You have 20+ meetings per week.
Investor calls. Vendor pitches. Your CEO’s “quick sync” (which is never quick). Cold calls from people you’ve never heard of.
When was the last time you prepared (properly) for these meetings?
Not a quick look at the calendar invite 30 seconds before you click “Join.”
I mean, knowing who you’re talking to, what they want, what you discussed last time, and what outcomes you want from the meeting.
You probably stopped preparing years ago, as you just don’t have time. So, you rely on experience to get you through the day.
But, with the help of AI, you only need 13 minutes every Monday morning to show up prepared for every meeting.
This is what an AI CFO that I recently interviewed – Saul Mateos – figured out.
Before his first coffee, he knows exactly how his week will unfold, so that he can show up ready to impress.
Let me show you how he built this.
Meeting Blindness
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Your calendar owns you, and most of your meetings go like this:
- You waste the first 10 minutes just getting oriented. “Remind me, what did we discuss last time?”
- You miss signals because you don’t know who you’re talking to. Is this person senior? Are they a decision-maker? What do they actually want?
- You can’t ask strategic questions because you have no context. You’re reacting, not leading.
- You leave opportunities on the table. You didn’t know this was the perfect moment to pitch that new idea.
Example: Saul had a meeting with someone named Mars McLean. But had no context, only a calendar invite:
His AI told him:
“This is a meeting from a cold call that you got and they’re going to most likely sell you insurance or other similar items.”
Before the meeting even started, he knew exactly what this was. So, he could decide in advance whether to take the call or cancel it. Ask pointed questions or politely end it in 10 minutes.
That’s the difference between showing up blind and showing up with intention.
Unfortunately, showing up ‘blind’ has been normalised.
So it’s up to you to take back control of your meetings.
The 13-Minute Monday Brief
Every Monday at 7:30am, Saul opens Claude, goes into a custom project he created and types one sentence:
“Prepare for my meetings today.”
Claude is connected to his calendar, his e-mails, and an MCP connection with his call transcripts.
After he asks the question, the AI automatically:
- Scans his calendar for every meeting that week
- Reviews related email threads with each attendee
- Pulls context from past call transcripts
- Researches attendees he’s never met (LinkedIn, company info)
- Assembles a structured brief for each meeting
13 minutes later, he has a complete weekly prep document.
- For his interview with me (you can find the full video on YouTube here), it gave him context about who I am, what I do, why we’re meeting.
- For Mars McLean (the cold caller), it told him exactly what to expect: insurance pitch, likely not worth his time.
- For his board member meetings, it summarized the last three discussion topics so he could pick up where they left off.
He walks into every meeting already three steps ahead.
Plus, When you’re the most prepared person in the room, you control the conversation.
This is the difference between reactive and strategic.
Reactive finance pros respond to whoever’s in front of them.
Strategic finance pros shape every interaction because they know what’s coming and prepared.
How to Build Your 13-Minute Monday Brief
Here’s the good news. What used to take hours to set up now takes about 15 minutes.
Step 1: Create Your Meeting Prep Project
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Open Claude (claude.ai or the desktop app). Create a new Project. Name it “Weekly Meeting Prep” or “Monday Brief.”
Why a Project?
Projects in Claude let you set custom instructions (like when you create a GPT in ChatGPT) and connect to your data sources.
This means, every time you open this Project, Claude already knows what you want, and what to do.
Step 2: Connect Your Calendar & Email
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Use Claude’s built-in connectors to link:
- Google Calendar or Outlook (so Claude can see your meetings)
- Gmail or Outlook email (so Claude can review relevant threads)
For other tools:
- If you use ChatGPT, you can set up connections
- If you use Gemini and you’re already in Google Workspace, this is even easier – Gemini has native access to your calendar, email, and Drive
- Same with Copilot that is enabled across your M365 environment.
This setup takes about 5 minutes.
Step 3: Write Your Prep Instructions
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In the Project’s custom instructions, tell Claude exactly what you want:
Step 4: Run Your Monday Routine
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Every Monday morning, open your Project and type:
Let it run while you make coffee.
You’ll get a structured brief for the entire week that you can review in 3-5 minutes.
Step 5: Add Advanced Research (Optional)
Want to go deeper? Saul added:
“I actually have a LinkedIn scraper MCP setup. So if I want to do additional research on you or other individuals, I actually call it and then it scrapes the LinkedIn profile.”
This is optional. Start with calendar + email. That gets you 80% of the value.
Once you’ve proven the basic system works, you can add:
- Call / meeting transcript analysis (easier if using Gemini or Copilot and your Meets / Teams Meetings are recorded)
- LinkedIn research for new contacts
- CRM data (if your meetings relate to customers / revenue)
My team use these connectors across ChatGPT and Claude:
- Google Drive, Gmail and Calendar
- HubSpot
- Asana
But don’t overcomplicate this at the start. Calendar + email + web search is powerful enough to start with.
Pro Tip: Keep the Project open all week. When a last-minute meeting gets added Tuesday afternoon, just ask: “Prep me for my 3pm with [name].”
What you should do now
You have two choices this Monday morning:
Option A: Show up to 20+ meetings this week completely unprepared. Hope you don’t miss something important. Let other people control the agenda. Keep winging it like you’ve done for years.
Option B: Spend 13 minutes on Monday. Walk into every meeting as the most informed person in the room. Know who you’re talking to. Know what they want. Lead every conversation strategically.
Most of us stopped preparing years ago. Not because we didn’t want to. Because there was no time. But, now there is.
So, build your 13-Minute Monday Brief this weekend. Because, the finance leaders who survive the next decade won’t be the ones who work harder.
They’ll be the ones who built systems to become more strategic whilst everyone else stayed reactive.
Meeting blindness is a choice. Strategic presence is a system.
Best,
Your AI Finance Expert,
Nicolas
P.S. – What did you think of this? Will you use it? Hit reply (I read all replies)
P.P.S. – Want to see the full interview with Saul where he walks through his entire morning AI routine? Watch the video “How This CFO Uses AI to Save 10+ Hours Per Week” here.
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