Shownotes
A lot of y'all have come to Ashley and said, “I love Notion, what's the difference between Airtable and Notion? Can’t I just run my group program on Notion?”
Notion and Airtable are designed to do completely different things and you can’t retrofit the functions of Airtable into Notion.
So, in this episode, Ashley invited on Debbie Murphy, who loves Notion and also uses and loves Airtable, so you can hear first-hand experiences about the pros and cons of both software and when you should use Airtable and when you should use Notion.
02:55 — Why you are drawn to Notion
05:39— The biggest differences between Notion and Airtable for managing group programs
14:14 — 💻Screenshare: The limitations of Notion and embedding an Airtable Sales Hub into Notion Instead
21:05— 💻Screenshare: Features in Notion that work well for content and task management
26:18— 💻Screenshare: Walkthrough of an Airtable Sales Hub with automations and client tracking
👋 CONNECT WITH DEBBIE MURPHY (SHE/HER)
Debbie is a Systems, Funnels & Operations Strategist and OBM for BOLD female founders that want to scale playfully!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbiedoes.co
WAYS TO WORK WITH ASHLEY:
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https://systemsoverstress.co/template-shop-waitlist
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👋CONNECT WITH ASHLEY
Website: https://systemsoverstress.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemsoverstress/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJJ01c-NTjI8eZzp2wwO7GA
Transcripts
Notion is great for, like, designers or people that like simplicity and
Speaker:they just want, basic aesthetic things, but if you want actual like
Speaker:automations and capabilities and those intricacies, you need Airtable.
Speaker:That's the hill I'll die on, which is like I care about your data.
Speaker:I care about you growing your group program and I care about you
Speaker:automating the hell out of everything.
Speaker:So you can just focus on your students and their results and improving your program.
Speaker:Welcome to Systems Famous, the podcast where we're revolutionizing the coaching
Speaker:industry by putting client results first.
Speaker:I'm Ashley Pendergraft, a systems and automation expert with over five years
Speaker:of experience in the coaching industry.
Speaker:Let's get into the show.
Speaker:Welcome to this episode of Systems Famous.
Speaker:I have my client, my friend Debbie here and Debbie is a.
Speaker:Well, I'm just going to let her explain herself because I feel like
Speaker:you're an expert in so many things.
Speaker:I'll let you decide what you want to be an expert in today.
Speaker:But Debbie loves Notion.
Speaker:And if y'all know, I am, I am anti Notion for running group programs
Speaker:and managing group programs.
Speaker:And a lot of y'all come to me and you say, I love Notion.
Speaker:What's the difference between Airtable and Notion?
Speaker:And I decided, why don't I just bring someone onto the podcast who loves Notion
Speaker:but also uses and loves Airtable, too, so we can have a really great in depth
Speaker:conversation about the pros and cons of both software, and when you should use
Speaker:Airtable and when you should use Notion.
Speaker:Very excited for this to be our final, we can just direct people to this anytime
Speaker:that comes into our DMs because I know we both get asked this question all the time.
Speaker:So Debbie, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself
Speaker:and tell the people what you do?
Speaker:I am Debbie, I am the founder of Debbie Does, and I guess I started out as an OBM.
Speaker:But specializing in all things systems and funnels.
Speaker:I, like Ashley, I'm a tech nerd.
Speaker:I love learning different platforms.
Speaker:I did her systems over stress program, like the first
Speaker:variation of it, I feel like.
Speaker:And fell in love with Airtable.
Speaker:And I recently changed to Notion.
Speaker:And the reason behind that, and I feel like Ashley can relate to this, is I think
Speaker:I have Undiagnosed ADHD, the more I learn about it, the more people I connect with
Speaker:online, online, I'm like, this resonates so much with me and I had so many
Speaker:different systems that were doing, one thing doing this and one thing doing this.
Speaker:It was all over the place.
Speaker:So I was like, I need one system to try to run my business
Speaker:out of that as much as I can.
Speaker:So I went all in, made the decision to kind of do 99 percent of my business
Speaker:in Notion and just like Ashley, it's the number one question people ask.
Speaker:Do you not love Airtable anymore?
Speaker:Why did you move?
Speaker:What's the difference?
Speaker:So that's why we're here today.
Speaker:We thought this would be such a valuable episode to you guys.
Speaker:And I'm so, so excited to join, to jump in.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So tell me about kind of your journey.
Speaker:So what were you using Airtable for?
Speaker:And then when did you decide, and like, I'm going to, I'm going to try Notion.
