In this episode of Prompt and Circumstance, Tom Adams, Mike Richardson, Mark Redgrave, and Ryan Niemann dig into the art and science of prompting. They share stories of building real tools without coding, debate the importance of prompt discipline, and outline frameworks that every CEO should know as AI becomes core to business strategy.
The crew covers:
- Tom’s no-code apps built in Warp for personal healthcare tracking and in Claude Code for field reps.
- Mark’s perspective on compute costs and why clarity in prompting equals clarity in leadership.
- Ryan’s frameworks—from “Act as a / I will / You will” to the six-component model of prompts.
- Mike’s experiments with Plaud AI recorders and his new Surface AI laptop.
They close with doable actions for CEOs: treat prompting as a core business skill, solve small recurring problems with AI, and form internal councils to experiment with AI capabilities.
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Show Links
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TOOLS & PLATFORMS
- PromptWorks Pro (six-component prompt builder) – https://promptworks.pro
- ChatGPT (OpenAI) – https://chatgpt.com/
- Claude Code (Anthropic) – https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/overview
- Microsoft Copilot – https://copilot.microsoft.com/
- Perplexity AI – https://www.perplexity.ai/
- Warp (AI terminal) – https://warp.dev
- Plaud AI (recorder) – https://www.plaud.ai/
- Whisper (speech-to-text by OpenAI) – https://openai.com/research/whisper
CONCEPTS & FRAMEWORKS
- Prompt Engineering – https://www.promptingguide.ai/
- “Act as a / I will / You will” structure
- Iterative prompt refinement (“Improve my prompt” technique)
- Agentic AI and conversational vs. product prompting – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent
- Six-Component Prompt Framework: Role, Task, Context, Reasoning, Format, Success
- “Think harder about this” (leveraging GPT-5 reasoning toggle)
- "The Frontier Firm" How Intelligence on Tap will rewire business (from Microsoft’s Worklab research and Work Trend Index Annual Report)
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Key Quotes
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Mike Richardson
- “If you are able to keep up with me, you’ll be kind of keeping up with them … I’ll do my best to hang on to their coattails.”
- “I got myself one of these Plaud AI recording devices … I’ve just started experimenting with keeping it on all day.”
- “I’ve had more glitches to work through with a brand-new laptop than ever before.”
- “Doing conversational prompts in ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude … that’s good training. We’ll reap the benefits of that when we move to agentic stuff.”
- “Whether you’re using Plaud AI or Copilot … I urge you to get in the habit of using AI companions for every meeting you have.”
Mark Redgrave
- “Before 2010, AI compute doubled every 21 months. Now it’s every 5.3 months … one estimate has the cost surpassing the entire US GDP by 2037.”
- “If you can’t describe what you want, maybe you don’t have the clarity you need … prompting becomes a proxy for whether you understand what you want.”
- “You should be prepared to sit and take time to write a great prompt … I force myself to slow down, even when I want to just hit enter.”
- “Prompting is gonna be table stakes … every team member is going to need to know how to prompt effectively.”
Ryan Niemann
- “Act as a … I will … You will.”
- “If you provide a prompt and then say, would you improve my prompt before proceeding? … it will.”
- “You can also say, ask me three questions before you proceed … it really improves the results you get back.”
- “Role, task, context, reasoning, format, and success — those six components can help improve your prompts.”
- “Try different LLMs … put the same prompt in ChatGPT, then Claude, then Perplexity, and see the different styles you get back.”
- “Think harder about this … you can trigger that in GPT-5 to get deeper reasoning.”
Tom Adams
- “Basically what I built without knowing how to code … was an app that allowed her to voice her challenges … it transcribes it, sends it to AI … and then we’ve been actually taking that to our medical appointments.”
- “We got this problem, like my field reps don’t say something when they see something. And I said, let’s build an app called When You See Something, Say Something.”
- “I don’t know how to code … and yet I’m able to come up with this stuff in hours, maybe even minutes.”
- “Often how we have to converse with a person that we’re asking to do a specific thing … that’s what’s so profound about this — teaching a machine in the way we’d teach a human.”
- “I literally spend all my day just talking … prompts all the time.”
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Doable Actions
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- For CEOs (Mark): Treat prompting as a core business skill. Start building capability across your teams.
- For Practitioners (Tom): Don’t chase big AI projects—solve a small recurring pain point with prompts or agents.
- For Leaders (Ryan): Create an AI council or small working group to explore use cases and grow internal expertise.
- For Individuals (Mike): Start using AI meeting companions daily to capture action items, tone, and productivity insights.
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Meet the Crew
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Mike Richardson - Agility, Peer Power & Collective Intelligence
https://mikerichardson.live/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/agilityexpertmikerichardson/
Ryan Neimann - Software CEO & Board Operator
https://bob3.pro/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanniemann/
Mark Redgrave - Agility, People and Performance
https://www.shift-transform.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mredgrave/
Tom Adams - Executive Coach, Advisor & Trail Blazer
https://tomadams.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomadamscoach/
