July 13, 2026 • 41 mins
Meeting minutes are one of the most valuable records in Construction Administration, but they can also be one of the most time-consuming tasks. In this episode of What the RFI?, Matt Brennan shares how Granola AI has transformed the way he captures meeting notes, documents decisions, and follows up on action items across multiple construction projects.
Unlike traditional AI meeting assistants that rely on intrusive bots joining your calls, Granola works quietly in the background, allowing you to stay engaged in conversations while automatically organizing your notes into clear, searchable summaries. Whether you're attending Microsoft Teams meetings, walking a construction site, or taking an important phone call, Granola helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
Matt discusses why he moved away from other AI note-taking tools, how Granola fits into his daily Construction Administration workflow, and why this may be one of the most valuable AI productivity tools available today for architects, project managers, consultants, and contractors.
If you've ever struggled to remember what was discussed weeks or even months after a meeting, this episode is for you!
In this episode, we discuss:
- Why accurate meeting notes are critical in Construction Administration
- Granola AI vs. traditional AI meeting assistants
- Recording Microsoft Teams meetings without intrusive bots
- Capturing notes during site meetings and phone calls
- AI-generated meeting summaries and action items
- Organizing notes by project for quick retrieval
- Real-world productivity gains for architects and project managers
- Why AI should enhance your workflow—not replace your expertise
Chapters
- 00:00 - Introduction
- 03:00 - Why Meeting Minutes Matter
- 05:01 - Why I Switched to Granola AI
- 08:01 - What Makes Granola Different?
- 11:01 - Granola AI vs. Other AI Note Takers
- 15:00 - My Construction Administration Workflow
- 18:01 - Site Meetings, Phone Calls & Teams
- 22:01 - AI-Generated Meeting Summaries
- 26:01 - The Game-Changing Features
- 30:01 - AI Prompts & Custom Templates
- 34:01 - Project Organization & Search
- 38:01 - My Thoughts on AI in Construction
- 41:30 - Final Thoughts & Recommendation
Whether you're an architect, engineer, contractor, owner's representative, or Construction Administrator, this episode demonstrates how AI can help you spend less time documenting meetings and more time delivering successful projects.
Ready to give Granola AI a try? Use my referral link to receive an extra month free while supporting What the RFI?:
https://www.granola.ai?via=matt-brennan
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
Is there a better way oftaking your meeting notes?
Actually, yes, there is.And we're gonna dive into that today.
Let's get into it.(upbeat music)
Welcome to What the RFI.I'm Matt Brennan, and this
is the podcast all about CA.So today, we're gonna
(01:00:20):
talk about meeting notes.And with meeting notes, it's
something that we do daily.We do it at our monthly
construction site meetings.It's maybe a general phone call.
Maybe it's an in-person meeting.Maybe it's a client meeting.
It happens all throughout.And the question is,
how are you tracking it?And there's a lot of value of tracking it
because we're human beings.We can only digest so much.
(01:00:44):
And when you ask me, whatdid we talk about last week?
What did we talk about six months?What did we talk about 24 months ago
during the design process?That's where meeting notes are very key.
So today, we're gonna do,this is gonna be one of
three show part sessions.Okay?
And we're kind of reversing itbecause we're gonna get
(01:01:04):
into the end of this thingwhere we're gonna talk
about AI note takers.And I know it's kind of reversed.
Why wouldn't you start atthe beginning and build up?
Because I want to bringa new perspective to this
and think about today's technologyand how we can start to utilize it
in our day-to-day operations.All right?
So today we're gonnatalk about AI note takers.
(01:01:28):
Next show, we're going to talk aboutactually taking a
construction site meeting notes.And then the first show,
we're gonna talk about your initialkickoff construction.
So it's like I said, it'sa reverse way of doing it,
but there's somevalue in going that route
because you're gonna, again,I think it's gonna build up foundation
in a different unique wayfrom a learning perspective.
(01:01:49):
Okay?So like I said, today's show,
we're talking about an AI note takers.And there's a bunch
that we'll kind of bring upto the screen and go through it.
And like I said, I thinkwe'll bring some perspective
because again, you mightalready be taking notes.
So this episode isgonna be really key to that.
Now, if you'relistening, fantastic, love it.
(01:02:09):
This has always beenrecorded in the video format.
It's posted to theYouTube channel, what the RFI.
And I'm gonna be sharing my screen.I'm gonna do my absolute best to describe
what I'm talking about.But I think for the benefit,
if you wanna see this in action,go to the YouTube channel
and check it out there and see.But again, I'll explain as you're
listening on your driveor wherever you're doing
(01:02:31):
your run and that, okay?And of course, if you
check out the YouTube,like and subscribe, of
course, it always helps.So let's get right into it.
AI note takers, what is it?What's the difference between a general
taking your own meetingnotes and an AI note taker?
Well, of course, meeting notes,and we'll dive into
this in the next episode,is that you manually inputting it.
(01:02:52):
And hopefully you'recatching everything, right?
You're typing it, you'remaking your own physical notes.
Okay?In today's revolution of AI technology,
we have AI notetakers out there now, okay?
There's lots ofproducts in respect to that.
And almost think of like an AI note takeris that person in that courtroom
that's typing on a little typewriterand transcribing in real time, right?
(01:03:16):
You're basically bringingthat assistant into your meeting.
Okay?So that's, like I said,
I'm gonna show you how,because there's a couple of things
that we can get into this, okay?And in terms of AI
note takers, guess what?You've probably been
in a meeting already.You've been in that Zoom call,
you've been in that Googlemeets or that Teams call,
and that AI bot wantsto join the meeting.
(01:03:36):
You've already seenthis, you've been president,
and you've probablyraised your eyebrow going,
what's going on?Who is this?
What is this?I don't wanna be recorded.
I've had clients, I'vehad city officials saying,
we're not attending any meetingswhen there's an AI note taker, okay?
Reason being, do they notwanna be held accountable?
I don't know.But it's today's technology,
(01:03:58):
and there's some really powerful toolsthat you're gonna see
through this day's episode.So through some of the common ones
you've probably already seen isMicrosoft's Copilot used it.
Not impressed, don'twaste your time, to be honest.
One I did use for anumber of years was Fathom,
and this is one that was really good.It came in, it recorded
(01:04:20):
the call, it was a bot,and then afterwards you
could go and ask it questionsand that respect, but it
always had to join the meeting,and you always had to
rewatch stuff, okay?And then there was ReadAI,
which is very similar to that.And then there was one
that I was dabbling withcalled Decisions, and this one was linked
(01:04:41):
and it actually, you couldkinda set up the template.
It was kinda hokey,I've got one contractor
it uses on a weekly basis.They enjoy it, but it only uses Teams.
And today's episode iswe're gonna talk about Granola.
This is the one that I've enjoyed using.I've been using it for the
last almost six months now.I've been very, very impressed, okay?
(01:05:06):
And let's just be veryclear about this episode.
By Granola, Granoladid not reach out to me.
I reached out to them,and which they did give me
an awesome referral code,which I'll put in the link
in the description below.The referral code basically
gets you one full free month,which is great.
And it also gives me akickback and helps maintain
(01:05:28):
and pay for the show tocontinue being broadcast
on all the stream servicesthat you guys love to listen.
So let's get into it.Why did I select Granola?
Why?Like I said, I started six months ago,
getting back into thearchitectural field,
taking meeting notes daily,running monthly site meetings for a
number of key projects.At the end of the day,
(01:05:49):
it just made sense toget an AI note taker.
And I ran through the courses again.I tried my Thathom, I tried the ReAI.
And the one thing that really bothered mewith a lot of these apps is that they
need to join the call.And that would set a
bad taste to everyone.Sometimes even like a
(01:06:10):
contractor would boot itfrom the call, then that
was useless in my opinion.And my meetings aren't always online.
A good portion of them are,but typically I'm in person.
Or I'm just grabbing afew people from the staff
and running through a project design,and I need something I
can grab right there.I can't invite everyone to Teams,
even though we're in the flesh.So that was kind of my first thing.
(01:06:30):
I was looking for a notetaker that did not join the call.
That was the first thing.The other thing is I take notes.
I give our junior staff a hard timeif they come up to me and
they're looking for stuff to doand we start talking about stuff
and I see absolutely no writing down.I give them a hard time.
(01:06:51):
I'll literally tellthem, go grab their notebook,
come back and let's talkbecause there's no way
they're gonna comprehendeverything that we're talking about.
So I've always been on the side of thingswhere I need to take
my own personal notes.I'm really good at that
because it's soimportant that you're digesting
what the person says, you're listening,you're making notes of it,
(01:07:11):
and then you're goingback and you're right away,
you're not going, what did I miss?So it's really important.
So I wanted an app where I could actuallyput notes into it.
And that's where a lotof these AI note takers,
decisions and fathoms, you can't do that.You can't go in and
start adding your notesand combine and merge in the two.
