July 15, 2025 • 38 mins
Susan sits down with leadership and culture consultant Melissa Carson to tackle a challenge so many entrepreneurs face: digital tool sprawl.
Together, they unpack the overwhelm caused by scattered systems and explore how creating a single source of truth—your personal data warehouse—can unlock mental clarity and free up energy for more meaningful work.
Melissa shares her struggles with multiple overlapping tools (Google, Microsoft, Airtable, and more) and the mental load of duplicated content workflows. Susan guides her through the process of consolidating tools, designing for ease, and building a system that actually supports her business rather than drains it.
Whether you’re drowning in Google Docs, lost in Notion, or stuck juggling endless spreadsheets, this episode offers a roadmap to a calmer, more intentional business setup.
What You’ll Learn
- How a “personal data warehouse” can transform your content and client operations
- Why choosing the right tool isn’t about features, but about how it feels and supports your brain
- The power of building a single source of truth to reduce decision fatigue
- How to leverage automation to reclaim time and mental energy
- Practical first steps to start consolidating and simplify your systems
Learn More About Melissa
Learn More About Susan
- (00:00) - The Power of a Centralized Digital Brain
- (01:51) - Meet Melissa Carson: A Case Study in Digital Overwhelm
- (02:30) - Diagnosing the Bottlenecks: Tools and Redundancies
- (04:37) - Strategies for Building a Personal Data Warehouse
- (21:37) - Consolidation and Efficiency: Steps to a Calmer Business
- Find out more about Calmer Brain by grabbing a copy of the Beyond Margins Services Guide
- Apply to be a guest on a future live diagnosis episode of Calm is the New KPI
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susan Boles (00:06):
Imagine waking up tomorrow, opening your laptop,
and knowing exactly where tofind every piece of content
you've ever created. Everyclient call, every blog draft,
every podcast episode, and everyrandom spark of genius all in
one place. Imagine the mentalfreedom that would unlock. No
(00:27):
more bouncing between halffinished Google Docs, rogue word
files, and sticky notes thatyou're pretty sure you left on
your desktop three months ago.Just one trusted central brain
for your business so you canfocus on actually running it,
not remembering it.
But if you're like most of thefolks I work with, your digital
(00:48):
brain is scattered everywhere.You've outgrown the systems that
you piece together over time andevery new tool you try just
feels like another layer ofnoise. Instead of feeling
supported, you're stuck proppingup this wobbly tower of default
decisions. You're reactinginstead of leading. What if
(01:08):
instead of just decluttering,you could build a single source
of truth?
What I'd like to call a calmerbrain. That not only holds your
knowledge but helps you makeclearer calmer decisions every
day. Welcome to Calm is the NewKPI, where we engineer calm one
KPI, one bottleneck, onebusiness at a time. And today
(01:30):
I'm trying something new,something I'm calling a live
diagnosis. In these episodes,I'll sit down with a business
owner to unpack a real messyoperational bottleneck in their
business.
We'll look under the hood. We'llfigure out what's really going
on, and we'll explore tangibleways to design for more calm
right there on the call. Myfirst guest is Melissa Carson.
(01:53):
She's a leadership and cultureconsultant with a ton of
experience. But like so many ofus, her internal systems grew
organically over time and endedup scattered across tools and
platforms that were dictated bywho she was working with, not
how she likes to work.
She's overwhelmed by duplicatedefforts, too many tools, too
(02:17):
many options to choose from, andthe brain train of just trying
to figure out where things live.Hey, Melissa. I'm so excited to
have you here with me today.
Melissa Carson (02:27):
I'm excited to be here.
Susan Boles (02:29):
For the people listening, can you give me a
little bit of a rundown of theparticular bottleneck that
you're sort of struggling withright now? What is happening in
your business?
Melissa Carson (02:38):
I have a small business that's predominantly
me. I have somebody who workswith me on emails and getting
out promotions of events type ofthing. And as I've grown over
the past five and a half years,I've picked and choose different
tool sets to use either becauseof how like, I use a Mac. So in
(03:00):
some cases, I use the notes appbecause I love it. I don't like
the Mac applications, Safari,and all their custom things.
So I buy Office March because Igrew up in corporate using
Microsoft products. So I love Iunderstand them better. But with
this assistant, we use Google sothat we can easily share the
(03:22):
documents. And then over time, Ipicked up Airtable, and I I use
Funnel Breezy for my CRM slashemail marketing. I also write a
lot of content, and I write itin Word.
And then it gets into either Ihave a blog location for a
website, Marlyssa Ryder Carson,where everything long term
(03:43):
lives, but I also send thatnewsletter out via Squarespace.
So it gets posted in twodifferent places. And this
assistant also helps in it. Sothat gets in a Google doc. So I
have a word document that hasall the content in it.
Plus I have a Google doc thathas things. I've been using the
notes, but I over the weekend, Ijust migrated back to
potentially using OneNote forcapturing some of the things.
(04:04):
But I feel like I have too manytools and I'm not sure that I
really need what I thought Ineeded them for. Like, I think I
can probably get rid of Airtableand use it for what I wanted it
to do in a different way. Soit's just a lot of different
things that I feel like areredundant and and at least time
small time sucks.
(04:25):
And with the emergence of AI of,like, wanting to have things in
one place so that I get thebenefit of being able to have
all the content in one place.
Susan Boles (04:37):
Yeah. I was actually talking about this with
another creator of basically theidea of creating essentially a
personal data warehouse. Mhmm.So if you're familiar with kind
of data structures or really anylike software system, the back
end of that is just a wholebunch of storage of data in
(04:59):
different ways so that you canaccess it. And one of the cool
things that's happening with AIright now is they are starting
to build connectors to things.
And the idea behind being ableto connect to a lot of different
systems is if you could pick oneplace and store all of your
content or all of your data inone place, that gives you a
(05:22):
single essentially a singlesource of truth, particularly
when it comes to things likecontent. One place to go be able
to search and find all of yourdifferent newsletters or filter
them by topics or also pull,have I done this newsletter as a
blog? Or where have I beeninterviewed about this specific
(05:42):
topic on a podcast? And beingable to pull all that
information together, which Ithink works really well on the
content side. And when we'retalking about systems in
business on the businessoperations side, it's kind of a
similar concept where if we canpick one place, one tool, it
honestly doesn't matter what thetool is as long as it works for
(06:07):
you and you have one place togo.
So where I see it happening alot is the very exact situation
that you're talking about wheremaybe you're a Microsoft
collaborating with is a Googleperson. And now everybody wants
to operate in their preferredsystem, but that requires
creating multiple copies. Andthen you never quite know which
(06:30):
version is supposed to be the,like, the real version. My
question to you is theconsultant that you work with is
a Google first person. You are aMicrosoft person because you
have existed in the Microsoftworld.
When you are interacting withyour clients, where are they
(06:50):
living?
Melissa Carson (06:51):
I have one that is a Google Google client, but
I'm working in their system. Andthen the rest that I worked with
from a coaching or strategystuff, they're a mix of Google
and Microsoft in general. But itmore shows up in how I run my
business versus how to interactwith them. And I think the other
(07:12):
piece that goes through my headis as you talk to more and more
people, they'll be like, oh, Ilove this tool. I love Notion.
It does all this thing. They'relike, it is hard to get to used
to, or this is like and soyou're like, okay. Do I go all
in? Do I switch types of things?I think I read something
yesterday about some like a datawarehouse similar to what you
were talking about, somebody whois creating all of that.
