Dan Martell - How to Use AI to Change Your Life (for the Better)

00:00:00.000 AI can change your life if you use it the way the greats use their coaches.

00:00:04.240 Michael Jordan got cut from his high school varsity team, then won six NBA championships.

00:00:09.320 Tom Brady was pick number 199 in the NFL draft, then won seven Super Bowls, more than any team

00:00:15.760 in the NFL. Steve Jobs got fired from his own company, then came back and built it into the

00:00:20.740 world's first trillion dollar company. They all completely changed their lives. But here's the

00:00:25.160 thing. None of them did it alone. Jordan had Phil Jackson, Brady had Bill Belichick, Jobs had Bill

00:00:30.820 Campbell. Behind every one of them, there was somebody seeing what they couldn't see for

00:00:35.740 themselves. Same's true for me. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on coaches,

00:00:40.240 and they're the reason I have the life I have today. And the cool part, AI can help you get

00:00:45.320 started on the exact same thing. So I'm going to give you the five things a great coach sees that

00:00:50.140 you can't and how to use AI for them. And stick around till the end because the fifth is by far

00:00:55.920 the most important. The first thing any great coach does isn't to help you hit your goals,

00:01:00.340 it's to help you get bigger ones. Most people don't know this, but at 17, I just get out of

00:01:05.620 rehab and one of the most powerful things they had me do was write a transition plan. One of the

00:01:10.580 questions was to ask me to define what I want to achieve in my life. I had never written a goal

00:01:15.840 down prior to that my whole life. And I wasn't even trying to do anything big. I was just trying

00:01:20.400 not to relapse. So then I wrote down something crazy at the time, because I'd never known a

00:01:24.620 person to ever do this. Make $100,000 a year. Then I wrote down, buy a house. Up until that point,

00:01:31.880 I was just a kid that got taken from my home at 11, put in a group home, spent most of my time

00:01:36.760 in the system. It wasn't in the realm of possibility, but I wrote it down anyway. I was

00:01:41.740 encouraged to dream a little bit. And in just four years, at 21 years old, I make my first

00:01:47.400 $100,000. I bought my first house that year. Crazy. If I would have just stuck with stay sober,

00:01:53.700 that would have never happened because it wasn't big enough. A good coach coaches you to your

00:01:57.860 potential, not a little bit better for what they've seen you do. That's the first step is dream. Allow

00:02:03.960 yourself to think big thoughts. Now we got to bring it into reality. That's your goals. So to turn it

00:02:10.120 from a dream into a goal, you need two things. You need a number specific and you need a date

00:02:21.180 by when. I want to be in shape. That's a dream. 185 pounds by December 31st. That's a goal. You

00:02:27.800 can't fail at a dream. And that's exactly why people like them. A dream is as big as you want

00:02:32.600 it to be. Then you have to make it a goal or nothing happens. So here's what we got to do.

00:02:37.240 Think 10 years out, not next year yet,

00:02:40.260 and brain dump the five to 10 outcomes.

00:02:42.940 I'm talking work, money, health, growth, relationships.

00:02:46.460 Don't let AI write these for you.

00:02:48.120 What we wanna use AI for is to push back on us

00:02:51.280 when we're playing it safe.

00:02:52.620 Then we wanna turn every one of those dreams

00:02:54.760 into a number and a date.

00:02:56.880 Then we have an opportunity to build a plan towards them.

00:02:59.800 10 years out, three years out, one year,

00:03:02.060 that all aligns with the dream

00:03:04.400 because they're defined by a goal.

00:03:06.080 So here's what I want you to do, pull out your phone.

00:03:08.320 And look, I put all these below

00:03:09.660 so you can copy paste them if you wanna do this later,

00:03:11.600 but we can do this together.

00:03:12.900 Open up your dictation app and read this to your AI.

00:03:15.980 You are my ruthless mentor helping me dream bigger.

00:03:18.940 Interview me about what I want my life

00:03:20.720 to look like in 10 years.

00:03:22.000 I'm talking work, money, health, relationships, growth.