(01:07:31):
That was just flat out.And this is where granola
made it a little different.As you actually type your notes,
and I'm gonna show you this in a second,it actually lets you write your notes
and then through the AI notation,it puts it back and forward.
And like I said, most of all,I needed a note taker
that I could take in person,online, when a phone call is received,
(01:07:54):
or just again, a group of people togetherin that spontaneous moment,
I wanted a note taker thatI could just grab and go.
And that's where granolareally starts to shine too.
And so when I discovered granola,it really checked all
these boxes and more.And there's a few
things that we're gonna showthat's just game changer
throughout this little demoand this introduction to it.
(01:08:16):
And a little bit about the company,when they started up,
they raised 20 millionin their first original
seed fund in the first week.So really impressive.
And then I think a few months later,they went up to 128 million.
So they definitely arevalued as a great company
in that sense, intoday's world and what it is.
And definitely, like I said,I can see why they've
(01:08:40):
got the funding for it.And one thing to just be really clear
about what reallyinterested me with granola as well,
because it's not an AIbot that joins the calls.
It doesn't record videoand it does not record audio.
So how does this work?Well, what it does is it
live transcribes everything.So as I'm talking to you,
(01:09:01):
and we're gonna pullthis up in a half a second,
you get to see how it all works.It live transcribes
the whole conversation.So I think there's some value about that.
Yes, you should betransparent with your clients
and your team thatyou're live transcribing this,
but you're not recordingit in both video and audio.
And I think that's a bit of,gives you a little bit more flexibility
(01:09:24):
where someone's like,"Well, I don't want to be recorded."
Well, you're not, right?I'm just getting texts
from this conversation.Same thing if you pulled up your iPhone
and use the voice memomap, voice app and everything,
you record your message, itdoes a lot of transcription.
That's all it's doing.It doesn't know exactly who's talking,
but once you start makingreference to that person,
then it kind of starts to figure outand starts connecting thoughts.
(01:09:46):
So without further ado,let's get into granola.
Like I said, if you're listening,I'm gonna do my best to kind
of describe what I'm doing,but if I jump over to the YouTube channel
and then watch it therebecause where I'm gonna
start to screen share thisright off the bat, get go.
So here we go, let's do this.So welcome to granola.
(01:10:07):
So the first thing Ijust want to point out,
when you set up and install it,the first thing it's going to do,
it's going to ask you toconnect it to your email.
And that's really important,whether it's your Gmail suite
or your Microsoft Office 365.And why is that important?
Well, it automaticallysyncs up your calendars.
And that is the most critical thingbecause the moment you jump into granola,
(01:10:29):
it's gonna look at allyour upcoming meetings.
And we'll dive into this elementof why this is beneficial in a minute.
So your calendar connects on the leftside and everything,
and you can hide it here.We've got all our spaces, our notebooks,
basically all for all my projects.Maybe you've got some
personal items in that sense.And then of course all the settings
(01:10:54):
and we'll get into thenitty gritty in a moment.
And of course there'sthe AI chat component,
which again, we're gonna doan extensive review of that.
So let's just get into a basic note.Let me just kind of
show you how this works.So as soon as I click on new note,
we're in production andyou'll see it's actually working
(01:11:15):
because it's live transcribing.If we were having a
conversation right now,it would be live
transcribing this and it's fantastic.And it would know
between the two components.And right away you
can add your own title.Now, teaser, it's going
to do that for you anyways,but I want control
(01:11:36):
because I like takingmy own physical notes.
So we're gonna callthis a granola CA demo.
And the way it works isyou can type in your notes.
This is where I add my notes.So you can just type it as you please.
(01:11:58):
But where it becomes really powerfulis basically we're
gonna do a number sign spaceand it turns into a
title and this is the intro.And from there, I'm
gonna go to the next lineand I'm gonna do a dash space
that's gonna automatically categorize it.So this is how you take your notes
as you normally would.So once you kind of get into this habit
of understanding how the program works,just these two simple methods,
(01:12:21):
your notes are gonna become very refined.So basically we did a
user intro to the UIand then we're going to basically demo
the live note taking.And you can keep going in there
and maybe you got off on just talkingand actually listening
(01:12:44):
and being part of it.And you forget what
you're doing and that's okay.That's where this is gonna go.
Sometimes when you're insome of these big meetings
and you get a littleconfused what's going on
and you've kind of dazed offor you're checking
emails and you're doing it.At the bottom here is this is where
this becomes really powerful.And I haven't seen this one
with any other note takers.You can basically, if
(01:13:06):
you've used chat GPT or cloudor any of these kind of AI
tools is we can talk to it.So they've got these
things called recipes.And again, we'll dive
into this a little deeperlater in the video.
So the first one, the one ofthe recipes that I like to use
and you can see that almost a millionhave used it as well
that have started sayingit's great is what did I miss?
(01:13:28):
Well, if you start to zone outis going to basically come up
and tell you what is going on.You can even make recipes
saying make me sound smartand it'll kind of take
what's happened in the transcriptsand put it together.
Maybe you want to suggest a questionand it's sometimes
these work really well.What I miss works really well.
It really, really does.And it goes into that detail.
(01:13:52):
So that's kind of apowerful thing with it.
We'll talk about where thisbecomes extremely powerful
later in this conversation.So we come through all this,
we've done our own physical notesand we're basically done with the call.
Thanks for joining us.And we're going to wrap it up.
(01:14:12):
And at this point, I'm going to clickand it would automatically stop.
But again, just to besafe, I'm going to click.
And at this point, the meeting's done.Now we've got this enhanced notes now
because it's got a full transcript hereof everything we've talked about.
It's going to take my notes and thenstart to enhance it.
(01:14:33):
So what it's doing isit took my live notes
that I physically put in therebecause that's really important to me.
I want you to do that there.And from there, it starts to add
all the extra little benefits.So under my intro, user intro,
use intro to the UI, demoof the live note taking,
(01:14:53):
and then under of it, it added theadditional comments,
lives transcribing,active during session,
noted type more.And maybe you want to
add up more to this.Maybe you want to write up an email.
This is where you canstart to use this tool.
We would automaticallynote who was in the meeting,
which is great so we can keep trackthat it was the three individuals,
the three constructionPMs, whatever the case is.
(01:15:16):
I can add it to a folder.So we're going to add
that to one of my projects,you know, my Sardis
school, my Langton, whatever,whatever project that I'm working on,
I can add it in there.And then even to up here on
where it says my notes enhanceis I can go to my original
notes to what the AI did.So you can see it.
(01:15:36):
And when using this tool,I meet with owners on a weekly basis.
We do a standardowners architects meeting
where we're just dealingwith items for their project.
And of course, afterwe've done these calls,
you can copy these notesand just blast it by email.
And boy, are they impressed.Holy smokes, look at
these detailed notes.Now, where the downfalls
(01:15:56):
are on this is sometimesif you've got someone
that has a unique name,yeah, you may want to
check the spelling of that.Sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't.
Maybe your project name is different.Maybe again, you're
really contractual term,sometimes it may not, but
overall, that's pretty good.Take a quick skim and for
some reason if it doesn't,you know, again, and be
(01:16:17):
honest that you're using thiswith your clients in that respect, okay?
So copying send, that'sabsolutely huge with it.
And so this was aquick little fun exercise.
It didn't reallyrelate to our day to day.
It was a real product.Let's do an actual CA meeting.
Because I think this is where you guysare going to realize
that this is a really,really powerful tool.
(01:16:39):
So let me go back home.I'm going to do a brand
new note and here we go.All right, you know,
welcome to the call ownerand let's talk about project A.
So first off, let's, for our CA,let's review the outstanding RFI's.
And this is where ingranola, we want to announce eight
things, it was really, really important.If you just say the
(01:17:01):
elevator RFI, that's good,but I want to get in details.
So we've got RFI 12 elevator switch.And then at this point, we
can even do a sub column of it,follow up on electrical.
(01:17:23):
And we got RFI 22 door hardware keying.Owner, are you going to do that?
Yeah, I'm going to,you're going to actually,
I encourage you as theowner to go and talk to your
maintenance staff, how theywant the key and keying all
the light to the wholebuilding, key, separate rooms,
classroom locks, howare the cabinet locks?
(01:17:44):
How are they going to be key?I'm going to leave
that to you to follow up.Take note, I didn't add
anything under that note,but I did put a title of
it, like kind of a sub column.And that's fantastic.
Cause it's going to do that.Let's keep going.
So we've got some shop drawings, somesubmittals to review.
So, you know, we got thedoor hardware and, you know,
we're going to make a note,coordinate this with RFI 22.
(01:18:11):
And then we've got the aluminum glazing,waiting for building an envelope.
And again, take thetime, write these out.
Cause it's really important, right?That's a hands down,
that's a key element of it.And if you're using
Grammarly, yes, it will work rightin the room by the way too.
(01:18:34):
And then you just keep going.And then maybe we've got
some owner request items.Sidewalks to change
to raised parking lot.Put some more notes.
We talk about that.Yeah, we have two
(01:18:56):
sidewalks that we want to be raisedon the north side.
