The Weekly Recap Email

When I started Same Page back in 2020, I had no grand plan and no idea if it would ever become a full-fledged business. I was just trying to pay my bills.

Very quickly, it became clear there was a real need for fractional HR, and before I knew it, I had five clients. That’s when I realized I needed to get ultra-organized and step up my communication. Managing multiple clients felt very different from working inside one company.

During those chaotic early days, a mentor shared one simple piece of advice that stuck with me:

“You need to start sending weekly recap emails.”

So I did.

Every Friday afternoon, I emailed each client a short update that answered four simple questions:

• Highlights: What did we accomplish?

• Priorities: What will we do next?

• Blockers: Where do I need your input?

• Observations: Anything else worth mentioning?

Even when the answers felt small or there wasn’t much to report, I sent it anyway. It wasn’t about activity for its own sake. It was about clarity, momentum, and accountability.

Today, we have more than 20 People Partners at Same Page, and sending a Friday recap is baked into how we operate. It builds trust with clients, keeps priorities aligned, and surfaces issues early before they become bigger problems.

Internally, it builds a culture of closing loops. If you know the recap is going out by 4 p.m. every Friday, tasks get finished, decisions get made, and vague progress updates get replaced with real ones.

Some companies—and a certain tech mogul now working for the government—use weekly updates to make people prove their worth. That is not the point. This is about ownership, clarity, and building trust without being asked. In a world where work is increasingly remote and fuzzy, the weekly recap is how you show your work.

Over time, I realized the habit isn’t just for client work. Any project, team, or initiative moves faster with a regular rhythm of closing loops and resetting priorities. It’s one of the simplest ways to stay aligned as things grow more complex.

The weekly recap email is a simple habit that builds the kind of rhythm serious work demands.