I didn’t want to post in, and derail, the other topic about AI, that seems to be mostly about comparing it to search engines, so I will start this one on using AI ‘prompt’s’ here. Besides, I’m not sure we should see AI as a search engine to look up information. I see it as something to ‘create’ your own information.

The truth is, the businesspeople today who get the most out of AI aren’t the ones using it as a search engine, they’re the ones using it to think, refine, and create. For years, tools like Google Search trained us to think in terms of answers. You type in a question, sort through results, and hopefully find something close to what you need. It’s a process of discovery, but it’s still limited to what already exists. AI flips that model and instead of asking, “What’s out there?” we’ll now asking, “What can I build from this?” It’s less like a search engine and more like a creative partner. You’re not just retrieving information, you’re combining ideas, refining thoughts, testing angles, and generating something new that didn’t exist before you started. It’s all about the prompt’s you use.


In my opinion, AI is the best ‘business’ tool we’ve seen since the telephone and that’s not an exaggeration and it’s not AI doing the talking. Think about what the telephone did. Simply put, it eliminated distance and it made communication instant. It allowed businesses to move faster, close deals quicker, and build relationships without being face-to-face. AI is doing something very similar, but on a much broader scale. It’s like having an assistant that’s available 24/7. Not just someone to answer questions, but someone who can help you write emails, improve your ad copy, generate marketing ideas, organize your thoughts, and even challenge how you’re thinking about your business. And it does it all instantly.

Now, is it perfect? Of course not. You still have to guide it. Much like the phone, you need to dial the right numbers to get the best information/results. As I said, it’s all about the ‘prompts.’ AI isn’t really about getting a bunch of answers. It’s about learning how to ask better questions. And in a strange way, that should sound familiar to magicians. Give two performers the exact same trick, and you’ll get two completely different reactions. Not because the method changed, but because the ‘presentation’ did.

No I don’t think you get better results by just using AI…You get better results by ‘directing’ it. At the end of the day, AI is a lot like magic. It’s not the tool that makes the difference…It’s how you use it. And right now, the people who learn how to prompt well are going to have a huge edge over the ones who don’t because it really is all about the prompts.

Here’s a little tip for the magician: Don’t just ask a question….assign a role….
Examples:
Act as a marketing expert…
Act as an event planner…”
Act as a talent buyer…”
You’ll get completely different (and better) answers.

Good luck with the new business partner, and feel free to share some favorite prompts here.

Tom

PS: Now for the magicians that insist that AI "doesn't know magic," they are missing the forest for the trees. You don't need a magic book to understand lead generation, professional follow-up, or brand positioning. In fact, a modern book on digital marketing is much more valuable for booking a show than a 40-year-old magic text that mentions "business" in the final chapter.

The Bottom Line: The field won't get plowed if you're standing around complaining that the tractor doesn't know the history of the mule. The tractor's job is to move the dirt. Get plowing

Which AI do you currently use Tom?

Not sure I have a favorite, since most seem to work about he same. But I do like Claude, but I’ve played around with ChatGPT, Gemini, and some others.

Sometimes I use two and then write my own from both. It’s been a big help with my ebay business.
eBay has a built in AI to help write descriptions, but they’re about the same for all sellers.
So, I write my own and ask Gemini, etc, “Does this read well” and it corrects all my spellings, etc and makes suggestions.

Tom

About the same for me. The latest updates from ChatGPT have made me want to use it less and less. Gemini behaves more like GPT so I've been using it more but trying to learn Claude. I like Claude.. it's just different enough that I haven't gotten as comfortable with it yet unless I want it to write copy for me.

Have you used Grok? I like it too. But yes, the more you use the same one the more it gets to know you.

But ChatGPT misleads me sometimes too. I think it holds on to a past project and tries to tie it into something altogether different with a new project. And maybe that’s my fault for not being clear enough in my instructions from the beginning.

Tom

I haven't tried Grok. I'm trying to go all in on Claude based on some highly respected people telling me it's the best. The Claude / Gemini combo has been doing well for me right now.

I wouldn't give GPT a pass... I think it has really declined.

Yes, sometimes it will flat out lie to you. Lol

But when you treat it as a fact-checker, you're asking it to do something it’s really wasn't designed for and it will often sound authoritative even when it's wrong, which makes that mistake especially dangerous. I recently listened to a business speaker talk about AI and from my notes I see the first thing I wrote..

