216 - AI SERIES: 20 - How to Turn Any Meeting into Action Items Automatically with AI with Olivia Look

0:00It's amazing. I'd normally go check my email five times a day, but with this, it's just pushing you notifications of, hey, like you said you're going to do this, Olivia. Let's go follow up with you to make sure that you're actually going to do this thing this time. Yes, this is much more plain English, natural language processing for your instructions, which I think is one of the really powerful things that the AI brings to automation in particular. Wow. So I could basically say, hey, this is what I want to do. Please go execute it as opposed to having to think through the process. Dude, you could set a trigger where it's like anytime I label something follow up or like remind me to do that in seven days or anytime I label it team or inquiry, that's a sales lead.

0:37Then there's a trigger for that that goes into a different funnel. Holy crap. Wow. Cool. Yes. There's a whole world out there.

0:47All right. Olivia Look, welcome back to Nickonomics. I'm excited to have you because you posted something the other day that caught my eye. You are obviously an automation expert. you have an automation agency. You've helped hundreds of business owners actually figure out technology. And then you posted this use case. So this is you. It's literally this easy. And then there's a screenshot that says email outbox watch agent. There's a trigger, which is a new email that comes in. And then here are the instructions. Basically, whenever you get a new email saying that you're going to do something, go look and click up to see whether or not a to-do has already been generated.

1:22If not, create a new to-do and click up and then follow up with you in one to three days. It's amazing. Like, I don't know how I'd normally do it now. I'm like, oh, I need to go check my email five times a day. But with this, it's just pushing you notifications of, hey, like you said, you're going to do this, Olivia. Let's, let's go follow up with you to make sure that you're actually going to do this thing this time. Yeah. Where is this? Where did you build this? I built this with Zapier agents. So this is built in Zapier. Okay. So Zapier has a new functionality called agents? Yes. Yes. And they are very similar to Zapps and the way you typically automate things.

1:59And when you get into building them, you'll see a lot of the options are the same, but the agents directly integrate AI and basically kind of naturally allow for the AI to be making decisions for you within workflows. So if I want to make an automation like this, if I'm like, oh, that's really cool. I want to have my emails create new to-do items for me. What softwares do I need? Obviously Gmail, because that's where my email is, but what else do I need in order to make this work? Just that plus Zapier. So Zapier Agents is a separate product, but there is a fairly generous free tier that I built this one on and we've been I'm pretty happy with it so far.

2:46Okay. Can we build it? Yeah, definitely. Can you show me? All right, let's do it. I'm going to see your screen. Yeah, perfect. All right. So let me share my screen. And I will just start from literally the Zapier homepage. Perfect. Because that's what I need. Perfect. So this is the Zapier homepage. This is what you will see when you just log right in. The agents are going to be down here in the left-hand sidebar at the bottom. Okay. So it doesn't look like the old Zapier. Not quite, no. Because the old Zapier had like little boxes and arrows and lines. Yes, this is much more plain English, natural language processing for your instructions, which I think is one of the really powerful things that the AI brings to automation in particular.

3:36Wow. So I could basically say, hey, this is what I want to do. Please go execute it as opposed to having to think through the process of, okay, step one. So I need to create this app step to that zap. Yes. Fair. Okay. Yes. And that's exactly what we're going to build. Cool. So I will go ahead and click new agent here just to completely start from scratch. And every time I have briefly described what I want the agent to do so that Zapier uses its own AI to put the directions and everything together, it just doesn't turn out that great. So I skip this step every time so I can start just from a completely blank slate.

4:15But there are tons of templates and you can briefly describe what you want on that page and it will pre-generate instructions for you. Basically what she said is she clicks new agent and then this page pops up that's like, what would you like this agent to do? And so you have the option to enter it basically into a chat box of explaining what you want to do. She's saying, I just skipped that step and I go straight to creating. Yes. Yes, exactly. So we are still looking at just building, this is a completely blank slate. And so what I want this to do is every time I send an email and say I'm going to do something, it checks ClickUp, which is where I keep my internal to-do list.

4:57It checks ClickUp for a related task. And then if it doesn't find one, creates a new one with a reasonable due date assigned to me. So that's the general idea. and I'm basically going to explain that almost exactly the same in these instructions here. Okay. The first thing I'm going to do though is start with the trigger. So I'm going to add a trigger and this is where things start to look similar to Zapier. They're not exactly the same, but you're going to be here, you know, searching for the app that you want to use. So video is cool, but I have what scientists call a face for radio. And so what's even cooler is long form audio via my podcast and my newsletter.

