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True creativity is born out of curiosity and wandering. Join Monica as she lets her curiosity lead conversations with beautiful minds, bold builders, and everyone in between.
Marie Poulin
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[00:00:00] Marie: a lot of it is instinct, like you said, where, people express things in a certain way that resonates with your soul in a way where I'm like, I like that. They're onto something. I want to be in their world.
[00:00:09] Is money my most important like, there are so many ways that I leave money on the table. But it's in service of, is my life more calm? Am I aligned with what I'm doing? Like there's lots of reasons that I don't do the things that I'm supposed to do.
[00:00:25]
[00:00:27] Monica: Marie, I am so nervous, I have so many years of coaching and I can just go on the fly, but I think it's a very special moment because you are like one of my top heroes in like the past five years. And I feel like I'm going to cry.
[00:00:43] Marie: I feel very honored by that. Cause I love. Following you online.
[00:00:47] I love seeing what you're doing on Twitter. So like the admiration is mutual. So I just wanted to throw that out
[00:00:52] Monica: there. So thank you so much. I think you don't need an introduction. Obviously people see you in different ways, but to me, you are a teacher you are a friend, like a cheerleader, a.
[00:01:06] Counselor therapist, you can be so many things to different people, but to me yeah, you have just been such a clear messaging around, learning, loving yourself and learning about how your brain works and accepting embracing. So I wanted to maybe start with, how are you feeling today?
[00:01:25] I know you've been doing a lot of different things. I read your last post about the masterminds. So I wanted to see where are you at your brain emotions
[00:01:34] Marie: today? Let's start with that. That's a great question. I feel pretty. Good, pretty inspired. I feel like I'm in a content creation cycle, if you will.
[00:01:44] And I'm sure you can relate to this where there's times where, you almost get stuck in consuming and you're reading and you're seeing what other people are doing and you're not producing as much. And so I feel like I'm always on this teeter totter of like, consuming and exploring and researching and then going into my cave and then producing.
[00:02:00] So I feel like I'm in a little bit of a. Production cave now where I'm like, okay, ideas are forming and connecting and whatnot. So I'm feeling pretty excited and inspired but also a little unsure like, I don't know where it's going to take me and I'm okay with that uncertainty. That's awesome.
[00:02:17] Monica: Can you share a little bit about what are these things that maybe like you're working on producing, or maybe even if it's early stages, . However much you can share,
[00:02:26] Marie: yeah, I'm open to sharing it. It's like uncomfortable to share things when you're not actually sure where it's taking you for sure.
[00:02:33] But because you're a student of mine, notion mastery is something that's taken up a lot of time and attention over the last, 3 to 4 years or so. And there's a part of me that wonders, what is after this product, right? Like , what happens if Notion disappeared?
[00:02:47] What would happen to our business, right? So a lot of our business activities right now are tied to a software that we have no control over. So if Notion makes certain decisions, if Notion gets purchased by another company or something like that, it makes our business inherently fragile. And so we always want to ask ourselves what are the.
[00:03:05] Concepts and the ideas that endure, even after notion were to disappear. What are those things that kind of hold true and are like tech agnostic. Those are the things I want to explore. So what's interesting to me right now is really the influence of my permaculture studies. And so what does it mean? To design a business and a life that is permaculture inspired.
[00:03:26] What does it mean to , design resilient systems and to build a resilient business, build a resilient life? Is there some kind of framework for applying permaculture principles to our lives? So that's what I'm exploring at the moment. Oh
[00:03:38] Monica: my God, it sounds fascinating. Marie , I think the last workshop that you hosted and maybe you hosted others was about this idea of capacity, like , what's like a capacity, even like the name.
[00:03:52] And I love how you label things. I wanted to see if you could maybe for those who are not familiar with this what was that workshop about? And how did that start? Because it was a very different workshop from a regular notion class. Yeah, but I think for a lot of people just seeing the response that I noticed in the workshop, it changed people's like perspectives and their planning and productivity sort of plan. So if you want to share about like, how did it start? Where did it begin? Like any other things that like are stemming from that? Cause I saw so much potential for, wow, people need this.
[00:04:27] Marie: Yeah. I think. If I try and trace the steps back of like how it evolved, part of it is the, how can we begin to teach these concepts that are necessary before people start building things in notion?
[00:04:40] Because I think people tend to be attracted to notion because they're like, this is the tool that's going to fix my productivity. That's going to make me produce more. It's going to improve all my habits, right? We're thinking of it as the technology is going to do this, but the technology is just reflective of your own.
[00:04:56] Patterns and habits. What I loved about notion was it was a tool that I could make reflect what I wanted out of my work, right? Whether you want an inspiring statement at the top, whether you want to see a tiny task list, whether you want to see a backlog, what you choose to see is very much a reflection of your inputs.
[00:05:14] I think what I noticed in the course was people were seeking the technology to solve what were very human challenges around our productivity. The fact that we all put more on our plate than we have available. Like, why do we all do this all the time? And why do people with ADHD do this at such an extreme level too, where we're just always working on the most exciting thing that's in front of us for getting the 400 other things that we said yes to.
[00:05:39] It's like, how do we begin? To improve that. How do we even begin to fix that? It's something I think everybody struggles with to some extent. And as a woman with ADHD, as a business owner that wears many hats, I know that I get stuck in that as well. So I think there's an aspect of my life's work.
[00:05:55] That's been trying to solve that problem because it's always been an issue for me of over committing, overextending myself, getting excited about so many different things. So how do we begin to wrangle this? How do you actually begin to see your time? And your energy in a way that's more effective. So that's, I think, maybe the origin of it.
[00:06:14] And then the fact that I knew people weren't just going to solve those challenges just with notion. So what are the questions that I can ask people that get them thinking about what they're truly committed to? How do your values show up in the way that you work? How do we look at our time and energy a little bit differently?
[00:06:31] Maybe you can relate to this, but when you're motivated by What's most exciting in the moment, right? Like a lot of us are just, okay, this is the thing that's just most exciting right now. It can get really difficult to do the things that aren't super exciting. So how do we begin to channel our energy into the things that actually do light us up, but also still bring in revenue and still push our projects forward.
[00:06:54] So I just wanted to offer another way for people to think about their commitments and think about their time and get more honest about why we. Say yes to things when we don't actually have time to do that, because I think those habits and those ways of thinking about our commitments, that's what helps us start to get things done, start to build, notion workspaces that makes sense for us.
[00:07:15] But if you just dive to the tech without actually looking at that stuff first, I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
[00:07:22] Monica: everything that you said is okay what is that? I want to buy it, like whatever you're offering. And like the workshop was fantastic because again, it just goes really deep, deep down into, , like really trying to understand and discover ourselves before we even face the tool.
[00:07:41] But I know that, both you and I, . We have been huge fans of Notion, your flagship sort of product is a Notion, ecosystem almost as a course. I don't see it just as a course, but it's a support group. It's like teaching, coaching, like so much. I wanted to again, go back to notion for those of maybe are not familiar .
[00:08:01] I doubt it. If you have a short version, like, how do you describe to people in 1 or 2 lines? What is notion? And you've been at this like for a long time. And I still remember the 1st video that got me hooked on notion like your video. I think with. Keep productive how has your notion journey evolved from like when you first met it in today?
