I stopped typing during discovery calls and started looking at people again. The summary that arrives afterwards writes the quote draft, the note in my CRM, and the first bones of the event guide — and the whole thing costs nothing.
You cannot listen properly and take notes properly at the same time. I spent years pretending otherwise. A couple would be telling me something that mattered — the grandmother flying in who may not manage the whole day, the fact that one of them hates being photographed and is dreading the portraits — and I'd be looking at a keyboard, typing the last thing they said and missing the thing they were saying.
And the alternative is worse. Don't take notes, and you get to be present for forty minutes, then discover on Thursday that you've done four calls this week and can no longer reliably say which couple had the 200-guest wedding upstate and which one asked about the second photographer. So you write the quote from memory, and the quote is slightly generic, and it lands like a template — because it is one.
Granola. There's a free tier and it's what I started on, and for a while I assumed it was a transcription tool, which undersells it. It listens to your computer's audio during the call while you jot the odd rough note — three words, a name, a number — and afterwards it turns that into a structured, readable summary using what was actually said. You're not writing minutes. You're writing the occasional breadcrumb and letting it fill in around them.
The part that matters for our work is that nothing joins the call. There's no bot appearing in the participant list, no awkward "Notetaker has entered the meeting" while you're trying to build rapport with someone about the most expensive day of their life. It's just you on screen.
Because nothing announces itself, a couple has no way of knowing unless you tell them. So tell them. I say a version of this in the first thirty seconds, every time:
"Before we start — I use an AI notetaker on my calls so I can actually listen to you instead of typing. It writes up a summary for me afterwards. Totally fine if you'd rather I didn't, just say."
Nobody has ever objected. Several people have said they wished their other vendors did it. It takes eight seconds and it converts a thing that could feel sneaky into a thing that signals you're organised — which is the impression you want anyway.
Be aware this isn't only manners. Rules on recording and transcribing conversations vary by where you and your client are sitting, and some places require everyone on the call to agree, not just you. I'm not going to pretend to know your jurisdiction. Ask once, out loud, at the start, and you've solved the courtesy problem and most of the legal one in the same sentence.
The notes aren't the point. What happens in the twenty minutes after the call is the point.
Guest count, venue, date, the coverage they asked about, the add-on one of them raised and the other went quiet about. I feed the summary through the prompt below and get a quote draft built from what was actually said — so when it lands, it reads like it was written for them, because it was.
Five lines: what matters to them, who's actually deciding, and the one thing that will win or lose this booking. Six weeks later when they reply, I read those five lines before I answer and I sound like someone who remembers them. That's not a trick — I do remember them. I just needed the reminder.
Half of what ends up in the pre-wedding event guide gets said on the very first call, months before anyone opens that document. The relative who shouldn't be seated near the other relative. The first-look question. Catching it at the point it's mentioned means I'm not asking them to repeat themselves later, which is exactly the sort of thing couples notice.
Paste your call summary in at the bottom. The rules in it are doing the real work — an AI given a meeting summary will cheerfully produce a confident, tidy quote containing a guest count nobody ever said.
Below is the summary of a discovery call with a couple about their [wedding]. Turn it into two things. 1. A QUOTE DRAFT, containing only what they actually told me: - their names, the date, the venue or venues, guest count - the coverage they asked about, and any add-on either of them raised - what I recommended on the call, and the reason I gave - anything they said about budget, in their own words - anything I promised to send, check, or find out 2. A SHORT INTERNAL NOTE for their client record — five lines maximum: what matters most to them, who is actually making the decision, and the one thing that will win or lose this booking. RULES: - Invent nothing. If something wasn't discussed, write "not discussed" rather than filling the gap with something plausible. - Flag every name, number, date and venue you are not fully confident about, in a list at the end, so I can check them before any of it reaches a contract. - Quote them directly where their own wording is better than a summary of it. - Write in my voice: plain, warm, no marketing language, no exclamation marks. [paste the call summary here]
That "flag everything you're unsure about" instruction earns its place the first time you use it. Names get misheard constantly — venue names especially, and anything said quickly over a bad connection. A flagged list of six things to double-check takes a minute to work through. A wrong date in a quote is a different kind of morning.
The free tier keeps a limited history. At the time of writing it holds your most recent 25 notes, which is fine for a while and not fine forever if you're doing a couple of calls a week. This is genuinely the moment to either pay or make a habit of moving the important parts into your CRM straight after the call — which you should be doing anyway, because your client record is where that information belongs, not a notes app.
It gets things wrong. Confidently. It will render a venue as something phonetically close and completely different, and it does not know which of the two people on the call is the one whose name goes on the contract. Treat the summary as a good first draft written by someone who was paying attention but doesn't know your business — because that's exactly what it is.
And it doesn't make you a better listener by itself. It removes the excuse. What you do with the forty minutes it frees up is still on you: ask the second question, sit through the pause, notice the one who's gone quiet. The tool just means you can look at them while you do it.
These are the systems my studio actually runs on, and I publish the exact prompt for each one — not a summary of it, the thing I used. Take them, change the details to fit how you work.
Get the discovery call guide— Alex Knight
No. 1: booking page · No. 2: feedback form · No. 3: package builder
No. 4: admin dashboard · No. 5: team onboarding · No. 6: the full stack