The Prompt Leadership Revolution: Why The Next Generation Of Thought Leaders Will Create Tools, Not Content
I recently discovered something that fundamentally changed how I think about thought leadership. Here's what I learned—and why I believe we're at the beginning of the most significant shift in...
Last January, I published an article called Augmented Reading: Learn 10x Faster And Better With AI. Within 48 hours, 100+ people had subscribed to my $100/year paid newsletter. That single post generated $16,618 in annual recurring revenue and continues to grow.
But here's what made this different from any other successful article I've written in my 20+ years as a thought leader: I didn’t just share insights about reading faster. I provided specific prompts that readers could copy and paste into an AI tool and immediately use to fundamentally transform how they read.
While traditional thought leaders write about concepts, I had discovered something more powerful:
Creating AI tools that deliver instant value
Sharing them alongside my existing content
Distributing them through my pre-existing media channels
Targeting my existing audience
This realization of the prompt-content synergy led me down a path that I now believe represents the future of thought leadership itself.
The future belongs to thought leaders who leverage their existing knowledge (subject matter expertise, explanation skills, audience understanding) and assets (reputation, subscribers, content library, notes) to create AI tools that solve problems instantly. Not in theory. Not eventually. Right now.
I call this Prompt Leadership, and I think it's the most significant opportunity for thought leaders since the advent of the Internet.
The Content Shock Crisis No One Talks About
Here's what's happening: We're drowning in a content flood.
Every day, people publish over 7 million blog posts. That's 81 posts per second. YouTube creators upload 500 hours of video every minute. It's as if every person on Earth decided to become a thought leader simultaneously.
Meanwhile, human attention hasn't expanded to match. You still have the same 24 hours, the same cognitive capacity, the same ability to focus. It's like trying to drink from a fire hose—no matter how good the water is, most of it just splashes off.
The result? The average piece of content is becoming invisible.
But here's the twist: while most thought leaders are struggling with declining engagement, playing an increasingly difficult game of "create more content, post more frequently, try harder to stand out," a small group has discovered an entirely different approach.
They're not trying to shout louder in the crowded marketplace. Instead, they're stepping out of the noise altogether and solving the fundamental problem that makes all traditional content forgettable.
But, before I introduce what that challenge is and how Prompt Leadership works, it’s critical for you to understand my journey to get there so you see what I see…
Navigating the Idea Maze: Why Experience Matters
Legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen (founder of Netscape) introduced me to a concept called the Idea Maze:
In short, he explains that great entrepreneurs don't just have great ideas out of nowhere. Rather, to get those great ideas, they spend 5-10 years navigating a complex possibility space via experimentation in order to finally find something that works. During those years, they have failure after failure. False start after false start.
It’s kind of like playing Battleship except the grid is 100x100 rather than 10x10:
As a thought leader and entrepreneur for 20+ years, the Idea Maze rings painfully true. There are hundreds of combinations to choose from:
Platforms (LinkedIn, X, Quora, Medium, Substack, and media organizations)
Mediums (podcasts, video, text)
Formats (shortform vs longform vs books)
Traffic strategies (ads, virality, social media, SEO,guest posting)
Etc (niches, voices, frequency, and the list goes on and on)
I've navigated my own Idea Maze:
Blogging that fizzled after two years when no one asked about it when I stopped
Speaking tours that became unsustainable after having kids
Agency work that felt disconnected from building my own brand
Paid ads that worked until Facebook mysteriously blocked my account
A 200,000+ community that became a drain to manage.
Each path taught me something valuable about myself and the market.
In the end, even with all of the setbacks, I got pretty good results…
Distribution: I’ve attracted 1+ million readers on 8 platforms (personal blog, Substack, Medium, Quora, LinkedIn, YouTube, Forbes, and Inc).
Monetization: I’ve earned 6-figures monetizing my expertise in 7 ways (book, courses, subscriptions, keynote speaking, events, consulting, agency, and coaching) and millions of dollars through both events and courses.
And along the way, I learned a critical meta-lesson: timing is key.