[00:08:24] Marie: I would say I consider notion to be a self discovery and Productivity tool. It's a place to manage information. It's a place to store and track behavior over time.
[00:08:38] It can really be whatever you want it to be. When I was first discovering it and first using it. A friend of mine recommended it and I didn't really understand. What I could use it for. I was like, it seems like a blog wiki. Okay and the functionality was pretty different back then, too.
[00:08:53] And it wasn't until I started studying permaculture. And my teacher was very analog. So everything is, sheets of paper and, really long emails with like attachments, and it was just a bit of a mess from a learning perspective. And I felt really scattered. And I was like, oh, I remember notion was this place where you could combine different links and images.
[00:09:10] And it felt like a place where you could condense the mess of links and information into a sort of attractive format. So that was kind of how it started. It was almost like, how do I condense this learning and this research in a way that I can find it and understand it? Great. But it took a while before.
[00:09:26] Yeah. I started to see it as a possibility for actually doing like task management and that sort of thing. And I'd say even before that was probably using it as a journal. So journaling wasn't something that I really did before. I didn't really have any consistent habit of doing that. I think I'm definitely much more of a digital person than I am of a paper person, probably because when you have ADHD, paper is my nemesis. It just piles up everywhere. I don't know where to put it and what to do with it. So it consumes me. Whereas in a digital environment, I feel like I don't have that same feeling of. Being overwhelmed by all the information, so it's kind of a, an interesting thing. And so I just started using it as a journaling mechanism and kind of a tracking mechanism because I think what I find really interesting is noticing my own patterns, right?
[00:10:15] Why do I keep doing this thing? And why does it keep holding me back when I do X? I feel why do I keep doing that? For me, it was a chance to. improve the way I move through the world to stop experiencing so much tension in different areas of my life. It was like a problem I wanted to solve is like why am I experiencing so many different difficulties in my life?
[00:10:35] How can I recontextualize this? How can I understand myself better and make different choices? So journaling was this beautiful entry point into understanding myself a little deeper. So I could hopefully make. Better decisions in the future.
[00:10:49] Monica: how has that evolved? Today, like , you're probably still using, I love seeing like your journal spreads and I always get almost jealous.
[00:10:56] I'm like, Oh, like it's so wonderful, , you had a, like a start your day page and. I love how you constantly make tweaks to your system and adapted to who you are today. What are some of the biggest, , changes you've made to your setup perhaps to today, to your notion?
[00:11:16] Marie: Yeah. So I think my system is, it's all about optimizing for. What you do most often and for what I want more of. So if I find myself getting really distracted and not following through on the tasks that I put on my plate, I have to ask myself. Okay. There's a tension here. There's some reason.
[00:11:37] That I'm not following through on my tasks. What is that? Is it overwhelmed? Do I have too much on my plate? Like it's an investigative process. And so I remember seeing somebody share some kind of now page or startup page or something like that. And I thought, you know what? I hear so much about morning routines and how helpful they are for people.
[00:11:56] Maybe there's something around. Creating some kind of anchoring morning routine that would be helpful. So I'm always experimenting with these different pages or dashboards to help me anchor my day or, , promote creativity, whatever it is that I want more of. I will usually make a dashboard in my space to try and foster that.
[00:12:14] And then I just noticed is this working? Am I visiting that page? If not, why? So I'm always reflecting on that. And so creating a startup page was a really helpful habit that just helped anchor my day. Same with the end of day review, like a simple you've probably heard me, refer to the daily me's just that end of day check in.
[00:12:31] Like how did things go and how did they go compared to, what I said I was going to do, did I actually do the thing, if not, why without judgment, just curiosity I sometimes refer to notion as a curiosity engine. If you're a curious person, you can. Really use notion as a tool to get curious about yourself, your own behavior, your team processes, like interesting.
[00:12:52] Why is this working? What works really well, and I'm just optimizing for those things that are working well, and just noticing where there's tension and trying to design that out of the system. That's how I see it. I guess that it's a. Of revolving
[00:13:04] Monica: experiment. Yeah. Like sometimes you have these this phrases that like, just like all of this messy thoughts, like totally crystallizes.
[00:13:11] So for example, you said, I just optimizing for things that I do often and then things that I want to see more off. That's like such a brilliant way of. Framing this and to go like at a metal level, were you always like that abstracting things? Do you think notion helped you think that way?
[00:13:31] I'm like, oh, that's so cool. What? I want to optimize for things that I do more often. What do I want to see more of? That's not
[00:13:40] Marie: such easy way. That's a permaculture principle, right? One of the principles of permaculture is you are designing zones with zone zero being the self, the body, right?
[00:13:50] You are in your body. 100 percent of the day every day. So when you optimize for sleeping better, eating better, whatever, you already know that you are going to be performing at a much higher level, right? So we want to optimize for health first. Great. Then we look at our house. What are the things that you do 100 times a day?
[00:14:08] What are the things that you do 10 times a day, once a day? What are the things you do once a year? So when you start to look at things in terms of frequency of how you do them. Optimizing for the things that you do 10 or 20 times a day are going to give you so much more of a result than a thing that you do once a year.
[00:14:23] And so in a way, studying permaculture helped me. Have some more helpful frames for looking at things like that. So I'm like, oh, yeah. Optimizing for frequency of use that to me, I'm like, oh, that clicks in my brain. And so I do think that I probably have a way of seeing the world. That's just influenced by my upbringing and my experience of the world, ADHD, whatever it is that my brain does not work in a very tidy, linear fashion.
[00:14:50] It's like pinging all over the place all the time. It's connecting patterns. I didn't necessarily know that maybe until working with other people and I've had a couple of clients that were like, do you realize that one of your strengths and skill sets is like, you have a way of seeing connections between things and you have a way of seeing the bigger picture.
[00:15:07] I was like, huh, nobody ever maybe put it in those words. So sometimes it takes working with other people with coaches with clients and people reflecting back to you. Like. Hey, do you know that your brain does this? And that's a really interesting and beautiful thing. And you're like, Oh yeah, I guess I, I didn't realize that.
[00:15:22] For me, permaculture is helping me give some words to concepts that almost feel universal. Like they feel Oh my God, you can apply that to business. You can apply it to the garden. You can apply it to relationships. So part of it is like, how do I take some of these principles and make them a little more accessible in a business and a personal development.
[00:15:41] Monica: . This is like so fun. I think I've made that comment before. I love your labeling process. So to give you one example I think in one of your setups, you had needs attention it's such a small thing between important needs attention, but the needs attention for me was such a gentle way of inviting me to solve it.
[00:16:03] Instead of, okay, if I don't do this, I'm going to get punished.
[00:16:07] Marie: Uh, Words matter. They completely can change how you feel about your work.
[00:16:11] Monica: Totally. So I wanted to see . What are some other frameworks that you feel have like unblocked workflows or made a big impact .
[00:16:21] In your work, I'm
[00:16:23] Marie: not sure if I can name some of the frameworks, but I feel like there are people that I encounter where similar to how you've expressed oh, there's something about the way you frame things. It feels really helpful for me, and I found that with a lot of different people that I followed online and in the business world, like Tara McMullen is someone who I think is always a few steps ahead and notices patterns and has a way of describing them in a way that I'm like.
