SHOWNOTES
If you have been using AI and feeling like the output is generic or off, this episode will change how you use it. The issue is usually not the tool. It is the lack of context. In this episode, I share how to create a Core Prompt, a single document that helps AI understand your business, your audience, and your voice.
A Core Prompt gives AI a clear source of truth so you are not starting from scratch every time. The result is better output, less editing, and responses that actually sound like you.
In this episode, I cover:
Why AI sounds generic without proper context
How one document can dramatically improve your AI results
How to use a Core Prompt as an onboarding guide for AI tools
Where to store and reuse it across platforms
I also walk through how to create your Core Prompt in a practical way and how I use it inside tools like Claude and NotebookLM (and everywhere!) to keep everything consistent and on brand.
This is a foundational episode that makes everything you do with AI easier and more effective.
Don’t miss this episode and let me know your thoughts after you listen. I always love hearing from you. DM me on Instagram @jen_lehner
RESOURCES:
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01.800] Hey, guys. It’s Gary Vaynerchuk. You’re listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur podcast with our girl, Jen.
[00:00:01.800] What if every time you opened an AI tool, it already knew who you are, what your business does, who you serve, and exactly how to help you. No more explaining yourself from scratch. No more generic responses that really miss the mark. I'm just very excited about today's episode because I'm going to show you how to create what I call a core prompt. It's a single document that transforms AI from a random stranger into a team member who actually gets your business. This is the foundation everything else is built on. And I thought this was really the perfect episode for the new year because this is like a very new year thing to do, right? It's very It's like, let's get organized, let's get everything straight. So, yeah, I'm excited about this one. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. I am Jenn Lainer. So here's a frustration. I hear all the time, Jenn, I use AI, but the output is so generic. It is AI slop. It doesn't sound like me. It doesn't understand my business. Every time I hear this, I always ask the same question, have you given it context about your business?
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[00:01:28.720] Almost every time, the answer is no or, but just bits and pieces here and there. Here's the thing about AI. It is brilliant, but it is not psychic. It doesn't know anything about you until you tell it. If you're starting every conversation from zero, you're going to get zero context answers. That's not AI's fault. That's just a setup problem. Now, almost all of the platforms offer persistent memory these days. But for your business, you want to have a source of truth that lives inside of your business that everybody in your company can use, since obviously their conversations with AI are going to be much different than yours. If it's just you and your business, this is still going to be a game changer for you. That's right. Today, I am going to give you the solution. It is called a core prompt, and it's essentially a comprehensive document about you, your business, your market, your team, and your offerings. You create it one time, and then you use it everywhere. Paste it into Claude's personal preferences, add it as a source, a notebook LM, drop it into any conversation that you're having with AI, and it becomes the foundation that makes everything else work better.
[00:02:49.160] Let me explain why this matters so much. AI models are trained on the entire Internet, as you know. Billions of pages of content from every industry, every voice, every style. So when you ask AI to write something without context, it's essentially just averaging across all of that. So the result is, of course, generic, bland, could be anybody content. But when you give AI-specific content about your business, it can narrow down dramatically. So instead of writing like a business, it writes like your business. Instead of guessing at your audience, it knows exactly who you're talking to. And instead of making up features, which it does all the time, it knows what you actually offer. So think about it this way. If you hired a new employee or you had an intern, and on day one, you just said, Write me some marketing emails without any onboarding, any context, any training, what do you think you get? Probably something pretty useless. But if you spent the time bringing them up to speed on who you are, what you do, who you serve, and how you're different, now they can actually help, right? So your core prompt is that onboarding document.
[00:04:09.680] You create it once and every AI tool you use gets the benefit of that context. So I've developed a template with six key sections, and I'm going to walk you through each one and explain what to include and why it matters. The real template is more detailed than the steps we're going to go through today. We're just going to do the main sections, but I've got the template for you over at jennlaner. Com/098. That's jennlaner. Com/098. So the first section is personal. This is about you, the person using the AI. What's your name? What's your role? What's the name of your company? How do you want to use AI? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? I know this might seem basic, but it really matters. When AI knows your role, it can tailor responses appropriately. A CEO gets different advice than a Marketing Manager. When it knows your strengths and weaknesses, it can lean into what you're good at and help you shore up where you struggle. When it knows how you want to use it, it can prioritize accordingly. For example, my personal section mentions that I'm a founder and CEO, that I want to use AI primarily for content creation and strategy, that my strength is connecting with audiences and explaining complex things simply, and that my weakness is that I can get scattered when I have too many projects going on at once.
