Lesson 2 of 10 · ⚡ Impact: High · Difficulty: Easy · ⏱ ~2 min
Why it matters
Almost every great result comes from the same handful of ingredients. Once you can see them, you stop guessing and start assembling — and the same shape works for a tagline, a presentation or a whole campaign.
The move: four ingredients
Audience — who's it for? "For CFOs" and "for students" produce completely different work.
Goal — what's it really for? Lead with the outcome ("win the pitch"), not the task ("make slides").
Format — what should come back? Length, tone, structure — "a punchy 100-word post."
Context — what does it need that only you know? Your brand, the data, an example to match.
You won't always need all four — but naming two or three is what separates a usable answer from a generic one.
The ladder you'll see throughout
Good — "write a post about our new dashboard"
Sharper — "a LinkedIn post about our dashboard, for time-poor marketing directors, ~120 words"
Flow — all that, plus "lead with the Monday-morning spreadsheet pain, and give me three hooks to choose from"
Now you try
Take the task you noted last lesson and add the four ingredients — audience, goal, format, context. That one sentence is your brief for what's next.
Remember: a good prompt isn't long or clever — it's just complete. Audience + goal + format + context.