Dan Martell - June 25, 2026


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

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
John Notion
28 Brutal Truths I wish someone told me in my 20s These 11 Minutes Will Save You 20+ Hours Every Week

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 .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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.