Every time I show someone how I use AI, something curious happens. It's as if part of their brain unlocks.
Suddenly they feel like they've found a superpower. Like they can do almost anything.
Build a business faster. Learn new skills faster. Understand topics faster.
And yes, they can get ahead of 99% of people using AI, because most treat it like a slot machine rather than something you can program to do exactly what you want.
AI is an incredible way to ask questions and get answers, but most people stop there.
It was supposed to change everyone's life. But ask the average person whether it changed theirs, and they'll usually say no.
I've rarely talked about this publicly, so I want to leave you with a clear, immediately usable guide to changing how you think about using AI.
When I say AI here, I mean language models. You can do all of this in any app like ChatGPT or Claude. All you need is an AI chat.
First, I'll show you my little secret. That first part alone, if you try it, will make you think, “Wow, this is good,” or might even blow your mind.
Then I'll share some of my favorite examples and prompts for business, creativity, deep thinking, content creation, and maybe a couple more.
But above all, I'll show you how to create your own, not just copy mine.
Let's get started.
How to do anything with AI
This is the most important part.
If you practice what you're about to learn, you can get AI to do almost anything for you, with answers that meet the quality you ask for.
This is how you go from receiving AI garbage to imposing your own judgment on the machine.
To do this well, think of AI as a digital employee who will do exactly what you tell it.
That means something uncomfortable: if you don't know how to do it well, or don't know how to guide AI toward the right way of doing it, it won't do it well. In short, you need to learn how to design good prompts. That's what we'll learn.
AI doesn't feel so magical because you write a one-line sentence and expect your first million to come out. The model has to guess what you want, draws on a thousand mediocre solutions, and gives you something that sounds decent—but not good enough if you want exceptional results.
In other words, you can't rely on AI's default programming. You need to be specific and clear about what you want to achieve.
If I type “generate a viral YouTube script” into ChatGPT, sure, it'll give me something decent. But think about it: is there one single best way to write a YouTube script?
No.
Ali Abdaal has his methods. Alex Hormozi uses completely different ones. A gaming channel's approach is even more different. Each has their own ideas, speaking style, and presentation. AI has none of that context.
So if you want AI to do something well, with real quality, you have to teach it exactly how you would create that video. At that point, it's no longer randomly generated text. It's an employee following your instructions and learning as you adjust and correct.
In other words, you'll be writing prompts of 500 to 2,000 words. Not one sentence. Not one paragraph. The shorter the prompt, the more AI has to guess, and the further it drifts toward digital garbage.
Your job is to narrow the context so AI doesn't have to guess anything.
But there's still a problem. What if you don't know how to do that task well? What if you haven't recorded hundreds of videos and become an expert?
Let's start there.
Step 1: Create detailed instructions for AI
If I want AI to write a YouTube script, a landing page, or have an interesting conversation with me, I need to tell it exactly what to do.
Here are four options:
1. If you already know what you want AI to do, write the instructions.
Most of the time, they'll be long. For example, if I want AI to write my newsletter, I have to give it my way of thinking. Teach it how I generate good ideas, write a strong hook, structure the newsletter, and organize each section.
I'd also have to do that for every newsletter style I use and explain how to choose the right style for each situation.
2. If the task is well established and doesn't require much creativity, ask AI to create a detailed guide.
For example, creating a customer avatar, since most people don't do that in a particularly unique way.
“Give me a detailed guide to creating the most complete customer avatar in the world.”
That's it. It'll give you something good.
You might think this makes no sense because you could find a customer-avatar template on Google and fill it out. But AI can help you fill it out better and do the market research you probably wouldn't do yourself.
3. If you aren't sure what you want to do, find an expert source, upload it to AI, and ask for a guide.
If you want to create an offer for your business, download the PDF of Alex Hormozi's “$100M Offers” or find a YouTube video where he explains how to create an offer.
If you want a personal-brand strategy, find an article or video teaching one. Paste the transcript into AI and ask it to turn it into a detailed guide, something like:
“I want you to create a complete guide to building a personal brand using the transcript below. Be as detailed as possible. Act as though you're teaching me step by step, in a way that makes it impossible to fail.
