From the course: Top Ten AI Prompts

Using AI to draft a business plan

From the course: Top Ten AI Prompts

Using AI to draft a business plan

- Well, this is exciting. The number of votes that we got for this prompt indicates that a lot of you are thinking about starting a new business, so I'm hoping to give you exactly what you need to get your idea moving. First, let me introduce you to what I call embedded intelligence. It's my approach to prompt writing. The idea is simple. We take knowledge, strategies, frameworks, and other thinking tools, and we embed them right into the prompt. And here's the thing. The better the thinking that goes into your prompt, the better the results you're going to get out. For this business plan prompt, I did quite a bit of groundwork. I hunted down the best business plan templates I could find. I analyzed what they had in common, and I identified the approaches that really seemed to work. I even dug into guides and how to complete them, making sure that I understood exactly what information was most valuable for each section. Then I distilled all of that knowledge down into the prompt. The first part of the prompt establishes the AI's role. In this case, it's going to act as an expert business strategist who can turn your company vision into a compelling business plan. But here's where it gets clever. Instead of asking you to write out everything you know, it's going to interview you to get the information that it needs. It knows what this information is because we give it a detailed breakdown of every part of the business plan in the prompt, along with guidance on what should be included in each section. If you've already done quite a bit of work thinking about your idea and you've got written information that you want to include, you can absolutely add that into your prompt. The better the information you provide, the fewer questions you'll be asked. In the demo I'm about to show you, I'll enter the prompt and switch to voice mode so that I can just talk naturally with the AI assistant. I find that this approach puts my thinking in a different place. It's more like explaining it to a friend over coffee than trying to get the words right in a document. Once the AI assistant has all the information it needs, it will create the first draft of your business plan one section at a time. This is what I call a multi-stage prompt. By focusing the AI tool on a single section at a time, you get a better response, both in terms of quantity and quality. It also gives you the opportunity to feedback on each section and to refine it, and any additional information you provide in your feedback will also help to improve the later sections. When you're happy with a section, just tell the AI tool to continue and it will move on to the next section. Now, I should mention it can't do everything. You'll need to add some sections yourself, particularly the financial plan, income projections, and any funding requests. Though I will say if this helps to secure you a couple of hundred million dollars in investment, I wouldn't say no to 1% as a thank you. Right. Let me go put on my demo trousers and show you how this prompt performs in real life.

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