(07:32):
I want it to feel easy becausemy business is not huge. Like,
it should not be a huge burdenbecause it's like, it's me and a
handful of clients clients atany point in time.
Susan Boles (07:42):
So which piece of this feels like it takes the
most time or is the mostannoying for you?
Melissa Carson (07:52):
I don't know if it's the most time, but I think
it's where I feel like I gottafigure out the strategy because
I feel like there's too muchduplication. So in my newsletter
process, which comes out everyweek, we now write it in a
Google Doc so that the assistantcan see it. She then posts it to
(08:13):
Squarespace so that it lives onthe blog long term. I put it
into Substack so that it goesout with the newsletter. Then
she slash her team capture thatas well as all my daily posts in
Airtable so that we have arecord of here's what I did,
here's where it went, here's thevisual that went with it.
(08:35):
That's where it feels like it'soverlapped to keep the the blog
page of just all my writing of,like, the long form. I would
call it couple paragraph longform content that I've
essentially written is there andon a page I own forever versus,
you know, everybody else'splatform. So it's like, those
are where I feel like there'sduplication of effort and maybe
(08:58):
not for the value. I startedwith the Airtable concept
because I'd seen somebody do itaround, like so I can keep the
picture. I can I know what Idid, and I can search to see if
I want to reuse it?
The reality is because I wroteall of those daily posts in a
Word document, and I have anExcel spreadsheet that outlines
(09:19):
what post I did for the lastfive years, I can easily go back
and say, oh, this was May oftwenty twenty three, pull up the
Word document and do it. So Idon't really need the Airtable
option, I don't think.
Susan Boles (09:32):
I think in this particular instance, you could
go either way.
Melissa Carson (09:36):
Okay.
Susan Boles (09:37):
In essence, you have two duplicate systems in
the same way that we're talkingabout, you know, Word draft and
a Google Doc draft. If youconsolidated into it all happens
in Google Docs, then you'vesolved the versioning issue. But
in the same way, you'reduplicating essentially what
we're talking about where youhave a data warehouse. So you
(09:58):
have the beginnings of apersonal data warehouse, but you
actually have two of them. Andagain, it doesn't actually
matter which one you go with.
But the goal is pick one and goall in. One of the benefits here
of going with something likeAirtable and making that your
(10:19):
system of record is there's alot of functionality that could
be used there. For example, youare not substantially changing
the draft between what goes onthe blog and what goes in
Substack, and instead of postingit in either place, you put it
in Airtable, you can use toolslike Zapier or depending on what
(10:43):
you're doing, Airtableautomations to actually post it
to Squarespace or post it toSubstack so that you can
eliminate those functionalities.So if you collapse your Excel
spreadsheet into the Airtabledatabase, you have one single
source of truth with all of yourWord documents. If they're
(11:04):
actual Word documents, you caneven upload them as attachments
or turn them into a PDF orwhatever.
But you do have the ability tothen automate some of the manual
workload. And that is thebenefit of using something like
Airtable versus Excel. Airtableis sort of almost still the gold
(11:24):
standard of, like, really solidautomation possibilities.
Melissa Carson (11:28):
And I'm not leveraging it because I think
the And person you are notleveraging it. Working with now
isn't an Airtable person. Theperson that I was working with
originally wasn't initially, butwas learning and was but this
other is that's not their keything. So I don't think they're
ever going to really focus onthat.
Susan Boles (11:48):
And a lot of these, you know, the automations that
you set up, it's mostly a onetime setup. Every once in while
you have to do a little bit ofmaintenance. Okay. Setting up
the automations can go both wayshere. So if you do substantially
change, you know, the newsletterdraft versus the blog draft, and
they're actually two separatethings, You can do automations
(12:08):
the other way.
So basically when somethingposts to Squarespace, drop all
the different pieces intoAirtable. So Airtable is still
the system of record. But nowyou have maybe a table for your
blog and a table for yournewsletter. Both of them are
automatically getting put intoyour data warehouse to be able
(12:29):
to then access search, all ofthose things. And then
eventually, the capability isthat that personal data
warehouse could then connect tosomething like ChatGPT via their
new integrations thing that theyjust released.
But then you could essentiallyuse ChatGPT to chat with all of
your own content, all of yourown data. So starting the
(12:55):
structure to be able to takeadvantage of that has a lot of
benefits, not just in, know, dayto day automation. You can
really expand this, you know, ifyou are somebody who's a keynote
speaker, you can have yourspeaking information as part of
the personal data warehouse, youknow, all of the speaking
engagements you've done eachpiece of your intellectual
(13:17):
property. So if you have, youknow, custom frameworks, or
stuff like that, you can addthat information into this data
warehouse. So it can serve as asingle source of truth from your
content and IP perspective.
And you are building thegroundwork to be able to
eventually take advantage ofthings like integration to
(13:41):
ChatGPT where you can then chatwith yourself essentially.
Melissa Carson (13:45):
Yeah. Oh, I like that.
Susan Boles (13:47):
So what other areas is this showing up for you in?
Is it mostly on the contentside? Or when you are thinking
about planning work or doinglike, where does that happen?
Melissa Carson (13:58):
I think that it all is also a level of
complexity. So I if I thinkabout, like, my client notes, I
was using the notes app becauseit was easy to use on my phone.
If I were taking notes, it waseasy to use on my laptop. But I
feel like it doesn't have asgood search fund functionality
and usability as something likeOneNote, which I could share
(14:20):
with other people probably alittle bit more easily than the
Apple Notes app. So I think Iwanna move more fully to
OneNote, but I think back tosystems and processes.
I do contracts through FunnelBiggerZ, which is my CRM and
email marketing type tool. Sothey get done through there, and
(14:44):
most of the invoicing gets donethrough there. I don't onboard
that many clients that I have agreat system yet. It would
generally be some sort of set ofWord documents, but could live
potentially in Airtable.
Susan Boles (14:57):
There are lots of places that it could live. Are
you sharing this informationwith clients, or is it mostly
internal notes? Mostly mine. Soyou remember like
Melissa Carson (15:07):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (15:07):
Hey. Wait.
Melissa Carson (15:08):
Correct. That more.
Susan Boles (15:09):
There's a few different options that you could
go about solving it. One, youcould build your client calls
into part of your datawarehouse. So if you record
client calls, you can have themautomatically transcribed, added
to your data warehouse, which ifyou are writing or talking about
(15:29):
the work that you're doing,sometimes you have really great
ideas and client calls that youforget. Right. You said You're
talking.
You're being brilliant. Theclient is loving it. But you
forget to, like, show that tothe outside world so that they
can have a really goodunderstanding of what you
actually do. One potential partof this could be recording the
(15:52):
calls either using an AInotetaker or just transcribe
them afterwards, stick thetranscripts in your data
warehouse to then be able tosearch and refer to. If that's
the route that you go, you couldalso then link them to their
record in your CRM, Right?
So you could tag them to thespecific client and be able to
integrate those things. That'seven easier if everything lives
(16:16):
in this case in air table.
Melissa Carson (16:18):
And it's funny that I did start my CRM
initially in air table.
Susan Boles (16:22):
In air table.
Melissa Carson (16:23):
And somebody had taught me, like, it had some
auto feeds to my calendar, so itshowed up on my Microsoft
calendar. So I'm like, who Ineed to talk to and, like, I've
missed that because this othersystem isn't as sophisticated in
that space right now.
