Dan Martell - July 22, 2025


How to Go From ChatGPT Beginner to Pro in 2026


Episode Stats

Length

12 minutes

Words per Minute

211.30164

Word Count

2,711

Sentence Count

116

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I've been programming since I was 17 and even I feel the pressure to keep up with AI.
00:00:05.120 New tools drop daily. Everyone's an expert and the more you search for answers, the harder it
00:00:10.420 gets to move forward. But after diving deep, learning everything I could about AI, building
00:00:15.120 my own AI companies, I've realized something. The real problem isn't that AI is hard to learn,
00:00:20.460 it's that you're stuck in the noise. So today I'm going to break down a simple four-stage roadmap
00:00:26.380 to go from AI beginner to AI pro,
00:00:29.960 even if you have zero technical background.
00:00:32.260 Stage one, choose your AI toolkit.
00:00:35.020 I've got a friend, he's a freaking genius.
00:00:37.420 His name is Chris.
00:00:38.160 He literally goes chasing AI tool, knows them all,
00:00:41.360 tells you how they all work.
00:00:42.580 But when you look at his life,
00:00:44.340 he's the same Chris I met 10 years ago.
00:00:46.460 And the reason why is he keeps resetting.
00:00:48.320 See, most people get into this squirrel mentality
00:00:51.140 of collecting information about AI.
00:00:53.700 What's more important is that you apply it
00:00:56.280 and actually get a result from it.
00:00:58.500 Most people have too many options.
00:01:01.320 They think they don't have enough,
00:01:02.480 so they're worried that they're gonna fail
00:01:03.740 by not saying yes to everything.
00:01:05.100 I'm telling you, it's the saying no to all the options
00:01:08.140 and picking one and going hard in the paint.
00:01:10.560 Instead of going a mile wide and an inch deep,
00:01:13.520 go a mile deep and learn these tools.
00:01:15.960 See, most beginners die from indigestion, not starvation.
00:01:19.000 So here's how to pick your toolkit.
00:01:20.660 First off, we have to audit your task list.
00:01:23.360 We gotta look at all the things
00:01:24.820 that you're doing every day
00:01:25.880 that's just sucking up your time,
00:01:27.820 that's draining your energy
00:01:29.220 that AI was specifically designed to help you overcome.
00:01:32.820 Make that list and start looking for groups of activities
00:01:36.140 that you can use AI to do for you.
00:01:38.340 Next, you have to think about
00:01:39.500 what is a bucket of things that you're working on
00:01:42.060 that AI can help you with
00:01:43.640 and pick two tools for that specific task.
00:01:46.240 If it's copywriting, if it's answering phone calls,
00:01:48.440 if it's writing emails,
00:01:49.420 as if it's coming up with ideas.
00:01:51.080 And you think there's no way that AI can do it.
00:01:54.020 Trust me, it can.
00:01:55.080 The reason we want two tools is so that we can figure out
00:01:57.920 which one's gonna best accomplish it for the way we like.
00:02:00.800 See, a lot of people don't like AI
00:02:02.160 because it doesn't feel like the way I do it.
00:02:04.180 Okay, guess what?
00:02:05.220 Two tools, two different outcomes,
00:02:06.780 pick the one that feels most organic to you and run with it.
00:02:09.920 Next, we wanna commit to seven days in a row
00:02:13.440 of doing the work, picking that one tool
00:02:16.420 and applying it to that task until we figure it out.
00:02:19.300 I get it. You might overwhelm yourself. You might get frustrated. It may not initially do it exactly
00:02:24.320 the way you want, but just play with it. The cool thing about AI, it gets better and better
00:02:29.340 every freaking week. Finally, make it a habit. I call this habit stacking. See, most people have
00:02:35.000 a hard time adding something new to their life because they don't force themselves to wake up
00:02:39.720 and stack that against another habit. So the way I do it is I find something that today I do no
00:02:44.800 matter what and then i add to that new behavior so that i stack it against something else so i like
00:02:50.040 to read every day in the morning so when i really wanted to plug in this ai world of mine i added
00:02:54.940 prompting ai after i read in the same chair three prompts every day for months now my default is to
