Quick challenge before you scroll past this: open your AI app right now and ask it to grade your last week out of 10. If it tells you you’re crushing it without asking a single hard question, you just found the problem. That’s not coaching. That’s flattery.
I came across this framework from Dan Martell, and I have to say I was hooked from the first minute. The creator has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on real human coaches, and he breaks down the five things a great coach actually does, then shows how to turn AI into that outside voice for free. What I love is that he doesn’t oversell AI. He’s honest about where it falls short. Let’s walk through his five steps, and I’ll show you exactly how to run each one.
🎯 Step 1: Make AI push you to dream bigger
Most people set goals that are a little better than yesterday. The author argues a real coach coaches you to your potential, not to a safe upgrade. He shared how at 17, fresh out of rehab, he wrote down two ‘crazy’ goals: make $100,000 a year and buy a house. Four years later he hit both. His point stuck with me: you can’t fail at a dream, which is exactly why people love dreams and avoid goals.
Here’s his fix. Turn every dream into a number plus a date. ‘Get in shape’ is a dream. ‘185 pounds by December 31st’ is a goal. Brain dump 5 to 10 outcomes 10 years out across work, money, health, growth, and relationships. Then hand it to AI with this prompt he provided:
“You are my ruthless mentor helping me dream bigger. Interview me about what I want my life to look like in ten years. When an answer sounds conservative, call it out and push me. Turn every answer into a real goal with a number and a date. Then work backwards into what that means three years from now, and this year.”
📊 Step 2: Get the brutal truth about where you stand
The second job of a coach is telling you where you actually are. The original poster does a 10-minute Friday ritual: he scores himself 1 to 10 across health, relationships, love, work, money, fun, and personal growth, then targets his two lowest.
He brings up the Dunning-Kruger effect, where nearly everyone rates themselves above average. Ask people how good a driver they are and they all say ‘the best.’ The trap with AI is that it’s sycophantic. It validates you. The author even points out that in 2025, OpenAI pulled back a ChatGPT update for being too agreeable. So the move is simple: don’t ask AI how you’re doing. Tell it the standard, then make it grade you against your own non-negotiables. His prompt sets up a weekly Friday interview that hands you a score and your two weakest areas.
🔍 Step 3: Stop fixing the wrong thing
This was my favorite insight. A great coach stops you from solving the wrong problem faster. The creator described a woman at his event convinced she needed a fancy AI support agent. Three questions later, the real issue surfaced: she didn’t have enough practitioners for the clients she already had. She was about to build a beautiful solution to a problem she didn’t have.
Psychologists call this attribute substitution, where your brain quietly swaps a hard question for an easy one. And AI makes it dangerous because it’ll happily research, plan, and build the wrong thing for you, beautifully. As the author puts it, you end up ‘wrong at scale.’ His prompt forces AI to interview you in rounds, digging under each answer until it hits something you haven’t said out loud, before it gives you a single action.
🏆 Step 4: Feel like you’re winning before you win
A number alone means nothing. The mind behind this ties every goal to an emotion using rewards and stakes, and he leans on loss aversion. You’ll do more to avoid a loss than to chase a gain. He shared how a teammate hit a fitness goal not because of a Bali reward, but because missing it meant leaving the team. That downside kept her stepping on the scale daily.
His structure has three levels: the year with a big reward and a real consequence, quarterly milestones, and daily activities. He put actual Porsches on the line for a follower goal. Intense, sure. But the prompt he gives builds a visual scorecard you open every day showing year, quarter, today’s progress, and days left.
👥 Step 5: The one thing AI will never do
Here’s the piece almost everyone skips, and the author is refreshingly honest about it. AI can dream, score, diagnose, and measure. It cannot hold you accountable like a human you respect and don’t want to let down. His entire media channel exists because a coach told him to go pro or lose the coaching relationship. AI could never create that stake.
He recommends finding someone who has actually reached your goal, not a friend a few steps ahead. Show up with a plan (built with AI), meet on a schedule, and ask real questions. His final prompt asks AI to list coaches, programs, and communities, plus the questions to ask and the red flags that reveal someone has never done it themselves.
💡 Extra tips worth stealing
- Tie money goals to purchases and health goals to experiences, so your family cheers your discipline instead of pushing dessert.
- Don’t let AI write your dreams. Use it to push back when you play safe.
- The whole thing is a loop. Hit the goal, then run it again on the next area of life.
Pro move the creator mentions: Feed AI the video transcript itself and let it pull the prompts and interview you automatically.
▶️ Want the full walkthrough with his personal stories and exact wording? Watch the complete video linked below. It’s worth the 15 minutes.