Most entrepreneurs get introduced to artificial intelligence in pretty much the same way: they type in their first question, get a flat, generic answer, and wave it off saying, "this is useless." Yet the mistake is rarely with the AI. Much more often, it lies in how we ask.
AI is not a mind reader
If you were to tell a new employee just "write an ad," they wouldn't know what you expect from them either. They don't know your business, your clients, your tone, or the things you would never put in writing. AI is in the exact same position, with the only difference being that it goes ahead and writes something anyway. It's just generic.
That is why a good prompt always provides context: who you are, who the text is for, what the goal is, how long it should be, and in what tone. This isn't an IT task, but a communication task—and that is precisely why anyone without a technical background can succeed with it.
Three things that immediately give you better answers
- Give it a role and context. "I am the owner of a three-person hair salon in a small town"—even that is enough to stop the answer from coming out of nowhere.
- Specify what you will do with the result. A Facebook post, a quotation letter, and website copy are completely different formats.
- Ask for multiple versions, then choose. The first answer is rarely the best. Feel free to tell it what you didn't like—that's how it gets good.
And what you shouldn't trust it with
AI is confidently wrong. Never rely on it as the final authority for data, legislation, numbers, or names—always verify those yourself. On the other hand, it is fantastic when you are staring down a blank page, when you need to translate something into plain human language, or when you need to extract the essence from a long document.
If even these few sentences were helpful, at a workshop we go through the exact same thing in practice, tailored specifically to your own business.