Down on the south side, wecan do a standard let down,
painted crosswalk and then back to letdown and get back up.
So let's do that.In doing that, we want
them to be painted yellowbecause that's our
school district standard.And in addition to that,
the concrete surrounding,what we'll do is some exposed aggregate
(01:19:20):
or stamped concrete,that kind of effect at that location.
Sounds good.By the way, Granola, what did I miss?
Check it out, it'll do that.And you just keep going
and do this for changesbecause that's always a
good topic to changes.Quote 163, door elevator,
(01:19:43):
stainless, process of CO.And talk all about changes.
Quote 164, the request forextra on the additional topsoil.
No, we will declinethis as per the contract.
It didn't note that.I think that's a
great thing to do, owner.I don't agree with this change
(01:20:06):
that the contractor's providing.And I think that's it.
Any other aims we haven't talked about?No, fantastic, great.
Thanks for doing the callwith me and we'll talk again.
Done.Now, kind of as we
did some of these notes,let's refine this and we're
gonna run through the notesthat is provided and
you're gonna start to seewhere this is really,
really, really slick.So RFI12, elevator,
(01:20:28):
swish, follow up on electrical.That was pretty straightforward.
There's no moreinformation we did talk about that.
So my note kind of stood true.RF22, door harbor keying.
I didn't put anything in that.I didn't actually know that.
But both the owner andI were talking about it
and I wanted to consultwith maintenance staff
on keying preference,whole building, key to light
versus separate rooms,classroom locks, cabinet locks.
Fantastic.This is great.
(01:20:49):
And we can evenexpand these notes as well.
And we can go into detail.And that's where we've got
these things called templates.And let me go through the rest
and I'll show you how atemplate works for all these.
Then we've got submittals,nothing was really added there.
The owner requesteditems, sidewalks changed,
res raised parking lot,north side, two res sidewalks.
(01:21:11):
Now here's the AI notes.South side, standard
let down, painted cross,let down, back up, painted
yellow, school district standard,surrounding concrete, exposing aggregate
or stamped concrete finish.This is fantastic.
This does wonders in that respect.And because in granola,
because I'm always havingthe same type of meetings,
(01:21:32):
well, guess what?You can apply this with,
you can make these templates.So owner meeting CA focus.
And this is my standard wayI always run these meetings.
And by doing it, it'sactually going to rearrange
these notes based onthat categories that I set.
My basically I had general updates,RFI submittals, owner
(01:21:54):
request items, changes,pricing, action items,
and it lists it all out.And this is what I would copy
and send off to myclients after my phone call.
And you would just befor our email record.
Now I don't take those notesand I don't paste them into a Word
document to keep thembecause we're using granola
and we've got themhere at any given moment.
(01:22:16):
Okay.So with your now kind of going back,
I just want to show you whythe calendar was so important.
If I've got a coupleof meetings coming up,
I've got a meeting comingup on Thursday, July 9th.
And actually let me go here.Actually I got some meetings next week.
(01:22:38):
I've got a consultant meetingto talk about RF3 coordination.
Because this is a futuremeeting in my calendar,
well, I can come in hereand I can rewrite my notes.
So I'm going to justbasically going to say general.
And I'm going to say fire sprayhas already been
(01:23:04):
discussed at previous meetings.And I know what this meeting is about
and yet something isbecoming an ongoing conversation.
So the thing is why let me do thisis I can pre-put some
of my notes into it.I do have a, on Tuesday,
I've got an owner's rep meeting herewhere I've already put my notes.
(01:23:26):
We're going to talk about opera walls.We're going to talk about a tree permit
and we're going totalk about some IFC specs
and how they're getting wrapped up.If I want to add more
notes, I can just do that.So I can preload these notes ready to go.
Once we jump into the call,I already have these set up,
these kind of agenda itemsthat I want to talk about.
And then we can dive into the details.And that is kind of the slick thing.
(01:23:47):
And because this connects with Teams,this connects with any of your Google
Meets and everything,it will automatically
pop up in that respect.So this brings me to the conversation
of when to use Granola.Well, first of all, I use this daily,
quite a few times in a day.As we've already discussed,
(01:24:08):
doing my ongoing onlinemeetings, Teams calls,
that goes without saying,basically a quick
owner's architects meeting,a conversation with a
contractor, whatever it takes.If it's on Teams, it's
immediately being brought into Granola, really simple on the
sidelines in that respect.Say if I get a phone call,
well, our office is run through Teams,so we don't have dedicated
(01:24:31):
phone lines, which is great.It actually runs through Teams.
So when I get a call receptionist,hey, so-and-so is on the call,
contractors on call,great, put them through.
Put my headset on, and guess what?Granola actually pops up on
top of my screen and says,hey, click here to start the meeting
if you wanna record this.Absolutely, it's great.
And then we wouldjust automatically put it
into the project folder.It knows who I'm talking to
(01:24:51):
because it's all the Teams.It's great in that respect.
And maybe we're doing a sitewalk after the site meeting.
Well, there's an iPhone appthat I can start recording.
I've done that.We've been walking around the site
where we're talking about Shaw Creek,and we had to basically
add some additional dowelsfor the Shaw Creek to
hold the rebar in placebecause of the
(01:25:12):
flexibility that it was giving,and we just weren't
confident that it was gonna hold,and we didn't wanna see
cracking down later road.Because this was ought to
digest, I opened up my phone,I ran granola in the
background, and just recorded,made a couple notes on it,
as you would in that respect.And then once we're done, I had a
conversation already,already written out for that
change that I had to issue out.And I think that's
(01:25:34):
where it's really critical.And of course, a lot of my
site meetings, guess what?They're in person, so
I'm not on a Teams call,but I'll run granola in the background
while I do my primary meeting notes.And again, next episode, I'm
gonna show you how I do thatwith this combination, right?
Okay, so we've kind oftalked about why granola.
I mean, you've kind of seen high level,why this is really cool,
(01:25:56):
and you can start to seewhy I'm getting really excited
about this application, okay?This is where granola changes the game.
This is the power of granola.And so when you finish the meeting,
this is where granolareally shines, okay?
So first off, I can go back to this,the note that we just did,
(01:26:17):
our mock ownersarchitects meeting right now.
I'm gonna go back into this,because this happened two days,
this happened six months ago, right?You can ask it anything.
So we asked,basically before we could say,
"Hey, what did I miss during the call?"But now the recipes have shifted to,
"What are my to-dos?"And it won't make a list of my to-dos.
(01:26:38):
Okay, that's great, that's fantastic.One thing that we can
do is we can actuallyhelp this draft up a CCN, right?
If we talk during the meeting,we could say what type
of CCN for this change,the owner change.
So let's actually try it out.Draft out CCN for the owner
(01:27:02):
change for the crosswalks, okay?And it's gonna go through,
proposed change, revisedparking lot, sidewalks,
and everything, provide two raised car,everything, reason for change,
scope review, requires provides.So you can do this, you can talk more,
we can shorten this,we can put this into a
simplified description.This is great to kinda craft it out.
(01:27:25):
My opinion on AI,and you've heard me say
it on the show before,but I'm just gonna repeat it again,
is AI is an incredible tool,but you need to know how to use it,
you need to know how to drive.And a good little simple example is,
you got your 16 year old kid,he's got it, he just got his license,
and you give him your sports car,your Ferrari, Corvette, your Mustang,
whatever the case, yougive him the keys and say,
(01:27:46):
"Go for it, he's gonnawrap it around the pole."
There's so much power in this applicationthat they're going to
destroy themselves in that respect.They're not gonna
understand in circumstanceswhen they get put in
that odd mind what to do,because there's no experience.
And that's where AI is.Given to someone
that's been in the industryfor a long time,
(01:28:07):
that's done their homework,it's fantastic because you can call them,
you can just franklyread out the bullshit
that it puts out to you.And you can see that it's just not true.
Or you can go, "That's good, but I'mgonna make it better."
And you become thedirector, the conductor
of this orchestra andyou're playing with AI.
That's where it's really powerful.You need to know what you're doing.
And this is the samething with these notes.
(01:28:29):
"I'm taking this livetranscript, help me create this.
I can write my own CCN for this,but this is just
gonna add that extra levelof professionalism,
critique, and also making surethat it's not gonna fall
short with the contractor."So this is where it
becomes really, really powerful.You can ask the questions even more.
(01:28:52):
One thing, if therewas a meeting going back,
let's look at previous meetings.So this is where I can go to,
let me go into an actual project here.And I can go into, I think I had,
let me go into one of my meetings.Yeah, go into here.
(01:29:17):
I can ask you questions such as,did we talk about, around about?
And you can basically ask questionsbecause sometimes
this is really critical.What was the dates
(01:29:38):
given for this install?And I didn't even spell install properly.
The thing is, this isreally, really powerful.
You can start treatingthis as like your chat GPT
because it's using chat,but it's also like your Google insights
based on previous information.I think that's really cool about that.