00:03:25.700 When an answer sounds conservative or easy,

00:03:28.200 call it out and push me.

00:03:29.760 I wanna 10X my growth, not 2X.

00:03:32.220 Then turn every answer into a real goal

00:03:34.700 a number and a date if i give you something vague don't let it through finally work backwards into

00:03:40.860 what that means for three years from now and what it means for this year that's gonna give you a

00:03:45.980 full-fledged plan based on the dreams that you've responded to now trust me it will push back on you

00:03:51.340 every time i've done this it's like not specific enough oh i don't think so it's an awesome prompt

00:03:56.220 to really get the juices flowing now we've got something for you to aim at now we've got to

00:04:00.700 figure out how far you are from it because the second thing a great coach does is they tell you

00:04:05.100 the truth about where you are right now they give us a score every friday i sit down and i pull up

00:04:13.500 my calendar and i do my non-negotiables where i open up a spreadsheet that has these seven columns

00:04:18.540 where i rate myself out of 10 for each one of those areas health relationships love work money

00:04:24.300 fun personal growth i take the two lowest scores i highlight them and then i make a commitment for

00:04:29.420 the following week to make sure I get better. It takes 10 minutes and it's the number one reason

00:04:33.900 nothing in my life gets dropped or becomes a crisis because I consistently have a score of

00:04:39.480 where I'm at on the things that are important to me towards my goals. Have you ever asked somebody

00:04:44.040 how their health is and they're like, pretty good. Based on what? There's actually a name for this.

00:04:48.420 It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, where essentially all people rate themselves way above

00:04:52.800 average from where they're at. Have you ever asked somebody like, how good of a driver do you think

00:04:56.400 you are. I'm the best. I say this all the time, so I'm full of crap. Clearly, I am not. There are

00:05:01.080 better drivers than me, but I think I'm the best. By definition, everybody can't be above average.

00:05:07.320 The places where we do this the worst is when there's no scoreboard. So let's ask yourself a

00:05:11.500 question. The person who hits their tenure goal, what do they do every week? So for example, the

00:05:16.640 person that's going to hit their goal of being absolutely shredded, what do they do every day?

00:05:20.660 They probably work out hard. They probably eat a caloric deficit. Those are things they can

00:05:25.280 measure themselves out of 10. If they hit it, that's a 10 out of 10. If you didn't go to the

00:05:30.080 gym that day, you lose three or four points. If you didn't eat well, there's another three points.

00:05:34.500 Now you start putting up the ones in the twos. Well, none of that's going to lead to you hitting

00:05:37.760 your goal in 10 years. AI is terrible about this. It's sycophantic. It tells you you're crushing it.

00:05:43.940 You're brilliant. You're so close. Keep going. You're amazing. And you might not be anywhere

00:05:48.940 near your goal. It's actually funny because in 2025, OpenAI actually pulled back an update they

00:05:54.580 made in Chagipetit for this exact reasons. It was way too agreeable. It was validating people

00:06:00.160 instead of actually pushing back. So the key is, is you can't ask it how you're doing. You have to

00:06:04.840 tell it what the standard is and then make it grade you against it. So here's how we do it.

00:06:10.080 First off, we have to give it our 10-year goals, but it already knows that because we did that in

00:06:13.860 the first step. Then have it pull out the weekly non-negotiables that actually gets you there.

00:06:18.400 The activities that if you do on a daily and weekly basis, it's aligned. That now becomes

00:06:23.220 your grading system, not your opinion of how well you're doing. Now, every Friday we schedule it so

00:06:28.540 that it interviews us on our week and hands us the score. Then now we have our two lowest scores.