These experiences are what give me confidence that prompt leadership is the best opportunity that has existed for thought leaders in the last 20 years. And the blue ocean won’t last long.
Introducing Prompt Leadership
Instead of just sharing knowledge and hoping people can apply it, prompt leaders create AI tools that accompany their content, which help their audience get immediate, personalized results.
Think of it this way:
Traditional thought leaders write about productivity frameworks. Prompt leaders also create AI prompts that generate personalized productivity systems in seconds.
Traditional thought leaders explain strategic thinking. Prompt leaders also provide prompts that walk people through strategic analysis with their specific data.
Traditional thought leaders teach writing techniques. Prompt leaders also provide prompts that helps people generate high-quality content instantly.
It's the difference between:
Before: Teaching someone about fishing
After: Handing them a custom fishing rod that automatically adapts to any body of water.
With the new approach, the knowledge becomes immediately actionable, personalized, and valuable.
To further set the context for why prompt leadership is so powerful, it’s important to understand the fundamental challenge of thought leadership and how prompts solve that challenge…
The Implementation Gap: Why Traditional Thought Leadership Falls Short
Here's the uncomfortable truth about traditional thought leadership: most insights never get implemented.
We buy books. Then they pile up, having never been read:
We listen to an audiobook on our commutes. Then we forget the entire book a few weeks later.
You bookmark an article and never go back to it.
This isn't because the content isn't good.
It's because there's an enormous gap between consuming information and successfully applying it to your specific situation. Inside those gaps live a series of steps that require time, meta-learning skills, a second brain, and a learning mindset.
Traditional thought leadership asks readers to do things that they don’t have the time or skill to do:
Understand abstract concepts
Figure out how they apply to their unique circumstances
Overcome the inertia of changing established patterns
Sustain motivation long enough to see results
Most people get stuck somewhere in this process. The insight dies in the implementation gap, no matter how brilliant the original idea was.
The brutal reality is that what most people do is the equivalent of eating an apple and expecting to get all of its nutrients. Just as an apple must go through several steps in our digestive system for its nutrients to be fully absorbed, so too must we do the same with information to get its value.
This is why even the most successful thought leaders struggle with a nagging question:
"Am I actually helping people change their lives, or am I just creating content that makes people feel smart for 15 minutes?"
Prompts change this equation entirely.
These Case Studies Show Prompts Can Generate Thousands Of Likes And Generate Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars
For example, rather than writing an article about Simon Sinek's Golden Circle framework, prompt leader Ruben Hassid created a prompt that readers can use instantly:
It generated over 1,500+ likes, in part because people could immediately apply it to their own businesses and see results. Right now, the opportunity exists for thought leaders to take EVERY framework in their niche and create the same sort of post.
The psychological difference of prompts is profound.
Traditional content asks readers to:
Consume information (10-15 minutes)
Process and understand it
Figure out how to apply it to their situation
Actually implement it (often never happens)
Get results (unpredictable timeline)
Prompts flip this sequence:
Copy and paste (5 seconds no matter how long the prompt is)
Input your specific situation
Get immediate, customized results
Apply those results right now
This creates a viral utility loop.
When someone shares traditional content, they're saying:
“This might be helpful someday.”
When someone shares a prompt, they're saying:
“This just worked for me.”
And they have the outputs to prove it.
Not only do prompts create a different way to spread virally, they also create a new way to earn income. Ruben Hassid, for example, has made roughly $326,274 by packaging his prompts with a 1-hour prompt engineering training video on Gumroad.
In addition, he created an AI tool that replicates his LinkedIn expertise to help others create LinkedIn posts. Now, he’s earning roughly $400,000/year in annual recurring revenue less than a year after launch via this AI tool.
Ruben is not alone:
Matt Shumer has built a large following on X by sharing prompts like this one:
Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush built a $500k prompt newsletter called Write With AI. Every week, they share an article with free subscribers, and at the end of the article, they share a prompt with paid subscribers.
