In this episode, systematic removal of reactive decision-making through AI delegation (email first-pass, SEO article review, initial deal analysis) creates maker schedule blocks for deep work, with new focus on automating podcast content scheduling via Notebook LM analysis of 150+ episode transcripts to eliminate daily topic anxiety.
Key Takeaways:
- Maker schedule beats manager schedule for entrepreneurs Deep work blocks without 15-30 minute meeting interruptions drive actual business progress versus endless task-switching.
- Notebook LM handles unlimited transcript analysis Google’s tool ingests 150+ podcast transcripts (far exceeding Claude/ChatGPT limits) to generate content calendars and identify high-resonance topics.
- Batch recording requires systematic content pipelines Moving from reactive daily recording to 3-4 episode batches demands AI-powered scheduling systems that analyze weekly themes and past content patterns.
Listen to the full episode for the complete automation framework that’s buying back 10+ hours weekly for strategic work.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris of Serious Land Capital, Vacant Land Funding Partner. Today, I wanted to go over some additional automation and efficiencies we’re trying to build out within our business and just trying in general to remove reactivity. So I think a lot of folks are familiar with the
I’m forgetting, what’s the name of the Y Combinator founder, something Graham, forgive me. But you know, he wrote about the Makerverse manager schedule, very famous blog posts within like last 20 years or so. And maker schedule is more where you’re not having any set time blocks on your calendar.
And so you can effectively dive into whatever problem you’re trying to solve without necessarily having boundaries or at least letting you really get into a a deep work state to solve things without interruptions. Whereas a manager schedule is more, you know, 15 minute calls, 30 minute calls, you know, top of the hour, mid hour, et cetera. It’s just blocked off, blocked off to where you can knock off a lot of,
various tasks, but it’s a lot of task switching involved and hard to get into a deep work standpoint. So, I mean, there’s advantages to both and depending on whatever your role is in your business, I for lot of entrepreneurs, you have to wear both hats more often than not.
And probably most of us operate on a manager schedule to our detriment, think, especially when it comes to business development and just working on the business itself. So I know that’s something I’ve talked about more routinely here. And so, when we were having our fourth week of our automate to accelerate program with Cal and it was supposed to be an implementation week where we were using an AI.
prompt to figure out, what are other areas of your business that could use additional automation to where you, know, areas where you feel like you’re explaining things more often than not. It’s just more of a general distractor for getting the necessary work done that would, that would free you up, or it could be a good candidate for some AI involvement. And I’ve actually felt, especially over the last couple of months, like we’ve
really taken a lot of steps forward to remove a lot of my critical decision making and explanation from the actual business. And a lot of this has been done over the last few weeks. Where for a lot of emails, like I won’t have to do first pass at those anymore. A lot of our SEO and GEO article prep.
Even my review time on that has decreased significantly since we built out better projects and the copywriting is just way, way better.
you know, some of the initial deal analysis that comes in. Oftentimes I won’t need to take a look at that. So I’m able to chunk my day a lot better to jump on the reactive things as necessary. but I don’t feel like I need to be in the weeds quite as much. Usually the first day of the week. mean, this was a Memorial day week. So, you know, Tuesday, everybody’s kind of getting rolling. Usually that first day it’s like, okay, I really, I want to set some balls in motion.
That first day, like figure out, where are we at with all of these various deals? Okay, what do I need to arrange for us to get done within this week? And I know that’s always a Hermosy principle I’m trying to get better at is like, you know, anything that you set for end of week to be done, why can’t it be done at end of day? I try to embody that a lot more, especially for my own tasks.
Uh, cause I feel like that’s probably the single biggest unlock that, um, could propel us forward even more. But at the same time, there’s just some things like that. just need to have inherent patience for, like, can’t always just rush a closing to happen with liquidity coming back in to the business. Um, no, just be impossible to do, you know, with an end of day type setup, but you know, the things that I can control more, uh, that’s what I try to orient around.
so like we’ve made a lot of progress from that standpoint, to remove a lot of the reactivity from my end. and so what I was really orienting around are actually these podcasts to where, know, it’s daily, right? So sometimes I’ll have a bit of a backlog that I, the ideas I can pull are just, you know, Do different learnings that come up. mean, you, you guys know, if you’ve listened to this for awhile now,
There’s a lot of current topics like something that we just went through during that day. It’s a good frame for what I want to talk about. And I usually record these in like mid afternoon when there’s some fresh, fresh content. But you know, some, some of the days there’s just a lot going on and then, know, I have to spend time thinking, okay, what do I need to talk about? Especially when you’re doing these, you know, seven days a week. And I would like to get more of a, okay, like batch recording, you know, three or four at once.
