How to use AI better than 99% of people

Most people don't know how to use AI

Self-sponsorship:

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• Intelligent file storage – any file you upload is transcribed and tagged automatically.

• Link transcription – paste any YouTube, Instagram Reel, or Substack article and it will be downloaded, transcribed, and ready to reference in a chat or on a canvas.

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• Spatial AI on a canvas – because normal chat interfaces are boring and one dimensional. Add any file, link, or note to a canvas and connect them to AI chats with the best models. (I do my weekly letters, content, research, and scripting in one canvas each week.

This is the canvas that I made for this letter. We’re going to go over all of it.

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Whenever I share how I use AI with someone else, it’s like it unlocks something in their brain.

They feel like they discovered a new superpower.

They feel like they can do almost anything.

They can build the business faster.

They can learn new skills faster.

They can understand topics faster.

They can effectively get ahead of 99% of people who use AI, because most people treat AI as a slot machine rather than something you can program to do exactly what you want it to.

AI is a cool new way to ask questions and get answers, but most people stop there.

It was supposed to be this life-changing thing, but if you were to ask the average person if their life has changed because of it, the answer will almost always be “no.”

Now, I’ve only talked about this in public a handful of times, so I want to create a detailed and immediately actionable guide to change how you think about using AI.

(When I say AI here, I mean LLMs. You can do this in any app like ChatGPT or Claude. You don’t need anything other than an AI chat.)

First, I’ll show you my little secret. The first section alone, if you try it, will at least make you think “wow this is cool,” or it may blow your mind.

Then, I’ll over some of my favorite examples and prompts for business, creative thinking, intellectual thinking, content creation, and maybe a few more.

Specifically, how to create them, rather than me just giving them to you.

Let’s begin.

How To Do Anything With AI

This is the most important part.

If you simply practice what you are about to learn, you will be able to have AI do almost anything for you, and the responses will be up to par with the quality you demand.

This is how you go from AI slop to imposing your sense of taste on AI.

To do this well, you need to think of AI as a digital employee that will do exactly what you tell it to do.

Meaning, if you don’t know how to do it well, or don’t know how to guide the AI to finding how to do it well, it will not do it well. In essence, you need to learn the skill of Prompt Engineering. That’s what we will learn.

The reason AI isn’t that magical to you is because you type a one sentence request and expect it to magically make you a millionaire. The LLM has to guess what you actually want, pulls from an onslaught of mediocre ways to do it from the internet, and spits something out that may be slightly good, but not good enough if you want outsized results.

In other words, you can’t rely on how the AI is programmed by default. You need to be extremely specific and detailed with what you are trying to accomplish.

If I type “generate a viral YouTube script” into ChatGPT, sure, it will come up with something that’s okay, but think about it for a second: is there any one best way to write a YouTube script?

No.

Ali Abdaal has his own frameworks and methods. Alex Hormozi has entirely different ones. A gaming channel has even more different ones. All of the above have their own ideas, opinions, speaking style, presentation style, and more. The AI has none of that context.

So, in order to get AI to do something well, in a high quality way, you need to teach the AI exactly how you would create the YouTube video. At that point, it’s not randomly generated slop, it’s an employee that’s acting on your instruction and learning as you refine the process by correcting mistakes.

In other words, you’re going to be writing 500-2000 word prompts. Not once sentence. Not one paragraph. The shorter the prompt, the more guessing the AI has to do, and the more the output increases on the slop spectrum.

In other other words, your job is to narrow the context to prevent the AI from guessing too much.

But that still leaves a problem... what if you don’t know how to do the task well? What if you haven’t created hundreds of YouTube videos leading to you becoming an expert?

Let’s start there.

Step 1) Create Detailed Instructions To Feed AI

If I want AI to create a YouTube script, landing page, or if I want it to have a stimulating conversation with me, I need to instruct it on exactly what to do.

You have four options here:

1) If you know what you want AI to do, write out the instructions.