Susan Boles (16:35):
Yeah. So when it comes to, like, just generally
thinking about how do I pick asystem to do a thing, I tend to
lean very heavily into systemsthat are highly customizable. So
something like Airtable,something like Notion, something
like ClickUp, SmartSuite, stuffwhere you can build your own
(16:57):
version of whatever thatworkflow is, but that also have
the capability to become thesingle source of truth for
everything. They can be yourdata warehouse. They can be your
document repository.
They can be your personal datawarehouse of content. And so I
look for systems that have a lotof inherent flexibility so that
(17:21):
you can build a CRM and acontent warehouse and a client
record. And I look for thingsthat have good connectors. So it
is, I think unrealistic toexpect one tool to do absolutely
everything we need it to do inbusiness. Right?
(17:42):
Because content is inherently adifferent business than doing
client operations. There'sdifferent workflows. But if you
are picking a system that hasinherent flexibility and has
connectors to good tools. So inthis case, a connector to
Substack or a connector toSquarespace, the places where
(18:02):
the other that you can't get ridof having a website, at least
not yet. You can't get rid ofclient operations.
You probably can't get rid ofemail marketing. But can we
connect our single source oftruth to those things? And by
looking and evaluating systemsin a pick something that's
(18:24):
inherently flexible and scalableand customizable and has good
connectors, you can get reallyclose to not having very many
systems in your business. Youjust have to be really committed
to, I'm not gonna build aseparate system. I'm gonna build
this in my one system.
So for a lot of people it startsat, I'm going to build a data
(18:47):
warehouse for my content. Cool.Now that's there. Now let me
think about client projects andhow that should be built in here
and CRM and how that should bebuilt in here. And you can begin
to kind of expand your system tomeet your specific needs without
having to like Frankenstein on awhole bunch of other systems to
(19:11):
do the thing that you need it todo.
And part of the reason thathappens is because oftentimes
we'll pick the system initiallythat just doesn't have the
capability to customize orexpand to fit our needs. Where
tools like Airtable, essentiallyit's just you know, a relational
database. We can do whatever wewant with it. That gives it a
(19:33):
lot of inherent functionalityand ability to scale with you as
you grow. What questions do youhave about all of that?
Melissa Carson (20:50):
No. I mean, it's less about questions. My head
starts going to, okay. So whatam I gonna do about it now?
Because I feel like I now havesome ideas, and I'm like, okay.
This is where I I might need youmore than the podcast to to
think about how to map this outbecause I do want ease in my
business. And I think that if Ican eliminate either where I'm
(21:15):
paying somebody else to dosomething and save that money to
do something different, whetherit's go to another conference or
go buy some new something orother that's gonna make the
business stronger. I wannafigure out how to do that and
thinking about where all thelinkages are across the
different things that I canautomate. Okay. How am I going
(21:37):
to really pull this off?
Susan Boles (21:38):
So the first step is I would start consolidating
into a single system. Okay. Soif you know you have duplicate
systems, start moving all thedata into one place. Pick one
tool that has inherentflexibility and scalability and
(21:58):
start moving everything there.Everybody's brain and how they
think about this stuff isdifferent.
So the functionality we'retalking about could be built in
a variety of systems. But thefirst, like the easiest way is
to get it all in one place.Because then even if you decide,
(22:20):
I low key hate air table and Iactually really love the notion
interface and it's so muchcleaner and I know that I'm
gonna use it because I can makeit which is not insignificant.
Right? Like, we wanna build intotools that we genuinely enjoy
using.
And if something about theinterface makes you not ever
wanna go in there, then that isnot the right tool for you.
(22:42):
There's lots of options. Sofinding one that like feels good
to open and use is an importantpart of the evaluation process.
Melissa Carson (22:53):
Well, it's funny that you say that because I was
much I've I've never been reallystrong on on managing my CRM. In
Airtable, I was decent. WithFunnel Breezy, I am not good. I
the interface is just
Susan Boles (23:10):
hate it, you hate it.
Melissa Carson (23:11):
Yeah. It's just wonky. It's like I don't use it.
I'm like, ugh. I need to use it.
I need to do take the notes inthere. I need to put it. But I'm
like, I don't love it.
Susan Boles (23:19):
I am similar. I was very early to ClickUp. So when
Notion happened, I kept tryingto do Notion, and my brain just
doesn't work that way. It feltvery cumbersome even though it's
a little bit more flexible andtrying to force myself into a
system that didn't feel naturalto how my brain thinks about
things or how I want to existmeant I never used it. And then
(23:41):
all of a sudden, I'm trying tohold things in my head, or I'm
building shadow systems inExcel.
All of those things where whenwe really think about, like, how
does this system feel to me? Isthis something that I want to
use and that I feel comfortablewith? That's not an
insignificant amount of theevaluation of which system
(24:03):
should you use. Because theanswer to which system you
should you use is different isgoing to be different for
everybody because all of ourbrains and our businesses look
different. Regardless of whichtool you ultimately end up
using, starting the process oflet me consolidate all the tools
that are kind of the samefunctionality into one place
(24:23):
means that then it's a loteasier.
One, I would almost guaranteeyou have duplicate records of
some sort, So you can get into asingle, you have single record
per item basically and you cando a little bit of the data
cleanup as you're consolidatingthe systems. But then most of
the tools like air table ornotion or whatever you can
(24:45):
export that data and just moveit into whatever the new system
ends up being and maybe duringthat process you realize you
love air table and you're goingto stick with it and that's
great. And maybe you realizelike, hey, something about this
doesn't quite feel right, butall of your data is there to be
able to easily move intowhatever the ultimate choice
(25:06):
ends up being. So the first stepof any of these projects is at
least to me always startconsolidating all your systems.
So you're down to one.
And that part is just timeconsuming, right? We all have so
many files and so much data. Andit does take time to move it
(25:26):
from one place to another. Butone of the impacts of this is
you stop having to hold in yourbrain where to go. So if you
have an Excel spreadsheet and anAirtable and you've got maybe
Asana on top of it and you'vegot your CRM, your brain
(25:48):
actually has to hold where isthe appropriate place for me to
go to get this information.
The fewer systems you have, theless brain space you have to use
on where do I go for this.Because as you consolidate down,
the answer is always, I alwaysgo to Airtable, always go to
ClickUp, I always go to Notion,because everything is there. And
(26:10):
so it really can do a lot toreduce decision fatigue and free
up some energetic margin. And wedon't really talk about that
very frequently, but knowing onewhere information is supposed to
go. A lot of the times we have aclient call showed up and what
am I supposed to do with this?
And now I have a new lead and itcame in an email and where is
(26:32):
that supposed to go again? Andit's too much of a pain to move
it over to that system. I'lljust leave it in my inbox, and
I'll just snooze in, and it'llcome back in a week, and I'll
remember to do it. And soknowing what to do with each
piece of information is also areally important aspect of that.
Of I know what to do with thispiece of with this lead.
(26:55):
I know where it's supposed togo. I know what I'm supposed to
do with it. So you're not tryingto hold all of these disparate
balls in your hands becauseyou're not quite sure where to
put the thing to make sure thatyou remember to do it. And the
end result is you just end uptrying to hold it all.
Melissa Carson (27:11):
So I guess one of my questions is, and it might
just be a personal perspective,but also just the functionality
of Google versus Microsoft. Someof the Google I don't love the
UI of getting things done, likehow I create or formatting and
things like that feels awkward.But I I do like whether it's a
family spreadsheet that weshare. Google seems to be the
(27:32):
way to most easily do it for allof us to be able to access it.
