Claim your business in ChatGPT What actually happened, and the content
Updated after watching your 67 second recording. You did not get a claim, you got a waitlist, and that is a better piece of content than the walkthrough I planned. This page covers what really happens, the one thing worth retrying before we cut anything, and the five pieces built around the real result. Tap Approve or Needs changes on each card, pick a chip on each decision, then Send my review at the bottom. Your progress saves if you close it.
What your screen recording shows
You reached a waitlist, not a claim. The flow ran: chatgpt.com/business-hub, the "Add your business to ChatGPT" modal, Get started, then a question reading "How do customers usually interact with Marathon Creative?" with two paths, At a physical location or Through a website. You took the physical location path and the next screen read "Join the waitlist to create Marathon Creative. We're gradually opening access to more businesses." You joined, and it ended on "You're on the waitlist. We'll email you when you can continue."
Two details worth noting. There was never a search-and-pick-your-listing step, which means Marathon has no existing listing to claim and you were routed into creating one. And the profile preview on the right had already filled in business hours, Central Time, Monday to Friday 9 to 5, so something is feeding it data about you already. Nobody can see that profile yet, but the skeleton exists.
The one thing to retry before we cut anything
Run it again and take the "Through a website" path instead. OpenAI's own documentation says online businesses have the widest access at launch, and that local businesses are the restricted group. The branch you picked is the restricted one. Marathon genuinely sells and books through its website, so that answer is honest, not a workaround. Sixty seconds tells us whether the waitlist is Marathon specific or branch specific, and the answer changes the entire video: either we show the claim completing, or we have proof the gate is real and the piece becomes the only honest post in the category. Worth doing on the same screen recording.
How it is supposed to work, once you are off the queue
1
Open Business Hub
Sign in to ChatGPT, Business Hub is in the sidebar, or go straight to chatgpt.com/business-hub. No Enterprise plan and no ads account needed.
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2
Find your business, or get routed into creating it
If a listing exists you search the name and pick it. If none exists, as with Marathon, you answer how customers interact with you and the hub tries to create one. This is where the waitlist sits today.
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3
Verify the business
Business phone by text or automated call, business email, your website domain, or connect Shopify. You never reached this screen.
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4
Verify yourself with Persona
A separate identity check, government ID plus proof you can represent the business. Everything stays locked until this clears: edits, insights, product feeds, and the blue check.
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5
Fill the profile, then watch the insights
Business details and links, product feeds for retailers, then aggregated insights: mentions, website clicks, and the discovery topics your site gets cited under.
How easy, honestly
The part you can do takes about 60 seconds. The part that matters is not open to you yet. That is the honest headline and it should be the honest headline in the content. For a business with an existing listing the published process is roughly 10 to 15 minutes split across two reviews, a verification code and a Persona ID check, with OpenAI emailing each result. For a Greater Houston service business creating a profile from scratch, today, it is a queue.
Free at launch. OpenAI's monetization lead has left open the possibility of charging later, so free is a today fact, not a forever fact. Claiming carries no guarantee of better placement or more sales, and we should say that out loud. It is accuracy control plus measurement, not a ranking hack.
What is true, and the three catches that matter to our audience
Thing
Status
What it means for a Marathon client
Claiming a profile
Open
Eligible businesses where ChatGPT operates. Owner or authorized rep, no Enterprise agreement.
Local stores and restaurants
Limited
Can claim only a listing that already exists in the US. They cannot add themselves. A lot of our home service clients will land here, so the tutorial has to answer "what if mine is not there".
Business Agent, the AI rep that answers customer questions
Not for most of our list
US ecommerce and online service businesses with a website only. A Tomball roofer or a listing agent does not get one yet. Do not sell this in the video.
Aggregated only, and only above a volume threshold. A small local business may see nothing for a while. Worth saying so we do not create complaints.
Someone else already claimed it
Handled
Dispute ownership from the ••• menu. Also: claiming the main brand does not claim its individual locations, which matters for brokerages and multi-location trades.
