FridAI - Gmail and Calendar Takeover

Business brain, episode 657 for Casual Friday, June 13, National Productive Business Civility Day. I don't really know what that means. Yeah, it. Actually, whenever I researched it, it seemed to make sense. Actually, there's something more important that happens on this day. I'll talk about it in a second. 2025. Greetings fol. Welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we use them to tune our business brains and keep on living our charmed lives. Sponsors for this episode include shopify.com businessbrain, where you can sign up for a $1 per month trial, and Nordlayer.com brain, where you sign up and get 22% off and then you use coupon code Brain. Why can't I say that and get another 10% off? We'll talk more about both of those in a little bit. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And here up in the foothills of the Sierras, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you? Happy Friday.

Happy Friday. And happy June 13th. 20 years ago, on June 13th, I released my very first podcast episode with what became macgeekab. Yeah, the first episode we called TMO to Go because we were running the Mac observer, and I thought, oh, it's the Mac observer to Go. And after we recorded and released that episode, my wife came up to me and she's like, you could have a better name. You should call it the Geek Gab. And I was like, wow, that's a great name. And so that's where Mac. I'm the one that foolishly added MacGeek Gab, because at the time, 20 years ago, Apple didn't have an iPhone or an ipod or whatever. That was it. So that's why it became macgeek Gab. But yeah.

And were they called podcasts back then?

They were, yeah, they were, yeah. Yeah, that's great. And there's. There's an interesting. We released. June 13th was three weeks before Macworld Expo that year. In March of that year, Steve Jobs had gotten on stage and said that they were going to add a podcast directory to itunes. He spent like 15 minutes on stage talking about this upcoming podcast directory. It was a big deal. Like, that's a lot of time. Yeah. And so as soon as we launched the show, like on June 13, 2005, I contacted everybody I knew at Apple and said, I want to make sure. We just launched the show. Want to make sure we're in your directory. And this went on for a couple of days. And Everybody. This is, of course, when Steve was running Apple and everybody was like, oh, well, it's not me. And if I tell you and I'm not supposed to, then Steve might fire me in an elevator. And I'm like, yeah, what a dumb way to run a company. This is literally your CEO's pet project. He spent 15 minutes on stage in March about this. And so I thought if I was running a company that way, I would want to know how dumb I was being. And so I thought, oh, I know what to do. So I wrote Steve. I didn't tell him he was being dumb. I, I. Because he and I had emailed a few times over things with Mac observer over the preceding nine years or whatever it was. But what I did tell him was, hey, we just started this show. I know podcasting's the thing. I want to make sure we're in your directory because I think we'd be perfect for your, you know, the audience of itunes users. But yeah, 20 minutes later, my telephone rings. Hey, Dave, it's Keith. We run the itunes directory for podcasts. I just got your email that you sent us. Like, well, I didn't send it to you, Keith. I know who you got it from. And it was a very. And he said, you were already in the directory, but we took another look at your show. We're going to feature you on day one. And then they went on and said, but where are you hosting your audio? Because we don't want to feature you and have no one be able to download your audio. So they actually gave us a place to host it in icloud for a little while while we sort of things out. Yeah, because they want, you know, they wanted to support the community and that's a lot. Yeah.

And it brings it.

You know, there's a valuable lesson here.

Yes, it is. And I like one of the things I always teach my clients. If it doesn't matter what companies you're dealing with, you need to connect with the executives at that business or the people at the business, you know, beyond your normal day to day. So it could be as simple as going on LinkedIn and connecting with the people in like, I help people a lot with, like, they start a business on ebay and I say, great, what do you want to sell? Okay, car parts. We go to LinkedIn. The first thing we do before you even open your account, connect with the category manager for the. In the auto parts section. Right. Just to have that, you start to build up that your network.

Right.

And then as you, if you Have a problem or a question or you want to. Even better, you know, leave a compliment. Like, I, hey, I really love this. You don't want to ask for anything, but you want to be in the conversation flow so that you can reach out to down the road. You never know where it's going to lead, and most people miss it. You know, when I was selling handbags on Poshmark for that experiment, I connected with everybody I possibly could. And when I got invited to go to their building and meet everybody, I was. I had my LinkedIn, like, my phone, like, oh, hey, da, da, da. I met the CEO, and I'm like, hey, Manish, I'm going to connect to her now. And he said, great, I'll connect with you here. So when I hit my first million in sales, I messaged him, and they were like, oh, we're gonna promote your account and we're gonna send you a bunch of stuff, and we're gonna get you connected with Business Insider to write an article about you. You know, it's just like you emailing Steve and getting that connection. You have to. I think I've mentioned here somebody. It's called, like, the third door, finding a way around.

