My AI Operating Stack: The Video Intelligence System

Every Friday, One New AI Use Case From My Operating Stack

160 Substack Founders Have Become Operating Founders

The Operating Founder Program is a weekly live Zoom cohort where we take my academic rigor meets real-world operations lens and apply it directly to your business.

Strategy, systems, decision-making, and occasional snarky commentary about spreadsheets.

On March 9th, we’re launching the Operating Founder Skool community

A private space for ongoing discussion, resource sharing, and direct access between sessions. A full year of membership is included free for the next 40 people who sign up for the Operating Founder program before February 28th.

60 seats are already gone. 40 left.

Once these fill, the Operating Founder offer disappears forever.

[Join the Operating Founder Program — 40 spots remaining]

---

My Operating AI Stack

I watch a lot of YouTube videos and podcasts.

Interviews, deep dives, masterclasses, long-form content packed with insight but impossible to retain in one sitting, or ever find the time to fully consume.

So I built a system to fix that.

It turns any video or podcast into a structured set of notes I can actually use, referenced, searchable, and tailored to my work.

The whole thing runs on two tools: Notion and Claude.

Here’s the exact process:

Step 1: Find the content.

I pull up the YouTube video or podcast episode in a web browser on my computer. Nothing fancy. Just the content I want to learn from, ready to play.

Step 2: Set up Notion.

I open a new Notion page and configure it as a meeting file. Inside that file, I select the Meeting Transcription option. This is the move most people don’t know about. Notion’s transcription feature isn’t just for Zoom calls. It captures system audio — meaning anything playing through your computer gets transcribed, not just your microphone. That’s the mechanic that makes this whole system work.

Step 3: Play and mute.

I hit play on the video, turn my computer volume to zero, and start the Notion transcription. Then I go do other work. The transcriber runs in the background, capturing every word while I’m answering emails, writing, or building something else. You’re not sitting there watching. You’re working. The system is listening for you.

Step 4: Stop and summarize.

When the video ends, I stop the transcription. Notion AI immediately generates a clean summary with key takeaways. That alone is useful. But I don’t stop there.

Step 5: Drop into Claude.

I take the full transcription, every word, not just the summary, and paste it into Claude. Here’s where it gets powerful. Claude already knows my work, my interests, my frameworks, and what I’m building. So I ask it to create a comprehensive set of organized notes from the transcription using everything it knows about me and my business.

---

Prompt

Below is a full transcription of a video/podcast I just watched. Using everything you know about my work, interests, frameworks, and current projects, create a comprehensive set of organized notes from this transcription.

Structure the notes as follows:

1. Core Ideas & Key Takeaways — The most important concepts, arguments, and insights from the content.

2. Relevant to My Work — Specific connections to my business, advisory practice, content strategy, or frameworks I use. Flag anything I should act on.

3. Quotable Moments — Any lines, stats, or phrases worth saving for future writing or content.

4. Frameworks & Models — Any mental models, systems, or strategic frameworks discussed that I can reference or adapt.

5. Research & Reference Material — Facts, data points, names, books, or resources mentioned that I should store for future use.

6. Open Questions — Anything that sparked a question worth exploring further or that challenges something I currently believe.

Keep the notes detailed but organized. I’ll be storing these in my Notion wikis and referencing them across multiple projects, so optimize for future retrieval — not just summary.

[PASTE FULL TRANSCRIPTION HERE]

The result isn’t generic bullet points. It’s a set of notes structured around what matters to me, connections to projects I’m running, frameworks I use, ideas I can actually apply.

Step 6: Store and deploy.

Those notes go into my Notion wikis, research databases, and project files. They become living reference material. When I’m building a new article, advising a client, or developing a framework, I pull from a library of processed intelligence — not a vague memory of something I half-watched three weeks ago.

---

That’s the system.

Two tools.

Zero wasted hours.

Every piece of content I consume becomes a permanent asset in my operating stack.

The best operators don’t just consume information.

We build systems to turn information into quickly accessible leverage.

Hope this helped.

See you next Friday.

- j -

---

Are you new to Operating?

You Might Enjoy These

(Access the entire library of articles and resources for $7.99 per month)

• 0 to 55,000 - The First 90 Days Playbook - What I’d Do Differently Knowing What I Know Now

• The Operating by John Brewton Resource Library - No Filler. All Killer.

• WINNING THE LOSER’S GAME: The Creator Economy and the Companies We All Need to Build

• Operating Stories: Hermès and the Manufacturing of Scarcity

• Operating Economics: Building Antifragile Companies

• How Three Decades Rewrote the Economics of Companies

Become a paid subscriber to access all the content ($7.99 / month) or get to work with us and become a member of the Operating Founder cohort for $99 (annual).

[Join the Operating Founder Program — 40 spots remaining]

---

John Brewton documents the history and future of operating companies at Operating by John Brewton. He is a graduate of Harvard University and began his career as a Phd. student in economics at the University of Chicago. After selling his family’s B2B industrial distribution company in 2021, he has been helping business owners, founders and investors optimize their operations ever since. He is the founder of 6A East Partners, a research and advisory firm asking the question: What is the future of companies? He still cringes at his early LinkedIn posts and loves making content each and everyday, despite the protestations of his beloved wife, Fabiola, at times.