My friend,
, created three AI tools in his newsletter to help people create better Substack Notes:In a matter of months, the number of his paid subscribers doubled. The craziest part is that Tom didn’t know anything about AI a year ago.
Finally, Jack Roberts built a $1+ million subscription business by making 85 videos on YouTube to demonstrate his AI workflows and then sharing the accompanying one-click install automation on Skool.
This growing list of case studies collectively show that prompt leadership isn’t just theory anymore. It’s a proven playbook.
While the list goes on, what is now key to understand is that the list is surprisingly small, which is a really, really good thing for you…
The Market Opportunity: Three Converging Forces
I believe we're witnessing the convergence of three powerful forces that create an unprecedented opportunity:
Force 1: AI Technology Is Finally Super Useful
AI has reached the capability threshold where prompts can reliably solve real professional problems. ChatGPT, Claude, and other models are now sophisticated enough to handle complex reasoning, creative tasks, and analytical work that knowledge workers do daily.
But here's the key insight: while the AI models are becoming incredibly powerful, most professionals don't know how to harness that power effectively. As a result, they aren’t getting profound results that help them see the full power of AI. Thus, there's a massive skill gap between what AI can do and what most people think it can do.
Prompt leadership fills this gap by sharing prompts that get outputs that shock and awe.
Force 2: Market Timing
We're currently in the "Early Adopter" phase for AI tools:
Said differently:
90%+ of knowledge workers have some familiarity with AI tools
But only 29% use AI weekly.
Even fewer can create sophisticated prompts
Less than .00001% create and share original prompts on an ongoing basis
This creates an enormous, time-sensitive opportunity for prompt leaders.
We're at the point where:
AI works reliably
Awareness is high
But sophisticated usage is still rare.
The professionals who develop prompt expertise and share prompts now will have a significant head start as mainstream adoption accelerates.
Becoming a prompt leader will become much harder once:
Mainstream audiences have a more sophisticated understanding of what to use AI for and how to use it. Thus, they are less easily wowed by prompts.
Thousands of thought leaders regularly share prompts. Thus, the market is more crowded.
Force 3: Creator Economy Evolution
The creator economy follows a predictable pattern: a percentage of successful creators eventually stop "mining gold" and start "selling pickaxes"—building tools that help others succeed rather than just showcasing their own success.
We're seeing this same evolution with AI. Early AI creators focused on sharing impressive outputs—AI-generated art, writing, or analysis. But the most successful are now creating the tools and systems that help others generate better results with AI too. They're building prompt libraries, frameworks, and educational content that enables.
This represents the natural transition from "look what AI made" to "here's how you can make AI work better for you in your industry."
The Competition Gap: A Blue Ocean Moment
Here's what surprised me most when I started studying this space: there are fewer than 100 serious prompt creators globally who are regularly publishing their prompts.
In one year, there will probably be thousands of people creating prompts for their industry. Then tens of thousands the year after that.
But right now, we're talking about dozens of serious practitioners worldwide.
As someone building online businesses since 1998, I've learned that opportunity windows in digital markets close faster than most people expect. And the opportunity window for prompt leadership is wide open right now.
You can be the first person in your niche to share personalized, transformative prompts for your audience.
How amazing is that?
The professionals who start building prompt expertise and audiences now will benefit from less competition for attention, algorithm preferences for high-engagement content, first-mover advantages in establishing authority, and network effects from early community building.
Thought Leaders Are Particularly Well Positioned For The Opportunity
While anyone can learn to create prompts, thought leaders have unique advantages that position them perfectly for this transition. Let me show you what I mean.
#1. Thought Leaders Know Their Audience’s Problems
Take a productivity expert who's been writing about time management for years. They don't just know that "people want to be more productive"—they know the specific pain points. They know their audience struggles with email overwhelm at 2 PM, procrastinates on important projects by doing busy work, and feels guilty about not being "strategic enough." That specificity comes from years of understanding exactly how their audience gets stuck. And that understanding helps them:
Pick better prompts to create.
Design those prompts better.
