What’s the difference between an AI Prompt and a Workflow?
in Knowledgebase on April 26, 2025by Harold MansfieldIf you’ve ever downloaded a list of prompts that promised to streamline your productivity and “10x Your Business” you know the feeling: You try a few and the results are pretty terrible. The posts don’t sound like you. The emails miss the point. The content feels generic or off-base for your actual audience.
It’s very frustrating.
AI tools can be a very powerful business assistant, however prompt lists are one-size-fits-all garbage. They don’t adapt to your messaging, your style, or your business’s growth strategy. Simply put, a random list of prompts won’t magically understand your business, your customers, or your goals. The output from your prompts feels off because you’re asking for disconnected one-off results, not building a system that thinks the way your business needs it to.
That’s where workflows come in.
What's the Difference Between an AI Prompt and a Workflow?
An AI prompt is a specific instruction or request you give to an AI tool to generate a generic, single, focused output. It’s like asking an Alexa one clear question or giving one task at a time. A prompt works best for quick, one-off results where you need immediate help on a specific piece of content or idea, but it doesn’t build a larger, connected strategy on its own.
An AI workflow takes advantage of today’s large token inputs ( the amount of instruction you can give an AI tool) to create a structured set of tasks, and actions that guides the tool to get a more complete outcome. Instead of giving the AI one instruction and getting one answer (a prompt), a workflow strings together multiple steps, often where each step depends on the previous one, to get a complete solution.
A prompt asks the AI to make a sandwich…any sandwich. A workflow gives it the recipe to create a specific sandwich and tells it how to build it.
Example of an AI Prompt vs a Workflow.
Let’s say you’re launching a new online course and want to create a marketing email announcing the course.
Using a Prompt Only: “Write a sales email for my online course.”
An email pops out. Maybe it’s decent for someone, but it misses the mark for you.
A workflow is more involved. It requires you to give the AI tool more context and information about the course, your purpose, goals and information about your business:
- About the Course
What is the name and topic of your course?
What is the main benefit or transformation the course provides?
What are 2–3 key features or highlights of the course? (e.g., “lifetime access”, “weekly live calls”, “certification included”) - About the Target Audience
Who is your ideal student for this course? (e.g., entrepreneurs, new moms, tech beginners, artists)
What are their main pain points or challenges that this course solves?
What level of experience does your target audience have in the course topic? (beginner, intermediate, advanced) - About the Email
Who will the email be sent to? (e.g., your newsletter list, cold prospects, social media followers)
What is the one primary goal of the email? (e.g., “Get them to sign up for the course”, “Book a free consultation call”, “Join the waitlist”) - Tone, Style, and Format
What tone would you like the email to have? (e.g., friendly, urgent, inspirational, professional)
Would you prefer the email be short and punchy, or a bit longer with storytelling?
Any specific phrases, offers, bonuses, or deadlines you want mentioned? (e.g., “early bird discount”, “limited seats”, “bonus coaching call”)
Once the AI has all the information needed, it can suggest an email that is suited to your needs. With the additional context, the workflow that you would paste into the prompt window would look something like this:
You are an expert email copywriter specializing in high-converting sales emails for online courses. Write a sales email based on the following information:
Course Details
• Course Name: Launch Your Side Hustle
• Topic: How to start a profitable side business in 90 days.
• Main Transformation: Helps busy professionals build an extra income stream without quitting their 9–5.
• Key Features: Step-by-step video modules, weekly live Q&A coaching sessions, downloadable templates.
Target Audience
• Mid-career professionals (ages 28–45) feeling stuck or limited in their jobs.
• Beginners in business with little to no entrepreneurial experience.
• Pain Points: Lack of time, fear of failure, overwhelm from too much conflicting advice.
Email Strategy
• Audience: Existing email subscribers who downloaded a free Side Hustle Starter Kit.
• Primary Goal: Get them to enroll in the course before the early bird discount expires.
Tone and Style:
• Encouraging, motivational, slightly urgent.
• Medium-length email, includes a short relatable story.
• Friendly, clear, and action-driven language.
Offers & Special Phrases to Include:
• “Enroll by Friday to get $100 off!”
• “Bonus: Free 30-minute coaching call for the first 20 sign-ups!”
Format Instructions:
• Start with an attention-grabbing subject line.
• Open with empathy about feeling stuck in a 9–5 job.
• Include this short relatable success story. (provide the story)
• Introduce the course naturally in the story transition.
• Highlight features and direct benefits tied to the audience’s pain points.
• Emphasize the early bird offer and bonus coaching call.
• End with a clear, bold call-to-action (CTA) link or button to enroll now.
• Use short paragraphs, bullet points for easy scanning, and a mobile-friendly format.
• Please deliver the final output in a format ready to paste directly into an email platform.
Workflows work best when the AI tool knows more about you, your business, your industry, products and services, who your target market and ideal customer avatar are. For even better results it has examples of your writing to guide it’s output so that it better matches your brand’s voice.
The Benefits of Using Workflows.
- Consistency: Your brand voice and messaging stay tight across everything.
- Save time: Batch-create multiple pieces of content at once without starting over.
- Better Quality: Each step builds on real insights from earlier steps, not random guesses.
- Scalability: Set up repeatable systems you (or your team) can reuse easily.
- Better Strategy: You’re creating campaigns, not just pieces of content.
Gosh! This sounds like a lot of work.
It is, at first. However this is information that you should already know about your businesses. All you’re doing is sharing it with the AI so that it knows how to create outputs that are specific to your needs.
Creating scalable Workflow tools.
You could go through this exercise every time you need to create something for your business, but the real time saving magic is in creating custom tools and workspaces that yare already trained with your data and branding so that it already knows you and how to produce what you need. Custom tools are also scalable, can be shared with teams (on team plans) and only need to be updated once with changes and additional information.
There are a few ways to accomplish this depending on the platform, and each requires at least the pro version of the tools (average $20 mo. for singles, $25 per seat for teams)
• ChatGPT Pro lets you create GPT’s (Recommended) – Custom versions of ChatGPT for a specific purpose. IMO the best way to create your own AI tools trained with your information and specific instructions.
• Perplexity has Spaces -Spaces allow you to organize your Threads and files by topic or project, making it easier to collaborate and manage research. Spaces let you create a tailored knowledge hub with both web and personal file searches.
• ClaudeAI has Projects – self-contained workspaces designed for users to upload documents, provide context, and have focused chats with Claude.
• NotebookLM – An awesome tool that lets you build “notebooks” of specific information and sources and then query and manipulate the combined information to create summaries, tasks, AI generated podcasts and much more.
• Gemini Gems – allow users to create and customize AI models for specific tasks or topics.
Ready to hit the ground running?
25 Essential Workflows for Startups and Entreprenuers
Harold Mansfield
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