#20: The Next Step on your AI Journey

Hey friends, and a special welcome to new subscribers!

(feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hi! It’s always fun to chat with new readers.)

More than 2,000 of you filled out our onboarding survey—thanks for that!

I figured it might be interesting to check in on who we are and where we stand on this AI journey.

70% of you are freelancers and employed professionals—people actually getting stuff done.

Nearly half call yourselves "intermediate"—you've tried ChatGPT, maybe messed around with other tools, but you're not quite sure what you're missing.

66% want tactical tips above everything else.

Your responses tell the story:

• "Make it work for me in my business"

• "Automate analytics tasks around finances"

• "Get caught up and then surpass"

You're done casually prompting ChatGPT. You fully understand AI can provide much more value for your career and business.

You want frameworks that bridge AI potential and business outcomes.

But what's the next step?

This is the messy middle.

A lot of AI content out there is either:

• Superficial—generic prompts that don't really provide value

• Automation theater—YouTube bros with complex flowcharts but no real operational experience, engineered for views not business outcomes

• Deeply technical

For the past few years I've experimented heavily with AI. I'm now building several ventures with AI as a foundational layer.

My approach with this newsletter: write the content I wish I had access to. Would have saved me countless hours of trial and error.

I'm still figuring out the best format.

With AI's current state in business building, you need high-level understanding of this technology's impact. You also need a roll-up-your-sleeves mentality to experiment yourself.

That's why I include both a strategic insight and an applicable tactic each week.

Still, I want to help you more. There's a gap between seeing a smart AI tactic and actually implementing it yourself.

One idea I'm considering: creating another format. Maybe something like the Track Club. A place for people ready to roll up their sleeves and come together. Where I can show in-depth builds, experiment with videos and detailed recipes. A format that unlocks two-way discussions.

Or, if you have other ideas for content formats that would move the needle for you, hit reply. I’d love to hear about it!

Tactic: How to build a personal CRM that actually remembers for you

I come prepared for every meeting I have. Because I capture and resurface meetings notes from my personal CRM all the time.

Sounds tedious? It really isn't, since my AI meeting assistant takes care of 95% of the work for me.

Here's how it works:

1. After every meeting, my AI assistant creates a clean summary and drops it into my personal CRM

2. Every morning, I get one email with prep notes for each upcoming call—what we covered, what I should follow up on

I built two workflows that run this entire thing in Notion for me.

I have two Notion databases: Meeting Notes and People.

After meeting my meeting assistant agent messages me and asks me for notes. I answer with voice and hit enter. Done.

Behind the scenes, the assistant now processes my transcription, breaks it into a tidy bullet point list. It creates a new meeting note in Notion, adds the summary and connects it to the right person in my CRM.

Here's the prompt I use for the summary. Short and sweet:

Turn the attached transcription into a bullet point summary. No meta content, only a bullet point list.

Then, each morning it looks at my calendar; Identifies meetings, checks for previous meeting notes and then create a prep note for each meeting. It sends this in one email to me each morning.

Here's the prompt for creating the prep note:

Your are my meeting prep assistant. Your job is to review notes from my previous meeting(s) with this person, and then compile a prep note for my upcoming meeting. Please review the previous meeting notes attached.

Make sure that the prep note considers the dates of the previous meetings, so the most recent information is at the top of the summary.

Create a prep note with:
- things we discussed in previous meetings
- things i should ask about / follow up on

Return a bullet point list in plain text.

In a world full of agents and automations, being intentional about relationship management is even more valuable.

(Like many of my automations, I built these in Relay.)

Until next week,

Martin