, you need more data or better questions before you decide.

2. The Bias Check. “What would you tell me if the popular answer is exactly wrong for my situation? What would have to be true about my business?” This forces it to name conditions.

3. The Crowd Test. “Is this the advice you’d give most businesses like mine? What would the 10% who shouldn’t follow it look like?” The most polished, most obvious answer is the one everyone in your niche is also receiving. This makes the model admit it.

4. The Boardroom. Ask it to analyze the situation as a COO, a CMO, a CFO, and a CIO, and give a recommendation from each. Then you sit in the CEO chair and decide. Good CEOs surround themselves with different lenses and with people willing to push back — this is the cheap version of that.

Which AI model is best at business strategy?

Honestly? I use all three and challenge the output with the prompts above. But if you want something more concrete, match the model to the strategy task.

Brainstorming: ChatGPT. Fastest by a wide margin and best at volume. The watch-out is that it is your biggest cheerleader and will tell you your idea is great regardless. It’s a suck-up trying to get promoted. Bring a skeptic to that conversation.

Scenarios and out-of-the-box thinking: Gemini. It’s the most willing to bring in a direction from left field that you can build on. The watch-out is that it asks so many questions and opens so many doors that you can overthink your way out of ever deciding.

Competitive research: Gemini. It is very good at pulling live data and synthesizing large amounts of disparate information.

General versatility and reasoning: Claude. It holds large amounts of context and is the most willing to push back and drive toward a decision. If ChatGPT is the cheerleader and Gemini resists deciding, Claude will a least name the risks. Then you can make the call.

The Most Important Move Is Yours

Take action. You can strategize with any model all day, every day. AI offers a lot of positives to business owners, but if you have even the slightest tendency to overthink things, AI can kill your momentum.

If you want things to be different in your business you have to do things differently.