00:03:01.280 go to ai i've already used it 26 times today and it's the first thing in the morning now that
00:03:06.320 you've chosen which tool to use it's time to get really freaking good at how to use them i call
00:03:11.680 this prompt like a pro the other day i was hanging out my buddy and he's like i use ai look at this
00:03:16.800 hey ai tell me what the weather's gonna look like tomorrow isn't that cool i'm like bro do not think
00:03:24.340 asking it to tell you what the weather is tomorrow is using ai it can do way more for example i sit
00:03:30.200 on a board incredible company i was busy with a lot of other projects i got the board pack this
00:03:35.420 is all the information the financial analysis the update from the ceo any other notes from anybody
00:03:39.960 else on those executive teams and i didn't have a chance to look it over so what i do i took all
00:03:44.440 that information and i plugged it into my own private ai because it's private and it's secure
00:03:49.400 and it's safe and then i asked it hey act as an investor and tell me what are the five questions
00:03:55.320 i should be asking the ceo based on this information the call started everybody starts
00:03:59.320 asking questions and then finally i get my turn the first questions got the ceo looking at me like
00:04:05.560 How did you know that?
00:04:07.180 That information around gross margin
00:04:08.900 was on page 27 of the financial plan,
00:04:11.080 and I didn't even know it, and you asked me about it.
00:04:13.520 The truth is, I don't like to work hard.
00:04:15.640 I like to work smart, and AI makes me wildly smart.
00:04:18.440 You essentially need to become a prompt engineer,
00:04:21.560 but I'll show you how to get the same results
00:04:23.280 without spending years trying to become one.
00:04:25.200 So this is my four-step prompting process
00:04:27.380 to go from AI beginner to AI pro.
00:04:29.820 The first one is the role.
00:04:31.540 You have to tell it, act like it.
00:04:33.300 I literally get really fun with these.
00:04:34.940 I tell it to act like the most eccentric version
00:04:38.180 of the person, because what that does
00:04:40.280 is it allows the AI to look at all the information it has
00:04:43.400 and discount or add things that it knows
00:04:46.300 only that kind of person would be interested in.
00:04:48.880 Next, we wanna give it the context.
00:04:50.800 I like using AI to help me with financial planning.
00:04:53.500 So what did I give it?
00:04:54.680 I gave it everything.
00:04:55.800 I gave it my bank statements.
00:04:57.220 I gave it all of my past investments.
00:04:59.400 I gave it all the legal documents.
00:05:01.340 Then I ask it questions like,
00:05:02.960 based on my age and my goals,
00:05:05.300 what do you think I should consider adjusting?
00:05:07.840 These are things that people pay some other person
00:05:10.640 to do for them that AI can not only do it better,
00:05:13.420 faster without the fricking attitude.
00:05:15.740 Next, we wanna give it the command.
00:05:17.520 Essentially, we wanna tell it what we want.
00:05:19.500 So if you want it, for example, to draft a legal document,
00:05:22.180 if you have to give it the command
00:05:23.540 for what it's trying to accomplish
00:05:25.020 based on what you gave it.
00:05:26.320 Next, we wanna give it the format.
00:05:27.960 And this, for me, I think a lot of people
00:05:29.840 misunderstand how powerful this is.
00:05:31.520 format yes is a list but formats also a spreadsheet a pdf a json output for the nerds in the audience
00:05:39.680 you can literally ask it to write the code for your next idea and watch it spit back code now
00:05:46.400 this is a cheat code of cheat codes at the end once you've talked to ai and you've given all
00:05:51.280 the prompt engineering you've gotten to an answer you like here's a really great way to get there
00:05:55.200 faster ask it to write the prompt that would have got you to that result faster and it will give it
00:06:00.800 to you. And then all of a sudden now you're learning how to talk to AI in a more productive
00:06:05.380 manner, which by the way, if you're a business owner and you want my step-by-step prompting
00:06:09.960 format for all areas of your business, just go find me on Instagram. It's Dan Martell,
