Organize, Automate, and Scale Your Business with Notion and AI

Not sure if you’re like me, but I’m not naturally organized. A bit of a mess to be honest. But I realized that to be a successful leader and entrepreneur, I needed to find a solution.

Instead of trying to become Mr. Super Organized, I decided to create systems that would keep me focused on what moves the needle, without having to become someone I’m not.

And this is when I found Notion.

Adam Fishman, who’s led product and growth at companies like Lyft and Patreon was on the PRODUCTEA with Leah podcast a while back. He said: “Notion, it’s like your grandma’s attic, you never know what you can find.”

Now, I appreciate Adam, exceptional chap he is but he’s completely wrong.

For us, Notion became the foundation of our business operating system and growth marketing approach.

Let’s break it down.

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Why tools won’t solve your bad habits

See, an attic, or any space for that matter, isn’t the problem. It’s how the owner of that space manages it. If my room is a mess, that’s on me, not the four walls around me.

Blaming the attic for the clutter is like blaming your mirror for the spinach stuck in your teeth.

You see, Adam is confusing the tool with the behavior.

I have used Asana, Trello, JIRA, Confluence, Monday, ClickUp, Google Suite, Microsoft 365. They can all turn into a nightmare with some will.

Notion brings three critical elements that teams need to be successful:

• A tool to get things done by managing projects, tasks, and sprints
• A dedicated space to help individuals see their priorities and get the important tasks done
• A place to file your key documents in an intuitive way
• BONUS: Some nifty AI functionalities that make life easier

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What is a business operating system?

To get things done, build your company culture, and stay organized, you need a business operating system. It combines vision, priorities, strategies, processes, tools, behaviors, and culture.

The challenge with a business operating system is that there are a lot of intangibles in it. Notion won’t build your culture for you. It won’t stay clean if you don’t clean it up, but it does provide a fantastic foundation and engine that form parts of your operating system.

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How we run our Operating System

Notion scoops up all your project, sprint, task management, and document juggling. We’ve been using it as a nerve center for our business, and, has it been a game changer!

Here are some of the key elements we have.

• Purpose, Strategy, OKRs: This section includes everything related to where we’re going, why, and how we’re doing so far. We use this section to keep our team aligned, focused on what’s most important, and on track with delivering results. This is where we have our Effective Strategy & OKRs Notion Template.
• Operations: This is where we document, manage, and track what needs to be done. Think projects, experiments, tasks, and sprints. Since you can connect them all, you end up with a real system. OKRs are connected to Projects, which are connected to tasks and organized in sprints. This is where you can find our Notion Growth Experiment Dashboard.
• Team Memos: On Mondays, we blast out a memo armed with orders of the week. It’s a simple way to keep our team looped in on recent developments, informed of, and laser-focused on our priorities. Because everyone knows, Monday mixed with a lack of clarity equals existential dread.
• Team Meetings: Minutes, agendas, and action items from all our weekly syncs. This is where you can find our High-Productivity Meeting Agenda Notion Template.
• Projects, Tasks, Sprints: We have all projects and tasks interconnected with related documents and resources. We run 2-week sprints focused on moving the needle.
• Department teamspaces: We created some teamspaces based on specific “departments”. For instance, we have a Marketing teampace that includes our content calendar, branding guidelines, podcast resources, files, etc.
• Clients & Partner spaces: We have separate spaces to share information and collaborate with our clients and partners.

Automate like there’s no tomorrow

To make the system turn into magic, we added a series of automation and AI tools to the mix.

I’ll get into that in another piece, but we basically use tools like Zapier, Custom GPTs, ChatGPT, Copy.ai, Notion, Sales Navigator, LinkedIn, Calendly, etc. to improve massively the quantity and quality of our output.

Here are some of the results we’ve got over the past two weeks:

• 🚀 100% increase in lead generation and 300% jump in LinkedIn profile visits over two weeks
• 🏃🏾‍♂️ 80% reduction of time spent on podcast scheduling, preparation, editing, and promotion
• 🎙 7 podcast interviews scheduled in 2 days

Now listen up!

Notion is not a walk in the park if you plan to bring your slobbish habits to the table. If you don’t set it up and maintain it properly you’re going to end up with your grandma’s attic.

And I don’t want anybody to prove Adam Fishman right. 😅

If you tend to be messy or have some ADHD-related issues, Notion and AI can change how you work and how productive you are. If you need help with Notion or AI Automation, let me know here.

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