September 21, 2025 • 13 mins
** Book in for Inventium’s GenAI Productivity Upgrade here: https://inventium.com.au/genai-cohort/ **
Struggling to get AI to write emails that sound like you? AI expert Neo Aplin joins Amantha to share how to train tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot to act like your own email-savvy executive assistant.
Inventium’s GenAI lead Neo Aplin breaks down:
- Why most people get poor email outputs from AI
- The critical context AI needs to draft great emails
- How to build a custom email assistant using ChatGPT projects
- What to include in your tone and style guide
- When it's actually worth using AI for email (and when it's not)
Plus, Neo shares a clever workaround for using AI to answer repetitive work questions—without it needing to read your whole inbox.
Whether you're dealing with a mountain of email or just want replies that actually sound like you, this episode is packed with practical advice for making AI work smarter.
My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/
Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)
Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)
If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe
Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.
Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au
Credits:
Host: Amantha Imber
Sound Engineer: Martin Imber
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you've ever asked AI to write an email for
you and ended up with something completely off, maybe too formal,
too vague, or just not you, You're not alone.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm joined by Inventium's AI expert, Neo Applin to unpack
where most people go wrong when using AI for email
and how to fix it. Neo shares some very practical
strategies for churning Chat, GPT, Claude, and even Microsoft co
Pilot into the ultimate email assistant. You will walk away
(00:37):
with a smarter and faster way to tackle your inbox.
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor
Amantha Imber. Two years ago, I completely overhauled how I
(00:58):
work with jen Ai and I'm now saving over forty
hours every single week. That is no exaggeration and that
is exactly why my company, Inventium, created the Genai Productivity Upgrade.
It's a twelve week course designed to move you from
Jenai dabbler to productivity machine. There is no fluff, just
(01:20):
practical strategies that will pay off from week one, saving
you at least ten hours every single week. We are
going to teach you how to automate the grant work.
Use AI as your second brain to excel at your job.
Learn how to create AI agents that we knew back
hours every time you use them, and so much more so.
Whether you're a complete beginner or already using AI, we
(01:43):
have got you covered. We start with prompting fundamentals and
we go all the way through to advanced automations and
agentic AI. We kick off on October fifteen and spots
are limited. Visit inventium dot com dot au, forward slash
Genai hyphen cohort to secure your place now and yes
that's a long link. It's also in the show notes.
(02:03):
If you're looking for it and you've literally got nothing
to lose, there's a seven day money back guarantee. So
go to the show notes hop on the link and
join our program today. So where do most people go
wrong when they ask AI to write emails for them?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Really two parts to that. The first part is drafting
the email, which people obviously think of when they're getting
AI to write anything, But the other one is about
getting the context that it needs to be able to
write an email for you for the purpose you're trying
to write that email for So the main problem I
think for most people is that context part, which is
(02:41):
who are you talking to in this email? What are
the conversations you've had before, what does your organization do
versus what they do? All those kind of things. That's
the hard thing to put in for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And so why is a lack of context such a problem?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, without that context, AI is going to assume. It's
either going to assume you're best friends and you've worked
together forever, or maybe it's a first contact, or it
might think that you're talking about this project for the
very first time, but in reality, you've been working with
this person for three months. Without that context, AI is
only going to guess. And here's the thing about guessing,
it's probably going to guess it wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Okay, Now, is this different between different GENAI tools? Because
I'm imagining in co pilot, because it can access all
of your inbox, you do get that context or is
that not quite right?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
You do, But there's a catch, And the catch is
you've got to tell the AI to read the emails
between you and that person so that it understands ah, okay,
there is background and context and rather than just saying, hey,
read all the emails between Amantha and I. It might
be read the emails between Amanthra and I with project
X in the subject line or something like that. So
(03:55):
it makes sure it reads it and it gives you
a summary of it. That way effectually thinks out. Then
it has the context. Either that or you provide a
briefing document.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Okay, so let's talk about this because I want to
know what is the ideal solution with with any of
the Jenai platforms that people are using, whether that be Chat,
GPT or Claude or Gemini or co Pilot being the
main one.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So what do we do first? Work with it like
it was a brand new EA. Why not. We'll use
that as an example. So you wouldn't go to a
brand new EA and say, write me an email to Amantha. Go.
