The advice out there about AI tools is either a list of 47 things you’re supposed to explore or or a “how to” that’s so vague it’s useless. Nobody has time for that. And the result is a lot of smart business owners who are more confused about AI than when they started.
So here’s what I did instead. I looked at five things that suck up real time in my business
- meetings
- communication
- research
- staying organized
- making slide decks
and I found one tool for each that you can drop in and start saving time this week. I personally use every single one of them.
Tool 1: An AI Notetaker
If your business looks anything like mine, you’re jumping on Zoom calls every day with clients, leads, and referral partners. Every one of those conversations generates information you could use: decisions made, pain points described, what the other person really wants from you. Not just the action items, but the heart of the problem they’re trying to solve.
Your ability to diagnose that and act on it is a big part of what clients pay you for. But if you’re in the meeting, there’s no way to be fully present and capture everything being said. And if you’re reconstructing it from memory afterward? A lot gets lost — like the exact words a client used, or the thing they said at minute 32 that turned out to be the whole point.
An AI notetaker like Fathom, Granola, or even the built-in options in Zoom and Google Meet, captures all of this for you. But here’s what I want you to hold onto: the transcript is where the real value sits, not just the summary or the action items. The raw transcript is a gold mine. More on why in a second.
Tool 2: Claude
Think about how much time you spend every day on follow-up emails, proposals, action items, pitch decks. For just one follow-up email, you’ve got to review your meeting notes, decide what’s relevant, and write it. For a proposal, you’re reviewing notes from every meeting in the relationship, potentially doing additional research, and then writing.
That’s a lot of context switching. So here’s where those transcripts from Tool 1 come in.
Upload your meeting transcript to Claude and ask it to pull your action items. Draft your follow-up email. Extract what the client said they needed in their words, not yours. And if you write proposals, surface the objections hiding in the conversation, the things they said that you’ll need to address before they’re ready to say yes.
Most of us write proposals based on what we think the client wants – or even what we think the client needs. Using AI to assess your call transcripts and integrate the research helps you write proposals based on what the client actually said.
The difference between a proposal that sounds like you were at the meeting and one that makes the client feel like you were in their head? That alone is worth the $20 a month for Anthropic.
Here’s a specific example of the ROI. Six months ago, I uploaded ten transcripts from different client meetings and asked Claude: what are these people actually trying to achieve? What are their near-term needs? What’s worrying them? What came back were my clients’ own words — their goals, frustrations, and what they really wanted for their businesses. I used that to build a new offer and completely rewrite my website. Not my words about what I do. Their words about what they needed. One afternoon of work. Totally changed my deal flow.
Tool 3: Perplexity
You need a way to stay current on your industry, your clients’ industries, your competitors. Claude and ChatGPT are great for a lot of things, but their training data has a cutoff date. You can ask them to search the web, but real-time synthesis isn’t what LLMs were optimized for. If you’re using them for competitive research or trend watching and you really want to trust those results, you might be working with stale information.
Perplexity is a search engine built for what’s happening right now. It synthesizes, cites its sources, and gives you something you can actually act on. I use it for competitive research, trend watching, and raw material for my newsletter.
When I was revising my website recently, one of the first things I did was ask Perplexity about website design trends in 2026 – what’s working, what clients expect to see. In a few minutes I had a synthesized answer with sources and screenshots I could use to form a design brief. It has a free tier. Start there.
Tool 4: NotebookLM
I don’t know about you, but staying organized with all the information I take in every day seems to just get harder. My desktop looks like a hurricane hit it — research reports, screenshots, PDFs, AI conversation logs. And before this tool, I was constantly trying to track down things. I needed a specific data point for a presentation, I’d seen it somewhere, but I just couldn’t find it.
NotebookLM from Google is free if you already pay for Google Workspace. It’s like a storage unit for when your brain is full, except the tool itself can tell you everything that’s in there. Feed it your notes, articles, videos, websites, research reports, and then ask questions across all of it.
One way I use it is to get value from courses I’ve purchased and sessions I’ve had with various mentors. I put all the workbooks and resources and videos in there.
And then when I’m working on a project like creating a new email welcome sequence or launching a new product, I ask it if I have anything on the topic. So I’m actually starting with trusted resources rather than going down rabbit holes.
For client work specifically, try building one notebook per engagement. Load it with your proposal, meeting transcripts, stakeholder bios, competitor websites. Then ask it: “What has this client said about budget constraints across all of our meetings?” or “How does their positioning compare to their two main competitors?” That’s institutional memory. As a solo operator, you’ve never had that before.
Tool 5: Gamma
Workshops. Pitch decks. Media kits. Client presentations. If you end up making slides as often as I do and formatting takes you three times longer than the thinking behind it, you’re spending non-billable hours on something a tool can handle in minutes.
Gamma lets you drop in your outline – literally copy and paste from a doc – and it formats the whole thing, finds images, puts the deck together. I’ll be honest: it has the highest learning curve of any tool on this list. And the first attempt won’t be a home run. But the learning curve isn’t technical – it’s more like learning Canva or Asana. Lots of features, takes a little time to get peak performance.
I discovered it when I was putting together a workshop, short on time after vacation. First try wasn’t perfect, but I see enough potential time savings to keep it on this list. Free tier available so next time you’re staring down a slide deck, try it.
The Pattern Worth Noticing
Not one of these tools has a big tech setup, and four out of five you’re probably already paying for or can test on a free tier. The approach isn’t “explore 47 AI tools.” It’s this:
- What are the friction points in my business?
- What time sucks could AI actually solve?
- And what’s the right tool to either save me time or make me money?
If you haven’t explored any of the tools on this list, start with the one that helps with something you’re working on right now. Use it on a real task – then decide whether it has enough potential to earn its spot in your workflow.
