Digitalization for Businesses - why am I talking about it?

Hey there Founders,

Today's newsletter comes from a pain-point topic that keeps on coming up during my client meetings.

First and foremost - I would like to apologize to everyone for having not put out any new articles for almost two months at this stage - there has been a lot of travel, a lot of exciting new work developing my new business and I will be sharing everything slowly but surely through the posts and newsletters to come!

Now, as we get into it let me be clear - yes. I'm a massive fan of Excel. Yes. Previous newsletter articles I have sent out have shown my work process and it wasn't digitized then.

So why am I talking about digitalization and going away from this now?

Because I literally digitalized my entire business and all of my services during the month of August of this year (2024 - in case some historians have randomly found this article during some future date).

My transition was led by a simple realization.

I have been running my business out of Excel, notebooks and Google Calendar since I started with my very first startup more than 10 years ago.

This doesn't just show how stubborn I can be - that would be a rather dull, albeit accurate conclusion. No. I was simply in a comfort zone. Me! And here I was complaining about the complacency of the organizations I worked for.

I let a decade go by before addressing this even though I literally grew up with technology at my fingertips.

But what was my main concern? That I could never scale myself. I created these complex spreadsheets where my main one spanned 605,588 cells! Can you imagine trying to fill all of that up with data not just for your own business but trying to replicate this for your clients too?

That was literally my business - that's how I ran marketing strategies and it's how my brain works but I couldn't translate this to just about any employee and have them replicate what I do. I don't say this because it was rocket science. I say this because I failed to make it simple enough for any user to understand and even enjoy!

You can't grow without structure and you can't wait to become big enough before you introduce it. Start today.

So what did I do? Well I remembered about this amazing company called Notion so I started tinkering about.

As someone who was facing a blank page with endless possibilities I slowly began getting overwhelmed but then I saw the "Templates" button and I breathed a sigh of relief.

What I love saying is that "there's no such thing as being original, but that doesn't mean you can't be creative". You won't reinvent the wheel, but you can find two or three things that already exist and work and put them together to make something beautiful.

That's why I love templates. They give you an idea of what others have already thought up of and by figuring out what you need and how it needs to work you can create something brilliant by the end of it.

I have been working with Bryan Mulry since August on our "Best-in-Class Marketing & Sales Workbook" - it's a mouthful though, we know, so internally we just call it "The Notion Workbook". It has not only gotten to the stage where I can run my business a lot smoother through it but I have also began giving it to clients and other marketing agencies to demo it.

The feedback was brilliant! Not that the workbook itself is immaculate - but rather the amount of feedback and the detailed descriptions from "this I would use, and this I wouldn't", to "why not introduce separate tabs for this and that?", and "how could I teach my team how to use this - could you put in onboarding videos?", etc. etc.

It has given myself and Bryan countless ideas of what our prospective new clients need. This digitalization has opened up a brand new business model for myself as I now offer the pages within on a subscription basis of €49 a month to businesses and I can focus on consulting them and coaching their teams on how to reach their goals.

Top this off with the absolutely invaluable help we got from my friend Francesca B. and the tips and tricks on how we can improve our Notion workbook and we got something special cooking up in here!

Digitalization isn't just a cost-center.

It's not even just about optimizations in the workplace.

It can introduce you to new revenue streams you didn't even think were possible until now!

Top this off with the Notion AI capabilities as well as being able to work on Notion from desktop and mobile has let me optimize everything in my day-to-day.

I'm not saying necessarily that the "Best-in-Class Marketing & Sales Workbook" is for you, but I am urging you to have a look into digitalizing your business. This is your sign.

Do let me know of course if you'd like to give it a test-run, here's my Calendly to book a meeting directly or comment below and let me know!

Kindest regards,

Lenard

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