What you'd say is, hey, Amantha, i've been working on
this project. Here's what we've been doing. Now, before you
write the email, here's how I like you to write
(04:41):
my emails and my style and my voice wise kind
of things. Okay, Now, with all that background, write me
an email to Amantha. Because other than that, if you
just got a brand new EA and you said, write
me an email. Of course they're going to get it wrong,
but you're not going to get grumpy at that EA
saying you've done a crap job instead of you go,
I didn't give you the background. AI is just the same.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay. So we've got a briefing document that talks about
your company, your role in the company, and key background info.
What about how we're sounding in an email? Because I
know when I write emails they're not overly formal whereas
other people might be. So do we also need to
talk about that? Is that a different document? How does
(05:22):
that work?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Depends on how you want to do it. Some people
put their voice and style guide within their briefing document.
Other people have it.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Separate and hang on what's a voice and style guide?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Okay, so first off, some tools have a voice and
style guide. So for example, Claude says, how do you
want to write this? Do you want to be friendly
and approachable? Or sometimes even the cloudical analyze your writing?
But what I recommend people do is you get AI
to analyze the way you write, to say, what's my voice?
(05:55):
What's my personality? How do I sound like? If you're bubbly?
Is a person then you kind of want bubble to
come through in your writing. Same thing with style, to
get it to analyze the style, so to use short,
punchy sentences. Are you like a Hemingway kind of person
or do you have a nice, long, rambly kind of sentences?
Do you use lots of metaphors and similars those kind
of things? So, if you get AI to analyze your writing,
(06:18):
it will then be able to use that analysis for
other pieces of writing you've got. So what you can
do is analyze the writing that'll have your voice and style,
so you can give that as well as all the
project briefing, like hey, this is what Amantha and I
do or this is what I do. So it's got
the business context or the relationship context or the project context.
Plus then it's got how you want to write. Whether
(06:40):
they're two documents or one doesn't really matter as long
as AI has both those things.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And so then with those documents, am I attaching those
every time I start a new thread in AI? Or
am I creating a GPT or a project? What is
the best way to set this up?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And this is one of the problems with AI. It's
not self evident. They make it as complicated as they can,
and each of them has a stupid different name. One's
an agent, one's a gem, one's a projector yeah, okay,
it is a problem. So what I do recommend you
do is create them as something that is reusable, and
depending upon your tool, your reusable one might have a
(07:22):
different name. So if you're in chat JPT or you're
in claude, I recommend a project and projects, you can
upload those documents and so that each new chat under
a project, it's already got those documents and so has
already read them and then can actually start talking turkey
And can.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I just ask why a project as opposed to a GPT.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
You could do it in a GPT. There's no problems
with that. I like projects because each chat you have
with that project is associated with that project. So that's
one of the things I do like about the projects.
But you could absolutely create it as a GPT that
has your background and your voice within it, and you
(08:07):
then have that as a tool, and that's similarly what
you're going to do. If you're in Microsoft Land, then
you'll be using an agent, which is not like a project.
It's more like a GPT. It's more like a GEM
which is for Gemini. So, as I said, very confusing.
So if you're in the I'll go through the four.
If you're in Chlaude, create a project. If you're in
(08:28):
chat TOPT, create a project. You could create a GPT,
but i'd recommend project. If you're in copilot, you create
an agent. I think would be a great way to
do that. You could also create a notebook for that,
but i'd create an agent probably, And if you're in
the Google system, then i'd create a GEM.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Okay, And one note on copilot because I think you
mentioned you need to ask it to summarize the thread
first before you go into the agent, Can you just
briefly talk about what that workflow is in co pilot?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, for all of them, you need to give that background,
particularly about the conversation you're about to have. How do
you give it that background? Or you could You've got
to find that somewhere, either go to type it in
or you've got to ask some tool what the background
is for that relationship me and Amantha working on that
project X, that kind of stuff. If you're in copilot,
(09:24):
you can just say tell me about or summarize that.
The last emails that I've had between me and this
person about this topic, and it will then write that
down and then you can use that as additional context
to feed your AI, so then it doesn't just assume
things about your email, and it then knows what the
next step on that conversation is.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Maybe this is a stupid question. Should we be using
AI for every single email that we write?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Neo, no way on Earth for most of them. Like
if if it's a quick email, then it'll take way
too much time, so you don't need that. Use it
for ones where there's a little bit of nuance needed,
or perhaps there's where I need to have, like for example,
email introductions. I know that it's great to do introduction.