We've talked about the third door here. And the other valuable lesson that I learned that day was because I already knew about the third door. Like, Steve and I had already been connected. I, you know, pestered him about something in the past or told him about something. You know, we'd communicate a little bit. But what I realized was, you know, if you're someone in the middle of some company somewhere in the hierarchy, I mean, in the middle, and you get a message from someone that says, hey, Dave is looking for. For you to do something. If that message comes from someone equal to or under you, it is assigned by you a priority. If it comes from someone above you, the exact same message, it is assigned a very different priority. And the reason my phone rang 20 minutes later is because that message came from on high down to Keith, not from someone else elsewhere in the company. Like, hey, man, you know, if you want to deal with this guy, great. Otherwise, whatever Steve said probably didn't say anything. He probably just forwarded the email. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. And, you know, but that's enough. That's all it takes.

And we. We talk on the show a lot about how you. You get to create your own reality. Well, this is one way you create it is you build your own peer group, you build your own, you know, infrastructure of people around you that can assist you at Some time. But you may need to have that contact for years before it really plays out. You may want, you know, you may want to be doing things for them and pointing out issues. You want to be in it. So don't live it with, with blinders on in your business thinking that, oh, I'm going to build this thing for nothing. You got to build this big thing around you. Everybody that is involved, everybody you touch should know you and your name should be, you know, if you emailed or called or messaged, you should be able to make that connection.

Yes.

Really important.

It's. It. Well, already have that connection. Yeah.

You know, before you need it.

Before you need it. Absolutely. Yep.

Yes. Like you should connect with Dave and.

I go on LinkedIn right now. Yeah, of course. We've had, we've had hundreds of you connect with us over the last couple of weeks since the last time we talked about the third door and said, do this. Absolutely. Do this. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We want to hear from you right today. We're excited to hear from you because you're a listener to this show. That's valuable to us. That means you are giving us something simply by connecting and saying you're a listener to the show. It's feedback. We feed on that someday down the road, a year from now, six months from now, two years from now, you might need something from Shannon or me. And then you ask, and I'm like, oh, I remember that guy. He's listening to the show. Susie. She. Oh, yeah. Okay, let me look. What can I do for you? That's it. Yep. We have some AI stuff to talk about. The next thing I want to talk about is our two sponsors. Because, look, when you're building a business, it can feel like you're juggling flaming swords while riding a unicycle across a tightrope made of tax forms. Been there. And of course, one of the only things that's made that act feel even remotely manageable is our sponsor, Shopify. I use Shopify with my other podcasts to sell merch. And candidly, it's like having a full on e commerce department in my pocket. Storefront design, done. Inventory management, easy marketing, emails. Shopify makes me look like I've got a Madison Avenue team on retainer. Shopify powers 10% of all E commerce in the US that's not just big, it's cosmic. From household names like gymshark and Mattel to entrepreneurs like us grinding it out every day, chasing that Charmed life dream. Oh, and that purple shop pay button you Love when you're shopping late at night in your pajamas. That's Shopify too. It's why their checkout converts better than anyone else on the planet. That's why that sound keeps happening. Turn your big business idea into kaching with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com businessbrain. Go to shopify.com businessbrain shopify.com businessbrain and our thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. And while I have you here, you ever secure your business network so well that it practically whispers sweet compliance into your firewall? No. Then you haven't met our sponsor NORD Layer. In the time it takes me to steep my mint tea, I could deploy NORD Layer across my entire team. No hardware, no IT drama, just toggle and go. Security that's built for entrepreneurs like us who are out there creating opportunity and don't have time to be worrying about ransomware or shadowy WI fi goblins. It's built on the same standards as NordVPN, but Nord layer is for businesses. You get threat protection, device health monitoring and zero trust access all running smoothly across macOS, Windows, iOS, even Linux if you're feeling spicy and scaling and add users faster than I can say AI generated revenue stream. Which of course if it's Friday I we say all the time. So grab your Charmed Life by the firewall and head to Nord layer.com brain. That's where you get our exclusive offer. Up to 22% off Nord layer yearly plans. Plus you get 10% on top with the coupon code brain. So Nord layer.com brain use code brain for an extra 10% off risk free with their 14 day money back guarantee. Secure smarter, grow harder. Stay charmed and our thanks to NORD Layer for sponsoring this episode. All right, it's Friday I the AI ChatGPT needs credit for Grab youb Charmed Life by the Firewall. That is. That is a brilliant line and I did not come up with it. ChatGPT helped me helped me do that.

That is really great. Hey, I want to talk about. Hey, I want to talk about Claude. I don't use it. I've used it but not very much and I have a. A guy that I I work with on X that I actually I've known for a while. His name is Nick Hulinsky and it's his X handle is at co founders Nick Nik. Okay and you can find it this link at Businessbrain show. Of course in the show notes and and I'm going to kind of go read this, this thread really quick and then we can talk about it. Okay?

Okay. Yeah, go.