Um, so then I can buy myself some time and structure my week a bit better. Uh, but I just didn’t have the best system for that. And so now I’m trying to orient AI, um, to assist with creating more of a content schedule based on all the content that I’m producing during that week and past versions of content. What else can we, you know, spin different flavors of this particular idea? Um,
And like, I’m already utilizing the podcast transcripts for building out newsletters. So, you know, I’ve built out an AI project where, you know, my voice is contained within this cloud project. And so I’m able to throw it podcast transcripts. Like for instance, last week, I did a few podcasts on that, you know, Washington state deal that fell apart and very fortunately we didn’t, you know, move forward and then threw that into a cloud project and was able to build out.
that content within the form of my newsletter, which is just way faster than just building it from scratch in and of itself. We’re using content, different people, you know, some don’t listen to podcasts. I’m going to read the newsletter, but, or, know, it’s always helpful to just to have different, mediums for people to even hear the same lesson twice, at the same time. some, you know, might resonate a little bit differently, but I’m already using that.
more strategically, you know, the podcast is more frequent, right? It’s daily. So I need a better cadence of scheduling and just so there’s less again, reactivity or like feeling stressed. What am I going to talk about today? and so initially,
Well, initially, and Callum provided some direct feedback on that. So I hadn’t been using Notebook LIM quite as much recently for those unfamiliar. That’s Google’s product where you can upload a ton of content into it. It doesn’t directly connect to the internet. mean, the AI software itself connects to the internet, but it doesn’t source things from the web. So it’s only in the content that you give it, but you can send it so much info, way more than Claude and ChetGPT.
Um, so I’m just having my team take all of my transcripts from, you know, the 150 podcasts that we’ve done, add that all into a notebook, LM, start summarizing and then having it interview me and like figure out, okay, what topics have we covered before? What can, you know, uh, or, what, what areas, um, you know, may have resonated more, you know, actually I’m kind of losing the thread here after getting off that training.
and had some really good stuff and now I’m gonna have to go back and figure it out. But that was like some of the gist, like, okay, definitely use notebook.lm, get all those transcripts in there and then you can start piecing out what works better. But I was already thinking about that, but I also want to include all the content that I’m doing in like the Facebook lives and even like anonymized emails or lessons or just like simple notes and might just throw into a various.
Collective weekly project and then it can just spit me out ideas So then I can just get a seven-day schedule Ideally of podcasts or even like a three-day Would be a better better start the more I’m at At the moment So there’s a couple ways to tackle this I’ll let you know once we sell this out. This will be by early next week once I have my team member working on this More over the weekend here
But the fact that we’re actually moving forward with this too, like, yeah, you gotta get the wheels turning to actually get this thing started. But once you start building these systems, like it just starts freeing up a lot more. Cause then I can remove another reactive piece from the business and some stuff you’ll never be able to remove really. Like the, I mean, title companies, anybody who’s been in real estate for a little, like it’s always the most last minute type of requests.
I’d say 90 % of the time. And so it’s just, okay, let me set up the notary, arrange my afternoon to take care of this, task switching and so forth. documents, how often is like, okay, we just prepped the documents. You need to get these out within the next few hours or otherwise closing is gonna be delayed. Like it’s just how tight of companies work more often than not. So you have to allow for some slack in the system to account for things like that. But again, we’re not always handling closes on a day by day basis.
And ideally you can batch those whenever possible. So that’s a piece that’s still going to be present here. But I feel a lot more confident with the lack of reactivity that I’ve built in. And my VA is just picking up so much more from the AI side, just really, really doing well with it, building his own projects and so forth. So I think his capability has increased a lot.
as well, and that’s allowed me to now focus on one or two other key maker level tasks, especially from the land price side. I’m really gunning to get this thing launched MVP version within the next three weeks. And so my CTO and his developer working under him, they have requests coming in, I need to knock out some of those tasks and those typically…
take more deep work for me to really think about, okay, what’s the best way to strategize about this? And so if I can knock out one or two of those a day on top of managing the funding business, like we’re in pretty good shape.
You know, can, can always improve from there. It’s like, man, should I be working even more, working even more? Like, I don’t know. You have to listen to yourself internally on, on what, how much is enough. And you know, when your brain is still in good enough shape to still push out more. But I’ve been so much more consistent with probably not having as much as like full days on the weekend, but I’ve, I’ve, for, for much of this year. Been way better both Saturdays and Sundays to at least knocking out a couple.
deeper work sessions, even in the mornings, like a few solid hours, even if I do that over the weekend, that’s way better than I had been in previous years as an entrepreneur. And so then I can kind of take heart, okay, even if I’m not having perfect, like just super long hours during the week, I know that I’m getting some high quality work, catching up on some deeper work items, the important, not urgent tasks.
they’re urgent, you know, they just had felt falling into a backlog. It’s not a fire to put out that I can knock out over the weekend and still just keep churning along steady, steady, steady week after week. So it’s the cadence that I’m trying to build over and over again. No one cares. Just win. Like that’s that. That is the focus that that we are having within our own team getting better every single
So hopefully all of this is helpful to you all as far as how we’re structuring our processes and delegating a bit more. I always like having more of maker schedule. The more I can do that, the more I feel like real progress is being made in the business. I suppose a maker schedule would be great if we were just having like infinite closes just happening and money was just coming in. would be tremendous. It’s just unrealistic.
especially in, in, real estate and bigger transactions. but I would not, mind that if that was the case. but until that ever happens, you know, I’m trying to buy more time to knock out bigger, hairier projects on average, because even though I usually hate starting them by the end of the day, I’m usually feeling more satisfied and that actually did something that mattered.
So let that be your guide Serious land dot Capital for any of your funding needs Land daily diligence Facebook group for zero cost review of your land deals. We’re back tomorrow with that May 29th depending on when you’re listening to this and landpricer.ai for the simple and easiest way Well, no simple and most accurate way for getting my own marketing lingo actually quad came up with some better
phrasing or slogan here. I gotta look at it again, but I really liked it. When I was doing some AI work on land price or branding earlier today. I’ll get back to you more on that. Anyway, subscribe and share looking forward to next time. Take care now. Bye.
