Extreme Productivity with Seth David

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And today we have, I would say, for me and Sarah, this is an extra, extra, extra special guest that we're going to talk about extreme productivity. And I have a feeling it's going to go down the road of me and Sarah sitting here while Steve and Seth David, who's our guest, start to go down the Notion road, but we're gonna have to rein 'em back in, Sarah. But welcome, Seth. We love you and you are the reason why Sarah and I are together, 'cause that's how we met in your mastermind group, 97 and Up. So welcome, welcome.

Thank you, and I love you too.

Yep.

I was saying before you joined that I absolutely adore the two of you, so. You know, Stephen said he was honored that I was joining. I said, no, the honor's all mine.

It's honoree all around.

It's honoree. I like that. That's perfect.

Honoree or honoree?

I like honoree.

You could go with, you could hear it as you need, Lynda. No, I'm kidding.

I mean, I say leave it open for anyone else to interpret.

I love it. I love it. So extreme.

Productivity.

Productivity.

Depending how you pronounce it. Kind of like honoree, honoree.

I feel like with Seth, I mean, I've been watching him forever. Like obviously one of his leading things was how to book him payroll. That's been a leader in his YouTube. And I watched that and I always would refer to him as the nerd guy in my house. And my husband's like, I gotta see who this nerd guy is that you keep talking about. So, like, he's like this cute little caricature. But you have been at the forefront of so many productive things. You've looked at all different apps. You've tested so many things. I mean, you've done so much. Look at this little Muppet here.

That's the real Seth David.

This is the real Seth David.

The Count. I love it.

He's your accountant.

Oh, that's a good one. But you would like, like, I feel like I squirreled for a long time. Like, okay, what's he doing over here? What's he doing over here? What's he doing over here? But you really have honed a skill just between work life, all of it, and productivity just in your own, just you, Seth David, on how you'd approach this.

And he's the OG of it, right? He's been around doing it before everybody else.

I'm a dinosaur.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You can't be a dinosaur. You're younger than me.

Not allowed here.

I'm the dinosaur in the room.

So, so where are you at now with the, the, obviously Notion is a big, a big space. You're a huge Airtable, Smartsheets back in the day. I'm just trying to remember some of them.

Yeah, Smartsheets ancient history. This will be my last. I had to renew my Smartsheets subscription one last time.

Okay.

Because I, long story short, and actually going even deeper into the answer to your question. So earlier this year, 2023, July 1st to be exact, I signed a deal with Erica, who I had worked with for almost a decade.

Yeah.

And sold off all of the clients that she worked on to her, which was most of the accounting clients. I've also worked with a woman named Kelly for years and she's still, she's still with me and she has 2 clients basically. One of which is a pretty big e-commerce client, which I'm really happy to keep on. First, I adore the client. Second, it keeps me in the game, especially as far as accounting work goes. E-commerce is, you know, a niche I've come to really love. Right. So, and the other client is more of a support client, but they're also in e-commerce. So if I'm going to stay anywhere in accounting, I figure e-commerce from, from where I sit is the best place to be. It's probably the fastest growing industry and based on that one with the greatest need for accounting and bookkeeping professionals. And at the same time, as I'm sure you well know, we have the fewest number of people in history entering the accounting profession, which creates an even more tremendous opportunity for bookkeepers who want to serve e-commerce clients because they're going to be desperate for people to help them.

So true. I mean, I forgot what the stats were on the decline, but it is kind of weird to think that that is That's where we are. When I often hear some people like, oh, I just thought I'd try it on the side. I'm like, yeah, that makes me nervous sometimes if you just try it on the side with no knowledge. What does that look like really? So—

Yeah, but there's such an opportunity to find those people out there now that work remotely. They're just hiding under the rocks waiting for us. And how do we find them and get them excited and bring them into the fold?

Yeah, I think that that's a very poignant point, Stephen, because I think really one of the answers to that specifically, and I hit on this when the pandemic started because I had just, I had already before it started, you know, in early 2020, I was in the process of organizing a relaunch of my original Bulletproof Bookkeeping Mastery course. And when the pandemic hit, I almost said, let's put this on pause. Who's going to want to spend money on this? And actually, My coach at the time in this program that I was signed up for where I was being mentored was— it was a woman named Madeline. Maddie is what she liked to be called. She got me completely turned back around on it. She's like, no, this is— first of all, what better way to make money working from home, working remotely, than to do bookkeeping, right? A lot of people think of home-based businesses and they— and it gets associated a lot with things like MLM and direct marketing, which has a stigma to it. Yeah. Probably less so now than in years past. But so it was the idea of going out there and saying, hey, here's a quote, legitimate home-based business. And that's how I reached those people. To go back to your comments, Stephen, that's exactly how I reached them, is I created marketing messaging that was based on the idea of, hey, you want to make money working from home, really good money doing something very legitimate, something that will truly add value for people who really need it. Mm-hmm. This is the way to go. And I, I built a customer avatar around that concept. Of somebody who's sitting at home jobless now because of the pandemic and wondering, what can I do to make money? And the whole, one of the major points I was going out there with, and one thing you always wanna do in marketing is make claims that are gonna sort of upset people a little bit, you know, that go against the grain, that go against common conceptions about how things should be. So I went out there and started making very loudly the claim, which is actually true, that you don't need to have a college degree to do bookkeeping work. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But that, that, that you do need the skills.

Mm-hmm.