[00:05:43.160] That context shapes every response that I get. I know a lot of people even will put in their personality test results, Myers-Briggs and so forth. Okay, so the next section is Company. This is the core business information. When was your business established? How many employees? Who do you report to and who reports to you? What contractors do you work with? What markets do you serve? Who is your ideal customer? What outcome do you give to your customers? How are you different from competitors? This section is gold for getting relevant, specific output. When AI knows your company is a small team versus a large organization, it suggests appropriately scaled solutions. When it knows your ideal customer, it can write content that actually speaks to them. When it knows your differentiator, it can weave that into everything. The outcome you give customers' question is particularly important. This is your transformation statement, what people's lives or businesses look like after working with you. AI can use this to create compelling messaging that focuses on results rather than features. Then section three is all about the market. This one's really simple, but it's very powerful. Who are your competitors and what do they do?
[00:07:11.820] List your main competitors in a brief note about each one. Why does this matter? Because positioning is everything. When AI knows who you're competing against, it can help you differentiate. It can avoid suggesting strategies that would make you look like everybody else. It can identify gaps and opportunities. Competitive awareness is strategic awareness. And the great thing is, as you work through the template, if you don't have answers to the questions, if you just aren't sure who your main competitors are, AI can help you with that, too. And that's another reason why this is just a great New Year's exercise, because this is the stuff, the house cleaning and, I don't know, landing strip building stuff that we always put off. Now is a really good time to do this.
[00:08:06.120] Do you know about the Front Row AI Club? This is a place where entrepreneurs come together to learn about AI and explore practical ways to use it in businesses and in life, just like what you're listening to today. Inside the club, the focus is on real-world applications, ongoing learning, and staying current as AI continues to evolve. But the bottom line is that the Front Row AI Club is all about saving you time so you can do more of what you love while make more money. You can learn more at frontrowaiclub. Com, and I would love for you to join us.
[00:08:41.560] All right, the next section is all about team and KPIs. Most of my listeners are solopreneurs, but some of you are small to medium-sized businesses, and this is where you're going to talk about who's on your team. For each person, what's their most important performance metric or target? Salaries are optional, but you can include those if it's relevant for your planning. This is also really useful if you use AI for management, planning, or strategic thinking, which, of course, you do. Why wouldn't you? When AI knows your team structure, even if that's just your virtual assistant and what each person is measured on, it can help you think through resource allocation, identify where support is needed, and make suggestions that account for your actual capacity. Again, even if you're a solopreneur, fill this out. It might be just you, but documenting your own KPIs helps AI understand what you're optimizing for. All right, next section, products and services. This is your offer suite. What products or services do you offer? What new ones are you planning? What does each one cost? What are the features and benefits for each? How do you differentiate between offerings? Sometimes I cheat here, not sometimes, all the time, because you can also get all of this information with all of the links to your different sales pages, to your page your Work With Me page on your website, you can just copy and paste all that stuff and put it on this document.
[00:10:22.700] Yeah, lots of ways to shorten this. So this section, the product and services section, is really essential for anybody using AI for marketing or sales content, which is every single one of the people listening to this episode. When AI knows your full product lineup with the pricing, the features, the benefits, it can create accurate sales pages, comparison content, and recommendations for which offer fits which customer. No more making things up and being super vague. You want to be thorough here. Include all of your offers, even the ones you don't promote heavily. Include What's your price points. Include what makes each one different from the others. The more detail, the better your output. And then the next section, the last section, is all about culture. What are your core values as an organization? Or as a solopreneur, what are the core values of your business? What's your mission? What's your biggest, most audacious long term goal? And this might seem soft or optional, but it's actually one of the most important sections for your voice and your tone. Your values and mission shape how you communicate, not just what you communicate, When AI knows you value authenticity over polish or community over competition, it'll adjust its suggestions accordingly.
[00:11:55.580] That big hairy audacious goal is your North Star. It helps AI understand where you're heading, so it can make suggestions that move you in that direction rather than just solving today's problem. All right, so how do you create this core prompt? So here's my recommended process. First of all, set aside focus time. This isn't something to rush. Block out an hour or two and really think through each question. Your answers don't need to be long. One or three sentences per question is really usually plenty, but they need to be thoughtful and accurate. I like to do this. It's cold here in Cleveland right now. Sit by the fire, get my favorite cinnamon tea, get a cozy blanket and do it in the first half of the day. Otherwise, I'm going to fall asleep in that spot. But that's the vibe we're going for here with this process. Step two, use AI to help you. If you aren't sure to answer a question, ask AI to help you figure it out. I'm trying to articulate my company's differentiator. Here's what we do. Can you help me clarify what makes us different? Use AI to build the document that will make AI better.