00:06:34.300 Now, don't fix them yet. Here's the exact prompt that I want you to talk into your phone to get

00:06:39.340 it to do this. You're my ruthless coach, not my assistant. Tell me the truth over making me feel

00:06:45.000 good. I'm scoring myself one to 10 on the areas we talked about in my previous prompt. Use my

00:06:50.380 10-year goals to define what a 10 would actually look like weekly in each area. Turn it into a

00:06:55.740 simple grading system based on the non-negotiables I need to reach my goals. Every Friday, ask me

00:07:01.240 about my week to see how much I've stuck to them. Grade me out of 10 on each and tell me my two

00:07:06.000 lowest. I used to do this myself every Friday by hand. Now I have AI do it because I'm not the one

00:07:12.600 should be grading me so now we've got our two lowest scores we know where we're going where

00:07:20.360 we're at right now which means there's a gap that we need to close this finally visible

00:07:24.840 and that's the exact moment that your brain does something sneaky because the third thing a great

00:07:29.400 coach does is they stop you from fixing the wrong thing helping you focus on the real problem it's 1.00

00:07:35.160 like there was a woman once at my event she's in the health business and she's fired up she's

00:07:39.320 learning about ai and automation and she's like i'm gonna build the most advanced customer support

00:07:44.760 agent infrastructure because that's my bottleneck and the easiest thing would have been me helping

00:07:48.920 her build it instead i asked her three simple questions where you're at now where do you want

00:07:54.280 to be and what do you think is actually the problem and the truth is the real answer came

00:07:59.320 out 10 minutes later it wasn't a support problem she didn't actually have enough practitioners to

00:08:04.360 serve the clients she already had she was about to sit down spend a bunch of time and energy to build

00:08:09.240 a beautiful solution, solving a problem she actually didn't have. Solving the wrong problem

00:08:14.800 faster is still failing. And that's exactly what your brain is about to do with your two lowest

00:08:20.240 scores. Because your brain, once you find those problems, wants to go find other things that are

00:08:24.840 easier to solve. The next shiny object, the new thing you have to do that doesn't exist.

00:08:29.660 Psychologists actually call this the attribute substitution. See, right now, when you look at

00:08:33.840 those scores, your brain quietly swaps in for an easy one. Like what AI should I build to improve

00:08:38.580 my business we want to answer the easy one because it feels productive it's something we can do right

00:08:44.100 now but the truth is is in a week nothing moved this is why they're smart people grinding for six

00:08:49.860 months a year to end up in the same spot they're asking themselves the wrong question this is where

00:08:55.460 ai gets dangerous not because it's bad because it's good if you hand it the wrong problem it'll

00:09:01.220 research it it'll plan it it'll build it it feels so good it can do it faster than you could ever do

00:09:07.780 it alone beautifully it's like oh my god look how great my report is congratulations you're now

00:09:13.460 wrong at scale see a coach doesn't take your problem at face value they go looking for what's

00:09:19.360 underneath it so don't let the ai solve anything until it argued with you about what the actual

00:09:24.800 problem is so here's the prompt i use to take my two lowest scores and go deeper my two lowest

00:09:30.900 scores are x and y it would know don't give me anything to do yet interview me about how i handle

00:09:37.760 those two areas today do several rounds of questions each round double click on what you

00:09:42.640 think the real cause is underneath my last answer especially what i'm not seeing keep going until

00:09:47.920 you hit something i haven't said out loud then give me the one change for each that moves the

00:09:52.880 score the most and why you picked it over the obvious answer so for example maybe one of your

00:09:57.920 low scores in your life is in your marriage and you might go oh i need to do more date nights

00:10:03.680 except when you prompt it,

00:10:05.040 it might get to the point where it realizes

00:10:06.900 that you don't pick up after yourself.

00:10:08.800 And that's actually the problem.

00:10:10.520 You think you've got to schedule date nights,

00:10:12.420 your wife's been asking you to pick up after yourself.

00:10:14.640 How do I know this?

00:10:16.020 I got to the same place.

00:10:18.200 Do you know how long that took me to learn?

00:10:19.920 You can learn it for free using AI

00:10:21.920 because it's gonna push you and push you to the real answer

00:10:24.620 as long as you prompt it right.