Most of the time, this will be quite long. Because if I wanted AI to be able to write my newsletter, I would have to pass off my thought process to it. I’d have to teach it how to generate good ideas, how to write a good hook, how to structure the newsletter, and how to structure each section. And, I’d have to do that for each style of newsletter I write, and instruct the AI on how to choose the write style.

2) If the task is relatively well known and doesn’t require creative thought, simply ask the AI to create a detailed guide. Here’s an example for creating a customer avatar, because people don’t tend to do that in their own unique way.

Give me a detailed guide on how to create the most comprehensive customer avatar in the world.

Simple, and it’ll give you a good result.

You may think that this is pointless, because you can just find a customer avatar template online and fill it out, but AI can help you fill it out better, and help you do the market research that you probably aren’t going to do.

3) If you don’t know what you want to do, find an expert source of information, feed it to AI, and ask it to create a detailed guide.

If you want to create an offer for your business, download Alex Hormozi’s $100M Offers PDF or find a YouTube video breaking down how to create an offer.

If you want to create a personal brand strategy, find an article or YouTube video that teaches one. You can paste the transcript into AI (you may need to use a tool that can extract the transcript) and have it turn it into a detailed guide like so:

I want you to create a comprehensive guide on how to build a personal brand using the transcript below. Be as detailed as possible. Act like you are 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 down why it works and turn it into a guide.

I actually did this just yesterday.

I saw a landing page that had incredible copywriting, and I wanted to understand it and replicate it using my own product’s information.

So, I copy/pasted each line from the landing page into AI along with this prompt:

I love this landing page copy. Break down the overall structure, what psychological tactics it uses, and why it works. Then, break down each line individually. Write this as if you are teaching me how to do it step by step.

By this point, you should have a detailed set of instructions for the next step.

If you are just reading this to learn and don’t have anything you are trying to do right now, hold tight for the next section, because the examples I give will show you how creative you can get with this.

Step 2) Turn Those Detailed Instructions Into A Prompt (That Collects Context)

We have detailed instructions we can feed AI.

But we’re still missing something...

The personal context.

If I have instructions on how to write a high converting landing page, how is the AI going to write it without understanding my company, product, features, and everything else that goes into the writing?

This is where the magic happens.

First, you are going to save this prompt somewhere very safe, because it will change the way you use AI as a whole.

That prompt is a prompt that creates prompts.

For the rest of this letter, we will call this the Prompt Creator so you know when to use this prompt.

Yes, you read that correct. It has all of the prompting best practices so you don’t need to write the entire prompt and waste a ton of time.

Now, you are going to create a new chat and send only that prompt. The one that creates prompts.

It’s going to ask you what type of prompt you want to create.

There are many ways to do this part, but here’s one that usually works well.

You are going to ask it to structure the prompt in 2 phases.

A context gathering phase and an execution phase.

As an example for creating a landing page, here’s what I would say:

I want to write a prompt that writes high converting landing page copy according to the guide below. You are going to structure this prompt in 2 phases:

Phase 1) Context gathering
- Break down everything you need to know to write high converting copy
- Interview me to gather all of that information
- Ask one question at a time

Phase 2) Execution
- Use the context you gathered to write the first draft of the landing page
- Give me suggestions on how it could be better and ask if I want to make any changes

Here is the landing page guide:
[paste in your instructions from step one]

It may ask a few more clarifying questions, but it should spit out a pretty compelling prompt.

It’s worth noting that the quality of this prompt will change depending on what model you use. From my experimentation, Claude 4.1 Opus seems to be best at this (with extended thinking turned on). I know Sonnet 4.5 is newer, but it seems to not follow instructions very well, and sometimes denies your requests.

Now, all you need to do is send the prompt, and boom, you have the first draft of whatever it is you are trying to do.

Of course, that’s only one example, so here are a few more.

The Most Life Changing Examples I Can Think Of

In review, here’s how you use AI better than 99% of people:

• Use AI to create or extract detailed, expert level instructions

• Do not allow the AI to guess what it should do

• Create a new chat and send the Prompt Creator

• Give details about what prompt you want to create

• Add a context gathering phase (if needed) and execution phase

• Paste the instructions into the prompt

In essence, you are now using AI to learn and build at the same time. You are orchestrating. You are in as much control as you can be while using AI. And if you are already skilled at what you are trying to accomplish, you can do what you were already going to do, but faster, and potentially at a higher quality. That’s incredible.