[00:16:47] Ooh, that framing that word. That's really interesting. That makes a lot of sense to me or my coach, Tanya Geisler you know, that we have different conditions to thrive. So how do you find your ideal conditions to thrive? Like a plant, right? Every plant has different amounts of sunlight and water and whatever, and humans are the same way.
[00:17:05] So sometimes someone just says a little comment that you're like, Oh, it. It clicks in your brain and suddenly it makes sense. So I can't say that it's necessarily one framework or anything like that. But I think I've just followed a lot of interesting people from different worlds, not just online business.
[00:17:20] Maybe it's a permaculture world as well. And just maybe I'm absorbing like a sponge where I'm like, Ooh, I don't even know where I got that from. But someone said something that kind of sparked an idea that. Took from this GTD over here and a little bit of atomic habit, whatever. And it just starts to crystallize your thinking.
[00:17:37] So I don't know that I can necessarily name specific frameworks per se, but I just think I've probably taken in a lot of information over the years. I've talked a lot about like my online course habit or this I think originally stemmed from a deep sense of insecurity and feeling like I'm not very smart.
[00:17:53] And so when I went to university in first year university, I felt like the dumb kid. I'm like, how did these people are engaging in conversations about art theory and culture. I'm like, I have no idea about any of this. And I feel like I came from a different world. So I think I. I was always consuming books and courses and whatever because I felt this like I have to catch up.
[00:18:12] I have to catch up to my peers. I feel really stupid. And I think that kind of endured for a long time. There was this I'm not smart enough. I don't understand things. Other people understand things that I don't understand, which is not true. I know it's not true but I think it's probably a result of seeing the world a little differently and then not feeling like you fit in with maybe the average of the people around you.
[00:18:33] So, Yeah. I feel like I, I sponged everything in and then I'm just trying to figure out what is the framework through which I see the world,
[00:18:41] Monica: I think one thing also that I've noticed about you or I have you as okay, if I need to, ask for a good reference, Marie knows, like , you seem to have a high taste for what's really elegant. I don't know, sophisticated. And I think 1 of the reasons why I just have you as 1 of my heroes is that, oh, you know, like, what do you think? Or what do you hold like with high standards, I feel like it really matches like what I would consider high standards, right?
[00:19:10] Like you have, if you are asking for movie recommendations, who to ask, who not to ask. So I was wondering like how going back to college, you said some people were really smart and I feel the same way where I knew who the smart kids were. And , they were not the typical smart, like grade A students, but they were like people who were like intriguing or were pulling me to them. So I wonder with all the people that you follow, is it just like a very, like an intuition or trusting your gut? Oh, this person has like interesting things to say, or like, you know, how did you find Tara or how did you find your coach, Tanya.
[00:19:50] How do you choose who to bring to your world?
[00:19:53] Marie: That's such an interesting question. I think for me, Tara was one of the very first entrepreneurs, business owners whose content I stumbled upon when I was. Or like early on in my career, I think it was the 1st or 2nd year that I was working at a design studio, but I think I craved the freelancing entrepreneurship thing.
[00:20:13] So I'm working full time, but I'm, looking at blogs and discovering people's content. And so Tara was like a really early blogger really early on. So she was 1 of the 1st people whose content I was discovering and finding. And she worked with a lot of, women business owners.
[00:20:27] And so her content I could relate to it. I could relate to other people that were just looking to make a living, doing things that they're good at and that they love. And so that was a rabbit hole that I went down. And I think a lot of the people who I followed have also stemmed from.
[00:20:41] that circle of people. And similarly, I think Tanya Geisler was Tara's coach. I was like, Oh, wow. If I respect Tara and she hired Tanya as her coach that she trusts, I bet I could trust Tanya too. So there's, I think, when you start to associate with certain circles and you start to hear who has helped who, and there's like trust that kind of happens through, through those circles.
[00:21:01] If I trust that person and that person trusts that person, you get that extension of trust. And so. I've been on the internet for such a long time through all the evolutions of even different technologies and online communities. And for a long time, it was all Facebook groups.
[00:21:15] That was how I built my business was Facebook groups. Most people don't know that they've either learned about me through YouTube or, notion. That was an inflection point in my career, but early on was Facebook groups and Twitter. It was a random Twitter post that got me discovered by Marie Forleo's team, and then they hired me to do her conference website and then that opened up all these doors.
[00:21:37] So suddenly people that were in her sphere were hiring me. So sometimes it just takes a couple little inflection points of people that are also really well connected that begin to feed your network. And so it's been a long process but just being open to. What are these people's ideas?
[00:21:54] What are they supporting? What are they putting out into the world? , what is the consciousness that they are putting out into the world through their products? And sometimes you get burned, you buy a product and you sign up for someone and you think, Oh, you know what? I think those ideas are problematic or predatory.
[00:22:09] I don't like that. And so it's not to say I haven't been burned over the years, but. I do think a lot of it is instinct, like you said, where, people express things in a certain way that resonates with your soul in a way where I'm like, I like that. They're onto something. I want to be in their world.
[00:22:24] Monica: do see all this connections with Prima culture and. you're so connected to how your body, like your mind maybe it is like permaculture thing where like you've done so much observing and seeing what does what, how like little things.
[00:22:39] So it seems to me that you're very sensible and sensitive to what's going on. Which is like probably how it helps you like, Oh, I want to connect in the circle. I'm curious, like what are. Some of those circles today that you feel like, I saw that you were at a mastermind with Tiago Forte and like a few other what I would say, like all star creators.
[00:23:02] And what are some of these circles that you feel like, Oh, I want to absorb from this team or this group?
[00:23:09] Marie: so I'll admit that I think it gets harder and harder. The more advanced you get, or the more sort of sophisticated your business becomes because I think a lot of advice and a lot of products are geared at the lower end of the market with people who are more beginner.
[00:23:25] And then, as you mature as your business matures, and as you mature as a business owner. The tactics, like they don't work the same way, or you just need a different level of sophistication, or you need someone who understands more nuance. And so it gets harder and harder to find people that are speaking at that level.
[00:23:43] And so I think in the early years of my business, I was following so many different people and absorbing all the information. And it gets harder and harder now to find the right mastermind or who is the next coach I need to invest in? What's my next edge to grow? That gets. Harder and harder, and there's, it's fewer and far between to find those people and to find those beacons.
[00:24:03] So there are still a few people that I'm sort of like, oh, wow, I really love, how they're thinking and what's happening here. I've really enjoyed Mariah causes work. She did a lot of High ticket hybrid and how do you sell high end services and high end masterminds without doing sales calls or without doing social media marketing?
[00:24:20] What does it look like to run a business without depending on social media? I think that's a really interesting question there. I also know she's a neurodivergent creator as well and doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do. She has a no panic policy. There were things that she did in her business that.
[00:24:36] Doing a 4 day work week and then sharing how they implemented it, what it looks like. So these concepts that kind of pushed against what is common knowledge. And it was like permission to do business differently was really interesting to me. So anyone like that is not just promoting the same old.
[00:24:54] Business tactics, but people being like, Hey, I'm seeing a problem in the business world. And here's how I'm looking at that. Differently is very appealing to me. Tiago Forte, I took his building a 2nd brain many years ago, and it was in an earlier iteration. And so I followed his work over the years, but I have to say meeting him in person.