And that was my marketing strategies. I'll give you the skills. You don't need to go to college. You don't need to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt before you even get started. You can start right now. I can teach you the skills. Go out there, have at it, learn bookkeeping, and then start figuring out what niche you want to serve.

That was— So the key is finding them, you know, and I've thought about like maybe, you know, with our legal niche, approaching the business schools connected to the legal school here in Denver at the University of Denver and maybe getting a mentor or two in that, you know, can work for 6 months with us. And but to your point, we've got to have all the SOPs and everything going, which I don't— we haven't touched on yet. But, but, you know, finding ways to get these people that are out there, they're probably on the other side of the fence going, how do I do this? How do I find this? I know it's there. Yeah. You know, and how do we marry the two sides together and give them the tools that they need to be successful with it and be excited about it like we are?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's social media and content marketing. That's how I find those people. That's how I, you know, from day one, I've shouted from the rooftops that, you know, the marketing side of this for accountants and bookkeepers is a, quote, program of attraction, not promotion. You attract—

Oh, I like that.

Yeah. You attract by putting value content out there that teaches people. It's counterintuitive initially for, for the untrained mind on this because they're thinking, but you're giving it all away and teaching people how to do it themselves. So why are they gonna need to pay you for it? And the answer is the majority of people will fit in that description, but the minority of people who then go on to say, you know what, I'd rather just hire you more than outweighs anything you'd lose by—

You're right, Seth. You know, I, I've been, for 10 years, I've, where are we at, '23? For 13 years now I've been teaching at the Colorado Bar Association for free.

Yeah.

But now I've become, you know, over those years I've become the expert in this arena here in this part of the country. And we just got a new client the other day who went back to the Bar Association and found one of my videos from, I don't know, 7 or 8 years ago. And he is like, you're the guy, we have to have you. You know, so you're right. Yeah, yeah.

That's how I got into e-commerce accounting in the first place is I had a guy reach out to me and he's like, I've been through 4 bookkeepers who've made a mess of my books. He's like, I don't know what I'm doing bookkeeping-wise, but I know enough to know that they've made a mess. And he's like, and I want you to come and fix it. And I said, I don't have any e-commerce experience. It's a very specialized area and there's a lot of accountants who specialize in that. I would be doing you a disservice if I told you I could just take it on for you. And he persisted and he says, nope, I've seen your videos on YouTube.

You're the guy.

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what he said. He said, you're the guy. Then I, I said, all right, well, let me, let me try something here. And I actually reached out to my community, right? My other accountant, the bookkeeper's friends. And one person actually had a really good suggestion. She said, why don't you find an accountant who specializes in e-commerce? Let them handle that piece of it, and then you just handle the rest of the general ledger for them. And it sounded a little disconnected, but I thought maybe it could work. But what I found out very quickly, as I spoke to each of the people that I knew were well known in the accounting world for this, they were all there. One of them even said, she said, I reached out to her through a referral. She said, Seth, I know you, I've watched your YouTube videos. I would love any opportunity to work with you, but I'm up to my eyeballs right now. I can't take on another stitch. And I was like, that was kind of the turning point for me. I remember it so well, you know, because it was such a turning point because I was on jury duty that week and I had the call with her while I was like waiting on a break, you know, when we were— I was waiting to find out if I was going to be stuck on a jury. Yeah. And, but that's when it clicked for me. I was like, okay, this is Economics 101. There is clearly very high demand for this and very short supply, and that equals opportunity, right? I can charge a lot. I can make a lot of money doing this. And so, you know, talk about insanely productive or extremely productive, you know, the first thing is find an area that where you can offer value where there's a need, right?

Yes.

And in my own marketing process, we have what we call the MAP framework. MAP standing for everything is unique. So MAP is the unique mechanism, the unique audience, and the unique promise, right? These are the 3 things you want to identify.

Wow.

Right? So you, because if I go out there and say, well, my audience is anybody who needs bookkeeping help, you're done. You're just dead in the water.

You're done.

Yeah.

You're talking to no one, right?

Yeah.

You're trying to talk to everyone, which means you're talking to no one. So you have to carve out a very unique audience. Going back to my Bulletproof Bookkeeping Mastery relaunch of that course, which I did in 2020. And to this day, it was the most successful launch I've done. In a week sales period, I made what most people don't make in a year. So, you know, that says something.

But to your points that I've looked at your course and it is, there's a lot of work behind what you did. This is not just a, this is not like a simple course. It's got everything in it you could possibly ever want. You worked hard to build that course, and I know what it's like to build a course, and I'm like, man, I— it's amazing because you've always made great content from way back in the day when we would find you on YouTube. And then now I look at the content, it's such good content. So if anybody looking for a course like that, I mean, that would definitely be hands down like the premier course to get because it gives you— you give so much even in it for the value for what it costs.

Thank you.

Definitely. And I just know how much work it is.

Well, my goal is to go so far over the top with it to really, even though, even though I'm charging a lot. And by the way, I just slashed all the prices probably for good. Because I'm like, I was charging $2,500 for any major bookkeeping course, any major Bulletproof Bookkeeping course. And I'm like, you know what? And I'll be very honest and transparent about this. They don't sell that well at that price point without me getting on the phone with people and talking to them and kind of reassuring them. Yeah. So I said, you know what? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do an experiment. Mm-hmm. And I slashed the prices to just $1,500. And I said, instead of doing promotions, cuz when you start doing promotions and coupon codes and Black Friday specials, guess what? Then everybody waits for that.

Yeah.

