Dan Martell - You’re not behind (yet)： How to learn AI in 18 minutes

00:00:00.080 believe it or not you're not behind on ai yet because the truth is most people still don't

00:00:06.400 understand how to use it well by just watching this video you'll know more about ai than 90

00:00:11.360 of the people out there and if you make it all the way till the end you'll be in the top one

00:00:15.840 percent of all ai users i've personally tested thousands of ai prompts across every major

00:00:21.520 platform built dozens of custom ai tools for my own companies and helped hundreds of founders

00:00:26.000 turn AI into their most profitable team member. So today, I'm going to show you how AI works,

00:00:31.960 the fundamentals you need to use it, how to master it, and how to future-proof yourself

00:00:36.860 so AI makes you a weapon instead of replacing you, starting with how it works.

00:00:41.960 Essentially, you've got all the world's information. I'm talking videos, podcasts,

00:00:46.280 documents, Reddit threads, and then AI analyzed it, and then it did this mathematical equation.

00:00:52.300 and broke all that text into tokens.

00:00:54.740 And then it tries to predict the most logical next token

00:00:57.640 based on what you gave it.

00:00:59.320 It's just like if you say twinkle, twinkle, little,

00:01:02.300 it's gonna say star.

00:01:03.500 That's why most of the answers

00:01:05.520 that come out of any chat AI have a lot of em dashes.

00:01:08.680 It's not because AI likes em dashes, 0.99

00:01:10.860 it's because humans like em dashes 1.00

00:01:13.200 and it's trying to replicate what it's seen us create.

00:01:16.240 And this is why if you give it really good information,

00:01:19.460 the output is really good

00:01:20.740 because it can use all that input to build context it's kind of like if somebody tells you

00:01:26.020 all the details of a story and then ask you a specific question you're more likely going to get

00:01:30.340 it right because you have all the details of the story that's what ai needs to give you the best

00:01:35.060 outputs and that's where people fall short the truth is ai isn't magic it's just pattern

00:01:40.500 recognition with the fancy suit on so now that we've covered how ai works behind the scenes we

00:01:45.700 need to talk about the fundamentals and how you need to use it the right way starting with the

00:01:50.340 right way to prompt the more information you give it aka the prompt the better the output will look

00:01:56.500 did you know you can give it like two three books worth of information about your question

00:02:01.380 before it even gives you an answer most people are giving it a text message it's giving it nothing

00:02:07.140 and then you're expecting it to do magic a few months ago i was working with a founder that

00:02:11.140 built this really cool ai technology and he was working on the marketing and he was having a

00:02:15.380 really hard time getting the marketing to actually communicate what his product did he spent like

00:02:20.660 three weeks on it iterating going back and forth trying to get the messaging right trying to get

00:02:24.980 the headline right trying to get the copyright all i did was sit down and i gave it the format about

00:02:30.180 to teach you and i hit enter and within 12 seconds it outputted the perfect plan structure and

00:02:36.740 strategy for him to get his customers to buy it took less than 15 minutes to implement on his

00:02:42.020 website and all of a sudden he's converting that traffic into customers what did i do different

00:02:47.060 here's how it works the first thing is the role you got to tell it who to be like it's kind of

00:02:52.100 like act like a professional dancer act like a killer musician so all i did when i was helping

00:02:57.700 my buddy to fix his prompt it said act like a world-class marketing strategist that focuses

00:03:02.980 on conversion for software what that does is it takes all the friggin information in the world

00:03:09.620 that's all been cataloged and structured and it says okay out of all of this only focus on this

00:03:14.420 piece and then with that it can then give you an answer that's very specific if not it just looks

00:03:20.500 watered down the second part to your prompt is the context i want you to give it all the background

00:03:25.780 information if you have marketing documents you have transcripts from a call you have any kind of

00:03:32.180 standard specification the more you can give it it can use that in its little brain for that prompt

00:03:38.580 to guide it in its output the third is the command you have to be very specific whatever you want it

00:03:44.980 to do tell it be very explicit i always say make the implicit explicit when we're prompting and

00:03:52.020 the last and the fourth is the format oftentimes for me i don't want these long lengthy outputs

