Wedding Business Solutions

You've been prompting for years!

• Alan Berg, CSP, FPSA, Global Speaking Fellow

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You've been prompting for years!

Are you getting the best results from your clients, employees, or even AI? Have you ever wondered why vague instructions lead to vague outcomes? In this episode, I explore how the way you communicate—whether with people or technology—impacts the results you get. Discover why context, clarity, and details in your input matter, and how they can bring you closer to the answers you need.

Listen to this new 5-minute episode for practical ways to give better direction and improve your outcomes—whether in business, with clients, or using AI.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/

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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks. 

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site: 

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com 

You've been prompting for years. Listen to this episode. See where I'm going. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I just finished my new AI book, AI for the Real World. And one of the chapters in there, I'm talking about how you've been prompting your entire life, or you've been prompting certainly for years. And all that really means is that you've learned how when you give better direction, you get better outcomes.

Matter of fact, the subtext of the book is if you want better outcome, you have to give it better input, right? So think about you as an employee or an employer. If someone wants you to do something and they give you better direction, you give them what they're looking for. Same with a client. If you find out more about what they're looking for, you can give them a better result. But when people give you vague instructions, you get vague outcomes. And it's the same thing with AI. With AI, you have to give it better input. You have to give it better instructions.

My very first computer class back when I was in high school, a long, long time ago was, and again, this doesn't matter what the programming language is or anything like that, but the first thing the teacher did is went to the blackboard and wrote gigo. Garbage in, garbage out. And that is the rule of computers, and that is the rule of life. If you give bad input, you get bad output. If you give vague input, the chances of you getting the output you want are reduced because the input was vague.

So think about the next time you're going to use AI, talk to it. And you don't have to actually talk to it, although you can, with many of them, write the instruction as if you were telling it to a person, right? And I know this artificial intelligence. You know, is it supposed to be as smart as people or whatever? No, that's not the thing.

It's still your judgment that matters. But if you give better input, if you give a better prompt, you tell it more of what you're looking for, including the format, who it's for, what you're going to do with it, you'll get better output. And then you don't have to take the first thing that it says. Matter of fact, most of the time, you shouldn't take the first thing that it says. It's just getting you closer to the answer.

And it's the same thing if you're working with a couple or if you're working with a client, or if you're an employer or an employee. When you're talking to someone, the more you can give them about the context of what this is, who it's for, what the format you're looking for, when it's going to be used, all these different things, the more you're going to get a better output. So it really does mirror human interaction because you've been doing this or should be doing this, or have learned the hard way about doing this, right or wrong, that if you give vague instructions, you get vague output.

If you give better instructions, you get better output. And this also leads into your sales process, which is if you ask better questions that will lead you to get that other person giving you more information, you can give them more of what they're looking for. So it's exactly the same thing.

Prompt engineering is the phrase in AI. And prompt engineering just means giving better directions, asking better questions, giving more input in terms of format, context, and all those different things. So whether you're using ChatGPT or Gemini or Ask Allan anything, and I actually say that on the prompt, when you go into Ask Allan anything, it says, give it context, tell it who you are, tell it what it's for, and you're going to get a better output because of that.

I remember when I first heard somebody say at a conference that people over 45 get better results from AI because they give better instructions.

And I said that to my assistant who's a few years out of college, and she said, yeah, I give it eight words, you give it two paragraphs. Exactly, exactly. Because I give instructions to AI the way I would give instructions to her.

And this is a life lesson. If we want to get better output, we need better input. It's the same thing with AI.

So think about what's the difference between saying, write me a social media post and saying, I want to write a social media post for Instagram. My target audience are Gen Y and Gen Z brides.

This is what I do for a living. This is the feeling that I want. This is the call to action that I'm looking for. Help me write five different social media posts about this particular event. Let me tell you about the event. That's way, way better.

And yes. Does it take a little more time? Sure.

But isn't that better than going back and forth 10 times because you didn't give good instructions? You'll get closer to the answer faster. And yes, maybe sometimes the first answer will be good enough and maybe it'll be great, but if you don't give a good instruction, the chances of that happening are severely diminished.

So you have been prompting for years, some of you for decades. You just didn't call it prompting, because we just called it interacting with people and giving better instructions, better guidance, input. That's how you're going to get better output with AI. That's how you're going to get better output in life. Thanks for listening.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2026 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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