Date: 2026-08-17 Attendees: Michael Houck, Blake Stewart, Blake Emal
Summary
First weekly Megaphone team sync. Three main topics: Jacob offboarding and Draper account transition, Studio tool feedback from Blake Emal, and proactive engagement issues (Casper killed, Jeffrey paused). Also covered meeting structure going forward and funnel/new business status.
Decisions
- Jacob gets no additional payment for content he pre-batched for clients who already dropped him. He wrote ahead without being asked. Michael will message Jacob tomorrow with a clean-break framing.
- Draper transition to Blake Emal starting September 1. Blake (Megaphone) to get a download on Draper’s email-based weekly cadence before handoff.
- Casper is dead. All proactive engagements now generated through Studio (using Fable), with full client context from the brain. Quality should be meaningfully better.
- Jeffrey Evans paused from proactive engagements after Peter Walker called out a comment as “AI spam” on LinkedIn. Comment reviewed live and didn’t read as AI; likely a frequency issue. Screenshot the comment, delete it, keep Jeffrey off the list through renewal. Michael joining Blake’s call with Jeffrey this week.
- Meeting structure going forward: client-focused with a light analytics/metrics layer each week. Blake Stewart to add client calls to the Granola team folder so Hermes sweeps them nightly.
- Casper killed, proactive engagements now Studio/Fable only. [See decision page: Casper Retired: All Proactive Engagements Now via Studio / Fable]
Action Items
- Michael: Message Jacob tomorrow with clean-break framing. Pay him for Draper work this month; September 1 is the handoff date.
- Michael: Build dedicated feedback submission box per client in the Studio writing desk (targeting tonight for tomorrow visibility).
- Michael: Push Studio AI toward client-specific niche expertise for topic selection, not crowd-pleasing defaults (Gutsburg example: spiky ideas needed).
- Blake Emal: Screenshot Jeffrey’s flagged comment, then delete it.
- Blake Stewart: Get topic ideas from Michelle Kwok and brief Blake Emal on Draper’s email-based weekly cadence before September 1.
- Michael: Have Hermes run an audit on Facet (Zara) account performance and possible shadow ban.
- Blake Emal: Follow up with a deeper audit on Facet after Hermes surfaces findings.
- Blake Stewart: Add client calls to the Granola team/client calls folder.
Notable Transcript Excerpts
“This is sort of the problem we were talking about last week… most of these people are going to want to see that it’s doing something before they’ll commit.” (Michael, on proactive outreach)
“Topic selection still too safe and repetitive. Gutsburg wants to be cutting edge, wants to write really spiky stuff, and it doesn’t tend to give spiky ideas even though it knows the kind of hooks he wants.” (Blake Emal)
“Casper is dead. Any proactive engagements we’re generating should be through the Studio tool, they use Fable, and they go into the brain with all our client context. So they should be better.” (Michael)
“Their series B announcement post where they raised $51 million, on their company account they only got 21k impressions. His personal account post literally got 300 impressions raising $51 million. That’s the worst result I’ve ever seen.” (Michael, on Facet/Zara)
“This new funnel - we’re testing it with Jolt this week. Assuming that works, we’ll basically just port the same model over to Megaphone.” (Michael, on VSL + down-sell funnel)
“I built it mostly just with Hermes. I think I had like one or two rounds of Claude design. So there are probably some little things that could be improved.” (Michael, on Studio)
Full transcript: Granola meeting 97735094-e3ad-4018-be3d-bf372c278d97