5:42Nickonomicspod.com. Go there for free. Subscribe to my newsletter. It's one email per week. Super tactical. And then go to my audio podcast. I do three to five episodes a week, depending on how curious I am. And it's stuff like this. It's all free. No sleazy sales pitches. Nickonomicspod.com. So when you go to trigger, you're not telling it like anytime I get a new email, you're saying Gmail. Yes. Is the app that's okay. Yes. Yes. And we are putting this. So we're using Gmail here. If you use Outlook, you can use Outlook as well. They have the same functionality, which is awesome. So I am going to select the new email trigger.

6:18So these are all the triggers that are available. And these are what's usually available in Zapier itself. So these are things you can always trigger. So a new attachment, new labels. I used to label emails with a click up label in Gmail to get them sent over. But that still requires me to remember to do that. Yeah. So these are like pre-built. Basically any email that I send could be a trigger. Any email that I get could be a trigger. Any email with the words, I don't know, yada, yada, yada could be a trigger. Yes, exactly. Okay. So I'm going to be Andrew Paul. Okay. I'm catching up. I'm catching up.

6:58No, you are just a beginner at Zapier and far more people get into Zapier and never successfully create their first zap than people who do get in there and get something built. So if you even have anything built in Zapier, you are far ahead of the curve. Well, you're very kind. Thank you for those words of encouragement. For you and everyone else. Okay. So we picked the first zap, which was a Gmail trigger. yes and the trigger you picked was this new email which triggers when a new email appears in the specified mailbox okay and that mailbox for us is going to be the scent box oh okay cool so there's a second category that you can choose from after you've chosen sent it'll ask you where which box mailbox okay yes and if you choose something like for example when a new label is applied, the options are preset as well for which label.

7:59Oh, dude, you could set a trigger where it's like anytime I label something follow up or like remind me to do that in seven days or anytime I label it team or I'm trying to think inquiry, right? Oh, that's a sales lead that then there's a trigger for that that goes into a different funnel. Yes. Okay. I feel so stupid. Wow. Okay, cool. No, no, there's a whole world out there. A whole new world. Yes. Oh my gosh. All right. So you've chosen, you've chosen the send outbox. Great. And that's all there is to this one. That's it. Okay. So then I am going to actually tell it what I want it to do here.

8:41And I'm going to start with just natural language. And then I'll use this add tools button to add in the actual integration to ClickUp. So the first thing that I'll do is, and you saw almost the exact instructions in the X post that you shared earlier. I just said, when I send an email saying I'm going to do something, check ClickUp. If you don't see something in there, make a task. Okay. So this is just plain English instructions. And you haven't had any tools yet. Not yet. So right here, and I don't know if the exact placement of these things matter, but I put them right before it. So right before search ClickUp, I'm going to add tools, and I will search for ClickUp again.

9:34And all of those integrations is just like Zapier, where you search for your app and there's just a huge list of apps and then a bunch of triggers and actions and things. So these are all of the things that you can do with ClickUp, which is our task management platform. Wow. Extensive. There are a ton of options and they update fairly often as well. Seems overwhelming. Like, would you just. It can be. How, okay. Let's say I was coming in here trying to do this. Would I scroll until I find the thing that says check new task? Or like, what are you even looking for right now? I guess is what I should ask.

10:10you're just looking for ClickUp or you're looking for a specific task within ClickUp. Yes. So this is perfect. What I'm doing right now is grabbing my to-do list because it has to check that to-do list and tell me if there's already a related task here. So I'm going to say, find a list of all tasks, which is going to get me a list of many tasks. And it looks like I can do them based on the list specifically, which is where my to-do list is. So if you were just getting into this and you, for example, wanted to create a task or find a task, I would search for tasks. So you're only looking at the task items.

10:51There are still a ton of them, but you can see the options and things. Oh, interesting. So that's what I would do, especially because ones like ClickUp can be really extensive. So there's just a lot of stuff to go through, like you said. I'm going to use this find a list of all tasks. And then it just pops up like this. And I click the settings icon, the tiniest settings icon you've ever seen in your life. You're going to click that. And then very similar to how you see it in Zapier. So I have my ClickUp account already connected. I know where my to-do list is. That's a flat out defined field.

11:34So I'm going to set a specific value for this field instead of letting my agent select a value. So if I let the agent select the value, is that where basically AI context comes into place? They're using context to make a decision on your behalf? Okay. Yes. And so my to-do list, I will just set all of these values specifically.