(01:29:59):
And that's where granola really shines.Now where it becomes
really powerful with thisis when you go into the projects,
we can ask about the folder.So again, because this is a project
and I've got everything about,I wanna ask what is the
(01:30:19):
term that you're gonna ask?Turnover dates provided
for the road A handover.And it's gonna go
through my whole entire noteson that project.
And it's gonna lookat every single meeting
and start to look at it.The most recent
meeting, let me check in those.It'll go through and
(01:30:41):
start to pull up all the notesand say, well, we
talked about the deadlines,the construction schedule.
As of June 24th, August1st was there, August 14th.
And then before,and you can go through all
the other previous notes.So it'll go through every
single meeting for this.It's really, really, really powerful.
And I think this is wherethis changes the game for anyone
(01:31:06):
because you can only take in so much.That's the reality of it.
In our lovely construction reality herethat everyone will point fingers.
And they're certain thatwe said this, well, hold on.
I'm a human being.I don't like, I'm very
(01:31:28):
cautious in a meetingthat I would basically
hold to something I saidbecause unless I damn
well knew that it's there,I'm not going to say I know.
I'm very cautious where Iwanna put the elements into it.
And that's where, again,granola is really slick
(01:31:49):
because I can go backand I say, if someone said,
oh, we didn't talk about this,I can just search it in
that folder and holy smokes.It's saved my butt so many times.
And I can do it live, right in person,right in those construction meetings.
Actually, no, in meeting 37,we talked about this pricing.
38, we talked aboutrefine, we got revised pricing.
And then 39, we are gonna process the CO.You agree to this, right?
(01:32:13):
Or like, again, talking aboutconstruction scheduling,
like that's always a critical one.Oh, I didn't say that.
What did the transcript size say?And it's just holding
everyone accountable to it.And that's where this
program is very, very, very slick.And I love it on that aspect of it, okay?
Beside the spaces and everything,we will dive into the recipes here.
(01:32:37):
This is where, again, youcan create your own recipes.
You can look at other people's recipes,look again, best practices.
It's pretty cool what you can do.And again, I've been
talking about granolaas an AI note taker for my
construction CA practice.This can be used from sales, right?
(01:32:59):
You can use it forone-on-ones, pretty much anything,
because a meeting is a meeting.It's what are you trying to do?
What are you trying to achieve?It's a very, very powerful
program in that respect, okay?And the other thing is you
can add your own team to this,and you can share your team folders
(01:33:20):
for all the projectsthat you're working on.
So again, if I'm in multiple,if we're basically, I've
got a couple of colleagueswho are in the same project as I am,
only one of us to do it, and we canalways see the notes,
and we can always record it.Or we can basically
both do note, both note,on both sides, and then we
can compare our own noteswith the AI notes, and it's
(01:33:41):
gonna be that very powerful.So great to have your
organization on it in that respect,and you can kind of
cycle between the companies.And the other thing I
just wanted to point outis in the settings here,
there was my templatesthat you can basically go and create
(01:34:01):
those recipes for it.That's really slick.
I'm trying to rememberwhere it was in the settings,
but basically doingthose templates, you can,
I wonder where it is here, but anyways,in the templates, you
can basically set upthose standard workflows to it,
and that's where it's really goodto kind of bring that into light,
(01:34:24):
and then you can customize your notesbased on the meeting,
as I showed you, having that owner's rep,maybe a site meeting, maybe a one-on-one,
and it automaticallystructures it every time,
and that's really, really cool.And when we get into the next episode,
when we do our real site meeting notes,again, you can go to Nolan,
say, "Help me write this note better,"and then bring it in to it, okay?
(01:34:44):
So that's kind of, between all that,that's really, really slick.
The other aspect of this is we canconnect into other apps.
So like, if you're usingSlack, you can connect it,
and again, the notesbasically will automatically take
from there and then postthem into your Slack channels,
which is, again, pretty cool,again, from a team aspect.
(01:35:06):
If you had a project thingin there, you could see it.
Someone took some notes,they could go in and
take a review, right?Notion, you can also connect that.
Great, fantastic tool.I've used that for a lot of things.
I'm actually exploring it,seeing how I can make it
better with my CA practicegoing forward in the day-to-day,
but again, maybe that'll bean episode on its own, okay?
Of course, if you're intosales, this tool's fantastic.
(01:35:28):
HubSpot, Salesforce, PipeDrive,all great, phenomenal tools.
In the sales side of things, again,these notes are automatically connected
and pushed right into those platformslike the other ones,
but again, in such a way.Where I see this really powerful
is I actually connect thisdirectly into Chat, GPT, Cloud,
all those AI note takers, okay?So the two work hand in hand
(01:35:51):
and are talking back and forth,so I can take my meeting notes,
bring them into Chat, GPT,start to really
dissect what we talked about,crafting out a bunch of SIs and CCNs,
proposed changes, whateverthe case you're calling it
for that type of project.That's where it's very cool.
And again, I'll do an episode just onthat by itself, okay?
(01:36:15):
So wrapping up this kind of granolareview and all that,
of course, what's the pricing, Matt?Well, it's actually pretty reasonable.
Runs for about $14 per month.That's the US, of course.
But I promise you,after your first meeting,
you're gonna think it's gonna be paid forthat for that month.
So overall, it's an essential tool.I've really enjoyed it.
(01:36:39):
I've showed a fewother colleagues, my staff,
and I think there's five of us right nowthat are pumping out notes each day
and seeing the benefits.And like I said, I use this daily.
I use it for personalcalls, I use it for everything.
It's fantastic when youneed to be able to go back
to the meeting, searchup all that information.
It's fantastic, okay?And like I said, the link below
(01:37:02):
gives you a full month free on it,which is, hey, you
saved your 14 bucks there,and that gives me a kickback.
And like I said, ithelps keep the show going
and pays for hostingand all that good stuff.
So yeah, pricing is what it is,but honestly, for what
you're getting out of it,and again, thinking of your ROI value
of you typing your notesversus just letting this run
on your kind ofstandard day-to-day meetings,
(01:37:23):
this is fantastic.You'll never look back.
Yeah, I'll even pay it for myselfif work ever took it away from me, okay?
And this kind of brings upto the conclusion of here
is like the realityof the meetings, okay?
We're busy, we're in meetingsdaily, and we're human beings.
We can only take in so much.And like I kind of noted,
(01:37:46):
when I have a junior staff come up to me,I tell them they've got
to bring their note backbecause they will not remember.
Even if I'm going to the grocery store,if it's three things or
more, I'm writing it down.I can remember one and
two, but that third thing, no,I need to write it down, right?
It's just we're human beings.I know everyone's a little
bit different, but the reality,you know, if you're the
(01:38:07):
most attention to detailand you remember these things
and you soak up like asponge and you spit it back,
are you really gonna remember?And of course, are you
gonna remember it tomorrow?Are you gonna remember it in three days?
Are you gonna remember it in five days?Are you gonna remember it in a month?
That's where this tool is very powerful.And what I like about it is
(01:38:28):
that even though I showed youa couple of notes I was tracking,
I was typing out the notes,the reality is I wanna
be focused on the meeting.I wanna be really, truly engaged.
And I don't have totype any notes in granola
in a lot of makely spitout the meeting notes for me,
which a lot of note takers will do.But again, I like how I can
add a couple little keynotes,just a simple, you know,
(01:38:49):
few words in a sentenceand it's gonna fill out the details.
And then I can go backand then I can start
asking the questions.And I think that's really powerful.
And again, once I've got agroup of meetings together,
I can ask the group ofall those notes, right?
When do we talk about this deadline?When was it promised?
Who's doing what?Who's responsibility?
It's accountability,it's not pointing fingers,
(01:39:10):
it's being accountableto what's being done.
And like I said, thatsearch function to me
is the game changer here.Because it's not looking
at one specific meeting,it's looking at a whole,
this outweighs all thenote takers out there.
If you've got one that you're using,drop it in the comments,
send me a note by email,fan mail, whatever.
(01:39:32):
I wanna hear what you're using.But to me right now, my day to workflow,
this is fantastic, okay?I know I'm kind of
preaching this and selling it,even though I have no stock into this.
But like I said, it's atool that's been very powerful.
So I'm closing off this episode.I use this tool every day.
You can see I'm very passionate about it.You can see why I've drunk
(01:39:54):
the Kool-Aid juice on this.I think it's fantastic.
It works really well.We need to take notes, great notes,
at any moment where we are.We're gonna be accountable.
Owner's gonna call us out on stuff.When was this promised, those things.
And this is a tool thatjust takes it to a new level.
(01:40:14):
I've almost actually dropped myhandwritten notepad.
I still have one for thoseodd chicken scratch notes
and stuff like that, andfor kind of my list of to-dos.
But this is where I'vealso, any meeting with a client,
I've moved digitally100%, which I love, right?
Less paper, more environmental friendly,and that kind of stuff, okay?
(01:40:37):
And if you really wanna up your meetings,this is the tool that's gonna do it.
