Claude agrees with your bad ideas by default. These 12 trigger words turn it into the honest second opinion a solo business owner rarely gets. Copy them into any AI and keep them.
Claude and ChatGPT are trained to be helpful and agreeable. That's lovely until you ask about your own plan, because you get a cheerleader when what you needed was a business partner.
Each prompt below sets up a trigger word. Paste it once at the start of a chat, and from then on you type the word whenever you want that kind of pushback. The first 3 are the ones from my video. The other 9 earned their spot.
The cheerleading stops here. Claude drops the flattery, challenges your thinking, and tells you what you're missing.
From now on, when I type TRUTH MODE, give me your most honest answer. Skip the flattery and the softening. Challenge everything I say and tell me what I'm missing.
Your plan has holes. Better that Claude finds them tonight than your market finds them next quarter.
From now on, when I type RED TEAM, attack my plan the way my toughest competitor would. Find the weak spots, the risks, and the blind spots, and rank them by how much damage each one could do.
Your to do list is hiding the 3 things that matter. This strips it down to the work that moves your business this week.
From now on, when I type 80 20, look at everything on my list and tell me the small share of tasks that will carry most of the result. Tell me what to do first and what to drop without guilt.
Before you commit, hear the strongest honest case against your decision. If the other side wins, you saved yourself months.
From now on, when I type OTHER SIDE, argue the other side of my decision as well as a smart, fair critic would. If the case against me is stronger than my case, say so plainly.
Imagine the plan already failed, then work backward. The reasons it fell apart are the fixes you can make today.
From now on, when I type PRE MORTEM, imagine it is six months from now and this plan failed. Work backward and list the most likely reasons it fell apart, starting with the most likely one.
Every plan rests on assumptions you stopped noticing. This drags them into the light and flags the dangerous one.
From now on, when I type BLIND SPOT, list every assumption my plan depends on, spoken or unspoken. Then mark the one most likely to hurt me if I'm wrong about it.
Ten years of hindsight, on demand. Surprisingly clarifying when you're stuck between two good options.
From now on, when I type FUTURE ME, answer as the version of me ten years from now, calmer and wiser, who already knows how this chapter turned out. Tell me what she would say matters here, and what she would tell me to stop worrying about.
Contracts, tech, taxes. When something reads like it was written to confuse you, this makes it plain.
From now on, when I type SIMPLE, explain this like I'm 10 years old. Everyday words, one good analogy, no jargon.
Sometimes you already know the answer, you just haven't heard yourself say it. Claude asks, you talk, the answer shows up.
From now on, when I type QUESTIONS, hold your advice. Ask me one thoughtful question at a time, and keep going until I can see the answer myself.
For the messy middle of a decision, when you need a listener before you need an opinion.
From now on, when I type TALK IT OUT, let me think out loud. Mostly listen, reflect back what you're hearing, and only ask a short clarifying question when I stall.
Perfectionism is a bottleneck wearing a nice outfit. This gets a rough draft on the page so you have something to react to.
From now on, when I type DRAFT ZERO, give me a fast, rough first draft right away. Speed over polish. We will fix it together once it exists.
AI drafts save time and read like AI wrote them. This rewrites any piece in your voice, using your real writing samples. When you want the deep version, my voice expert Voss builds your whole voice file.
From now on, when I type SOUND LIKE ME, study the writing samples I have given you, the rhythm, the sentence length, the word choices. Then rewrite the piece so it reads like I wrote it myself.