What Separates High Performers Who Use AI From Everyone Else

I was watching Kansas play St. John's in March Madness this weekend. Two of the best teams in the country. High intensity, great defense, elite-level basketball.

Then one of the players catches a pass with one hand and turns it over.

Stan Van Gundy, doing the broadcast, said something that stood out to me. He said the player got lazy. Catching the ball with two hands is simple but important.

And immediately I saw the connection to how entrepreneurs use AI.

These are the best teams in college basketball. They are the highest performers. And for them, performance often comes down to something that is simple but important, like catching the ball with two hands instead of one. It is an easy fundamental to overlook.

The same thing is happening with AI right now.

After coaching hundreds of founders on ChatGPT, Claude, and other platforms, including high performers using ChatGPT at a world-class level, I can tell you that the things separating the best from everyone else are not advanced prompt engineering tricks or secret tools nobody knows about. They are fundamentals. Simple but important.

Here are five of them.

Are You Personalizing Your AI or Using It Like Everyone Else?

Personalization is the single most impactful thing you can do with AI. Set up your custom instructions so the output is tailored to you, your business, your voice, and the way you think. This is the foundation everything else builds on.

The single most impactful thing you can do with AI is personalize it. Setting up your custom instructions in Claude, ChatGPT, or any platform you use so that the output is tailored to you, your business, your voice, and the way you think.

This is simple but important because personalization is the difference between generic AI output and AI that actually sounds like you and works for your specific situation. Most entrepreneurs skip this entirely. They open ChatGPT, type a prompt, and wonder why the output sounds like it was written by a robot.

When you take the time to set up your custom instructions, your context, your brand voice, your business details, everything changes. The AI stops guessing and starts creating from a foundation that is already you.

This is catching the ball with two hands. It is not exciting. It does not feel like an advanced move. But it is the foundation that everything else builds on.

Do You Know What You Don't Know?

Ask AI directly what is hidden and non-obvious. Ask it what you are missing. Ask it to show you what you cannot see on your own. Most people treat AI like a search engine. High performers use it to surface the invisible.

One of the things I say all the time in coaching is this: I don't know what I don't know.

When you are working with AI, there are new tools, new platforms, new capabilities, and new ways of doing things that you have never done before. Even with your best intentions and genuine excitement about what is possible, you do not always know exactly what to do next.

So something that is simple and powerful is to ask the AI directly. Ask it what is hidden and non-obvious. Ask it what you are missing. Ask it to show you what you cannot see on your own.

This is what I call creating with the invisible. You are using AI to surface the things that are right in front of you but outside your current awareness. Most people never do this because they treat AI like a search engine. They ask it questions they already know the shape of. High performers ask AI to show them what they are not seeing.

This is a fundamental that takes five seconds and changes the quality of everything you create.

How Much Time Are You Actually Spending Inside AI?

Time is the most honest assessment of your growth with AI. The founders getting extraordinary results spend meaningful, focused time inside AI every single day. Not scrolling. Creating, thinking, and building inside it.

Time is a very honest assessment of your growth. As a high performer in AI, how much time are you and your team actually spending creating inside of AI every day?

This is where a lot of entrepreneurs lie to themselves. They say they are really good with AI. They believe they are ahead of the curve. But when you look at the receipts of their actual time, it tells a different story. Maybe they use it for 15 minutes a day. Maybe they check in a few times a week.

The founders I work with who are getting extraordinary results are spending meaningful, focused time inside AI every single day. Not scrolling through outputs. Creating inside it. Thinking inside it. Building inside it.

You cannot get elite-level results from casual-level effort. And time is the one metric that does not lie. If you want to know where you really stand with AI, look at how many hours you are investing in it this week. Not what you think you are doing. What you are actually doing.

Simple but important.

Are You Creating From Outcomes or Just Prompting?

High performers start with the outcome. They tell AI exactly what they want to create, who it is for, and what it should accomplish. That is the difference between catching the ball with one hand and catching it with two.