00:03:58.100 i want bulleted lists i want it short and concise i want it in a table format i want it in a pdf

00:04:04.500 the format is how you take that output and then use it in other tools you might want to put it

00:04:09.540 in a csv so that you can import that into another tool but if you don't tell it that it's not going

00:04:14.660 to know what format you want if you do those things you will notice a complete difference

00:04:20.020 in the output i'll even go as nerdy in the format where i'll say here's the format then give it a

00:04:26.980 template to follow then hit enter and it can't go outside of those parameters the truth is is

00:04:32.900 the quality of your output will never exceed the quality of the input to your prompt so now you

00:04:38.260 know how to structure your prompt but there's this other crucial step that if you don't know you

00:04:43.300 can't learn ai properly which is you got to pick one tool and don't switch the amount of people

00:04:49.220 that come to me and they're like hey i'm using chat gpt and claude and gemini and grok and i'm

00:04:54.180 like show me your prompts and it's crayola it's simple they haven't mastered the tool learning ai

00:05:00.500 is like learning an instrument if you tried to learn a little bit about the piano and the guitar

00:05:04.740 the drums all at once you wouldn't be really good but if you decided to pick one and you decided to

00:05:09.380 be a master at it the others become way easy after it because you understand music you understand

00:05:14.740 tones you understand how to read sheet music same thing with ai tools pick one and master it before

00:05:20.100 you switch once you understand how one works the others are way easier to pick up and i will be

00:05:25.460 honest the people that keep switching tools all the time i just call it procrastination masters

00:05:31.220 go deep before they go wide so know the tools know which one's right for you and go deep on it

00:05:36.020 so i've already mentioned the top three okay we've got claude gemini and shadgbt i'm gonna walk you

00:05:41.620 through each one and tell you exactly which one does what best so that you can pick the right one

00:05:46.740 for your current use case so for example if you do a lot of writing creative work deep thinking

00:05:52.820 code well claude's got everybody beat there and it could change in a few months but for right now

00:05:57.460 i'm telling you claude's the one the other one if you do a lot of research you need up-to-date

00:06:01.300 information you live inside of google tools you can't go wrong with gemini it is an incredible

00:06:06.740 language model and it's the one a lot of people that are like google specific are using gpt is a

00:06:11.540 great one it's the first one to get really popular it's got a lot of integrations can't go wrong with

00:06:16.020 it and before you start hammering me in the comments i understand there's a bunch of others

00:06:20.740 I live my life on a site called Hugging Face,

00:06:23.200 which is like the nerdiest AI community.

00:06:26.480 So don't tell me about Grok and all these Chinese models. 1.00

00:06:29.620 I get that.

00:06:30.420 I'm just telling it for most people that are like,

00:06:32.820 I'm ready to be masterful at this so I can become a weapon.

00:06:36.060 These are the three I would recommend.

00:06:37.620 And by the way, if you choose to go towards ChatGPT,

00:06:40.080 I've got a full freaking masterclass

00:06:42.220 that I'll link at the end of this video 0.69

00:06:43.640 that goes through everything to make you a pro.

00:06:46.660 And if you're a business owner

00:06:47.740 that's trying to break seven figures

00:06:49.400 and you wanna go even deeper,

00:06:51.120 I've got an AI implementation playbook

00:06:53.040 that is what I use in my companies to implement AI.

00:06:56.540 And it shows you everything.

00:06:58.220 Just find me on Instagram and DM me AI business.

00:07:01.180 I'll send it over to you for free.

00:07:02.860 So here's the thing.

00:07:03.980 If you have made it to this point

00:07:05.420 and you feel like you've got everything covered so far,

00:07:08.180 the cool part, you're in the top 10% of AI users.

00:07:10.940 But if you stick around and implement

00:07:13.000 what I'm about to teach you, you'll be in the top 1%.

00:07:16.120 So let's talk about mastering AI,

00:07:18.280 starting with pull versus push prompting.

00:07:20.900 This is where we get a little advanced, but it's fun.

00:07:24.120 Come with me for the ride.

00:07:25.560 Don't run away.

00:07:26.560 This is gonna be good.

00:07:27.740 Most people use AI the hard way.