Now, I want you to think of this as documenting you own processes with AI.

Imagine if you built a prompt library. A library that stores all of your “skills,” because skills are mental processes.

You have a prompt that documents your marketing processes, thinking processes, customer support processes, and anything else you can think of that you do while typing at a keyboard.

By doing this, you bring yourself to a higher level of thinking. You can refine and iterate on your processes in a tangible way. You reduce your own cognitive load so you can begin thinking of higher leverage ideas and tasks.

With that, here are some of my favorite examples, and how I would go about creating them.

The Intellectual Sparring Partner

When it comes to acquiring deep knowledge, I don’t just ask the base AI questions. ChatGPT and other companies package up their models so that they are palatable to the average person.

Meaning, if you spend too much time with it, you become what you consume, so your mind takes the shape of the average person. No thanks.

If your mind takes the shape of those you learn from, then I want to learn from clear thinkers at a visibly high stage of development.

I want to be able to learn directly from them, as if they are my mentors helping me view my problems and goals from a broadened perspective.

For me, there are a few people that come to mind:

• Naval Ravikant

• Daniel Schmachtenberger

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• J. Krishnamurti

• Ken Wilber

I could add more, but for the sake of example, these 5 people cover business, systems thinking, psychology, and spirituality. It’s rather holistic.

Now, for each of those people, I would send this prompt in a new chat:

I want you to break down the entire worldview of [Naval Ravikant]. His core principles, how he thinks through problems, his main discoveries or insights, and all of the ideas that best illustrate his philosophy. This should be a comprehensive document, as if I am diving into the entirety of his mind.

Now you have 5 detailed worldviews I can dive into, and whenever you want to talk to these people, you can ask a question and paste any of their worldviews in. Or, you can create a project in Claude or ChatGPT and add all of their worldviews as context for the project.

If you want to take it a step further and guide the conversation, you can create a prompt to go along with it.

Meaning, you could paste the Prompt Creator into a new chat, and tell it that you want to create a prompt that challenges your beliefs, expands your perspective, and helps you solve problems according to the worldviews you’ve broken down above (and you would paste each one in).

Here’s an example of how to do that:

The Creative Thought Partner

Thinking, in my opinion, is not a random process.

There are good ways to think and poor ways to think.

Successful writers, creators, filmmakers, and the rest often have soft processes for how they think best, and it usually involves questioning their thoughts and ideas in a specific way.

For myself, whenever I write, I tend to think through the following:

• What’s the big problem relating to the topic?

• What’s the consequential cascade of not solving the problem?

• What’s the ideal life I want to inspire people to move toward?

• What are novel concepts, perspectives, or personal experiences that shine an interesting light on this topic?

• Without using someone else’s advice, what is an effective, step-by-step process to overcoming the problem and moving toward the ideal life?

• What are compelling quotes, anecdotes, studies, or statistics that add to the argument I am trying to make?

By answering those, I usually have a pretty compelling brain dump of ideas that I can string into a newsletter or pull multiple short-form ideas from.

I don’t use this all the time, most of the time I just do it in my head, but if you are worried about AI doing the writing for you, then I would try this out. Use it as some form of intelligent questionnaire to guide you through how you would create your outlines or generate ideas. If you were to reflect on how you came about your best ideas, you could probably turn it into a prompt, allowing you to replicate that more frequently.

Of course, that’s just how I think through writing.

If you want, you can find a book or YouTube video on “how to think” in a good way. Or you can simply ask AI to break down how a specific person thinks.

Now you have the “instructions” portion of this, and we can turn it into a prompt.

So, if you start a new chat and paste in the Prompt Creator, you can type the following:

I want to create a prompt that helps me arrive at clear, novel insights through questioning. I want you to act as purely observational “clear eyes” that does not give me the exact answer but guides me to it.

