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A Session Notes Stack That Survives Flu Season

Consent, summary, backup, what a VA can touch. Resilience, not another AI pitch.

DukeFounder & Developer

SystemsCoaching
A Session Notes Stack That Survives Flu Season
Photo from Unsplash

Notes stack

AI automation already covered Otter. This is resilience: you get sick, the notes still exist, a VA can send the recap without hearing the raw hour. Progress is the three lines. Notion can hold them. The Q4 freeze means you do not buy a new notes app this month. The invisible win still gets a sentence on the recap.

The Stack (four layers)

  1. Consent — recorded or not, written in intake.
  2. Summary — insight / decision / experiment, same day, where the client can see it.
  3. Backup — export weekly to a place that isn’t only your laptop.
  4. Handoff — a VA may send the summary, never the raw audio, unless the agreement says so.

If layer 2 exists, you can miss a week and the work continues. If only layer 1 exists, you have a graveyard of files.

What a VA Can Touch

Allowed: send the three-line recap you already wrote; book the next slot; chase a missing invoice. Not allowed: listen for “nuggets,” rewrite the insight, post a story.

Write that list. If you don’t have a VA, write it anyway so flu-you remembers.

Flu Week Protocol

  • Recaps already sent? Good. Don’t reopen them.
  • Tomorrow’s clients: offer 45 minutes or a voice-note check-in.
  • Do not record new hours you cannot summarize.

The freeze still holds. Sickness is not a reason to start Notion 2.0.

What Most Coaches Get Wrong

They keep recordings and skip summaries. Then illness means a pile of audio nobody will hear.

They also give a VA the Drive and hope. Hope is not a handoff.

Backup That Is Boring

Weekly export of summaries to a second place: another drive, a dated zip, email-to-self. Not a new SaaS. If the laptop dies on Tuesday, Wednesday’s recaps still exist.

Test it once: restore last week’s zip. If you can’t, you don’t have a backup.

Name a coverage person before flu hits: who can send recaps you already wrote, who cannot open audio. If the name is “nobody,” your stack is you. That’s allowed. Don’t pretend a Drive folder is a team.

When DIY Isn’t Enough

When backup is “I’ll remember,” you won’t. A portal that is the summary layer is the point of Grow / Scale. You still write the three lines.

Want recaps that go out even when you’re on the couch? Let’s talk.