Issue #9: 20 million people stopped taking notes in meetings. Here's what they're using instead.

The tool that joins your calls, writes everything down, and reminds you what to do next — without you lifting a finger.

Picture this. You're in a client call. You're trying to listen properly, respond thoughtfully, and take notes at the same time. You can't do all three well. So you take half-decent notes, miss a few things, and spend 20 minutes afterwards trying to remember what was actually agreed.

That's the meeting problem every small business owner has. And 20 million people have quietly solved it with the same tool.

It's called Fireflies AI. And once you use it, going back feels genuinely absurd.

Fireflies is an AI meeting assistant that joins your Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Webex calls as a participant, records the entire conversation, and produces a full transcript, AI summary, and action item list within minutes of the call ending.

Here's what it actually does:

Auto-joins your meetings — connect your calendar once and Fireflies shows up to every call automatically. No manual recording, no remembering to press start.

Full transcription in 100+ languages — the entire conversation is captured word for word, searchable across all your past meetings. Looking for that thing a client said six weeks ago? Search it.

AI summaries — instead of reading a 45-minute transcript, you get a clean summary of what was discussed, what decisions were made, and what's happening next.

Action items — Fireflies automatically pulls out tasks and commitments from the conversation. "I'll send you the proposal by Friday" becomes a tracked action item without you writing it down.

AskFred — an AI assistant that lets you ask questions about any past meeting. "What did the client say about the budget?" and it pulls the answer directly from the transcript.

Real-time notes — as of 2026, Fireflies now generates bullet-point notes during the call itself, not just after. You can see key points being captured as they happen.

Talk to Fireflies — a new feature powered by Perplexity AI that lets you search the web during a live meeting without leaving the call interface. Someone mentions a competitor? Look them up without breaking the conversation.

The verdict: For any small business owner who has regular client calls, sales calls, or team meetings — this is one of the highest ROI tools available. The time saved on note-taking and follow-up alone pays for itself in the first week.

A freelance business consultant in London named Sarah was spending roughly 90 minutes after every client meeting writing up notes, summarising decisions, and drafting follow-up emails. She had 8–10 client calls a week. That's 12–15 hours of post-meeting admin every single week.

She set up Fireflies in 20 minutes. Within the first week, her post-meeting admin dropped to about 15 minutes per call — reviewing the AI summary, adjusting the action items, and copying the key points into her follow-up email. That's a saving of over 10 hours a week. She used that time to take on two additional clients.

She's been on the Pro plan at $10/month for the past eight months. Her calculation: "I made the money back in the first hour."

Total setup time: 20 minutes, and it runs on autopilot from that point.

"Won't people be uncomfortable knowing the call is being recorded?"

This is the question everyone thinks but rarely asks. The honest answer: most people are fine with it when you're transparent about it. A simple "just so you know, I use an AI notetaker for my calls so I don't miss anything" at the start of a conversation lands well in most professional contexts. Fireflies also sends an automated notification to all participants when it joins a call, so nothing is hidden. In practice, most clients appreciate it — it means you're paying attention to the conversation rather than furiously typing. The one exception is highly sensitive conversations, like negotiating terms or discussing confidential matters. For those, just remove Fireflies from the call manually.

One honest caveat: the "unlimited" AI summaries on the Pro plan are limited by an AI credits system that most people don't notice until they hit the cap. Heavy users of AskFred and advanced summaries may run through the 30 included credits and face a $5 top-up charge for 50 extra credits. Not a dealbreaker, but worth knowing upfront so you're not surprised.

This week: sign up for the free plan and run it on your next three calls. Don't change anything about how you run those meetings. Just let Fireflies attend and see what it produces. By the third call you'll have a clear picture of whether this is worth $10/month for your situation — and for most small business owners who have regular client calls, it absolutely is.

Fireflies crossed a $1 billion valuation in mid-2025, which puts it firmly in the company of tools that are here to stay. The latest update — real-time note generation during calls, plus the Perplexity-powered live web search feature — signals that this category is evolving from simple transcription into something closer to a real-time meeting intelligence layer. That's worth paying attention to.

Paying a virtual assistant to take meeting notes manually. If you're currently outsourcing this task to a VA — whether offshore or local — and their primary job is attending calls and writing up summaries, that's a Fireflies subscription and $10/month. A VA costs $5–$25/hour. If they're spending even two hours a week on meeting notes, you're paying $40–$200/month for something that costs $10 and runs automatically. Redirect that VA's time to tasks AI genuinely can't do yet.

Until next issue, Kris

The Layman's AI — The only AI updates your business actually needs.