And nobody signs up in between. And my goal is to create a pipeline or a funnel, if you will, where I have people signing up all the time. Right? I want more steady sales with this. So, yeah. How do I do that? What's the strategy? Well, I slashed the prices and not just by a little. I knocked $1,000 off of each of those courses. So they're now $1,500 and I plan on keeping them there. And, and the Notion course that I just launched, going back to the extreme productivity side of things, because that's what that's really all about. I was going to do it like a typical Bulletproof course because it is as robust, if not more, than any of these other Bulletproof bookkeeping courses have been. And I said, you know what, I'm going to do something again extreme in my opinion. And So originally the plan was I'll try, I'll do the typical routine that I do when I launch a Bulletproof course, which is retail price is $2,500. But if you sign up during this launch, it's gonna be $1,000, right? And then you, so you have that week to sign up at that price. That's how I create urgency for people and say, do it now, otherwise it's gonna cost you a lot more. Mm-hmm. And I said, you know what? No, I'm not gonna do any of that. I'm just gonna price the whole damn thing at $750. And I threw in a few extras for people who signed up during the launch. And, but that's it. And that's, so I'm not gonna, no more discounts. Because I literally had people emailing me earlier this year saying, hey, I know you often like to do promotions. So before I sign up for your Bulletproof Bookkeeping course, can you let me know if there's gonna be like a Valentine's Day special or a Tuesday special or whatever special they think is coming up next? And that's when I realized, I'm like, so people are just gonna wait it out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I, I said, you know, and a lot of marketers would say I'm shooting myself in the foot because they say that's how that, that's how it works, right? That you have to make people feel like they're getting something of value by offering some kind of a promotion or discount at these certain periods of time. But like I said, I'm trying a different strategy here. I'd rather not sort of play those games with people and say, look, let's just be straight. This, this is worth a lot more than this. I think it's extremely fair at this price. And the reality is what I'm already starting to see is people are just randomly— people I've never spoken to before or heard of before. And usually I do at least recognize the name. It's somebody I usually have had some some kind of an exchange with, but people are just signing up at the $1,500 price point without even needing to have a conversation. And I think that speaks volumes as far as strategy goes.

So Seth, let's talk about extreme productivity and, oh, I don't know, Notion.

Yeah.

So let me tell you how I met Notion.

Bring us in. The sun is coming up right now.

Let me tell you how I met Notion. So years ago I was using Evernote for everything, you know, to keep track of notes and information and even tasks and to-dos and things. It was just, I realized one day like, hey, I can just use Evernote and it's, you know, you might think of it as a note or a page, but I can just say this is a task. I can make a note be whatever I want it to be, right?

Mm-hmm.

And the time came when I was starting to find that I was hitting a certain critical mass in terms of the volume of information I was keeping track of in Notion. I tried a few different methods of organizing using things, different systems with tagging and whatnot, but I was starting to struggle to find things when I needed them. And what was most sort of upsetting to me was the tag area within Evernote itself was there was no easy way to organize that or to look through and kind of browse by tags. It was just not well done in that area.

Mm-hmm.

Then I started reading, and I'm a, I'm an avid reader, especially if I'm gonna go that all in with an app. I wanna know who's behind that app. That's super important to me. And I started reading that the entire management team of Evernote just left one day. This was years ago.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

And I was like, that doesn't bode well. That's not a good sign. And they completely reorganized. And some of the articles that were kind of clearly trying to paint a favorable picture were like, oh, the company's grown so much, they need a different kind of management. And I was like, okay, whatever. I'm not sticking around for this. I was already struggling with it. So I left Evernote and from there it was like I dated for years, but I couldn't find my mate, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. The first thing I did of course was I searched Google for Evernote alternatives. And the first thing I remember coming up was Notion. Notion in those days was in its infancy and I looked at it and I said, well, this is just Evernote. It's just a little different interface, but it's the same thing, you know? And it seemed very linear and I didn't see the benefit. I didn't, I didn't see how it was gonna be any better than Evernote was. So I said, no, I'm out. I used OneNote for quite a while. And I love— there are pieces of that that I love. And as a result, there were many times I went back to OneNote really trying to love it. But every time it ended up failing me for different reasons. In the early days, it was because their mobile app was either nonexistent or just terrible. Right? And for something like this, the mobile app is critically important to me at, at this point in time. Any app I choose to use better have a really good, solid mobile experience, right? Because I want to know that I can be sitting here at my computer, right? Writing up notes or whatever I'm doing. And all of a sudden I look at the time and I say, oh crap, I'm late for my haircut. And so I can get up and grab this. And as I'm sitting waiting for my haircut, I better be able to pick up right from where I left off with zero friction. That's kind of my acid test on something like this. And I love that analogy of, you know, waiting for my haircut, you know, because—

Well— Then I need to get some hair because this isn't gonna work for me.

Well, or car wash. Okay. Waiting at the car wash. Okay.

Take your Airbus.

No, I'm kidding.

There we go.

So anyway, so long story short, eventually I project management-wise, eventually I was forever using something called, it was called, it was some cloud something. I don't know why I can't remember because I just revisited it recently out of curiosity to see what was going on with it. ActiveCollab. That was it. ActiveCollab was the app I was using for years. Eventually I just— what happened with that one was I had a contractor bookkeeper who sent me an invoice from that product. And I was like, this looks really cool. This looks very slick. I really liked it. And clearly you can invoice people from it. And clearly it had time tracking. So that was what she was doing and how she was using it. And that's often, by the way, how I discover new apps. It's not so much researching or asking other people. I see what grabs my attention. I look and, and, and I often, I become like a personal sociologist, right? I observe my own behavior. How do I react to something? If I notice that I have a very positive reaction to something, I want to take a look at where that came from. Why is that? Right? That's how I discovered ActiveCollab. And so I used ActiveCollab for years and didn't think I was ever going to leave it. I really liked it. Everybody I had turned on to it really loved it. Everybody in my 97 and Up group really loved it.