00:06:14.440 12s and Martell and follow me. Then message me the word YouTube prompt, and I will send it
00:06:19.860 directly to you. So now you know which tools and how to use them, but with how fast everything's
00:06:24.960 changing, you have to create your own learning rhythm. Schools don't teach kids AI. If anything,
00:06:30.400 they get in massive trouble if they even consider using it.
00:06:33.940 Now, I get it.
00:06:34.560 Some teachers are like, yeah, but you don't understand.
00:06:36.780 If you let them use it, they're never gonna learn anything.
00:06:39.160 I completely disagree.
00:06:40.820 I have been teaching my kids AI
00:06:42.860 from the moment it was released.
00:06:44.680 They use it every day for their creative projects.
00:06:47.240 And what, I'm supposed to pretend
00:06:48.600 like the future doesn't have AI in it?
00:06:50.720 That's like when, before we had the internet,
00:06:52.720 if people wanted to learn something,
00:06:53.940 they had to like walk to the library to get a book
00:06:57.000 and find the right book.
00:06:57.800 They had the answer to their question.
00:06:58.980 and then the internet came along
00:07:00.440 and all of a sudden it got brought to us.
00:07:02.440 AI is the exact same thing.
00:07:04.200 And you're telling me we shouldn't let people
00:07:06.420 use the internet and instead force them
00:07:08.020 to walk to the library to learn?
00:07:09.660 Not something I can support
00:07:10.980 because once you stop learning, you start dying.
00:07:13.940 This is the AI learning rhythm
00:07:15.300 that's gonna turn you into a pro.
00:07:16.940 First, it comes down to daily consumption.
00:07:19.520 I'm a big fan of using my feed to feed my mind.
00:07:22.480 So I want to make sure that wherever I put my time
00:07:25.100 and attention, it's feeding me the things
00:07:26.980 that I wanna get better.
00:07:27.860 So here's how I do it.
00:07:28.740 I open up my phone and I go to TikTok
00:07:31.160 and I search for AI construction or whatever your field is.
00:07:35.180 And then I give it a FYP in the comments of the videos
00:07:39.000 that it shows me.
00:07:39.820 So it tells the algorithm to change my algorithm
00:07:42.500 to only show me things that is relevant to what I'm doing.
00:07:45.520 Whatever your role is, you literally do that.
00:07:48.260 And now when you go on TikTok,
00:07:49.960 you will have a feed that's gonna teach you
00:07:52.240 how to become an AI pro.
00:07:53.740 Next, you wanna create your weekly mastermind.
00:07:56.040 I'm a big fan of learning through osmosis.
00:07:58.920 So what I did months ago
00:08:00.260 is I decided to do a weekly mastermind
00:08:02.960 with people I saw online creating content.
00:08:05.520 And it's very simple.
00:08:06.560 They don't even know me.
00:08:07.620 I reach out to them.
00:08:08.520 I ask them if they wanna come have lunch on Zoom.
00:08:10.880 And we just talk.
00:08:12.040 One of my favorite questions I ask them right now
00:08:13.660 is what do you think they're gonna release
00:08:15.320 in the next Frontier model?
00:08:16.880 Talking to people that are doing it at the Frontier
00:08:20.240 that you find on social media using the first step
00:08:23.260 is how you stay competitive.
00:08:25.300 Next, we wanna do a monthly tool audit.
00:08:27.880 Go back to step one and go back to all the tasks
00:08:31.140 that you're working on and specifically the things
00:08:33.020 that suck your energy that you really don't wanna do
00:08:35.140 and ask yourself, can AI today replace that work?
00:08:39.020 See, what you can do today changes every three months
00:08:41.840 in a massive way.
00:08:43.220 Finally, a quarterly event or going to a workshop.
00:08:46.620 At the end of the day, there's no way that you on your own
00:08:49.740 with your assistant can recruit
00:08:51.040 and have these meetings every week
00:08:52.400 and it's gonna give you coverage.
00:08:53.520 what i want to encourage you to do is find the ai focused event in your industry or at least the
00:08:59.400 industry event and hopefully they have a whole section on ai i'd be a little bit concerned if
00:09:03.720 they didn't and go sit in that room be around those people that's where you find potential
00:09:08.600 peers advisors or vendors that can help you solve the biggest problems you've got using ai so you