Now maybe that I don't fullyunderstand what I can do with
some of the Microsoft stuff, butI'm just curious on your
perspective of the two differenttool sets.
Susan Boles (27:44):
So I come from the world of government. I was very
much brought into the Microsoftecosystem. I've built apps in
Microsoft. I have existed in theMicrosoft ecosystem for the
majority of my non consultingcareer. And it is a solid
(28:05):
product if you are in corporateand a lot of people have been
indoctrinated into the Microsoftway of doing business.
So sometimes it can be reallyhard to envision how to do work
outside Microsoft ecosystem,especially if like, that's
literally all I knew. That beingsaid, I think Google as an
(28:31):
ecosystem is functionally betterin that it's built first. And
while Microsoft hascollaborative features, they're
not necessarily intuitive.Google is designed for people
who don't know how to do any ofthis to be able to come in and
(28:52):
intuitive ly do the thing thatthey need to do. So when I'm
recommending ecosystems toclients, I'm almost always
recommending Google.
But that's because most of mybusiness is connecting Google to
things. It's so much easier toconnect Google to things and get
(29:12):
Google to be an automaticfunction
Melissa Carson (29:17):
of
Susan Boles (29:17):
what you're doing than it is to do that with
Microsoft. That being said, itis very difficult sometimes for
people who have beenindoctrinated into the Microsoft
ecosystem to get used to howGoogle thinks about things.
Right? So in the Microsoftecosystem, yeah, collaboration
is a thing. Yeah, we're trackingchanges.
(29:40):
But also we probably have v one,v two, v three, v 15 dot two dot
three of whatever that documentWhere the benefit of something
in Google is it's just there.It's just the one document.
We've updated it. We can revertto the versions. But for the
(30:00):
most part, it's designed to becollaborative.
And it's designed to becurrently up to date, right?
It's designed to be, here's thelink to the file. Oh, the file
is always the most recentversion. If I need to see what
previous versions were, I can goin the menu and look at the
previous versions. But I knowthat there's only one copy of
(30:22):
this thing and it is the currentversion.
And I think that's reallypowerful, but it's also really
hard to get used to if you areused to v one dot b final,
final, extra final.
Melissa Carson (30:38):
Well, I guess the one question that I have
less than that final finalversion is more thinking about
where it lives. So if you thinkabout Microsoft, I'm usually
working on a local copy of it.Whereas, usually when I'm
working on Google, I'm on a webbased
Susan Boles (30:54):
browser.
Melissa Carson (30:55):
Right. Is it just the the habit of saying,
hey. If I really wanna be and II think you can create local
copies if you're, like, flyingor doing something. I think
that's the thing of, like, it'snot always there. Like, I need
to be feel like you need to beonline to do work.
Think so it's probably a mindsetshift.
Susan Boles (31:13):
It's a mindset shift. You can still use focus
blocking programs or createoffline versions and that sort
of thing. I find the cloud basedness to be a feature, not a
Because I've had situationswhere my computer broke. Right?
(31:34):
And I lost everything.
Like I spilled a drink on thekeyboard. That thing is mush.
I'm never getting it back. I'mnever preserving it. And this is
also a factor of havingsupervised IT departments for a
long time.
But I didn't actually loseanything. Everything I work on
is in the cloud. So all I had todo was reinstall Google Drive
(31:54):
and reinstall ClickUp and all ofa sudden I'm right back where I
was. I didn't actually loseanything. So for me, I find it
to be a benefit that it's cloudbased.
For me, the ability to know I'mnot gonna lose anything is
(32:15):
actually fantastic.
Melissa Carson (32:17):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (32:17):
There's also the secret third option, which is
actually what I do, which ismost of the time I'm now using
the documents inside my projectmanagement software. So Notion,
everybody that's in Notion,they're not writing in Word or
Google, they're writing inNotion. ClickUp has a similar
feature. So I'm writing inClickUp docs 95% of the time.
(32:41):
It's actually rarer that I amusing some other tool.
And that is almost always I'mcollaborating with somebody and
it's a consultant, and so I'musing the system they have. But
I'm usually dropping that linkto whatever it is that we're
using into my project managementtool, which serves as my
(33:03):
personal data warehouse. Istarted going to that a few
years ago because I just wantedone place. Right. Right?
I just wanted to go to one placeand search for everything and
the ability to do like documenttemplates that go along with my
task. Right? So when I create anew podcast episode idea, it
plops down my script templateand it has my entire workflow
(33:28):
built out there. So I don'tactually have to do anything. I
don't have to remember where onGoogle Drive it is and grab the
link.
I don't have to remember, okay,let me make a copy of the script
template and all of thosethings. I could absolutely be
doing that in Google or Word.But that is a sort of de facto
second system, right? And again,personal preference. I know a
(33:51):
lot of people that are, theywork in Notion and they still
use Google Docs or they work inNotion and they really prefer
Word.
A lot of it has to do with whatmakes you feel like you can do
your best work.
Melissa Carson (34:02):
Right. Yeah. Think some of the things of
Google versus Microsoft, it'smore probably a learning curve
of like whatever functionality.But I'm like, why is it not
obvious in Google? Why is itlike so I think some of it is
learning And curve
Susan Boles (34:15):
just of because you know exactly where it is in
Microsoft. So it feels intuitiveto you. We do develop habits
about how to do things. Forexample, like in Notion, in
ClickUp when you're typing, youcan use the slash command and it
brings up a menu so you don'tactually have to click around.
(34:35):
But that's not true in GoogleDocs necessarily.
So every time I now try and typein Google Docs, I'm like, why is
there no slash menu for me toput in a new heading? Right?
Like, and that's just becauseI'm so used to the system I'm
used to. There is an inherentcost of switching that is worth
(34:55):
considering when you're thinkingabout using system? Are the
benefits of moving to somethingthat feels a little bit more
intuitive to you or feelsprettier or feels more exciting
to work in?
Is that worth the trade off ofhaving to learn a new system?
Sometimes it is, sometimes itisn't. And I think that decision
is different for everybody andat different stages of their
(35:18):
business. It's also reallydifferent if it's just you
switching. Or if it's you, plusa whole team of people that you
have to manage the changemanagement process and their
training and they're convincingthem that this is the right way
to go.
Any other thoughts, questions,stuff you would like to
consider?
Melissa Carson (35:37):
I think that's enough. You gave me more work,
but it's the work to get It'sthe
Susan Boles (35:42):
free work to get to the better situation.
Melissa Carson (35:45):
Right. It's like, I can see the light, but I
gotta go through that tunnel toactually get there.
Susan Boles (35:51):
Yep. And I think sometimes that pre work isn't
worth it. And sometimes it makesa huge difference. And it ends
up being the thing that frees upa whole bunch of brain space and
energy and margin to be able togo do more fun things. Like
(36:12):
nobody actually wants to beposting a blog post manually to
Squarespace.
That's not that nobody's likedesire of what do you want to do
today? And I would like to postthis thing in four different
places and then put it in adatabase. Said no one ever. And
so I think when we can usetools, we can use technology as
(36:32):
a way to get to do moreinteresting, more fun kind of
work, that's when it can bereally, really powerful. What
Melissa and I walked throughwasn't just a strategy for
organizing her content.