Speaker:Like what was the, the reason to jump from Airtable into Notion?
Speaker:For me, I, because I'm a done for you service provider, I didn't have
Speaker:the group program aspect myself.
Speaker:I was creating Notion Hubs for my clients who were coaches to
Speaker:manage their group programs.
Speaker:For me,
Speaker:hubs, right?
Speaker:You said Notion hubs.
Speaker:sorry, Airtable Hubs.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yes, Airtable Hubs.
Speaker:But for me, I was using it then for.
Speaker:My sales hub for a content and marketing hub, a launch hub, even though I
Speaker:wasn't launching, I was trying to edit the launch hub for like one to
Speaker:one client delivery and management.
Speaker:I guess there's one big difference between Notion and Airtable in my opinion.
Speaker:Airtable is like.
Speaker:Spreadsheets on steroids.
Speaker:If you were a spreadsheet girl, I feel like air table.
Speaker:I keep saying, I keep mixing them up.
Speaker:Actually, air table is your jam.
Speaker:If you were a spreadsheet girly, if you were notebook early or a
Speaker:Google docs person, I feel like notion is the best option for you.
Speaker:And that's kind of what drew me to notion because I love notebooks.
Speaker:I love the simple checklist and I loved.
Speaker:The aesthetics of it, creating client facing portals that weren't
Speaker:ClickUp, because I don't like ClickUp portals for some reason.
Speaker:And interfaces weren't really a thing in AirTable at the time.
Speaker:So that's what drew me to Notion.
Speaker:But I do still use AirTable for some things like my sales hub.
Speaker:I think that that's such a great and very simple way to explain it
Speaker:because I think of it the same way.
Speaker:I'm like, if you love to bullet journal, you're going to love Notion and like,
Speaker:building it and making it pretty.
Speaker:And it's like, spreadsheets is to Airtable as Google Docs is to Notion.
Speaker:Nobody is managing their group program in a Google Doc.
Speaker:So why would you manage it in Notion?
Speaker:You might make pretty, you might make it, like, people
Speaker:make sales pages in Google Docs.
Speaker:You can make a sales page in Notion.
Speaker:Like, anything that you do with the Google Doc and make it really pretty
Speaker:and fun and aesthetic, like, you can do that in Notion, but nobody is managing
Speaker:their group program in a Google Doc.
Speaker:And I think that that is kind of a helpful, really helpful delineation, that
Speaker:like, Yes, you can make tables and many databases and notion, but that's not the
Speaker:tool like it's Google Docs to notion.
Speaker:Spreadsheets to air table is a really great way to just
Speaker:AirTable for sure.
Speaker:the differences.
Speaker:So tell me about you mentioned before this that you so you have a sales hub
Speaker:and if anybody doesn't know what a sales hub is, we have we had that in
Speaker:systems over stress when you make a sale.
Speaker:goes into Airtable and it can do automatic payment plan projections and it can
Speaker:update from projected to received.
Speaker:It's very robust so you can see like in like incredible detail.
Speaker:You can group by month, by year, by product and see how
Speaker:your business is performing.
Speaker:When you are doing your migration from Airtable to Notion, you mentioned that
Speaker:you tried to build that over in Notion.
Speaker:How did that go?
Speaker:Impossible.
Speaker:And I spent hours last weekend doing it.
Speaker:And the one thing I loved about systems overstress and the sales
Speaker:hub was that it's real time data.
Speaker:You can look at your sales hub at any time, and it's the exact figure that
Speaker:you have cash in projected payments.
Speaker:It's just correct.
Speaker:So you're not pulling data from all different pages.
Speaker:And I was trying to recreate it in notion and.
Speaker:It would pull in the sale, but the automations that we have
Speaker:in the back end of Airtable cannot be replicated in Notion.
Speaker:They have recently released their automations, but it's very basic.
Speaker:And I was saying to Ashley earlier, the simplest thing is that when you get a
Speaker:sale in, You want to search your client list to see if that person is already
Speaker:a client or a new person and then link it if they're existing clients.
Speaker:So you can see my client Ashley has bought XYZ.
Speaker:This is her lifetime value.
Speaker:You can't do that in Notion.
Speaker:The Notion automations are great for if you change status to ready for
Speaker:review tag Debbie, but it doesn't allow you to number one, search for a
Speaker:record in another database, which is.
Speaker:And also it doesn't allow you to update linked records or
Speaker:relation properties in Notion.