00:10:26.420 You might think that the thing you gotta fix

00:10:28.220 is go to the gym more,

00:10:29.220 but when it prompts you and you answer it

00:10:31.080 and it keeps going and going,

00:10:31.900 it might be that you're not sleeping enough

00:10:33.700 so your body can't recover.

00:10:34.960 Or you're trying to outwork a bad diet.

00:10:38.180 Sometimes we need to be prompted

00:10:39.300 to get to the layer of the real problem.

00:10:41.340 So now we know where we're going,

00:10:43.120 we know where we stand,

00:10:44.440 and we know the one thing

00:10:45.560 that's actually getting in the way,

00:10:46.940 which means you've got everything you need

00:10:48.860 and you're still probably not gonna do it.

00:10:50.880 So in the problem, we have to go deeper.

00:10:55.340 So now you know where you're going,

00:10:57.560 where you stand,

00:10:58.580 and the one thing that's actually getting in the way.

00:11:00.380 Here's the fourth thing a great coach does.

00:11:02.620 They make you feel like you're winning before you won.

00:11:05.740 And they do that by measuring your progress.

00:11:08.080 So for example, if you write down a number in a spreadsheet,

00:11:11.040 it doesn't mean anything on its own.

00:11:13.240 There needs to be something tied to it emotionally.

00:11:16.600 Gain, something you're looking to get,

00:11:18.240 or pain if you don't hit it, right?

00:11:19.940 I call those rewards and stakes.

00:11:21.560 And the reason why a great coach does this

00:11:22.980 is because you will do more to avoid a loss

00:11:26.140 than you will to have a gain.

00:11:27.780 A number on its own is just a number.

00:11:29.700 We have to tie it to an emotion.

00:11:31.720 Otherwise, your brain will just discount it.

00:11:33.620 Like, why am I even doing this?

00:11:34.980 If nobody knows, then why do I care

00:11:36.800 if I eat what I wanna eat tonight,

00:11:38.180 or I decide to skip the gym,

00:11:39.640 or I don't do the calls that I need to do

00:11:41.660 to hit my revenue number? 0.99

00:11:42.920 It's like Jen on our team. 1.00

00:11:44.160 She set a fitness goal. 0.90

00:11:45.660 She wanted to hit a weight

00:11:47.340 that she hadn't hit since high school.

00:11:49.080 And if she just set a reward,

00:11:50.880 which was going to Bali, if she hit it,

00:11:52.600 she wouldn't have actually hit her number.

00:11:54.640 What she did instead would set a stake.

00:11:56.540 And this is her that said it.

00:11:57.800 She essentially said, if I don't hit it,

00:11:59.860 I can't stay on the team.

00:12:01.220 I will tell you, the days that she didn't want

00:12:03.660 to go to the gym, eat right, make sure she got her steps in,

00:12:07.380 she showed up because she wanted to stay on the team.

00:12:10.100 That downside avoidance mattered way more

00:12:12.160 than the gain of going to Bali.

00:12:13.480 And what that caused was for her to step on the scale

00:12:15.880 every single day to measure her progress,

00:12:18.540 to build momentum, to make sure she was doing

00:12:20.600 the right things ahead of time

00:12:22.000 so she hit her numbers on the backside.

00:12:23.720 Here's a tip.

00:12:24.440 I always put money goals as things that I buy

00:12:27.820 and experiences for things that are health related.

00:12:31.040 That way, if I have my family vacation on the line

00:12:33.760 and I gotta lose some weight or do a cut

00:12:35.700 or whatever my fitness goal is,

00:12:37.020 then my family supports me at the dinner table

00:12:39.940 instead of pushes me to have yet another bite of dessert

00:12:42.780 because they wanna go on that vacation.

00:12:44.760 But if I say, hey, I don't hit this goal,

00:12:46.580 I don't go on vacation, you guys can go,

00:12:48.380 then they'll support me.

00:12:49.260 So it's a really smart way

00:12:50.300 of getting their support as a team.

00:12:51.620 So here's what we gotta do to measure.

00:12:53.780 First off, we have to break it down into three levels.

00:12:56.900 First, we have the year, and this is the big one.

