Dan Martell - 40 Hacks to Use AI So Well It Feels Unfair

00:00:00.000 77% of employees using AI say it's actually making them less productive, not more. That

00:00:05.460 means that AI isn't achieving the results that everyone had hoped for. And it's all because

00:00:09.400 almost nobody understands how AI actually works. I went from wasting hours and burning thousands

00:00:15.900 of dollars in tokens a day to now using AI as the backbone of my whole portfolio of companies

00:00:20.980 that's about to cross $250 million in enterprise value in only 16 months. And along the way,

00:00:26.700 I learned 40 brutal truths about AI that could have saved me all this time and money.

00:00:31.140 So let's start with number one.

00:00:32.640 More context isn't always better.

00:00:34.820 Too much just confuses AI.

00:00:37.000 If we just dump everything into it, it buries what actually matters.

00:00:40.900 If instead we give it the cleanest, tightest version, exactly what we want to give it,

00:00:45.500 not just like a junk drawer, but very specific instructions, then it will do the work we need.

00:00:49.840 It's even got a term called context rot when we do this.

00:00:52.620 Number two, one good example beats the perfect prompt.

00:00:56.140 We don't wanna burn 20 minutes

00:00:58.140 wordsmithing the perfect prompt.

00:01:00.200 We just have to give it a great example.

00:01:02.660 If you just give it three to five great examples

00:01:05.200 of what you want it to look like,

00:01:06.440 you can save yourself hours of time

00:01:08.360 trying to fix your prompt to get the perfect output.

00:01:10.820 Number three, AI doesn't read minds.

00:01:13.140 It needs instructions.

00:01:15.040 It's not like a person who just gets it.

00:01:17.340 You have to spell it out.

00:01:18.580 You have to tell it who you want it to be,

00:01:20.760 what you're doing, what you want.

00:01:22.720 Vag requests just gets vague answers every time.

00:01:25.420 Number four, lazy in, lazy out.

00:01:28.880 AI can't want it more than you do.

00:01:30.840 If we don't work on putting the time into the prompt,

00:01:33.960 into the AI, then we shouldn't be upset

00:01:36.020 if we don't get great responses

00:01:37.580 because the energy we put in is the energy we have back.

00:01:40.180 If we put a lot of effort in time,

00:01:41.800 guess what's gonna come back?

00:01:43.040 Detailed work done.

00:01:44.960 Number five, don't ask AI for answers, argue with it.

00:01:48.380 It will agree with everything

00:01:49.900 because its job is to make you happy.

00:01:52.080 What you wanna do is tell it to be your ruthless mentor

00:01:54.740 and actually poke holes in what you're asking it to do.

00:01:57.660 You need bulletproof thinking, not a cheerleader.

00:02:00.060 Six, with AI, be the boss, not the buddy.

00:02:03.400 I know with people, you wanna be nice

00:02:05.260 and you wanna be clear.

00:02:06.620 With AI, you actually have to be strict.

00:02:09.200 You have to tell it what you want.

00:02:10.400 It actually responds better if you say, never do this,

00:02:13.280 than, could you please maybe sometimes do it this way?

00:02:16.440 It does better when you tell it what not to do

00:02:19.160 than ask it to do a general thing.

00:02:21.560 Number seven, stop typing, start talking to your AI.

00:02:25.080 When we wanna get the most out of the AI,

00:02:26.860 the best way to do that is to use your voice.

00:02:28.980 It's three times faster.

00:02:30.440 Instead of just typing everything you're thinking,

00:02:32.400 just ramble to it like a real person

00:02:34.420 and then just hit enter and watch it take your voice

00:02:37.460 and text and make sense of it all.

00:02:39.300 And there's apps to do this like Whisperflow.

00:02:41.260 Number eight, if AI sounds like a stranger,

00:02:43.920 it's because you never introduced yourself.

00:02:45.540 The more you give it about who you are,

00:02:48.320 the better it can answer your questions.