00:07:30.140 They do 80% of the work

00:07:31.780 and they let AI finish the last 20%.

00:07:34.240 That's push prompting. 0.59

00:07:35.720 You're telling AI how to do the task.

00:07:38.160 So you wanna go from push to pull prompting.

00:07:41.600 And the way that it's different

00:07:42.860 is that you start with the outcome

00:07:44.440 and then you let AI figure out the best way to get there.

00:07:47.440 instead of doing all the work yourself which you're doing today you let ai do the heavy lifting

00:07:52.320 the way i like to think about it is push is kind of like when you used to get directions from a

00:07:56.880 friend when they're like come to my house come over and then they tell you you got to turn left

00:08:00.800 at the house and then right at the church and then you'll see a red mailbox that's how most

00:08:05.760 people prompt poll is like gps where you let the ai direct you based on the destination you've given

00:08:12.240 it so here's how you use poll prompting it's super cool first you give it the role in the context

00:08:16.720 like you normally would it needs to know kind of who it should act like and what's the information

00:08:21.040 about the scenario second is you give it the outcome based objective right this is where you

00:08:25.360 tell it what you need so you might say i need a sequence that converts cold leads into booked

00:08:29.600 calls right very specific it's like the destination third you say this ask me all the questions you

00:08:36.240 need for you to create this for me and then give it back to me in and then you can say the format

00:08:41.200 you might say pdf or a table then just answer all the questions my little trick there is i use the

00:08:46.480 voice mode where i can just hit that little microphone and then answer because they might

00:08:49.840 give you seven questions and i don't want to type that much but you give it all the answers and then

00:08:54.080 let ai do the work watch it cook now you might say hey i need to refine this ask me more questions

00:09:00.160 to make it more relevant and it'll keep refining so you keep essentially using that's why it's

00:09:04.640 called a pull method you keep having it pull from you exactly what you need and let it go find the

00:09:10.560 solutions this is how software programmers have been doing it for a while okay most coders are

00:09:15.520 are sitting there and we're coding through outcomes.

00:09:17.780 It's called spec-driven development.

00:09:19.540 That's now becoming the mainstream for how you can prompt.

00:09:23.120 Now, pull prompting is crazy powerful,

00:09:25.740 but if you really wanna master AI,

00:09:27.620 you need to make it personal to you.

00:09:29.920 So number five, master prompts for every role in your life.

00:09:33.800 The way to think about a master prompt,

00:09:35.740 it's kind of like a manual about a part of your life.

00:09:39.040 So if there was like a manual called Dan CEO,

00:09:42.200 what would be in that manual?

00:09:43.200 If there was one called Dan Father,

00:09:44.880 would be in that manual well i would assume and they would have everything about me my life the

00:09:49.280 people in my life how things are structured what we sell when you have these master prompts and

00:09:54.720 you use it to give it to the ai because you might switch to different ones then it'll give you better

00:10:00.000 answers because right now if you don't it's not personalized to you it's just giving you generic

00:10:05.200 auto completion instead of something that is laser focused to your exact situation and remember

00:10:10.800 earlier when i talked about giving it context this is the context and if you do it once you

00:10:16.160 never have to do it again and it makes prompting so much easier and faster every team member in

00:10:21.520 all my companies has to have a master prompt they have to show it to me i got to make sure

00:10:26.240 it's complete i just can't imagine that they're efficient chatting with ai all day long and it

00:10:31.920 giving great answers if it doesn't have that so now let's create one for yourself the first thing

00:10:36.560 is we're going to practice pull prompting you can say i want to create a master prompt for my role

00:10:41.760 as whatever your role is in life you know father husband vp of marketing and ask me all the

00:10:47.360 questions you need to create it for me see how we're going to have it pull from me now it's going

00:10:51.680 to give you all these questions so they can create this document and that's where you use the voice

00:10:56.240 to text feature and just answer each one conversationally and third once ai gives you

00:11:01.520 your master prompt go through it and just refine anything that doesn't feel right and you can

00:11:05.840 literally just talk to it and say like update this add this you're missing that you didn't understand

00:11:10.320 this properly and it'll literally update the whole thing for you the last part is to save it as a pdf

