📝 Be The Most On-It Person In The Meeting

The most impressive person in your last meeting wasn’t the cleverest one. They were the one who’d spent ten minutes preparing while everyone else spent zero.

That’s the open secret. Most people skim the invite on the way in and wing it. So being the on-it one comes down to ten minutes with a prompt, before you walk in.

This guide is about the meeting itself. What happens after it (actions, the follow-up email) is a different job, and it lives in Turn Every Client Call Into Actions.

The ten-minute brief

Set a calendar alert for ten minutes before anything that matters, or this won’t happen. Then paste this.

Nick this one:

You're briefing me before a meeting so I walk in as the sharpest person in it.

What it's about: [e.g. my coffee supplier of three years has announced a 12% price rise from next month]
Who's there and what they care about: [e.g. their rep, friendly, always says pricing is "set by head office"]
What I want out of it: [e.g. the rise capped at 5%, or phased over six months]
What's awkward: [e.g. I don't actually want to switch suppliers, but they don't know that]

If you can see my calendar, read the invite for [time] and use anything in it. If not, work from what I've written.

Give me:
1. Five lines on the situation as a sharp outsider would see it.
2. The three best questions I could ask. Ones that show I'm thinking ahead, not just keeping up.
3. The pushback I'm most likely to get, with one calm line answering each.
4. The one thing I should NOT bring up today.
5. Then give me the lot as a one-page document I can keep open in another tab.

Rules: work only from what I've given you and mark anything you're inferring as a guess. Short lines, no theory, nothing I'd have to memorise. Ask me up to three questions before you start.

The questions matter more than the answers. Everyone preps what to say. Almost nobody preps what to ask. “What would our order need to look like for better pricing?” flips a meeting from you defending to them offering, costs you nothing to deliver, and buys you thinking time while they answer.

The three-minute version

For the meeting you’d forgotten about until the reminder went off.

Nick this one:

Meeting in three minutes: [one line on what it is and what I want out of it, e.g. "call with a new client about a website quote, I want to leave with a budget number"].

Give me exactly three things, one line each: the thing I most need to remember, the best question to ask, and the pushback I should expect with my answer to it.

No preamble, no explanation, nothing I have to scroll. Just the three lines.

Being present in the room

Once you’ve got a brief, the only job left during the meeting is listening properly, which is hard while you’re writing things down.

Two ways round that. Take deliberately messy fragments: “J says Q3 budget maybe, waiting on finance” is perfect, because your notes only have to be good enough for Claude to untangle later, not good enough for a human to read.

Or take none at all. If your meetings happen on video, Fireflies (affiliate link, free plan is fine) sits in the call, transcribes it, and connects straight to Claude. Say so when you start: “I’ve got a notetaker running so I can actually listen.” Nobody has ever minded, and if someone does, switch it off.

What the brief actually changes

Take that supplier meeting. Without ten minutes of prep you open with a grumble and take whatever comes back.

With it, you know the pushback (“our costs have gone up too”) and your answer (“I’d expect some rise. 12% in one jump is what I can’t do”). You know your best question. You know the one thing not to say out loud, which is that switching suppliers would be a nightmare for you.

Same meeting. Completely different position.

Honestly, the limits

It won’t attend for you. The brief sharpens what you say, you still have to say it.

It only knows what you type. Claude has no idea about the history between you and this supplier unless you tell it.

And it can’t fix a meeting that shouldn’t exist. Although “should this meeting exist?” is a fair thing to ask it.

One discretion note: your brief contains your reads on other people’s motivations. Keep it to roles rather than full names, and keep the output to yourself. The follow-up email is for sharing. The brief is not.

Before your next one

Put a ten-minute alert on the next meeting in your calendar that you actually care about. When it goes off, paste the first prompt.

That’s one meeting handled. The Claude Kickstart sets Claude up around your whole trade, with five real jobs handed over and a playbook for the work you actually do. £47, one weekend.