A living guide from Jay Owen. Five tips for using AI more effectively, the tools we actually use and love, almost 50 prompt ideas you can steal today, and the eight prompting secrets that separate "meh" output from "how did you do that?"
I frequently get asked how I use AI in my business and personal life. So I built this guide. It's divided into three parts — and now a fourth — and I'll keep updating it as the tools and techniques evolve. Read it top to bottom, or jump to the section you need most.
Five tips for using AI more effectively — the basics that most people skip.
The $20/mo it costs to upgrade is worth at least 100x that if you're using it for the things in this guide alone — especially for long-form writing, document and spreadsheet analysis, code, and the kind of nuanced thinking the free tier just can't sustain.
Instead of "Write a sales email to help me sell widgets," try: "What information would you need from me to write a sales email to help me sell widgets?" The AI will hand you a list of questions. Answer them, and the next output will be dramatically better.
Instead of "explain quantum mechanics," say "explain quantum mechanics like I'm in middle school." When you ask it to write, tell it "write this at a 6th-grade reading level." It will. Calibrating the level alone changes the output more than most prompt tricks.
If you find yourself doing similar things over and over, click the SHARE button in the top right corner of ChatGPT. It saves the conversation up to that point, and you can pick it up anytime. We use this for messaging guidelines — give the AI our voice rules once, save the link, and start from there every future time.
If you don't get what you want from your first prompt, don't give up. Tell it what you liked, what you didn't, and ask it what you could do to get a better response. You'll be amazed how much better it gets when you keep refining.
The AI tools we actually use and love — and what each one is best at.
The overall workhorse. Best-in-class for nuanced writing, long documents, code, and serious thinking. Get the pro version.
The daily driver. The one that started us all down this crazy AI path — still great for quick answers, brainstorming, and everyday tasks.
The best image and video creator of the bunch — and the one that plays nicest with Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Gmail, Drive).
The best for current research and real-time information. Plugged straight into the firehose of what's happening right now.
Take a long podcast or YouTube video and turn it into multiple viral clips with captions in one click.
Create your own avatar, write a script, and have it read back videos of you automatically. Not perfect yet — but a fast way to produce training videos, social posts, and more.
Transcribe, translate, and voice-clone any video with ease. Great for taking content global.
A human-like scheduling assistant that lives in your email. CC it on a thread and it handles the back-and-forth for you.
Auto-drafts about 80% of my emails in my voice. Wakes up before I do and has replies waiting.
In-person meeting recorder and summarizer. Sits on your laptop, listens, and gives you clean notes when you're done.
Video meeting recaps with full transcripts, action items, and shareable highlight clips. The one I send to clients after every call.
A talk-to-type tool that actually works. I dictate emails, prompts, and notes 3x faster than I can type them.
A browser that does tasks for you. Tell it what you want done on a website and it goes and does it.
AI-powered app and website prototyping. Build, run, and deploy from your browser — with AI helping you write the code.
Describe an app, get a working prototype. Wild for fast ideation and front-end mockups.
Forty-nine prompt ideas to use today — half for personal use, half for business. Steal any of them.
The difference between "meh" AI output and "how did you do that?" — eight techniques you can use in your very next prompt.
Don't give it all the instructions up front. Let it interview you. The output is 10x better when AI understands your context first — and it almost always asks better questions than you would have answered without prompting.
→ The single most underrated prompting technique."You are a senior marketing strategist" gets wildly different output than "write me a marketing plan." The role shapes the vocabulary, the assumptions, the priorities — everything. Set the identity first, then the task.
→ Identity before instructions."Don't use jargon. Don't give me more than 5 bullets. Don't sugarcoat it." Constraints produce better output than open-ended freedom. Negative instructions are a cheat code most people never use.
→ Guardrails beat blank canvases.Don't describe your brand voice — paste 3 emails you've actually sent. Don't explain the format — paste one that's already done right. Concrete examples train the output faster than any adjective ever will.
→ Show, don't tell."I'm a small business owner with 12 employees losing clients to cheaper competitors" beats "marketing strategies for small business" every time. The more context you bring, the more useful the answer.
→ Context is everything.Most people re-prompt from scratch when the output is wrong. Instead: "That's too formal. Make it sound like I'm texting a friend." Iterate, don't restart. The model already has the context — use it.
→ Your second prompt is more powerful than your first."Now give me 3 reasons this plan would fail." Then: "Now fix those." You become the decision-maker, not the writer. Adversarial prompting catches weak spots no first draft ever will.
→ Stress-test before you ship.End every prompt with this. It catches blind spots you didn't know you had and makes every output more complete. One line. Massive difference.
→ The best finishing move in prompting.Using AI well is all about experimentation. The space is evolving faster than anything we've ever seen, so keep checking back here for the latest updates, new tools, and more. The people who win with AI aren't the ones who picked the right tool — they're the ones who tried the most things.
Jay speaks on AI, entrepreneurship, organizational leadership, and building things that actually matter. More resources, playbooks, and free downloads at AIwithJay.com.