Speaker:So it's impossible to say this sale came in, okay, record it in my sale
Speaker:hub and now link it to that client.
Speaker:You can't do it in Notion's native automations.
Speaker:So then, of course, we go straight to Zapier and we try to do that.
Speaker:You can't do it in Zapier either.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Without...
Speaker:A webhook, JavaScript code, which nobody wants, even Ashley and myself
Speaker:as tech experts, like we don't want to be playing around with that when
Speaker:we're trying to automate our hubs.
Speaker:So you can't do it.
Speaker:It's impossible.
Speaker:So that's
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And
Speaker:side.
Speaker:that's so helpful to hear because I used to before when people would ask me about
Speaker:notion versus air table notion didn't have automations until pretty recently.
Speaker:And so I could just be like, they don't have any automation.
Speaker:So it's like, it's dead in the water for me.
Speaker:But now that they had automations, I was like well, like, but it's nice to
Speaker:hear, not nice, because I wish they, would, would be better, but to hear that
Speaker:they're just not as robust as Airtable.
Speaker:And that's really, especially as you are growing a group program, you want to
Speaker:rely on, you rely on those automations all of the time, not just with sales,
Speaker:but like, if a student submits their onboarding form and you want to link
Speaker:it to the student, can you do, like, like, select their name in a dropdown,
Speaker:like, linked records that way in Notion?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Okay, great.
Speaker:These are the reasons why.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Another, this was so helpful because I was like, I don't want
Speaker:to do my own research about this.
Speaker:I just want to ask Debbie what's like, I'm like, here's why Airtable
Speaker:is like the best and can Notion do it?
Speaker:Because if Notion.
Speaker:Could do these things and you love notion I would honestly tell you that
Speaker:you could do notion and we would make a air table or notion Like options
Speaker:for these we'd give you an air table template or a notion template which a
Speaker:lot of business a lot of group programs do which I think is really great if
Speaker:you have Let's say a content calendar.
Speaker:You can put the content calendar in air table or notion.
Speaker:There are certain Things, certain systems like that you build that
Speaker:could go in different tech, but group program management truly has to be
Speaker:done an air table for some of these very specific features, like being
Speaker:able to select your name from a drop down and that student is automatically
Speaker:linked to their primary client record.
Speaker:If you can't do that in Notion, it is going to really hinder
Speaker:the way you run a group program.
Speaker:Can you, I'm, I'm curious, tell me your thoughts there.
Speaker:And I have another, like, use case.
Speaker:I'm like, here's why I use Airtable.
Speaker:So tell me your thoughts about this.
Speaker:I'm curious about, so we, another thing that we do when someone
Speaker:submits their onboarding form, this is just very basic beginner stuff.
Speaker:Like, if someone hasn't submitted it in seven days, we can automate
Speaker:a reminder email to say, hey, haven't seen you submit this.
Speaker:In seven days, what's up, and it will automatically integrate
Speaker:without using Zapier or anything.
Speaker:A Gmail message saying, hey, haven't received this, here's a reminder
Speaker:to fill out your onboarding form.
Speaker:Can Notion automations do anything like that?
Speaker:Okay, cool.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Airtable has so many integrations that are native, native to Airtable.
Speaker:Notion doesn't have that without using a third party.
Speaker:So with the Notion automations, all that you can do is add a
Speaker:page to that particular, database that you've just searched.
Speaker:So if there's a page added, this one added to this one.
Speaker:But it's kind of replicating and like I said, there's no option to link the two.
Speaker:It's really good at updating like status properties.
Speaker:But not linking records or the onboarding process that you
Speaker:need to run your group program.
Speaker:So it doesn't have the native forms like Airtable does.
Speaker:I actually, via filling out a form for Ashley, I saw you
Speaker:were using fill out forms.
Speaker:And I was like, Hmm, what's that?
Speaker:Why is she using that?
Speaker:I'm not irritative.
Speaker:So I start investigating and that integrates with Notion.
Speaker:And with that, you can obviously choose, the, the main client record.
Speaker:So for taking an onboarding form, that's like.
Speaker:An alternative, I guess you can create the form and fill out
Speaker:and link it to your database.
Speaker:But again, you're going outside notion to do that.
Speaker:It's not within the platform.
Speaker:Sorry, the Gmail.
Speaker:No, you can't.
Speaker:You can send a slack notification.
Speaker:But again, that's just internally.
Speaker:You're not able to link to Gmail to send a reminder email or, an onboarding email.
