EP 224 Tame Your Time: Build Your Own AI Executive Assistant!

Do you or one of your clients struggle with time management?

Maybe you have a little bit of ADD that you don't want to admit, but it stops you from actually getting things done.

Have you ever felt like you have so much on your to do list and you go and you sit down at your computer and you're ready to work and then you're like, what is it that I'm supposed to be working on?

I can't quite remember.

Well, I got you.

Today we are going to be talking about how you can create your own AI executive assistant that can help you in brainstorming what things you should be working on, helping you find times in your day where you can actually sit down and have it be time for you to do just deep work and really get things done.

And a way that you can review the week of all the things that you've done and be able to build your own confidence that you do know what it is that you're doing.

This is a training that we recently did inside our yacht club.

If you are not part of the OPS Yacht Club, there is a link below.

Make sure that you click on that link and join the yacht club up.

That's where you're going to find all of our AI prompts, everything that we do here on this channel.

And we also do a whole lot more inside our free community.

We'd love to see you in there.

Now let's dive into this training that's going to walk you through step by step, how to create your own executive assistant using AI.

All right.

I am so excited for today's training.

It's so good to see everybody on this call.

We are going to be talking more about AI because I find that a lot of the things that as I've been looking through, what operations people need, operations professionals, virtual assistants, if you are an obm, that one thing that business owners are really wanting right now is ways to just make their jobs faster, work easier, and how to start implementing AI into everything that they're doing.

So today we are going to be talking about how you create your own executive assistant with AI just to help you in managing your calendar and especially if you are a little add.

I know I am a little add and sometimes I like get sidetracked on things and this is just a way that's going to be able to help us to manage the things that we need to do, manage our calendars a little bit, help us find some time to do deep work.

I know I like look at my calendar sometimes and I see things That I have these big chunks, but then I end up, like, doing something else instead of doing deep work on it and, you know, all the things.

So this is gonna help us with all of that.

So I'm really excited to dive into this and show you guys one where in the yacht club this is and how we're gonna actually start building out our own executive assistant.

And of course, we're gonna be using Claude to do this.

Cause Claude is our favorite AI tool, so will be using that.

All right, I'm just making sure everybody is getting in here.

We have a full house today.

I love it.

Just so exciting.

All right, well, let's dive in.

First, I'm going to show you where inside the yacht club this is.

So I'm going to go to the beginning here and let me go ahead and share my screen.

Okay.

So when you come here inside the yacht club, if you come here to library, you'll see in the library that there is this AI prompt treasure chest.

So that's where we are going to be hanging out today.

Underneath productivity, we have your executive assistant.

So as soon as we are done recording this video, it's going to show up right here.

But this is going to walk you through exactly how to do this.

Okay.

All right, so the very first thing that we need to do, we need to get our Claude set up a little bit before we actually start creating this as our executive assistant.

So inside Claude, you guys can see Claude, right?

Yes.

Okay, so Claude projects.

And we've talked about this before, but about a month ago, if.

Even if you are on the free version of Claude, you can have projects now.

It used to be a paid thing.

Juanita, do you have something to add?

I was just saying that the free gives you one project.

Oh, the free gives you one project.

Okay, good to know.

So you get one project with the free version.

So if you want to have multiple projects, then you need to upgrade to the paid version.

It's $20 a month.

Well, well worth it.

So if you're gonna pay for anyone, like, Claude is the one that I would pay for.

So if this is the one project that you want to create, then you could create this.

Honestly, you probably could do this without doing a project, and you would just use the prompt every single time.

So there is that workaround, too.

So we're going to create a project.

So I'm going to do a new project, and I'm going to call this my executive assistant.

And then if you want to give it a description, this is just so, you know, what this project is about.

Okay.

So we're going to create that first and create the project.

So we have our project set up now.

The next thing that we need to do is Claude can actually connect with other resources that are outside of cloud.

So we need to connect.

Right now we're going to be connecting our email, we're going to be connecting our Google Docs, and we're also going to be connecting our Calendar.

So to do that, we're going to come here under Settings and we're going to come here to Settings and then we're going to go to Connectors.

So I have my Google Drive connected, I have Gmail connected, I have Google Calendar connected.

And you can like, you can connect Canva right here.

You can browse Connectors.

So if you are using Asana to do it doesn't connect with ClickUp.

