Are You a List Shopper or a Treasure Hunter?
It was my third trip to the warehouse and hubby’s first, and I could already tell he was ready to go.
A few weekends ago, while we were still in San Diego, I found this amazing place. A woman who has been a real estate stager for 20 years (she’s also an interior designer) is leaving the staging side to focus on design. So she’s selling it all. We’re talking at least 10,000 square feet stacked full of furniture and pretty things for the house, at great prices.
I’d already been twice. Oh my gosh, it was almost too much to take in on one visit, and she’s only open part of the day.
So I went back a third time and brought hubby. We walked through, and I said, “I’m getting vibes that you’re ready to go.”
He said, “Well, yeah, okay. But what do we need here?”
I told him we didn’t need anything in particular. We were hunting for treasure and looking for ideas.
“I can’t do that,” he said. “I don’t shop that way. I need a list. Give me a list of what we need.”
I’d already bought what we needed. Pillows, bedding, towels and a king mattress came home with me on the first two trips. When I walk through a place like that, I’m doing something different. I see two pieces sitting together, or I start to see our place with a few new things in it, and suddenly I notice something I walked right past the first time.
He was maxed out, and I couldn’t give him a list. So we left.
Funny thing, though. Thinking his way, about what we needed that she had, sent me back in for three coverlets. Twenty dollars each, never slept in, only used for display. Shell yes!
Neither Way Is Wrong
On the drive home, we laughed about it. We’d walked through the exact same warehouse and shopped it in two completely different ways.
It’s just like this in our business. We all work a little differently, from how we plan our week to how we keep track of what needs doing. There’s no one right way.
Hubby needs a list to walk into a store. I need one too when I’m headed to the grocery store. But in a creative place like that warehouse, I’d rather wander and see what turns up. Someone could tell him to slow down and soak in the ideas, and someone else could tell me to bring a list and save time. Either one would miss the point. That day, his way helped me find something mine walked past.
That’s easy to say, and a lot harder to remember when everyone online is telling you the right way to do it. I saw this play out with a client this week.
They’ve been losing their mojo. Everywhere they turn, someone is telling them how to run their business. They’ve heard how many emails to send each week, that they need to run workshops and repurpose every piece of content, and that their Notion should be spotless with no mess anywhere. They’ve been told to use AI for this but never for that. Somebody even had rules about how they should price their high-end offer.
I call these the shitty shoulds. When enough of them pile up, you stop hearing your own voice.
Go Back to Your Best Month
So how do you get your own voice back? With this client, I started by looking backward. I remembered a conversation we’d had about their best month in business. They’d told me about it with so much energy, what they’d done and how it lit them up. So I asked them to go back there. What worked? What were they doing?
They felt free. They tried whatever they felt like trying and made a lot of offers they knew their clients would love. They were solving the problems their clients had, and things sold.
I’m not saying that’s always a sustainable way to run a business. But if you’ve had a stretch where things worked and you need your mojo back, go back to it. Do what felt good and aligned, and what your clients responded to.
When your offer is built to solve what your client needs and help them get a good outcome, it sells. And when you believe in it, serving them feels good too. It goes both ways. They get help, and you get the joy of helping them. That’s where the mojo comes from.
Why I’d Set Up Your Notion Differently Than the Next Person’s
The same goes for the tools you run your business on. They work best when they’re set up for the way your mind works.
Take Notion. If you haven’t used it, Notion is an online workspace where you can keep your notes, tasks and how-to steps in one place. You build it out with pages and tables, kind of like a digital binder you set up yourself. Because you build it, no two setups have to look alike.
I’ve set it up for a handful of clients, and the home page (the first page you see when you open it) has looked really different from one client to the next.
One client is very visual. Their home page has a big image for each main area, like SOPs, branding and tasks, with a link right under each picture.
For another client, the home page is just a bulleted list of six main areas. Click in and you’ll find a few popular items underneath, and that’s it. Not everything in the system shows up there, on purpose.
A third client’s home page holds what they need every day, with tabs along the top like a website. There are fewer lists, no pictures and lots of tables. When they land, the tables are right there, stacked one on top of the other.
All three use Notion. Each one is built for the way that person’s mind works.
Most tools, templates and programs out there are sold as one size fits all. Somebody built them with a particular person in mind, and that person might not be you. (Hi, I’m Michelle, and I’m a treasure hunter.)
How Do You Make AI Fit Your Specific Business Needs?
So how do I know what will fit someone before I build it? I start small and ask a lot of questions.
When I set up something like Notion, I usually start with one piece of it, like a task board. Before I build anything, I learn how the person does that job today. I picked this up from Rachel Woods, and I use it with every client now.
So for tasks, I’ll ask: Are they in a paper notebook, or Outlook, or Google Tasks? Do you keep one running list, or do you sort them by day? If it’s on paper and you need to hand a task to someone, how does that happen?
We break it down step by step, the way it gets done on a regular Tuesday. Then we sort it. Some pieces need a person, some can run on their own with an automation, and some AI can take over. AI comes last, after the work is clear. If you hand a messy process to AI, you just get a messy process running faster.
This is the part of AI I think is so cool. Sometimes, not always, it lets us take a tool built for everyone and shape it to fit one person. But it only works once you know how that person works. That’s why writing down how you do the job today comes first.
Set Down the Shoulds
Hubby is never going to wander a warehouse just for fun, and that’s okay. His list got us three coverlets.
This week, I’d love for you to set the shitty shoulds down and listen to your own voice. Go back to your best month. Notice how you like to work, and build from there.
And if you’d like help building systems that fit the way you think, that’s what I do. Let’s talk.
So tell me in the comments: are you a list shopper or a treasure hunter?
Shell, Yes! Here’s to your success,
Michelle
FAQs
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Start with how you do the job today, before any tool. Write down each step the way it happens. Then decide which steps need a person, which can run on their own, and which AI can take over. The tool should bend to your process, not the other way around.
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It was probably built for someone else’s way of working. Go back to how you do the job, keep the parts of the tool that fit, and change or drop the rest. Have a person check the work, especially at first. If you’re not sure whether you need a tool or something more, this post on AI tools and AI employees can help.
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Sometimes. Start with one job and one tool, and get it working the way you work. Add the next one when you’re ready. Small steps you can build on beat a big setup nobody uses.