00:12:59.200 This is where I want you to set a big reward

00:13:01.240 on the other side and a real consequence if you miss it.

00:13:04.140 For example, last year, we had a follower growth goal

00:13:07.000 from 3.2 million to 8.9.

00:13:10.280 It was aggressive.

00:13:11.380 What was the consequence?

00:13:12.760 We actually put our Porsches on the line.

00:13:15.280 My GT3 RS, Todd's Taycan, and Sam's GT4.

00:13:19.620 None of us wanted to lose our car,

00:13:22.120 So we set the quarterly milestone, that's number two.

00:13:25.060 These are smaller goals and rewards along the way.

00:13:28.120 Then we figured out what the daily activity needed to be

00:13:31.020 by every person on the team

00:13:33.200 to make sure that we were aligned with that annual.

00:13:35.580 That went for the whole year,

00:13:37.520 right up until December 30th,

00:13:39.600 where there was a chance that we weren't gonna hit it.

00:13:42.180 And I will tell you, I had Betty, my house manager,

00:13:44.540 ready to hit the button, to list the cars, to sell them

00:13:47.240 if we didn't hit it, and there was no negotiation.

00:13:50.000 I know this is intense,

00:13:51.100 but I'm here to teach you how to use AI

00:13:53.100 to actually achieve what you want out of life.

00:13:55.500 And I have to model it myself.

00:13:57.480 And I'm telling you, this is real things

00:13:58.780 that I do in my own life.

00:13:59.940 And it is both crazy and wild and also a lot of fun.

00:14:04.000 And on the backside of that, when we did hit it,

00:14:06.200 I got to surprise both Todd and Sam with a beautiful watch.

00:14:09.800 It was probably one of my favorite things

00:14:11.600 that I got to do last year.

00:14:12.960 So here's how we use AI to prompt it properly

00:14:15.520 to help us break those down.

00:14:17.100 This is what you say.

00:14:17.940 Take the one-year goals we built

00:14:19.640 and break them down further.

00:14:21.100 one milestone per quarter and the daily progress that gets me there. Every level needs a number

00:14:26.520 and a date. Then interview me to pick a big reward and a real consequence for the year,

00:14:31.620 plus a smaller reward for each quarter. Push me on the consequence. If it's something you think

00:14:36.880 I could just shrug off, tell me and make me pick again. Then build me a visual scorecard I open

00:14:41.980 every day with the year, quarter, today's progress and days left. And the big idea is ask it to build

00:14:48.680 you a spreadsheet and put that all in there with the cover dashboard with the things I just said

00:14:52.840 days left etc to let you know if you're on track so AI has done four jobs a great coach does it

00:14:58.080 told you how to dream bigger it told you where you stand today it found the real problem and it

00:15:03.100 created a scoreboard on it but there's one more at the beginning of this video I told you there's

00:15:07.900 five things a great coach does and I'll be straight with you this is why anyone serious still needs a

00:15:13.740 real coach. Because as good as AI is at everything we just did, there's still one thing it'll never

00:15:19.440 do. This whole channel is here because of a conversation with my coach. He essentially said,

00:15:24.580 look, based on what you shared with me, you have to build a media team. You have to go pro. And it

00:15:29.340 needs to happen next time I see you, or I'm going to stop coaching you. I would have never felt the

00:15:33.560 accountability if I didn't have him, somebody I invested in, somebody who I valued his opinion,

00:15:38.200 somebody who had done it himself, say to me, you got to do this. And if you don't, I'm not here to

00:15:44.280 help. And the truth is, AI could never do that. So what we need is a human to keep us accountable.