[00:25:12] He was so much more delightful and interesting than me. His online profile, gives the impression of, and it was the same with a lot of other folks at that mastermind. These are all star creators. We often see these sort of pithy tweets, but the humans that you meet in person, , it proved to me that there's just no replacement for.
[00:25:33] In person events and activities only getting to see someone's funnels and their tweets and whatever you're just scratching the surface of the human. So I was just blown away by how interesting and heart centered. It was, mostly men too. It was a group of mostly men. It was, just myself and a couple, couple other women.
[00:25:53] And so it can be really intimidating to be one of a few women and what tends to be a very male dominated. Industry or circle or whatever, but I was so pleasantly surprised by how introspective people were, how heart centered they were, how vulnerable they were, being willing to talk about their fears and things like that.
[00:26:10] So, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the group of people that Tiago attracted and same with Sean Blanc. That was the 2nd mastermind that I did. Really interesting people. I just think it's so important for us to get out of that Twitter bubble and the Facebook bubbles and to actually spend time with people in person again.
[00:26:30] Monica: I was reading the mastermind. I read it before and I read it again today. I actually like. Somewhat like it's so randomly I became part of this group of entrepreneurs and it's like a new world to me. Like it's not a, it's not a space with creators. Cause I'm really used to course creators, like content creators, writers, like rite of passage YouTubers.
[00:26:55] And then suddenly I, just as an experiment, I went into this group of entrepreneurs and. I see so many patterns and so many ways to connect them and I see so many things and they were having a mastermind with about maybe like 70 people. I just really like randomly went to host, I want to make this a successful mastermind for you.
[00:27:17] Can I help you? Wow. And this, and it was like almost okay, he's not going to say yes, but then he was like, Oh, it sounds like a great idea. Let's do it. I just threw myself into this mastermind of people that are doing things that I probably don't like really understand out of like, firsthand experience, but I almost know what they need.
[00:27:39] Or like how I can get to them so they can , look for what they need in an easier way. Yeah. . I've done events, but the mastermind like proper is my first time. I read your article and you were saying, Oh my God, this is amazing.
[00:27:52] And I saw you. You guys were outside with one of those big boards and I'm like, wow, this is such a cool idea. We cannot do that. Of course, we'll probably be in a hotel. But I love the idea of the hot seats and you also said, get them to mingle and get to know each other before you have activities and, with all your experience with this, like masterminds or groups what are some ways to get a bunch of strangers to not feel awkward? . So any whatever your mind wanders interesting activities that you've been part of the, Oh, this really helped us connect.
[00:28:32] Marie:
[00:28:32] It so it's tough because I think the size of the group obviously impacts the experience. And I think there's a difference between networking per se and masterminding. And I think masterminding can be really challenging to do in a larger group. So I don't know if your group of like 70 was, was all together and you're mingling.
[00:28:51] But it can be hard to share the nuances and vulnerabilities of your business with a really large group without any kind of sort of connection with those people. So in the cases of these masterminds, they were like a dozen. Ish people, right? So it's like small enough, big enough to be a little intimidating.
[00:29:08] You almost feel like you're in a board meeting where you're like, Oh, I have to, share with these people that maybe I haven't even had a personal conversation with yet. And that can be very intimidating. But I think the key in at least the 2 masterminds recently that I went to was. Doing social things first, even like going for dinner and having a chance for people to sit beside one another and just Oh what do you want to get out of this weekend?
[00:29:28] Or not even about business. Just what are you up to? How far did you come? What's it like? Just totally casual conversation without an agenda. I think is really great way to start off the experience. . I think in Sean Blanc's Mastermind, one of the things we did was you're having like appetizers, drinks, playing pool.
[00:29:45] The rooms are big enough that you can be moving around and sit on the couch for a bit, go play pool, go sit at the kitchen table. And there was a lot of room for movement and good food, which I think gets people talking. And then we had a dinner all together and everybody got to introduce themselves.
[00:30:00] Why they're here, how did they get here? How did they know Sean or the connections? And even just that. experience during dinner of meeting everyone and having them put into their own words, how they got there and maybe what's a business challenge that they're hoping to work through gave so much context.
[00:30:16] And some of those intros were actually quite emotional. Some people were like, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it today because my wife is sick and I was afraid to leave her. And so there was so much emotion there. I didn't know most of the people in that group. And I felt very connected to them after those introductions.
[00:30:31] And I thought, wow. What an incredible group of people. I'm actually really excited and honoured to be here. How can I honour these people with my presence here, are there things I can offer? Can I ask them questions that will help them, improve what they're doing? So coming in with an open mind, food, connection, a prompt for people to introduce themselves and to even maybe express an intention of what they want to get out of being there.
[00:30:55] Monica: Yeah. That's such a I think great idea to do social things without an agenda, like at the very beginning or before even a reception, maybe like the night before or something where people can grab drinks. That is, and I think Ali Abdaal also shared about like everybody from that mastermind was talking about it on their like respective newsletters.
[00:31:16] And Ali was saying that,, I brought up what's next for me. I'm fairly successful and I don't know what's next. And then
[00:31:27] He heard. Do you have to have a next, like all of this, interesting things. And I think Tiago did don't give advice, just questions and personal stories. Yeah. I wanted to hear more about that. Like in what ways was that, , different or
[00:31:45] Marie: powerful. I think it was like completely What it does is it takes your own personal agenda out of it. So I think when you ask questions about what somebody wants when someone's in the hot seat Ali asking what's next for me and you just have someone say. Why do you need to have a next thing? It's like a intense journaling process that it's happening in real time in public.
[00:32:12] And I think there's something powerful about that, that it almost leaves no time for long drawn out plans. You're actually just forced to tap into your heart, your gut, what you want. In a really honest way. So I think it just really helps unpack the preconceived notions. What I should be doing. All the shoulds start to peel away.
[00:32:32] And I think it just gets to the heart of what really matters. And I think what was really interesting too, is to realize we're all motivated very differently. So someone could give me advice about Oh, you should set up your funnels and do X and how come you don't have a webinar, but I'm like, do I effing care?
[00:32:50] Is money my most important like, there are so many ways that I leave money on the table. But it's in service of, is my life more calm? Am I aligned with what I'm doing? Does it feel like there's lots of reasons that I don't do the things that I'm supposed to do. So if someone were to just give me advice of Oh, you need to set up a dot, and it was very tactical.
[00:33:12] I'd be like, yeah, fine. That might work, but we're not uncovering the reason why I haven't done that yet. So by stripping away your own agenda and just asking that person questions. You start to get at what matters to that person, regardless of whether it's different than what you want. So I think it just really revealed that we have different needs, we have different desires.
[00:33:33] This person wants to be the next James Clear. This person just wants to have a chill life and run a farm and give up business and go do something completely different. If you don't... Have that context, then like advice is just meaningless. So I just think it was just so powerful to so
[00:33:50] Monica: powerful.
[00:33:51] Just imagining this oh, wow. This is like also what we do with parenting. I had this parenting group and like our one rule was not to give advice because we all have. different parenting standards and different kids and different situations. So that was the one rule, don't give advice.
[00:34:11] And it's amazing how that can apply to, like other like professional colleagues.
[00:34:18] Marie: Even like your partner, your relationship with your partner, just be like. Hey, is there anything I can do for you right now? Like asking questions instead of directing, like you, you will get such a different reaction from people when you ask questions.
