Guide
How to prep for every meeting in five minutes
Prepare a one-screen brief with five things: the meeting goal, who is attending, the last meaningful interaction, open promises on both sides, and the decision or next step you want. Pull from the calendar invite, recent messages, and the latest account or project note.
Pally can text you this brief before each meeting you pick, built from the invite, your email history, what it remembers about each person, and recent news. Stop when the brief lets you open the meeting with context and close it with a clear ask.
A practical approach
What to do
Write the meeting goal
Turn the calendar title into one sentence about what must be true when the meeting ends. “Decide the pilot start date” beats “Northwind sync.” If the organizer gave no outcome, pick your own next step, note that it is not agreed, and park side topics on a separate list.
Scan the people
Check each attendee's role, your relationship, and the last important change at their company. Use the invite, your CRM, the company site, or a recent message, and skip broad biography. An old record can miss a new role, so ask at the start whether anyone's responsibilities changed.
Find the open loop
Search the latest email thread, chat, and meeting note for open promises, objections, documents, and decisions. Write who owes what, and by when. Start with the newest source, because a keyword can surface an old promise and miss its later resolution.
Prepare one close
Write the question, decision, or assignment that should end the meeting, plus your preferred next date. Put it at the bottom of the brief so it is visible when time runs short. Change it openly if the conversation shows a better outcome.
The Pally option
How Pally helps
Pally texts you a brief before the calendar meetings you pick. It combines the invite, your Gmail history, what it remembers about each person, and timely web news, and you can ask for the source thread in the same conversation. When it writes a follow-up email, you see it before it goes out.
Pre-meeting briefs
Walk in knowing who's in the room, your history, and what's still open, without doing the homework.
See the recipeMeeting memory
Every decision, owner, and open question from your meetings, remembered and answerable.
See the recipeA memory for your people
Where they moved, what they're into, what they're going through: Pally keeps it all and hands it back right when you need it.
See the recipeOptions
Other tools people use
Fair alternatives, including ones that overlap with Pally.
Orchid
Orchid fits founders who want meeting booking and a morning rundown drawn from their connected email and calendar.
It drafts replies for you to approve rather than sending them on its own.
Hey Noah
Hey Noah fits meetings that need scheduling and action items extracted afterward through email or text.
Access is invite-only, and pricing is unpublished.
Lindy
Lindy fits meeting-heavy work that needs preparation, scheduling, notes, and follow-up in one assistant workflow.
Its work focus can be more than a founder needs for an occasional external meeting.
Compare Pally and LindyQuestions
Frequently asked questions
What if there is no recent history?
Use the invitation, the attendee's current role, and the meeting goal. Ask a context-setting question at the start instead of pretending the relationship has more history than it does.
Should I research every attendee?
Check the people who affect the decision or need a different level of context. A large internal meeting usually needs the owner and decision maker, while a small customer call may justify checking everyone.
How do I keep preparation to five minutes?
Use the same brief format every time and stop after the goal, people, history, open loops, and desired close are clear. Save deeper research for meetings where the stakes justify it.
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