9 AI Skills You MUST Have to Get Ahead of 99% of People
At a glance
- Length
- 20 min
- Channel
- Dan Martell
- Video from
- Feb 2026
- Rating
- ⭐⭐ Great video · 2/2
- Best for
- Entrepreneurs, team leads, and content creators ready to systematize AI workflows
What this video answers
- What is the core difference between a master prompt and a system prompt?
- Can I use the same master prompt across different AI platforms?
- Why does taste curation matter more than prompting ability?
- What is the Canvas feature and how does it change iteration?
- How do I create a Custom GPT from a system prompt?
Overview of Nine Essential AI Skills for Competitive Advantage
Dan Martell's video tackles a critical gap in how most people adopt artificial intelligence. While the majority use AI at surface level, Martell argues that understanding nine specific skills separates those in the top 1% from the rest. The video draws on six years of hands-on experience building AI companies, developing internal tools, and teaching these competencies to millions, positioning itself as a practical roadmap for anyone starting from zero.
The assessment reveals that competitive advantage in AI comes not from the tools themselves—ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, and DeepSeek all appear interchangeable—but from how intentionally you work with them. Each skill builds on the last, creating a system where outputs become increasingly personalized, polished, and repeatable.
Key Moments
Key Strengths and Techniques Highlighted
- Prompt Engineering Foundation: The video establishes that every effective prompt must include four elements—role definition, context, specific command, and output format—with the bonus insight that providing examples to pattern-match against acts as a "cheat code."
- Taste Curation as the Differentiator: Martell argues that knowing what great looks like is more valuable than generating options. He emphasizes building a "taste library" through studying world-class examples across your field, then documenting your preferences in writing to make taste repeatable and teachable.
- Master Prompt as Digital Identity: Saving a personal master prompt as a PDF allows you to upload it across any AI platform—existing or future—ensuring consistency and personalization without starting from scratch. The video demonstrates this works across ChatGPT, Claude, and emerging tools.
- Canvas Feature for Iterative Refinement: The video highlights ChatGPT's Canvas tool as a game-changer that lets you lock in a format and make manual tweaks while generating variations, avoiding the common frustration of AI rewriting content when you only want minor adjustments.
- System Prompts as Programming Language: The video frames system prompts as the first technology programmed in natural language rather than code, making AI accessible to the 4.9 billion internet users and enabling creation of reusable Custom GPTs for team sharing.
- Output Iteration Discipline: Martell contrasts most users (who accept the first output as "good enough") with top performers who fight for perfection through specific feedback and iteration—using Coca-Cola's 70,000 AI prompts for one commercial as an extreme example of this mindset.

Who Benefits from These AI Skills
This content suits professionals and entrepreneurs building AI-integrated workflows—startup founders, team leaders, content creators, and product managers who want to scale output without scaling headcount. Martell explicitly mentions his team operates with 92% of work supported through AI, making this relevant for anyone managing teams or handling repetitive creative work.
The video also works well for solo operators and beginners with no prior AI experience, since each skill starts from fundamentals (what is a prompt? what is a master prompt?) and builds logically. However, those merely curious about AI's general capabilities will find less value than practitioners ready to implement systems immediately. The verdict: invest time here if you're actively using AI in your work or business and want to compress months of self-discovery into structured learning.
Frequently Asked Questions About Building AI Competency
What is the core difference between a master prompt and a system prompt?
A master prompt is a document that tells the AI who you are—your role, context, and background. A system prompt contains instructions that tell the AI how to behave. The master prompt provides context about you; the system prompt provides rules for output style and structure.
Can I use the same master prompt across different AI platforms?
Yes. When you save your master prompt as a PDF, you can upload that file to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or any future AI platform. The video emphasizes this approach "futureproofs" your workflow because new, more powerful AI tools will have access to your personalized context immediately.
Why does taste curation matter more than prompting ability?
The video argues that AI can generate unlimited options, but taste—knowing which option actually works in the market—is the rare human skill. Developing documented taste (writing down what makes something great) lets you communicate that preference to AI with precision, eliminating low-quality outputs before you waste time iterating.
What is the Canvas feature and how does it change iteration?
Canvas is a ChatGPT feature that creates an editable document window within the chat. Instead of prompting the AI to rewrite an email and watching it change unexpectedly, you generate the email in Canvas, manually tweak words and paragraphs, lock in that format, and ask the AI to use it as a template for creating variations.
How do I create a Custom GPT from a system prompt?