00:02:50.160 So if you want to write an email,

00:02:51.280 for example, have it scan your email

00:02:52.800 and say, extract how I write my emails,

00:02:55.520 and then you could say, now write more emails like me.

00:02:58.160 It can't sound like you

00:02:59.240 if you've never introduced yourself.

00:03:00.860 Number nine, AI's first draft is a rough cut,

00:03:03.660 not the final cut.

00:03:05.000 What the AI spits out is not the finished product.

00:03:08.480 Our job is to look at it, react to it,

00:03:10.460 push back, reshape it.

00:03:12.280 See, the gold is in round three, not in round one.

00:03:15.460 What it spits out is like the clay,

00:03:17.200 but our job is to mold it.

00:03:18.480 number 10 trust ai's speed not its accuracy it can do in seconds what used to take days for any

00:03:26.020 human to do but the problem is is that it hallucinates and the crazy part it will hand

00:03:30.480 you a confident answer but if you don't inspect what you expect and make sure everything works

00:03:35.020 good then you might move fast to just find out that it created something wrong just like humans

00:03:39.540 it makes mistakes and if it does number 11 make ai check its own work before you do don't be the

00:03:45.720 first set of eyes on it, you can actually get another AI to look at the work, to give it feedback,

00:03:50.520 take that feedback, give it to the AI, and it'll make an even better version. That way, when we

00:03:54.940 see the final version, we'll know that it's a more cleaned up, polished version that it battled with

00:03:59.200 itself to produce. Number 12, AI should make you work less, not more. Don't spend 20 hours building

00:04:05.780 something that only takes you 30 seconds to do. Keep that one, get rid of the stuff that takes a

00:04:10.360 lot of work to do. 13. If you can talk the task, AI can do the task. If you know every step you've

00:04:17.340 done this and it's a process and it's a checklist, then AI can crush that. But if you're still trying

00:04:22.080 to figure it out, it has a hard time. 14. Playing with AI feels like progress. The truth is, it

00:04:27.900 rarely is. When we play with the newest tools, it feels so productive. It's so cool. Look at this

00:04:32.460 brain I created. Look at this script I created. Look at this automation. But we forget that it

00:04:36.720 took us like a week of exploring AI. And for some reason, our revenue didn't go up. So we have to

00:04:41.840 make sure we aim the AI at an actual problem, not just things that feel productive. 15. You can't

00:04:48.260 automate what you've never done. If we can't do it by hand, then we can't hand it off. Think about

00:04:53.980 that. If you can't explain it, then AI can't run it. 16. Nobody cares how the meal is cooked. They

00:05:00.160 care if it was great. Founders panic all the time. What if people find out that I use AI to do this?

00:05:06.120 Will my customers be upset that I didn't do all the heavy work?

00:05:09.100 I don't think we should worry about that.

00:05:10.660 I think the customer's paid for an outcome.

00:05:12.540 It's like if I'm a video editor and I edit videos and I charge for an edited video,

00:05:16.860 whether I use AI or did it myself, the client doesn't care.

00:05:19.500 They care if it's great.

00:05:21.000 17.

00:05:21.620 If your AI isn't moving a number, it's just a hobby.

00:05:25.200 Be honest with me.

00:05:26.280 Is it really changing the number in your business or does it just feel cool?

00:05:29.880 Is revenue going up?

00:05:31.400 Is the time being saved?

00:05:32.900 because if nothing moves,

00:05:34.880 then using AI is kind of just a hobby.

00:05:37.120 You might love to do it,

00:05:38.240 but it's not moving our business forward.

00:05:39.780 Number 18, falling in love with the tool

00:05:42.320 is how we forget the outcome.

00:05:44.080 The tool or AI was never the point.

00:05:46.640 The outcome was.

00:05:48.100 The reason why we use AI

00:05:49.360 is because we hope we get to the outcome faster.