It's a way to actually build asingle source of truth for your
(36:52):
business. We focused on twodifferent levers from the Calmer
framework, business design andefficiency. We examined how to
consolidate systems and reducetool sprawl. So moving from
default decisions and duct tapedworkflows towards an intentional
design that supports how sheactually wants to work. And we
(37:15):
focused on creating efficiencybut not the default version
where we just cram more in.
Here efficiency means creating asingle source of truth to reduce
mental load, cut down ondecision fatigue, and free up
energy for more meaningful work.That's the essence of a calmer
business. Not just cleaning upthe surface, but changing the
(37:38):
underlying design so yourbusiness supports you instead of
you constantly propping it up.If you're listening and
thinking, yep, this is totallyme. I'm holding everything in my
head or it's spread across amillion actions.
Here's a tiny action to try thisweek. Just identify one system
or tool you can consolidate oreliminate. Even if it's just
(38:00):
moving one folder or archivingone app, that small decision is
the first step towards moreclarity and more calm.
Imagine waking up tomorrow, opening your laptop,
and knowing exactly where tofind every piece of content
you've ever created. Everyclient call, every blog draft,
every podcast episode, and everyrandom spark of genius all in
one place. Imagine the mentalfreedom that would unlock. No
(00:27):
more bouncing between halffinished Google Docs, rogue word
files, and sticky notes thatyou're pretty sure you left on
your desktop three months ago.Just one trusted central brain
for your business so you canfocus on actually running it,
not remembering it.
But if you're like most of thefolks I work with, your digital
(00:48):
brain is scattered everywhere.You've outgrown the systems that
you piece together over time andevery new tool you try just
feels like another layer ofnoise. Instead of feeling
supported, you're stuck proppingup this wobbly tower of default
decisions. You're reactinginstead of leading. What if
(01:08):
instead of just decluttering,you could build a single source
of truth?
What I'd like to call a calmerbrain. That not only holds your
knowledge but helps you makeclearer calmer decisions every
day. Welcome to Calm is the NewKPI, where we engineer calm one
KPI, one bottleneck, onebusiness at a time. And today
(01:30):
I'm trying something new,something I'm calling a live
diagnosis. In these episodes,I'll sit down with a business
owner to unpack a real messyoperational bottleneck in their
business.
We'll look under the hood. We'llfigure out what's really going
on, and we'll explore tangibleways to design for more calm
right there on the call. Myfirst guest is Melissa Carson.
(01:53):
She's a leadership and cultureconsultant with a ton of
experience. But like so many ofus, her internal systems grew
organically over time and endedup scattered across tools and
platforms that were dictated bywho she was working with, not
how she likes to work.
She's overwhelmed by duplicatedefforts, too many tools, too
(02:17):
many options to choose from, andthe brain train of just trying
to figure out where things live.Hey, Melissa. I'm so excited to
have you here with me today.
Melissa Carson (02:27):
I'm excited to be here.
Susan Boles (02:29):
For the people listening, can you give me a
little bit of a rundown of theparticular bottleneck that
you're sort of struggling withright now? What is happening in
your business?
Melissa Carson (02:38):
I have a small business that's predominantly
me. I have somebody who workswith me on emails and getting
out promotions of events type ofthing. And as I've grown over
the past five and a half years,I've picked and choose different
tool sets to use either becauseof how like, I use a Mac. So in
(03:00):
some cases, I use the notes appbecause I love it. I don't like
the Mac applications, Safari,and all their custom things.
So I buy Office March because Igrew up in corporate using
Microsoft products. So I love Iunderstand them better. But with
this assistant, we use Google sothat we can easily share the
(03:22):
documents. And then over time, Ipicked up Airtable, and I I use
Funnel Breezy for my CRM slashemail marketing. I also write a
lot of content, and I write itin Word.
And then it gets into either Ihave a blog location for a
website, Marlyssa Ryder Carson,where everything long term
(03:43):
lives, but I also send thatnewsletter out via Squarespace.
So it gets posted in twodifferent places. And this
assistant also helps in it. Sothat gets in a Google doc. So I
have a word document that hasall the content in it.
Plus I have a Google doc thathas things. I've been using the
notes, but I over the weekend, Ijust migrated back to
potentially using OneNote forcapturing some of the things.
(04:04):
But I feel like I have too manytools and I'm not sure that I
really need what I thought Ineeded them for. Like, I think I
can probably get rid of Airtableand use it for what I wanted it
to do in a different way. Soit's just a lot of different
things that I feel like areredundant and and at least time
small time sucks.
(04:25):
And with the emergence of AI of,like, wanting to have things in
one place so that I get thebenefit of being able to have
all the content in one place.
Susan Boles (04:37):
Yeah. I was actually talking about this with
another creator of basically theidea of creating essentially a
personal data warehouse. Mhmm.So if you're familiar with kind
of data structures or really anylike software system, the back
end of that is just a wholebunch of storage of data in
(04:59):
different ways so that you canaccess it. And one of the cool
things that's happening with AIright now is they are starting
to build connectors to things.
And the idea behind being ableto connect to a lot of different
systems is if you could pick oneplace and store all of your
content or all of your data inone place, that gives you a
(05:22):
single essentially a singlesource of truth, particularly
when it comes to things likecontent. One place to go be able
to search and find all of yourdifferent newsletters or filter
them by topics or also pull,have I done this newsletter as a
blog? Or where have I beeninterviewed about this specific
(05:42):
topic on a podcast? And beingable to pull all that
information together, which Ithink works really well on the
content side. And when we'retalking about systems in
business on the businessoperations side, it's kind of a
similar concept where if we canpick one place, one tool, it
honestly doesn't matter what thetool is as long as it works for
(06:07):
you and you have one place togo.
So where I see it happening alot is the very exact situation
that you're talking about wheremaybe you're a Microsoft
collaborating with is a Googleperson. And now everybody wants
to operate in their preferredsystem, but that requires
creating multiple copies. Andthen you never quite know which
(06:30):
version is supposed to be the,like, the real version. My
question to you is theconsultant that you work with is
a Google first person. You are aMicrosoft person because you
have existed in the Microsoftworld.
When you are interacting withyour clients, where are they
(06:50):
living?
Melissa Carson (06:51):
I have one that is a Google Google client, but
I'm working in their system. Andthen the rest that I worked with
from a coaching or strategystuff, they're a mix of Google
and Microsoft in general. But itmore shows up in how I run my
business versus how to interactwith them. And I think the other
(07:12):
piece that goes through my headis as you talk to more and more
people, they'll be like, oh, Ilove this tool. I love Notion.
It does all this thing. They'relike, it is hard to get to used
to, or this is like and soyou're like, okay. Do I go all
in? Do I switch types of things?I think I read something
yesterday about some like a datawarehouse similar to what you
were talking about, somebody whois creating all of that.
(07:32):
I want it to feel easy becausemy business is not huge. Like,
it should not be a huge burdenbecause it's like, it's me and a
handful of clients clients atany point in time.
Susan Boles (07:42):
So which piece of this feels like it takes the
most time or is the mostannoying for you?
Melissa Carson (07:52):
I don't know if it's the most time, but I think
it's where I feel like I gottafigure out the strategy because
I feel like there's too muchduplication. So in my newsletter
process, which comes out everyweek, we now write it in a
Google Doc so that the assistantcan see it. She then posts it to
(08:13):
Squarespace so that it lives onthe blog long term. I put it
into Substack so that it goesout with the newsletter. Then
she slash her team capture thatas well as all my daily posts in
Airtable so that we have arecord of here's what I did,
here's where it went, here's thevisual that went with it.