[Paste the transcript]”
4. My favorite: if you have an example you want to emulate, ask AI to break it down, explain why it works, and turn it into a guide.
I did this just yesterday. I saw a landing page with amazing copy and wanted to understand why it worked and how to recreate it using my own product information.
I copied and pasted every line of the landing page into AI with this prompt:
“I love this landing-page copy. Break down the overall structure, the psychological tactics it uses, and why it works. Then analyze each line individually. Write it as though you're teaching me step by step how to do it.”
By now, you should have a fairly detailed set of instructions for the next step.
If you're just reading to learn and don't have something specific you want to do yet, no problem. The examples in the next section will show you how creative you can get with this.
Step 2: Turn those detailed instructions into a context-gathering prompt
You have the detailed instructions to give AI. But something is still missing:
Your personal context.
If I have a guide for writing a high-converting landing page, how can AI write it without understanding my company, product, benefits, and everything that makes that copy work?
This is where the magic happens.
First, save this prompt somewhere safe, because it will completely change how you use AI.
It's a prompt that creates prompts.
For the rest of this article, we'll call it the Prompt Creator, so you know when to use it.
Yes, you read that right. It contains all the best practices for prompting, so you don't have to write everything from scratch and waste time.
Open a new chat and send only that prompt—the one that creates prompts.
It will ask what kind of prompt you want to create.
There are a thousand ways to do this part, but this one usually works well:
Ask it to structure the prompt in two phases: a context-gathering phase and an execution phase.
For example, to create a landing page, I'd say something like:
“I want to write a prompt that generates high-converting landing-page copy following the guide below. Structure this prompt in two phases:
Phase 1: Context gathering
- Break down everything you need to know to write high-converting copy.
- Interview me to get all that information.
- Ask one question at a time.
Phase 2: Execution
- Use the context you gathered to write the first landing-page draft.
- Suggest improvements and ask whether I want to make changes.
Here's the landing-page guide:
[Paste your instructions from step one]”
It may ask a few more clarifying questions, but then it will give you a solid prompt.
It's worth noting that the prompt's quality depends heavily on the model you use. In my tests, Claude 4.1 Opus has been best for this, especially with extended thinking enabled. Sonnet 4.5 is newer, but seems less consistent at following instructions and sometimes refuses requests.
Now all you need to do is send that new prompt. That's it: you have the first draft of whatever you're trying to create.
That's just one example. Here are a few more.
The most transformative examples I can think of
To recap, here's how to use AI better than 99% of people:
- Use AI to create or extract detailed, expert-level instructions.
- Don't let AI guess what it should do.
- Create a new chat and send the Prompt Creator.
- Explain what kind of prompt you want to create.
- Add a context-gathering phase and an execution phase if needed.
- Paste the instructions into the prompt.
Essentially, you're now using AI to learn and build at the same time. You're orchestrating. You have as much control as possible while working with AI. And if you're already good at what you're trying to do, you can do what you were going to do anyway, only faster and perhaps better. That's wild.
Now think of this as documenting your own processes with AI.
Imagine building a prompt library. A library storing all your “skills,” because ultimately a skill is a mental process.
You have a prompt documenting your marketing processes, thinking processes, customer-support processes, and anything else you do while typing on a keyboard.
Doing this raises your level of thinking. You can tangibly refine and improve your processes. You reduce mental load and make room for higher-impact ideas and tasks.
With that in mind, here are some of my favorite examples and how I'd create them.
The intellectual companion
When it comes to acquiring deep knowledge, I don't ask the base model simple questions. ChatGPT and other companies package their models to make them digestible for everyone.
That means if you spend too much time with one, you become what you consume, and your mind starts resembling the average person's. I'll pass.
If your mind takes the shape of those who teach you, I want to learn from clear thinkers at a high level of development.
I want to learn directly from them, as though they were mentors helping me see my problems and goals from a broader perspective.
A few people stand out for me:
- Naval Ravikant
- Daniel Schmachtenberger
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- J. Krishnamurti
- Ken Wilber
I could add more, but these five cover business, systems thinking, psychology, and spirituality. Pretty comprehensive.
