116 | Accelerate the Critical 1st Step of Successful AI Business Implementation with Isar Meitis

0:00Welcome to another live session of Leveraging AI, the podcast that shares practical ethical ways to improve efficiency, grow your business, and advance your career. This is Isar Maitis, your host. And today we are going to talk about the first step in your way to business efficiency. And it's actually very interesting because it's not exactly AI related. And yet we are going to use AI in order to define the first step of AI process and do this. And I'm going to share a screen, I'm going to share a presentation with you. And those of you who are listening to this as a podcast, first of all, come and join us live.

0:40We do this every single Thursday at noon Eastern time, usually with another guest as an expert. But if not, then you're just with me, which I hope is going to be at least okay, even though the experts are being are always amazing. And I appreciate every single one of them. I want to start. What do you think is this first and critical step for AI automation? So if you're again, listening to this podcast while you're driving or mowing the lawn or walking your dog or washing the dishes, whatever it is that you're doing as you're listening to podcasts, just think about it. Just think, what do you think is the first and critical step of doing AI implementation in your business?

1:17If you want to automate something, how do you start? In the next few years, AI technology will change our world dramatically. Whether you are a business executive trying to catapult your business forward or just somebody who refuses to be left behind and want to advance your career, this is the show for you. I'm your host, Isar Maitis, a serial entrepreneur and an AI enthusiast. You'll hear invaluable practical tips from innovative business leaders, AI practitioners, and some of the brightest AI minds in our world today on how you can leverage AI in ethical ways to advance your career and grow your business.

2:03So I start to see results and people say, hey, know your data and your inefficiencies, the readiness of the culture of the company, AI education for leadership, all are great answers. Like they're all correct to understand, like you need to understand all those. But in this particular session, we're going to dive into a very practical aspect of this. So what do I mean by a practical aspect? we are going to understand our business processes in a high level of detail. Now, that's extremely important for every company, whether you want to implement AI or don't want to implement AI. Mapping your processes is extremely important.

2:44Now, you all know that and nobody likes to admit that, but all of us are guilty of this. There are multiple process in our business, whether you're the CEO or in leadership position, that you know that Jim knows how to do, or Jill, or Mike, or Susan. And if you're going to go to Susan, she will help you through the process, but she's the only one that knows exactly how to do this. And that's not a healthy thing for an organization. Being able to know every single process exactly how it's done is very important for every business for multiple reasons. Reason number one is redundancy. What happens if, God forbid, something happens to Susan, or she's on vacation or she decides to jump ship and move to a different company or anything else.

3:26You're screwed. Nobody actually knows how to do that thing. And in some cases, these tasks and these things are on the critical path of the company. If you onboard new members of your team, you now have to sacrifice the time of the people who know how to do the process in order to train the new people. However, if you have the process very well mapped, you don't have to do that. They can just follow a checklist and a video and an explanation on how to do the thing, and they can do it with significantly less training, which puts less burden and overhead on the existing employees, which allows you to scale your business.

4:02If you want to sell your business, people will want to know your processes. And if you have them well mapped, that's going to give them the warm and fuzzy that you know what you're doing in your business. So there are many benefits beyond AI. But in addition, if you want to automate processes with AI, the very first step that you have to know is exactly how the process works. Because without that, when you try to automate it, it's going to break because you're going to be missing critical pieces of the process. Now, all businesses want to have mapped processes. The reason we don't do this, because it's a pain in the butt, or at least it was until we now have AI tools that can help us do extremely amazing mapping of business processes that are very detailed, that turn into checklists and flow charts and videos and all of that without investing almost any effort.

4:57And then you can take that and use that as your first evaluation on what kind of AI and automation you can build in order to drive efficiencies across every process in your business, whether it's marketing, sales, HR, etc. Now, this is what we're going to learn today. We're going to learn how to use AI to do that process very quickly and very effectively for all the benefits that we talked about before. that being said, at the end of this presentation or this podcast, if you're listening to us, I'm going to completely flip it on its head. So wait for the end, because there's a big surprise about this whole thing and how to do this with AI and how to approach this.