12:00And there's my to-do list. I will let my agent select a value for all of these fields. I will set myself as the assignee here because I only want it checking for to-do list items assigned. Oh, wow. So since it was already integrated with ClickUp, like there was Scott look. So So I already knew there's somebody else it could be assigned to. Technology is cool for you kids. And those are ClickUp specific terminology. So if you're using Trello, you might, you know, select a board here instead of a workspace or something like that. But if you're using the app, you should have to do it. Whatever software you're using, it's going to show in the language that you'd be familiar with for that software.

12:43Yes, exactly. Cool. Exactly. So I am going to go ahead and let this do its thing. So it's going to search ClickUp for a related task. If one does not exist, create one. So I'm going to insert another tool here. How do you know when to insert the tools? That is going to be when there's an actual action you want to be taken in an app. so i want to search my click up or add a new task and click up that's when i would add basically anytime you're adding another connection to a different app so at this point you would actually search task this time because you want it to actually do something yes so this time i'm going to create the task and i am going through a million of these so There it is.

13:41Okay. So we will click up create task assigned to Olivia with a due date one to three days out. So I'm going to come back and do this whole thing again.

13:54And these fields are all very similar to what you see in Zapier. This is just a little bit less pretty. I was going to say UI seems more intuitive than Zapier or traditional Zapier. I agree with you. This makes a lot of sense. I do like the visual flow of the Zap builder though. Although this doesn't have the same, you know, there's not a lot of visual flow happening here. It's all our natural language, which is fun. Look at you waxing nostalgic about Zapier. It's beautiful. Thank you. All right. I'm going to share my screen now. All right. So I'm in Zapier. I come over here to agents. I'm now in the agents.

14:42I'm going to click new agent. So what I want to do is something that lots of business owners I think could benefit from. It's after you have a meeting where AI has attended and your note taker has attended. After that meeting, I want something emailed out to my team or to me summarizing the meeting and telling me what the do outs are for each individual. Okay. So I'll skip your step. Yes. Skip that. And the first trigger, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to try this and then you stop me when I do something stupid. Perfect. I'm going to add a trigger. I'm going to go to Otter AI, which is the AI that I use.

15:25Cool. New recording, save. And now I just want to tell it what I'm doing. Every time there is a new meeting transcript generated, please summarize the meeting and give follow-up assignments for each person who took on a task. Okay. So I wrote it out, and now I need to go and look for actions being taken. So every time there's a new meeting, transcript generated. Boom, that's an action. So I'm probably going to have to insert Otter AI here. That is your trigger. So it should already be handled by the trigger section. Okay. Excuse me. Please summarize the meeting and give follow-up assignments. So, Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract.

16:33I would spend time, energy, and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business. And you would like subscribe and leave me five-star review. Now, out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights. We both get a ton of value, but I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help. And if you want, even share this with a friend. Here's my question. Will AI within Zapier do that for me?

17:07Or do I need to then go to like open AI, you know, with an API call, have open AI summarize that. Okay. So Zapier agents are going to be able to handle that on their own. So they are using their own LLM features within this. When you chat with the agent, you are chatting with an LLM. So you don't necessarily have to connect another AI tool, but you can, if you want to. Okay. I think you can test this agent as is. Okay. Are these instructions enough? So I've told it where to get something from. I've told it what to do. But it doesn't necessarily know where to send it. Right. Right now I think it's going to chat it back out to you.

17:50Okay. So what do I do? Do I just test? You can see what happens now. Yeah. Test incrementally. Yes, ma 'am. Test the agent. Otter AI new recording. Your agent is testing. That's nice. But like I had maybe a new recording yesterday. So is it going to go do – oh. You can see. Oh. Yeah. So Marissa is my new assistant. We're talking about like a 30-day content series that we're going to do where we're posting a new business idea for first-time entrepreneurs every single day. And it has her. Oh, and it has the do-outs. Okay. I'm not a huge fan of the format. I'm sure I could mess with that. That's fine.

18:33But what do I want to do with this information? If I'm a business owner, what do I want to do? I could text it out to my employees. I could email it out to my employees. If I have Slack, I could probably send a Slack message with this to employees. Teams would be the same thing. ClickUp, I could create a ClickUp to-do. It's like, okay, here is the meeting and now here are the ClickUp to-dos from today's meeting. What else would you do with a meeting minute summary? Oh, maybe look at everybody who was on the meeting, get their email and then send them a message? I do like those follow-up emails that I sometimes get from, I don't know if it's Otter or Fireflies or a different tool.