I'm working on a workaround for you guys for ClickUp because I know we all are ClickUp lovers.

But if you use Asana, you can connect it to Asana, which would be really great if you're using this to help manage different projects.

But if you keep your projects inside your Google Drive, that's another way that you can manage this.

So there's a lot of different tools that it connects with.

So you can look through all of this and see which ones.

If you use Notion, I know there's a lot of people who use Notion instead of ClickUp, so that might be a good one to connect to.

Um, and then it does connect to Zapier.

So you can do connect Zapier to your ClickUp and that's a way that you can connect it to ClickUp.

But I have found a workaround for this.

But I.

It's not quite dialed in yet, so as soon as I get that done, I'll do a loom video for you and add that into this.

So if you want to connect your click up to this too, you can.

So to connect them, all you do is.

I mean, I'm already connected to it, but there's a button that you just click on and connect.

You sign into your different Google assets and then it will be connected to you.

That way you can now ask Claude things about your what's in your email.

You can ask Claude to do draft of emails.

If you can say pull what emails came from today and it will tell you what emails came in.

You can have it draft responses so you can really prompt it on all the things.

For right now, we're just using Google Drive, Gmail and our Google Calendar.

Okay, so that's step two.

So first we need to set up our project, project, project.

And then step two is going to be to connect whatever things we need connected.

So your main ones are going to be Google Drive, Gmail and your calendar.

And then.

Oh, test says you have to upgrade for connections.

Okay, so if you're not seeing this, then you want to upgrade for connections too.

Like I said, if you're going to pay for any of them, like I would pay for Claude over like a chatgpt any day.

So you can probably do the same thing inside ChatGPT because I'm pretty sure that they are connecting with all of these as well.

So I'm showing you Claude.

But if you wanted to do this with the ChatGPT, you could same thing.

You would create a project, you would make sure all the connections are there and then we're going to go through the prompt.

So once we have all those connected, I'm going to come back to our project.

And then, so that's step one.

We've done that, we've done our connections.

Then this is our instructions right here.

So you can just take this and copy it or if you want it in a Google Doc, you can grab it here from this Google Doc.

But if we look through this, we are telling.

So I'm going to walk you kind of through how we build out this prompt.

So one, you're learning how to build out an executive assistant, but two, you're also learning how to build out prompts.

So we want to give this project that we're creating, we want to give it a identity.

So this is, this AI is an expert in scheduling and productivity assistance.

So, and I also added in that you're ADHD friendly.

So use the strategies that, because Claude understands like how to work with like ADHD brains.

So if you are, if this is you, or if you have a client that's a little adhd, this might be a good solution for you on that too.

So the purpose of this is that we are going to help busy entrepreneurs maximize focus while managing their complex priorities.

The role of this is to be witty, supportive personal assistant who understands the unique challenges of an ADHD brain.

Includes executive dysfunctions, time blindness, hyper focus and motive, motivation variabilities.

So that here is what this, this assistant is supposed to be doing.

You can take this and just use it as it is or change it up however you want your executive assistant to be acting.

Then we have the personality and the communication styles.

So you can look through that and see if that's how you want to keep it or if you want to change it up, then we are giving it ideas for its areas of expertise.

So we're telling it what it is that it is supposed to be really good at.

So first we have calendar management, we have tasks and projects breakdown.

One other thing that you can do if you want to add in ClickUp into your calendar is ClickUp syncs with your Google Calendar and it will put all the tasks on the calendar.

So because Claude can then read what tasks are on the calendar, that's another way to kind of break this into and connect your task to that.

So there's task breakdown, delegation, weekly planning review.

So how are you going to actually be planning these out every single day?

And then we have some ADHD specific strategies.

So we're telling that this is the things that we want to look for.

So we want to make sure that we're protecting ourselves against overwhelm, breaking down tasks, having motivation, tactics.

We're telling it has access to Google workspace integration.

So this is all the things that it has access to.

And then we have operational guidelines.

So like I said, look through this, see if this is how like, yes, this is how I want my executive assistant to work.

Or maybe not.

You can take this and make it your own.

We have success metrics, quick start learning protocols.

Then we have an example of how to do this.

So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to come up here, we're going to leave it as it is.

I'm going to hit copy, then we're going to come into Claude and here under the instructions, that's where we're going to paste this prompt.