5:36But let's get started with the actual process. Now, today you're actually getting two in one. And what do I mean by two in one? So today what we're going to do is you're getting two in one. And what do I mean by two in In addition to learning how to map business processes, I had to pick a business process in order to map, in order to show it to you. So our example today is going to be how to create market research and do like a weekly recap of what's happening in your market with AI. So you're going to gain that as well, but that's just an example. And you can do anything in your business that is related to mapping business processes.

6:22So to do market research, you need some kind of AI that has internet access. You need to make it understand the relevance to your industry and so on. You need to be able to summarize that in a way that's helpful to you. And you need to define the format on how you want that summary to happen. This could be a document, a webpage, a table in Excel, a Slack channel, like whatever it is that you want. You need to define what the outcome is going to be. So I have this process done for myself. If you've been listening to the Leveraging AI podcast, you know that on a regular basis, I share news like every week.

6:59To do this, I have to have a process in place to go through the news and so on. I do this also for my clients. I help them figure out how to learn what's happening in their industry, their competitors, their markets, M &As, news, like all that stuff. Get a weekly digest on your industry on a regular basis. So that's the process I picked as our example. But how do you do that? So the first thing you need to do is actually very simple. And that's the cool thing. And that's actually the only work you need to do other than the initial setup, which we're going to learn today. So the only work you need to do is actually to run through a playback.

7:37of what you were doing. So go to Susan or Jill or Mike or whoever it is that knows how to run the process. Ask them to open their computer and do the thing that they always do. But explain what they're doing in as much detail as possible as if a complete idiot is standing next to them and trying to learn the process. You go to this page, you open that thing, you type this, you copy this from this source. I look at my emails and I check that thing and then I copy that and put it in the AI and I write this prompt, like whatever the process is, just have them explain it in their own words, in a non-formal way, as if they're talking to a person sitting next to them.

8:16There's people who have issues with that and they're not know how to do this thing, then actually have a person sitting next to them and asking them how to do the process. And then it becomes a lot more natural. They're actually explaining the process. The other person can ask questions and then you go through the process. So you record the thing. If I'm going to share with you how that looks like, this is me doing this process. So if you look at my screen right now, I have literally went through the entire process that I explained to you. And you can see it's a very long, in this case, you can see a transcription.

8:45You've got to get to that. But here's a video of me actually showing the process and how it works step by step with all the different tools that I'm using. So the first step is actually really simple. Now you can record the screen with any tool you want. You can use Loom, which is a great tool that allows you to record things on your screen with you on top of them. and it also transcribes it and helps you use it. But you can use tools you already have. Like all of us are using Zoom or Loom or stuff like that. And so you can use any of these tools to record your screen. So that's step number one, pretty straightforward.

9:19Now, I'll add one more thing. Some of you have businesses that are not completely digital, meaning you have inventory or you go to clients' locations or you do installations of systems or renovate homes or whatever it is that you're doing. So in those particular cases, some of the process is not done in front of a computer. It's done in the real world. Same thing. Open your phone, turn it on, turn the camera on, and just record what you're doing as you're doing it. It's the same exact thing. So then you have the very first step. You have a recording in details of somebody going through the process of doing whatever business process you're trying to do.

10:03So what's the next step? The next step is to transcribe the video. There are endless number of tools who do this today. So if you're using any kind of a meeting summarizer, I use Fathom, but you can use any other ones, Seabill, Otter, there's many of them. Today, even some of the tools themselves, Zoom has its own transcription tool. Teams has its own transcription tool. I really like using Descript, and Joyce is going to share the link with you, the chat, both the LinkedIn chat and on the Zoom chat. But I like to use Descript because Descript has a lot of other benefits, which we're going to talk about some of them at the following stages of this, but just transcribe the whole thing.

