Start treating AI as a collaborator, not a vending machine.
Using AI as a creative tool is frustrating.
The same ChatGPT prompt that gave you a great result yesterday delivers an unusable output today, with a different tone, structure, and detail. The specific brand phrasing you asked for starts to default to clichés. Even though you thought you explained it well, the AI still misunderstands your creative intention.
Sometimes it nails in one shot, sometimes all you can do is give up after 3 or 4 re-prompts. Your creative wingman is grounded. The time you thought you'd save has evaporated. That's not exactly the kind of experience that makes you want to use AI more.
Here's what happened. AI mirrors what's fed to it and tends to collapse towards the average. Creativity is intuitive. AI is literal. Without context, guardrails, and examples, AI will fill in those blanks on its own. The disconnect occurs when its guesses don't align with your intention.
You could try using any of the hundreds of prompting techniques, structures, examples, parameters, and cheat sheets from the 'experts.' But do you really have time for that? You don't want to engineer a machine; you just want to make great content. And you're on a deadline.
Forget the AI tips and tricks and start treating AI as a collaborator, not a vending machine. The best results come from a process, not a prompt. The time spent learning and applying what I'm about to share might feel like time stolen from productive work. It's not. The only way to know that is to try them.
Detailed explanations, steps, real-world examples, and materials you can copy are linked below.
Find the personalization menu settings in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or whatever AI platform you use to tell it how to respond. If you only try one thing to get more from AI, this should be it.
Giving an LLM clear, explicit instructions will fundamentally change how it serves you. Example:
"If there are any blank spots or missing parts of information that you need to complete a task or answer a question, ask me. Don’t guess and never make assumptions about blank spots. Ask me about them. This is important. I expect it."
The initial back-and-forth caused by instructions like this will subside as the AI's responses improve. You'll likely need to test and tweak personalization instructions until you get the results you're looking for. That's how it works. The AI is learning how to respond while you're learning how to coach it
Prompting is fine for quick, low-impact tasks or questions. Leveling up to custom GPTs is a giant leap forward in consistency, creativity, and efficiency. A custom GPT is simply an isolated version of ChatGPT that you give specific information and instructions so it behaves the same way every time you use it.
The disclaimer here is that custom GPTs are only available with a paid ChatGPT subscription. Since billing is monthly and cancellable at any time, the $20 you spend on a 30-day road test is worth it, IMHO.
The equivalent of a custom GPT in Gemini is called a Gem. Microsoft 365's Copilot studio offers custom AI agents, best suited for business use. Claude's Artifacts are also similar but used more for app prototyping. Any of these can be used with a free account.
Think of creating a custom GPT as creating your own creative AI producer that knows your station, your listener, your format, your creative style, and follows the same rules every time you use it. It's like giving ChatGPT a job description complete with examples, a list of dos and don’ts, and a detailed outline of the tone, style, and personality to use in its responses.
Instead of using the same prompt over and over with different results, a custom GPT creates within the boundaries you set. Imagine giving ChatGPT transcripts and social posts to create a custom style guide for your morning show, then adding it to a custom GPT along with a target listener profile and persona, content guidelines, script lengths, preferred news sources, etc.
Now it can find and curate prep, develop content, write promos, one-liners, social posts, and teases. Use it to generate contests, content angles, video scripts, and images for social and web posts. You get customized, stylized, targeted content from a single, simple prompt in seconds because you've taught the AI what you know and the way you'd do it.
As I hope you'll come to realize, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Really. See what else is hiding beneath the surface here, or get in touch and let’s build something together.