(08:35):
That's where it feels like it'soverlapped to keep the the blog
page of just all my writing of,like, the long form. I would
call it couple paragraph longform content that I've
essentially written is there andon a page I own forever versus,
you know, everybody else'splatform. So it's like, those
are where I feel like there'sduplication of effort and maybe
(08:58):
not for the value. I startedwith the Airtable concept
because I'd seen somebody do itaround, like so I can keep the
picture. I can I know what Idid, and I can search to see if
I want to reuse it?
The reality is because I wroteall of those daily posts in a
Word document, and I have anExcel spreadsheet that outlines
(09:19):
what post I did for the lastfive years, I can easily go back
and say, oh, this was May oftwenty twenty three, pull up the
Word document and do it. So Idon't really need the Airtable
option, I don't think.
Susan Boles (09:32):
I think in this particular instance, you could
go either way.
Melissa Carson (09:36):
Okay.
Susan Boles (09:37):
In essence, you have two duplicate systems in
the same way that we're talkingabout, you know, Word draft and
a Google Doc draft. If youconsolidated into it all happens
in Google Docs, then you'vesolved the versioning issue. But
in the same way, you'reduplicating essentially what
we're talking about where youhave a data warehouse. So you
(09:58):
have the beginnings of apersonal data warehouse, but you
actually have two of them. Andagain, it doesn't actually
matter which one you go with.
But the goal is pick one and goall in. One of the benefits here
of going with something likeAirtable and making that your
(10:19):
system of record is there's alot of functionality that could
be used there. For example, youare not substantially changing
the draft between what goes onthe blog and what goes in
Substack, and instead of postingit in either place, you put it
in Airtable, you can use toolslike Zapier or depending on what
(10:43):
you're doing, Airtableautomations to actually post it
to Squarespace or post it toSubstack so that you can
eliminate those functionalities.So if you collapse your Excel
spreadsheet into the Airtabledatabase, you have one single
source of truth with all of yourWord documents. If they're
(11:04):
actual Word documents, you caneven upload them as attachments
or turn them into a PDF orwhatever.
But you do have the ability tothen automate some of the manual
workload. And that is thebenefit of using something like
Airtable versus Excel. Airtableis sort of almost still the gold
(11:24):
standard of, like, really solidautomation possibilities.
Melissa Carson (11:28):
And I'm not leveraging it because I think
the And person you are notleveraging it. Working with now
isn't an Airtable person. Theperson that I was working with
originally wasn't initially, butwas learning and was but this
other is that's not their keything. So I don't think they're
ever going to really focus onthat.
Susan Boles (11:48):
And a lot of these, you know, the automations that
you set up, it's mostly a onetime setup. Every once in while
you have to do a little bit ofmaintenance. Okay. Setting up
the automations can go both wayshere. So if you do substantially
change, you know, the newsletterdraft versus the blog draft, and
they're actually two separatethings, You can do automations
(12:08):
the other way.
So basically when somethingposts to Squarespace, drop all
the different pieces intoAirtable. So Airtable is still
the system of record. But nowyou have maybe a table for your
blog and a table for yournewsletter. Both of them are
automatically getting put intoyour data warehouse to be able
(12:29):
to then access search, all ofthose things. And then
eventually, the capability isthat that personal data
warehouse could then connect tosomething like ChatGPT via their
new integrations thing that theyjust released.
But then you could essentiallyuse ChatGPT to chat with all of
your own content, all of yourown data. So starting the
(12:55):
structure to be able to takeadvantage of that has a lot of
benefits, not just in, know, dayto day automation. You can
really expand this, you know, ifyou are somebody who's a keynote
speaker, you can have yourspeaking information as part of
the personal data warehouse, youknow, all of the speaking
engagements you've done eachpiece of your intellectual
(13:17):
property. So if you have, youknow, custom frameworks, or
stuff like that, you can addthat information into this data
warehouse. So it can serve as asingle source of truth from your
content and IP perspective.
And you are building thegroundwork to be able to
eventually take advantage ofthings like integration to
(13:41):
ChatGPT where you can then chatwith yourself essentially.
Melissa Carson (13:45):
Yeah. Oh, I like that.
Susan Boles (13:47):
So what other areas is this showing up for you in?
Is it mostly on the contentside? Or when you are thinking
about planning work or doinglike, where does that happen?
Melissa Carson (13:58):
I think that it all is also a level of
complexity. So I if I thinkabout, like, my client notes, I
was using the notes app becauseit was easy to use on my phone.
If I were taking notes, it waseasy to use on my laptop. But I
feel like it doesn't have asgood search fund functionality
and usability as something likeOneNote, which I could share
(14:20):
with other people probably alittle bit more easily than the
Apple Notes app. So I think Iwanna move more fully to
OneNote, but I think back tosystems and processes.
I do contracts through FunnelBiggerZ, which is my CRM and
email marketing type tool. Sothey get done through there, and
(14:44):
most of the invoicing gets donethrough there. I don't onboard
that many clients that I have agreat system yet. It would
generally be some sort of set ofWord documents, but could live
potentially in Airtable.
Susan Boles (14:57):
There are lots of places that it could live. Are
you sharing this informationwith clients, or is it mostly
internal notes? Mostly mine. Soyou remember like
Melissa Carson (15:07):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (15:07):
Hey. Wait.
Melissa Carson (15:08):
Correct. That more.
Susan Boles (15:09):
There's a few different options that you could
go about solving it. One, youcould build your client calls
into part of your datawarehouse. So if you record
client calls, you can have themautomatically transcribed, added
to your data warehouse, which ifyou are writing or talking about
(15:29):
the work that you're doing,sometimes you have really great
ideas and client calls that youforget. Right. You said You're
talking.
You're being brilliant. Theclient is loving it. But you
forget to, like, show that tothe outside world so that they
can have a really goodunderstanding of what you
actually do. One potential partof this could be recording the
(15:52):
calls either using an AInotetaker or just transcribe
them afterwards, stick thetranscripts in your data
warehouse to then be able tosearch and refer to. If that's
the route that you go, you couldalso then link them to their
record in your CRM, Right?
So you could tag them to thespecific client and be able to
integrate those things. That'seven easier if everything lives
(16:16):
in this case in air table.
Melissa Carson (16:18):
And it's funny that I did start my CRM
initially in air table.
Susan Boles (16:22):
In air table.
Melissa Carson (16:23):
And somebody had taught me, like, it had some
auto feeds to my calendar, so itshowed up on my Microsoft
calendar. So I'm like, who Ineed to talk to and, like, I've
missed that because this othersystem isn't as sophisticated in
that space right now.
Susan Boles (16:35):
Yeah. So when it comes to, like, just generally
thinking about how do I pick asystem to do a thing, I tend to
lean very heavily into systemsthat are highly customizable. So
something like Airtable,something like Notion, something
like ClickUp, SmartSuite, stuffwhere you can build your own
(16:57):
version of whatever thatworkflow is, but that also have
the capability to become thesingle source of truth for
everything. They can be yourdata warehouse. They can be your
document repository.
They can be your personal datawarehouse of content. And so I
look for systems that have a lotof inherent flexibility so that
(17:21):
you can build a CRM and acontent warehouse and a client
record. And I look for thingsthat have good connectors. So it
is, I think unrealistic toexpect one tool to do absolutely
everything we need it to do inbusiness. Right?
