095 | 5 Meeting Mistakes Costing Founders $24K a Year (And How AI Fixes Them)

What if the reason your meetings suck… isn’t your team—but your system?

Let’s be real: unstructured meetings are silently bleeding your business dry.

In this quick-hit episode, Dawn drops a $24K truth bomb—how bad meetings drain your time, energy, and profits. But here’s the fix: a smarter meeting system powered by AI.

You’ll walk away knowing how to turn time-wasting chaos into high-leverage clarity—with tools, scripts, and a system that runs without you.

🎧 Listen now if you’re ready to stop being the bottleneck and start leading like a CEO again.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Stop blaming yourself or your team. Bad meetings are a systems problem, not a leadership flaw.
• Every meeting is a product. Use AI to build, test, and refine it—before, during, and after.
• Simple prompts = powerful results. Use ChatGPT, Claude, or Notion to generate agendas and follow-ups in minutes.
• Compliance matters. If you record meetings, get consent and protect your data—no exceptions.
• Recurring chat = AI magic. Your weekly team sync can become smarter, faster, and self-running with the right setup.
  
  

Resource:

• Join AI for Founders – Our free community where ambitious women test tools, swap wins, and scale smart.
• Recommended AI Tools Mentioned: Otter.ai, Fireflies, Zoom AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Notion AI
• Coming soon: AI Meeting Security, Client Privacy, and Why You Might Be Sued By Your Bot

🎧 Related episodes to keep you in your CEO flow:

• Ep. 94: 3 Signs Your Loyal Employee Is Now Holding Your Business Back — And How to Use AI to Fix It Fast] — Spot the loyalty traps that slow your growth.
• Ep. 91: The 4-Day AI System That Ends Friday Afternoon Panic Forever — Design your week to prevent chaos before it starts.
  
  
  

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

She's That Founder
095 | 5 Meeting Mistakes Costing Founders $24K a Year (And How AI Fixes Them)

Real talk. 

That meeting you just sat through for an hour with three people who talked in circles. Nobody wrote anything down. Everybody was processing rather than deciding. 

And you're pretty sure that someone said follow up with the client, but you have no idea who that was. Yeah. Meeting just cost you $500 in lost productivity.

Multiply that by four meetings a week, and you're bleeding $24,000 a year on meeting sessions that solve nothing. And yet you might be blaming yourself. Maybe I'm not leading, well, maybe my team isn't taking ownership. 

Those things might be true, but what I think is the biggest truth is that your meetings aren't broken.

Your system is. So let's fix that today. 

Hey, hey, hey. This is She's that founder Thursday edition, the no fluff corner of the internet for bold Women Building big things. I'm Dawn Andrews, and this episode is your espresso shot of clarity, strategy, and a little AI magic served with love and a velvet boot to the bt.

Let's fix your meetings. 

One of my clients, brilliant, wildly capable, came to a session recently and she was wrecked, so tired. She said, "I've been crying in my car between client calls. Dawn, I spent 11 hours in meetings this week and I have no idea what we decided, and I have no time to do the actual work that I'm meant to do", and she blamed herself.

She thought she wasn't strategic enough. She thought she hired the wrong people. She thought maybe she just wasn't cut out for leadership. And I think we've all been there, you guys, we know that when we're really tired, we start to tell real rough stories about ourselves.

So here's what actually happened. No agenda was sent beforehand. People showed up, confused about why they were even there, like they were in the room and they weren't even sure why they should be in the room. Someone maybe took notes. Everybody took a few notes, but there was no one consolidated doc where everybody could find what they needed.

Action items were spoken, but they weren't necessarily assigned and given deadlines and the follow-up that happened days later after somebody came up with additional information went probably when they were taking a shower because that's when all this stuff surfaces itself. 

So doesn't work really well, right?

So what we did, we built her a simple system. Three weeks later, she texts me on a Friday at 2:00 PM, "just wrapped a 30 minute meeting that used to take two hours, the summaries in their inbox. I have my Friday back." That's what a good system does. It gives you time and confidence in your damn weekend back. 

Here is the new mindset. I'd like to propose. Look at every meeting as if it's a product. Build it, test it, refine it. And with ai, you can make every part of that product better before, after. That's a system. 

So let's talk about the parts before, let AI help you build your agenda. Stop trying to remember everything that you need to talk about. Pop into chat, GPT or Claude, or your favorite LLM, and say, "We need to finalize the Q4 goals and set next week's priorities", if that's what you need to say. If not, say what you need to say and then boom, you've gotta a structured agenda with time blocks, prompts and decisions to make. Done in 90 seconds, sent in 30.

