Dan Martell's Recent LinkedIn Posts

You're prompting AI backwards. You're telling it exactly what to do. Word count. Tone. Structure. All the details. Then you spend 15 minutes editing generic output that sounds like AI wrote it. Here's what works better: Reverse prompting. Don't tell AI what to do. Tell it what you need and let it ask you questions. The formula: "I need help with [task]. Ask me 3-4 questions to get the context you need to give me the best output. One question at a time." Then answer. 2 minutes of back-and-forth. Perfect output. Zero editing. Why it works: AI knows better what questions to ask than you know what details to provide. Stop writing paragraphs of instructions. Let AI interview you instead. Output gets 10x better. Time spent gets cut in half. -DM P.S. If 2 minutes of reverse prompting saves you hours, imagine AI agents doing this 24/7 across your entire business. That's what I'm building with Apex - autonomous agents that handle your operations (emails, research, outreach, documentation) while you sleep. Join the waitlist at https://lnkd.in/gsEy59SB

I have a confession to make…

In 2026 AI has gotten specialized. One tool doesn't do it all anymore. So you need to know WHICH tool to use for WHICH job. These are just some of the tools I use daily. I'd you'd like my full stack of 30+ tools mapped to specific business functions, message me "AISTACK" and I'll send it over. My gift to you 👊 -DM -- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

One AI used to cut it. That era's over. Here's the stack I use every day in 2026: Chatgpt.com → Ideas and brainstorming. Built for fast back-and-forth. Best for exploring angles, weighing options, and pressure-testing decisions before you commit. "Give me 10 different angles for positioning this product launch." "Help me think through whether to hire for this role or restructure." "What are the second-order effects of this pricing decision?" Claude.ai → Writing. Anything over 200 words that needs to sound like you, not a robot. Team updates, memos, proposals — anything you'd normally spend 45 min writing. "Take this voice note and turn it into a Slack message I can send leadership." "Write the internal memo explaining why we're killing [product/feature]." "Turn this Loom transcript into a clear SOP my team can follow." Grok.com → Current research. What's happening right now — not last year's training data. Competitive intel as it drops, straight from the people actually doing it. "What are founders in the AI space saying about the new OpenAI model?" "What's the latest discussion about [competitor]?" "What happened in [industry] this week I should know about?" Gemini.google.com → Deep analysis. When the input is long, messy, or multi-source and you need structured insight back. Also has YouTube integration none of the others have. "Watch these 3 founder interviews and tell me their common growth strategies." "Analyze this 50-page market report and give me the 5 things I need to know." "Summarize shared patterns across these interviews." This isn't the advanced setup. This is the starting line. If you're still doing everything in one tool, you don't have to be. This is a good place to start. Save this so you can come back to it. -DM P.S. These are just the 4 main tools I use daily. I have 30+ other tools mapped to specific business functions. I'd you'd like the full stack that shows you which tools to use for what in your business, message me "AISTACK" and I'll send it over. My gift to you 👊 -- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Why does one t-shirt sell for $3 and another for $620? Same fabric. Same manufacturing cost. Same basic function. The difference isn't in what they're selling. It's in how they think about what they're selling. Here's what separates businesses that compete on price from those that create their own rules: Businessman: Sells watermelons Entrepreneur: Sells fresh juice and convenience Businessman: Makes burgers for customers Entrepreneur: Builds systems that make burgers everywhere Businessman: Sells CDs with music Entrepreneur: Puts 1,000 songs in your pocket Businessman: Sells books from a store Entrepreneur: Makes every book instantly available Businessman: Sells cotton t-shirts Entrepreneur: Sells status and identity One focuses on the product. The other focuses on the transformation. One competes in existing markets. The other creates markets that didn't exist. Most business owners are stuck perfecting their product when the real opportunity is reimagining what problem they're actually solving. That's the difference between making money and creating wealth. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Meta is laying off 20%. Block is laying off 40%. Both blame AI. Here's what actually happened: Leadership moved too slow. And employees waited too long. If you're a leader: The companies cutting teams right now had the same warning signs you have. They just chose to ignore them. They didn't train their people. Now they're cutting them. That's not an AI problem. That's a leadership failure. If you're an employee: Your company isn't going to save you. They're running the same math Meta and Block ran. And if the numbers say "replace" instead of "train", you won't make the cut. The truth is both sides failed. Leaders didn't invest. Employees didn't upskill. The companies winning right now trained their people six months ago. Leaders made it mandatory. Employees took it seriously. We shut down for two days and retrained everyone. Not optional. Not "when you have time." Required. Because I only see two paths forward: Train and win. Or wait and get replaced. Leaders: Invest in your team now. They're your competitive advantage. Employees: Invest in yourself now. You're your own best bet. You still have time to be on the right side of this. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Do you understand what happened in the last 24 hours? → A CEO of a $200B company said 35% of new grads won't find jobs. He didn't even flinch saying it. → A random guy in Florida sold his house in 5 days using ChatGPT. No real estate agent, no commission, no experience. Just a $20 subscription. → Meta just had their best revenue year ever. $200B. And they're still planning to fire 15,000 people (20% of its workforce) - because apparently AI is cheaper than people. → A man in Australia cured his dog's cancer with AI after every single vet told him there was nothing left to do. Built a custom vaccine from his couch. → Naval Ravikant said software is dead. Four words. The entire industry felt it. → And Anthropic doubled everyone's usage for free. Because when the product is addictive enough, you give the first taste away. None of this was breaking news. None of it made the front page. It was just a random Saturday. This is the pace we're moving at now. Not quarterly. Not monthly. Daily. If you're still debating whether to get involved with AI - the world already answered that question for you.