Instead of prompting something generic like everybody else, your ability to lead with the outcome of what you want to create with AI is another fundamental that is simple but important.

Most people open AI and say something like "write me a blog post about leadership" or "help me with my marketing." That is the equivalent of catching the ball with one hand. It works sometimes. But it is lazy.

High performers start with the outcome. They say "I need a 1,500-word blog post that positions me as a thought leader on AI enablement, speaks directly to 7-figure founders, and drives readers toward my coaching program." That is catching the ball with two hands.

When you lead with the outcome, you are focusing the entire interaction on an end result. The AI has a target. You have a target. And the quality of what you create together goes up dramatically because you gave it something specific to work toward instead of leaving it to guess.

This takes no extra tools. No extra training. Just the discipline to think about what you actually want before you start typing. It is the same preparation mindset that changes everything.

Are You Connecting What You Build to Revenue?

The thing that really moves the needle is connecting what you create with AI to revenue. Most entrepreneurs get caught in the building trap. High performers connect every AI activity back to the question: how does this make me money?

Here is the fifth fundamental, and it might be the most important one.

Your ability to connect what you are creating with AI to revenue.

It is very easy to work on a lot of things that create efficiencies in your business. And those efficiencies are real. Saving time is good. Automating tasks is good. Building systems is good.

But the thing that really moves the needle is your ability to connect all of it to revenue. How does this AI workflow lead to more sales? How does this content system drive more conversations? How does this automation free up time that you reinvest into revenue-generating activity?

Most entrepreneurs get caught in the building trap. They use AI to build and optimize and systematize, and they feel productive. But when you look at the revenue, it has not moved. Because they disconnected the building from the selling.

High performers connect every AI activity back to the question: how does this make me money? That connection is simple but important. And it is the one most people skip.

Bonus: Are You Implementing at the Speed of Instruction?

See the signal, speak it, feed it into AI, and ship same-day value. That is the cycle. Most people see a signal and move on. High performers take action with AI on a relentless level, and that speed compounds into a body of work nobody else can match.

Here is the one that ties everything together.

I implement at the speed of instruction. That is one of the things I value most about myself, and it is the ultimate simple but important behavior for AI.

Here is a real example. I was watching the Kansas and St. John's game. I saw the turnover. I heard Stan Van Gundy say "simple but important." I recognized the signal immediately. I saw how it connected to AI, to coaching, to everything I teach. So I spoke the entire article out loud right then, fed it into AI, and turned it into a finished piece of content the same day.

Signal recognition, AI creation, and same-day value delivery. That is the cycle.

Most people would have watched that moment, thought "that's interesting," and moved on. Maybe they would have written it down in a notes app and never looked at it again. High performers take action with AI on a relentless level. They see the signal, they capture it, they create from it, and they ship it. That speed is what compounds over time into a body of work that nobody else can match.

And the beautiful thing is that this is not complicated. It is simple but important. You see something. You speak it. You feed it into AI. You create value from it. You ship it the same day. That loop is available to every entrepreneur right now. The question is whether you are running it.

The Fundamentals Win Championships

The best teams do not win because they have plays nobody else has seen. They win because they execute the fundamentals with consistency, discipline, and intention. Every single possession. AI works the same way.

These fundamentals are not complex. They are not advanced. They are not reserved for people with technical backgrounds or massive AI budgets.

They are the AI equivalent of catching the ball with two hands.

Personalize your AI. Ask what you do not know. Track your actual time. Create from outcomes. Connect everything to revenue. And implement at the speed of instruction.

The best teams in college basketball do not win national championships because they have plays nobody else has seen. They win because they execute the fundamentals with consistency, discipline, and intention. Every single possession. That is the commitment to excellence that makes the difference.

The same is true for AI. The founders who are getting the best results are not using different tools than you. They are doing the simple things that are important, and they are doing them every day.

That is what separates high performers who use AI from everyone else. And the good news is that every one of these fundamentals is something you can start doing today.

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