Yeah.

And then one day, then ClickUp came out and ClickUp was taking the market by storm. They did a very good job with the product first and foremost. And with the marketing. And it was very clear they had a really solid team behind the product.

Mm-hmm.

And in some ways, I like the fact that none of them had any kind of background in our little accounting world for a number of reasons. But a lot of, I feel like it tells me their focus is on building a really solid productivity app, not on accounting. Like, there's not that sort of dilution that I think can happen sometimes. And yet since then, there are some really, really good project management type apps that have come out by accountants for accountants. You know, there's things like Keeper, which is amazing.

Yeah.

There is Financial Sense, which is also amazing.

Yeah.

I feel like there's one other one that should be top of mind and I'm not thinking of it. But anyway, eventually I said, all right, I'm gonna check out ClickUp, right? Because I heard enough buzz about it.

Yeah.

And so I started checking out ClickUp and long story short there, I did eventually get so sold on ClickUp that I moved out of ActiveCollab and into ClickUp. And I used that for quite a while, for several years. But the problem with ClickUp that I ran into was it was a great project management app, but there was no real knowledge management piece to it. That's what I was missing. I still needed that knowledge management piece.

So talk about that a little bit, the knowledge management piece.

I was going to say, yeah, because are you thinking more industry specific or just— I'm curious.

It could be industry specific, but also just generally what we— the term we've now come to, which wasn't really there yet was, is the term that you'll hear people use that I use a lot now called like where we have a second brain, right? In other words, a reference tool where I can reference information. So ClickUp had developed a really good documents feature, which is what I was, was clearly designed to be used in that way. But here's the problem that I ran into that didn't get fixed, at least as of the point that I ended up leaving ClickUp and getting into Notion full time, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Which is that I could create a document and, and I would, I would create a document that, you know, with, so I could write detailed notes about something. You know, you could create a task in ClickUp and it has that description area, but sometimes you need something where you can just lay out a much broader context, right?

Like your SOP.

Exactly.

Yeah. So I'd write up that document and then later I'm like, I'm looking for it. I'm like, where is that thing? And because, and that's where the problem gets introduced. So with, with ClickUp, they give you lots of flexibility, but therein lies the issue with this particular feature. Because I couldn't remember if a document that I created was associated with a task or a list or— Oh, I gotcha. Okay. And there was, there was an area where you could see all of your documents, but there was no organization of that area. There was no easy way to find things, especially once I had a lot. And so then I just made a rule for myself. I said, okay, no longer making any documents at the task level because that's buried too deep in the infrastructure and I can't find it., right? And a task is eventually gonna get marked completed or something, presumably. So then I'll really lose that document in, in the abyss. So all in all, I just didn't— it, it worked as well as it could work, but I didn't feel like I had a really good solid solution for that knowledge management piece, for notes, for my thoughts, for, hey, I've got this idea. It's got nothing to do with a project, right? It's got nothing to do with any kind of task or anything. It's just I have an idea. I wanna record it somewhere. I wanna offer a new service. I wanna offer this CFO service. Service, you know, concept that I have. I don't know what it looks like yet, but I need a place where I can write about it and define it and, and, and get that concept, that idea to materialize into something concrete so that I can then go create a product on my website and offer the thing. Then that brings me into a product like ClickUp where once I have clients in that service, I'm gonna manage it, right? So I was missing that whole area of stuff, not to mention even once the client's in effect, I have meetings. What was I doing? I was creating a task in ClickUp that I was really using to effectively be my meeting notes. So I'd have a task called meeting with so-and-so on X date. That's not really a— it's a workaround. It's not a good way to keep track of meeting notes. And then within those meeting notes, I want to be able to peel off to-dos. I just didn't feel like I had a good system to manage the whole picture. And this is where I started rereading David Allen's Getting Things Done, because I'm like, okay, I need to go back to the source, right? And Getting Things Done, as far as I'm concerned, is the source of all of this productivity stuff. You want to get extremely productive or insanely productive, please reread that book. And I say reread because most of you have read it.

I started it. I didn't finish it. I need to. I need to.

Yes. But the question is, how are you taking what's in that book and applying it?

Yeah.

I built my whole entire Bulletproof Notion concept around that book primarily, and one other book, which I'll mention in a minute. But my idea was I need to take his concepts, right? His concepts give you the system, which is devoid of any apps, right? He gives you the system, the framework for how to operate. And then I'll quickly touch on the other book for a minute, but I want to stay with Getting Things Done for the most part. But where I came up with this term work management instead of project management is from Nick Sonnenberg's book, Getting Things Done. Nick Sonnenberg's book is called Come Up for Air. And he talks about work management and I love, I, and obviously completely agree with his concept there that much of what we do has nothing to do with a project. So a system that's limited to managing projects is limited. It doesn't encompass everything that we need to do.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting.

So that's where, that's why I, I ultimately the title evolved a lot from, you know, day to day for a while, but eventually I landed on Bulletproof Notion Work Management System. Because I believe that what I created there was a complete work management system where you can manage all of your work, tasks, meeting notes, projects. I even reluctantly built a timekeeping system with it because people in the beta group asked me for that. And I said, well, as much as I don't want to encourage bad behavior, I recognize that some people are going to need it. And to be fair, some people, you know, want to track time for good reason, right? Because they just want to see how long it takes them to complete something.

