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Turn yard-walk voice notes into priced landscape quotes with a Claude project loaded with your costs and last year's quotes
Quinten O'Dea, owner of Q&A Landscaping, a landscape and hardscape company in Pittsburgh with about 20 people, on the Blue Collar Builders podcast
After each estimate he records voice notes on his phone while walking the yard, runs them through an AI note-taker and pastes them into a Claude project. The project holds his cost structure (labor rates, equipment, materials and overhead recovery) and every quote he wrote the year before, so Claude prices the job and writes the customer-facing quote in his voice and order.
Claude $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) · The note-taker app isn't named (not checked).
Medium · or we set it up for $197
Claude, AI note-taker app (not named)
The problem
He does all of the company's sales and estimating, and writing quotes was eating his Fridays and Saturdays.
What happened
"On most quotes, there's a slight tweaking one way or another, but it is a significant reduction in the time." He says Claude sometimes assumes things it shouldn't, so he tells it not to guess. No dollar figures. Self-reported.
Quoted in the source: Quinten O'Dea, owner, Q&A Landscaping. Source: Blue Collar Builders podcast: Quinten O'Dea, Q&A Landscaping (2026-06-22) · Added 2026-10-29.
How to set it up yourself
- What Q&A Landscaping used: phone voice notes, an AI note-taker the podcast doesn't name, and a Claude project holding the company's cost structure and last year's quotes.
- In Claude, create a project for estimating. Upload your labor rates by role, equipment costs per hour or day, material markups and overhead, plus 20 or more past quotes you were happy with.
- Add project instructions: ask clarifying questions before pricing, show labor, equipment and materials separately, write the customer scope in the style of the uploaded quotes, and never guess a quantity; mark it CHECK.
- After each site visit, record a voice note walking the job, transcribe it (your phone's voice memo app or any note-taker), and paste the transcript into a new chat in the project with the prompt below.
- Review every number before it goes out. O'Dea says most quotes still get a small tweak.
Copy-paste prompt
Here are my notes from a site visit for {CUSTOMER NAME} at {ADDRESS}: {PASTE TRANSCRIPT}. Using my cost sheet and past quotes in this project, 1) ask me up to 5 questions about anything you'd otherwise have to assume, 2) then build a price with labor, equipment and materials (with overhead) shown separately, and 3) write the customer-facing scope in the same order and voice as my past quotes. Mark any quantity or price you're unsure of as CHECK.We set up one AI automation in your tools, live within 48 hours of getting access, for $197. No call needed. Founding price for our first 10 customers (regular $297).
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Tools used
Claude
AI assistant for writing, long documents, analysis and coding help.
From $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) (checked 2026-10-30)
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Checked prices: Claude: from $17/mo billed annually ($20 monthly) (verified 2026-10-30)
Rather not do it yourself?
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