[00:13:16.580] It's very meta, but it works. Step three, make this a voice exercise. And what I mean is use Loom video or your favorite screen recorder or just the voice notes in your app. And verbally answer the questions as if you're being interviewed. And what I love about this is that it makes the whole process easier and more enjoyable. Plus, I'm lazy. I just, I don't want to type that much. And there's a built-in bonus because The AI is capturing how you actually speak, which can only help future output to actually sound like you, right? Your voice notes in your phone automatically creates a transcript for you. So you can just copy and paste, as does Loom video. Just pop that transcript into AI to clean it up and turn it into your final core prompt. Then put it where you'll use it. Once your core prompt is complete, you need to actually deploy it. In Clawed, you're going to go to your settings and paste it into your personal preferences. You could put it into a Clawed project folder instructions. That means that every conversation that you have is going to have that context. In Notebook.
[00:14:28.360] Lm, add it as a source into one of your notebooks. For ChatGPT or other tools, you can just paste it in the beginning of important conversations or save it as a custom GPT instruction or a project folder instructions. I particularly recommend using Clawed and Notebook for them for this because they both allow you to share project folders with team members. If you have a VA or a team, they can use the same core prompt and get consistent on-brand output. Then you want to update it regularly. Your business changes, so your offers evolve, your team grows. So set a reminder to review and update your core prompt quarterly. It only takes a few minutes to keep it current. You No, outdated context leads to outdated output. And if you forget to, and this has happened, I've run into this several times, where I haven't... Something has changed. I didn't update my core prompt, and the information that's being spit out is inaccurate. And then I think, Oh, I don't offer that anymore. And I forgot to take that out of my prompt. Okay, so let me just paint a picture for you of the difference that this makes.
[00:15:45.500] Without a core prompt, here's what happens. You open up Claude and you say, write me an email to promote my upcoming workshop. And Claude writes something generic about workshops. It doesn't know your voice, your audience, your offer details, or your initiator. So you spend 20 minutes editing it to make it sound like you and be accurate. And with a core prompt, you open Claude, which already has your core prompt in personal preferences or in ChatGPT or wherever, and say, Write me an email to promote my upcoming workshop. Claude writes an email in your voice to your specific audience with accurate details about your offer, positioned against what competitors do, reflecting your values. You spend five 20 minutes polishing. That's the difference. The same tool, the same request, completely different results. And it's all because of context. One of my AI club members told me that creating her core prompt was like finally teaching AI to speak, she said, speak my language. And that's exactly what it is. You're not changing the AI. You're just giving it the information it needs to actually help you. So here's your action item. Create your core prompt this week.
[00:17:00.480] Open a document and work through all six sections. Remember, aim for one to three sentences per question. Doesn't need to be a novel. If you get stuck on any question, ask AI to help you think through it. Then paste the completed prompt into Claude's personal preferences, ChatGPT's preferences, or wherever you're going to use it the most. You can also, and this is a real pro tip right here, you can also turn it into a keyboard shortcut so that any time you're communicating with AI anywhere, you just tap the relevant two or three keys on your keyboard and voila, the whole core prompt will be there to bring your AI up to speed. If you want my complete template With all the questions formatted and ready to fill in, just go to jennlaner. Com/zero98. And next episode, we're going to be talking about which AI to use for which task. It really is probably the question that I get asked the most. And also, did you know that for the last five or six years, I've been publishing a daily news brief on Amazon Alexa and Google Home and whatever the Apple Home device is? And apparently, all the home devices have now picked it up.
[00:18:19.160] It's called the Front Row Entrepreneur Flash Briefing. It's a two or three minute update about what's happening in the world of AI as it relates to your business. So I handpicked the news that I think is important for solopreneurs to know, so you don't have to keep up with it all. And if you want to subscribe, just go to your Amazon account, scroll down to skills, and look for it and subscribe. And then each morning when you say, Alexa, play my flash briefing, you'll hear it. Or you can go to jennlaner. Com/flash and subscribe there. All right. See you next time.