[00:34:31] Monica: that's a great way that I'm going. I'm like, you know, making a mental note of what kind of good questions would be right. Are there any like, I don't know, all of your head resources for good prompt questions that help people open up about, , their work, their business.
[00:34:48] That may be that you go through,
[00:34:50] Marie: There's a, so there's a few, I think Lauren Bacon has a resource.
[00:34:55] Curiosity and action or something like that. I'm probably butchering it. Lauren Bacon curiosity. If you look that up, I think she has an ebook or something like that. Sorry, Lauren, if I'm messing up the title, that was really cool. I know Susanna Conway has that beautiful unravel your year resource that she does every single year.
[00:35:15] And again, that's just asking questions that kind of get to what your soul wants. I think it's really easy, especially in the creator world, to think other people's goals should be your goals. And then that's when we get mixed up and frustrated and that, things aren't working. Cause there's an energy, there's like a energetic mismatch in like why I'm doing this thing.
[00:35:36] , it's like, why am I don't even know why I'm doing this at the end of the day. I think asking those questions and trying to be really honest about them can be one way for us to not just get caught up in the shoulds. It's should I, or is that just a great approach for that person?
[00:35:48] But isn't necessarily the approach for me.
[00:35:50] Monica: I'm going to definitely look that up. And you also mentioned coaches and I've been oh, coaches are too expensive. I cannot do that. And and I feel like I have hit a point where I'm like, I think I need a little bit of help to go to the next stage.
[00:36:06] And I have become a huge fan of, Megan, Meg, I think it's like Meg mince. And then now it's like Meg King. And I think she's like coming back from after having her kids and she has rebranded herself. And it was really cool to see how. This person who had a niche, kids, and then rebranding to fit her like current schedule.
[00:36:28] And I made this huge investment. I'm like, Oh, there's a lot of money to be with her for one hour. It's like an hour intensive. And I feel in a way when you hire a coach. You want to get advice. I like, me questions. Tell me what to do. So given that I have this one hour and, ADHD, like I have so many things on my plate right now, so many directions, so many things going on. If you had an hour intensive with a coach who's you're paying her so they can listen to you. It's a dedicated time from your experience with multiple coaches. What is like the one thing that I should maybe aim for or ask more about or how can I like, I don't, it's my first time that I have.
[00:37:17] So you haven't had the session with a coach yet tomorrow. Oh, exciting. I don't know what to do. You know what? I mean, I don't know what to expect and how to make the most of it. If there is such a
[00:37:29] Marie: thing I've had a session with Megan too. That was like phenomenal. So I've had some coaching with her and I've been in her like communities and circles before.
[00:37:38] She's a great coach. And so I will say a really good coach will be able to direct the conversation and they'll be able to help you find what it is that you need. So it helps to come with an intention. Like you said, I'm feeling really scattered. I have a lot of different interests and I feel like I'm not moving forward in one of them or something like that.
[00:37:55] Even just having a loose intention like that, they'll be able to ask the right questions to help direct the conversation to get you where you need to go. So don't feel like you need to It's like you have the answers, but she's going to help uncover. What answers you want.
[00:38:08] Trust the process because you it's you know what you want and you know yourself well enough to to answer whatever questions are going to come up. One of the things I hired Megan to help me do was to develop a morning routine. You could say that's a pretty expensive thing to do to have someone help you do that.
[00:38:23] But just I needed an outside party that could ask me the question would this feel good? what would happen if you worked out in the morning instead of the evening? How does that feel in your body when I say that? And you're like, Ooh, like you just start to notice where you.
[00:38:37] Contract or resist and where, what feels like possibility. So a good coach will be able to read the situation and to help ask the right questions to guide you where you want to go.
[00:38:47] Monica: I think if I needed to hear that don't worry, don't overthink it, be It's almost like I'm making this huge investment.
[00:38:55] I'm like, I'm going to regret this and I'm going to get disappointed. But then I've been like . I need to be happy. And then as a result of trying to be, you're not, and I was afraid of of this being such case, but I think you telling me, okay, trust the process.
[00:39:11] She'll know what to do. I've, worked with her. She's great. That gives you so much more like peace. It's okay. That's I'm already feeling like less contracting and
[00:39:22] Marie: I thought that was interesting when you said, Oh, I need to be happy. I need to be happy.
[00:39:25] Like a question there is do you need to be happy? Is that actually a thing that we should be striving for? And it reminds me of, I don't know if you've seen the documentary Stutz. . It's about Jonah Hill's therapist. It's really interesting because he showcases his therapeutic tools and how he helps people overcome their anxiety and whatnot.
[00:39:43] And I think one thing that was clear and obvious from it that we forget about is the fact that The one constant in life is stress, pain. That's actually part of life. And when we fight so hard against it should be easy. It should be easy. No is that actually true that things should be easy and I should.
[00:40:04] Have a perfect nine to five day and my funnels are working like life wouldn't be interesting and it just wouldn't be real to do that. And so I feel like in the last couple years, I've actually started to appreciate strife, conflict, uncertainty. Discomfort to me, all of it is just interesting learning.
[00:40:25] You learn so much more about yourself through tension and discomfort. So that's where the data is feeding back to you. This is really interesting. So I don't treat it anymore as a bad thing to avoid and anger is not a thing to avoid. I'm like, Ooh, that's interesting information.
[00:40:40] What's happening there. So I just wanted to throw that out there that like, it's taken a long time. Yeah.
[00:40:49] Monica: I love how you're like injecting humor. Oh, wow. I got upset. What happened? I feel like you have
[00:40:55] Marie: to, it's
[00:40:57] Monica: Instead you're like turning the table oh, wow, interesting. Why am I getting upset at this? And in a more. Like curious way and it's what are the patterns, like the same thing? So different, what are the
[00:41:06] Marie: patterns that keep showing up in my life and what are they trying to tell me?
[00:41:10] Okay. And obviously it helps when you have like that, my partner is the same way where we're always willing to unpack it and be curious about it and be like, Oh that was interesting. That I like. went to that weird place where I felt really insecure or defensive. Sorry about that. Like we just in conversation, talk about it and unpack it. And he's when you said that thing, I felt really defensive, but then I like reframed it. And we love talking about that and understanding our own experience of our relationship of the world, of our ego and identity.
[00:41:40] Like we find it really interesting. So I think. Things get easier when you're not trying to fight so hard against Oh, that means I'm like a mean person or an angry person. I used to fear anger. Like I, it used to be an emotion where I was like, Oh, I don't feel angry. Like it's so rare that I get angry, but that's a problem.
[00:41:59] That means something is actually not like a need is not being met if you cannot express anger. So it's been a long process over the last couple of years through therapy, coaching. To experience the full range of emotions as a human, it's so important. So I'm not afraid of that anymore.
[00:42:18] Monica: Wow, that's so powerful.
[00:42:21] And I, I don't know if people tell you this Marie, but a lot of people know you as the kind of like lighthouse or like the authority with notion, but I think there's like this whole other. Thing about you that if, people know through your videos but there's definitely, I think, value and maybe it's something related to what you're doing now, but the capacity, workflow at workshop that you did or what you're saying right now, I think a lot of more people need to hear this and,, another thing that I love about you is that you're constantly learning. I'm like, Oh my God, like all of these courses are taking this books. When does she have time? And I wanted to like, okay, I need to talk to Marie because. I've been so obsessed about ultra speaking it's Oh my God, this course is like nuts.