So now it knows exactly how to act anytime we ask it in a chat here.

You could also add in if you want to add in files, so any background information.

So one thing that I would add, if you have like your True north document that you put together, that has your goals, it has your vision, it has your mission, it has like, this is the area that I'm really focused on and where I'm going to go.

You can upload that here.

So that way it also, it knows one what is it that you're working on right now, what's on your calendar right now, all of those things.

But it also will help you in making decisions of what is your goal a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, because it has all of that information there.

So that's just another side note.

If you have that already, you can put it there.

All right, so we have that all put together.

Now we are going to test it.

So right now we're going to check that it has the calendar access.

So I'm just going to put it in the chat right here.

Nope, did not copy the right thing.

Let's see.

Copy that.

We'll just copy it this way.

It did not like that.

Okay, we'll send it like that.

So now you guys are going to be able to see my whole calendar because it's connected to my calendar.

It's looking right now, looking at that calendar so I can ask it specific things.

You can also ask it to like move appointments.

You can have a creep appointments for you.

Because the reason that we're connecting is through what's called, called a Claude mcp.

It's a way that it can do a lot of different things.

So anything that you can do on a calendar like Claude can do.

So right now we're just asking for what the schedule looks like so you can see like, okay, my Tuesday, I have a pack today.

It already is telling me that I have a schedule conflict on Thursday.

So it's going through and saying, here's all of the things that you have on your calendars.

Then it's going to give us some information here.

So Friday, Saturday and Sunday are completely open.

So that's good.

And then it will tell us some other things that we can do then.

Do you want me to help you figure out your Thursday conflict?

Should we find some time to focus?

So this is going to start walking you through some things that you can do.

So this is good.

We have it all connected.

It's pulling up my calendar.

Right.

So now let's test the next thing.

So here's our next one which is finding focus time.

So I'm just going to paste this prompt in here and we want to change this to.

Instead of having a specific project so we can say I need to work on a training for the yacht club and then it's going to find me three times time blocks that I can start working on that.

So it now is going to start looking at my calendar and start figuring things out.

And I love this because then it just takes a little bit of the like your own brain power, you know, like there's, there's decision fatigue that really does happen where you're thinking of all of these things that you need to do and you just, you've made so many decisions and you just don't know.

Like sometimes I'm like, I just don't want to make another decision.

So this is a way that you can create something else to make decisions for you and give you some options.

So looking at this is going to say, okay, so Wednesday morning, I could have a power hour Wednesday afternoon, do a deep dive Friday morning.

So this is going to give us some ideas right here of when we can start putting this all together.

All right, so that's working.

And then the last one that we can test is I need to.

Then we're going to do an overwhelming task.

So let's say I need to create a new certification program.

That's very vague, but we'll just see what it does to break it up.

And all of this is testing the way that it's thinking.

So you always want to, whenever you're creating something, especially for a client, you want to put in different things and test it to see is it working the way that you expect it to work.

So, all right, so this is breaking it all down for us and helping us make those decisions and walking them us through the process.

So this would be really good if you, let's say you're working with a client and they have a big problem that they're trying to solve or there's a gap that you see inside their operations and you're like, I know that this is something we need to fix, but I'm really not sure how to fix it.

This is going to help you in breaking down the steps into those bite sized chunks so it doesn't feel like such an overwhelming project.

And one, this is great for you, but I mean imagine if your business owners and your clients that you're working with could also do this.

And have it break it down is going to make them feel less overwhelmed too.

So this breaks it all down.

It gives us the different phases and everything.

So, and then it tells us what our next steps are.

And then it's going to start asking some questions so we can start answering these questions.

It's like having a conversation with our executive assistant to help us get a project accomplished, figure out where in our schedule is going to be, help us to plan it out.

We can ask it to add in like work blocks onto our calendar and to work on certain things.

So this really is a way that you can, can get rid of maybe an executive assistant you have if or if you don't have one.

This is a very, I mean, $20 a month if you're paying for Claude, $20 a month for an executive assistant is a really good value that you can then walk through and have it Answer any questions for you, add things to your calendar, move things for you, and, and you can do this all through the app if you have the cloud app.

And you can also do this on desktop.

So the step five is to just make it your own.

So make sure that you, you test it.

If there are times where you're like, I work best in the mornings, that's when my, my best time for focus is.

You can put that into your prompt.