#2. Your Thought Leader Skills Translate Directly
If you can explain a complex concept to a human reader, you can teach AI to help others implement that concept. They both use the same skills.
Consider someone who's written extensively about negotiation tactics. They already know how to break down abstract ideas like "building rapport" into concrete steps a person can follow. Creating an AI prompt becomes a natural extension.
#3. You Have Built-In Testing Grounds
Most thought leaders already have newsletters, social media followings, communities, and/or a personal network. This means when you create a prompt, you can immediately test it with real people facing real problems, not hypothetical users. And, you have a seed audience to spread your most engaging prompts.
#4. You Understand the Implementation Gap
Here's perhaps the biggest advantage: unlike pure technologists, thought leaders live in the messy world between theory and practice. You've seen how people struggle to apply good advice. You know that knowing what to do and actually doing it are completely different challenges. This makes you naturally oriented toward creating prompts that don't just provide information, but actively guide people through implementation.
The combination of domain expertise, audience relationships, and implementation focus creates a unique advantage. While others are still figuring out what problems AI can solve, thought leaders already know exactly what their audience needs help with and how o translate that understanding into prompts.
Now that you understand the potential of prompt leadership, let’s explore how you can get started step-by-step…
The 6-Figure Prompt Newsletter Blueprint
Since baking AI into my newsletter, the revenue has increased from $30,000/year to $160,000 in 15 months. And, it’s growing rapidly.
After testing various approaches, I've developed a three-prong approach for building a prompt leadership business. You don't need to start with all three, but this systematic approach has proven most effective:
Prong 1: Daily Social Media Posts (Free)
Prong 2: Weekly Newsletter Post On Substack ($10/month)
Prong 3: Weekly Live Prompt-Centered Class ($100/month)
Prong 1: Daily Social Media Posts
Post one prompt per day on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Substack Notes.
Here's a key strategy to consider: after 48 hours, edit your post to cut off or remove the prompt and add a note saying "Full prompt moved to newsletter archive—subscribe for a full, categorized library of [x] prompts." This creates a scarcity mechanism that encourages immediate action while keeping the “I would pay for access to your prompts” door open.
If you do this prong of the strategy consistently for just five hours per week,
You'll build a library of 200+ prompts over a year
Steadily growing your audience
Get valuable feedback on what prompts work and don’t work
Drastically improve at prompting
Prong 2: Weekly Newsletter Post On Substack
I recommend Substack specifically because:
You own your email list
Subscriptions connect to your Stripe account (portable to other platforms)
It's free to start, and they only charge when you make money
They have built-in recommendation and cross-promotion features to help you grow.
You can structure free/paid parts of your posts as follows:
To make this more concrete, you can see a sample of how I turned a live class into a prompt post below:
And, you can see two other non-class prompt posts I created below:
Prong 3: Weekly Live Prompt-Centered Class
For subscribers who upgrade to premium, offer a weekly live class focused on one core prompt. The goal isn't to overwhelm people with dozens of prompts, but to help them master and customize one prompt in each class for their specific needs.
This creates a premium community where people get real-time feedback, see how others adapt prompts, get their questions answered, and develop advanced prompt creation skills.
This is exactly what I did with the recent AI Thought School launch.
Blueprint Summary
The free daily posts give you feedback, build your prompt library, and improve your prompting skills.
The weekly prompt-centered class with the follow-up prompt explainer gives you the assets to build a 6-figure thought leadership business.
Each prong of the model supports the other.
As you build up your asset library and deliver results, you can increase your price. For example, I started my newsletter charging $10/month. Now, I charge $20/month.
With this model, you don’t need to see-saw between content creation, teaching, and marketing. They are all integrating on the same platform. Every class you create leads to the creation of a prompt post, which does the marketing for your paid program. Every social media post helps you test prompts that could be good to create classes around.