19:12Sometimes they do send kind of meeting summaries to everyone that attended, which is nice. Okay. So I could just add something here. Please send meeting summaries to everyone who attended. So at this point, do I need to add something here? So here you will add a tool. You said you used Gmail, right? Put the cursor right after send meeting summaries. Okay. And go ahead and add Add a space and then add tools. Okay. And then you will choose Gmail there. Perfect. And then you're going to send an email.

20:03Okay. I'm just going to agent generate all that stuff. Yeah. Go for it. And now retest. Retest. Oh my gosh. It's happening. It's named itself. I'm sending the meeting summary and following up assignment to everyone. who attended the meeting. Okay, it's thinking. Oh my gosh. This is exciting. Isn't it cool? Yes. Okay, so here's the message it sends from me. Hi, Nick and Marissa. Here's the summary. Okay. Nick and Marissa discuss strategies, blah, blah, blah. Action items. Very freaking cool. Does it look good? How cool is that? So, okay. Let's go up here. I don't like just the massive body of text.

20:55Okay. So I could give it some formatting instructions. Yeah. Okay. Please summarize the meeting and give follow-up assignments to each person. I want the summary to be short, bullet-pointed. And make sure to highlight specific examples used during meetings where instructions are given. Also, please be sure to use names for who will do what as category separators. Okay, let's try that. Nice. Yeah, test it again. Oh my gosh. What's happening? Do you know what it's built, what it's on top of? Is it using Claude? Is it using ChatGPT? Is it its own LLM? It's built on top of ChatGPT 4.0 Mini by default.

22:10But when you use the AI by Zapier actions, you can select the model if you want. Dude, okay, look at this. How did the email turn out? I did exactly what I said. All right, everybody, here's the email. Meeting summary. Dog behavior. Marissa has a very cute dog named Buster. newsletter platforms, building an audience, course and team building. And you can see, I want to see if it used any examples. Oh, it does. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Here's an example. This is freaking cool. This is great. Isn't it so cool? And it was so easy to build. You built it with plain English and a little bit of clicking.

22:53Wow. This is, I mean, like if I'm a business, I own businesses, but I don't operate them anymore. I used to operate the businesses, but like as a business owner, I'm just thinking of all the potential use cases of this. I mean, this is just meeting summaries that could be automated. Like I don't need to sit down at my desk anymore and be like, okay, what did we talk about in our meeting? Okay, everyone, here's what we discussed and here's when we will meet again. And I could set it up one time to say, this is sort of my framework for summarizing meetings. I like to talk about who was there, what was discussed?

23:25What were the action items? Were there any examples? When are we meeting again? I could have added that to this instructions, right? When are we meeting again? I could even have it say in the instructions, oh, that would have been cool. Please generate a new meeting based on what we decided in that meeting, right? Yes, yes. Oh, man, that would have been great. And then you don't have to worry about like, hey, did Brian set up that meeting for next Tuesday that we talked about? that's freaking money because everybody wants to look at a meeting is a to-do item i want to end that meeting and end that meeting like i want it to be over i want to walk away i want to go do something else i don't want to immediately follow up on the meeting i just took yeah i don't want an open loop yeah i want it to be done i don't need to circle back on anything I will forget genuinely.

24:18Right. Right. That's amazing. This was fantastic. I encourage anybody who's watching to go, just go try something, just go try to automate something. And when you realize you don't know anything, reach out to Olivia and pay her company lots of money to figure it out for you. No, but seriously, go play around with it. Test us out. If you get stuck, reach out to Olivia. I'm sure she's more than willing to answer some questions. Yeah, it's amazing. me and my whole team of people who are even smarter than me. Well, thank you for this. This was awesome. I can't wait to talk again. Yeah. Thank you. All right.

24:53Hopefully you liked that episode. And if you've made it this far, you're either really committed or you're stuck doing yard work and you can't actually skip on your phone. So while I have you, the show is growing, but I have a favor to ask of you. Will you please help me grow the show? I want to reach more people. There's a couple of things that you can do. Like, and subscribe is the simplest thing. obviously you want to get notifications for when the next episode is coming out but if you go the next step will you leave me a review five star on spotify or apple what that does is it tells the algorithm that oh hey this is a high value podcast because more people are leaving reviews for it and it then pushes it out to more people so that's why when people are like will you log and subscribe and put the five star rating it's not just to make themselves feel better it's actually to get more exposure for the show so if you do that for me i would greatly appreciate it and I'll see you next time.