I run a solo business and I've been methodical about finding prompts that actually produce ROI vs. prompts that sound impressive in a tweet.
After testing 200+, here are the 5 I'd keep if I could only keep 5.
1. The Ruthless Editor
Rewrite this to be 40% shorter without losing any meaning.
Cut filler, redundancy, and hedging language.
Show me only the final version, not your commentary.
Use it on: Emails, proposals, blog posts, landing pages. This prompt alone has saved me hours of editing per week. The key is the "40%" — vague instructions like "make it shorter" return garbage. Specific constraints produce clean output.
2. The Devil's Advocate
You are a highly skeptical critic of the following plan.
List every way this could fail, every assumption I'm making,
and every risk I'm ignoring. Be brutally honest.
Do not soften your critique to be polite.
Use it before: Pitching clients, launching anything, making a hire, signing a contract. I run every major decision through this. It's caught at least three expensive mistakes this year.
3. Plain English Explainer
Explain [complex topic] like I'm a smart professional
who has never worked in this field. Use one concrete analogy.
Keep the total response under 150 words.
Use it when: Writing for non-expert clients, creating onboarding docs, building landing page copy. Forces clarity. If Claude can't explain it simply, your copy can't either.
4. Ideal Customer Persona (the version that works)
Based on this product/service description, tell me:
1. The single biggest fear my ideal customer has that they'd never admit publicly
2. The exact language they use when describing this problem to themselves (not to others)
3. What they've already tried that hasn't worked, and why they believe it failed
Use it when: Writing sales copy, planning content, building a product feature. This is the prompt that changed how I write every sales page.
5. Cold Email That Gets Replies
Rewrite this cold email so that:
- It opens with their specific problem, not our solution
- The ask is one concrete question, under 10 words
- The whole email is under 100 words
- It contains zero corporate jargon
Use it on: Every cold outreach before you send it. Open rates don't matter — reply rates do. This prompt is ruthless about it.
These five are from a library of 47 prompts I've built and refined over the last year running a solo business. If this kind of thing is useful to you, I packaged the full set into a $12 download.
→ Get the full AI Prompt Pack ($12)
It includes prompts for client acquisition, content creation, copywriting, operations, and decision-making — organized by use case so you don't have to hunt.
If you have a prompt that's genuinely changed your workflow, drop it in the comments. I'm always looking to add to the library.
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