Dan Martell - June 25, 2026


This AI Brain Will Make You So Smart It’s Almost Unfair


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

202.52

Word count

2,437

Sentence count

158

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

I built a fully AI powered brain that runs across every part of my life. It helps me run dozens of companies and it gets me days of my day back. Here s how you can build the same AI brain I use to become part of the 0.01% of all AI users in the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I built a fully AI powered brain that runs across every part of my life. It helps me run dozens of
00:00:05.560 companies and it gets days of my life back. So today I'm going step by step on how you can build
00:00:11.340 the same AI brain I use to become part of the 0.0001% of AI users in the world, starting with
00:00:18.240 going pro. Simple, get a pro membership for your AI. It doesn't matter which AI invests the money.
00:00:25.420 Free versions of AI give you the worst version of the tool.
00:00:29.280 Slow to answer.
00:00:30.600 They're older models.
00:00:31.860 So as soon as you pay, 0.99
00:00:33.300 you've now become part of the 0.3%
00:00:35.860 of all users in the world that have a paid membership,
00:00:38.320 but we want you in the 0.01%.
00:00:40.620 So let's get into how we actually do that.
00:00:42.800 Install the brain.
00:00:44.700 Every AI conversation forgets the second you close it.
00:00:48.280 Sure, they have some tools for memory,
00:00:50.080 but it's basic things.
00:00:51.440 The 0.01% give AI a permanent place to read from.
00:00:56.220 That place has to be your files in your structure
00:00:58.740 that any AI can read your digital brain.
00:01:01.780 So here are three options you can pick from.
00:01:03.660 The first is a Google Drive.
00:01:05.480 Most people have this already
00:01:06.620 and it's kind of where it all started.
00:01:08.440 But the problem is, is that it's pretty limited
00:01:10.740 and it's not process.
00:01:12.420 The second is Notion.
00:01:13.980 This is a cloud-based data structure system
00:01:17.160 where I believe that the way it's built is AI native.
00:01:21.100 Google is a basic digital version of a folder system.
00:01:24.540 Notion is a modern AI-powered data store.
00:01:28.160 So yes, it has the files, but it also has the context.
00:01:31.060 It also has the data.
00:01:32.440 If you wanna go to the next level,
00:01:34.020 and this is what I use, I use Obsidian.
00:01:36.220 The challenge with a lot of these AI systems
00:01:38.220 is that you can't read what it's saved in.
00:01:40.760 You can't read the information.
00:01:42.300 So Obsidian uses what's called markdown files.
00:01:44.700 It's free and it's visual.
00:01:47.000 So not only is it like a big wiki
00:01:48.700 that sits on your computer,
00:01:49.860 but you can also see how the brain forms
00:01:52.520 and all the connections and links
00:01:54.140 to the information within it.
00:01:56.040 And the cool part is the grab view within Obsidian
00:01:58.240 is the only one that actually feels like a brain.
00:02:00.440 At the end of the day,
00:02:01.100 it comes down to personal preference.
00:02:02.320 There's literally hundreds of other tools you can use.
00:02:04.340 These are the ones I've used and where I'm at today.
00:02:06.360 So if you're not sure, just start with Obsidian,
00:02:08.380 download it and just have the AI create a second brain.
00:02:11.140 It takes five minutes.
00:02:12.120 Now you have a brain, it's installed,
00:02:13.700 but if AI reads it, there's nothing in it.
00:02:15.520 So how do you make sure
00:02:16.460 that it actually has the information
00:02:17.760 and it sounds like you?
00:02:18.940 give your brain an identity. Without an identity, the AI is just going to sound like some
00:02:24.640 corporate robot. But to have the agent act like you, you have to tell it how to act. That's the
00:02:29.760 identity. These three files will literally turn your AI from a tool to a digital clone that sounds
00:02:35.740 exactly like you. Number one, user.md. Who are you? What is your role? How do you communicate?
