How to prompt AI with Eli 10 and clarifying questions

TL;DR

Eli 10 makes AI explain complex ideas in simple terms so you can start a business without confusion. Pair it with asking five clarifying questions to tailor AI outputs to your situation, then supply examples of what great looks like to guide the AI. Store key context as memory or a reusable skill to improve future prompts.

Transcript

I built and sold my first AI company for over $10 million at age 30 and made the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Now I teach millions of people AI for free. Today I'm going to show you six secret claude prompts to get ahead of 99% of people using AI. Starting with number one, Eli 10. Now it stands for explain like I'm 10 years old. By the way, I use this ... Read More

Key Insights

• Eli 10 is a prompt that asks AI to explain concepts in beginner terms, removing confusion before acting.
• Five clarifying questions before a response give AI richer context about goals, services, customers, and preferences.
• Showing AI examples of what great looks like teaches it to emulate desired outcomes more accurately.
• Memory in AI stores important business context so you do not repeat details in future conversations.
• Skills or GPTs create repeatable prompts for common tasks, reducing repeated setup work.
• The dry principle encourages avoiding duplication by creating reusable prompts or functions.
• Memory and skills form a compounding system where AI conversations improve over time with use.
• Sparring with AI to identify blind spots prevents agreement bias and strengthens conclusions.

Questions & Answers

Q: What is Eli 10 and how does it help when starting a business?

Eli 10 is a technique that prompts AI to explain complex topics in simple, beginner friendly terms. When starting a business, it helps by breaking down difficult decisions like entity type, contracts, invoicing, and payment terms into clear, actionable steps. This reduces paralysis and enables you to act with confidence based on easy to understand guidance.

Q: Why should you ask five clarifying questions before an AI response?

Asking five clarifying questions adds essential context about your goals, background, services, packages, ideal customers, and sales process. This turns a generic AI answer into a tailored solution. It makes recommendations more relevant, increases the likelihood of alignment with your specific situation, and improves the quality of the final output.

Q: How do you show AI examples of what great looks like and why is it important?

You provide concrete examples or templates of successful outputs, such as sample pitches or templates that resonated with audiences. This acts as a guide for the AI to emulate. It is a high leverage technique because AI learns from concrete instances far more effectively than abstract adjectives like good or compelling.

Q: What is the dry principle and how does it apply to AI prompts?

The dry principle stands for Don’t Repeat Yourself. In AI prompting, you avoid duplicating context by storing it in memory or turning it into a repeatable skill. This means you reuse a single source of truth for your business details or processes, so new prompts don’t need to reintroduce everything from scratch.

Q: What are memory and skills in the context of AI prompts?

Memory is a place to store important business context, goals, and preferences so future AI interactions remember and apply them. Skills, or GPTs, are repeatable prompts or workflows you can execute with a single command. Together they allow you to build a more efficient, personalized AI system.

Q: What is the concept of compounding in AI prompting as described in the video?

Compounding refers to making future conversations with AI smarter than the last one. By saving context, building repeatable skills, and refining prompts based on feedback, each interaction becomes better tailored to your needs, gradually increasing efficiency and precision in achieving your business goals.

Q: What problem does the sparring partner prompt aim to solve?

The sparring partner prompt asks AI to identify blind spots and weak assumptions. This helps counteract the tendency of AI to simply agree with the user. By challenging assumptions, you get more robust, critically evaluated recommendations and fewer errors from overconfidence or bias.

Q: How does the video suggest turning prompts into reusable assets?

The video suggests saving important prompts as memory or creating a repeatable skill (a GPT) so you do not have to repeat the entire context each time. This enables quick, consistent outputs for common tasks like pitching, while gradually improving the AI’s understanding of your business and preferences.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The video introduces six Claude prompts to outperform most AI users, starting with Eli 10 to simplify topics and break down complex business concepts. It emphasizes asking five clarifying questions to gather context and using examples to teach AI what great looks like. It also covers memory, skills, and sparring for smarter prompts.

• The speaker highlights the advantage of persistence and iteration, encouraging saving important context to memory and turning repeated processes into reusable skills. This creates a compounding effect where future AI interactions become smarter and more tailored to the user.

• The guide ends by proposing a sparring mindset, asking AI to identify blind spots and weak assumptions, ensuring recommendations are robust and grounded in critical thinking rather than agreement.