The Polite Argument Miner Prompt
For turning a client’s disagreements into sharp, useful thought leadership.
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The best ideas usually arrive wearing boxing gloves.
Most client interviews are too polite. Everybody agrees, nods, says “great point,” and then somehow you end up with a draft that tastes like unseasoned oatmeal. The problem is not that the client has nothing interesting to say. The problem is that nobody asked them what makes them want to throw a stapler across the room.
Use this prompt to uncover what your client rejects, challenges, or quietly rolls their eyes at.
Turn vague opinions into specific contrarian angles.
Find the “enemy idea” behind the client’s real point of view.
Create hooks, claims, stories, and outlines from disagreement.
Keep the tone sharp without making the client sound like they’re yelling at a parking meter.
This prompt helps AI act like an interview strategist: curious, direct, and useful. It does not invent outrage. It finds the honest friction already sitting inside the client’s experience.
Use it before your next client call and stop asking questions that produce beige answers.
How to use this prompt:
Use this prompt when preparing for a client interview, extracting thought leadership angles, or turning a transcript into stronger content. Fill in the placeholders with the client’s industry, audience, topic, and content goal so the AI can generate questions and angles that fit the client’s world.
Add the client’s niche, role, and area of expertise.
Include the topic or content theme you want to explore.
Share any existing client notes, transcript excerpts, posts, or common beliefs in their industry.
Ask the AI to produce interview questions first, then content angles after you collect answers.
Use the strongest disagreement as the spine of the final piece.
The goal is not to make the client controversial for sport. The goal is to find the belief they can defend with experience, examples, and conviction.
The Prompt:
Assume the role of an expert ghostwriting interview strategist with 10 years of experience helping founders, executives, consultants, creators, and subject-matter experts turn their strongest disagreements into original thought leadership.
Your job is to help me prepare for a client interview that uncovers sharp, useful, authentic points of view.
Client context:
- Client name or role: [CLIENT NAME OR ROLE]
- Industry/niche: [INDUSTRY OR NICHE]
- Target audience: [TARGET AUDIENCE]
- Content platform: [PLATFORM]
- Content format: [POST / ARTICLE / NEWSLETTER / THREAD / SCRIPT / SPEECH / OTHER]
- Topic we want to explore: [TOPIC]
- Client’s known beliefs, experience, or expertise: [CLIENT BACKGROUND]
- Common advice, trend, belief, or best practice in the market: [COMMON BELIEF OR ADVICE]
- Desired tone: [DIRECT / WITTY / CALM / AUTHORITATIVE / CONTRARIAN / TEACHING / OTHER]
I want you to help me find the client’s original thinking by focusing on what they disagree with.
First, identify 10 common beliefs, assumptions, trends, clichés, or pieces of advice in [INDUSTRY OR NICHE] related to [TOPIC] that the client might have a strong reaction to.
For each one, create:
1. The common belief
2. Why people believe it
3. A sharper disagreement angle the client might take
4. A specific interview question I can ask to uncover their real opinion
5. A follow-up question that asks for a story, example, mistake, data point, or lived experience
6. A possible content hook based on that disagreement
Then, give me a “Contrarian Interview Flow” I can use on the call:
- 3 warm-up questions
- 5 disagreement questions
- 5 follow-up questions that dig for proof
- 3 questions that help turn their answer into a clear lesson for the audience
- 2 closing questions that uncover what they want readers to remember
After that, create 5 possible thought leadership angles from the strongest disagreements. For each angle, include:
- Working headline
- Core claim
- Reader problem
- What the client disagrees with
- Why the disagreement matters
- Proof needed
- Suggested structure
- Strong closing takeaway
Important rules:
- Do not make the client sound angry unless their voice supports that.
- Do not invent beliefs, stories, credentials, or experience.
- Keep the client’s ideas as the source material.
- Make the disagreement useful, not performative.
- Favor specificity over drama.
- Write in a sharp, conversational, slightly witty style that sounds human, not corporate.
- Use placeholders anywhere more client input is needed.
End by giving me the top 3 interview questions most likely to produce original, publishable material.What to expect after running this prompt:
You’ll get a structured interview plan designed to pull out the client’s real opinions instead of reheated industry advice. The AI will help you identify market clichés, create sharper questions, and turn disagreement into useful content angles without making the client sound artificially provocative.
Stronger interview questions that create better raw material.
Clearer thought leadership angles built around tension and specificity.
Better hooks because each piece has a real “against what?” built in.
More authentic client content because the ideas come from what they genuinely believe.
Faster drafting because the core claim, reader problem, proof, and structure are already mapped.
Run this before the call, and you’ll walk in with a shovel instead of a spoon.
Chat soon.
Roger
P.S.
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