I'm disorganized. I run a mile a minute. I'm terrible at documentation.

But I understand the importance of having an organized company. That's why I work closely with our COO, Shonak “Nak” Patel.

I'm turning this email over to him so he can show you how our companies run on Notion (a Bootstrapped Giants partner).

If you're not using Notion and want to follow along, you can get 6-months, plus unlimited AI for free. Apply here to get the free package ($6,000 in savings).

When asked for a referral partner, select Bootstrapped Giants, and when asked for your partner code, enter BGXNotion.

I never faced a challenge like one at Gateway X.

I know from experience that if leaders pick the wrong software or set it up poorly, team members will get distracted by time-sucking issues like “Where’s the doc?” “Who’s working on this?” or “What happens next?”

These tiny cuts can kill a team’s momentum.

The challenge with Gateway X is that our companies can grow fast, so their needs constantly change.

The question I had to answer is, “What software do we need today, AND what will we need as we grow?”

I’ve seen people talk about Notion on social media and college grads we hired swore by it.

But when I tried it, it didn’t seem right for our needs.

Then I heard someone compare it to LEGO blocks and it clicked for me.

Previous Notion setups I saw didn’t work for me because they were built for other people, but if I used these blocks for my own needs I could build anything I needed.

I decided to learn the basic Notion building blocks. Once I did that I was able to build what our teams need AND adjust what I built as the orgs grew.

How we use Notion

Project management - with easy requests

The team at Aux Insights, our private equity consulting business, had design requests for their presentations.

I didn’t want to force them to use the design team’s project management system and putting requests in Slack is distracting.

So I built a form in Tally for them to make requests easily

Then I connected it to the design team’s project management database in Notion to enable the designers to stay organized as they keep up with each request.

CRM

When we ran Kahani, our SaaS e-commerce platform, we needed a way to manage our customer pipeline.

We wanted to ensure we were having enough customer conversations and that we properly shepherded each prospect through our sales process and then through our customer success process.

Each of those experiences needed a customized layout and they all needed to connect (call notes, client reports, onboarding tasks).

With Notion, it was easy.

Content management

The newsletter and tweets you read from Jesse are based on conversations he’s had throughout the week.

We needed a way to capture those ideas, ensure Jesse can work on them when he has time to write, and get them published on time.

We used Notion to create this Content OS.

Public pages

When we started selling ads, we created a gorgeous media kit, but we made it a PDF.

Then we caught a small typo and had to recreate the PDF.

That led us to realize that we needed a way to make tweaks to our presentation quickly. So we recreated our media kit in Notion.

Notion enabled us to tweak the media kit while keeping a design we could be proud of.

AI Writing

Before we had Notion AI, if we got stuck while writing a doc, we left our writing and went to Google or ChatGPT or some other app.

It was a big momentum killer.

And, because those tools didn’t have the full context of what we were writing, they weren’t effective enough.

With Notion AI, when we’re stuck, we just click Command+J (Control+J on Windows).

Notion AI can outline what we should write, help us find the right words, or even continue writing for us.

AI Creation

Sometimes it’s easier for me to ask for what I want than to build it myself.

With Notion AI’s creation abilities, I could just type what I want and get it.

Notion’s AI creation abilities are especially helpful for newer users who don’t love software but need to get something done.

Shareable templates

When key hires start working with us, we ask them to create a page in Notion describing how they work best. (Ex, What time of day do they prefer to work quietly, with no obligation to respond to Slack.

To guide them through creating this doc, I created a template. I make a copy of it and assign it. Once it’s done, the whole team can see it.

Search

One key aspect of using Notion for everything is that anyone can search and find what they need in one place.

You might argue that we could recreate all our uses in other apps, but what that setup misses is the ease with which anyone on the team can find what they need.

More

I can go on and on.

Notion gives someone non-technical person a really easy way to build something super consumable.

Try it yourself

This week, because we partnered with Notion, we can let you try Notion for free for 6 months, including their fantastic Notion AI.

​Apply here to get the free package. When asked for a referral partner, select Bootstrapped Giants, and when asked for your partner code, enter BGXNotion

When you sign up, we’ll give you templates we use to run our companies.