And for their KPIs.

Yeah. Yeah. So for that use case, I totally agree. It's of value. Just please don't ever use your time tracking to bill anyone, right? Because time has no real value. Not that way. It has no intrinsic value. Time is the most precious resource, but it has no value for billing purposes. Yeah.

So, so, you know, I'm just thinking like, because I wrote down Evernote Active, I remember all of these. From before starting out.

We've all been down that path.

We've all been down it. Yeah. And I really feel like you've always said this is whatever you decide on, you have to adopt it. You have to get into it. You have to give yourself the leeway and the space to do it. We also have to see if that's what's gonna work for you because what might work for you is not the thing that might work for the other person. And I've always felt like that's kind of true of like a lot of things that will open up and right away we'll be like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. You got to give it a little bit of time. And we had that happen to us where we really did try to adopt Notion, but we got so much resistance without silent resistance, without being able to move too far forward because really we didn't have a lot of people that it wasn't working for the team.

Mm-hmm.

Once we found that we ended up in financial sense, once we found that that worked for them, And they're in the adoption. Yes, it's been slow. It's been a— but at least they went into it. They looked at it. They liked the timer situation, not for billing, but just for tracking. We started to see things turn and we're getting the SOPs in there. We're starting to see that gravitation. And then we're adding in, like you, like you say, like check this place, check this. But I mean, sure, they could be dependencies. They could— that could automatically be checked off if you finish the task. But it spoke the language to the team. We haven't gotten anywhere close to where we want on what we want to see. Lynda and I, we haven't really worked that portion out quite yet. Just the adoption, I think, is the part that we're most excited about.

Excuse me.

I feel like that's true of anybody on the productivity side because you're solo. You've always taught this. Even if you're solo, you have to kind of build to having some sort of workflow. You have to have something behind yourself to back yourself up. Don't delete anything. I've Taught Lynda that too from you.

Yep. An email thing. I wasn't archiving and she's like, ah, did you just delete that? Don't delete anything. Archive, archive. So I archive everything. I learned that from Seth.

Yeah. And let me, so let me speak specifically to that 'cause this is something we were talking about for a few minutes before we went live and I said I definitely need to bring this up during the podcast. So what I think Sarah, you're underscoring here is one of my key issues with how most people in our industry approach the use of these apps. And what I mean specifically is you're doing it backwards.

Yeah.

And what I mean by that is you're starting out using the app before, before A, you've identified exactly what problem you're hoping to solve with that app, and then B, defining what your process is, right? So that's how I, where I go back to David Allen's Getting Things Done and the bigger picture work management concept, which is this. And as I was starting to say, I can ask probably probably everybody here has read the book at some time or another. Maybe not, but probably, right? Probably everybody listening to this eventually will be able to hear me saying these words and acknowledge, yeah, I read that book. But if I ask you to regurgitate the list that I'm about to regurgitate as smoothly as I'm about to, because I've studied it so thoroughly, you probably couldn't do it. Yeah. And what I'm getting at is the core principle that underlies everything else about how you can have a system that you can trust, which is one of his key buzzwords. And the reason that you can trust that system, whatever that system is, whether it's Notion or Financial Cents or anything else—

Yeah.

—is you have to be able to develop that system using a framework that exists with or without that system. And it has to be able to accomplish the following. And here comes the list. You have to be able to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with everything you need to do. And I'll repeat that. You have to capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with everything you need to do. You need all of those pieces in place in your process in order for it to become a system you can trust. And whether you think you can trust the system or not is not the same as actually trusting it. Your brain, independently of you, has to trust it. And here's how you know whether it does or it doesn't. When your brain feeds you endless loops of things you have to remember to get done. It's because your brain is not trusting the system that you're using.

Ah, good. I like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what we also know here is that most of the time our brains remind us of things we need to do at the worst possible times.

Mm-hmm. 3 o'clock in the morning.

3 o'clock in the morning.

I was gonna say.

When I'm otherwise completely indisposed and unable to make a note about it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Unless maybe as I'm waiting for that haircut or the car wash to finish and I'm sitting somewhere and the random thought pops in to do something that I have no ability to do until I'm back in my office, that's when I better have a good mobile app where I can quickly jot that thought down before it escapes me, before I start getting really stressed out about, oh my God, how am I going to remember to do this between now and then? You know, and so instead of looking like a crazy person sitting there mumbling something on repeat to make sure I try not to forget it. right? I just have a, I have a system I can trust. I can open up Notion. I have my Bulletproof Journal within Notion, which is the perfect place that I've built out that gives me a daily page where I can capture any of those things. There's the capture part. I capture that thought or idea. And the reason I can trust it is because later on, I know I'm gonna go back into it and clarify it.

Mm-hmm.

Organize it, put it in its proper place. If it's a task I need to do for a client, it's gonna get copied from my journal to, you know, the place where it's going to become a task that I have to do for that client.

Is it going to automatically— have you got it set up so it automatically travels over to that client's portal?

Well, there's no way to automate that per se. I mean, I like the journal and keeping the history of the journal.

So you move it yourself?

