ChatGPT Isn’t the Problem. You are. Hand It the Plans!!

Imagine a subcontractor turns up on site at 7:00 a.m. He’s good. Twenty years at his trade. Fast, reliable, and he’s never walked off a job half done.

There’s just one small problem: nobody gives him the plans.

No specs. No client name. Nobody even tells him which of the three houses on the street he’s supposed to be working on. So he shrugs and gets to work.

By 4:00, whatever he built will probably be square, tidy, and beautifully finished. It just won’t be your building.

Welcome to the way most people use ChatGPT.

They open it, type, “Write me a marketing email,” get back something that sounds like it was written by the Committee for Generic Corporate Communications, and conclude: “AI is overrated.”

Maybe. Or maybe you forgot to hand it the plans.

Garbage in. Beige out. (Beige? Ewwww…)

ChatGPT knows a lot. What it doesn’t know is your business. It doesn’t know who your best customers are, what you charge, why customers choose you instead of the guy down the street, or that your communication style is direct, practical, and slightly allergic to marketing fluff.

So when you give it five generic words, it gives you a generic answer. That isn’t artificial intelligence failing. That’s artificial intelligence doing exactly what you told it to do—which is occasionally an uncomfortable distinction.

You really only need two things

Don’t turn this into a six-week “AI implementation initiative.” Nobody needs another initiative.

Give ChatGPT two things: your business and the situation.

Your business context is what you sell, who you serve, what you charge, what makes you different, what you refuse to compromise on, and who makes a great customer—or absolutely does not.

The situation is the job at hand. Who is this customer? What happened? What are you trying to accomplish? What matters here?

That’s it. Business + situation. You don’t need a 47-page AI strategy. You need to tell the subcontractor which house he’s working on.

Better yet, make AI ask the questions

While coaching a locksmith who wanted to grow, Peter tried something different. Instead of painstakingly explaining the business to ChatGPT, he had ChatGPT interview him.

The goal was to develop a detailed profile of the locksmith’s ideal customer. They did it three times for three different customer types. Those profiles became the foundation for outreach plans, safety audits, and employee incentive programs designed around earning trust with each particular customer. Within weeks, the owner could see the difference.

That’s the trick. A good subcontractor doesn’t wander around the job site hoping inspiration strikes. He asks for the plans.

Try this:

“Interview me about my business so we can build a profile of my ideal customer. Ask me one question at a time. Keep going until you know enough to describe that customer in detail.”

Then answer the questions. You may be surprised by how much you learn about your business in the process.

Not everything needs the full treatment

Sometimes a one-line prompt is perfectly fine: “Summarize this email.” “Explain this contract clause.” “Turn these notes into a checklist.” No need to tell ChatGPT your company’s founding story before asking it to alphabetize something.

But the important stuff is different. Pricing, proposals, marketing, customer follow-up, hiring, strategy, positioning—those answers depend on things only you know.

The fashionable term for supplying that information is “context engineering,” which sounds wonderfully expensive. It really means: write down what you know and tell the AI.

Start with one page about your business: who you are, what you do, who you serve, how you think, what makes you different, and what “good” looks like.

Interestingly, that page becomes useful for much more than AI. It’s also what you should probably give a new employee on Monday morning. Because information that exists only inside the owner’s head is not really a business system. It’s a hostage situation.

So the next time ChatGPT gives you something bland, don’t immediately blame the technology. Look at what you gave it and ask yourself:

Could a smart, capable stranger who had never met me do this job well with these instructions?

If yes, maybe you’ve found the limits of the tool. But if the answer is no, the subcontractor showed up.

You just forgot to hand him the plans.