00:05:51.820 If we're just collecting logins and API tokens

00:05:54.980 and subscriptions instead of actually getting work done,

00:05:58.320 then we've lost the plot.

00:05:59.800 Number 19, a finished workflow

00:06:01.840 beats the newest model.

00:06:03.960 It seems like every week there is a new model

00:06:06.360 that comes out.

00:06:07.180 We gotta stop chasing it.

00:06:08.480 The person who finished that one system

00:06:10.520 on last month's model beats the person chasing

00:06:13.340 the new thing that still hasn't gotten done.

00:06:15.660 If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

00:06:17.520 Stay with what you've got and get back to work.

00:06:19.760 Number 20, it's faster to build a feature

00:06:22.320 than to actually have a meeting to talk about it.

00:06:24.500 I've seen people spend hours debating something

00:06:27.360 in a meeting that AI could have just did for them

00:06:30.220 in minutes. Instead of sitting there and debating how something could look or how it would work or

00:06:34.780 how it would feel, they could just stop the meeting, do the thing, and come back and talk about it.

00:06:39.180 For example, I was in a meeting the other day with a team member and I said something before the

00:06:43.140 meeting was done, 30 minutes later, he showed me a prototype of what I just said I wanted him to

00:06:47.340 work on. 21. Simple scales. Complexity is just procrastination with extra steps. When we put so

00:06:53.860 much effort in the setup, we think we're being smart, but we're actually just delaying putting

00:06:58.760 something out in the world. The thing that actually scales is the simplest, tiniest, easiest version of

00:07:04.780 it that we get in front of customers that we can scale. We need to make sure we don't overthink it.

00:07:09.140 We don't over-engineer it. We just get it done. 22. One well-built agent beats 10 half-built ones.

00:07:16.480 Most people have a graveyard of half-finished automations, half-finished agents, half-finished

00:07:22.460 scripts or processes or workflows that they started but never finished. We need to make sure we deploy

00:07:27.380 one agent that runs a daily beat that creates a lot of value instead of experimenting with 10

00:07:32.940 other ones that are half to 23. You need a polyamorous relationship with your AIs. Yeah,

00:07:38.480 I said it. You got to around with the other AIs to figure out which one's the best one.

00:07:42.500 There's no single model that is best at everything. There's a site called OpenRouter,

00:07:47.560 and I will use 30 to 40 different AIs to figure out which one is the best. And what's crazy is

00:07:53.220 they're leapfrogging each other every week. So we need to pick the best tool for the job,

00:07:58.460 not the one that we're just used to. You can't be married to just one of them. You have to play

00:08:03.060 with all of them. 24. Stop using AI and let it run without you. This is a big one. I want you to go

00:08:10.160 from I use AI to AI runs. There's a difference. Using it means that you're still doing the work.

00:08:16.900 Running means it's doing a whole process workflow or even managing a department. You go from being

00:08:21.660 in the work and doing it, copy and pasting things, to it doing the work for you and you're just

00:08:26.300 reviewing. That's the whole shift. And look, everything so far you can do on your own laptop

00:08:31.200 tonight. But if you're a founder or CEO, the real money isn't you getting a little better at AI,

00:08:35.940 it's AI running your departments for you. That's why I built a whole AI company operating system.

00:08:40.900 It's the exact playbook for plugging AI into every part of your business. It's all the workflows,

00:08:45.560 the agent setups, the templates my own team uses to get the work done while we sleep.

00:08:49.860 If you want it, find me on Instagram and DM me the word YouTubeOS and I'll send it right over.