Speaker:And we do a lot of that in systems over stress, via automations
Speaker:and the integration with Gmail or Outlook or whatever, Notion
Speaker:doesn't have that capability
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:That's really helpful to know because we use that Gmail integration so much.
Speaker:And for onboarding, offboarding, re signs, engagement, like you want to be
Speaker:able to automatically message and engage with your clients based on a variety
Speaker:of different points in your program.
Speaker:Like I said, seven days and they have seven days since they joined and they
Speaker:haven't filled out their onboarding or once they fill out your client results
Speaker:tracker and they share with you that they've submitted a win, you want to email
Speaker:them and say, yay, you've submitted a win.
Speaker:By the way, here are all the other wins that you submitted.
Speaker:That's the magic of what, like, that's the future standard of group programs
Speaker:because of systems over stress and if Notion can't do that, then there's no,
Speaker:you should not be managing your group program inside of, or inside of Notion.
Speaker:Can you share your screen?
Speaker:I would love to see just what the automation dashboard looks like
Speaker:and like what's possible there because that's the biggest thing.
Speaker:I think folks who.
Speaker:Are kind of trying to make the decision all they think is like, well, air table
Speaker:does automations, but so does notion and they don't get to see truly the limits.
Speaker:So I'd love for it.
Speaker:I'd love to see the back of this.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Look at this.
Speaker:I will tell
Speaker:So aesthetic, right?
Speaker:notion, like it looks.
Speaker:Beautiful.
Speaker:And I think especially with, you said you have un undiagnosed ADH, adhd.
Speaker:I have diagnosed ADHD.
Speaker:It can feel so good to look at something like this.
Speaker:Like it feels like, oh, like it's so clean.
Speaker:Airtable can feel maybe a little more rigid, but there's some
Speaker:benefits of the rigidity there.
Speaker:But I like, look, this is beautiful.
Speaker:I will give it that.
Speaker:But show me, show me your sales hub.
Speaker:This is it.
Speaker:This is what I was trying to build.
Speaker:So like there would be, your offers table.
Speaker:So your product suite database that we can link to.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:This is what I was trying to pull in.
Speaker:So similar to Airtable, you have, the summary and everything you pull
Speaker:in from your zap, it cannot link to.
Speaker:The primary client record in your client management's home or table here,
Speaker:got
Speaker:just simply can't do it.
Speaker:And I'm like, that's so simple.
Speaker:Why does that not exist?
Speaker:Another thing that kind of annoys me is what I loved about.
Speaker:Like your group programs and your sales hubs is the formulas
Speaker:for the summary, right?
Speaker:Where you can do Debbie Murphy, what the product, how much it was.
Speaker:Notion doesn't allow you to do that.
Speaker:In fact, their formulas don't allow you to create that like text for some reason.
Speaker:It's very complicated.
Speaker:you can't do like lookup fields.
Speaker:Can you do lookup fields?
Speaker:Yes, they're called roll ups, but
Speaker:yeah, yeah, you can do that.
Speaker:But this is the thing with the automations.
Speaker:The automations can update like.
Speaker:These.
Speaker:Like single selects, multi selects, you can't update like roll ups
Speaker:or relational fields, linked records, anything like that.
Speaker:So this is it.
Speaker:I'll just show you.
Speaker:It's so basic.
Speaker:So your new automation.
Speaker:All of you that have told me Notion does automations, no,
Speaker:it barely, it barely does.
Speaker:Okay, keep going.
Speaker:I haven't, I truly haven't seen this, but this is like so funny to me.
Speaker:Okay, keep going.
Speaker:Keep going.
Speaker:I got so excited that this was released that I upgraded my plan to the paid plan.
Speaker:So instead of the free notion, it was like 8 a month or something for this.
Speaker:And then I started playing around with it being like, why?
Speaker:So, yeah, so your trigger is basically when like a page or record is added here.
Speaker:Or one of these are updated, I guess,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:so that's a basic,
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:you do this, and then you can add a page to another database, edit a
Speaker:page in another database, which in and of itself has so many problems,
Speaker:or send a Slack notification.
Speaker:But here's the thing.
Speaker:I can't say when a page is added and The payment status matches received.
Speaker:You can't do that.
Speaker:So like, you can add this and say payment status, received or
Speaker:whatever, but then it's like when either of those things occur.
Speaker:So this brings problems then for like our projected payments in our sales hub.
Speaker:Like you can't say when it comes in and the, initial payment fields,
Speaker:like the rebuild number is blank.