[00:43:11] And then when you reacted in a similar fashion, I was like, I need to talk to Marie. Like, we need to talk about this course, and unpack this. You've taken so many courses, right? You probably are taking courses now. What was so special about Ultraspeaking?
[00:43:27] ? Cause I think you were a very good presenter to begin with.
[00:43:31] Marie: So speaking is something that has always been a struggle and a challenge for me. I don't even know how, like, how much emotion wise. Yes. Emotion wise. So when I was very young, like grade two, grade three, grade four, I used to win public speaking awards every year.
[00:43:47] You'd like, at school, you'd memorize a book and then you deliver it in front of the auditorium. And I was doing this every year, get winning awards over it. And then, I think I hit like grade 6 or 7, you start to hit that awkward puberty age, and I remember my mom making a comment about my appearance.
[00:44:05] That like deeply wounded me and I remember thinking, I don't want to be seen I don't want to be in front of people and I began to fear all of the eyes looking at me. And this translated into so many other areas of my life. I couldn't go to the bathroom on a plane because that feeling of walking down an aisle and all the eyes on me.
[00:44:26] I hated that feeling of people looking at me. And so it began to become like a real problem. I hated hopping on zoom calls. I always wanted to do everything by email. And I was seeing the ways that this was going to hold me back in my life.
[00:44:40] And hold me back in business. I remember in university, having to give presentations and my whole body was shaking. I just hated every aspect of it while also recognizing if you want to be taken seriously, presenting your ideas is a skill that you need to have. So I had this tension of not wanting to do it, but also knowing it was going to hold me back and not liking that feeling.
[00:45:00] So it's something I've always invested in because I just felt like there's this piece of my life that feels like a real struggle and there's a skill I want to get better at that probably deep down I'm skilled at naturally, but I've allowed to believe that it's not a natural thing.
[00:45:17] And I think even discovering that I have ADHD and learning that some of the early videos that I made that were like really fast. And I had some people that were like, she's all over the place. She's really, I was like, it was like wanting to find what is my style of communication and how do I express it in a way that feels really good and natural.
[00:45:37] Doesn't feel like you're putting on a face. And so I think this ultra speaking course cause again, I've taken. Multiple different courses and higher different course for speaking. Specifically. Oh, I've done speaker boot camps. I've hired a speaker coach, a speech coach. I spent a lot of money trying to hone this skill in different ways and in different aspects.
[00:45:57] Acting classes, like all sorts of different ways that I'm like, I need to figure this out because nothing is quite getting me there.
[00:46:03] We all speak every single day. We speak to our partners. We speak to friends every single day. What is it that made you believe you can't speak? And so it was like how do we get you to be more of yourself? And the timing of it again, my ADHD diagnosis is only in the last couple of years. So then to have this it felt like a sort of full circle of.
[00:46:24] Maybe you have a unique way of seeing the world and moving through the world and communicating, but it's interesting to people. It won't be interesting to everyone and that's okay. But can you hone it? Can you appreciate it? Can you just be more you? So it was like, it's cheesy in a way, but it was just such a beautiful acknowledgement that who you are, how you are.
[00:46:44] It's great. It's fine. You're good at this and we're just going to make you even better at it through practice.
[00:46:49] Monica: Yeah, I think you hit the perfect word is like beautiful to me was just a very beautiful, like human way. And it's almost like you said, you're like stripping away all the things that are covering who you are.
[00:47:01] And then the, every week everybody comes and they're like, just a little bit more naked, a little bit more themselves. And it was like, so cool. And for me, there was this one of those like pot sessions where somebody totally blanked and it was so uncomfortable to see because they're turning red.
[00:47:19] Yeah. You can feel the discomfort. Yeah. You can feel their discomfort. Like they look uncomfortable and I almost wanted to, okay, I'll go next. Like I, I wanted to kind of like save them. And I thought there was so much wisdom in the coach where, he took a pause and it was so objectively, I think you got caught up thinking X, Y, Z.
[00:47:44] You blanked out. I want you to do it again. And I was like, Oh my God. Like it was just like those moments where you feel like, Oh my God, he's going to collapse. And he's going to leave the room. And it was in that one minute difference, right? This guy takes a deep breath and does it again beautifully.
[00:48:04] And I think like he probably learned his lesson forever. And then, like, all of us also you can be a different person in a minute., you're the same person, but that mindset shift and that happened my 1st session and I was like.
[00:48:22] Oh, wow. This is like really cool I've been really trying to, how can I make people feel this way with Notion with like my English coaching and sometimes with English coaching, . I can make them feel that way, but you're speaking has, you said I'm a different person, but have you been able to adapt or use some of those techniques that you learned through like in a pedagogical way, like how to teach better after the course or like things to adapt
[00:48:50] Marie: from the course?
[00:48:51] I think some of the practical things that I took away immediately that I thought were so interesting. One of the exercises That I thought was so interesting that really stuck with me was delivering the same story, three different times with three different timescales and the idea of jumping into the action that you don't actually need to set the stage jump to the action point.
[00:49:14] So there was something around, even like the structure of stories and not, you don't have to give all the context in order to get people to follow you It made me realize one, like how one, how powerful storytelling is just as a skill and that when you're teaching something that's a little more technical, like notion and giving tutorials and doing workshops, I realized my workshops previously were very technical.
[00:49:38] Here's how to do X in notion. Let's set up a task manager, blah, blah. There were no stories in there. Like, why am I approaching it the way that I'm approaching it? So it actually gave me permission to bring a little bit more of my perspective and story into the workshop. So at the capacity workshop, I was trying to share a little, like here I am in cooking school realizing, if I do this faster or I try to do it faster, it's actually going to be more disastrous.
[00:50:04] So pulling in just a little bit more of myself as the person. Into what I previously thought was like just a very technical workshop. It was kind of permission to do a little bit more storytelling.
[00:50:15] Monica: That's so powerful because I, , I've attended other workshops, but the capacity workshop felt very different.
[00:50:23] It was like, Oh, wow. This was like, this is like a masterclass, like in an hour.
[00:50:28] Marie: I feel like that was actually, I think it works for people. That was the first workshop. I think. That I did right after UltraSpeaking. So it was this like test, I'm like, okay, can I do this work? Let me backtrack a little bit.
[00:50:41] Most workshops that I would deliver in the past were really fricking stressful, always stressful. The lead up, the evenings before didn't matter if I'd done the workshop before. It was always this really stressful process of sweating buckets. I'm like not sleeping well. This was the first time doing a workshop after UltraSpeaking.
[00:51:00] And I was like, am I actually excited about this workshop? I would like, I was. Looking forward to it. I was excited to deliver it. I weaved more of myself into it. It wasn't so notion heavy. So it was a chance to like, talk about things more conceptually. So I did feel like it was more my natural style without the worry of what is this need to be?
[00:51:22] What is a proper workshop? Like I, I stripped all of that away and was like, what would it look like if I just showed up as I am. Delivered what I thought it needed to be and know that there's room for improvement. Like I know one of my habits, like cramming so much into an hour or an hour and a half and people being like, ah, slow down.