I use AI all day. Here's what actually works vs what's overhyped. S-Tier: OpenClaw - AI agent that never stops. (Building my next company on this). Claude Code - Natural language → working software. Manus - Actually delivers 10X productivity. A-Tier: Claude Chat - Best reasoning engine, occasionally slow. NotebookLM - Fastest learning tool I've found. Whisper Flow - Raw thoughts → polished output automatically. Gemini - Mainly for YouTube/Docs search. B-Tier: Grok - Good for real time news, not essential. Perplexity - Only relevant because of the new computer feature. D-Tier: ChatGPT - Lost the lead somehow. Apple Intelligence - Actually makes things harder. What's on your list? -DM P.S. Comment "APEX" if you'd like to join the waitlist.

The day I became a millionaire was the emptiest day of my life. The alarm didn't go off that day because I didn't set one. For the first time in years, there was nowhere I had to be. No urgent Slack messages waiting. No "hey, quick call?" texts. Just my own breath and a question I didn't want to ask. I rolled over and checked my phone. The wire transfer had cleared… Seven figures sitting in my account like it belonged to someone else. I stared at the number, waiting to feel something. Anything. My co-founder had texted: "Dude... we're done." I didn't reply. What was I supposed to say? That I felt empty? That the moment we'd worked toward for four years felt more like an ending than a beginning? My inbox showed zero unread emails. No bug reports from the engineering team. No "ship it" messages from product. I used to beg for quiet. Now it felt like attending my own funeral. That's when the memories came back. Year one. My co-founder and I in my basement, surviving on pizza and pure stubbornness. "You in?" I'd ask him. "Always" he'd reply, even when we both knew we were one month away from bankruptcy. Those late nights writing terrible code, thinking we were building something that mattered. We didn't sleep much, but we believed. I walked to the bathroom and caught my reflection… Same wrinkled t-shirt I'd been wearing for two days.  Same dark circles under my eyes. I whispered to the guy staring back at me: "This is the guy who built the dream?" I stood there waiting for it to feel like I thought it would. Like winning. Like freedom. Like the finish line we'd been running toward. Instead, all I could think about was what I'd traded to get here. Everyone asks what the company sold for. But no one would ask what it cost. The missed birthdays... The relationships that didn't survive... The version of myself I left behind somewhere in year two... I thought joy would come with the exit. That walking away with life-changing money would feel like winning. But sitting there I realized the joy had come in the middle of it all. In the build. In the "one more push". And the people who pushed with me. That's why I'm writing this for you today. If you too are in the basement right now... Stacking the late nights... Or going through the "one month from bankruptcy" phase... Please don't wish it away. Because one day you'll get everything you're working toward. And you too will realize that the best part wasn't the destination. But the process of getting there and people you got there with. If you've already made it? Then you already know. Either way… Keep building. The world needs what you have to offer. Rooting for you from afar, -DM