After AI generates your final system prompt, copy and paste it into the instructions field of a new Custom GPT in ChatGPT. Once saved, you can share the link with team members, giving them access to a specialized AI tool configured exactly to your standards without requiring them to paste context each time.

Key Terms
- Prompt engineering
- The skill of crafting inputs to AI that include role, context, command, and format to receive useful outputs.
- Taste curation
- The ability to recognize and document what quality looks like in your field so you can guide AI toward your standards.
- Master prompt
- A document containing all relevant information about you, your role, and your context that you upload to AI to personalize every response.
- System prompt
- A set of written instructions that defines how an AI should behave, structure responses, and apply rules to its outputs.
- Canvas
- A ChatGPT feature that generates content in an editable window, allowing manual refinement without triggering AI rewrites.
- Custom GPT
- A reusable AI tool created by saving a system prompt as instructions, which can be shared via link for consistent team access.
📚 Go deeper: Prompt engineering explained
Sources: Prompt engineering · Taste curation · Master prompt · System prompt · Canvas · Custom GPT — definitions cross-referenced with Wikipedia
Video by Dan Martell on YouTube. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to their channel and show your support for the great video.
Description
✅ Get Your FREE AI Company Operating System here: https://go.danmartell.com/4l2d0n7
👥 Are you building an AI software company? Partner with me: https://go.danmartell.com/46KsZQw
Most people are using AI at the surface level, and it’s holding them back.
In this video, I break down the 9 AI skills that separate the top 1% from everyone else, and how you can start building them even if you’re a complete beginner.
Tools mentioned:
ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/
Claude: https://claude.ai/
Grok: https://x.ai/
Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/
DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/
▸▸ Subscribe to The Martell Method Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3XEBXez
▸▸ Get My New Book (Buy Back Your Time): https://bit.ly/3pCTG78
IG: @danmartell
Video transcript Accessibility
A full written transcript of this video, provided for accessibility. Select any timestamp to jump the video to that moment.
It's actually pretty simple to get ahead of 99% of people with AI because most people don't have the right AI skills. I spent the last six years [music] inside the AI trenches. I'm talking building companies, developing internal tools, and teaching these skills to millions. And I can tell you the top 1% use AI in
a completely different way. [music] So, I'm going to show you the nine AI skills that you can use to get ahead of 99% of the people, even if you're starting at zero. [music] And the last one is definitely my favorite. Starting with skill number one, prompt engineering. This is the skill of talking to the AI
models and creating prompts that get the best output. Think of it this way. Garbage in, garbage out, and you definitely won't get the result. So every good prompt has four things. The first is it defines the role. You have to tell it to like act like a marketer, act like a leadership expert or act like
a lawyer. Why? because it's looking at all the knowledge in the world and it's saying this body of work is what I want you to pull from. So you give me the best answer through that role. Next, we have to give it the context. You have to give it all the information that you have about yourself. The more you tell
it about your situation, the better the response because it'll use that to craft its search query in the brain called AI. Next, we have to give it a command. We have to give it very clear instructions on what you need. The more specific your command, your request, the more dialed
in the results are going to be. And the last [music] one is format. We want to tell it how to respond out. Do we want a PDF document? We want bullet points. We want to put it in a table. Do we want as a spreadsheet? But I will tell you this, if you have an example of world class output [music] that you've seen somebody
else or you've created before, giving it that to pattern match against is actually a cheat code. Now that we've got your prompt dialed in, now we actually have to learn how to fight with AI to [music] get it to do exactly what you want. Which brings us to skill number two, taste curation. The ultimate
skill you can develop in this new world of AI is knowing what great looks, sounds, and feels like. For example, if you're starting a new [music] product and you need to come up with names for that product, AI can give you suggestions. It could write out 25, 50, 100 different names. But it takes taste
to know when you look at those hundred which are the one or two that are actually going to work in the market. It reminds me of this quote by of all people Ben Affleck the actor and he was talking about like where AI is going to be challenged. He said being a craftsman is knowing how to work but art is
knowing when to stop. That is taste [music] and that's your skill to develop. So here are the steps to improve your taste but the last one is how you lock it in. First we have to create your taste library. Where do you learn what great looks like? I love to use social media. I like to hear things
that people say and write them down because I like the way it was said. If you're a startup and you want to like get better at pitching your startup, then you might go on YouTube and watch all the winners who ever pitched. If you're a musician, go watch all the best acts of all time. If you're a
programmer, go review the code in GitHub from the best and most popular projects. The way to get better is to curate a taste library of examples of what world class looks like. Next, we have to develop your communication skills. Here's why. Your words, how you talk to the AI or how you talk to other people