First, you will ask what topic, idea, or problem I want to discuss.

Then, you will ask one question at a time following the thinking instructions below.

Please ask clarifying questions before creating the prompt so that it comes out the best it can.

[Paste your thinking instructions]

This probably won’t come out perfect the first time around.

As you use it, refine the prompt until it works to your liking.

The One-Person Business Stack

When it comes to building a business, specifically as one person, it’s not as simple as asking an AI agent to do it all for you.

In fact, you are doing all the same things you would have normally done, but you are building a library of prompts that can do those things well: writing content, building a digital product, writing promotions, writing emails, creating an offer, and writing landing page copywriting.

This would get extremely long if I walked you through how to build each of those prompts, so I’ll stick to giving you quick and simple steps.

Writing Content

• Create a prompt for a personal brand strategy (find a YouTube video that teaches it and turn it into a prompt)

• Create a prompt for content ideas (paste 10 high performing content pieces into AI and have it teach you how to replicate them)

• Create a prompt for newsletters (paste 2-3 newsletters you like and have AI break down their structure)

Of course, I personally don’t recommend having AI write for you, so consider creating a prompt that guides you through the outlining and ideation process so you can be guided to these ideas on your own.

Building A Digital Product

• Preferably, have an idea for a product you already want to build

• Ask AI how those products are structured, and how to build them in a way that ensures the buyer uses and benefits the most from the product

• Create a prompt that guides you through the product creation process with the instructions from the last bullet point, section by section

This will take some creative thinking on your end to nail.

Offer Creation

• Create a customer avatar prompt like we discussed earlier in this letter

• Create a prompt that guides you through creating a compelling offer blueprint (ask AI how Alex Hormozi creates offers for the instructions portion)

• Use the offer blueprint for any of your other marketing materials

Copywriting

• Find a respected book on copywriting like Breakthrough Advertising and/or Great Leads

• Upload the PDF to AI and ask it to turn it into a detailed actionable guide

• Find a landing page structure (or structure of whatever type of promotion you are trying to create, be it email or social promotion), paste it into AI and have it break down why it works

• Add both the structure breakdown and copywriting guide to AI

• Create a prompt that interviews you for your offer, customer avatar, and other context to write the copy

This one may require a bit of refining once done.

The YouTube Workflow

Since YouTube has so many moving pieces, I feel as if this one deserves it’s own section outside of plain old content writing.

First, you need a compelling topic or title.

After that, you need the key points, a gripping introduction, full script, b-roll ideas, video description, and potentially a coach for speaking to the camera if you are a beginner. All of these can be turned into prompts.

Again, for the sake of brevity, and since I think you get the point now, here’s what I would do:

• Title Prompt: Find 5-10 accounts in your niche, filter their videos by most popular, copy 10-20 titles into AI and ask it to break them down into instructions on how to replicate them. Turn that into a prompt that ingests your video topic idea and spits out potential titles.

• Key Points Prompt: Ask AI to create a guide on how to outline a YouTube video topic into compelling key points that keep the viewer engaged, while ensuring that the video is novel and valuable.

• Introduction Prompt: Find a YouTube video that teaches how to create a good video introduction. Turn that into instructions. Turn those into a prompt.

• Script Prompt: Find a YouTube video that teaches how to create a good script, or find a video transcript you want to emulate and have AI turn it into a guide. Turn that guide into a prompt that gathers your topic, key points, and intro as context.

• B-Roll Ideas Prompt: Ask the AI for b-roll and retention best practices as instructions. Turn that into a prompt that adds b-roll ideas for each line of your script. Feed that prompt each individual section of your script.

• Video Description Prompt: Paste the Prompt Creator first. Ask it to create a prompt with 3 sections: A keyword friendly brief description of the video, your links (write out what your links are), and video chapters with exact time stamp that are attention grabbing and keyword friendly.

Now you’re off to recording YouTube videos like a pro in a day rather than 6 months.

Hopefully all of that was helpful.

I wish I knew this when AI first became a thing.

Let me know if this changed how you view using AI!

– Dan