[00:51:39] There's so much wisdom. I don't know how to, so how do I pace things better? And that's okay. I'm going to practice with that. I'm going to use the ultra speaking exercises to, okay, should this be an hour and a half workshop? Should I cut out half of it and experiment with that? But I think. Like the example with the guy that blanked, he got to go again, you blanked, you maybe messed up that part, but the audience was still rooting for you, and you didn't die, you got to do it again, it's fine.
[00:52:06] So it's you get to experience discomfort and know that. You're fine. Like it's okay if you miss the thing or you zip through a slide too fast or whatever, you're going to do it again another time and it's going to be better and that's okay.
[00:52:18] They're still getting something from it and they still are rooting for you and it's going to be okay.
[00:52:24] Monica: and that day, I think it was like, right before the workshop, Mochi had a seizure and I'm like, Oh my God, Marie, you could have canceled this. We would have totally been fine. And after, I remember like after the workshop, I was like, wow, this is such a pop. This must have been a powerful experience for Marie. Cause like it's such a strong evidence. Oh wow. I did that. And that was ultra speaking just a lot of evidence gathered. Yeah.
[00:52:50] So yeah, I think ultra speaking is great. I've loved to see just like how notion mastery evolved your team and how your team operates Georgia, like the zoom calls are so smooth and.
[00:53:04] And I'm sure like there, there's a lot of things happen behind the scenes. Ali Abdaal recently was mentioning how he like had this like super fast growth and then he shrunk, his team and he talked about hiring and building a big team. And I know Notion Mastery, had more people and then there, there seemed like more helpers and, so I was curious about how is it like to work in teams? And the reason why I'm asking is I've started delegating more and I've started like hiring more help, but not full time help, but just like part time helpers and showing them how to do things, like delegating things and to try to get more things done.
[00:53:48] So I wanted to hear your experience delegating and I know you struggle with that, but. You have an amazing Georgia so a little bit about teamwork, like delegation, project management. I'm sure I know it feels good to share.
[00:54:02] Marie: Yeah, I'm sure my, my circumstances are fairly unique, but I can just speak to what I've experienced, but Georgia's worked with me for four or five years now.
[00:54:11] And it was her and I working together, like before even Ben came back to the team. So it's basically husband and wife duo plus Georgia. So it's it's a unique circumstance because Ben and I know each other's skills so well, and we were like talking at lunch and at breakfast or whatever.
[00:54:26] So we're always in communication and one of the challenges that we. Have to do is to make sure that Georgia feels included because it can be really easy to almost like we're reading each other's minds over here. But if we're not including Georgia in the decision making or the weekly updates and that sort of thing, so we have to be mindful of that, that there's like kind of a weird power dynamic there.
[00:54:46] It's 2 owners, they're married and Georgia. That is a unique circumstance there. Georgia and Ben are similar in some ways. And like , they do what they say they're going to do. They make plans and they follow through on them and they don't always get swiped by something interesting that comes by.
[00:55:01] And so it's taken some time for us to find our groove and our dynamic and what are the team processes that we want to put in place to make sure that I still have. Some accountability, Georgia knows what's happening that sometimes Ben and Georgia have to know how to motivate me if there's something that's really important that needs to get done.
[00:55:19] So in some ways I will admit I can carry some guilt around feeling like I'm the delinquent team member that doesn't always do what I'm supposed to be doing. I know that if I produce a YouTube video every week our business does better, but I don't always have the capacity and the energy to do that.
[00:55:36] And so how do we make sure that we're still following through on important business activities while still tapping into the creative. Energies that feed me and that allow me to actually show up in this way that I need to show up. So it's not perfect by any means, but I think we really value communication and our processes help us do that.
[00:55:57] So we have a tensions database, right? You can add tensions at any point, and it's a way to asynchronously say hey, I'm noticing a thing or, hey, I just want to give you a heads up on this thing, or. I need more information to be able to follow through on this thing. At any point, anyone can add an item to the tension database, and we resolve those together as a team in our weekly meetings.
[00:56:17] So we're encouraged tensions are just part of the process. The idea that things would just be smooth and perfect all the time is really unrealistic. Every week we check it. How are you feeling this week? How do you feel the meeting went? So we do actually more meta discussions around do we feel good about how this meeting went?
[00:56:33] Or do we need to change things? Like there, there was one time I called out Ben and I said, Hey, I felt like you were interrupting Georgia a little bit there. Do you like Georgia? Were you okay with that or whatever? It's We don't shy away from the tricky conversations, and I think it's really important to bring that up.
[00:56:49] Are you feeling secure? Are you feeling not productive this week? That's okay. , it's again, curiosity, not judgment. So I think the reason our team is gelling the way it is right now is that we. Really place a high value on that honesty communication, even if it's uncomfortable,
[00:57:05] Monica: The tensions I, I remember you're talking about the tensions database and I was wondering what was there before the tensions database?
[00:57:12] What was the, okay, this is not working. Let's create a tensions, database.
[00:57:16] Marie: I think it was influenced by. Is it the Traction EOS entrepreneurial operating system? They, I think they call it issues or tensions. And I think tensions was also something in holacracy. So when Ben worked at Precision Nutrition, they used a holacracy system of governance and roles and team organization.
[00:57:35] So we actually adopted some of the principles of what Ben liked about. The way things operated under Holacracy. And then we also integrated some of the entrepreneurial like EOS things. So before that it was just a Slack group or we would just experience tensions. And, hopefully we'd bring them up in a team meeting or whatever, but sometimes things would go too long before, like you could tell someone was resentful about something or like it would feel more heated, but this way, if we're talking about it in real time, without judgment.
[00:58:02] One example is, Georgia brought up the fact that she adds me as a reviewer on her content, but I never hear from Marie, I always hear from Ben, but not, okay there's an opportunity there because asynchronous reviews are really difficult for me. I'd much rather we review them in real time on a call.
[00:58:18] So it's like unfortunate in some ways, but also it's like, look. We know that in four years, this has always been an issue. So instead of making Marie feel guilty about it every time, is there a possible different solution? And so what I would say is, Georgia, I give you permission, grab my time.
[00:58:38] Here are all the slots on my calendar that I'm, I do admin work. Grab me during one of those times, and I bet you we can bang this out in five minutes. So it's things like that, where you just have to be honest as a team. How do we leverage people's skills?
[00:58:53] How do we help people with their weaknesses without making them feel bad about those weaknesses? That's why it's not very motivating to feel like I'm failing every week that I'm failing my team.
[00:59:02] Monica: And that's such a interesting thing. My question is, when you, like you've worked with a lot of different people, what are some things that are, that people often feel bad about?
[00:59:13] Or they feel like underappreciated or is there any pattern that you've noticed?
[00:59:18] Marie: I think that's going to be so different person by person. I think each of us is.
[00:59:21] I think we're so different in the way that we work and what we want and one person finds slack distracting, and the others like, no, this is the best way for me to do my work. So it's really challenging. I think when you have different personalities, different needs and we bring our Childhood traumas to work.
[00:59:37] We absolutely do in ways that we don't even know that need to be recognized and seen that need to feel connected to your team. We're bringing it all to the table, whether we realize
[00:59:48] Monica: it or not I always tell work is not family, but you guys are like brothers and sisters or something.