(17:42):
Because content is inherently adifferent business than doing
client operations. There'sdifferent workflows. But if you
are picking a system that hasinherent flexibility and has
connectors to good tools. So inthis case, a connector to
Substack or a connector toSquarespace, the places where
(18:02):
the other that you can't get ridof having a website, at least
not yet. You can't get rid ofclient operations.
You probably can't get rid ofemail marketing. But can we
connect our single source oftruth to those things? And by
looking and evaluating systemsin a pick something that's
(18:24):
inherently flexible and scalableand customizable and has good
connectors, you can get reallyclose to not having very many
systems in your business. Youjust have to be really committed
to, I'm not gonna build aseparate system. I'm gonna build
this in my one system.
So for a lot of people it startsat, I'm going to build a data
(18:47):
warehouse for my content. Cool.Now that's there. Now let me
think about client projects andhow that should be built in here
and CRM and how that should bebuilt in here. And you can begin
to kind of expand your system tomeet your specific needs without
having to like Frankenstein on awhole bunch of other systems to
(19:11):
do the thing that you need it todo.
And part of the reason thathappens is because oftentimes
we'll pick the system initiallythat just doesn't have the
capability to customize orexpand to fit our needs. Where
tools like Airtable, essentiallyit's just you know, a relational
database. We can do whatever wewant with it. That gives it a
(19:33):
lot of inherent functionalityand ability to scale with you as
you grow. What questions do youhave about all of that?
Melissa Carson (20:50):
No. I mean, it's less about questions. My head
starts going to, okay. So whatam I gonna do about it now?
Because I feel like I now havesome ideas, and I'm like, okay.
This is where I I might need youmore than the podcast to to
think about how to map this outbecause I do want ease in my
business. And I think that if Ican eliminate either where I'm
(21:15):
paying somebody else to dosomething and save that money to
do something different, whetherit's go to another conference or
go buy some new something orother that's gonna make the
business stronger. I wannafigure out how to do that and
thinking about where all thelinkages are across the
different things that I canautomate. Okay. How am I going
(21:37):
to really pull this off?
Susan Boles (21:38):
So the first step is I would start consolidating
into a single system. Okay. Soif you know you have duplicate
systems, start moving all thedata into one place. Pick one
tool that has inherentflexibility and scalability and
(21:58):
start moving everything there.Everybody's brain and how they
think about this stuff isdifferent.
So the functionality we'retalking about could be built in
a variety of systems. But thefirst, like the easiest way is
to get it all in one place.Because then even if you decide,
(22:20):
I low key hate air table and Iactually really love the notion
interface and it's so muchcleaner and I know that I'm
gonna use it because I can makeit which is not insignificant.
Right? Like, we wanna build intotools that we genuinely enjoy
using.
And if something about theinterface makes you not ever
wanna go in there, then that isnot the right tool for you.
(22:42):
There's lots of options. Sofinding one that like feels good
to open and use is an importantpart of the evaluation process.
Melissa Carson (22:53):
Well, it's funny that you say that because I was
much I've I've never been reallystrong on on managing my CRM. In
Airtable, I was decent. WithFunnel Breezy, I am not good. I
the interface is just
Susan Boles (23:10):
hate it, you hate it.
Melissa Carson (23:11):
Yeah. It's just wonky. It's like I don't use it.
I'm like, ugh. I need to use it.
I need to do take the notes inthere. I need to put it. But I'm
like, I don't love it.
Susan Boles (23:19):
I am similar. I was very early to ClickUp. So when
Notion happened, I kept tryingto do Notion, and my brain just
doesn't work that way. It feltvery cumbersome even though it's
a little bit more flexible andtrying to force myself into a
system that didn't feel naturalto how my brain thinks about
things or how I want to existmeant I never used it. And then
(23:41):
all of a sudden, I'm trying tohold things in my head, or I'm
building shadow systems inExcel.
All of those things where whenwe really think about, like, how
does this system feel to me? Isthis something that I want to
use and that I feel comfortablewith? That's not an
insignificant amount of theevaluation of which system
(24:03):
should you use. Because theanswer to which system you
should you use is different isgoing to be different for
everybody because all of ourbrains and our businesses look
different. Regardless of whichtool you ultimately end up
using, starting the process oflet me consolidate all the tools
that are kind of the samefunctionality into one place
(24:23):
means that then it's a loteasier.
One, I would almost guaranteeyou have duplicate records of
some sort, So you can get into asingle, you have single record
per item basically and you cando a little bit of the data
cleanup as you're consolidatingthe systems. But then most of
the tools like air table ornotion or whatever you can
(24:45):
export that data and just moveit into whatever the new system
ends up being and maybe duringthat process you realize you
love air table and you're goingto stick with it and that's
great. And maybe you realizelike, hey, something about this
doesn't quite feel right, butall of your data is there to be
able to easily move intowhatever the ultimate choice
(25:06):
ends up being. So the first stepof any of these projects is at
least to me always startconsolidating all your systems.
So you're down to one.
And that part is just timeconsuming, right? We all have so
many files and so much data. Andit does take time to move it
(25:26):
from one place to another. Butone of the impacts of this is
you stop having to hold in yourbrain where to go. So if you
have an Excel spreadsheet and anAirtable and you've got maybe
Asana on top of it and you'vegot your CRM, your brain
(25:48):
actually has to hold where isthe appropriate place for me to
go to get this information.
The fewer systems you have, theless brain space you have to use
on where do I go for this.Because as you consolidate down,
the answer is always, I alwaysgo to Airtable, always go to
ClickUp, I always go to Notion,because everything is there. And
(26:10):
so it really can do a lot toreduce decision fatigue and free
up some energetic margin. And wedon't really talk about that
very frequently, but knowing onewhere information is supposed to
go. A lot of the times we have aclient call showed up and what
am I supposed to do with this?
And now I have a new lead and itcame in an email and where is
(26:32):
that supposed to go again? Andit's too much of a pain to move
it over to that system. I'lljust leave it in my inbox, and
I'll just snooze in, and it'llcome back in a week, and I'll
remember to do it. And soknowing what to do with each
piece of information is also areally important aspect of that.
Of I know what to do with thispiece of with this lead.
(26:55):
I know where it's supposed togo. I know what I'm supposed to
do with it. So you're not tryingto hold all of these disparate
balls in your hands becauseyou're not quite sure where to
put the thing to make sure thatyou remember to do it. And the
end result is you just end uptrying to hold it all.
Melissa Carson (27:11):
So I guess one of my questions is, and it might
just be a personal perspective,but also just the functionality
of Google versus Microsoft. Someof the Google I don't love the
UI of getting things done, likehow I create or formatting and
things like that feels awkward.But I I do like whether it's a
family spreadsheet that weshare. Google seems to be the
(27:32):
way to most easily do it for allof us to be able to access it.
Now maybe that I don't fullyunderstand what I can do with
some of the Microsoft stuff, butI'm just curious on your
perspective of the two differenttool sets.
Susan Boles (27:44):
So I come from the world of government. I was very
much brought into the Microsoftecosystem. I've built apps in
Microsoft. I have existed in theMicrosoft ecosystem for the
majority of my non consultingcareer. And it is a solid
(28:05):
product if you are in corporateand a lot of people have been
indoctrinated into the Microsoftway of doing business.
So sometimes it can be reallyhard to envision how to do work
outside Microsoft ecosystem,especially if like, that's
literally all I knew. That beingsaid, I think Google as an
(28:31):
ecosystem is functionally betterin that it's built first. And
while Microsoft hascollaborative features, they're
not necessarily intuitive.Google is designed for people
who don't know how to do any ofthis to be able to come in and
(28:52):
intuitive ly do the thing thatthey need to do. So when I'm
recommending ecosystems toclients, I'm almost always
recommending Google.
