Scene hook
Last night I was at my desk revising a proposal, staring at a page of pricing logic I just couldn’t untangle. My first reaction was a quick wave of panic.
I’ve been stuck in moments like that too: not because I couldn’t do the work, but because the problem had too many twists and my brain just locked up. Recently I saw a story from the math world: someone used a prompt to help an AI fill a gap in convex optimization that had been open for 30 years. What hit me wasn’t the “academic breakthrough.” It was the sudden realization that the hard problems in our own businesses may not be something we have to muscle through alone from the first minute.
What this method is + who’s already using it
I think of it as a more practical way to use AI: not just as a copywriting tool, but first as someone sitting beside us helping break down a complex problem. We give it the goal, the constraints, the known facts, and the places where mistakes would hurt most. Then it helps us map possible paths, spot weak points, and raise counterexamples.
Last Tuesday at 8 p.m., in a coffee shop beside a mall in Nanshan, Shenzhen, Lin Wei, who runs corporate training projects, was flipping through a client’s WeChat messages while feeding AI a messy brief: “small budget, lots of demands, short delivery timeline.” She asked it to come up with three trade-off options first. Later she told me what really saved time wasn’t the writing itself, but avoiding half a day of aimless thinking. I’ve messed this step up too. At first I would jump straight to “what’s the best way to do this?” and the answers came back vague. Only after I started giving the background first did the output become genuinely useful.
What it costs to copy today
Money: $0-20/month. A common AI chat tool you already have is enough to start. Time: 30 minutes is enough to test a first version. Technical barrier: no coding needed. You just need to explain in plain language what you want, what’s off-limits, and where exactly you’re stuck. First step: open a new chat in the AI tool you already use and send these four lines first: goal, constraints, known conditions, and “don’t give me a conclusion yet—help me break down the problem first.”
Not everyone needs this tool. If your business is still very simple, it’s fine not to bother yet. But if pricing, process design, product selection, or client requests keep getting you stuck, I’d start with one small problem instead of betting a big project on it right away.
Advice by stage
If you’re just getting started, I’d practice with one real client problem, like pricing language or the boundary of what your service includes.
If you already have one or two clients, I’d turn the recurring headaches into a fixed prompt template and let AI help with early judgment first.
If you’re scaling up, I’d place AI in the “proposal rehearsal” and “risk check” step, not in the role of making the final call for the team.