(10:12):
Hey June, I'd like to introduce you to Bob. Those
kind of emails. So getting AI to write those ones
is great because I find them hard to write because
you know, you've got to get them right and all
those kind of things. But most emails, i'd say probably
sixty percent of emails probably you don't need AI. They
just really transactional, functional ones. Yes, I'll get it done
by Tuesday. You don't need AI for that. But certainly
(10:35):
for other emails might be sales email, it might be
customers support email, people asking about your products and services.
Those emails are great to have in AI because you
can build in the background and context about your business
and all those kind of things, and then you can
answer questions using your AI. So those are brilliant for AI.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So let's just walk through just a few of those.
Where are the best use cases for using AI to
write your emails?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The easiest ones are the we'll call them the Rinston
repeat the We've done it plenty of times before. So
if you're in HR, you're going to get the same
kind of questions day in day out, which might be
how many weeks leave do we get? It might be
what are the t's and c's of our contracts and
(11:26):
those kind of things. So what you could do is
create a briefing document with all those kind of questions
and answers in it, and so then you just fitted
a question and then write that email for you with
those answers. So those ones are really good. Same thing
as I said before with sales answering questions about products
or services, those things are really good as well. Help
(11:46):
desk and support AI is amazing for that. So you're
then not formatting all these emails had a client who's
a hotel a while back, and being able to answer
questions about your hotel, how many rooms, what times the
paul is open, all those kind of things. AI is
amazing for writing those kind of things. For other things
like project updates and things like that, it's a little
(12:10):
harder because you need to make sure it's got that context,
so you might need to get it to search those
emails from Amantha and I for a project X and
things like that. But for those transactional day and day emails,
I highly recommend you using AI for that. With background
briefing which might have your products or services or things
like that, and also your voice and style so it
(12:31):
sounds like you when it gets out of the AI.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Thank you so much, Neo, so many great tips for
really getting the most out of AI when it comes
to email.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Thank you, Thank you so.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I Remember if you want to turn your AI into
your email assystem, just starts more. Create a briefing document
about your role and a simple writing style guide, and
then upload that into a project of your AI tool
of choice. That one simple step can transform your inbox
into something far less painful and if you're looking to
(13:08):
take your AI skills up to the next level. Inventium's
Genai productivity upgrade is kicking off on October fifteen, and
there is a link to more info and bookings in
the show notes. If you like today's show, make sure
you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted
when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on
(13:29):
the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the
Cool And Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber
for doing the sound mix.
If you've ever asked AI to write an email for
you and ended up with something completely off, maybe too formal,
too vague, or just not you, You're not alone.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
I'm joined by Inventium's AI expert, Neo Applin to unpack
where most people go wrong when using AI for email
and how to fix it. Neo shares some very practical
strategies for churning Chat, GPT, Claude, and even Microsoft co
Pilot into the ultimate email assistant. You will walk away
(00:37):
with a smarter and faster way to tackle your inbox.
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor
Amantha Imber. Two years ago, I completely overhauled how I
(00:58):
work with jen Ai and I'm now saving over forty
hours every single week. That is no exaggeration and that
is exactly why my company, Inventium, created the Genai Productivity Upgrade.
It's a twelve week course designed to move you from
Jenai dabbler to productivity machine. There is no fluff, just
(01:20):
practical strategies that will pay off from week one, saving
you at least ten hours every single week. We are
going to teach you how to automate the grant work.
Use AI as your second brain to excel at your job.
Learn how to create AI agents that we knew back
hours every time you use them, and so much more so.
Whether you're a complete beginner or already using AI, we
(01:43):
have got you covered. We start with prompting fundamentals and
we go all the way through to advanced automations and
agentic AI. We kick off on October fifteen and spots
are limited. Visit inventium dot com dot au, forward slash
Genai hyphen cohort to secure your place now and yes
that's a long link. It's also in the show notes.