Creating a profile that does not exist yet
Waitlist
Confirmed on your own screen today. Marathon had no listing, the physical location path led straight to a queue. Expect most of our Houston service clients to land exactly here.
Real estate agents and brokerages
Check per account
Eligibility depends on industry, location, and OpenAI's own integrity checks. I could not verify a specific real estate outcome, so the content should tell people to check rather than claim it works for them.
Sources: OpenAI's launch post and Business Hub help article, the Businesses in ChatGPT policy page, and the VentureBeat and Reuters coverage of the 10 November beta. I could not log into Business Hub from my side, Cloudflare blocked the automated browser, so every screen in the tutorial has to be captured from your screen or Hector's.
Blocker you should know about before we promise a blog post
www.marathoncreative.co still serves the old Wix site. The redesigned Astro site lives on pages.dev with no custom domain attached, so there is no working path for me to publish a tutorial page to the real domain tonight. Either it goes up in Wix by hand, or the written tutorial ships as a PDF one-pager plus a carousel and the email carries the full steps. That is decision 6 at the bottom.
What I would ship
1. Vertical video, 55 seconds
Posts tomorrow
New angle, built on what you actually filmed. The hook is the failure, not the feature. Every other account in this category is reposting OpenAI's announcement, and none of them show the queue. We do. Your existing 67 seconds is most of the footage already.
0:00 - 0:06 · HOOK, your face or the waitlist screen"I just tried to claim my business inside ChatGPT. I did not get in, and that is worth two minutes of your time."On screen: YOU'RE ON THE WAITLIST
0:06 - 0:16 · what this is"OpenAI opened Business Hub on November 10. It is the ChatGPT version of claiming your Google listing. You control what it says about you, you get a verified check, and you see how often it mentioned your business and sent people to your site."
0:16 - 0:34 · the real walkthrough, your footage"Here is what happened. chatgpt dot com slash business hub, add your business, get started. It asks how customers interact with you, at a physical location or through a website. I picked physical location, and this is what I got."Hold on the waitlist screen for a full beat. That frame is the whole post.
0:34 - 0:46 · what it means, said straight"So here is the honest state of it. If your business already has a listing in there, you can claim and verify it in about fifteen minutes. If it does not, and most Houston service businesses do not, you are joining a queue. It took me sixty seconds, and the queue only gets longer."
0:46 - 0:54 · the thing nobody else will tell them"While you wait, the only thing ChatGPT has to go on is your website. If your site does not plainly say what you do and where you do it, that is what it is working from. Fix that first."
0:54 - 0:58 · CTA"Go get in line today. If you want us to handle it when it opens, send us a message."
Footage problem to fix before this goes anywhere. The first 14 seconds of your recording are the ClickUp team chat, including a client menu PDF and messages between Hector and Philip, and the bookmarks bar shows client portals by name through the whole thing. None of that can be published. Re-record just the hub portion with bookmarks hidden, Cmd Shift B, in a clean window, or we crop hard and blur the bar. Re-recording is faster than masking 40 seconds of footage.
Production: Rey cuts it, captions burned in, Marathon navy and red lower third. Roughly 3 hours from clean footage to posted.
2. Written tutorial, the evergreen piece
Lead magnet
The video gets reach, this gets saved and forwarded. Structure, revised for the waitlist reality:
What Businesses in ChatGPT actually is, in four sentences
The two paths: your business is already listed, or it is not, and why that single fork decides your whole experience
The real screens, including the waitlist, captured from our own attempt
Before you start: who should own the login, and what the ID check wants
Which verification method to pick, and why domain verification is the one to use if your business phone rings to a cell
What to do while you are on the waitlist, which is the only genuinely actionable section for most readers
What this does not do, so nobody expects a ranking boost
Branded PDF one-pager plus a web version, both under the Marathon print and brand system. This piece ages well because we can update the waitlist section the day access opens, and that is a second email to the same list.