So Nick posted. He said, hey, I thought I was cool hiring an assistant, but they still couldn't fix my chaos. Claude did. No team, no meetings, no management. Just one prompt. Here's how I'm turning AI into my personal assistant. And then Nick says, first I plugged Claude into my calendar and my email. No code, no fancy automations. This is amazing. I connected Gmail, connected my calendar. I asked Claude how many unread emails do I have? Claude told me I had 201. Okay, cute trick. But what can it tell me about my calendar? It gave me times, topics, who I was meeting with. But the thing that blew me away was the last question. Is there anything specific about these meetings you'd like me to help you prepare for? Claude said back to Nick. And so Nick says, I use this prompt, act as my personal assistant every Sunday, help me plan my week, every morning, tell me what matters that day, what I got back a framework for building a personal operating system. Claude offered to help me build my own personal manual with my work style, decision filters, goals. Then it gave me decision frameworks actually used like barbell, regret, minimization, inversion. And not only that, it gave me a checklist and a calendar. Week one personal manual. Week two morning check ins. Week three Sunday planning work four, relationship tracking. It was like hiring an assistant, but with a blueprint. And so this I think is great. And I would like to build this for myself. I could totally use it. I have an assistant and I have them in my calendar. But I would love to get this reviewed and figured it out and I thought this was a great prompt that we should talk about.

Oh yeah, and I did not realize that Claude has. For anyone on any paid plan with Claude AI, there is a Gmail and Google Calendar integration available. So this chatbot needs to jump on this because.

Got it right.

I've been wanting this for a long time. I want to give chat GPT or whatever my assistant is, I want to give it access. And I'm, I say this with my eyes wide open. I know that there are privacy concerns with this and I, as much as I, I say I want to give it access to my email, I really, before I did that, I would have to stop and think, okay, I'm okay with my private information being pushed up there, everybody else's, but I have, you know, I don't have, I'm not an accountant, so I don't have a fiduciary duty. But I have something very akin to that, like a bunch of NDAs that I've signed. You know, so.

Good question.

So there. There need, like, I need to figure that part of it out and figure out how to filter that part of it out. But I, I want to be able to. To have the assistant do what Nick is talking about.

Same. Same. I want it to help guide me into more efficient use of my time.

Yeah.

Into more productive interactions with the people that are waiting to. To. Or something from me. And, you know, I love this concept of, okay, like, this is what I do. I look at my calendar at night. Okay, what's coming up tomorrow? How do I. What. What happens and. And get alerts. So I, I think it's a great.

You know, it's not. It's a. It's a. It's a much more systematic approach to the same prompt that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. And I can't remember the woman's name that I found on LinkedIn where she. Literally once a week up. I guess hers is systematic too. This is just more integrated, I should say. Uh, but where she took a picture of her day planner and said, I don't have all. I don't have enough time tomorrow to do all of the client work that I have on this list. Prioritize with me for me, whatever, like that kind of thing. Also very helpful. And. And so there's. There's a world here where you can maintain that you can respect that fiduciary duty you might have for whatever reasons while still being able to do this. Yeah.

And I think I, I just. This is where I'm. I'm. I'm disappointed that we don't have this because we're in the Apple ecosystem. This is just the kind of thing I want Apple to do for me. Keep it private, but give me the benefit. And why can't we get that? I don't want transparent icons. I don't. I've had that. Didn't we have that before in some sort of bubble OS or something years ago?

It's Aqua. All of it's. It's Aqua. Aqua Revisited.

No, and I didn't watch the keynote. I didn't see it. So I don't know. I did other things that are really cool.

No, there are some cool things. I'm sure there is, but not in terms of the best things for me in terms of AI. And I'm saying AI for artificial intelligence, not AI, Apple intelligence. But the best things regarding AI that were mentioned in the keynote were the better integrations with ChatGPT and or Claude. Because there are some things that you can do. You can now tap into either Apple's private cloud or ChatGPT directly from shortcuts, which may, like, this may get us where we want to go. Right. This may be the path. The other thing is all of Apple's developer tools now have essentially Vibe coding support. They didn't call it that, but they sort of did. But. But not using Apple Intelligence, using ChatGPT, just like Copilot does. Because of course, like, you know. Yeah, of course.

Yeah. So I do want, or I too want to have this integration into my life. It'll make me. I just know it'll. I just see how I use the AI stuff every day with other aspects and I know that it will be a huge improvement for me.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, man.

Yeah. Hey, and I also, before we go, I just want to mention if you're listening, which is like, I don't know, maybe it's 98.3% of the people versus watching. If you want to watch the live stream, we live stream typically today it's Tuesdays, but typically it's Mondays at around like 1pm Pacific time. And you can watch us on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X. And so if you ever want to chime in and you can also reply to us live while we're during the show. If you have a question, if you don't want to send an email, we'd love to hear from you to watch the live stream or feedbackusbrain show. Love to hear from you.

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