[00:59:53] Yeah, I feel like you guys are maybe not a family, but yeah, brothers and sisters, like bringing all your stuff, your traumas and maybe that's why it also works. It just seems like it's like you guys are thinking in the same wavelength and it's actually beautiful to see hard to replicate hard to.
[01:00:10] Marie: Every team has such a different dynamic based on your unique mix of strengths, weaknesses, interests, motivations. And it's really important to I have a book that someone sent me called the languages of appreciation in the workplace. And it's basically like love languages applied to the workplace and realizing what, how Ben feels recognized in his work is going to be different than how.
[01:00:33] I feel recognized in different than Georgia. So what are some ways that we can make our team different members, have their needs met, and that everyone feels safe to communicate if something feels challenging, if something feels difficult. So we don't, we try not to shy away from those conversations and something that's really important to us that we added in the last maybe year or so.
[01:00:56] The idea of a deliberately developmental organization, which means your work and your workplace is actually a place where not only are you encouraged, but you are expected to work on your edges and that our interactions at work. Are part of a process of helping you work through your edges. So if Georgia has trouble accepting criticism or feels really sensitive about something, and that's an edge for her to grow, like as a team, we're aware of it, we actively work on it.
[01:01:28] We support her on that. We ask her what she needs to do that. All of us have those edges. So by encouraging that at a culture level, at the team level that we say. We're not shying away from this awkward shit. This is part of how we want to operate. I want you to be a better human because we worked together.
[01:01:47] Whatever that looks like.
[01:01:49] Monica: Wow. I almost feel Marie, like your team. It's very tight and there is there's so much real stuff that must be hard to scale. Imagine you have a team of 20 people you can know, we're going to work on everybody's edges, like all of their traumas.
[01:02:06] And it also tells me that teams don't have to be big. Like Ali was saying, the beginning just hire one generalist and one editor. That's it. And that's like a Georgia, right? Like the. You need like a generalist who can do the jack of all trades, can do a bit of design, can be a bit of this.
[01:02:24] And I'm trying to look for more of those people. And I've been thinking about creating what are some good test projects? What would be a good a test project? And what I'm doing right now is I'm designing this test project that I've been obsessed with podcasts. So maybe they can take one podcast episode.
[01:02:46] And create a, I don't know, a little graphic for the for social, like the show notes. That's one example, but again you've seen a lot of different talent staff. What do you think are concrete test projects that tell you a lot about their skill potential and. Yeah. I
[01:03:06] Marie: think this is a fun. It's funny that you're asking me this because I feel like this is absolutely my point of weakness.
[01:03:12] I always hire people that are in my inner circle. They seem cool. Look what they're doing. Awesome. We're best, but just hire. Without any test project, without any formal interview, it's just like a gut feeling. Let's just roll with it. So I actually don't feel like hiring well is necessarily a strength of mine.
[01:03:31] And I feel with Georgia, I got lucky she lived on the coast where I live in this tiny little town and it was like another business friend that recommended her. Like it, it worked out so well. I feel very lucky. Thank you. You're welcome. And it started as a contractor and you're like doing things together over time and you just keep growing it, but that's really my only, real successful experience hiring a full time employee.
[01:03:52] I've had trouble with contractors before tons of times where it's hard for me to delegate or articulate or express the expectations or correct someone if they're not meeting the mark. So this is definitely an edge for me to grow, but I can also ask myself, is that. Is that even something that I want to invest time in?
[01:04:11] Do we want to grow? Do we want to just be like a husband and wife team? Do we want a homestead? There's all these questions around what does it mean to scale? Is that really what we want? Do I want to manage more people? I don't think I'm great at managing people. We hired Georgia because Georgia man, tells me what's up.
[01:04:25] What I need to do. So I, yeah, I don't know that I can. I know
[01:04:30] Monica: Sure.
[01:04:30] That's awesome. Oh my God, Marie, this was like a fabulous kind of almost a dream come true. It was like, Oh, like four years ago, maybe when I, when we first talk, I remember sending you all this text messages Oh, but like you were like the first course I bought. Wow. And I was like, all your stuff is like on YouTube, but what is the difference?
[01:04:51] And you were so kind and I don't know, it just a good role model in this like internet world to have. So what's the difference about ADHD? The difference is that, yeah, like you get to know Marie. And it's it's just like having access to this whole, like new package of things.
[01:05:12] That's , I tried to look at the frameworks optimizing for what I do often. That's 1 thing that I'd like, I really stuck with me and that you get to see in your office hours in just conversations that happen.
[01:05:27] And the course just evolves and learning so much about the course. And how to build a course I think it's one of the most long standing courses, right? There's so many courses that are like shutting down that are going to self paced. And I think that the model of notion mastery were.
[01:05:48] There are people who signed up last week and they can come in, they can still ask questions and that I think it's very unique about the course. And as a wrap up, I don't know if as ADHDers, we get our, we have our hyper focus. What have you been, I don't know, obsessed about my, I've been really obsessed about podcasts and I love the space and learning through a very unique medium.
[01:06:16] I know you've been like into cooking and it's been amazing to see. What are some things that you've been like, , curious about or learning more?
[01:06:26] Marie: Definitely cooking has been a huge one. I did a culinary bootcamp and then now it's like meal prepping and flavor and like understanding how flavor works and going down these YouTube rabbit holes and following some like home chefs and things like that.
[01:06:40] So that's definitely been an area of curiosity. And and then the other one I'll share is Psychedelics as a tool for a therapeutic discovery.
[01:06:48] Monica: Is that something , that you have access to? Like people have access to? Or like you need a special permission or like
[01:06:55] Marie: special... No, and I'm sure part of it depends on where you live, like what the regulations are and whatnot, but mushrooms are pretty, pretty common where we live and lots of like people that just grow them on their property and share them. And so it's it's been an interesting avenue, like learning more about what's actually happening to your brain when you're consuming psychedelics and whatnot.
[01:07:16] So that's a bit of a tangent, but it's been a curiosity lately.
[01:07:21] Monica: Yeah. And I would love you to someday, hopefully you can write something like your blogs are not frequent, but every time something drops, it's like, Oh, like it's so powerful and good. I would love to hear about like what you're discovering in that space.
[01:07:36] I know. It's like primaculture. There's there's so much information to digest and patterns to be connected. So having somebody like you just share your experience. That'd be like really neat to see. I'll do that then. Any for people who are listening to you and we're going to have links to Notion Mastery, , how will be the best way to to find you, connect you to get to know you more.
[01:08:01] Marie: It's so funny. I'm still trying to figure out what are the best mediums for that with some of the changes that are happening on Twitter and whatnot. But, twitter at the moment is probably a place to engage with me directly at Marie Poulin on Twitter.
[01:08:12] I've also been experimenting with threads a little bit, even TikTok as a place to share more personal stories. So I like to experiment with the medium and see the medium kind of shapes the message a little bit, right? What works on TikTok doesn't work on Twitter. And so I like to have some room to experiment across these different platforms.
[01:08:30] So if you want notion heavy or productivity heavy stuff. YouTube is going to be the best place. Twitter tends to be a little bit more business focused. Instagram is more personal. So take that for what you
[01:08:41] Monica: will. Yeah, I'm going to have all those links for people to to just learn more about you.
[01:08:46] I think again, you don't need an introduction. I think people. No, you, but there's so much more than notion to me and we talked about, so we cover so many other areas yeah. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you. So nice.