10:50So now I have me mumbling about how to actually do the thing that we just talked about, which is to do the news. But again, for your case, in your case, it could be any other process in your business. So what do you do with that transcription? What you do with that transcription is you put it into an AI. You can use any AI large language model you want. I personally recommend Claude for that. And what you do there, and now I got to find it because obviously that closed when I restarted my computer. So give me two seconds. what you do there is you ask it to help you create a checklist in the process and we're going to dive deep into this particular step right now so let's stop the presentation and i will bring claude in here so here's what i've done and i'm going to walk with you through the exact process that i've been doing with the exact prompt as i was doing it and so the i attached three things before I even started.

11:54So as you probably know, you can give large language models background information about what you're doing as part of the prompt. And in this particular case, I attached three things. I attached the actual transcription that I just showed you that I created with Descript. And I attached two examples of checklists that I have done previously for similar processes. If you don't have one, you can take somebody from somewhere else, like Just go browse the internet for checklists for business processes and find a format that works for you and a style that works for you and use that as a reference. But now let's look at the exact prompt that I was using in order to create my checklist.

12:32And again, if you have any questions or any comments about that, if you are with us live either on Zoom or on LinkedIn, please feel free to just add it in there. I'm monitoring both of these chats and I'll gladly stop and explain any part of this process. So you are a business expert with 20 years of experience. You specialize in mapping and documenting business processes, turning them into detailed and easy to follow checklists. So that's important to do in any prompt that you have. Give the AI the understanding of which hat it needs to wear because it will give you better results and more focused results than just starting with whatever it is you needed to do.

13:11That's called the system prompt. That's like setting up the stage. And then I started. I'm about to provide you three files. Number one, a transcription of one of our employees explaining the process that he is or her in following in order to achieve a specific business goal. Now, you can see this is not talking about my specific process. And the reason for that is then I can use this prompt again and again as part of my prompt library, and I'm only adding the specific topic at the end of the prompt, which you'll see shortly. But in this particular instance, I'm just saying it's a business process.

13:46This is your source of information for the checklist. Number two, the two other documents are examples of previous checklists we've created. Use those only as a reference to the format and the style of the checklist. You will notice that we like two levels in our checklist. The main steps and the specific actions in each step. So that's the way I like to create my business processes. You can define it however way you want, with however levels you want, with whatever level of detail you want, but it's really important to give it examples of what good looks like. And again, if you don't have it, steal it from somebody else.

14:23Just go online, find an example you like, and you can mimic that and use it as an example. So now that we've identified that, I'm identifying the target audience for this checklist is business people in junior leadership roles. Like, okay, so now it knows who this refers to. That's also very important when you're creating content, when in this particular case it is content, for somebody else. And then I give it the actual specific instructions of what it needs to do. Please follow the following process. Number one, take your time and read your transcription. Number two, identify the main steps of the process.

14:58Number three, identify the specific actions in each step. So I'm basically telling it what it needs to do in order to identify the checklist. But then there's a twist. And that twist is actually very important when you're working with AI because AI is amazing at brainstorming. And one of the things that people miss the most is being able to go back and forth with the AI on whatever ideas or things they're trying to execute. So what I'm asking for it now is before you share the checklist with me, please ask me any questions that you have that may assist you in creating a better checklist that will capture every aspect of this process and will allow users off the checklist to follow the process without external help.

15:41Going back to what I said in the beginning, I'm not using this just for AI purposes. I'm also using this for then onboarding new members of my team that will need to follow this process. In this case, our process is going to be how to use AI to create weekly digest of important industry news. That's the first time I'm making it specific. Why? Because I'm using the whole top part as a prompt library item that I can bring in and use again and again for every business process. And really, that's the only sentence that I have to change. And then the final thing is I do regularly in all my posts. It's just best practices.