You think too much because you do too little. Your brain is bored. When you don't give it real problems to solve, it starts making up fake ones. Action kills overthinking. Do something. Anything. Your mind's spinning because your wheels aren't. -DM -- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Jack Dorsey just published something that should be required reading for every founder. The premise: the org chart needs to be replaced entirely. And the argument starts 2,000 years ago. For thousands of years, every organization on earth has run on the same logic the Roman Army invented. Small teams report to a leader → Leaders report to managers → Managers report to executives. The whole structure exists for one reason: to route information up and down the chain. That's it. The whole system exists to solve a bandwidth problem. Jack's argument is simple: AI solves it better. Block built what they call a "world model" - a continuously updated picture of everything happening across the company. Every decision. Every customer. Every transaction. Every bottleneck. In real time. No status update needed. No weekly sync. No manager to translate what's happening on the ground into language the executive can understand. When the world model carries the information, you don't need the layers. So they eliminated them. Block now runs on three roles: 1. Individual contributors who build.  2. DRIs who own specific outcomes for a fixed period.  3. Player-coaches who develop people while still doing the work themselves. No middle layer. The system handles coordination. The humans handle the work. I've coached thousands of founders. The number one problem is always the same: information latency. By the time a problem surfaces from your front line to leadership, it's already compounded. By the time a decision travels back down, the damage is done. That lag costs you deals, people, and momentum. And most founders accept it as the price of scale. Block is trying to prove you don't have to anymore. I think they're right. Because the hierarchy was never the point - it was just the best tool we had. The moment something better exists, the layers eventually collapse. This is either the biggest structural shift since the 1850s - or it breaks at scale like everything else before it. Either way - every founder should be asking the same question: how much of your org exists just to route information? If the answer is "most of it" - that's your problem. And your opportunity. -DM Link to Jack's full article: https://lnkd.in/evBdYZmr

Crazy times...

The destination was never the point. The willingness to move was. You don't need perfect clarity to start. You need momentum. Build. Learn. Adapt. Repeat. The path reveals itself to people who are actually walking it. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Never say these words in business...

AI Tools for every task in 2026...

Building a business used to take months. Now it takes one afternoon. Ten years ago, you needed developers, designers, copywriters, a sales team. Today? You need Claude Code and a decision. The shift isn't just speed. It's access. Everything that used to require a team, capital, and connections is now available to anyone with internet. Landing page? Built. Prospect list? Generated. Sales script? Written. Delivery process? Mapped out. All of it. One afternoon. The gap between starting and not starting has never been smaller. But it's still a gap most people won't cross. AI gave you the tools. Use them. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Research shows that optimists make significantly more money. Not a little more. 30% more over their lifetime. Pessimists see everything that could go wrong. They're usually correct. They're also miserable. Optimists might be delusional. They believe things will work out when all evidence suggests otherwise. They're also happier. It's not magic. Good things happen to good people with good attitudes. That's why some people are right and others are rich. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

People ask me all the time: "Dan. which AI should I use?" The answer isn't ChatGPT or Claude. It's both. Plus 3 others. Depending on what you need. I use at least 5 different AI tools every day. Each one for specific tasks. Why? Because the best tool today might be obsolete in 6 months. A better one will launch. You’ll want to switch. If your entire workflow depends on ChatGPT knowing your history, you’re trapped. And in a world where AI is changing this fast, being locked in is dangerous. The people who stay ahead aren’t the ones who master one tool. They’re the ones who can stay adaptable. This is how I do it. If you want the full prompt, MESSAGE me “SWITCH” and I’ll send it over. -DM -- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

I've tested over 500 AI tools in the past year.  Most of them are garbage. Here are the 8 I actually use every day across all my companies: Claude.ai → anything that needs to sound like a human wrote it.  Copy, emails, scripts, proposals. If someone's going to read it - Claude writes it. Manus.ai → automation without the complexity.  I used to need Zapier flows and a dev to connect everything. Now I just describe what I want done and it handles it. Notebooklm.google → learning without reading 500 pages.  Upload your docs, ask it anything. Like having a research assistant who actually read the whole thing. Gemini.google.com→ when the input is long, messy, or multi-source. It can digest complexity, return structured insights, and even watch full YouTube videos for you. Apex.host→ my AI business partner. It lives in Slack, consumes everything across my companies, and runs with it. Research, updates, follow-ups, feedback - it handles the work I used to need 3 people for. Wisprflow.ai → Went from 80 WPM to 200+. Simplest productivity upgrade I've ever made. Grok.com→ replaced Google for anything happening right now. Real-time answers pulled straight from where the actual conversations are happening. ChatGPT.com → still the best brainstorming partner. Especially voice mode. When I need to think out loud and bounce ideas fast, this is where I go. There are other tools I use depending on the job. But if you're building a stack from scratch - start here. Save this so you can come back to it. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