It's up my meetings dramatically.The fact that I'm
sending out meeting notesright after the call,
plus more, plus details,very clear, it's fantastic.
And yeah, it's just afantastic tool in that sense.
So like I said, this isone of the three-part series
that we're gonna do.Next episode, we're gonna talk about the
(01:41:00):
actual meeting notesrunning a construction CA meeting.
A lot of people havebeen asking me about that.
So I'm gonna go into those detailsand show you how I like to run it
in conjunction of havingthis on the side, okay?
And then the firstepisode or the third episode,
we're gonna talk about doingan initial kickoff meeting.
Because again, there's acertain kind of baseline
of things that we need to talk.So more to come, stick
around, subscribe to the channelso you don't miss any
(01:41:23):
future episodes in that respect.And again, if you wanna
try this granola application,be in a broken record
here, but it's in the link.You've got a free month.
The show gets a kick out.I really appreciate it.
It all helps everything going forwardand helps keep
delivering content to you guys.So appreciate you joining the show.
And then last but not least,architects keep designing and contractors
keep making those blueprints reality.We'll see on the next one.
(01:41:46):
(upbeat music)
Is there a better way oftaking your meeting notes?
Actually, yes, there is.And we're gonna dive into that today.
Let's get into it.(upbeat music)
Welcome to What the RFI.I'm Matt Brennan, and this
is the podcast all about CA.So today, we're gonna
(01:00:20):
talk about meeting notes.And with meeting notes, it's
something that we do daily.We do it at our monthly
construction site meetings.It's maybe a general phone call.
Maybe it's an in-person meeting.Maybe it's a client meeting.
It happens all throughout.And the question is,
how are you tracking it?And there's a lot of value of tracking it
because we're human beings.We can only digest so much.
(01:00:44):
And when you ask me, whatdid we talk about last week?
What did we talk about six months?What did we talk about 24 months ago
during the design process?That's where meeting notes are very key.
So today, we're gonna do,this is gonna be one of
three show part sessions.Okay?
And we're kind of reversing itbecause we're gonna get
(01:01:04):
into the end of this thingwhere we're gonna talk
about AI note takers.And I know it's kind of reversed.
Why wouldn't you start atthe beginning and build up?
Because I want to bringa new perspective to this
and think about today's technologyand how we can start to utilize it
in our day-to-day operations.All right?
So today we're gonnatalk about AI note takers.
(01:01:28):
Next show, we're going to talk aboutactually taking a
construction site meeting notes.And then the first show,
we're gonna talk about your initialkickoff construction.
So it's like I said, it'sa reverse way of doing it,
but there's somevalue in going that route
because you're gonna, again,I think it's gonna build up foundation
in a different unique wayfrom a learning perspective.
(01:01:49):
Okay?So like I said, today's show,
we're talking about an AI note takers.And there's a bunch
that we'll kind of bring upto the screen and go through it.
And like I said, I thinkwe'll bring some perspective
because again, you mightalready be taking notes.
So this episode isgonna be really key to that.
Now, if you'relistening, fantastic, love it.
(01:02:09):
This has always beenrecorded in the video format.
It's posted to theYouTube channel, what the RFI.
And I'm gonna be sharing my screen.I'm gonna do my absolute best to describe
what I'm talking about.But I think for the benefit,
if you wanna see this in action,go to the YouTube channel
and check it out there and see.But again, I'll explain as you're
listening on your driveor wherever you're doing
(01:02:31):
your run and that, okay?And of course, if you
check out the YouTube,like and subscribe, of
course, it always helps.So let's get right into it.
AI note takers, what is it?What's the difference between a general
taking your own meetingnotes and an AI note taker?
Well, of course, meeting notes,and we'll dive into
this in the next episode,is that you manually inputting it.
(01:02:52):
And hopefully you'recatching everything, right?
You're typing it, you'remaking your own physical notes.
Okay?In today's revolution of AI technology,
we have AI notetakers out there now, okay?
There's lots ofproducts in respect to that.
And almost think of like an AI note takeris that person in that courtroom
that's typing on a little typewriterand transcribing in real time, right?
(01:03:16):
You're basically bringingthat assistant into your meeting.
Okay?So that's, like I said,
I'm gonna show you how,because there's a couple of things
that we can get into this, okay?And in terms of AI
note takers, guess what?You've probably been
in a meeting already.You've been in that Zoom call,
you've been in that Googlemeets or that Teams call,
and that AI bot wantsto join the meeting.
(01:03:36):
You've already seenthis, you've been president,
and you've probablyraised your eyebrow going,
what's going on?Who is this?
What is this?I don't wanna be recorded.
I've had clients, I'vehad city officials saying,
we're not attending any meetingswhen there's an AI note taker, okay?
Reason being, do they notwanna be held accountable?
I don't know.But it's today's technology,
(01:03:58):
and there's some really powerful toolsthat you're gonna see
through this day's episode.So through some of the common ones
you've probably already seen isMicrosoft's Copilot used it.
Not impressed, don'twaste your time, to be honest.
One I did use for anumber of years was Fathom,
and this is one that was really good.It came in, it recorded
(01:04:20):
the call, it was a bot,and then afterwards you
could go and ask it questionsand that respect, but it
always had to join the meeting,and you always had to
rewatch stuff, okay?And then there was ReadAI,
which is very similar to that.And then there was one
that I was dabbling withcalled Decisions, and this one was linked
(01:04:41):
and it actually, you couldkinda set up the template.
It was kinda hokey,I've got one contractor
it uses on a weekly basis.They enjoy it, but it only uses Teams.
And today's episode iswe're gonna talk about Granola.
This is the one that I've enjoyed using.I've been using it for the
last almost six months now.I've been very, very impressed, okay?
(01:05:06):
And let's just be veryclear about this episode.
By Granola, Granoladid not reach out to me.
I reached out to them,and which they did give me
an awesome referral code,which I'll put in the link
in the description below.The referral code basically
gets you one full free month,which is great.
And it also gives me akickback and helps maintain
(01:05:28):
and pay for the show tocontinue being broadcast
on all the stream servicesthat you guys love to listen.
So let's get into it.Why did I select Granola?
Why?Like I said, I started six months ago,
getting back into thearchitectural field,
taking meeting notes daily,running monthly site meetings for a
number of key projects.At the end of the day,
(01:05:49):
it just made sense toget an AI note taker.
And I ran through the courses again.I tried my Thathom, I tried the ReAI.
And the one thing that really bothered mewith a lot of these apps is that they
need to join the call.And that would set a
bad taste to everyone.Sometimes even like a
(01:06:10):
contractor would boot itfrom the call, then that
was useless in my opinion.And my meetings aren't always online.
A good portion of them are,but typically I'm in person.
Or I'm just grabbing afew people from the staff
and running through a project design,and I need something I
can grab right there.I can't invite everyone to Teams,
even though we're in the flesh.So that was kind of my first thing.
(01:06:30):
I was looking for a notetaker that did not join the call.
That was the first thing.The other thing is I take notes.
I give our junior staff a hard timeif they come up to me and
they're looking for stuff to doand we start talking about stuff
and I see absolutely no writing down.I give them a hard time.
(01:06:51):
I'll literally tellthem, go grab their notebook,
come back and let's talkbecause there's no way
they're gonna comprehendeverything that we're talking about.
So I've always been on the side of thingswhere I need to take
my own personal notes.I'm really good at that
because it's soimportant that you're digesting
what the person says, you're listening,you're making notes of it,
(01:07:11):
and then you're goingback and you're right away,
you're not going, what did I miss?So it's really important.
So I wanted an app where I could actuallyput notes into it.
And that's where a lotof these AI note takers,
decisions and fathoms, you can't do that.You can't go in and
start adding your notesand combine and merge in the two.
(01:07:31):
That was just flat out.And this is where granola
made it a little different.As you actually type your notes,
and I'm gonna show you this in a second,it actually lets you write your notes
and then through the AI notation,it puts it back and forward.
And like I said, most of all,I needed a note taker
that I could take in person,online, when a phone call is received,
(01:07:54):
or just again, a group of people togetherin that spontaneous moment,
I wanted a note taker thatI could just grab and go.
And that's where granolareally starts to shine too.
And so when I discovered granola,it really checked all
these boxes and more.And there's a few
things that we're gonna showthat's just game changer
throughout this little demoand this introduction to it.
(01:08:16):
And a little bit about the company,when they started up,
they raised 20 millionin their first original
seed fund in the first week.So really impressive.
And then I think a few months later,they went up to 128 million.
So they definitely arevalued as a great company
in that sense, intoday's world and what it is.
And definitely, like I said,I can see why they've
(01:08:40):
got the funding for it.And one thing to just be really clear
about what reallyinterested me with granola as well,
because it's not an AIbot that joins the calls.
It doesn't record videoand it does not record audio.
So how does this work?Well, what it does is it
live transcribes everything.So as I'm talking to you,
(01:09:01):
and we're gonna pullthis up in a half a second,
you get to see how it all works.It live transcribes
the whole conversation.So I think there's some value about that.