will actually craft your world around you. So, if you want the best prompts, you have to make sure you use the right words to describe exactly what you're looking for. So, for example, when you're communicating to your AI, you have to be specific. So, you'll say things like, "I need a max line length
of 100 characters. I do this all the time for Instagram notes." Or you might want to use the word leader, not boss. Those two different words will get different outputs in what you're trying to accomplish. Understanding the words that align with your tastes is the meta skill. People that are great at a topic
because you've studied greatness will talk about the work differently and the AI will actually respond and it'll shape the output to match that. And finally, as I mentioned, this is how we lock it all in. We have to learn how to implement universal rules. What this means is to continue to craft your
prompts by giving it repeatable direction. So for example, you might always be saying, "Write in ninth grade English." I use this one very often. Or use simileies over examples. Keep sentences short. Avoid cheesy quotes. No M dashes. That's the biggest one. I want to encourage you to start building the
ability to write down your taste. When people hear taste, they think it's this like kind of six sense [music] for what is great. You know, like I can't tell you why. I just have a taste around it. It's like, no, you actually, if you document it and wrote down things, there's like specific outputs of what
makes it something you like. And the more you learn to write them down, the better you're going to be able to get AI to do exactly what you want it. And by the way, if you're struggling with any of this and really implementing AI in your business, I'm giving away my internal AI playbook on how to deploy AI
in every department in your business. Just DM me AI Business on Instagram, Dan Martell on Instagram, or click the link below in the description. I'll send it over to you. Now, [music] with your taste dialed in, it's time to make sure every response the AI gives you is fully personalized to you. Skill number three,
create a master prompt. If Chad GPT sounds like a stranger, it's because you've never properly introduced yourself to it. Here's why a master prompt is so valuable. You essentially have a document that's got everything about you, your role, all the context, and when you go to prompt, you hit that
little file icon and you upload that document. I do this for all the different roles in my life. Even being a dad, if I'm doing like kid questions, so the answers are so freaking dialed. Everyone on my team has a master [music] prompt. They have to. There's just no world where you're going to be good at
AI if you don't have a master prompt to guide it. It's the reason why 92% of my team's work is supported through AI because we've taught them to do what I'm about to share with you so that every output is hyperpersonalized. This is the first step to get your whole team way more efficient, way more productive
using AI. Here's how we do that. And the last one is a little trick to ensure that you don't have to start from scratch as new platforms launch. First, just tell the AI, act as an interviewer and ask me everything needed to build a master prompt for my role. And then it'll sit there and I'll write down all
the questions that you need to answer so that it can create this document. Next, you have to answer those questions. Make sure you give it as much detail as you possibly can. Now, if you want a trick, I recommend use the voice to text feature where it's like a little microphone icon and then you just click
it and then you talk reading through all the questions and just allow yourself to ramble. The more you give it, the better it is cuz it's going to take everything you gave it and then insert it into the answers and it's going to do it really concise way so that we can produce this
master prompt. And last, once you have all that, say to it, generate a master prompt and save it as a PDF. This is the trick. See, saving that information [music] as a PDF allows you to upload that PDF to every AI out there and even the ones that haven't even been built [music] yet. So, it futureproofs you
around other AIs that come out that are more powerful so that you can come into that platform from scratch and have it act as if you've been using it for years. This becomes your digital ID no matter where you're at. Now, with that, the AI knows who you are, but context alone won't put you in the top 1%. You
need to make sure your output is as polished as possible, which brings us to our next skill, output iteration. The challenge with most people is they don't fight enough with AI. They get an output and they're like, that's good enough, I guess. I'm not that guy. I fight for it. I tweak it. I play with it. It's almost
like there's a piece of clay and it can do anything. And I'm like pulling pieces of the clay away till I get the shape of the object that I want, which is the output. And I'm going back and forth with it until I get it exactly how I want to look. For example, if you didn't see the Christmas commercial that
Coca-Cola used 70,000 AI prompts to generate, that's an example of fighting with AI and iterating to get it to [music] do exactly what you want. And those 70,000 prompts were made by just five AI experts. So think how many times they prompted per expert to make it do exactly what they wanted. The top 1%
iterate to perfection. And here's the truth. To be able to polish your outputs through this iterative process, you need to follow these three steps. And the last one nobody knows about that I personally use almost every time I chat with AI. So the first thing we have to do and we just talked about is we have
to upload our master prompt. It's going to give you all the context for your specific role to prime your prompting. The second is once it gives you an output, give it specific feedback. Don't say make it punchier. Anybody does that. Instead, say open with a strong reframe that [music] talks about how X, Y, and
