AI Note Taking For Fast Moving Teams | Emily Eckert from Super Normal

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Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Emily Eckert from Super Normal. How you doing today, Emily?

Emily Eckert: I’m good. I’m very good. Thank you for having me on.

Ernesto: No, it’s good to have you on today’s show. And myself and our listeners are curious—Super Normal. What is Super Normal, right? It sounds not normal at all. So in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more about Super Normal?

Emily Eckert: Yeah, of course. So Super Normal is a startup. We build AI tools that make work… well, less work. So right now we are focused on the work that happens in meetings and keeping teams aligned and fast moving by taking detailed meeting notes and distributing those notes for teams.

There’s so much of the work that we do, I think everywhere, it happens in meetings. But it takes a tremendous amount of time and diligence to accurately record what happens in meetings and to share that information so everybody stays aligned. So SuperNormal does all of that work for you.

We take detailed meeting notes for all your meetings. They include a transcript, a summary, action items, and we keep them organized in a centralized and searchable place for you and for your team.

What’s also really special about SuperNormal’s Meeting Notes is that you can fully customize your SuperNormal experience and your notes with AI to get the experience and the notes that you want.

This is my favorite part of SuperNormal because it allows me to go back to conversations a week, a month, two months later, and I can prompt it and ask it for new insights and new notes that might not have been top of mind then, but are really important now.

So just overall SuperNormal is here to handle a bunch of work for you and to keep your team aligned and fast moving and on the same page so that you can focus on the work that only you can do.

Ernesto: That’s awesome to hear. I think everybody wants something like that, right? There’s always one designated person in a call every time and at the end of the call everybody’s asking, “Hey, can you send everything?” So yeah—great stuff.

Emily Eckert: For most of my career, that was me. I was the person responsible for taking and sending the notes. So this product is particularly special to me.

Ernesto: Definitely—the hardship, the pressure at the end, right? “Hey, can you send me the notes? What did we talk about? Are you sure?” There’s so many questions involved. So definitely there’s a lot of pressure on the person who takes notes. I’m glad that Super Normal can help us out with this.

So then, are your clients only business or classrooms as well? Who’s your vertical, your segment that you guys like to go for?

Emily Eckert: Yeah, so we’re really built for teams that have lots of internal and external meetings, so they need to keep a lot of people aligned. That includes, namely teams at marketing agencies who have a lot of clients. Sales teams is another vertical.

But we also serve project and product teams who need to keep everyone aligned across various functions like product engineering and design. That’s who we’re serving right now.

We do have students who use us to cover lectures and things like that, but we’re really focused right now on helping teams and companies up level through notes and through that alignment value problem.

Ernesto: Okay. Awesome. Great to hear. And as far as marketing efforts from your side, in order to get those people inside the door to use Super Normal, what would you say is your top client acquisition channel that’s working best for you guys right now?

Emily Eckert: Yeah. So right now—and this is very humbling and I think a testament to the product—the majority of our new customers learn about Super Normal through word of mouth. They find out about us from a friend or a teammate, or by receiving notes from a meeting that they attended.

Part of that is because we’re still really small, definitely in startup mode, focusing on those organic channels. Our other biggest acquisition channels are organic search.

What’s been really surprising about PLG and organic search is when you approach them in conjunction, they fortify the brand and they really amplify each other.

At SuperNormal—and I know I’ve said this, but I can’t say it enough—our team genuinely cares that work is easier, that it’s less mundane, that it’s more engaging for every team member. So teams are really doing the work that only they can do and not all of the little stuff.

I’ve personally dedicated most of my career to helping teams operate well, and everybody at SuperNormal is really passionate about that. We do that through the product and the sharing loops within the product, but we also do it through the content we create to support teams.

So we’re creating a lot of content that’s getting a lot of organic traction—how to make work easier through SuperNormal, but also other productivity hacks. When we do these things together, they really build a brand that’s about making work easier, and it’s authentic and delivers on its promise.

Ernesto: That’s great to hear. And while I am here on your website, Emily—what role does a website play for your client acquisition?

Emily Eckert: It’s really important for us because it’s our first impression. Most users, when they find out about us—even if they get notes—they still end up looking at the website. And it’s where people go to sign up. So very important for us.

I think the biggest strength of our site is how the design reflects our brand and our value prop and is incredibly authentic. We’re not just another AI SaaS tool—there are dozens of them—but we really care about making work life easier for people. And by extension, more fun. Work should be fun.

The design captures that, which is unique for a B2B SaaS brand.

However, the site is still limited. We’re always looking for new ways and new pages so we can create additional resources for people. So I’m excited—going into 2024 we have a bunch of ideas about new content and new pages that help people understand how SuperNormal can help them up level with their teams.

