Capturing

Whole sentences, your own words, any order. You do not need to say which parts are people and which are notes.

Just had coffee with Sarah Whitfield from Brightline. She runs their ops team. They are replacing their scheduling system in Q1 and she is frustrated with the vendor. Her colleague Tom sat in for the last ten minutes. I said I would send her the case study by Friday.

From that one paragraph KnowWho creates two people, a company, a meeting, a note about the vendor frustration, and a dated task. You did not name any of those things.

Voice works as well as typing, and is usually faster. Most assistants take dictation. Use it while you are walking to the car.

Every capture comes back with exactly what was recorded:

Recorded. Created Sarah Whitfield at Brightline, head of operations. Created Tom, no surname given, at Brightline. Logged a meeting on 16 September with both of them. Created a task: send Sarah the case study, due Friday 19 September.

This is the single most important habit. It takes three seconds and it is the difference between a book you trust and a book you half trust. Every other tool records silently and lets you discover the mistake in eight months.

The confirmation also states anything KnowWho assumed. If it created Brightline because no such company existed, it says so. If it matched a name that was close but not exact, it says so. If it picked today's date because you did not give one, it says so. Assumptions are stated as facts, so you can see them and correct them.

One sentence, straight away, while you still remember what was true.

That was Whitfield, not Whitfeld. Tom is at Brightline, not Northgate. The meeting was Tuesday, not today. Delete that task, I already sent it. Sarah and Sara Whitfield are the same person, merge them.

You can correct anything at any time, not just immediately. The reason to do it now is that now is when you know.

If a name is close to more than one person in your book, KnowWho does not guess. It writes nothing, returns the candidates, and asks which one you meant. Answer and it carries on.

The same applies to companies. An exact match is used. Something with no near match is created. A near miss comes back as a question.

If two people genuinely have the same name and you want both, say so and it will create the second one.

Capture is not only meetings.

Add James Okafor, partner at Hendricks, met him through Sarah.

Note on Brightline: anything over 50k goes to their board.

Sarah has moved to Northgate as COO.

People can work in more than one place. A new job never ends the old one by itself: your assistant asks whether Sarah has left Brightline, and records the end date if she has.

Tag Sarah and Brightline as flow-metrics.

Brightline is a member of the Logistics Leaders network, and a client of Northgate since 2024.

Sarah's personal email is sarah@example.com, and her birthday is 14 March.

Log that I emailed Tom the pricing yesterday.

Remind me to call Sarah next Tuesday.

New opportunity with Northgate, scheduling replacement, about 80k, Sarah is the buyer.

Met about forty people at the conference. The three worth remembering are...

The mechanical facts are the least valuable thing in your book. Your assistant could guess most of them.

What no other system will ever hold is your read. Why the deal actually stalled. Which of the two of them really decides. That he mentioned he is leaving in the spring. That she was frustrated, not just interested. None of that is in an email, so it is in no CRM, and it is the part that matters.

Three habits that make everything later work better:

• Say why, not just what. "She is frustrated with the vendor" beats "discussed vendors".
• Name who else was there. Even without a surname. The connection is worth more than the record.
• Record your read, marked as your read. "My sense is Tom is the real decision maker" is a legitimate thing to put in a book.