00:11:15.840 and i like to just call the master prompt and then the role name so i have them on my hard drive and

00:11:20.160 that way when i'm using different ai tools i can always upload it so that it has perfect context

00:11:25.600 on my situation in life the truth is if ai sounds like a stranger and anybody could have got that

00:11:30.560 output it's because you haven't introduced yourself the master prompt is how you say

00:11:35.280 hello ai this is who i am the cool part is like i said you can use it in other tools

00:11:40.160 i personally spend a lot of time in a tool called manis which lets you create agentic workflows and

00:11:46.000 when i first loaded up the tool it didn't know anything about me so i use my master prompt to

00:11:50.560 give it all the context so that it could do outputs that were very personalized if i had to like

00:11:55.440 play with it and tweak it and talk to it it would have just took me a long time this gets an ai

00:12:00.320 from stranger to best friend.

00:12:02.220 So now you get the master prompts.

00:12:03.780 You have a way to give the context to the AI

00:12:05.880 so that you guys are best friends.

00:12:07.220 But what if you're like trying to get an output

00:12:09.200 and you like the output and you wanna like repeat it

00:12:12.060 and keep it consistent?

00:12:13.520 This is where you need the next tool to master AI.

00:12:16.880 Number six, system prompts.

00:12:18.920 Think of a system prompt like a recipe

00:12:21.180 and it has all the structure and you have the ingredients,

00:12:24.040 but the sequencing matters.

00:12:25.200 How you do what you do in the order

00:12:26.780 will dictate if you have a big pile of mush

00:12:28.900 or you have a beautiful chocolate cake.

00:12:30.640 So if you're chatting with the AI

00:12:32.160 and eventually it gets an output that you're like,

00:12:35.040 oh my gosh, this is great.

00:12:36.360 Why did it take me 17 minutes to get to that output?

00:12:39.140 This is how you solve that problem.

00:12:41.260 Understanding how to create system prompts is the future.

00:12:44.300 So here's how you build a system prompt

00:12:45.840 using what we've learned so far.

00:12:47.460 First, you gotta start by saying,

00:12:49.080 you're an expert AI engineer.

00:12:51.220 I want you to create a system prompt that does X,

00:12:54.760 ask me all the questions you need to create.

00:12:56.840 See how I'm using the poll structure?

00:12:58.260 Next, once it gives you all the questions,

00:13:00.800 answer them using the voice to text feature,

00:13:03.580 then test the response you get back.

00:13:05.460 The third, if something needs to be tweaked,

00:13:07.740 just tell it to refine it.

00:13:09.020 It's literally you code system prompts with words.

00:13:12.100 Once it's dialed in,

00:13:13.400 then you copy that system prompt into a custom GPT

00:13:16.960 or a Cloud Project or a Gemini Gem.

00:13:19.180 And then you've got a system that works for you on repeat

00:13:22.580 without ever having to give it instructions ever again.

00:13:25.720 I use this for strategic work.

00:13:28.040 I use it for research work.

00:13:29.720 I use it to create systems for my team to follow

00:13:32.580 where I can give them the link and say,

00:13:34.160 look, just give it the topic and it'll do something for us.

00:13:36.800 That way you take the complexity of AI

00:13:38.900 and just make it really simple for everybody else to use.

00:13:41.860 You're basically building little machines

00:13:43.800 that take care of work for you

00:13:45.260 so that you can focus on the fun new stuff.

00:13:47.440 Now, here's a pro tip.

00:13:48.460 A while ago, there was a leak.

00:13:50.660 All the complex system prompts from the top AI tools,

00:13:54.460 I'm talking Perplexity, Notion, Lovable,

00:13:56.600 and 20 plus others were actually collected and put together.

00:14:00.620 So if you wanna go see

00:14:01.900 what the world's best system prompts could look like,

00:14:05.440 just search system prompts and models of AI tools

00:14:07.840 on GitHub, on Google, and you will find the link

00:14:10.480 and you can go look at each one of them

00:14:12.320 to understand how powerful these can be created

00:14:15.400 to do literally anything for you,

00:14:18.380 like build mobile apps or reconcile financial details.

00:14:22.320 So now you know how to use AI

00:14:24.180 better than most people ever will.

