Dan Martell - September 09, 2026


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


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

218.87

Word count

4,300

Sentence count

255

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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.