The Math Behind The Blueprint After One Year
With just 15 hours per week, you can build a significant side income in one year:
Share prompts on social media (5 hours per week)
Teach a prompt-centered class for premium members (5 hours per week)
Turn class into a prompt post for basic baid members (5 hours per week)
Below is what I believe is what I believe is a realistic snapshot of what someone who diligently follows the blueprint for one year can earn:
7,000 free email subscribers (20 new subscribers per day)
300 paid subscribers ($36,000 per year)
30 premium subscribers ($36,000 per year)
This snapshot is specifically for someone who executes consistently and comes with a pre-existing “good enough” understanding of marketing, writing, teaching, AI prompting, subject matter expertise, and audience understanding.
The Fourth Prong (After Year One)
Over time, you will find that certain prompts you create have three qualities:
Solve a really important problem
Are particularly resonant
Are worth further developing
With these blockbuster prompts, you can create new versions of them that have better quality outputs. From there, you can commercialize them in other ways that are explained below…
The Economics Of Prompt Leadership Are Better Than You Think
The economics of prompt leadership are fundamentally different from traditional thought leadership:
Traditional thought leaders monetize through:
Speaking engagements (trading time for money)
Consulting (limited scalability)
Courses (front-loaded work, declining value over time) and books (difficult to update, low margins).
Prompt leaders can monetize through:
Subscription newsletters (recurring revenue)
Premium prompt libraries (compound value that grows over time)
Live prompt workshops (interactive, high-engagement format),
Custom prompt development (high-value consulting work that can be productized)
SaaS tools made with wrappers or tools like PickAxe.
The key difference is that prompts become more valuable over time as AI models improve and as community feedback refines them. It's one of the few content types that actually appreciates in value.
Unlike traditional content that requires constant new ideas, prompt creation has a systematic approach: identify common problems in your niche, create prompts that solve them, test and refine based on usage, and build a library of reliable tools.
How To Start Your Prompt Leadership Journey
If you're intrigued by this opportunity, here's my recommendation: start by posting one prompt per day publicly and asking for feedback.
Don't worry about having a complete strategy or perfect prompts. Focus on:
Solving real problems your audience faces daily
Testing what resonates and getting feedback
Building the habit of prompt creation
Learning from community responses
The goal isn't perfection—it's momentum.
Every prompt you create teaches you something about what works. Every piece of feedback helps you improve. Every person who gets value from your prompts becomes part of your community.
I spent months overthinking this before I realized the best way to learn prompt leadership is by doing it publicly and improving based on real feedback.
The professionals who start building their prompt libraries now will look back on this as the moment they positioned themselves at the forefront of the most important shift in thought leadership since the rise of social media.
Join The AI Thought Leader School To Become A Prompt Leader
In the newly-launched AI Thought Leader School, there are two tracks with weekly classes that will help you become a successful prompt leader:
6-Figure Prompt Newsletter (Mondays at 11:00am-12:30pm EST)
AI Blockbuster (Wednesdays at 11:00am-12:30pm EST)
In 6-Figure Prompt Newsletter, I teach you everything you need to know about:
Setting up a newsletter on Substack
Getting new subscribers via posting on social media
Getting paid subscribers via weekly prompt posts
Going to the next level with prompt-centered, live classes
Monetizing prompts through AI apps without knowing anything about programming
In AI Blockbuster, I teach you everything you need to know about creating blockbuster content. The goal of the course is the 5x the quantity and quality of your content with AI. This higher quality will directly increase the odds of success of your newsletter.
In addition to these tracks, which each include 40 90-minute live sessions centered around one transformative prompt, you also get:
Full access to all of my previous courses (Mental Model Club, Learning Ritual, and Seminal—my year-long flagship thought leader course). This is a $6,000 value.
A one-on-one coaching session with me ($1,000 value)
We’re just getting started this week, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
So, if you’re at all interested in the idea of becoming a prompt leader, I encourage you to give the new school a try. You won’t regret it.
I’m personally going all out to make sure that each and every student who shows up consistently and takes action gets the results they’re looking for.
If you have any questions about the school, don’t hesitate to message me:
Excited
Michael - thank you for this incredible roadmap. I have several questions:
is it possible to create a specific group of prompts to augment my digital course? Can it be packaged and sold? What are GPTs and how do you create them?