My Top Three Automations for CRE

Hi all- after a few weeks break, I’m back.

Before we dive into today’s main topic (Automations), here are a few exciting things in AI that have happened since my last newsletter:

• OpenAI had its DevDay yesterday and released a ton of new things like AgentKit, which can build AI Agents, upgraded Codex, its vibe coding tool and more.

  • Is this the death of tools like Zapier, Lindy, Base44, etc.? OpenAI can’t have a monopoly on all of this functionality, right? More on this next week.

• OpenAI dropped Sora 2 a few weeks ago, which is an incredible video creation tool that without sounding hyperbolic, can probably compete with Hollywood for the things it can create.

  • CRE Marketing Teams can use this for new acquisition teasers and existing property ads.

• a16z released a report showing which AI companies (mainly startups) are using as a layer for their own products.

  • Use these names as a guide for which AI companies will most likely survive in the future.

• Not earth shattering but one I really like: the three creators of Notebook LM (a Google product) have released Huxe, which can turn anything into an audio version of itself.

  • Most interesting is its ability to connect to your email + calendar and provide summaries of them, which is really cool.

And Now To Today’s Topic: Three Automations That Are Easy To Build and Save Me Lots of Time

I hosted an Automations Live Webinar for the CRE AI Studio this week.

Automations are definitely my favorite thing to build (for now-wink wink AI Agents) as the things you can automate are endless and it’s never been easier to build them yourself with a $20 a month subscription in tools like Zapier, Make.com, Relay.app, and even within ChatGPT.

There were never any easy to use automation platforms that we in CRE could use and as we all know, even at the highest levels we still deal with so many boring, manual tasks that take up way too much time.

But now?

All you need is to watch a Youtube video, join a course, and play around with these tools to start taking control of your daily work life.

So here is a little snippet of the three automations I built live on the call:

Automation #1: Daily Meeting Briefing using Relay.App

Here’s what this Automation Does:

Four hours before any calendar event (or a day before, or an hour before —> whenever you want), this automation will:

1. Scan the participants on the event (think investors),

2. Then search for the 10 most recent emails + 10 most recent calendar events + search for their LinkedIn profile

3. Use that info to create context for that day’s meeting.

4. It filters out co-workers (by using your company’s email domain name as a filter).

5. It then feeds that data to ChatGPT, puts it in a digestible format, and

6. Delivers it to you via email so you can be prepared for the meeting(s).

No more searching for emails trying to figure out what your days looks like and what the topics are.

What I love about Relay.app is that it’s probably the easiest to use, the templates are actually fully populated (unlike what I’ve found in other platforms), the tutorials are easy to follow and if you plan on using a LLM (e.g. ChatGPT) and don’t want to get your own API keys (like you have to do with Zapier, Make.com, etc), Relay.App is for you.

The one downside is the platform doesn’t have as many connections with popular apps like Zapier does but honestly, it’s got more than enough to get started.

Automation #2: Important Email Summarizer/Alert System using Make.com

Here’s what this Automation Does:

Whenever I receive an email from an important sender (e.g. principals at my company, investors, lenders, etc), this automation picks it up and does the following:

1. Every 60 minutes, the automation runs, searching for the important email addresses I gave it.

2. It then takes that email (sender name, subject, body of the email) and sends it through a text parser to clean up the data (converts it from HTML to Text)

3. It then sends that clean data through ChatGPT to create a summary, identify any action items I need to take and due dates.

4. Last, this output gets sent to my personal Slack account, which alerts me to the email received and what I need to do.

In a sea of 100s of emails received every day, this automation helps me NEVER miss an important email again. 

I love Make.com. It’s visually easy to understand, there are a ton of Youtube videos that can teach you how to use it and it has a ton of great templates + connectors that make building these automations fun and useful.

The downsides to Make.com are that it has a higher learning curve than Relay.App and Zapier and requires API keys for a bunch of the connections like ChatGPT, Claude, etc (which isn’t that big of a deal).

Other than those downsides, I find Make.com at the top of my automation tools list (right there with Relay.app).

Automation #3: Adding Zapier Automations to a CustomGPT in ChatGPT

Here’s what this Automation Does:

With any CustomGPT I’ve built, I can have it do any automation I want.

For this one, I created basic automation code in Zapier and pasted it into my CustomGPT to:

1. Take the output from this CustomGPT (this one creates CRE AI Studio tutorials for our members),

2. Automatically email it to my team and

3. Automatically save it in the correct place in my Google Drive.

No more having to download the report (or any output) to your desktop, drafting/sending an email and then saving it in the correct folder in your drive.

This automation is really cool and since I spend most of my time within ChatGPT, adding automations there really helps me out.

(it’s actually very simple. Remember: I’m not a tech guy).

There are thousands of automations you can build yourself.

If you have ideas of ones you want to build or want help on building them, send me a note.

AI is moving fast. My goal is to help the Real Estate Industry keep up.

Hope you enjoyed this.

Jonathan

Founder, The IndustrAI