Yes, you should betransparent with your clients
and your team thatyou're live transcribing this,
but you're not recordingit in both video and audio.
And I think that's a bit of,gives you a little bit more flexibility
(01:09:24):
where someone's like,"Well, I don't want to be recorded."
Well, you're not, right?I'm just getting texts
from this conversation.Same thing if you pulled up your iPhone
and use the voice memomap, voice app and everything,
you record your message, itdoes a lot of transcription.
That's all it's doing.It doesn't know exactly who's talking,
but once you start makingreference to that person,
then it kind of starts to figure outand starts connecting thoughts.
(01:09:46):
So without further ado,let's get into granola.
Like I said, if you're listening,I'm gonna do my best to kind
of describe what I'm doing,but if I jump over to the YouTube channel
and then watch it therebecause where I'm gonna
start to screen share thisright off the bat, get go.
So here we go, let's do this.So welcome to granola.
(01:10:07):
So the first thing Ijust want to point out,
when you set up and install it,the first thing it's going to do,
it's going to ask you toconnect it to your email.
And that's really important,whether it's your Gmail suite
or your Microsoft Office 365.And why is that important?
Well, it automaticallysyncs up your calendars.
And that is the most critical thingbecause the moment you jump into granola,
(01:10:29):
it's gonna look at allyour upcoming meetings.
And we'll dive into this elementof why this is beneficial in a minute.
So your calendar connects on the leftside and everything,
and you can hide it here.We've got all our spaces, our notebooks,
basically all for all my projects.Maybe you've got some
personal items in that sense.And then of course all the settings
(01:10:54):
and we'll get into thenitty gritty in a moment.
And of course there'sthe AI chat component,
which again, we're gonna doan extensive review of that.
So let's just get into a basic note.Let me just kind of
show you how this works.So as soon as I click on new note,
we're in production andyou'll see it's actually working
(01:11:15):
because it's live transcribing.If we were having a
conversation right now,it would be live
transcribing this and it's fantastic.And it would know
between the two components.And right away you
can add your own title.Now, teaser, it's going
to do that for you anyways,but I want control
(01:11:36):
because I like takingmy own physical notes.
So we're gonna callthis a granola CA demo.
And the way it works isyou can type in your notes.
This is where I add my notes.So you can just type it as you please.
(01:11:58):
But where it becomes really powerfulis basically we're
gonna do a number sign spaceand it turns into a
title and this is the intro.And from there, I'm
gonna go to the next lineand I'm gonna do a dash space
that's gonna automatically categorize it.So this is how you take your notes
as you normally would.So once you kind of get into this habit
of understanding how the program works,just these two simple methods,
(01:12:21):
your notes are gonna become very refined.So basically we did a
user intro to the UIand then we're going to basically demo
the live note taking.And you can keep going in there
and maybe you got off on just talkingand actually listening
(01:12:44):
and being part of it.And you forget what
you're doing and that's okay.That's where this is gonna go.
Sometimes when you're insome of these big meetings
and you get a littleconfused what's going on
and you've kind of dazed offor you're checking
emails and you're doing it.At the bottom here is this is where
this becomes really powerful.And I haven't seen this one
with any other note takers.You can basically, if
(01:13:06):
you've used chat GPT or cloudor any of these kind of AI
tools is we can talk to it.So they've got these
things called recipes.And again, we'll dive
into this a little deeperlater in the video.
So the first one, the one ofthe recipes that I like to use
and you can see that almost a millionhave used it as well
that have started sayingit's great is what did I miss?
(01:13:28):
Well, if you start to zone outis going to basically come up
and tell you what is going on.You can even make recipes
saying make me sound smartand it'll kind of take
what's happened in the transcriptsand put it together.
Maybe you want to suggest a questionand it's sometimes
these work really well.What I miss works really well.
It really, really does.And it goes into that detail.
(01:13:52):
So that's kind of apowerful thing with it.
We'll talk about where thisbecomes extremely powerful
later in this conversation.So we come through all this,
we've done our own physical notesand we're basically done with the call.
Thanks for joining us.And we're going to wrap it up.
(01:14:12):
And at this point, I'm going to clickand it would automatically stop.
But again, just to besafe, I'm going to click.
And at this point, the meeting's done.Now we've got this enhanced notes now
because it's got a full transcript hereof everything we've talked about.
It's going to take my notes and thenstart to enhance it.
(01:14:33):
So what it's doing isit took my live notes
that I physically put in therebecause that's really important to me.
I want you to do that there.And from there, it starts to add
all the extra little benefits.So under my intro, user intro,
use intro to the UI, demoof the live note taking,
(01:14:53):
and then under of it, it added theadditional comments,
lives transcribing,active during session,
noted type more.And maybe you want to
add up more to this.Maybe you want to write up an email.
This is where you canstart to use this tool.
We would automaticallynote who was in the meeting,
which is great so we can keep trackthat it was the three individuals,
the three constructionPMs, whatever the case is.
(01:15:16):
I can add it to a folder.So we're going to add
that to one of my projects,you know, my Sardis
school, my Langton, whatever,whatever project that I'm working on,
I can add it in there.And then even to up here on
where it says my notes enhanceis I can go to my original
notes to what the AI did.So you can see it.
(01:15:36):
And when using this tool,I meet with owners on a weekly basis.
We do a standardowners architects meeting
where we're just dealingwith items for their project.
And of course, afterwe've done these calls,
you can copy these notesand just blast it by email.
And boy, are they impressed.Holy smokes, look at
these detailed notes.Now, where the downfalls
(01:15:56):
are on this is sometimesif you've got someone
that has a unique name,yeah, you may want to
check the spelling of that.Sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't.
Maybe your project name is different.Maybe again, you're
really contractual term,sometimes it may not, but
overall, that's pretty good.Take a quick skim and for
some reason if it doesn't,you know, again, and be
(01:16:17):
honest that you're using thiswith your clients in that respect, okay?
So copying send, that'sabsolutely huge with it.
And so this was aquick little fun exercise.
It didn't reallyrelate to our day to day.
It was a real product.Let's do an actual CA meeting.
Because I think this is where you guysare going to realize
that this is a really,really powerful tool.
(01:16:39):
So let me go back home.I'm going to do a brand
new note and here we go.All right, you know,
welcome to the call ownerand let's talk about project A.
So first off, let's, for our CA,let's review the outstanding RFI's.
And this is where ingranola, we want to announce eight
things, it was really, really important.If you just say the
(01:17:01):
elevator RFI, that's good,but I want to get in details.
So we've got RFI 12 elevator switch.And then at this point, we
can even do a sub column of it,follow up on electrical.
(01:17:23):
And we got RFI 22 door hardware keying.Owner, are you going to do that?
Yeah, I'm going to,you're going to actually,
I encourage you as theowner to go and talk to your
maintenance staff, how theywant the key and keying all
the light to the wholebuilding, key, separate rooms,
classroom locks, howare the cabinet locks?
(01:17:44):
How are they going to be key?I'm going to leave
that to you to follow up.Take note, I didn't add
anything under that note,but I did put a title of
it, like kind of a sub column.And that's fantastic.
Cause it's going to do that.Let's keep going.
So we've got some shop drawings, somesubmittals to review.
So, you know, we got thedoor hardware and, you know,
we're going to make a note,coordinate this with RFI 22.
(01:18:11):
And then we've got the aluminum glazing,waiting for building an envelope.
And again, take thetime, write these out.
Cause it's really important, right?That's a hands down,
that's a key element of it.And if you're using
Grammarly, yes, it will work rightin the room by the way too.
(01:18:34):
And then you just keep going.And then maybe we've got
some owner request items.Sidewalks to change
to raised parking lot.Put some more notes.
We talk about that.Yeah, we have two
(01:18:56):
sidewalks that we want to be raisedon the north side.
Down on the south side, wecan do a standard let down,
painted crosswalk and then back to letdown and get back up.
So let's do that.In doing that, we want
them to be painted yellowbecause that's our
school district standard.And in addition to that,
the concrete surrounding,what we'll do is some exposed aggregate
(01:19:20):
or stamped concrete,that kind of effect at that location.
Sounds good.By the way, Granola, what did I miss?
Check it out, it'll do that.And you just keep going
and do this for changesbecause that's always a
good topic to changes.Quote 163, door elevator,
(01:19:43):
stainless, process of CO.And talk all about changes.
Quote 164, the request forextra on the additional topsoil.
No, we will declinethis as per the contract.
It didn't note that.I think that's a
great thing to do, owner.I don't agree with this change
(01:20:06):
that the contractor's providing.And I think that's it.
Any other aims we haven't talked about?No, fantastic, great.
Thanks for doing the callwith me and we'll talk again.
Done.Now, kind of as we
did some of these notes,let's refine this and we're
gonna run through the notesthat is provided and
you're gonna start to seewhere this is really,
really, really slick.So RFI12, elevator,
(01:20:28):
swish, follow up on electrical.That was pretty straightforward.