Yeah, I go in, and that's the reflect part, right? I'm going to reflect on everything, which means every day throughout the day. People say, well, how often a day? I'm like, all day. Notion's open all day and my, it's the first thing that gets opened. It's the last thing to get closed.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And so later on when I get back to my computer, I know I'm gonna be looking at that daily journal because I'm in it all day throughout, and I'm gonna have that item that I recorded while I was getting my haircut. Mm-hmm. And I'm going to then in another tab, open up the client where that task ultimately needs to go, and I'm gonna create the task and then I'm gonna clarify it. So here's a big mistake we make, whatever system we're using, most of us suck at writing tasks. Right? Because what do we do? We just write, like, get that thing done. I'm using a very generic language here, right? But we have no idea what that means to us. And one of the keys that David Allen teaches is I have no idea what's the next thing I need to do to move this forward, to get it complete.

That's where I get stuck. That's where I get stuck all the time. And then you freeze and—

Yeah. And then you're paralyzed and you're stressed out instead of reducing stress. So when you capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage with everything you need to do in a system you can trust, you will find that your stress levels are dramatically reduced. Guaranteed, right? And like I said, it can't be that you think it's a system you can trust. I gave you the criteria for how to gauge whether or not your brain really trusts it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. I don't have those kind of stresses anymore because of what I've built. And, and that's what I realized is initially I did this course called Oceans of Notion where I just sort of generically taught you how to use Notion and gave you some suggestions for how you can build a database and how you can build a central hub and all this. But it wasn't really done for you. It was more, you know, here are the concepts and here's the examples of the concepts. So now you can take it and run with it. And it was pretty successful. I don't really, I've had like maybe one course that I've ever produced that I actually pulled because it was so bad, right?

I'm kind of curious, not curious now live, but I'm curious which one you were thinking of.

I don't mind. It was a course I did on another app that I love, but a lot of people have trouble wrapping their brains around, which ironically enough, it's the product called The Brain that I use and I still love it.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

But I did a course on The Brain and just, it just kind of flopped. And so I eventually pulled it because I was like, this is terrible. I don't even want somebody paying me for this, right? If somebody really wants it because they know about it, I'll give it away for free at that point. But, but so going back to, you know, what evolved with Notion there was I did that course. It was, you know, reasonably successful. I had a bunch of people get really excited about it. A lot of our 97 and up members, you know, did the course. It's included with 97 and up. So we have a Notion channel in 97 and up Slack, and a lot of people were in there asking questions and engaging with it, and then it kind of died off after a while. And then I thought, you know, like everything we've been talking about here, what I've learned is based on many, many years, as you pointed out, Sarah, having conversations with many people like yourselves. Mm-hmm. And really over those years, getting what I believe is now an extremely thorough understanding of what lies at the core of why so many accountants and bookkeepers struggle with this stuff.

Mm-hmm.

And it really is because of what I've just laid out, that they don't have a system they can trust. You know, whether you realize it or not, whatever system you're using, it's not one you can trust. Probably because first and foremost, you did it backwards. You heard everybody's using ClickUp, so I'm gonna use ClickUp. Yep. And then you go and you think, you think the app is the system.

Yes.

And you get the two confused and now you don't really have a, a recipe for how to use that app properly to manage everything so that it becomes a system you can trust. And then you build it to a critical mass. You say it's not working, so now you're gonna try Asana and you're gonna have the same cycle repeat. Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

So what I did this go around was I started learning more and more because I just got obsessed with Notion. I started out initially saying, I'm just gonna use Notion for the notes and the knowledge management piece, but I'll stick with ClickUp for project management. But as I learned more and more about how beautiful and customizable Notion could be, like I was saying earlier with Evernote, I said, Notion, with Notion, everything's a page.

Mm-hmm.

But each page that you create in Notion can be a task, it can be a whole entire universe that leads you into a whole bunch of other things, right?

That's what I like about Notion.

Yeah. And it, what it does is it enables you to put lots of information with, with good context in its place and keep it neatly tucked away so that it doesn't overwhelm. That's the problem is most of us then, so we have these robust systems, you know, like ClickUp. One of the things I loved was I had built this table view that lived at the top of the structure of all my clients' stuff. So in that table view on my computer desktop on my big wide screen, I had a really nice bird's eye view of all of my clients and everything I needed to do across the board. But to this day, as far as I, I can tell, and I checked maybe 6 months ago and it still hadn't changed, ClickUp's mobile app doesn't give you the table view. You simply don't have access to it. So major, major fail because while I'm waiting for that haircut, I have no ability to check in on or follow up with any of that stuff.

Yeah.

Like no easy way to access it. I would have to somehow figure out how to manually browse to something specific. Okay. So Notion solves that whole problem. However, yeah, the first round I did, I built it kind of with that concept in mind. So you had one database with everything for every client. And as I started to do that for a year or so, it, it, it became problematic. Because anything I did in that database would not only affect the one client I may have wanted to do that thing for, but it would affect every client. So for example, in a dropdown with some kind of category list, if I wanted to add an option that was really just unique to that one client, didn't matter. That option now populated into the list for every other client too. And even if I made that client inactive, I couldn't remove it because that would have removed it from the client that I did need it for in case I ever needed to reactivate that client. So I was— Yeah. By developing it that way, I was building a list of lists that would permanently accumulate, and I could never really properly clean up, or what we like to talk about in knowledge management tools. The term we like to use is called gardening, where I can really clean things up and, you know, keep it manageable instead of it becoming unmanageable. So the system I built is one where every time you create a new client, it duplicates a source, a database template. So each client has its own separate database. Now the downside of that is if I want to make a global change to something, I have to repeat it for every existing client, then I can do it to the master and it will be there for any new clients. The upside though is I can manage each client specifically and individually and tailor it to what I need to do for that client.

