Two AI Prompts that are game changers

Most small businesses don’t have an AI problem — they have a thinking problem

If AI feels noisy, overwhelming, or underwhelming, it’s rarely because the tool isn’t powerful enough. It’s because it’s being used without intent.

That was the central theme in a recent episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, hosted by John Jantsch, featuring Geoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader.

Geoff doesn’t talk about AI as a content machine. He talks about it as a thinking partner. And the most telling detail from the episode wasn’t a tool, a model, or a workflow.

It was two prompts.

Prompt #1: “How can AI help me do this?”

This is the first question Geoff forces himself to ask — before opening ChatGPT.

Not:

• “Write this faster”

• “Create more content”

• “Give me ideas”

But simply:

How can AI help me do this?

Why this matters for small businesses

This prompt decides whether AI should be involved at all.

It immediately filters out:

• Tasks that don’t need AI

• Low-leverage busywork

• Over-automation of things that require judgment

For small business owners, this is critical. Time isn’t scarce because there’s too much work — it’s scarce because attention is misallocated.

Used properly, this prompt helps you decide:

• Should AI support thinking or execution?

• Should it reduce effort or improve quality?

• Is this even worth doing?

AI becomes a lever, not a distraction.

Prompt #2: Context · Role · Interview · Task

Once Geoff decides AI should be involved, he forces a second discipline: proper briefing.

Before asking for output, he supplies four things:

• Context – What’s happening? What problem are we solving?

• Role – Who should AI act as?

• Interview – What question are we really trying to answer?

• Task – What should be produced, decided, or clarified?

Why this prompt fixes “bad AI results”

Most people blame AI when outputs are vague, generic, or wrong. In reality, AI is responding exactly to the quality of the input.

This framework:

• Eliminates lazy prompting

• Forces clarity before execution

• Turns AI into a collaborator, not a guessing machine

For small businesses, this is the difference between:

• “AI wrote something okay”

• “AI helped me think and decide faster”

Why these two prompts work

together

These aren’t standalone tricks. They’re sequential.

1. How can AI help me do this?
   → Decides whether AI should be used

2. Context · Role · Interview · Task
   → Decides how AI should be used

Only after these two do you ask for content, campaigns, emails, or assets.

That’s why Geoff Woods sounds calm when talking about AI — and why so many business owners sound frantic.

What this means for the SBPS audience

For SBPS users, these two prompts should become non-negotiable defaults.

They:

• Reduce wasted time

• Improve output quality

• Prevent over-automation

• Encourage leader-level thinking

Most importantly, they turn AI into part of a system, not a series of random experiments.

AI doesn’t replace strategy.

It exposes whether you have one.

Final thought

The businesses winning with AI aren’t using better tools.

They’re asking better questions.

Two prompts.

Used consistently.

Stuck to your desk, not buried in a prompt library.

That’s how AI starts working for your business instead of around it.