00:08:54.980 25. You can't automate a moving target. If your process changes every week, there's nothing

00:09:00.300 stable to automate, which is fine. If you're growing really quick, you're going to be breaking

00:09:04.300 your processes every three to six months. But the ones that are locked and loaded, lock them down,

00:09:09.500 make it boring and repeatable, and then build on top of it. 26. A prompt you can't repeat isn't a

00:09:15.520 skill, it's just luck. Have you ever did a prompt and you got a magic result, but then you can't

00:09:19.840 do it again it's just kind of gone my favorite thing to do is once i get it to create that magic

00:09:24.160 output i ask it to write the system prompt behind it so that i can save that in my system now i'm

00:09:30.000 building a machine that prints results on demand it's not a one-time magic trick it's something

00:09:34.640 you can repeat 27 never explain yourself to ai twice i use this philosophy called dry it's a

00:09:40.880 programming term that stands for don't repeat yourself which means i document everything i

00:09:46.080 I document all my meetings, I document my decisions,

00:09:48.800 I document my processes.

00:09:50.320 And so that I don't have to repeat myself again,

00:09:52.240 I just point it to the folder with all those documents.

00:09:54.960 Number 28, a tool with no owner is just the toy.

00:09:58.220 If nobody owns the process, nobody can maintain it,

00:10:01.320 and honestly, it'll just die.

00:10:03.060 No owner, no results.

00:10:04.600 Every tool you build with AI

00:10:06.560 has to have a name of a person that owns it.

00:10:09.040 That's called a direct responsible individual.

00:10:11.360 Number 29, AI is fuel, not a fix.

00:10:14.680 If I take jet fuel and I put it in my Volkswagen,

00:10:17.780 it will explode because that's a broken process.

00:10:20.440 It's not built to go fast.

00:10:21.900 If I put jet fuel in a jet, it will take off.

00:10:24.560 It will get us to space.

00:10:25.720 A broken system will explode.

00:10:27.720 A kick-ass system will scale.

00:10:29.500 Fix the system first before you add the fuel.

00:10:32.460 30. Let AI take the task.

00:10:34.460 You can keep the human moments.

00:10:36.840 Hand the repetitive, soul-sucking,

00:10:39.380 soul-draining stuff to the machines.

00:10:41.220 We want to keep the hugs.

00:10:42.660 We want to keep the hard talks.

00:10:44.080 We wanna keep the creative conversation.

00:10:46.900 Let the AI take the task

00:10:48.320 that we don't even wanna do in the first place

00:10:49.660 so that we have the time to be human.

00:10:51.500 31, AI won't replace your people, it'll free them.

00:10:55.080 I didn't have to get rid of my assistant

00:10:56.680 because she stopped triaging emails. 0.99

00:10:58.680 She just became my chief of staff. 0.99

00:11:00.380 She now has the time to focus on bigger problems, 0.99

00:11:02.460 human problems, not doing triaging and automation 0.80

00:11:04.920 that the AI does better than her.

00:11:06.740 Now, if you do need a task done,

00:11:08.940 then we gotta go to 32, token first, hire second.

00:11:12.240 See, before we deploy money to labor and people,

00:11:16.180 we need to first ask for self,

00:11:17.440 can we use the tokens or the AI to get it done first?

00:11:20.660 It's way cheaper to get AI to do something 24 seven,

00:11:24.380 never gets upset, never quits, never gets mad at us,

00:11:27.200 then to hire somebody, have to train them

00:11:29.120 and then hope that they don't leave.

00:11:31.060 If AI can't do it, that's when we hire someone

00:11:33.440 who can actually run the AI to manage it.

00:11:35.880 33, if your best people are doing what AI could do,

00:11:39.860 you're the problem.

00:11:40.440 If we use our most expensive talent on a task

00:11:43.420 a machine can handle, that's a waste.

00:11:46.140 We need to make sure that that's not happening

00:11:47.760 because if it is, it's a failure.

00:11:49.220 34, the future belongs to directors, not doers.

00:11:53.200 The way I think about it is we wanna be the editor,

00:11:55.800 not the author.

00:11:56.780 We wanna make sure that we come in

00:11:58.420 and we let the machine do the work

00:12:00.180 and then we become the director, we direct it.

00:12:02.580 We're the human on the loop, not human in the loop.

00:12:04.880 So we need to actually challenge ourselves

00:12:06.300 to stop being the best worker

00:12:07.700 and start being the best director.

