NotebookLM Tutorial: 6 Use Cases You Haven't Thought Of

About this video

The tutorial presents Google’s NotebookLM as a ChatGPT-like tool restricted to source material you provide, so answers stay grounded in that set. You create a notebook and add up to 50 sources as documents, audio, Google Docs or Slides, website links, YouTube videos, PDFs, or pasted text. Using fall-of-the-Roman-Empire articles as the study example, adding a source produces a Notebook Guide with a summary, suggested questions, and options such as an FAQ, study guide, briefing doc, and an audio podcast discussion; clicking a circled citation number in a chat answer shows the underlying source context. Beyond basic study, the creator walks through six unexpected uses: compiling dense or conflicting research papers and chatting as if with their authors, using study guides, notes, and briefing docs to learn them; summarizing books, illustrated with a PDF of Product-Led Growth by Wes Bush turned into an FAQ; turning a book plus your own material, here the Kevin Cookie Company website, into a personal coach, including a customized podcast requested to run about 10 to 20 minutes and focus on practical advice for a new app; gathering YouTube videos on acute and chronic pain to prepare better questions for a doctor, with repeated warnings that this is not medical advice; drafting an annual review for a fictional IT worker named Michael by uploading coworkers’ praise emails saved as PDFs and asking for a review highlighting performance, impact, and company values; and selling yourself better in interviews by uploading a resume and generating a customized podcast telling a hiring manager the story behind accomplishments, such as a 30% increase in network stability. He cautions that NotebookLM is a research tool from Google Labs and says he would not get too attached to it for long-term projects.

Key takeaways

• Create a notebook and add up to 50 sources — documents, audio, Google Docs/Slides, links, YouTube videos, or text — so chat answers draw only on that material.
• Use the Notebook Guide outputs — FAQ, study guide, briefing doc, and podcast — plus circled citations to check answers against the original sources.
• Dense or conflicting papers become manageable by uploading them together and asking questions, saving useful chat responses as notes.
• Combine a book with your own website or documents to get coaching tailored to your business, and customize the generated podcast by topic, audience, and length.
• Upload saved praise emails to draft an annual review, or a resume to generate an interview-oriented podcast — but treat pain-related research as doctor-conversation prep, not medical advice.

Episode details: published November 7, 2024 · 10:13 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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