There's no moreinformation we did talk about that.
So my note kind of stood true.RF22, door harbor keying.
I didn't put anything in that.I didn't actually know that.
But both the owner andI were talking about it
and I wanted to consultwith maintenance staff
on keying preference,whole building, key to light
versus separate rooms,classroom locks, cabinet locks.
Fantastic.This is great.
(01:20:49):
And we can evenexpand these notes as well.
And we can go into detail.And that's where we've got
these things called templates.And let me go through the rest
and I'll show you how atemplate works for all these.
Then we've got submittals,nothing was really added there.
The owner requesteditems, sidewalks changed,
res raised parking lot,north side, two res sidewalks.
(01:21:11):
Now here's the AI notes.South side, standard
let down, painted cross,let down, back up, painted
yellow, school district standard,surrounding concrete, exposing aggregate
or stamped concrete finish.This is fantastic.
This does wonders in that respect.And because in granola,
because I'm always havingthe same type of meetings,
(01:21:32):
well, guess what?You can apply this with,
you can make these templates.So owner meeting CA focus.
And this is my standard wayI always run these meetings.
And by doing it, it'sactually going to rearrange
these notes based onthat categories that I set.
My basically I had general updates,RFI submittals, owner
(01:21:54):
request items, changes,pricing, action items,
and it lists it all out.And this is what I would copy
and send off to myclients after my phone call.
And you would just befor our email record.
Now I don't take those notesand I don't paste them into a Word
document to keep thembecause we're using granola
and we've got themhere at any given moment.
(01:22:16):
Okay.So with your now kind of going back,
I just want to show you whythe calendar was so important.
If I've got a coupleof meetings coming up,
I've got a meeting comingup on Thursday, July 9th.
And actually let me go here.Actually I got some meetings next week.
(01:22:38):
I've got a consultant meetingto talk about RF3 coordination.
Because this is a futuremeeting in my calendar,
well, I can come in hereand I can rewrite my notes.
So I'm going to justbasically going to say general.
And I'm going to say fire sprayhas already been
(01:23:04):
discussed at previous meetings.And I know what this meeting is about
and yet something isbecoming an ongoing conversation.
So the thing is why let me do thisis I can pre-put some
of my notes into it.I do have a, on Tuesday,
I've got an owner's rep meeting herewhere I've already put my notes.
(01:23:26):
We're going to talk about opera walls.We're going to talk about a tree permit
and we're going totalk about some IFC specs
and how they're getting wrapped up.If I want to add more
notes, I can just do that.So I can preload these notes ready to go.
Once we jump into the call,I already have these set up,
these kind of agenda itemsthat I want to talk about.
And then we can dive into the details.And that is kind of the slick thing.
(01:23:47):
And because this connects with Teams,this connects with any of your Google
Meets and everything,it will automatically
pop up in that respect.So this brings me to the conversation
of when to use Granola.Well, first of all, I use this daily,
quite a few times in a day.As we've already discussed,
(01:24:08):
doing my ongoing onlinemeetings, Teams calls,
that goes without saying,basically a quick
owner's architects meeting,a conversation with a
contractor, whatever it takes.If it's on Teams, it's
immediately being brought into Granola, really simple on the
sidelines in that respect.Say if I get a phone call,
well, our office is run through Teams,so we don't have dedicated
(01:24:31):
phone lines, which is great.It actually runs through Teams.
So when I get a call receptionist,hey, so-and-so is on the call,
contractors on call,great, put them through.
Put my headset on, and guess what?Granola actually pops up on
top of my screen and says,hey, click here to start the meeting
if you wanna record this.Absolutely, it's great.
And then we wouldjust automatically put it
into the project folder.It knows who I'm talking to
(01:24:51):
because it's all the Teams.It's great in that respect.
And maybe we're doing a sitewalk after the site meeting.
Well, there's an iPhone appthat I can start recording.
I've done that.We've been walking around the site
where we're talking about Shaw Creek,and we had to basically
add some additional dowelsfor the Shaw Creek to
hold the rebar in placebecause of the
(01:25:12):
flexibility that it was giving,and we just weren't
confident that it was gonna hold,and we didn't wanna see
cracking down later road.Because this was ought to
digest, I opened up my phone,I ran granola in the
background, and just recorded,made a couple notes on it,
as you would in that respect.And then once we're done, I had a
conversation already,already written out for that
change that I had to issue out.And I think that's
(01:25:34):
where it's really critical.And of course, a lot of my
site meetings, guess what?They're in person, so
I'm not on a Teams call,but I'll run granola in the background
while I do my primary meeting notes.And again, next episode, I'm
gonna show you how I do thatwith this combination, right?
Okay, so we've kind oftalked about why granola.
I mean, you've kind of seen high level,why this is really cool,
(01:25:56):
and you can start to seewhy I'm getting really excited
about this application, okay?This is where granola changes the game.
This is the power of granola.And so when you finish the meeting,
this is where granolareally shines, okay?
So first off, I can go back to this,the note that we just did,
(01:26:17):
our mock ownersarchitects meeting right now.
I'm gonna go back into this,because this happened two days,
this happened six months ago, right?You can ask it anything.
So we asked,basically before we could say,
"Hey, what did I miss during the call?"But now the recipes have shifted to,
"What are my to-dos?"And it won't make a list of my to-dos.
(01:26:38):
Okay, that's great, that's fantastic.One thing that we can
do is we can actuallyhelp this draft up a CCN, right?
If we talk during the meeting,we could say what type
of CCN for this change,the owner change.
So let's actually try it out.Draft out CCN for the owner
(01:27:02):
change for the crosswalks, okay?And it's gonna go through,
proposed change, revisedparking lot, sidewalks,
and everything, provide two raised car,everything, reason for change,
scope review, requires provides.So you can do this, you can talk more,
we can shorten this,we can put this into a
simplified description.This is great to kinda craft it out.
(01:27:25):
My opinion on AI,and you've heard me say
it on the show before,but I'm just gonna repeat it again,
is AI is an incredible tool,but you need to know how to use it,
you need to know how to drive.And a good little simple example is,
you got your 16 year old kid,he's got it, he just got his license,
and you give him your sports car,your Ferrari, Corvette, your Mustang,
whatever the case, yougive him the keys and say,
(01:27:46):
"Go for it, he's gonnawrap it around the pole."
There's so much power in this applicationthat they're going to
destroy themselves in that respect.They're not gonna
understand in circumstanceswhen they get put in
that odd mind what to do,because there's no experience.
And that's where AI is.Given to someone
that's been in the industryfor a long time,
(01:28:07):
that's done their homework,it's fantastic because you can call them,
you can just franklyread out the bullshit
that it puts out to you.And you can see that it's just not true.
Or you can go, "That's good, but I'mgonna make it better."
And you become thedirector, the conductor
of this orchestra andyou're playing with AI.
That's where it's really powerful.You need to know what you're doing.
And this is the samething with these notes.
(01:28:29):
"I'm taking this livetranscript, help me create this.
I can write my own CCN for this,but this is just
gonna add that extra levelof professionalism,
critique, and also making surethat it's not gonna fall
short with the contractor."So this is where it
becomes really, really powerful.You can ask the questions even more.
(01:28:52):
One thing, if therewas a meeting going back,
let's look at previous meetings.So this is where I can go to,
let me go into an actual project here.And I can go into, I think I had,
let me go into one of my meetings.Yeah, go into here.
(01:29:17):
I can ask you questions such as,did we talk about, around about?
And you can basically ask questionsbecause sometimes
this is really critical.What was the dates
(01:29:38):
given for this install?And I didn't even spell install properly.
The thing is, this isreally, really powerful.
You can start treatingthis as like your chat GPT
because it's using chat,but it's also like your Google insights
based on previous information.I think that's really cool about that.
(01:29:59):
And that's where granola really shines.Now where it becomes
really powerful with thisis when you go into the projects,
we can ask about the folder.So again, because this is a project
and I've got everything about,I wanna ask what is the
(01:30:19):
term that you're gonna ask?Turnover dates provided
for the road A handover.And it's gonna go
through my whole entire noteson that project.
And it's gonna lookat every single meeting
and start to look at it.The most recent
meeting, let me check in those.It'll go through and
(01:30:41):
start to pull up all the notesand say, well, we
talked about the deadlines,the construction schedule.
As of June 24th, August1st was there, August 14th.
And then before,and you can go through all
the other previous notes.So it'll go through every
single meeting for this.It's really, really, really powerful.
And I think this is wherethis changes the game for anyone
(01:31:06):
because you can only take in so much.That's the reality of it.
In our lovely construction reality herethat everyone will point fingers.
And they're certain thatwe said this, well, hold on.
I'm a human being.I don't like, I'm very
(01:31:28):
cautious in a meetingthat I would basically
hold to something I saidbecause unless I damn
well knew that it's there,I'm not going to say I know.
I'm very cautious where Iwanna put the elements into it.