Speaker:To add a new record.
Speaker:You can't do any of that.
Speaker:Yeah, that doesn't think there's any conditional like in like
Speaker:logic groups and all those things.
Speaker:And to be fair, when Airtable rolled out their automations, it was also very basic.
Speaker:They have just grown so much in automations that like now, like this
Speaker:is probably what Airtable's automations looked like a couple years ago, but now
Speaker:we're leaps and bounds ahead of this.
Speaker:And so looking at this, it feels like this is like the dinosaur ages.
Speaker:And can you only do those per like?
Speaker:That little automation section.
Speaker:Can you only look at them per table?
Speaker:Or is there kind of like a high overarching dashboard to see
Speaker:where all of your automations are?
Speaker:They are database automation.
Speaker:So this one is the sales tracker database.
Speaker:Now you can do this where it's like, do you want it in the overall
Speaker:database or just a particular view?
Speaker:But it's not like, up here then has the Up here has like my
Speaker:database for my product speed.
Speaker:So putting the automation here doesn't carry across there.
Speaker:It's specific to that one.
Speaker:Got it.
Speaker:This all makes sense and I'll share my screen and share in a 2nd, but
Speaker:I just want to talk about, like.
Speaker:This is where we're getting into, like, the Google Docs Versus spreadsheet of it.
Speaker:This is, like, a very pretty Google Doc alternative, and inside of
Speaker:Google Docs, you can make tables.
Speaker:You can, like, make the tables pretty and things.
Speaker:Like, this is, like, a barely half a step up from Google Doc tables, it feels like.
Speaker:I'm curious if you would ever just embed your Sales Hub view...
Speaker:Inside of your sale, like your air table 1 inside of your notion, like
Speaker:sales tracker, because can you, you can do that with notion, right?
Speaker:Look at the difference.
Speaker:Look at the difference.
Speaker:Like, I would
Speaker:not the vibe.
Speaker:Yeah, and so if you scroll up you can have this pretty like sales tracker
Speaker:banner and everything in your product suite these like, the, the Google
Speaker:docification of it, but then embed Airtable tables and views inside of it.
Speaker:So still using Airtable as your database solution but you can use Notion as
Speaker:like your, your interface or kind of like your internal access point.
Speaker:That's what I, that's I think now seeing this, this was also helpful to
Speaker:those listening, like, this is a very in real time learning thing for both
Speaker:of us, because we're trying to figure out, like, Why use Notion over Airtable?
Speaker:Like we wanted to be really clear and as we're both experts in the
Speaker:platform, it's helpful to kind of to come up with these solutions together.
Speaker:So that's how I would still, you can still have this as your sales hub, but
Speaker:the data is living inside of Airtable.
Speaker:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker:So, like, for this stuff...
Speaker:Definitely, I still, my sales hub is staying in Airtable.
Speaker:So that's going to be like my financial hub and my quiz
Speaker:program, not program, course.
Speaker:And when I do like group programs for my clients, I will continue to
Speaker:recommend and use Airtable for that.
Speaker:Something that I think that people, I see this all the time, I see these
Speaker:Facebook messages that are people that say, I'm moving to Notion!
Speaker:Fuck Airtable!
Speaker:I love Notion!
Speaker:I'm moving everything!
Speaker:I'm spending the weekend migrating everything over to Notion!
Speaker:Boo!
Speaker:Airtable!
Speaker:And I'm like, you'll be back in some capacity because you're
Speaker:going to realize the limitations.
Speaker:And I think that that happens all the time when people want to jump ship to software.
Speaker:They think like, oh, this one, I need to move everything over.
Speaker:As both Airtable and Notion experts, we are, like, proof that, like, you
Speaker:can use both for different reasons.
Speaker:So it is okay to have Notion and Airtable.
Speaker:You do not have to pick one.
Speaker:And I think that this is a really great example to see, like, Like
Speaker:show us your show us your dashboard.
Speaker:I'm so curious to see how like the things that you love about notion and like how
Speaker:this can work, but then also how how Airtable kind of can support how like
Speaker:support the data behind your notion.
Speaker:So you're already showing this walk us through it because it is it is beautiful
Speaker:I mean, it's pretty, but there's no pointing at being pretty
Speaker:if it's not functional, right?
Speaker:For me, ClickUp was too much for me in terms of task management, right?
Speaker:Because it's just me.
Speaker:I don't have an agency.