But that's because most of mybusiness is connecting Google to
things. It's so much easier toconnect Google to things and get
(29:12):
Google to be an automaticfunction
Melissa Carson (29:17):
of
Susan Boles (29:17):
what you're doing than it is to do that with
Microsoft. That being said, itis very difficult sometimes for
people who have beenindoctrinated into the Microsoft
ecosystem to get used to howGoogle thinks about things.
Right? So in the Microsoftecosystem, yeah, collaboration
is a thing. Yeah, we're trackingchanges.
(29:40):
But also we probably have v one,v two, v three, v 15 dot two dot
three of whatever that documentWhere the benefit of something
in Google is it's just there.It's just the one document.
We've updated it. We can revertto the versions. But for the
(30:00):
most part, it's designed to becollaborative.
And it's designed to becurrently up to date, right?
It's designed to be, here's thelink to the file. Oh, the file
is always the most recentversion. If I need to see what
previous versions were, I can goin the menu and look at the
previous versions. But I knowthat there's only one copy of
(30:22):
this thing and it is the currentversion.
And I think that's reallypowerful, but it's also really
hard to get used to if you areused to v one dot b final,
final, extra final.
Melissa Carson (30:38):
Well, I guess the one question that I have
less than that final finalversion is more thinking about
where it lives. So if you thinkabout Microsoft, I'm usually
working on a local copy of it.Whereas, usually when I'm
working on Google, I'm on a webbased
Susan Boles (30:54):
browser.
Melissa Carson (30:55):
Right. Is it just the the habit of saying,
hey. If I really wanna be and II think you can create local
copies if you're, like, flyingor doing something. I think
that's the thing of, like, it'snot always there. Like, I need
to be feel like you need to beonline to do work.
Think so it's probably a mindsetshift.
Susan Boles (31:13):
It's a mindset shift. You can still use focus
blocking programs or createoffline versions and that sort
of thing. I find the cloud basedness to be a feature, not a
Because I've had situationswhere my computer broke. Right?
(31:34):
And I lost everything.
Like I spilled a drink on thekeyboard. That thing is mush.
I'm never getting it back. I'mnever preserving it. And this is
also a factor of havingsupervised IT departments for a
long time.
But I didn't actually loseanything. Everything I work on
is in the cloud. So all I had todo was reinstall Google Drive
(31:54):
and reinstall ClickUp and all ofa sudden I'm right back where I
was. I didn't actually loseanything. So for me, I find it
to be a benefit that it's cloudbased.
For me, the ability to know I'mnot gonna lose anything is
(32:15):
actually fantastic.
Melissa Carson (32:17):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (32:17):
There's also the secret third option, which is
actually what I do, which ismost of the time I'm now using
the documents inside my projectmanagement software. So Notion,
everybody that's in Notion,they're not writing in Word or
Google, they're writing inNotion. ClickUp has a similar
feature. So I'm writing inClickUp docs 95% of the time.
(32:41):
It's actually rarer that I amusing some other tool.
And that is almost always I'mcollaborating with somebody and
it's a consultant, and so I'musing the system they have. But
I'm usually dropping that linkto whatever it is that we're
using into my project managementtool, which serves as my
(33:03):
personal data warehouse. Istarted going to that a few
years ago because I just wantedone place. Right. Right?
I just wanted to go to one placeand search for everything and
the ability to do like documenttemplates that go along with my
task. Right? So when I create anew podcast episode idea, it
plops down my script templateand it has my entire workflow
(33:28):
built out there. So I don'tactually have to do anything. I
don't have to remember where onGoogle Drive it is and grab the
link.
I don't have to remember, okay,let me make a copy of the script
template and all of thosethings. I could absolutely be
doing that in Google or Word.But that is a sort of de facto
second system, right? And again,personal preference. I know a
(33:51):
lot of people that are, theywork in Notion and they still
use Google Docs or they work inNotion and they really prefer
Word.
A lot of it has to do with whatmakes you feel like you can do
your best work.
Melissa Carson (34:02):
Right. Yeah. Think some of the things of
Google versus Microsoft, it'smore probably a learning curve
of like whatever functionality.But I'm like, why is it not
obvious in Google? Why is itlike so I think some of it is
learning And curve
Susan Boles (34:15):
just of because you know exactly where it is in
Microsoft. So it feels intuitiveto you. We do develop habits
about how to do things. Forexample, like in Notion, in
ClickUp when you're typing, youcan use the slash command and it
brings up a menu so you don'tactually have to click around.
(34:35):
But that's not true in GoogleDocs necessarily.
So every time I now try and typein Google Docs, I'm like, why is
there no slash menu for me toput in a new heading? Right?
Like, and that's just becauseI'm so used to the system I'm
used to. There is an inherentcost of switching that is worth
(34:55):
considering when you're thinkingabout using system? Are the
benefits of moving to somethingthat feels a little bit more
intuitive to you or feelsprettier or feels more exciting
to work in?
Is that worth the trade off ofhaving to learn a new system?
Sometimes it is, sometimes itisn't. And I think that decision
is different for everybody andat different stages of their
(35:18):
business. It's also reallydifferent if it's just you
switching. Or if it's you, plusa whole team of people that you
have to manage the changemanagement process and their
training and they're convincingthem that this is the right way
to go.
Any other thoughts, questions,stuff you would like to
consider?
Melissa Carson (35:37):
I think that's enough. You gave me more work,
but it's the work to get It'sthe
Susan Boles (35:42):
free work to get to the better situation.
Melissa Carson (35:45):
Right. It's like, I can see the light, but I
gotta go through that tunnel toactually get there.
Susan Boles (35:51):
Yep. And I think sometimes that pre work isn't
worth it. And sometimes it makesa huge difference. And it ends
up being the thing that frees upa whole bunch of brain space and
energy and margin to be able togo do more fun things. Like
(36:12):
nobody actually wants to beposting a blog post manually to
Squarespace.
That's not that nobody's likedesire of what do you want to do
today? And I would like to postthis thing in four different
places and then put it in adatabase. Said no one ever. And
so I think when we can usetools, we can use technology as
(36:32):
a way to get to do moreinteresting, more fun kind of
work, that's when it can bereally, really powerful. What
Melissa and I walked throughwasn't just a strategy for
organizing her content.
It's a way to actually build asingle source of truth for your
(36:52):
business. We focused on twodifferent levers from the Calmer
framework, business design andefficiency. We examined how to
consolidate systems and reducetool sprawl. So moving from
default decisions and duct tapedworkflows towards an intentional
design that supports how sheactually wants to work. And we
(37:15):
focused on creating efficiencybut not the default version
where we just cram more in.
Here efficiency means creating asingle source of truth to reduce
mental load, cut down ondecision fatigue, and free up
energy for more meaningful work.That's the essence of a calmer
business. Not just cleaning upthe surface, but changing the
(37:38):
underlying design so yourbusiness supports you instead of
you constantly propping it up.If you're listening and
thinking, yep, this is totallyme. I'm holding everything in my
head or it's spread across amillion actions.
Here's a tiny action to try thisweek. Just identify one system
or tool you can consolidate oreliminate. Even if it's just
(38:00):
moving one folder or archivingone app, that small decision is
the first step towards moreclarity and more calm.
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