Issue #11 May 26, 2026 4 min read

5-Minute Meeting Prep That Changes How People See You

You have a meeting in 30 minutes with someone you barely know. A client, a partner, a board candidate. You need context, fast. One prompt turns you into the most prepared person in the room.

The Problem

Most people prepare for meetings by scanning a website and reading a LinkedIn bio. That gives you surface information. Job title, company size, maybe a recent press release. Enough to avoid embarrassment but not enough to impress.

The gap between "I looked at your website" and "I saw your comment at the Barcelona conference about supply chain visibility" is enormous. The first is homework. The second is preparation. People notice the difference immediately.

The information you need already exists. Interviews, conference talks, LinkedIn posts, earnings calls, industry articles. Nobody has 45 minutes to sift through all of it before a single meeting. But an AI model can synthesize it in under a minute.

The Fix

  1. Open any AI tool. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini. Free accounts work fine for this. No documents to upload.
  2. Paste the meeting prep prompt below. Fill in the name, title, and company of the person you are meeting.
  3. Read the briefing card. Three minutes. You now know their recent priorities, what they have said publicly, and one question that shows you did real preparation.
Copy-paste prompt
"I have a meeting in 30 minutes with [Name], [Title] at [Company]. Research what you know about this person and their company. Give me: (1) three recent developments at their company I should reference, (2) two things this person has said publicly (interviews, conference talks, LinkedIn posts) that reveal their priorities, (3) one question I can ask that shows I did my homework. Keep it under 200 words."
Optional: go deeper
"Also compare their company's last annual report with the previous year. What changed? What did they stop talking about?"
What you get

A structured briefing card: three company developments to reference naturally, two public statements that reveal what this person actually cares about, and one question designed to signal genuine preparation. Under 200 words. Scannable in three minutes.

Cost
$0
Time to learn
0 min
Time saved per meeting
~40 min

Why this works better than Google

Google gives you 50 tabs. AI gives you one briefing card. The difference is not speed. It is structure. You walk in knowing what matters to them, not what the internet thinks matters.

The real trick is point (2). When you reference something someone actually said, they notice. Not their company tagline. Not their job description. Something they chose to say in a public forum. It signals that you did more than skim their LinkedIn profile.

This is especially powerful when meeting people from different departments. A CFO cares about different things than a CTO. A regional manager has different pressures than a VP. The prompt surfaces what matters to this specific person, not their company in general.

The annual report trick

The optional second prompt is where it gets interesting for higher-stakes meetings. Ask the AI to compare this year's annual report with last year's. What language changed? What initiatives disappeared? What got promoted from a paragraph to a full section?

Companies telegraph their strategy through what they stop talking about. If "digital transformation" was on every page last year and barely mentioned this year, that is a signal. If "cost optimization" replaced "growth acceleration," that tells you where the conversation will go before you walk in the room.

Works for

  • Client meetings, especially first meetings where you have no relationship history
  • Board presentations where you need to know your audience before you present
  • Job interviews, on both sides of the table
  • Investor or partner conversations where rapport matters
  • Internal meetings with colleagues from departments you rarely interact with
  • Conference networking, when you know who will be in the room beforehand

5 meetings per week × 40 minutes saved = ~3 hours back every week
And every meeting starts better because you already know what matters to the other person. The information was always there. Now it takes five minutes to find it.

The Bigger Picture
Where This Is Going
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