00:12:09.720 35, your talent strategy is your AI strategy.

00:12:13.860 When we hire people, we're taking money

00:12:16.100 and we're bringing people into our business.

00:12:18.020 We need to make sure that we qualify

00:12:20.180 and we start bringing people into our business

00:12:22.400 that know AI natively.

00:12:24.280 So every hire that you're considering

00:12:26.240 should be showing you on their interview

00:12:28.180 how they've partnered with AI to do that work.

00:12:31.180 36, AI isn't a department, it's a way of operating.

00:12:34.800 Oftentimes, leaders try to delegate AI

00:12:37.180 down to the tech people.

00:12:38.700 And I think that's why it fails.

00:12:40.520 For me, it's not one team or one department.

00:12:43.200 It's how the whole business runs.

00:12:45.120 And it has to come from the top

00:12:46.520 because number 37 is your team

00:12:48.400 will never out-adopt their leader.

00:12:50.200 You are the ceiling.

00:12:51.580 If you're just dabbling with AI, your whole team will dabble.

00:12:54.680 It's what John Maxwell calls the law of the lid.

00:12:56.580 Your team will never rise above the leader.

00:12:58.620 So it's not about getting them to use AI.

00:13:00.900 It's about you as a leader showing them how you're using it.

00:13:04.600 If you do that, the whole team will follow.

00:13:06.220 38. You're not too busy to learn AI. You're actually busy because you have it.

00:13:11.520 When I hear people say, I don't have time for this, that's exactly why you should do this.

00:13:16.460 This weekend, take some time to educate yourself. Talk with the AI. Have it teach you. Download my

00:13:21.840 workbook. Go through the exercises. Learning AI is how we get our time back.

00:13:25.820 39. AI doesn't have an identity problem. We do.

00:13:29.360 The tech is ready. People are like, oh yeah, but it's not good enough yet. Nah, it's there.

00:13:33.500 what's actually holding us back is that we're scared to let go. The bottleneck in most cases

00:13:39.120 has a face and it's usually yours. 40. The barrier was never the tech. It's your willingness to try.

00:13:45.460 What we need to make sure is we don't blame the tools. See, the tools are incredible. The only

00:13:49.760 gap that I've noticed is that we're bad at using the tools, but if we stay with them long enough,

00:13:54.440 eventually the tools will get good because we get better. We just have to start. Even if it's messy,

00:13:59.300 even if it's hard, even if it doesn't do what you want right away, that's the whole difference is

00:14:03.320 we want to stick to it until we get it. The people that are going to stay behind are the ones that

00:14:07.480 quit in that first try when it didn't work exactly the way they wanted it. You just made it through

00:14:11.780 40 brutal truths around AI. Most people aren't willing to be honest with themselves. They're not

00:14:16.180 willing to confront it. They're not willing to say, hey, I probably got to get better at this.

00:14:19.940 But here's what I know. If you watch this, you're ready for this. Right now, you have the opportunity.

00:14:24.860 It doesn't take anybody else's permission, no timeline. You just have to make a decision

00:14:29.200 to invest in yourself, to go all in on this,

00:14:32.020 to decide that you wanna be the best in your peer group.

00:14:34.540 So leave a comment below and let me know out of these 40

00:14:37.340 or anything I shared, what hit you the hardest?

00:14:39.880 What did you need to hear today?

00:14:41.200 So just leave your answer below

00:14:42.480 and I'll make sure I read every one of those comments.

00:14:44.920 And remember, if you want my AI company operating system,

00:14:47.540 the exact playbook for running your whole business on AI,

00:14:50.300 just DM me YouTube OS over on Instagram

00:14:52.360 and I'll send it over.

00:14:53.200 And if you wanna know

00:14:53.920 the six most profitable AI businesses to start,

00:14:56.820 click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - July 02, 2026

40 Hacks to Use AI So Well It Feels Unfair

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