Speaker:I don't have a team.
Speaker:Airtable didn't really have the capabilities I needed.
Speaker:Notion didn't have the capabilities I needed.
Speaker:They've only just updated their recurring task automation.
Speaker:Just show you what I mean, like in this task manager.
Speaker:so this is now like my daily task manager.
Speaker:What I have to do, what I'm working on, what I'm waiting on.
Speaker:And then over here, I have templates for these like recurring tasks.
Speaker:Yes, I'm doing the MDE email challenge at the moment.
Speaker:So before you used to not be able to set a due date on those tasks.
Speaker:So this one, for example, I do every Wednesday.
Speaker:So every Wednesday.
Speaker:I would have a new task here to do that task.
Speaker:But the due date could be back in January when I first set up the task.
Speaker:It would never update the due date.
Speaker:Now it's so much better because you can come in.
Speaker:It's set to repeat every week and you can edit it.
Speaker:And then they have this option that's like at today.
Speaker:So every Wednesday that updates at like midnight and it's like, it's due today.
Speaker:So that to me is giving me a little bit more calm in terms of task management.
Speaker:So, yes, I love it for that.
Speaker:Something I want to just add here is that it's so important to be like, when,
Speaker:when you have different workflows in your business, when you have, you're
Speaker:trying to figure out the best system for task management and the best
Speaker:system for group program management, you're going to have different.
Speaker:Needs and different, like, red flags and different, like,
Speaker:like, absolute, like, no goes.
Speaker:And so here, like, Debbie is outlining some very specific.
Speaker:I needed something to have a today option.
Speaker:You don't necessarily need that as much inside of group programs.
Speaker:So, like, it makes sense that her tasks are working inside of here.
Speaker:So if air, if notion has been working for you, there's a reason, like,
Speaker:because it was built for, to like, with task management in mind or with
Speaker:content management in mind, it was built with those things in mind.
Speaker:I don't think it was built with group program management in mind, and so
Speaker:it doesn't solve a lot of the things that air table does solve for us.
Speaker:So it totally makes sense that there are things that really, really work
Speaker:well for your business inside of notion and really, really don't.
Speaker:So I think that that's a cool thing just to like know that.
Speaker:There's no all in one tool that's perfect for absolutely everything.
Speaker:And I really like that you are utilizing the best of the best
Speaker:in each, in each software.
Speaker:Like with the content hub, if you did have a team and every, Tuesday you
Speaker:had to go in and review whatever your designer or copywriter had did, like
Speaker:you can have that automation in Notion.
Speaker:It can be, when the status of this is updated to this, do this.
Speaker:It's simple, but the Intricacies of running a group program
Speaker:and the automations needed.
Speaker:It's not possible for Notion.
Speaker:You need to have Airtable for that.
Speaker:Like it doesn't work in ClickUp.
Speaker:It doesn't work in Notion.
Speaker:Airtable is the only option in our opinion that works for that
Speaker:in this industry, for sure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I used to teach, I've been teaching Airtable for years
Speaker:now, since like 2019, I think.
Speaker:And something that I, I used to teach content management in
Speaker:Airtable and management and task management inside of Airtable.
Speaker:And what I realized is like, I will not die on those hills.
Speaker:Like, I can be convinced that you can manage your content inside
Speaker:of Notion, or you can manage your content inside of ClickUp.
Speaker:I cannot be convinced that you can manage your group program
Speaker:inside of those softwares.
Speaker:And so that's why,
Speaker:I mean, you can, if you want to have a very manual process, right?
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:And you still want to do all the things yourself and you still want to send
Speaker:the emails and be checking every day.
Speaker:But if you want it to do what it's designed to do and give you freedom
Speaker:and still provide that amazing client experience, you need Airtable for that.
Speaker:Like
Speaker:Yes, you can't grow a, you can't grow a scalable group program in Notion or
Speaker:ClickUp or anything, because As you grow, the manual work also grows, and that is
Speaker:like the antonym of scalable and so that's really like, it's been so helpful to get
Speaker:that clarity over the years of like, it doesn't feel authentic for me to say, you
Speaker:can't manage your content anywhere else because like, I objectively, I'm like,
Speaker:yeah, you can, and it gets the job done.
Speaker:But seeing these other things, it just doesn't, it doesn't get the job done.
Speaker:I want to share my screen and just because we looked at
Speaker:notions automation capabilities.
Speaker:I want to show air tables capabilities.