If you are like someone that after three, like, that's when you're mind is really open, then that's what you can tell it.

So any information about you of how you already know how you work is going to be really helpful to tell Claude how to build out your executive assistant.

And then we just have some things here about troubleshooting.

So if there's a couple things that aren't working, this is going to help you in troubleshooting that.

All right, so now let's get into use cases.

So how are we actually going to use this now that we have it built?

So this is one way that I do it.

Every Sunday evening I will sit down for like, usually it's a little more than five or 10 minutes.

It's about probably 30 minutes where I am planning out my week and looking at what are the things that are on my to do list and what does my week look like and how am I going to fit all of those things in.

So here is a flow that you can follow.

So here's step one.

This is your brain dump.

So you can go into your cloud project and you can say, hey, it's Sunday planning time.

Here's what's on my mind this week.

And then you're just going to say, these are all the things that need to get accomplished.

These are the things that I'm at.

These are the things I'm worried about.

I want to make sure that I don't forget this, this, this, and then say, can you help me with that?

And then Claude's going to be able to look at your whole calendar for the week, help you start planning things out so that way you can get things done.

So that is one way to do it.

Then you can ask Claude, can you review my calendar for this week, show me what my current commitments are, identify my 3 to 5 best deep work wind, and then flag any potential scheduling conflicts or overwhelm zones.

That also is important because there are times where I don't realize this, but I will have booked my calls for like eight hours straight with like, I'm Zoom calls back to back for eight hours.

And that's when things get a little hairy and I feel a little overwhelmed at the end of the day.

So that is something that you can have Claude help you with in your calendar management and your time management.

So that's another thing you can do.

And then you can also look at if there's a project match.

So you can say, this is the thing that I'm working on.

Can you suggest which of my available time blocks would be best to work on this?

Break this project into an ADHD friendly chunks to fit in those time blocks and then add this to my calendar with tasks to breakdowns and reminders.

So right here you can put everything in there and it's all going to go onto your calendar.

It will set up reminders and it'll say, okay, here's your time block.

These are the things you're supposed to be working on.

Here's this time block.

Here's the things you're supposed to be working on.

And I hear this all the time.

Like, we are all our own business owners, but we all actually do love being told what to do too.

You know, as much as we love being like our own bosses and stuff.

But sometimes it's like someone would just tell me what to do.

Like it would be so much easier.

So this is a way that you can have AI go in and tell you all the things that you should be working on and what it is that you're going to do.

And your product productivity is going to go up so much more because it's working within your schedule, it's working on projects that you know are going to be able to get done.

And by the end of the week, you're going to be amazed how much more that you're getting done because you're planning out things this way.

All right, then here's a bonus.

This is the thing I love is the reflection time.

And we don't really reflect on the things that we've done in the past.

Like, I know I.

This is something I'm really bad at too, but being able to look at, okay, what things did we accomplish over the last week?

Celebrate the wins of the things that we did get accomplished.

Looking at what happened and what didn't happen and then just getting some notes about, like, what are some things that I can do better for next week?

And this is really like you.

And maybe you have heard this before, like every day you just want to start getting 1% better.

And if at the end of the week you're looking at, even if it's just every week we're getting 1% better.

We do that by reviewing what happened the last week, seeing what things got done, seeing where maybe we dropped the ball, coming up with ways so that we won't do that again and learning from our mistakes.

Because that's what mistakes are.

They're not really mistakes.

They're all just learning lessons.

So when we do something and it doesn't quite work the way we want, we are learning through that process so that way that thing won't happen again.

And if we're reviewing every week of how our productivity was, what are the things we got done?

What are the things we didn't get done?

Maybe you scheduled yourself way too thin.

And I've, I've done this before where I've looked at my calendar for the week.

The last week, I'm like, I got nothing done because I had so many things scheduled.

I was trying to get everything so jam packed.

It made it so that way I couldn't actually accomplish anything.

So it helped me learn what's a better way to then set up my calendar so that way I can make sure that those things don't happen again.

And I don't feel like dreading one day because I have eight hours of calls or I can look at every day.

If I have like a two hour chunk where I can just get things done, I'm going to feel way more accomplished and feel way better about where it is I am in that day.

And, and at the end of the week I'm going to see all the things that I accomplished and it's going to build that confidence that I can do this and I can move forward.