00:02:42.620 What are the frameworks you live by? How you present problems to you? Two is the soul.md file.
00:02:48.460 This is for the AI.
00:02:50.260 It's kind of wild, but you can define the voice,
00:02:53.440 the tone, the values that essentially the AI will adopt
00:02:57.920 so that it can interact and operate like you.
00:03:01.240 So the user.md file is how you are.
00:03:04.000 The soul is how it acts.
00:03:06.020 And then the third is the identity.md file.
00:03:08.800 That is who the AI is and what they do.
00:03:11.940 For example, I named my Kai.
00:03:13.880 I actually didn't even name him.
00:03:15.100 I used him for two weeks and I had him name himself.
00:03:17.300 So for example, in my user.md file,
00:03:19.720 I included who I am.
00:03:21.580 You know, I'm a founder, I'm a CEO,
00:03:23.140 I'm an author, I'm an investor.
00:03:24.560 My communication style,
00:03:26.220 things like being direct, fast, concise,
00:03:28.700 frameworks over fluff,
00:03:30.060 and things I care about like freedom,
00:03:32.340 execution, systems, leverage.
00:03:34.420 Some of my operating principles,
00:03:36.100 theory of constraints, minimum effective dose,
00:03:38.640 the 131 rules, a lot of different frameworks
00:03:40.700 that I've taught you, I put those in there
00:03:42.640 so it can operate from those principles by default.
00:03:45.280 Then my soul.md includes instructions for my AI.
00:03:48.500 So for example, talk like Dan.
00:03:50.040 I'm direct, high conviction, founder to founder.
00:03:52.680 Challenge me with love.
00:03:53.920 No hedgy words.
00:03:54.700 I don't like try.
00:03:55.520 I don't like hope.
00:03:56.180 I don't like maybe.
00:03:57.180 Get rid of those.
00:03:58.080 And then be resourceful.
00:03:59.320 Try to solve the problem before you ask me.
00:04:01.180 These are things that are in the soul file.
00:04:02.920 And then my identity file.
00:04:04.320 Kai is part coach, part chief of staff,
00:04:06.320 part accountability partner.
00:04:07.300 These are things that we define
00:04:08.840 so that he can operate from that place.
00:04:10.840 Now here's a pro tip.
00:04:12.180 Don't write these yourself.
00:04:13.400 You can get any AI to draft them for you.
00:04:15.840 It's kind of the coolest thing in the world.
00:04:17.240 You can ask it, hey, I need to create this new AI,
00:04:19.600 so can you interview me about how I work,
00:04:21.580 what I value, how I like to communicate,
00:04:23.580 and what I need from an AI assistant,
00:04:25.380 then have it draft the agent files
00:04:27.540 and it'll know user, soul, and identity files.
00:04:30.380 And once you have those, now we can just save them
00:04:32.620 and then point our AI to it
00:04:34.140 so it can reference back to it every single time.
00:04:36.240 Now, look, this is great for you,
00:04:37.660 but what about the rest of your team?
00:04:39.320 That's why I built a whole AI company
00:04:41.020 operating system playbook
00:04:42.500 around how to integrate AI
00:04:44.220 into every department of your business.
00:04:46.440 It's got all the tools, the workflows, the templates,
00:04:48.980 everything your team needs to use AI
00:04:50.800 to get 10x the results.
00:04:51.940 If you want it, just find me on Instagram
00:04:53.600 and DM me the words YouTube OS
00:04:55.380 and I'll send it right over.
00:04:56.620 So the brain knows who you are now.
00:04:58.760 Cool.
00:04:59.660 Now you probably want to start feeding it information.
00:05:02.840 Not yet.
00:05:03.660 Before you do that,
00:05:04.460 you have to make sure it's organized first.
00:05:06.640 Wire the brain.
00:05:08.180 AI needs a way to clearly identify the context of the brain.
00:05:11.800 No structure means AI just drowns in noise
00:05:14.680 and eventually hallucinates.
00:05:16.440 I went from 60% accuracy in asking questions
00:05:19.160 to 85% just by setting up the right folders.
00:05:22.420 So create these seven folders inside your vault
00:05:25.160 to get your brain organized.
00:05:26.880 The first one is people.
00:05:28.180 You should have a place where every person in your life
00:05:30.620 has a people file and has all the context on those people.
