Stop Overthinking AI Prompts
Most business owners tell me they aren’t using AI much—or they’re getting mediocre results because they try to craft the “perfect prompt.” In 2025, you don’t need prompt engineering techniques like “act as a therapist” or “pretend you’re an expert.” Instead, just give the AI context. Talk to it like you’d talk to a trusted advisor: explain the situation, share how you’re feeling about it, and describe what you need. The AI is smart enough to figure out your intent from there.
The Five-Step Process
Step 1: Dump everything into the AI—the full situation, relevant emails, documents, photos. Don’t filter. More context produces better output.
Step 2: Ask the AI to draft an expert-level prompt for your situation. Say “use best practices” and “act like an expert” to push it past average-quality thinking.
Step 3: Tell the AI its first answer was level one and ask for a substantially improved level-two version.
Step 4: Ask it to take the prompt to level three—the most advanced version it can produce—and output it in code block markdown so you can easily copy it.
Step 5: Paste that polished prompt into a fresh chat using the most advanced AI model available (like ChatGPT o1 or o3) for the final, highest-quality response.
Why This Works
AI was trained on all the content on the internet, so it defaults to average thinking. Each “level up” step forces the AI to critically evaluate and improve its own output. By the time you reach step five, you’ve transformed a simple question into an expert-level prompt that produces dramatically better results—even if you started with no idea how to write a good prompt.
Share This With Your Team
These techniques work for anyone—even complete AI novices. Share the five-step process with every employee. They’ll get better output immediately and learn how AI works in the process, making them more effective over time.
Video Transcript
AI Usage Among Business Owners
A lot of business owners I work with tell me they are not using AI much. Now, sure, there are some that are concerned about conspiracies that are out there, or whatever. And I am not going to address that today. As far as the privacy is concerned, if you have a paid version of any of the big AI companies, you have the option to protect the confidentiality of your information.
So once you pay for a subscription, like with ChatGPT, you can say, “Please don’t share any of my information with the model.” And that preserves the confidentiality. So that is a good basic step here. But what we are talking about today is five little techniques that will be a game changer for your AI usage.
I would recommend that you share these with every employee who works for you, because even if they give the most simple prompt, or even if they are a novice when it comes to using AI, these techniques will improve their output dramatically. Like from level 1 to level 95. Second, it will train them on how to use AI better just by seeing how the AI works.
So, I will walk you through them. It is really simple.
Step 1 – Give AI as Much Context as Possible
I will give you an example. Let’s say that you have a strategic partner, somebody in your business who has been saying some bad things about you and you need to approach this. You need to give the AI some context as you put together an email. Now maybe the best way to deal with this is not an email, it is a phone call and in that case, you might generate the email and then just use the content from that email for a phone call.
Providing Context the Right Way
But let’s talk about how we do this. Well, one way is to simply say, “Hey, please write a draft email about blank.” That doesn’t work great. You are going to just get a generic, overly simplified email addressing whatever you just presented. Instead, give the AI context.
Here is what that looks like.
I am going to use my ChatGPT phone to speak it into the phone rather than type it because I find that is the easier way to put the information in there.
Here is the situation: A strategic partner of mine, Kevin, has been saying some bad things about me. I don’t appreciate it. At first, I was really offended and insulted. Then I wondered if it was even true. I am not sure if it is true. I heard about it through the grapevine. I need to approach Kevin. I am mad. I am frustrated. I am confused. I feel like this is affecting my trust for him. But I don’t want to overreact. I don’t want to approach this the wrong way. I don’t know how to approach this, and I am concerned that if I approach it the wrong way, it is going to harm our relationship. But if I am too weak or naive, that could also harm our relationship. I am not really sure how to approach this.
So as you can see there. I didn’t think about AI as a prompt. I didn’t use the technique of like act like a therapist or act like an email writing expert. We don’t need to do that anymore. That is 2024. Here in 2025, you can just give the AI context. Think of it like your best friend, your mentor, your somebody that you look up to, and you are just saying, “Hey, here is what happened. I am not sure what to do about this. Here is how I am feeling. I am not sure about this. I am not sure about that.” By doing that, you are giving the AI context for the situation.
In 2025, AI is smart enough to take all of that and then figure out what is your intent and what do you need to do from that.
Another example of that might be putting an email thread into the chat window. Another example might be putting a document in there, or taking a photo of something. Give AI as much content as possible.
Step 2 – Ask AI to Generate a Prompt for You
Once AI is done thinking with the last step and processing the content and the context that you gave it, then, we are going to ask AI to act like an AI prompt engineer. But we don’t have to say that. We can just say, “Hey, for my situation, please draft an AI prompt. Use best practices. Act like an expert.”
By the way, these little parts here, “Use best practices. Act like an expert.” The idea there is we want to use its best thinking, not average thinking. Keep in mind, AI was trained on all the content on the internet. So it defaults to average thinking. If you want best thinking, ask for best practices, or act like an expert.
Step 3 – Ask AI to Improve Its Prompt
We say, “Good, that is a level one answer. But you can do better. Please act like an expert. Give me a level two version with substantially improved intelligence and quality.”
So now what we are allowing AI to do is review what it did and say, “Hmm, how can we make this better?” And now it provides more thorough, more expert level content for the prompt.
Step 4 – Upgrade the Prompt Again and Use Code Block Markdown
So, now what do we do? We are going to ask it to level up again. But this time, we are going to ask it to output in a special way.
So here is the prompt, “Great progress. Now, please take this to level 3. Give me the most advanced response you can think of.”
We are going to add one more piece of code here though. We are going to say, “Output in code block markdown.”
Step 5 – Paste the Final Prompt into an Advanced AI Model
Now what do we do? This is the final step. We go open a new chat. And for this we want to have the most advanced AI possible. In AI terminology, that means using, AI with reasoning, if possible. So I will give you a couple examples. That would be ChatGPT o1, or o3 is even better. Most people have at least access to o1.
So what I am going to do is just paste in here the entire large prompt that was created in the last level. And because we are in ChatGPT o1, it is now going to think about it and produce the ultimate response.
Reviewing and Refining the Output
Now, the beauty of this five-step process is if you want, you can go back into the prompt, which step 4 generated, this really advanced prompt here, read through it, and you can revise it as you desire.
Now if you don’t have access to a really smart AI like GPT o1, which I believe is free, at least if you set up a free account, there are a number of places where you can go, and you have free access to a really smart AI. Another one here is Perplexity.
Final Thoughts
So that is it. Step one is the only part that really takes some brain power. That is where you just think through out loud and go ahead and just orally process your thoughts, your feelings, and all the information you have about the situation. Once you do that and just dump it into the AI, the rest is essentially autopilot.
Now, if you want other tips on how to avoid legal problems in your business and how to implement best practices in growing your company, you are welcome to go to AaronHall.com/free.
