Macpreneur

Never Type Meeting Notes Again on Mac (Do This Instead)

• Damien Schreurs • Season 7 • Episode 161

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In this episode of Macpreneur, discover how you can use AI tools to automate note-taking and improve focus during meetings. 

Through past interviews, we revisit workflows for transcribing and summarizing notes using tools like Apple Notes, ChatGPT, Granola, and Fathom. 

These techniques help solopreneurs save time, enhance productivity, and maintain full engagement in conversations. 

Tune in to discover practical AI tools and take a quick quiz to determine your AI journey stage:

🆓 Discover Your AI Archetype: https://macpreneur.com/aistage

Missed any of these past episodes? Catch-up on now!

Highlights

  • [00:00] Introduction - Leveraging AI for note taking  
  • [01:22] Using Apple Notes for Handwritten Ideas  
  • [02:53] Recording and Transcribing Phone Calls  
  • [04:33] AI Tools for Online Meetings  
  • [07:52] Discover your AI Archetype  

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AI for Note-Taking and Transcriptions


[00:00:00] Introduction: The Struggles of Solopreneurs

Damien Schreurs: Hello, hello! As solopreneurs, we live in meetings, client calls, discovery calls, podcast interviews, and webinars, and in every single one of them we are trying to do two things at once: be present and listen while typing or scribbling notes so that we don't forget the important stuff. The result is that we end up doing both poorly.
We half-listen and take bad notes.


[00:00:27] Leveraging AI for Note-Taking

Damien Schreurs: What if you could be 100% present in every conversation, fully focused on the other person, building that relationship—all while knowing that your own personal AI assistant was silently taking perfect notes for you? My podcast guest and I have been using these workflows, and they are complete game changers.

Today I'm going to show you how to use AI on your Mac, from built-in tools to amazing third-party apps that automatically transcribe—and, more importantly, summarize—your meetings and calls, saving you hours every single week.

Nova AI: Welcome to Macpreneur, the show for seasoned solopreneurs looking to streamline their business on a Mac. Unlock the secrets to saving time and money with your host and technology mentor, Damien Schreurs.


[00:01:22] Using Apple Notes for Handwritten Ideas

Damien Schreurs: So let's start with the simplest use case: capturing your own ideas.
Maybe you are not in a meeting; you are just brainstorming. Personally, I love my iPad and Apple Pencil for this, but the problem has always been: how do you make those handwritten notes useful?
You can't necessarily search them. You can't necessarily copy and paste them into a proposal.
Well, as my guest Joe Casabona explained in episode 114, Apple Notes is a powerful AI feature that can help you with this.

Joe Casabona: I've started using Apple Notes again. While I love Bear Notes, I get my Markdown fix from Obsidian. I find that inputting into Apple Notes is a little bit faster, so when I want to capture something quickly, Notes is there. Something I've been using a whole lot is the feature to convert handwriting to text—it's really good.
I'll write a note on my iPad, and then I'll be able to grab the text and put it somewhere else on my Mac. That's been a game changer for me because I love writing handwritten notes and hate moving them to a digital format later.

Damien Schreurs: That handwriting-to-text feature is brilliant for capturing your own thoughts, but what about capturing what other people say?


[00:02:53] Recording and Transcribing Phone Calls

Damien Schreurs: This is where it gets really powerful, especially for those unscheduled phone calls. You are on your iPhone, a client calls, and they drop three critical action items. What do you do? Well, back in episode 139, my guest Anthony Franco shared a workflow that he calls a superpower, and I have to agree.
It starts with recording the call on his iPhone, which automatically transcribes it into Apple Notes—but that's not even the magic part.

Anthony Franco: I can record phone calls. It'll transcribe them for me, and then I can put the transcription into ChatGPT, and it'll summarize it for me so I don't have to take notes anymore. On phone calls, I just record them, and it gives me a great summary so I can be focused on the conversation and the person I’m talking to, knowing that someone is there to capture the information so I can refer to it later. It's a superpower. It's magical.

Damien Schreurs: And so, is it linked now to the voice memo, or is it integrated with the phone app?

Anthony Franco: It drops it in. It's a great question because it took me a second to find the recording; there's a little record button for phone calls. You hit the record button, it records the call and drops it into Notes. Then you go into Notes, and it'll transcribe it for you.

Damien Schreurs: How amazing is that! No more note-taking—just focusing on the conversation. That final step, using ChatGPT to summarize the transcript, is the real time saver.


[00:04:33] AI Tools for Online Meetings

Damien Schreurs: But, okay, what about our scheduled Zoom meetings? Manually recording, waiting for the transcript, and then uploading it to ChatGPT is still a few steps.
This is where dedicated AI note takers come in.
These tools are designed to be your silent, automated meeting assistant. My guests from episodes 126 and 127, Wayne Pelletier and Jen Rulon, both use apps specifically for this.

Wayne Pelletier: A local app I like is called Granola. It's an AI transcription app—really good for recording voice and calls locally. It's a bit of a game changer when it comes to making notes from my calls and meetings.

Jen Rulon: I do use—what is it called?—Fathom, and that's a little AI note taker which is fantastic with my clients, though I believe that's mostly online as well.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, so there's a local app—a Fathom app that runs on the Mac continuously. You most likely give it access to your calendar so it knows when you have Zoom meetings. And what's nice with Fathom, because I'm using it from time to time, is that it will pop up in the top right corner a few minutes before the meeting.

Jen Rulon: Yes. Yes.

Damien Schreurs: Actually, starting the Zoom session is very quick. You click on a button, and there is a local component—a Mac app that lives most of the time in the menu bar at the top. Then, Fathom records the Zoom session, and the recording is stored online. The summary, the transcriptions, and so on are accessed through the browser, right? It's easy.

Jen Rulon: Exactly, exactly.

Damien Schreurs: And what is nice is that Fathom can automatically send an email to the guests—the other people in the Zoom session—with the link to the recording. Right? I think it's not fully automatic because I have the free plan. I don't know if you pay; I have the free plan, and it's not automatic, but there's just a button to click. I can do that immediately after the meeting: I click on the button, and then the other people get a link to the recording.

Jen Rulon: Sure.

Damien Schreurs: Tools like Fathom and Granola are fantastic because they plug right into your calendar. They just show up, do their job, and provide a summary.
Being able to send that recording link to your guest right after the call is also a massive professional touch.
The goal here isn't just to create more data; it's to save you time and, more importantly, mental energy.
Imagine ending a client call and having a summary with action items before you've even closed the Zoom window. That's what these tools do. You stop being a typist and start being a fully present solopreneur.


[00:07:52] Discover Your AI Archetype

Damien Schreurs: On a side note, I have created a super quick quiz to help you find out at which stage of your AI journey you might be.

In less than two minutes, you will discover whether you are an AI Dabbler, an Integrator, or a full-on Automator.

After answering 12 questions, you will get your personal AI archetype, but more importantly, three simple, practical next steps that you can take today.

Find out where you stand at macpreneur.com/aistage in one word.
That's macpreneur.com/aistage.

And until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day.

Nova AI: Thank you for listening to the Macpreneur Podcast. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with a friend right now.