00:05:33.540 Two is projects.
00:05:34.860 What's one place where all of your projects,
00:05:37.400 timestamped, are listed and located
00:05:39.580 with all the context that it needs?
00:05:41.760 Third is decisions.
00:05:43.020 What are the decisions you've made in the past?
00:05:45.300 How did you decide what the alternatives are?
00:05:47.700 Four is companies.
00:05:48.820 This is any information on the company I'm dealing with,
00:05:51.820 the research, the competitors, et cetera.
00:05:53.880 Essentially, it's like another index of companies
00:05:56.400 that I might be interacting with.
00:05:57.660 Number five is meetings,
00:05:58.740 because that's where a lot of the decisions are made.
00:06:00.840 That's a lot of preferences are made.
00:06:02.100 That's where team and information about people is made.
00:06:04.380 So we need a meetings folder.
00:06:05.700 Six is daily.
00:06:06.780 I use this as a daily dump to analyze
00:06:09.680 and lock in every day daily decisions
00:06:12.840 that are three to five lines
00:06:14.020 that explain what happened throughout that day.
00:06:16.020 And then seven is knowledge.
00:06:17.480 This is where I'm extracting insights, frameworks, quotes,
00:06:21.520 anything that kind of makes me me
00:06:23.640 that I could reuse in the future,
00:06:25.400 I wanna save it in this knowledge folder.
00:06:27.380 Now, here's a pro tip.
00:06:28.560 I have an eighth folder.
00:06:29.960 It's called an MOC folder, a maps of content.
00:06:32.760 It's a folder that includes files
00:06:34.980 that is summaries of bodies of work.
00:06:37.380 So for example, I could have a youtube.md
00:06:39.640 moc linking all my scripting frameworks all my hook libraries all my thumbnail tasks all living
00:06:45.120 in different folders but the moc pulls it together it's kind of like consolidating information into
00:06:51.240 one simple reference file now you don't have to build an moc from day one that's why it's a pro
00:06:55.940 tip but you build them when a topic seems to get messy think of it like this your brain has
00:07:00.300 different parts of your brain that's responsible for different things motor function smells vision
00:07:05.860 And that's kind of what we're doing for a AI brain
00:07:09.800 that's gonna have to do things on our behalf.
00:07:11.660 That's why we've created these folder structures.
00:07:13.280 Now you can create a bunch more over time,
00:07:15.480 but this is where we start.
00:07:17.060 Now the brain is organized
00:07:18.280 and it's ready to be fed information,
00:07:20.760 but how do you actually feed it?
00:07:22.440 And then the next step, you have to feed the brain.
00:07:25.840 So what you do is you connect all your system,
00:07:27.800 then you have your AI extract all that information
00:07:31.640 into the folder structure that your brain is structured in.
00:07:35.480 because the brain only needs the information it needs to use to make decisions. There is a hundred
00:07:40.560 thousand data points that are being sent to me right now from the light to the temperature to
00:07:45.200 everything. And my brain is filtering out all the noise and it's only capturing the stuff I need to
00:07:51.080 know. This system works the exact same way because it doesn't need the raw stuff. It's pointed back
00:07:57.060 to it, but it does need to synthesize and extract the people, the decision, the knowledge that
00:08:02.460 happen inside those meetings you just have your ai do it you have your raw files where you pointed
00:08:07.420 to with your connectors and then you just have your ai extract every day all of the information
00:08:13.500 based on the folder structure within obsidian you just improve your brain at the speed of links
00:08:18.300 that's where we're at right now now i use granola to auto transcribe all my meanings and then
00:08:22.940 extract decisions commitments and actions and the cool part is in granola settings you can set a
00:08:27.260 custom template for this exact prompt to do the extraction just write this down extract from this
00:08:32.300 meeting one decisions what did i decide today by whom and why two commitments who promised what by