16:17Take your time. Work step by step. Review the details and ask me questions that would assist your work. That's it. I hit enter, and then it did its thing, and it said that it's going to follow the thing, but then it provided me a list of questions. And these questions are actually amazing in the importance of the outcome, and I'm going to give you some of them. So the first one, the example that I gave it is very specific to a specific company with specific set of tools. So it asked the following, the AI asked me the following, the transcription mentioned using perplexity as the AI tool. Should the checklist be specific to perplexity or should it be more general to accommodate for other AI tools as well?

17:02That's a great question. The other thing, the process described, a tailor, the process described seems to be tailored for a specific company. In this particular case, Amdocs, which they are a large international company. Should the checklist be company specific or generalized for every business? Again, very good question when you're creating a checklist. And it goes on and on with similar questions like the format of it and multiple iterations for feedback that I put into the process and different things like that. And it's asking me on every one of these things for clarifications. Now, it also adds stuff that wasn't even in there, which is amazing.

17:42As an example, should the checklist include steps for measuring the effectiveness of what we're doing, e.g. gathering feedback from recipients, tracking engagement, and so on? Are there any specific AI ethical considerations? So it's asking me additional questions that were not directly tied to the process that I gave it to digest, which is, again, great because it allows you to brainstorm back and forth. So then I went ahead and answered all these questions, just one by one, literally on the numberings that they said. So I said, here are my answers to your question. Number one, it can be any AI tool that has internet access that can search and find relevant news articles on its own.

18:24Currently, the best tool we tested is perplexity. Number two, please generalized the process to any company. So instead of using Amdocs, use in quotations, your company name, and then your competitors' names, your clients' names, and so on, replacing the specifics that I had in the example that I gave it, and so on and so forth. So what I'm doing here is I'm just going back and forth and making sure that my assistant, my AI assistant, that is an expert on creating checklists, has all the information they need and asking me follow-up questions and so on. What happens then? Then I ask it to create the checklist.

19:04Now, I do this specifically in Claude. The reason I do this in Claude is because Claude, the paid version of Sonnet 3.5, which is the default tool right now, has a function called Artifacts. And what Artifacts do is it opens a side window on the right side that's actually showing you the output of what it's doing, whether it's writing code, whether it's creating designs, whatever it's doing, you're going to get the outcome on the right. So if you can see my screen right now, you don't see that. But if I click on this box, then, and I got to make it smaller so we can actually see the full screen, it created a checklist.

19:45And it's an actual checklist, like I can check the boxes and so on. And it's built the process for AI-powered weekly industry digest checklist. And it did it in two levels, just like the examples I gave it. And it made it short and to the point and easy to follow, just like I asked for it. So if you look at the high-level stuff, it's set up your AI search assistant, define your research parameters, create the initial AI prompt, generate the initial article list, refine the article list, create the news summary table, generate and refine news summary table, format and polish digest, distribute the news, gather feedback and iterate that it added that.

20:25Remember, I didn't have that in my initial thing. And then update the AI prompts based on the feedback. And each and every one of these steps has between two and six things as a checklist that I need to do. That by itself is absolutely magical. Why is it magical? Because all you need to do to have a checklist of the process is have the person who knows how to do the process, actually do the process, record themselves how they're doing it, explaining what they're doing, and run my prompt as is. So your effort is almost zero because the person is already doing the thing that they need to do. And the prompt you already have because I just gave it to you.

21:06And all you have to do is click go and you have a checklist of every process in your business in a few seconds. Now you can obviously give it feedback and make more changes and so on, but that's an amazing first step. So let's go back to our presentation. We have a checklist and you can ask it to, by the way, do it in any format you want and in any style you want, and then you can use it for your employee handbook. You can use it for onboarding. You can use it for training. You can build presentations out of it for new employees and so on. You can do many things with it, create guides that you share with your industry, et cetera.