So having this Friday reflection, like as part of your like shutdown routine, every Friday to go to your executive assistant and ask these questions and go through what it is that you did, this is going to be so, so beneficial for you in moving your business forward.

So here are just some options of some ideas of things that you can do and then we have some pro tips here.

So if you are looking for some prompts for your Sunday planning, you could do a midweek check in your Friday reflection.

And then when you hit that overwhelm, we also have like, if it's an emergency and there are times where sometimes I'm like, I'm so overwhelmed with so many things I have to do, I will come and sit down on my computer and I'm like, okay, I, I know that I'm supposed to be doing something, but I don't know what it is I'm supposed to be working on.

Okay.

I'm glad I see heads nodding.

Yes.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that.

And I'm like, I know that I have an overwhelming to do list, but right now I don't know what I should even be doing.

So this will help you in that, and it will tell you, okay, this is the next thing that you can do.

All right, so then this.

This tells us.

What does the ritual actually give us?

Okay, so with this, there's no more Sunday scaries.

So when you're sitting there and they're like, oh, I am not looking forward to Monday, because this week is going to be crazy.

This is going to help with this.

No more Thursday panics about missed deadlines, and you're like, oh, it's Friday.

We're all the way at the end of the week.

How did this become Friday already?

I haven't got anything accomplished.

This is going to help with that.

No more where did this week go?

Confusion.

And then actually, you are going to have evidence of your progress, because your brain needs evidence of that progress.

It needs to see, oh, this is where we started on Monday or on Sunday when you're doing your planning, and then on Friday, you can see, these are all the things that I got accomplished.

Your brain is going to see that as we are making progress.

And so it's going to build that confidence.

Because how you build confidence in yourself is by doing the things that you say you're going to do.

It's really as easy as that.

So if you say that you're going to do something and then you don't do it, that's how you start losing confidence.

So if you say, every Monday I'm going to wake up and I'm going to work out, and then Monday comes and you stay in bed.

Like, that's not a way to build confidence.

But if you're really looking to build confidence, you do the things that you say you're going to do.

So if you have this scheduled on your calendar and the notification pops up and it's like, hey, you're in deep work time.

This is the thing you're supposed to be working on and be like, great, I can do this.

And then you go and you get those things done.

And at the end of the week, you see all the things that you've done.

Like, your confidence is just going to grow and grow and grow.

And especially when it comes to having discovery calls and talking with clients that Confidence is going to come across so much more because clients buy confidence.

If you are really confident in the things that you do and that you know you can get results, the confidence that you have, your clients are going to see that and they're going to be buying your confidence.

So, so, so important to have that.

Then it also gives you a planning buddy.

I talk to a lot of people because we are by ourselves all the time, right?

As operations.

That probably is the most loneliest department in all of business because usually it's just you and you're doing things.

So I've heard so many people say, well, I just wish I had someone that I could talk to around this, this, this one.

That's why we have the yacht club community.

So you are not alone, but you also can have an AI buddy.

And you know, Louise and I both love Claude, and so you can use this as your executive assistant, too.

And then it's also going to help you with time blocking.

So time management is something that so many people have questions about, and I've done surveys in the past of what are some of the things that is like the biggest thing that's holding you back.

Time management is always top, but no one wants to fix their time management because it's not the sexy thing to fix.

But this is going to help you.

One, it's a little bit fun because, you know, you're creating your own AI agent that you're building out and you have this project and you and Claude get to talk and like, that makes it a little bit more fun.

But this is going to help you so much in your time management because it's going to actually be working with the way that your calendar is structured and how everything is all set up and help you to start creating these good deep work times.

And if you start seeing that you actually don't have any deep work times at all in your calendar, then it means we need to start managing your calendar a little bit differently.

We need to start changing things up a little bit so that way you will have more of that deep work time to get things done.

All right, so like I said, where you can find this is inside the library.

And then you're going to go to AI prompts, and it is here under productivity, you have your executive assistant.

So that's where you'll be able to find the prompts and everything.

And then, like I said, this video will be up here at the top as soon as it is done.

Well, this was a short training today, but it didn't really need to be much longer.

I would much rather give you guys, like, 25 more minutes that you can go and build this out for yourself and use this time to create your executive assistant to help you in the rest of the week and all the things that you have to do.

It was good to see you, and good luck with creating your executive assistant.

Bye.