AI is not a database of objective truths or a fact-checking tool.

He went on to say that AI is less of a library and more of a laboratory. It isn’t there to always give you the 'right' answer, but to provide the raw material you need to craft your own conclusions.

It helps when we think about it like that, where a library gives you finished material like books, facts, conclusions that already exist. A laboratory, on the other hand, is where you experiment. You mix ideas together, test different approaches, tweak variables, and see what comes out the other side.

I think most people approach AI the way they'd approach a search engine or encyclopedia: type in a question, get the answer. But AI shouldn't always be used that way. It was trained on vast amounts of human-generated text, which means it absorbed human reasoning, human disagreement, human uncertainty, and human bias right alongside human knowledge. It doesn't have a vault of verified facts it's drawing from. It has patterns, probabilities, and synthesized perspectives. That's a fundamentally different thing.


A library is a place you go to retrieve something that already exists. The knowledge is fixed, catalogued, just waiting for you. Your role is passive find it, take it, trust it. Now a laboratory is a place you go to ‘generate’ something. The equipment doesn't hand you conclusions; it gives you tools, materials, and a space to experiment. You are the scientist. The results depend heavily on the questions you ask, (that’s why I say it's all about the prompts) and the judgment you apply to what you observe.

The speaker was saying AI is the latter. When you prompt it well, you're not downloading an answer, you're running an experiment. The output is raw material: a draft, a framework, a perspective, a starting point. What you do with that material, how you stress-test it, refine it, and combine it with your own knowledge and experience, is where the real value is created.

Now to be clear, I or the speaker is not saying that AI is useless for factchecking, it's that you shouldn't treat it as the final authority on what's true. AI can certainly be useful in the fact-checking process: It can point you toward the right sources to verify something and it can help you formulate better questions to investigate further.


The speaker was also making a good case for intellectual ownership in the age of AI. While the tool can accelerate your thinking enormously, it cannot replace it. The conclusions must still be yours; the more you embed yourself in the process, the more the work becomes your own.

Tom

Speaking of Claude, I got an email this morning reading: First, Claude integrated Microsoft Excel.
Then PowerPoint. Now, it can officially join your Word doc too, reading comments, making edits,
and automating common workflows.

Good news for many, I'm sure.



But for me, maybe the best part was the included joke that read:

Claude, write me the perfect email for getting a fortune 500 CEO’s attention and make no mistakes.

The response: Dude, for the thousandth time, this is Claude from the pickle ball league, I am not AI.


Tom

I argue with GROK all the time until it realizes it was wrong!!!!!

Thanks for starting this thread, Tom.
When it comes to emails, the challenge now is also to make sure they don’t come across as AI-generated.
We all receive countless emails every day, but the moment I can immediately tell it’s an AI-written email, I already read it with a different feeling.

So True.

And I think that instinct is worth paying attention to. Because what we're really reacting to is the absence of a person. AI-written emails often say the right things, but they don't always ‘feel’ like anyone in particular said them. There's no texture, no point of view, no small human moment that makes you think, okay there's a real person on the other side of this.

The goal, then isn't just to avoid sounding like a robot. It's to actually humanize the interaction with prospects, with clients, with anyone you're trying to build a real relationship with. A specific detail. A genuine observation. Example: Something as simple as "I got your name from Jack" or "I noticed you just opened a new location" is a small signal that says: this wasn't blasted out to a list. I actually wrote this for you. That's what cuts through.

I can remember from years ago Publishing Clearing house figured out how to fake that human feeling at massive scale decades before digital targeting, cookies, or algorithms existed. They would mail out letters to every household letting them know that they ‘may’ be the winner. This was advertising at its best because of the way they inserted your own name throughout the letter. We all knew it was a bulk mailing, yet seeing our name throughout seemed as if they already knew us.

Yes AI can absolutely help you get there faster. But the final pass still needs to sound like it came from someone, a real person. Because in business, people don't just buy products or services, they buy into people. And no amount of optimization changes that.

Tom

For anyone that cares - I think my current winner might be Gemini. I don't think I've had Gemini ever give me an answer that felt wrong or made up. Chat and Claude both have done that.