Everyone has the opportunity to show up prepared, and you just saved 20 minutes of awkward throat clearing. And what are we talking about again? 

At the top of your meeting, during your meeting record with consent and transcribe it. Tools like Otter, fireflies or Zoom AI can transcribe and extract action items and document decisions automatically. 

But here's the thing, you must tell people you're recording. It's the law in many places, and it's the right thing to do. 

Now I know that each of these tools has the participant opt in to be recorded, but I also think it's a good idea just to reiterate that, to get into the habit of it. So you could say, "Hey team, we're recording this with fireflies, so no one has to scramble for notes. It's secure. We delete it after 30 days and it helps us all stay on track." 

Cool. So I'll go deeper on AI security and recording protocols in another episode. But for now, disclose it, get consent, and be smart about what you record. S

o we talked about before and during. 

Now let's talk about after. Let AI help you handle the follow-up. So for instance, the meeting ends, you close, zoom, minutes later. The AI can send what was discussed. What was decided? Who's doing what by when? No more, Can someone send the notes messages? No more. Wait. Did we agree upon that? It's all there already done. 

Okay, you ready for the hot tip? 

Use the recurring meeting chat method. This is method that I use for my meetings, and this is a game changer worth the price of listening alone. 

Okay, start a dedicated chat for that meeting in chat, GPT or Claude. Before the meeting ask, create an agenda for our weekly team leadership meeting. Cover the project updates, roadblocks and next week's focus. 

So this, with all of your brain dump information, we'll give you your agenda for your meeting. And then after the meeting, paste your transcripts or notes and say, summarize this meeting. List the action items with owners.

And then when you're getting ready for the following week's meeting, say "based on our last meeting and the summary that I provided you, what do we need to cover this week?" And then you can add in more of your information, what you know, what changed, et cetera. 

But the chat thread gets smarter over time and it learns your team's flow, your priorities, your unfinished to-dos. It becomes a version of your AI chief of staff without 150 K salary. 

Here's an important little nugget that you need to know though. Turn off training in chow GPT. Go to settings, data controls, and toggle off. Improve the model for everyone. 

Claude doesn't train on convos by default, but just double check and in notion, review your workspace data settings because you want the memory to be able to remain, but you don't want to be training the model on your sensitive business data, if that's the transcripts that you're providing. 

So, which recording tool is the best for you and your company? 

I would say if you're a solo founder or with a team of five or less, start with Otter. It's clean, it's easy, it's secure, totally great. I use Otter with my team and my clients. 

If you have a team of five or more and you're on some sort of enterprise solution, you can use fireflies. It integrates with Slack. Other CRMs and it keeps everyone accountable. 

If you're already using Notion, keep going because Notion can run the whole workflow. Agenda notes, follow ups, the whole thing. 

And then if you want chat based AI that remembers your meetings, use Chat GT Plus or Claude Pro. 

There you go. Pick one. Set it up. This week you will be shocked at what a difference it makes to be able to record.

And here's what it feels like when it really works. You walk out of a 30 minute meeting that used to be 90 minutes, that's an hour back to yourself. You remember what got decided and so does everybody else. Your team can actually execute because they know what to do. Your team also comes prepared for the next meeting, and you guys can make decisions in the room instead of processing.

And the best of all, you get your Fridays or your mental space and your CEO energy back. You're no longer the bottleneck. You're the strategist, the visionary, the leader, the builder, the boss. 

So here's what's to remember. 

Meetings don't suck, but maybe your system does. Use AI before, during, and after to make your whole meeting process better.

Set up recurring chats to make your AI smarter over time. Turn off model training and protect your data and security and privacy. We're hitting that deep in another episode, so hang in there. Your meetings should move your business forward, not drain your soul. 

And if you'd like a little more support with that, join us in the AI for Founders Free Community on LinkedIn. This is where we test tools, share wins, and talk about systems that actually work. The links in the show notes and heads up, we're going into AI meeting security in another episode soon. Recording protocols, client privacy, how not to get sued because of your transcription bot. 

So before we go, here's your assignment.

Pick one recurring meeting this week. Start a dedicated chat for it in chat, GPT or Claude. Let it build your agenda, record with consent, and then use AI to generate your follow up. 

Then tag me on LinkedIn or Instagram and tell me how much time you saved. 

You don't have to wonder what it's like to have your time back. You can build it this week with ease. 

I'll see you soon. Lovies. In the meantime, go forth and be that founder.