Roles That Work
A useful working perspective, no fictional biography
Pick a useful working perspective without writing a fictional biography.
A role points the work. It is not a credential.
Telling AI to help as an estimator points its attention toward that kind of work. It does not give it a license, a job history or verified expertise.
Start with one short, specific role. Then add your business context and the result you want. Only add more detail to the role if the drafts still miss.
You are a world-famous estimator with 30 years of experience and an award-winning track record...
Help as an estimator for a small landscaping company, focused on a clear scope the homeowner can understand.
The rest of this guide is free with your email.
Already unlocked? Use the link in your welcome email.
A useful role in one sentence
Three parts are enough: the function, the setting and the priority.
| Part | Ask yourself | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Function | What kind of work is this? | Estimator, customer-service editor, operations planner, content editor |
| Setting | Does the business or reader change the work? | For a small HVAC company, for homeowners |
| Priority | What matters most in this job? | Clear scope, calm replies, fewer handoff errors |
Keep facts, limits and the output format in their own fields of the brief. A role stuffed with prices, rules and word counts gets hard to read and hard to reuse.
A full brief with a one-sentence role
Turn dramatic personas into practical jobs
Plenty of popular prompts open with a dramatic character. Keep the useful job inside and drop the story.
| Dramatic persona | Practical job instead |
|---|---|
| A secret-wealth genius | A resource planner. Lists underused equipment or skills from your own inventory, with costs and risks to check. No income promises. |
| A burned-out star ghostwriter | A content editor for local customers. Builds only from experiences you approve. No invented stories or viral claims. |
| A roundtable of famous advisors | Three labeled perspectives: operations, customer and cash. Compares tradeoffs without pretending to be real people. |
| A mind-reading profiler or sales king | A workflow interviewer or an offer-clarity editor. No diagnosis, pressure, fake credentials or false urgency. |
One job, three role choices
The only fair test keeps everything else the same and changes the role.
- Write a brief with context, task, rules and output.
- Run it three times: with no role, with a generic role ("a helpful assistant") and with a short task-specific role.
- Try one ordinary case and one awkward case.
- Judge each draft on the scorecard below.
Scorecard: No role, Generic, Specific for Useful details, Factual errors (fewer is better), Missed assumptions, Editing time. Print the PDF to fill it in.
A longer role is not a prize. Keep the shortest version that reliably helps your real task.
Role cards and a five-minute exercise
In CRIT (Geoff Woods' framework) Role follows Context. Interview finds the gaps and Task names the work.
| Job | Fill-in role |
|---|---|
| Customer messages | Help as a customer-service writer for [business], focused on [calm, clear replies]. |
| Estimating support | Help as an estimator's assistant for [trade], focused on [a clear scope and exclusions]. |
| Process planning | Help as an operations planner for a [size] business, focused on [fewer handoff errors]. |
| Teaching content | Help as an educational content editor for [audience], focused on [one practical point]. |
Write it down: Your five minutes: write one role, run one safe draft, note what you had to edit. There is space for this in the PDF.
Next step: use your role inside a full Prompt Recipe or a Small Business starter, not as a standalone magic sentence.
CRIT (Context, Role, Interview, Task) is Geoff Woods' prompt framework. We teach it in AI Basics and build on it here.
Practical guidance reviewed November 2026. Start simple and test on your own tasks. No guaranteed results.
Keep customer data private. Use placeholders or anonymized facts in an approved AI tool. Check facts, figures, promises and tone before anything leaves the business.
Want help with this for you or your team? Book a free 20-minute call.