00:08:38.380 when three preferences how people work and communicate and four key insights framework
00:08:44.140 strategic shifts non-obvious observations output as a markdown skip small talk now granola drops
00:08:51.260 those outputs into the meetings folders as again the date meeting name.md now this is where things
00:08:57.900 get cool the brain is installed it knows who you are it's organized and it's starting to feed
00:09:03.580 itself but the real brain doesn't just hold things it rewires itself overnight but how do you get the
00:09:09.180 brain to get smarter overnight compound the brain now i'm gonna process the brain the way my real
00:09:17.100 brain works see when we go to sleep every night it takes everything that you were exposed to and it
00:09:23.100 organizes, it synthesizes, it consolidates, it summarizes, it looks at things that it needs to
00:09:28.440 connect, and then it even prunes things that it needs to forget. And an AI brain works the exact
00:09:33.360 same way. And this is what separates everything else we talked about in the past, storage,
00:09:38.740 into an actual brain. Here's two ways to refine your brain. The first way is manual. At the end
00:09:45.300 of the day, if you want, you can type into your AI a prompt that's going to tell it to go into
00:09:50.160 your brain and run this process essentially just say read everything that you've added to my vault
00:09:54.480 today and i need you to find orphan notes mentions of people projects companies that don't have their
00:09:59.280 own files you got to create those files you have to consolidate duplicates you have to update the
00:10:03.600 relevant map of contents with new links you have to flag anything strategic for me to review for
00:10:08.880 tomorrow it'll take 60 seconds but you'll wake up tomorrow to a cleaner more connected brain
00:10:13.840 the second is what i do is automate it i actually use claude's scheduled tasks to run a cron job
00:10:20.960 that runs the same prompt i just gave you every night at 11 o'clock and then once you set this up
00:10:26.560 your brain will constantly improve itself every morning i wake up and i click the grab view within
00:10:31.440 my obsidian brain and i see it morph and evolve every night it's pruning it's cleaning up it's
00:10:37.760 essentially getting smart because the more links that it creates the higher the signal is for
00:10:42.080 context. So when I get my AI to talk to my brain, it comes back with better answers. So let's do a
00:10:48.060 quick recap. Number one, we went pro. We decided to pay for real power in AI. Then we installed the
00:10:55.260 brain. We figured out where we're going to save it. And then for most of you, you probably use
00:10:58.900 obsidian. Then we gave an identity. We created the files that needed to know how to react and
00:11:04.100 respond as an AI. Then we wired it to a brain. So it knew the folder structure of how we're going
00:11:09.620 to save information, then we fed the brain.
00:11:12.300 And now it gets smarter overnight.
00:11:14.900 You can't have an autonomous agent unless it has context.
00:11:18.940 Using the brain is how we build that.
00:11:21.500 If it knows the meetings you were in,
00:11:23.140 the decisions you made, the people in your life,
00:11:25.320 you can say things like send the invite to John,
00:11:28.280 and it knows who John is because John has the most links
00:11:31.280 in the brain for the word John.
00:11:33.360 And it knows John's email, and it knows his cell number.
00:11:36.580 It's crazy how all this information is available,
00:11:39.260 but it's never reused in our AI prompts.
00:11:41.460 If you build the AI powered brain,
00:11:43.880 you will start to buy back days of your life
00:11:46.700 because the AIs can actually run your life.
00:11:49.460 And remember, if you want the AI company OS playbook
00:11:52.080 for your whole team, just DM me YouTube OS on Instagram
00:11:55.080 and I'll send it right over.
00:11:56.260 And if you wanna learn how to build
00:11:57.620 a $10 million solo AI business,
00:12:00.220 click here and I'll see you on the other side.