There, bingo, right there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that became more important to me. I had one guy who was in the beta who was really incensed about the fact that it was creating separate databases and He asked me like, you know, why would you do this? And I explained to him what I just explained to you. Yeah. I never heard back from him, so I'm assuming he didn't like my answer.

So can you talk, can you, can you kind of bring it all together and talk to us about your Notion group and what you're doing in it?

What I did, as I was saying, is I took this to the next, next, next level. And I said, as I was learning more and more about how Notion works and, you know, Sarah, you mentioned in the beginning Airtable, or maybe that was you, Lynda. One of you mentioned that I, I love Airtable and I still love Airtable. Yeah. Notion has, you know, its database feature, which is very similar to Airtable. But, and this is what I love about having a toolbox with lots of different tools. Uh-huh. And, and knowing how to use them all really well. Mm-hmm. You know, a lot of people in our profession, they get into, you know, all these different apps. I, I can't learn how to use all these apps. And to me, that's the equivalent of a handyman or a handywoman or a handy person, whatever you wanna call it.

A handy person, whatever you wanna call it.

Handy person. I, I don't wanna offend anybody here, right? Yeah. So a handy person. Going into their toolbox and saying, well, it's too overwhelming to learn how to use all these tools. So I'm just gonna learn how to use a Phillips head screwdriver. And if I have a standard screw, I'm just gonna hope for the best that I can get my Phillips head to do it. Right? That's— I love that analogy. So what I love about learning how to use all these tools, and by the way, this doesn't mean you have to learn how to use every tool you ever hear mentioned. You learn the ones that you find are gonna be useful. So there's a lot of overlap between things I could do in Airtable versus a Notion database. But because I've gotten so intimately acquainted with both products, I can tell you where there's a better use case for using Airtable versus where there's a better use case for using Notion. And then I can tell you where everything is that lies in the middle where it won't make a difference which one you use because either one will handle it just as well, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That to me is the goal here is I'm, I'm like a, I'm a digital handyman.

Yeah.

And, and based on that, I have a toolbox and then, then to take it deeper and going back into Notion and going back, Stephen, to your question specifically, the way I learned how to look at Notion is it, it's like one of those gigantic toolboxes that has lots of compartments with different kinds of tools in it.

Yeah.

And you just have to know how to access what you need, remembering you're never gonna even want to try and learn how to access everything. You access what you need when you need it, when and as the need arises. And you'll figure that out as you go to a large extent. But what I realized having done the Ocean of Notion course was I needed to go a lot further. And as I learned more and more, here was the turning point where I, as I'm learning how to use Notion and I'm learning how to create templates specifically, eventually one day I'm like, I wonder, I wonder how deep I can go. So I create a template, right? And that template's got a database in it, right? In that database, can I create more templates within the template? And then can I create templates within the templates within the templates, right? So I'm talking about like 3 levels deep here.

Yeah.

I said, well, Instead of throwing up my arms and trying to search YouTube, I'm like, forget all that. I'm just gonna play with this and I'm gonna test it and I'm gonna see ultimately, here's how I, here's how I innovate. Whenever I'm trying to innovate something, my goal is to answer one simple question. Can I break this? Can I get this thing? Can I get it to break? Right? I recently wrote something that this reminds me of. I don't know how many of you have heard of the show The Peripheral. It's on Amazon Prime. And it's about these kids who— there's a brother and sister, two of the main characters, and the sister has like incredible prowess in these VR games, right? And in one scene he asks her, "How do you get so good?" And he knows the answer. He's trying to get her to bring out an important point in front of their other friends. He says, "How have you gotten to be so good at these games?" And she says, "Well, when I get into a new one, I go in there and I do exactly what's not expected of me." Mm-hmm. And then I die a lot, you know, in the game, of course not.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the game. Yeah.

And then I die a lot. She says, but then I start learning and I start figuring things out and I start finding things that are not meant to be easy to find because she's doing what they don't expect you, what they don't sort of try and guide you to do. Right. And then little by little, she goes from dying a lot to absolutely mastering the thing. And that's kind of what I do when I'm exploring a new app. So I went in and I tested my theory and I built the database and the databases within the data. I got it to the point where I was so freaking confused in my own head because I had so many layers to this. But like, that was my version of failing. And then finally I, the picture became clear and it came together almost seemingly like that.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, okay, this can work. And so I got to work and I, that this started like in January of this year, you know, so I've spent almost a whole year developing this whole system and program. And I didn't honestly know exactly where it was gonna go initially. I just knew it was gonna be something. And I said, okay, I know I can sell templates. So then I had to research that. How do you sell Notion templates? And what I, what did I do? I went on Google and I searched for Notion templates and I, I didn't care about the template itself. I, I studied the process that these people had for how they sold their templates. And that's also how I've learned a ton, right? I sign up for webinars not because I care about the webinar's content, but because I respect the person who's putting on that webinar and I wanna study their sales process. I wanna study their funnel. You wanna learn a ton about how to build a sales funnel, go sign up for one of Jay Abraham's webinars, right? You'll learn a ton. You'll learn how to build a sales funnel, but you have to slow down and study that process.

And after you need a long pad and long notes of things that you've done. And you know, lots of times, I can't tell you how many times I've said, made a comment and say, well, you know, Seth said, and it's kind of funny that it just kind of comes up that way.

Actually, somebody called us out and said, who is this Seth guy? I'm like, who?