Z. Like I want you to really ask yourself, what does it mean to be punchier? And finally, don't get stuck on the tiny details because things keep changing every time you prompt it because I use this feature that most people don't know about called canvas to allow myself to lock it in and then I
can tweak it manually. So, for example, if you're working on an email and every time you prompt it to rewrite the email, it kind of changes too much. You can ask it to write the email as a canvas, it'll create almost like a Google doc within Chad GBT that you can click on to tweak
words, sentences, create new paragraph breaks or whatever, and then say it, use that format that you just created to write the next 10 emails. That one feature canvas will change the game for how you iterate with AI. Okay, now that you've iterated to the perfect prompt, it's time to lock it in so you can
repeat it over and over and over again. Which brings us skill number five, system prompts. [music] A master prompt is a document that tells the AI who you are. Context. A system prompt is essentially instructions to tell the AI how to behave. This is what's mind-blowing. AI is the first technology
that is actually programmed not in computer code but in words which means anybody who can speak any language which is the 4.9 billion people on the internet right now are now AI programmers and the way we program it is through the concept of a system prompt. It's just most people are never taught
this. Now this may sound a little scary but trust me it's way easier than you think. And I'm going to teach you the three steps to create one. And if you get to the third, you'll never have to think about it again. The first thing we have to do is we have to grab the final output that you just iterated against
using AI and then write this prompt. Write the system prompt that would have generated this exact output. And what it does is it writes the actual system prompt. You might have never seen one before, but you'll see how detailed it is, how it breaks it up into structure. Then the next step is to save it as a
PDF. Because now with a PDF document now you can use it in like maybe use Claude or Gemini or Grock or any other platform because the PDF is there with the instructions. The cool part is they all kind of talk similar and a system prompt from one AI will work for another AI. Now the last one and the most powerful
if you're using chat GPD for example, you can actually turn that code into a reusable component called a custom GPT by copying and pasting the output into the instructions of a custom GPT. It's more advanced, but the benefit is that I can then share the link to it with anybody on my team. So, for example, I
created one called the book architect, which essentially takes a topic and a person's name, does a massive research project, and writes a book on behalf of all the content they've already put out in the world that I can read. I know it's wild. So, now that we've got like the master prompt figured out for a role
and the system prompt for the instructions, you need to actually teach AI on how to push back on your ideas. And nobody does this. Which brings us to skill number six, using your AI as a critic. AI is designed not to fight with people. They made it almost like a people pleaser. The truth is the pros
like myself, we use AI to expose our blind [music] spots. I want it to give me my harsh reality. See, if it's just a yesman, then I'm just going to get a reflection of my thoughts that I already want. But if I get it to push against me, I'm going to get a better version of myself. For example, just last week, I
used it to rebalance my investment portfolio. I gave it the goal of what I'm trying to accomplish, which it knew. And then I said, "Hey, here are some decisions I want to make. What do you think?" And it pushed back. I didn't want to hear those things. There were some things I wanted to buy that I
thought I should buy. There were some companies I want to invest in that I want to invest in. And guess what it said? No. And here's why. and you said, "And this is what's right." And I'm like, "Why are you so smart?" So, as long as you give it a direction and tell it to push on you, it's going to
show you who you are. I mean, there's an incredible prompt you should try out. Tell me about the things that I need to know about my psychology that's been holding me back that I've never asked you. You're not going to like the response, but guess what? It's going to shine a light on a path that you might
need to go down. Here's how we use AI to critique our thinking. And the last one is actually how to reintegrate it so that it's always there. So the first thing is we want to ask AI to act like a devil's advocate and put that in the role section of your prompt and then it'll stress test all of your
assumptions and it'll list all your risk but you have to tell it to do that. [music] Next we have to ask it to break down all the criticism they gave you through the lens of first principles which is a physics concept. The cool part about this is it's going to decompose everything it told you down to
the fundamentals and I'll help you rebuild the answer through base truth. So, not only will it be very critical and give you the feedback that you might not want to hear, but it's going to teach you how to think about its answers, which is so freaking valuable. And lastly, if you agree with its
assumption, here's the cool part. Capture the insight and update your master prompt. Give the master prompt back to the AI and then give it the insight and tell it update this context as my role so that your answers always follow this principle. So now that you've got AI fighting with you and you
get to like real core answers, the problem is that now you might have too much, okay? And then AI gets confused. So that's why you need the next skill, context compression. I know you may not know this and you're probably not going to believe me, but it's possible for you to give AI too much too much