(02:03):
If you're looking for it and you've literally got nothing
to lose, there's a seven day money back guarantee. So
go to the show notes hop on the link and
join our program today. So where do most people go
wrong when they ask AI to write emails for them?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Really two parts to that. The first part is drafting
the email, which people obviously think of when they're getting
AI to write anything, But the other one is about
getting the context that it needs to be able to
write an email for you for the purpose you're trying
to write that email for So the main problem I
think for most people is that context part, which is
(02:41):
who are you talking to in this email? What are
the conversations you've had before, what does your organization do
versus what they do? All those kind of things. That's
the hard thing to put in for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
And so why is a lack of context such a problem?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, without that context, AI is going to assume. It's
either going to assume you're best friends and you've worked
together forever, or maybe it's a first contact, or it
might think that you're talking about this project for the
very first time, but in reality, you've been working with
this person for three months. Without that context, AI is
only going to guess. And here's the thing about guessing,
it's probably going to guess it wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Okay, Now, is this different between different GENAI tools? Because
I'm imagining in co pilot, because it can access all
of your inbox, you do get that context or is
that not quite right?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
You do, But there's a catch, And the catch is
you've got to tell the AI to read the emails
between you and that person so that it understands ah, okay,
there is background and context and rather than just saying, hey,
read all the emails between Amantha and I. It might
be read the emails between Amanthra and I with project
X in the subject line or something like that. So
(03:55):
it makes sure it reads it and it gives you
a summary of it. That way effectually thinks out. Then
it has the context. Either that or you provide a
briefing document.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Okay, so let's talk about this because I want to
know what is the ideal solution with with any of
the Jenai platforms that people are using, whether that be Chat,
GPT or Claude or Gemini or co Pilot being the
main one.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So what do we do first? Work with it like
it was a brand new EA. Why not. We'll use
that as an example. So you wouldn't go to a
brand new EA and say, write me an email to Amantha. Go.
What you'd say is, hey, Amantha, i've been working on
this project. Here's what we've been doing. Now, before you
write the email, here's how I like you to write
(04:41):
my emails and my style and my voice wise kind
of things. Okay, Now, with all that background, write me
an email to Amantha. Because other than that, if you
just got a brand new EA and you said, write
me an email. Of course they're going to get it wrong,
but you're not going to get grumpy at that EA
saying you've done a crap job instead of you go,
I didn't give you the background. AI is just the same.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay. So we've got a briefing document that talks about
your company, your role in the company, and key background info.
What about how we're sounding in an email? Because I
know when I write emails they're not overly formal whereas
other people might be. So do we also need to
talk about that? Is that a different document? How does
(05:22):
that work?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Depends on how you want to do it. Some people
put their voice and style guide within their briefing document.
Other people have it.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Separate and hang on what's a voice and style guide?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Okay, so first off, some tools have a voice and
style guide. So for example, Claude says, how do you
want to write this? Do you want to be friendly
and approachable? Or sometimes even the cloudical analyze your writing?
But what I recommend people do is you get AI
to analyze the way you write, to say, what's my voice?
(05:55):
What's my personality? How do I sound like? If you're bubbly?
Is a person then you kind of want bubble to
come through in your writing. Same thing with style, to
get it to analyze the style, so to use short,
punchy sentences. Are you like a Hemingway kind of person
or do you have a nice, long, rambly kind of sentences?
Do you use lots of metaphors and similars those kind
of things? So, if you get AI to analyze your writing,
(06:18):
it will then be able to use that analysis for
other pieces of writing you've got. So what you can
do is analyze the writing that'll have your voice and style,
so you can give that as well as all the
project briefing, like hey, this is what Amantha and I
do or this is what I do. So it's got
the business context or the relationship context or the project context.
Plus then it's got how you want to write. Whether
(06:40):
they're two documents or one doesn't really matter as long
as AI has both those things.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And so then with those documents, am I attaching those
every time I start a new thread in AI? Or
am I creating a GPT or a project? What is
the best way to set this up?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And this is one of the problems with AI. It's
not self evident. They make it as complicated as they can,
and each of them has a stupid different name. One's
an agent, one's a gem, one's a projector yeah, okay,
it is a problem. So what I do recommend you
do is create them as something that is reusable, and
depending upon your tool, your reusable one might have a
(07:22):
different name. So if you're in chat JPT or you're
in claude, I recommend a project and projects, you can
upload those documents and so that each new chat under
a project, it's already got those documents and so has
already read them and then can actually start talking turkey
And can.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I just ask why a project as opposed to a GPT.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
You could do it in a GPT. There's no problems
with that. I like projects because each chat you have
with that project is associated with that project. So that's
one of the things I do like about the projects.