21:44But then there's another cool step, which is using, again, Claude Sonnet 3.5 to create flowcharts out of this. So I'm a very visual learner, and there's a lot of other people like me. And looking at a flowchart helps me a lot in understanding, especially more complex processes, what happens before, what things are connected to, what things lead to other things. It's just helpful for me and it's helpful for a lot of other people. So having a flow chart of the process is awesome, especially when it comes in combination with the checklist. Now, many businesses, even those who have a checklist or a user guide on how to do something or a manual, like an employee manual on how to do something, usually do not create these flow charts because they used to be a pain in the ass to create.

22:33It just takes hours or a lot of time to go and draw the things and connect them and make them in the same size and the same color and the same font and connect them together and set it up in a way that makes sense and so on. All of that doesn't have to happen anymore. All of this AI knows how to do on its own. Now, there's a question. Hold on. I'm going to go to that before we continue. Would you create a GPT, including the prompt, document uploads, etc. to reuse the documentation in different processes. It depends. So those of you who don't know what GPTs are, these little automations that you can build in ChatGPT, you can do the same thing, by the way, in Claude.

23:10So the example I'm giving right now is in Claude. Claude has the same concept, it's called projects. And you can definitely build a project that has this if your examples are the same examples. So if your checklists are similar for your finance team and your HR team and your marketing team, then yes, you can use that. Or you can build the automation in a way that will, the first thing it does is it asks the users, please upload your existing checklist that you can have that. So this is, yes, you can automate this further by building a project in Claude or a GPT in ChatGPT. So people don't have to know the prompt and all the other stuff.

23:48All they have to do is bring the transcription over and it will do it for them. And that's what I actually do in my business. So it's a great question. The next question is, it would have been great if there was an AI tool that can do the mapping on its own. It does, right? That's exactly what I'm going to show you right now, because the other half of that question is, I would like it to do something like a Visio or Lucidcharts, which are tools that a lot of people are using to create these charts. You will see now, that's the next step. So I'm very happy, Curtis, that you asked this question, because I'm going to show you how to do the Vizio slash LucidChart step with zero effort.

24:24And Curtis also asked, are artifacts separate stored in a library? So yes, artifacts are just another chat, but they're saved on the side. And I'll show you in a minute how you can leverage them outside of Claude. So awesome questions, but now let's go back to our next step. So quick recap on what we've done so far. We recorded a screen capture and somebody who knows how to do the process as they're doing the process, we transcribed the video, we use the transcription together with examples to create a checklist. And now we have a checklist and we want to turn it into a detailed flowchart. So how do we do that?

25:01I do that in Claude as well. So let's go to Claude. So here's what I've done in this particular process. The first thing, again, I attached two different things to it. The first thing that I've attached is the checklist, right? The one we just created. I literally saved it as a Word document. So I copied the outcome from Claude from the previous step, saved it as a Word document, and I've uploaded it into here. Now, I know some of you may ask, why don't you just continue in the same chat? And you can do that. You can just continue in the same chat. The reason I decided to do it in two different steps, because many companies have a checklist or a user guide or an employee manual that tells them how to do this.

25:40So they have the first step. So I just broke this into two separate automations. So the first thing I attached is that. The other thing that I attached is my company's brand guidelines, the colors, the font, the text sizes, all that I have as far as brand guidelines, because I want the flowchart to be aligned with that. And then it's going to use my colors and it's going to look as part of my employee handbook if I've done a good job in my previous steps as well. Okay. Or if I want to share it on LinkedIn or Facebook or TikTok or wherever it is that you share content and you want it to look like aligned with your brand.

26:15So I attached that as well. And now let's go to the prompt that I've used. You are a business process expert. You specialize in creating flow charts who accurately present a business flow. I will provide you with a detailed business flow checklist. Your goal is to create a detailed flow chart that will be an easy to follow graphical representation of the checklist. Your target audience are mid-level managers. Again, same thing as before. I tell it who the target audience is because it's going to use different terminology and so on if I said this is for middle schoolers. This flowchart would be combined with the checklist and shared as part of our business processes for onboarding new managers.