That's funny.

I know. And we're like, you don't know Seth.

That's the first response. I'm like, oh gosh, okay, let me help you out here. Let me redirect you.

That's hilarious.

Oh man.

But just to quickly wrap up on Stephen's last question, and because I know we're kind of running short on time here, I built these templates. Of course I tested them. I tried to make sure, you know, I tried to see how I could break them, you know, on my own system. And then eventually it all came together. And then I said, let me roll this out. Let me, first I want to show it to, I said, let me just show this to somebody. And I might have even reached out to you, but the first person who, like, responded to me quickly was Mariette Martinez.

Uh-huh.

And I showed it to her, and you know how Mariette gets. She just— I just— it was like I had set her on fire with what I showed her.

Oh, yeah.

And so she went all in. My Notion project is now— she's integrating it as part of her own course, and she's basically telling her people— of course, it's optional, but strongly suggested— that as part of her program, they sign up for mine. So we have a whole affiliate relationship there so that she can get paid for the referrals and so on. But yeah, so I built the system, then I said, let me do the beta test. And so I said, I'll, I'll let people have access just to the templates that won't include the course and the videos so that they can test it and give me feedback. And that was without even realizing it, it was a very smart thing I did because I got great feedback. Like I said, I would never have built a time tracking template, but once it was suggested to me and I convinced myself to do it, it became actually one of my favorite templates. I just love the way it works. It's really slick. Right? And then just to round it out, you know, I thought about, okay, so when you sign up for a product like ClickUp or Asana or any of these other well-known project management apps, you don't get a course, and you don't get a community. I mean, sure, they have Facebook groups. But so I'm putting this whole resource together where you get the templates, you get the course, and you get the community in the form of a Slack workspace, so I can provide ongoing support. So I can, because I'm not building— it's like I've developed an app without any code. Yeah. But I can't because of the way it's done in Notion. It's not like I can just update the code and poof, it's there for all of you. So I'm gonna be teaching you all how to use Notion so that when I have an updated template— well, there's a lesson in the course that shows you how to edit and update your own templates. Just this morning, as of this recording, I created a very simple version of our daily journal that it's the first thing I have everyone do is you gotta use your journal daily, and I explain all the context behind why that's so important beyond just the— oh, you know, I'm journaling. I'm from LA, and I journal. You know, it's more serious than that. And anyway, so I, I said, you know, the, the initial template is, it's detailed. It asks you to answer certain questions every day to understand where your head's at, and so on. And then today I said, you know, sometimes you just need a blank page to work from. And so I created a very simple template, gave everybody in Slack the link and said, here, copy this in to create your own new template. And now you have 2 templates, the normal one you'll use, the default, which is the detailed, and, and then the simple version. Right? So the point is I can provide that support to the community that I have that goes with this course, which is not something any of these apps will ever give you. So my hope honestly is that those who are willing to, you know, take on a system like this that can be evolved, that can be tailored and really customized to suit your specific needs, but where I've done most of the heavy lifting for you to get you started. So you don't have to start from a blank Notion page, like like Sarah, you and Lynda probably did initially and say, well, how the heck do I get from this to an actual project or now in my term, work management system? Well, I'm handing you the work management system. It's done. It's built. All you have to do is follow my instructions and you'll understand very quickly how to use it. And there's a whole section on collaboration, by the way, so that when you're working with a team, you'll understand very quickly, you know, how to get it to work with a team. And when people start to experience it and realize how much easier it makes your life, That is when you will, you know, you'll have no trouble with adoption at all. Yeah. No, I love it.

I know we're limited on time, but I think you have to come back because there's so much more you haven't tapped into.

I feel like we just did an infomercial for my course. I'm sorry. No, I totally—

No, do not apologize. You said you're touching on something we interviewed somebody else earlier in this week on, which is it is if you can, if you're smart enough to understand the value of putting your money to self-educate or allow somebody to give you that guidance, do that. Because the time it would have taken you to figure it out on your own sometimes is a lost leader and you'll abandon it and you'll be disgruntled and you'll want to just never touch it again. Not seeing all the attributes to it. For us, it was like a team decision. But if you're in a solo position or if you're in a— it does, it takes a huge list of collaboration and you need a leader in the group too. But. Yeah. So I, I love, I mean, you've, I've written down a whole bunch of stuff. I always do with you. I can't keep a, I can't even keep myself typing as fast anymore, so I just have to write them down.

So, well, you got, don't you have like, um, a transcript? Like I have, you let my Otter pilot in, so I'll be able to provide you with the transcript if you don't have your own.

Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll listen again to the recording and—

By the way, speaking of extreme productivity, use one of these transcription tools with Zoom. It makes, it's a huge—

It makes life so much easier. But I was gonna say—

That's Zoom.

The quick thing. My mom is listening and she adores you to the moon.

I adore both of your moms.

She's gonna hear this. I know, the two mamas. Yeah. So, hey, Mom, this one's for you. Maybe you can be a part of the next one. So there you go. Oh, Seth, it's always fun to hang out with you. I absolutely adore it. And thank you.

Likewise. And I would welcome doing part 2 whenever you want. I just love and adore you both. Stephen, it's a pleasure getting to talk to you.

Likewise. And you know, I signed up for your Notion course and I just need to get started with it. So I'm excited. You've got me pumped up.

You'll love Steve. Steve's awesome too.

Thank you. Thank you. And we love our Tierra, who needs to take us away now.

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Awesome. Thank you. Bye-bye, everyone.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you.