But you could absolutely create it as a GPT that
has your background and your voice within it, and you
(08:07):
then have that as a tool, and that's similarly what
you're going to do. If you're in Microsoft Land, then
you'll be using an agent, which is not like a project.
It's more like a GPT. It's more like a GEM
which is for Gemini. So, as I said, very confusing.
So if you're in the I'll go through the four.
If you're in Chlaude, create a project. If you're in
(08:28):
chat TOPT, create a project. You could create a GPT,
but i'd recommend project. If you're in copilot, you create
an agent. I think would be a great way to
do that. You could also create a notebook for that,
but i'd create an agent probably, And if you're in
the Google system, then i'd create a GEM.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Okay, And one note on copilot because I think you
mentioned you need to ask it to summarize the thread
first before you go into the agent, Can you just
briefly talk about what that workflow is in co pilot?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, for all of them, you need to give that background,
particularly about the conversation you're about to have. How do
you give it that background? Or you could You've got
to find that somewhere, either go to type it in
or you've got to ask some tool what the background
is for that relationship me and Amantha working on that
project X, that kind of stuff. If you're in copilot,
(09:24):
you can just say tell me about or summarize that.
The last emails that I've had between me and this
person about this topic, and it will then write that
down and then you can use that as additional context
to feed your AI, so then it doesn't just assume
things about your email, and it then knows what the
next step on that conversation is.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Maybe this is a stupid question. Should we be using
AI for every single email that we write?
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Neo, no way on Earth for most of them. Like
if if it's a quick email, then it'll take way
too much time, so you don't need that. Use it
for ones where there's a little bit of nuance needed,
or perhaps there's where I need to have, like for example,
email introductions. I know that it's great to do introduction.
(10:12):
Hey June, I'd like to introduce you to Bob. Those
kind of emails. So getting AI to write those ones
is great because I find them hard to write because
you know, you've got to get them right and all
those kind of things. But most emails, i'd say probably
sixty percent of emails probably you don't need AI. They
just really transactional, functional ones. Yes, I'll get it done
by Tuesday. You don't need AI for that. But certainly
(10:35):
for other emails might be sales email, it might be
customers support email, people asking about your products and services.
Those emails are great to have in AI because you
can build in the background and context about your business
and all those kind of things, and then you can
answer questions using your AI. So those are brilliant for AI.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So let's just walk through just a few of those.
Where are the best use cases for using AI to
write your emails?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The easiest ones are the we'll call them the Rinston
repeat the We've done it plenty of times before. So
if you're in HR, you're going to get the same
kind of questions day in day out, which might be
how many weeks leave do we get? It might be
what are the t's and c's of our contracts and
(11:26):
those kind of things. So what you could do is
create a briefing document with all those kind of questions
and answers in it, and so then you just fitted
a question and then write that email for you with
those answers. So those ones are really good. Same thing
as I said before with sales answering questions about products
or services, those things are really good as well. Help
(11:46):
desk and support AI is amazing for that. So you're
then not formatting all these emails had a client who's
a hotel a while back, and being able to answer
questions about your hotel, how many rooms, what times the
paul is open, all those kind of things. AI is
amazing for writing those kind of things. For other things
like project updates and things like that, it's a little
(12:10):
harder because you need to make sure it's got that context,
so you might need to get it to search those
emails from Amantha and I for a project X and
things like that. But for those transactional day and day emails,
I highly recommend you using AI for that. With background
briefing which might have your products or services or things
like that, and also your voice and style so it
(12:31):
sounds like you when it gets out of the AI.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Thank you so much, Neo, so many great tips for
really getting the most out of AI when it comes
to email.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Thank you, Thank you so.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I Remember if you want to turn your AI into
your email assystem, just starts more. Create a briefing document
about your role and a simple writing style guide, and
then upload that into a project of your AI tool
of choice. That one simple step can transform your inbox
into something far less painful and if you're looking to
(13:08):
take your AI skills up to the next level. Inventium's
Genai productivity upgrade is kicking off on October fifteen, and
there is a link to more info and bookings in
the show notes. If you like today's show, make sure
you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted
when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on
(13:29):
the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the
Cool And Nation. A big thank you to Martin Nimber
for doing the sound mix.
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