3. Email to the list
Draft below
SUBJECTI tried to claim Marathon in ChatGPT. Here is what happened.
BODYHello {{contact.first_name}},
On November 10, OpenAI opened Business Hub. For the first time you can claim your business inside ChatGPT, the same way you claimed your Google listing years ago, and control what it says about you.
I went to claim ours this afternoon. Four screens in, I hit a waitlist. Marathon had no listing to claim, so ChatGPT offered to create one, then told me access is opening gradually and it would email me when I can continue. That took about 60 seconds, start to finish.
I am telling you that because the useful version of this news is not the announcement, it is what you will actually run into. Here is the whole thing:1. Go to chatgpt.com/business-hub while signed in. 2. If your business is already listed, select it and verify by business phone, business email, or your website domain, then complete the ID check. Roughly 15 minutes. 3. If it is not listed, answer how customers reach you and you will likely be put on the waitlist, as I was. Join it anyway.
It is free right now. One more thing worth knowing: the AI agent that answers customer questions for a business is limited to online businesses at the moment, so most local companies will not see that option yet.
While you are in line, the only thing ChatGPT has to describe you is your website and whatever else it can find. That is the part you can fix today, and it is the part that decides what it says about you when someone asks for a company like yours. If you want us to look at what ChatGPT currently says about your business, reply to this email and we will check it and send you what we find.
Jacob Dow Marathon Creative 832.639.1810
Sends from PaceCRM. The reply offer is deliberately a real thing we can deliver in five minutes per business, not a claim service we cannot perform while the waitlist is on. Audience and timing are the decisions below.
4. Social set around the video
Same day
Carousel, 6 slides, the five steps plus the two catches. Works where video does not, and it is the piece people screenshot.
LinkedIn text post in your voice, aimed at builders and brokerage leadership rather than consumers
Three caption variants so the same cut can run on Instagram, Facebook, and the Short without reading identically
Story frame with a question sticker: "have you checked if your business is in ChatGPT yet"
5. The actual business case: sell the setup
Your call
The content is good, but the content is not the point. This is a reason to call every retainer client and every brokerage you have been meeting with something useful in hand rather than a pitch. The waitlist changes what we can honestly sell though: we cannot promise to claim a profile that OpenAI will not open yet. What we can sell today is the part that actually determines the answer.
AI visibility check. Ask ChatGPT what it says about the client's business and category, capture it, and send them the real answer. Five minutes per business, immediately interesting to the client, and it opens every conversation. This is the giveaway in the email.
Get them in the queue and fix what it reads. While access is gated, ChatGPT answers from their website. That is work we already do and already bill for, and now it has a reason attached that a builder actually feels.
Profile setup, sold now and delivered when it opens. Claim, verify, write the description in their voice, load services and links, then report mentions and discovery topics monthly. The ID check must be done by the client, their identity, not ours, so the deliverable is "we prepare and fill it, you press the two verification buttons".
Feeds the Signal story too, since mentions and discovery topics are exactly the number that keeps a retainer renewing
Pricing is yours to set, I have not put a number on it anywhere
6. The retry and the clean re-record
Do this first
One session, three outcomes, and it is the only thing blocking production. Do it with bookmarks hidden and nothing but the browser on screen, and the same recording serves as both the test and the final footage.
Run the hub again and take Through a website at the interaction question. If it clears the waitlist, the video becomes a real walkthrough and a much easier sell
Check the other three the same session: Commercial Connect Group, Builder Connect Group, The Metropolitan Builder. If one of those has an existing listing while Marathon does not, that contrast is a great beat in the video
Record the failures too. "My business was not even in there" is the most relatable 10 seconds in the piece
Cmd Shift B to hide bookmarks, close the ClickUp tab, and start the recording on the hub page, not on your desktop
I cannot do this part for you. The Persona check wants a government ID and proof you represent the business, which is yours to hold. Everything downstream of the footage I can run.