00:14:26.100 That's the truth. But here's the thing. AI is evolving fast. I'm talking every day. And if you

00:14:31.940 want to stay ahead, you need to make sure AI will never replace you, which takes us to our last

00:14:36.780 point, but the most important one, which is future proofing yourself, which comes down to taste,

00:14:42.420 vision, and care. There are three things that when I sat back and I asked myself, like, what are the

00:14:47.520 areas of human existence of life that I feel is going to be really hard to disrupt? I feel like

00:14:52.760 things like our taste for what is great and our vision for things that don't exist that should

00:14:58.840 or caring about other people. What a crazy idea. I really don't think that AI is going to be able

00:15:03.340 to do that well. Simulate it, maybe, but I'm talking heartfelt, empathetic conversations.

00:15:09.020 That takes you. Machines can optimize what already exists, but humans imagine what doesn't.

00:15:14.800 First thing is taste. You got to immerse yourself in excellence. I think of it like standing

00:15:19.100 underneath a waterfall and allowing amazing world-class things to be poured over me so that

00:15:25.060 I might have the possibility of picking stuff up. So if you're like massively interested in music,

00:15:31.600 go subscribe and use your social media to learn music. If it's code software, I want you to use

00:15:37.540 your feed to feed your mind. Go and follow all the top people. Go subscribe to the newsletters.

00:15:42.200 The more you consume the best in the world and you get to understand what greatness looks like,

00:15:47.100 the better you build your taste. The second is vision. Schedule thinking blocks so that you can

00:15:52.180 sit down and think about the future. Visualize concepts because your brain doesn't think in

00:15:56.300 words. I don't know if you know this, but like if I say pink elephant, you just saw it. You didn't

00:16:00.600 have the words written down in your mind. So even just doodling, planning, exploring, reading books

00:16:06.700 that'll expand your horizon, that gives you a sense of what's possible or maybe how the world

00:16:11.480 should be shaped around you. And that is your job to shape the AI to help you with the vision.

00:16:15.880 And the last one is care.

00:16:17.520 And this is why I'm so bullish around AI

00:16:20.160 doing all the boring and dirty and dangerous work for us

00:16:23.380 is then you get to celebrate your clients.

00:16:25.720 You get to celebrate your team.

00:16:26.880 You get to be with your family.

00:16:28.300 You get to use it to create more

00:16:31.020 because you were born to be a creator.

00:16:32.920 Like that's what you're here to do.

00:16:34.680 Then you have the time to collaborate with people authentically.

00:16:38.020 Start thinking about ways you can get out in the world

00:16:41.080 and show that you care and contribute

00:16:43.400 and just connect with people.

00:16:44.880 I really think that AI has enabled us to have this deep desire to be around other people.

00:16:49.880 It's why you see events having record number of people showing up and sold out in no time

00:16:54.000 because we have a deep need for connection.

00:16:56.580 Do these three things and AI will become your weapon instead of your replacement.

00:17:00.920 Now, believe it or not, you're still early.

00:17:03.640 So stop panicking if that's where you're at.

00:17:05.620 Most small businesses haven't even started using AI in a meaningful way.

00:17:10.220 So just by watching this video, you're already ahead of the game.

00:17:13.240 So here's what I need you to do.

00:17:14.380 Just pick one daily task and have AI do it.

00:17:18.060 I don't care if it's move information

00:17:19.660 from one system to another,

00:17:21.300 just 10 minutes of action beats 10 hours of tutorials.

00:17:24.580 So just leave me a comment and leave that commitment below.

00:17:27.440 I wanna know, what are you gonna commit to

00:17:29.420 to really upgrade your AI skills?

00:17:31.780 And remember, DM me AI business on Instagram

00:17:34.680 if you're looking to grow your business

00:17:36.200 and I'll send you my AI implementation playbook

00:17:38.540 so you can scale past seven figures.

00:17:40.480 Like I mentioned, if you want the full chat GPT masterclass

00:17:44.040 to get ahead of 99% of the people,

00:17:46.340 just click here and I'll see you on the other side.

Dan Martell - March 05, 2026

You’re not behind (yet)： How to learn AI in 18 minutes

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