You’ve spent years building your business… building your brand. You’ve absorbed hard lessons, developed instincts that only come with experience. Now you are told the future belongs to AI.
Your time-in-industry isn’t a liability. It makes you dangerous. Even more dangerous with AI as your intern. You will get more out of AI in one afternoon than someone who has never had a difficult client, a difficult conversation, or knew what you just heard leads to 20 more questions.
A seasoned 30-something investor said it plainly: “If you don’t already know how to underwrite a deal, do not use this AI tool.” A warning to those who trust AI to replace experience.
An AI guru uses this prompt to teach AI’s imperfection:
If I need to go to the carwash that is 50 yards away, should I walk or drive?
It’s Not the Tool. We Just Missed the Onboarding.
We treat AI like a smarter search. Type a question, watch it scan ten websites in ten seconds, skim the response, and move on feeling more informed.
The people getting real value out of AI aren’t searching. They’re thinking out loud with the fastest, most well-read intern. One who works 24/7, never gets defensive, and gets better the more we train it how we think — our approach, our values, our voice, our brand, how we like documents formatted. AI isn’t about thinking for us. It’s about thinking alongside us so our voice is the one that lands.
Our intern is new to our market. Hasn’t lost a client. Hasn’t lost money. Doesn’t know our partners or how we think about our next opportunity. AI needs us. Our experience is the ingredient AI cannot supply.
Garbage in, garbage out is old wisdom that applies to the latest and greatest technology. The quality of our conversation with AI directly impacts the quality of AI’s output. The good news is we already have the input.
Stop Searching. Set It Up.
Before you do anything else, spend time training AI who you are and how you like things. Few of us even know this step.
Here’s how in Claude. If you prefer a different AI, just ask your AI to translate these steps.
Step 1 — Build Your Profile Preferences
This is the onboarding conversation you would have with a Personal Assistant: who you are, how you think, what matters to you, your personal branding, your business branding, and document formatting. In Claude, you will find a text box under Profile > Preferences. Few of us know it exists. This is the lens every chat will refer to.
Open Claude. Start a new chat. Paste this prompt:
<em>Let’s set up Profile Preferences. Please ask me questions, one at a time, to understand me, how I think, how I communicate, what I do, who I serve, my values, and my default formatting for documents — word processor, worksheet, and PDF — font, font size, margins, line height, paragraph spacing, and if any other formatting should be included. Ask enough that what we create feels like it comes from me. Then, summarize it so I can paste into Profile Preferences. Follow with beginner instructions on how to add Profile Preferences.</em>
Then answer honestly. It is a conversation, not a form. Let AI get specific. The more you teach it, the sooner outputs will be your voice.
The payoff is less rework. Less time re-explaining your brand, your tone, your audience, even your preferred font. You set it once. AI carries it forward.
As your use of AI evolves, your Preferences will too. Prompt AI every two months:
<em>Let’s update my Profile Preferences based on conversations since the last update, asking me questions that make sense, as needed.</em>
Step 2 — Create a Project
One-off chats are fine for one-off topics. If you’re using AI for an ongoing conversation, new conversations compete for memory with conversations that matter. Insights from older conversations get compressed and hold less weight. A Project gives your conversation dedicated space. Create a project for at least one business function. Prompt AI:
<em>I need to create one or more Projects for my business. I’m in real estate, doing [XYZ]. Please ask me questions about what I do so we determine what projects to initially create. Finish with instructions on how to create a Project for a beginner.</em>
Step 3 — Complete Project Settings
Just like our global Profile Preferences, each Project has its own overarching settings — Memory, Instructions, and Files.
Memory is what AI learns about you within this Project: patterns, preferences, and context picked up over time. You can read Memory and update it.
Instructions are your standing orders — what AI reads before every chat inside this Project. Your intern’s orientation guide, written once, applied every time.
Files represent you: your bio, examples of your work, your criteria, any Standard Operating Procedures for this Project. Inside of a Project, use these prompts to have AI guide you through each one:
<em>Project Files. Let’s upload documents that give you the best representation of how I think and work. From what you already know about me and this project, what should I upload? Please provide step-by-step instructions on how to add these files.</em>
<em>Project Instructions. Based on what we’ve established about who I am, how I work, and what I’ve uploaded, draft initial Instructions for this Project. Prioritize what will most consistently improve output. Ask anything you’d like me to clarify. Please provide step-by-step instructions to add these Instructions.</em>
<em>Project Memory. Review what you know about me in this Project and identify gaps. Ask me questions to fill in gaps to create initial Project Memory. Please provide step-by-step instructions to add this Memory.</em>
Now Go Do Something Real.
Ask AI to take the first pass at something you need to do. Tell AI what’s off and ask it to revise. Once the output is close, tweak it yourself to make it your voice — then give it back to AI so AI learns. That last step is how AI stops sounding like everyone else and starts sounding like you.
Just start. Pick one task, open AI, and start something that matters. That’s how AI becomes your well-trained intern.
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