information, too much [music] context. And what happens when you give it too much context? It actually spits back, I don't know what to do with all this. The AI can process a lot of information you give it. It just can't process everything. [music] For example, the other day I was working
on tweaking my Dan AI system and essentially I had 2 million words of context I wanted to learn against. AI can deal with 2 million words. So I had to do a pre-ompression process to essentially [music] compress the context. Say that 15,000 times fast into 200,000 words using AI. What it did is
it took that and it compressed it into very detailed and specific context that I can then use to actually train my AI. So if you have a lot of information, you're going to need to know how to do this so that you can get AI to consume it all. Here's how we do it. First thing is we have to just paste the mess. Give
it everything. I'm talking transcription, data, all the context. [music] And then say this, say summarize this transcript with bullets for key facts, data, and stories. reduce it down to 10% of his original size. See how specific that is? The second is we have to ask it what's missing from the
original information and list it out and give me the option to bring it back cuz it might have actually summarized out some of the context that you need in there for the prompt to work. And lastly, lock it in. Use the compressed knowledge as the only context in the next prompt. Meaning, you use that
information and start a new window and prompt with that compressed context. So essentially you take a big mess, you tell AI to pre-process it into only the important stuff for the context. Then you say, "What did you take out just in case I want it back?" And then you got the final verdict that is the input to
the new prompting. You see, it's not as complicated as it sounds. So now that you have your compressed knowledge, it's time to make sure your AI workspace isn't an absolute mess. Which brings us to skill number eight, knowledgebased gardening. Just like a garden, your AI knowledge base is going to need some
weeding once in a while. When chatbt came out, my whole team jumped on it. All buying their own accounts, running prompts, training their AIs, but everything was a freaking mess. Nobody was consistent. Everybody was using different data to train it. So, I had to sit down and I taught everyone how to
use the concept of projects to keep everything clean like a well-curated garden. I learned a long time ago with AI, a messy mind creates messy prompts and worse outputs. So here's three things that you can do to organize once and reuse forever. First we have to create a project folder for each
initiative. So essentially think about a project an outcome just name it correctly. So for me I have it for all my key projects. I even have a folder for all my investments so that I can put all the context in those project folders and I'm always making sure that the name is very clear. If you're in a team use a
team account. Next, we have to upload our master prompt into that project. So, it has the context on your role and the compressed context also to the project. So, that compressed context might have came from a PDF that you saved it in so that you have your master prompt, you have the compressed context, you have
anything else you wanted to give it that needs to fit within that project. And lastly, keep your best system prompts in an organized folder by department in a PDF form so that you can reuse it. Again, you want to futureproof yourself around switching different AIs cuz I guarantee the one you're using today may
not be the one that wins in the future. Keeping those PDFs updated and in folders by departments is going to make this process easy. Now, this last skill has been easily the biggest gamecher for me and it'll allow you to easily get ahead of 99% of people if you [music] do it right. Skill number nine,
personalized learning. AI is the future of education, but 99% of people don't use it that way. One of the things that I do almost daily is to ask Chad GPT to create a research paper in a story format on any topic as deep and nerdy as I want to get and then I can just listen to it when I'm at the gym. Here's how we
do it. First, write a simple prompt and tell it how much time you have to learn. Just anything. Say, "Teach me AI. I've got 7 minutes." Next, we want to ask it to put it in a simple conversational language. I like to use grade levels depending on the topic because if it's AI, I may not go to fifth grade level
because I get a bunch of metaphors that really don't give me details, but you can say like seventh grade language if you prefer. So, for example, write a 10-minute research paper on the history of AI for a seventh grader. So, then lastly, just click that play icon and then you put your AirPods on and you can
just listen to the answer while you're walking around or doing stuff or going to the gym. [snorts] This is a thing. Chad GPT isn't a chatbot. That's actually just a use case of [music] AI. It's more than that. It's a creative operating system. Stop using it for simple tasks. Use it to cocreate
the world ahead of you. Use it to help you with your goals and where you can't see your blind spots and conversations with people that you should be having that you've been putting off or text messages that you're afraid to reply to cuz you don't know what to say. Just ask it. If you stop playing in beginner mode
and start using AI the right way, it will make you an [music] expert in life because 99% of people are just not using AI this way. And if you do, you will easily find yourself in the top [music] 1%. And remember, if you want my internal prompts, just DM me AI business on Instagram or click the link below and
I'll send it over to you. Now, click the video if you want to learn the 15 AI tools that you need to build a million-dollar
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