Want to know if someone's ready to lead? Don't look at their performance. Look at their team's. The best predictor of leadership isn't how good someone is at their job. It's whether they make everyone around them better at theirs. Do people ask them for help? Do they share knowledge freely? Do they celebrate other people's wins? Do they take blame when things go wrong? That's leadership. Everything else is management. Most companies promote their best individual contributors and wonder why they fail as managers. It's because you promoted them for being great at the job, not for making others great at the job. Stop promoting for past performance. Start promoting for future impact. -DM --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U

10 million followers. Still doesn't feel real. Because I remember all the times I almost quit. The 2am moments lying in bed wondering what the hell I was doing. Posting to 80 views. Then stuck at 1,500 views. Week after week. Nobody watching. Nobody caring. After 8 years I made a decision. A decision to stop lying to myself. To GO PRO. No more marketing department. Instead, build a Media company. Invest in editors, research, writing better scripts. Build a real team around it. I went ALL IN… … then nothing happened for 7 months. Most people would've stopped. Told themselves it wasn't working. Found a reason to move on. I almost did. But I kept going because I have lessons I refuse to take to the grave. Every scar from building companies. Every mistake from addiction and rock bottom. Every framework I learned the hard way. I can't let that die with me. That's the principle I've built my entire life on: die empty. Leave everything on the field. Share it all. Even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts. Because somewhere right now, someone's in their darkest moment. Scrolling. Searching. Hoping someone out there has been through what they're going through and made it out. And now 10 million people are here. Building businesses. Taking risks. Betting on themselves when nobody else would. That's what this number actually represents. Not my audience. Our movement. To the 10 million of you who show up every week: Thank you. For trusting me with your time. For proving that ordinary people can build extraordinary things. You're changing the definition of what's possible. And that's all I could ask from you. Thank you for helping build something worth leaving behind. Onwards. -DM

If you're still using the same tools from last year, you're already behind. Here are the 7 tools I switched to: 1. Claude.ai - Better reasoning, better writing, doesn't sound like AI. 2. Grok.com - Better than Google. Real-time answers from X. 3. Wispr.ai - I talk, it types. Went from 80 WPM to 200+. Best productivity upgrade I've made. 4. Gemini.google.com - Best image generation model period. 5. Manus.im - Automation without the Zapier complexity. Just works. 6. Notebooklm.google.com - Upload your docs, ask anything. Like having a research assistant who read everything. 7. Granola.ai - Meeting notes that make sense without joining your calls. 2025 tools kept you busy. 2026 tools make you productive. Save this. Pick one tool. Try it this week. -DM

Most people think they're "using AI."  They're still on Level 1. I was too. For a long time. Asking questions, getting answers, copying and pasting into my docs. It felt productive. But I was still doing all the work. Then I started building workflows that ran without me. Level 2. One trigger, everything handled. Big shift, but it was rigid and often complex. One thing goes sideways and the whole thing breaks. Now I'm at Level 3 - which ironically takes the least of my time. That's kind of the point. I describe what I want done. The agent figures out the how. I come back to a completed deliverable. The business I'm running today would've required 3x the team size two years ago. Same revenue. Same output quality. A fraction of the overhead. Level 1 was me being faster. Level 2 was me building systems. Level 3 is me running a business that doesn't need me for execution. The companies that adapt to that reality are going to dominate. The ones that don't are going to be competing with one hand tied behind their back. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm trying to show you what's possible when you stop asking AI for help and start giving it responsibility. -DM P.S. I put together a doc with 30+ AI tools organized by what they actually do - chatbots, agents, workflows, content, creative, productivity. The whole stack. Message me "AISTACK" and I'll send it over 👊 --- Enjoyed this? Join 300,000+ entrepreneurs receiving my weekly insights: https://bit.ly/3RQoZ9U