Speaker:So this is the database that I just gave Debbie a quick copy link and she was able
Speaker:to embed that right inside of notion.
Speaker:So you can still use notion as your little like wiki hub.
Speaker:But the data lives here.
Speaker:So we've got our sales log.
Speaker:And you'll see here this is grouped by client.
Speaker:You can group by.
Speaker:I think that it's.
Speaker:There's way more robust ways to, like, visualize the, like, the data inside
Speaker:of Airtable over Notion as well.
Speaker:But if we look at these automations, and we create one, you're gonna see,
Speaker:you have your own separate, like, little page for it, which already gives it,
Speaker:like, a little more energy than just, like, that little pop up that Notion has.
Speaker:But you have all of these different triggers, which is, like, so when a
Speaker:record matches a condition, when a form is submitted, when a record's
Speaker:created, when it's updated, when it answers a view, you can schedule
Speaker:things at, right, at scheduled times.
Speaker:When a webhook is received and that's a very powerful automation trigger
Speaker:that a lot of us don't really need to get into, but just know it is
Speaker:very, very robust and like makes it so you can pretty much automate all
Speaker:of the things inside of Airtable.
Speaker:But having all of these different options helps you like any part of
Speaker:the journey of your group program.
Speaker:So if someone submits that form, if a record matches a condition where, like I
Speaker:mentioned, the date is 7 days past, like those are all different triggers and use
Speaker:cases to start triggering automations.
Speaker:So we've got that.
Speaker:But then what we've also got what we mentioned that notion didn't
Speaker:have was conditional logic.
Speaker:So that means we say let's let's say a student submits a form and if
Speaker:the condition is like paint, like.
Speaker:It's an application form and let's say that their monthly revenue is 10, 000 and
Speaker:you, in your mastermind, you only want to work with people who have 20, 000 above.
Speaker:You can say if the condition is met where their revenue is under 20, 000, send
Speaker:them an email that automatically rejects them and then like, directs them to your,
Speaker:your lower offer or something like that.
Speaker:So you can have that, and then you can also have one say otherwise, if it's 20,
Speaker:000 or over, automatically accept them.
Speaker:There's so much automation capability you can do right inside of Airtable that
Speaker:makes it just so easy and dynamic to, like, run and manage your group program.
Speaker:So that's why, when people specifically ask me, what are the differences
Speaker:between Notion and Airtable?
Speaker:I hope this episode makes it clear that, like, Notion cannot hold a
Speaker:candle to, to, to Airtable when it comes to managing group programs.
Speaker:There's so many other reasons, but these automations are like one of
Speaker:one of the biggest ones for sure.
Speaker:Yeah, it's the biggest standout one, because like I said, otherwise
Speaker:we're just doing it all manually.
Speaker:And that's not what you want when you have a group program
Speaker:that you're trying to scale.
Speaker:You need the automations and so many people shy away from them.
Speaker:Like, yes, we want them to be simple.
Speaker:So at a glance, notions, automations could be like, this is going to be amazing.
Speaker:It's not too complicated.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, it also doesn't work.
Speaker:So you need Airtable.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:can't believe I upgraded.
Speaker:there are so are you on the free plan of notion?
Speaker:Did you down?
Speaker:Are you still paying?
Speaker:I'm still paying.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm still paying because I want to have the, like, access to
Speaker:it when and if they do build it out.
Speaker:But yeah, it's just so disappointing.
Speaker:I'm sure they might get there.
Speaker:And that's the thing about software is like, they're going to
Speaker:change and they're going to grow.
Speaker:But air tables already light years ahead.
Speaker:So when notion grows, for sure, air table has grown by then too.
Speaker:And so it's really like, yeah, it's kind of the We want to, we want you
Speaker:to be, especially if you're scaling a group program, we want you to be on
Speaker:a software that can really grow with you and you don't feel limited by.
Speaker:So to think, oh, Notion is simple and it's simple and it's easy for me to
Speaker:have everything in Notion and not have to log into 2 different platforms.
Speaker:If.
Speaker:Like Debbie said, if Notion doesn't work to run your group
Speaker:program, then it's not simpler.
Speaker:It's more, it's harder.
Speaker:And so, there's definitely like, that's some of the benefits of, of picking
Speaker:the right, the right tech for the job.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:I think, I mean, Notion is great for, like, designers or people that like
Speaker:simplicity and they just want, basic.
Speaker:Aesthetic things, but if you want actual like automations and capabilities and
Speaker:those intricacies, you need Airtable.