And that's where, again,granola is really slick
(01:31:49):
because I can go backand I say, if someone said,
oh, we didn't talk about this,I can just search it in
that folder and holy smokes.It's saved my butt so many times.
And I can do it live, right in person,right in those construction meetings.
Actually, no, in meeting 37,we talked about this pricing.
38, we talked aboutrefine, we got revised pricing.
And then 39, we are gonna process the CO.You agree to this, right?
(01:32:13):
Or like, again, talking aboutconstruction scheduling,
like that's always a critical one.Oh, I didn't say that.
What did the transcript size say?And it's just holding
everyone accountable to it.And that's where this
program is very, very, very slick.And I love it on that aspect of it, okay?
Beside the spaces and everything,we will dive into the recipes here.
(01:32:37):
This is where, again, youcan create your own recipes.
You can look at other people's recipes,look again, best practices.
It's pretty cool what you can do.And again, I've been
talking about granolaas an AI note taker for my
construction CA practice.This can be used from sales, right?
(01:32:59):
You can use it forone-on-ones, pretty much anything,
because a meeting is a meeting.It's what are you trying to do?
What are you trying to achieve?It's a very, very powerful
program in that respect, okay?And the other thing is you
can add your own team to this,and you can share your team folders
(01:33:20):
for all the projectsthat you're working on.
So again, if I'm in multiple,if we're basically, I've
got a couple of colleagueswho are in the same project as I am,
only one of us to do it, and we canalways see the notes,
and we can always record it.Or we can basically
both do note, both note,on both sides, and then we
can compare our own noteswith the AI notes, and it's
(01:33:41):
gonna be that very powerful.So great to have your
organization on it in that respect,and you can kind of
cycle between the companies.And the other thing I
just wanted to point outis in the settings here,
there was my templatesthat you can basically go and create
(01:34:01):
those recipes for it.That's really slick.
I'm trying to rememberwhere it was in the settings,
but basically doingthose templates, you can,
I wonder where it is here, but anyways,in the templates, you
can basically set upthose standard workflows to it,
and that's where it's really goodto kind of bring that into light,
(01:34:24):
and then you can customize your notesbased on the meeting,
as I showed you, having that owner's rep,maybe a site meeting, maybe a one-on-one,
and it automaticallystructures it every time,
and that's really, really cool.And when we get into the next episode,
when we do our real site meeting notes,again, you can go to Nolan,
say, "Help me write this note better,"and then bring it in to it, okay?
(01:34:44):
So that's kind of, between all that,that's really, really slick.
The other aspect of this is we canconnect into other apps.
So like, if you're usingSlack, you can connect it,
and again, the notesbasically will automatically take
from there and then postthem into your Slack channels,
which is, again, pretty cool,again, from a team aspect.
(01:35:06):
If you had a project thingin there, you could see it.
Someone took some notes,they could go in and
take a review, right?Notion, you can also connect that.
Great, fantastic tool.I've used that for a lot of things.
I'm actually exploring it,seeing how I can make it
better with my CA practicegoing forward in the day-to-day,
but again, maybe that'll bean episode on its own, okay?
Of course, if you're intosales, this tool's fantastic.
(01:35:28):
HubSpot, Salesforce, PipeDrive,all great, phenomenal tools.
In the sales side of things, again,these notes are automatically connected
and pushed right into those platformslike the other ones,
but again, in such a way.Where I see this really powerful
is I actually connect thisdirectly into Chat, GPT, Cloud,
all those AI note takers, okay?So the two work hand in hand
(01:35:51):
and are talking back and forth,so I can take my meeting notes,
bring them into Chat, GPT,start to really
dissect what we talked about,crafting out a bunch of SIs and CCNs,
proposed changes, whateverthe case you're calling it
for that type of project.That's where it's very cool.
And again, I'll do an episode just onthat by itself, okay?
(01:36:15):
So wrapping up this kind of granolareview and all that,
of course, what's the pricing, Matt?Well, it's actually pretty reasonable.
Runs for about $14 per month.That's the US, of course.
But I promise you,after your first meeting,
you're gonna think it's gonna be paid forthat for that month.
So overall, it's an essential tool.I've really enjoyed it.
(01:36:39):
I've showed a fewother colleagues, my staff,
and I think there's five of us right nowthat are pumping out notes each day
and seeing the benefits.And like I said, I use this daily.
I use it for personalcalls, I use it for everything.
It's fantastic when youneed to be able to go back
to the meeting, searchup all that information.
It's fantastic, okay?And like I said, the link below
(01:37:02):
gives you a full month free on it,which is, hey, you
saved your 14 bucks there,and that gives me a kickback.
And like I said, ithelps keep the show going
and pays for hostingand all that good stuff.
So yeah, pricing is what it is,but honestly, for what
you're getting out of it,and again, thinking of your ROI value
of you typing your notesversus just letting this run
on your kind ofstandard day-to-day meetings,
(01:37:23):
this is fantastic.You'll never look back.
Yeah, I'll even pay it for myselfif work ever took it away from me, okay?
And this kind of brings upto the conclusion of here
is like the realityof the meetings, okay?
We're busy, we're in meetingsdaily, and we're human beings.
We can only take in so much.And like I kind of noted,
(01:37:46):
when I have a junior staff come up to me,I tell them they've got
to bring their note backbecause they will not remember.
Even if I'm going to the grocery store,if it's three things or
more, I'm writing it down.I can remember one and
two, but that third thing, no,I need to write it down, right?
It's just we're human beings.I know everyone's a little
bit different, but the reality,you know, if you're the
(01:38:07):
most attention to detailand you remember these things
and you soak up like asponge and you spit it back,
are you really gonna remember?And of course, are you
gonna remember it tomorrow?Are you gonna remember it in three days?
Are you gonna remember it in five days?Are you gonna remember it in a month?
That's where this tool is very powerful.And what I like about it is
(01:38:28):
that even though I showed youa couple of notes I was tracking,
I was typing out the notes,the reality is I wanna
be focused on the meeting.I wanna be really, truly engaged.
And I don't have totype any notes in granola
in a lot of makely spitout the meeting notes for me,
which a lot of note takers will do.But again, I like how I can
add a couple little keynotes,just a simple, you know,
(01:38:49):
few words in a sentenceand it's gonna fill out the details.
And then I can go backand then I can start
asking the questions.And I think that's really powerful.
And again, once I've got agroup of meetings together,
I can ask the group ofall those notes, right?
When do we talk about this deadline?When was it promised?
Who's doing what?Who's responsibility?
It's accountability,it's not pointing fingers,
(01:39:10):
it's being accountableto what's being done.
And like I said, thatsearch function to me
is the game changer here.Because it's not looking
at one specific meeting,it's looking at a whole,
this outweighs all thenote takers out there.
If you've got one that you're using,drop it in the comments,
send me a note by email,fan mail, whatever.
(01:39:32):
I wanna hear what you're using.But to me right now, my day to workflow,
this is fantastic, okay?I know I'm kind of
preaching this and selling it,even though I have no stock into this.
But like I said, it's atool that's been very powerful.
So I'm closing off this episode.I use this tool every day.
You can see I'm very passionate about it.You can see why I've drunk
(01:39:54):
the Kool-Aid juice on this.I think it's fantastic.
It works really well.We need to take notes, great notes,
at any moment where we are.We're gonna be accountable.
Owner's gonna call us out on stuff.When was this promised, those things.
And this is a tool thatjust takes it to a new level.
(01:40:14):
I've almost actually dropped myhandwritten notepad.
I still have one for thoseodd chicken scratch notes
and stuff like that, andfor kind of my list of to-dos.
But this is where I'vealso, any meeting with a client,
I've moved digitally100%, which I love, right?
Less paper, more environmental friendly,and that kind of stuff, okay?
(01:40:37):
And if you really wanna up your meetings,this is the tool that's gonna do it.
It's up my meetings dramatically.The fact that I'm
sending out meeting notesright after the call,
plus more, plus details,very clear, it's fantastic.
And yeah, it's just afantastic tool in that sense.
So like I said, this isone of the three-part series
that we're gonna do.Next episode, we're gonna talk about the
(01:41:00):
actual meeting notesrunning a construction CA meeting.
A lot of people havebeen asking me about that.
So I'm gonna go into those detailsand show you how I like to run it
in conjunction of havingthis on the side, okay?
And then the firstepisode or the third episode,
we're gonna talk about doingan initial kickoff meeting.
Because again, there's acertain kind of baseline
of things that we need to talk.So more to come, stick
around, subscribe to the channelso you don't miss any
(01:41:23):
future episodes in that respect.And again, if you wanna
try this granola application,be in a broken record
here, but it's in the link.You've got a free month.
The show gets a kick out.I really appreciate it.
It all helps everything going forwardand helps keep
delivering content to you guys.So appreciate you joining the show.
And then last but not least,architects keep designing and contractors
keep making those blueprints reality.We'll see on the next one.
(01:41:46):
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Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.