A weekly dispatch on the three things every small business has to get right: Operations. Marketing. People. Real stories about the structural breakdowns that keep good businesses stuck — and what it looks like when you finally fix them.
What are you the lookup tool for?
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Hello Reader, My youngest daughter called me last week to ask where we were staying in San Diego. Before I could answer, she stopped herself. Oh wait, I know. It’s in the spreadsheet. I’ll go look it up. I caught myself smiling after we hung up. We’re getting her ready for graduation, which means the whole family is heading on a trip with more moving parts than any I’ve planned in a long time. Different flights for different people, a road trip down the coast with my aunt, San Diego, then Hawaii. Rental cars, hotels, VRBOs. Every year I start a Google sheet called Vacations [year]. Every detail of every trip goes into this one place. Flight numbers, confirmation codes, hotel addresses, the time the rental car shuttle picks up. It lives in Drive so the whole family can pull it up, even without wifi. I, too, used to be the human directory. Mom, where’s the hotel, can you forward me the confirmation, what time does the flight land. For years, every trip, I was the one carrying every detail in my head and the one everyone reached for when they needed any of it. It was its own kind of work. The spreadsheet stopped that pattern. Now they all look things up themselves. The information lives in one place we trust, and we all use it. It’s the same in business. When a team has one trusted place where information lives, they stop pinging the same person for every detail. That person, often you, stops being the bottleneck. So here’s what I’d ask: what are you the lookup tool for, in your business or your life? It probably wants a spreadsheet, a Notion page, a shared doc, anywhere as long as it’s one place and everyone knows it. Reply and tell me. I’d love to hear. If you want to keep reading, the full post is on my blog here. Shell, Yes! Here's to your success, _______________________________________________________________________ “It’s Just Like This in Our Business”A weekly dispatch on the three things every small business has to get right: Operations. Marketing. People. Real stories about the structural breakdowns that keep good businesses stuck and what it looks like when you finally fix them. |
“It’s Just Like This in Our Business”
A weekly dispatch on the three things every small business has to get right: Operations. Marketing. People. Real stories about the structural breakdowns that keep good businesses stuck — and what it looks like when you finally fix them.
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