A tale of Karen and her $1,000 AI prompt collection

OK so there's this copywriter - let's call her Karen (not her real name).

Karen jumped into AI hard back in 2022. Went absolutely wild buying every "master prompting" course she could find. Built up this massive collection of supposedly "proven" prompts. Followed all these AI gurus who were honestly just surfing the hype wave, selling solutions to problems that didn't exist.

Just AI for AI's sake. No real strategy behind it.

Fast forward two years and $1,000 later? She barely touches AI in her actual work.

But forget the money that's not even the worst part. It's all the hours wasted watching generic prompt engineering videos instead of actually writing better copy or landing better clients.

Classic Karen behavior really.

Just like those social media marketing courses she bought. And the email courses. And the lead gen stuff. All collecting digital dust right next to those dozens of ebooks she panic-purchased at 3am.

(She could've just subscribed to AI Copywriting Pro and learned from the best, but anyway...)

Karen made the same mistake most copywriters do. She let the internet paralyze her ability to actually write better copy and make more money by overcomplicating something pretty straightforward.

What she missed was dead simple. AI is a dialogue, not a command line.

The real breakthrough happens when you bring your copywriter brain to the conversation.

Your instinct for context, patience with iteration, creativity in hitting different angles. Your ability to spot those weird counterintuitive things that actually resonate.

100% specialized prompts can be useful starting points. But your fundamental copywriting skills make the real difference.

- Reading between the lines in customer research

- Knowing how to position against competitors

- Understanding what actually makes copy convert

- Being willing to experiment until it clicks

When I work with Claude or ChatGPT, I'm bringing my entire conversion copy toolkit into the conversation. Market awareness. Positioning. Customer psychology.

The AI amplifies all that - but only if you know what you're doing.

Karen eventually figured this out.

But first she had to unlearn all that generic "prompt engineering" nonsense.

Don't be like early Karen. Skip the prompt collection phase. Focus on bringing your copywriting brain to AI conversations.

P.S. Want to talk through how you're using ChatGPT / Claude? I do paid 1-hour sessions where we can dive into any questions about AI for copywriting, VOC data, prompting methodology, and real examples across email, web copy, social, and blogs. We'll work through your specific challenges and I'll show you what's actually working.

Book time here:

https://meetings.hubspot.com/brooks-lockett/ai-copywriting-call-with-brooks