For each person, I'd send this prompt in a new chat:
“I want you to break down [Naval Ravikant]'s entire worldview. His core principles, how he approaches problems, his discoveries or key insights, and everything that best illustrates his philosophy. Make it a complete document, as though I were immersing myself in his entire mind.”
Now you have five detailed worldviews to explore. Whenever you want to talk to one of them, just ask a question and paste the corresponding worldview. Or create a project in Claude or ChatGPT and add all those worldviews as context.
If you want to go further and guide the conversation, create an additional prompt.
Paste the Prompt Creator into a new chat and say you want a prompt that challenges your beliefs, broadens your perspective, and helps you solve problems using the worldviews you've already broken down. Paste them all in.
Here's an example of how to do it:
The creative thinking partner
Thinking, in my opinion, isn't random. There are good ways to think and pretty bad ones.
Writers, creators, filmmakers, and others tend to have “soft” processes for thinking better, and those usually involve intentionally asking certain questions.
When I write, I usually work through something like this:
- What's the big problem related to this topic?
- What's the chain of consequences if that problem goes unsolved?
- What's the ideal life I want this piece to lead people toward?
- What new concepts, perspectives, or personal experiences could cast this topic in a different light?
- Without using anyone else's advice, what would be a clear, step-by-step process to overcome the problem and move toward that ideal life?
- What quotes, anecdotes, studies, or statistics could strengthen my argument?
After answering those questions, I usually have a good brainstorm I can turn into a newsletter or several shorter pieces of content.
I don't always use this process explicitly; usually I do it in my head. But if you're worried about AI “writing for you,” try this.
Use it like an intelligent questionnaire guiding you through outlines or idea generation. If you think about how you arrived at your best ideas, you could probably turn that into a prompt and repeat it more often.
Of course, that's just how I think when I write. You could find a book or YouTube video about thinking better, or simply ask AI to break down how a particular person thinks.
That gives you the “instructions” part, which we can turn into a prompt.
Open a new chat, paste the Prompt Creator, and write something like:
“I want to create a prompt that helps me arrive at clear, original ideas through questions. Act as a purely observing pair of clear eyes: don't give me the exact answer, but guide me toward it.
First, ask what topic, idea, or problem I want to work on.
Then ask one question at a time, following the thinking instructions below.
Please ask clarifying questions before creating the prompt so it turns out as well as possible.
[Paste your thinking instructions]”
It probably won't be perfect on the first try. As you use it, keep refining the prompt until it works the way you want.
The one-person business stack
Building a business, especially on your own, isn't as simple as asking an AI agent to do everything for you.
You're still doing what you'd normally do, but now you're creating a library of prompts that can do those tasks well: write content, create a digital product, write promotions, draft emails, create an offer, and write landing-page copy.
Explaining how to build every prompt step by step would take forever, so here's a quick, simple version.
Writing content
- Create a personal-brand strategy prompt. Find a YouTube video teaching it and turn it into a prompt.
- Create a content-ideas prompt. Paste ten pieces of content that performed really well and let AI teach you how to recreate their success.
- Create a newsletter prompt. Paste two or three newsletters you like and ask AI to break down their structure.
Personally, I don't recommend having AI write for you. Consider a prompt that guides you through ideation so the ideas still come from you.
Building a digital product
- Ideally, you already have a product idea in mind.
- Ask AI how that type of product is structured and how to create one buyers will actually use and benefit from.
- Create a prompt that guides you through making the product, section by section, using those instructions.
You'll need some creativity here.
Creating an offer
- Create a customer-avatar prompt as we discussed earlier.
- Create a prompt that guides you through building a strong offer. Ask AI how Alex Hormozi creates offers and use that as instructions.
- Use that offer blueprint in all your marketing materials.
Copywriting
- Find a respected book about copywriting, marketing, sales, or a related topic.
- Upload the PDF to AI and ask it to turn it into a detailed, actionable guide.
- Find a good landing-page structure or the type of promotion you want to create—a page, email, or social promotion. Paste it into AI and let it explain why it works.
- Combine the structural breakdown and copywriting guide in AI.
- Create a prompt that interviews you about your offer, customer avatar, and the context needed to write the copy.
I hope this was useful. I wish I'd known it when AI first became popular.
Let me know whether this changed how you think about using AI.
Thank you for being part of this great community!