Ernesto: Definitely. And for our listeners, you can check them out at supernormal.com. Great tool for taking meeting notes.

Let’s switch gears a little bit, Emily, and talk about you as a leader. You’re the head of marketing there for SuperNormal—what are some key tasks you focus on in your day to day work?

Emily Eckert: I like this question because it’s such a different answer working at a startup versus a big company—and I’ve had the privilege of doing both.

At a startup, everyone wears lots of hats, me included. We have a tiny marketing team. Some days I’m focused on content creation and some days I’m focused on performance experiments.

But the two things I do every day that are really important to how we operate and grow right now:

First, I track our metrics. Every morning I look at about 60 metrics day over day, week over week, and month over month. It’s to understand the product, our users, and how they’re evolving. Things change rapidly, so I want a really good handle on how the machine is performing overall.

Second, because we’re a small team, I create content daily—social content, website content to drive organic search. I have a content calendar that’s jam packed every week. From memes to blog posts to new web pages—just all of that stuff.

Ernesto: Okay. Awesome. Great. Like you mentioned—startups, different hats. Something new every year, and going into 2024, I’m sure it’s going to get a lot busier.

Emily Eckert: A lot of stuff we want to do.

Ernesto: Oh, definitely. All right—let’s jump into our rapid fire section. Are you ready for them, Emily?

Emily Eckert: Okay, let’s try it.

Ernesto: First stop: what is the last book that you read?

Emily Eckert: The last book I read was Adam Grant’s new book about Hidden Potential. I think it’s called Hidden Potential. I’m a bit of an organizational sociology nut, so I really enjoyed it.

It also rang true with what SuperNormal does. The book explores how organizational structures and rituals shape our achievements and opportunities at work. One of my takeaways is how much potential there is with AI tools like SuperNormal to improve those structures and rituals so people can meet their potential and succeed faster.

Ernesto: That’s awesome. Great find there. Great read. Next up: what is one single thing that SuperNormal is focused on at the moment the most?

Emily Eckert: Right now we’re focused on improving all parts of the work that goes into before, during, and after meetings.

We take meeting notes and make sure they’re available to everyone afterwards, completely customizable, so every person can get what they need. But there’s a whole bunch of work we’re doing R&D on to improve the pre-meeting experience and the during-meeting experience. Those are the things we’re thinking about for 2024.

Ernesto: Okay. Awesome. Great. And if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing you’d want fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Emily Eckert: I’d love AI for scenario planning. Particularly in growth marketing, there are so many ways we can invest and we have limited resources, especially as a startup.

If we could identify initiatives and decisions and get scenario analysis with probability weighting using AI—that would be amazing. I think that would be really useful for marketers… probably for everyone, but especially marketers.

Ernesto: I would agree with that. Now, if there was one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Emily Eckert: Definitely market research and competitive analysis. Since I started my career in tech 10 years ago, every quarter I’ve done market research for whatever team I’m on.

It’s often overlooked but incredibly important for marketing and product development. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but I’d love a tool that could do it for me.

And I think we’ve all heard about OpenAI’s new GPTs product, which I’m excited to experiment with over break and see if I can build that for myself—it would save me so much time every quarter.

Ernesto: The way they made it sound—super easy to create. So that’s what they say.

Emily Eckert: Yeah.

Ernesto: Awesome. And lastly—I love asking this question. You’ve been with major companies: what is one piece of advice you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Emily Eckert: Learn how to make memes. No—that’s a joke, but also… I have really enjoyed learning how to make memes over the last quarter. You can check them out on our Instagram page, our handle is @supernormalapp.

But genuinely, I would have loved to strike a better balance of experience with brand and performance, especially for this role. I’ve had a winding career—I started in feature and TV production and had several years at Instagram.

At both places there’s a premium on storytelling and brand development, which is important and something I deeply appreciate. But there’s also the science behind marketing—the math, mechanics, formulas, tooling. That work is equally important.

I came to that side a bit later, and I’d invest in that learning sooner if I could.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great to hear that.

Emily, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what’s the one thing they should remember about SuperNormal?

Emily Eckert: We really do take the best, most insightful meeting notes, and using them in your workflows and with your team can make you faster moving and more aligned.

That’s something everybody on our team cares about a lot, and we hope that you try it and get that value out of it.

Ernesto: Definitely, guys. I know everybody has some meetings—because we’re all marketers and we’ve got meetings. Go check them out at supernormal.com. Spend less time writing, polishing, and sharing notes, and more time on work only you can do.

Thanks a lot, Emily, for being with us today. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents.

Emily Eckert: Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Ernesto: Thanks, Emily.

Emily Eckert: Bye Ernesto.