Speaker:Just
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And that's where, that's where...
Speaker:That's the hill I'll die on, which is like I care about your data.
Speaker:I care about you growing your group program and I care about you
Speaker:automating the hell out of everything.
Speaker:So you can just focus on your students and their results and improving your program.
Speaker:The things that like, I want to get you out of the admin and that's personally my
Speaker:gripe with Notion is a lot of the things that you have to set up are more aesthetic
Speaker:than Well, helpful, at least to me.
Speaker:It's like you get to move things around and it like, it, it scratches an itch
Speaker:for like creative and potentially neurodivergent brains to be like, I
Speaker:get to build this exactly how I want.
Speaker:For me, bullet journals, like starting from scratch is incredibly overwhelming.
Speaker:And so the blank page of notion can feel like a lot.
Speaker:And so that's That's why I personally, with my neurodivergentness like and
Speaker:thrive inside of Airtable because you have some creativity with views and filters,
Speaker:but it's much more rigid than Notion.
Speaker:And for me, that's a good thing.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:I mean, I didn't even touch then on like the Airtable interfaces
Speaker:and how you can pull all that data into, just a one page shop.
Speaker:You can't really do that.
Speaker:In Notion, you need, widgets and different things outside of Notion to
Speaker:create your your graphs and your pie charts and all the things, whereas
Speaker:in Airtable, you can just click, click, click, boom, there it is.
Speaker:And, and I mean, the information that we get from that, when we're
Speaker:planning and reviewing and trying to scale is just invaluable.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:good.
Speaker:Airtable.
Speaker:Debbie, this was, I feel like this, I hope this was validating for
Speaker:you because it's also validating, it's validating for me as well.
Speaker:I think to kind of sum it up, just the clarification of the spreadsheets.
Speaker:Art to Airtables, Google Docs, Is to Notion.
Speaker:I think that's so huge and I think that's going to help
Speaker:people have a lot of clarity.
Speaker:If you want to do, if you care about your data and the integrity of your
Speaker:data and scaling and automating, that's not where notion thrives.
Speaker:And that's really where Airtable thrives.
Speaker:And that's why it's so imperative to run your group program there.
Speaker:And, like, we said.
Speaker:I really wanted to bring an air like an a notion superfan to the podcast so
Speaker:it wasn't just trash talking notion the entire time because there's legitimate
Speaker:reasons to want to be inside of notion, but there's a beautiful marriage
Speaker:that can that can be merged if that's something that's important to you.
Speaker:So it doesn't have to be.
Speaker:Either or, in terms of your entire tech stack, you have to manage your
Speaker:group program in Airtable, but there's other ways that you can continue to use
Speaker:Notion, and I think the biggest thing that I just want to say is that you do
Speaker:not have to spend a weekend migrating everything off of Airtable and into
Speaker:Notion, or even migrating everything off of Notion and into Airtable, if you start
Speaker:to love Airtable, you can use them both for, for the purposes of their design.
Speaker:exactly.
Speaker:Like I said, my sales hub is staying in Airtable because the data that
Speaker:comes from that is just beyond amazing.
Speaker:And when I do the group program management for my clients,
Speaker:that will always be Airtable.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Anything else you want to share?
Speaker:I'm so happy that we'll have this to refer to people, but
Speaker:any other final, final words?
Speaker:No, I think that's it.
Speaker:It's like when Ashley invited me and onto the podcast, I said like,
Speaker:that's the million dollar question because it's what everybody asks, what
Speaker:is the difference between the two?
Speaker:And it's just, if you want the easy life.
Speaker:With the automations that work to allow you to step away from
Speaker:your laptop and your phone.
Speaker:Airtable is the best option for that.
Speaker:So stick with Airtable and sign up to Systems Over
Speaker:Stress because it's brilliant.
Speaker:Thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker:Well, Debbie, thank you so much.
Speaker:Where can folks find you on the internet?
Speaker:Instagram mostly it's DebbieDoes.
Speaker:co and I hang out a lot on my email list.
Speaker:I have a weekly email series and the link is in the bio if
Speaker:you want to sign up to that.
Speaker:But yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker:This was so much fun.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:Alright, I'll see you in the next episode.
Speaker:If you are committed to getting your client's results and creating
Speaker:the go-to coaching program in your industry, we want you to join us.
Speaker:Click that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app or YouTube
Speaker:to see all the system strategies and behind the scenes stories of
Speaker:what it takes to create the most impactful coaching program you can.