00:09:14.500 can get leverage because you don't want to default to labor you want to look for leverage but there's
00:09:18.800 one last shift. And honestly, it's the one that will make sure you stay ahead because it's not
00:09:24.020 just about using AI to get stuff done. You need to become a director, not a doer. People ask me
00:09:29.360 all the time, will AI replace me? How do I stay competitive? Here's what I've learned. There's
00:09:34.460 only three things AI won't replace. One, vision. Can you predict and see a future that doesn't
00:09:41.380 exist yet that should? Hey, see AI, just like great music, it doesn't know when to stop taking
00:09:48.160 things away to consider something complete your taste by reviewing 1500 different facebook ads
00:09:54.560 but understanding what the market's going to resonate with that is invaluable and lastly it's
00:09:59.760 care a lot of people call this eq emotional intelligence your ability to care for people
00:10:05.760 to interact with people in a caring way that ai will not disrupt so you need to become a visionary
00:10:11.520 you need to become somebody that can predict and see around the corner because ai will take care
00:10:16.480 the last mile so this is how you become a director not a doer first we have to stop being busy a lot
00:10:23.040 of people confuse busyness with motion if most of your day is just busy task work back to back
00:10:30.000 you have to step back and look for ways automating all of that stuff because in 10 years ai will be
00:10:35.280 doing 99 of your to-do list next we have to upgrade our taste this is about understanding what great
00:10:42.240 output looks like it doesn't matter if it's art or business or leadership you want to study the
00:10:47.760 best in the world you want to look at what they're doing and ask yourself what's the pattern that
00:10:52.400 they're all following that's contributing to that success honestly that's why i love social media a
00:10:57.440 lot of people say it can be used for harm i think it's the most helpful thing in the world if you
00:11:01.280 use it properly so go find those examples follow those people study those videos on youtube and
00:11:07.040 and just go and bathe in world-class mastery.
00:11:09.960 Next, we have to simplify our thinking.
00:11:11.980 See, to be a great director,
00:11:13.780 you need to be able to explain complex problems
00:11:16.160 in a simple way.
00:11:17.240 Let other people go, oh, that makes sense.
00:11:19.720 So being able to understand what's available out there,
00:11:22.440 but then create a plan that's simple but powerful,
00:11:25.840 that's gonna make you an AI pro.
00:11:27.540 And lastly, we have to practice self-reflection.
00:11:30.260 A life unexamined is a life not lived.
00:11:33.320 We have to look at ways
00:11:34.780 that we can get feedback from other people.
00:11:36.680 could be our team it could be our family members you have to be willing to seek the feedback the
00:11:41.480 self-reflection to understand is my calendar getting better am i becoming more effective
00:11:46.760 is ai giving me more time back i know ai is overwhelming but honestly if you follow this
00:11:52.040 simple road map you'll stay ahead of 99 of the people you're watching this because you're like
00:11:57.320 hey i don't want to be one of those people that wake up and go hey what happened to the horse and
00:12:02.120 buggy and why is everybody driving around these cars but here's what i've seen because i'm a
00:12:06.120 technology guy when uber launched are all the people that drive ubers previous taxi drivers
00:12:12.600 or are they just normal people that shifted into new roles most of them never drove a taxi before
00:12:17.320 they drove uber the truth is is as innovation creates new opportunity we're just going to have
00:12:22.280 people migrate from one skilled area to another that's what happened in the industrial revolution
00:12:27.960 and many other transitions along the way but the difference is the people that were here ahead of
00:12:33.160 the curve and wanted to take advantage they sold the picks and shovels to all the people looking
00:12:37.800 for gold that's the opportunity in front of you now if you want to learn how to get rich
00:12:42.120 in the new ai era click the video and i'll see you on the other side