00:15:52.580 Most people just think, well, I just don't know what to do. The reality, knowing what to do was

00:15:58.540 never the problem. AI could have always given you some options, could have always helped you stretch

00:16:02.800 the gap. But here's what I know. There will be a month when you don't want to do anything,

00:16:07.980 when you want to skip out, when you want to give up. And that's when a real person you made a real

00:16:12.640 commitment to matters the most. And the best version of this isn't one person. It's a freaking

00:16:18.380 community. I literally have people in my corner all over in different subject areas, in different 0.97

00:16:24.500 areas of expertise, in things that they're all masters in. Coaches who have been to where I want

00:16:29.340 to go for different aspects of your life. I have a coach that just shows me how to live life more

00:16:33.760 expressively. I have a coach that helps me with my kids. I have a coach for my health. I have a

00:16:37.880 coach for everything. Why? Because I know me and I will be more accountable to another person that

00:16:43.780 I'm worried to let down than I will just a spreadsheet or an AI. If you make commitments

00:16:48.400 to people and then you don't show up, they're probably going to go looking for you. If you

00:16:52.980 don't have somebody you've made a commitment to, your trainer, therapist, whatever it is, somebody

00:16:57.280 else, then there's no accountability. That's why inside of my coaching, my communities,

00:17:02.180 I have each group get together and set their goals and hold each other accountable and share

00:17:07.340 best practices and be their biggest cheerleader. Sometimes if you can't be a great leader,

00:17:11.460 be a cheerleader for somebody. They've got me to help them make sure that we're going on the

00:17:15.320 right problem, but they also have each other to have the support. That's what accountability is

00:17:20.120 and that's what community is and that's what a human does when it comes to coaching. So here's

00:17:23.880 how we find a coach. First thing, we need to find someone who's already done it. And I'm talking not

00:17:28.600 a friend, not a family member, not someone a few steps ahead of you actually who have gotten the

00:17:33.480 goal that you want to achieve. Then you have to find them and tell them what your goal is. And I

00:17:38.160 do this using AI so that when I show up, we're not sitting down to figure this stuff out. I present

00:17:43.900 them a plan. Then we work through the details to make sure that there's accountability to every

00:17:48.340 step of the action. Then meet with your coach on a schedule, not when you feel like it, but actually

00:17:53.360 on a schedule so you know you're accountable. And then ask them questions. In my situations,

00:17:57.900 what would you consider? Because that's what they're there for. AI can't help you do this,

00:18:02.460 but it'll help you find some great coaches. So here's what you prompt to get it to find you

00:18:06.140 those people. Based on everything we've built, my goals, my scores, and the real problems that

00:18:10.560 we found, give me a list of coaches, programs, and communities that could actually help me with

00:18:15.520 this specific thing. Ask me anything you need first, then give me the questions to ask before

00:18:20.620 I commit and the red flags that mean they've never done it themselves. And watch what it

00:18:25.360 comes up with. Now, here's a pro tip. If you want to make this super duper fast, give it the link

00:18:30.280 to this video and tell it to find the people who match what we just talked about. You want to find

00:18:34.820 somebody who's gone through it, knows the pain, who's done it recently, can actually help you

00:18:39.780 avoid the pitfalls, tell you what comes next and how to prepare for it. That's what a great coach

00:18:44.580 does. So that's the fifth job. And honestly, the most important one. Here's the thing. Once you've

00:18:49.960 done all five. You didn't just get one answer. You built something that runs again. Same loop,

00:18:55.500 whatever part of your life that you want to improve. Once you reach your goal, you start

00:18:59.320 again and you do it over and over again. Here's the deal. Jordan didn't need Phil Jackson to

00:19:05.100 explain basketball. Jobs didn't need Bill Campbell for information. They needed someone who would say

00:19:09.820 the thing that nobody else would say. Most people never get this. Most people feel stuck. You're

00:19:15.400 going to do this. You watch the whole thing. Grab the link, give it to your AI, make it do the work.

00:19:21.420 It'll actually pull out the prompts based on the transcript and ask you those questions and see

00:19:25.580 yourself perform at a level you never thought. You don't need anybody else to get started, but you do

00:19:30.460 need to get started to find the person. And look, if you're still stuck on what you even want, you

00:19:35.120 don't have clarity, you don't have any goals, nothing to aim at, click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - September 09, 2026

How to Use AI to Change Your Life (for the Better)

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