Inspiring Conversations with Josh Redd of Notion State

Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Redd

Hi Josh, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been many things including a touring drummer (30 countries), barista (won a few latte art throwdowns in my day), videographer, photographer (featured on Unsplash), and even construction worker (not my favorite). Now, I’m a Notion consultant. That means I’m very good at this new software called Notion and built a business helping other businesses learn to use it correctly and to its full potential – networking their knowledge and talent. I discovered Notion at the end of 2019 and was immediately hooked by what it let me do – build my own tool. Notion is often called “Legos for software” because it gives you the blocks to build whatever tool you want, all without touching code. Out of the box, it’s an elegant document creator but with the right touch, it can become a powerful Enterprise tool for complex interconnected workflows across an entire company. At it’s best, it’s a single source of truth for networking knowledge and talent. 1+1=3. I don’t work for Notion, I promise. I’m just a big fan that was able to build a business on it.

I obsessed over Notion and learned everything I could about it, often pushing it to its limits and learning all the different tips, tricks and hacks. Sometimes I would try something so obscure and niche that I discovered bugs to report to their engineering team. Recently I even suggested a small update to one of their menus to make it easier for users and they built it! Initially I had no plan to monetize it and I think that played to my favor. I just enjoyed the discovery of the new digital frontier. Along the way I discovered that a few people had already made a full-time living being Notion consultants and Notion had recently started a certification program for aspiring consultants. That was it, I knew the direction I was headed and in June of 2022, I became the 11th U.S. Notion Certified Consultant.

Toward the end of that year, I met my business partner Bryan Takayama. He had actually interviewed me for a consulting project and then decided to become a Notion consultant himself. I had the product expertise and credentials, he had almost a decade of management consulting experience at Deloitte and we hit it off really well when we chatted over a video call. We partnered up and officially registered as business in Missouri in February of 2023. A few months later in May after doing a few projects together and landing a retainer client, I was able to jump in full-time. We had yet to meet each other as Bryan was actually a van-lifer with his wife and was hanging out in Baja, Mexico at the time while I was freezing up here in KC. We got to meet six months later when he came through with his two pups so I took him to Bar K and now he’s convinced they need to expand to all 50 states. but I digress!

Over the last year and a half, we’ve grown from doing small projects for solopreneurs to now being Notion’s preferred professional services partner for some of their largest Enterprise customers. We’re now partnering long-term with clients to not only optimize their digital workflows but the business process that drives them. The door really opened when I was invited to the company retreat in Maui, 1 of 3 community members to speak on a panel. After speaking from my consulting experience, I met with some of the amazing employees who were instrumental in connecting us to help serve some of their biggest new customers. We’re now a global remote team of 5 with team members in London, Slovenia, and Bryan now in Barcelona, myself in Kansas City. We expect to soon become 6 or 7 and we’re holding on to the rocket ship as long as it’s on its way up.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In 2020, during the height of covid, I lost my job, got married, finally graduated college and we moved to Manhattan, Kansas from my hometown in Hutchinson, Kansas (in that order). The following year was one of the hardest of my life. My wife had one more year at K-State and I took a construction job 30 minutes away to pay the bills in our 550 sq. foot apartment on the corner of Aggieville. To put it nicely to the fine folks who employed me, I didn’t enjoy my job. I woke up at 6 and got home at 6 but despite that, I was spending time each evening learning and building in Notion. In fact, I stuck a phone holder in the shower and would watch youtube videos about Notion when I got home from work. I knew there was a future where I could make my living off of it, I was just trying to figure out how and get better on the way.

Shortly before the end of our time in Manhattan, I was done with that job and spent a couple months freelancing Notion coaching and door dashing. It wasn’t enough to be full-time but I got a taste of working for myself and developed some more chops with consulting. I had no experience with it and while everyone was telling me to charge a lot, I just didn’t have the confidence to do it or the experience to know why I should. I landed a job helping the COO of a national company learn Notion for $50/hr and that sounded amazing coming from my previous work swinging hammers for about $100/day. But when the job wrapped and I invoiced $1500, I realized the outsized value I had traded. Nothing against the company either, I’m very thankful for the opportunity. But I realized I had just helped a national company worth millions streamline their operations (a very valuable proposition) for $1500 over 30 hours. And Uncle Sam still wanted his, of course.

The last rock along the way was when I almost decided to quit. We were in Kansas City by then and I was actually getting a lot of leads. I had just landed a couple projects for more money each than I had ever made in a month. But along the way, I realized I just wasn’t good at executing on the services I was providing. I had moved away from live 1:1 coaching and was trying to productize my service and deliver on my own time. But it just wasn’t nearly as natural as teaching the software I knew so well. I was seriously contemplating getting out of the consulting game and trying to jump into creating and selling templates (a few people had boasted of making over $1m at that point selling Notion templates). That’s when, at the perfect time, I met my business partner and we decided to join forces with our complementary skillsets. I had the product expertise and leads, he had the consulting chops and business acumen. The rest is history as things have consistently been going better and better.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We help businesses network their knowledge and talent with a digital workspace using Notion. Software should have made our professional lives easier but instead, it’s a common source of frustration amongst employees and owners. People are talented and want to do their best work and live a fulfilling life but instead are bottlenecked trying to find the information they need to even start their work. Studies show knowledge workers spend anywhere from 20-50% searching for and wrangling information before they can even begin analyzing and executing. If business boils down to inputs and outputs, the ratio has a lot of room for improvement. With a new tool like Notion, this can change, but it needs to be done right and that’s where we step in to become resident experts, deploying and training users in their new digital home for ideas.

We specialize in helping Enterprise customers with our unofficial mission to be the best at Notion for the biggest customers. We utilize a unique approach, a specific method for building in Notion that I pioneered a few years ago – called “The Perspectives Method.” While it won’t gain me any status with the outside world, it gave me a bit of a reputation in the community of users and builders. It’s largely the reason my business partner was interested in working together. This particular setup takes more time to build (which we handle) but the end result is a satisfying experience of using “mini-applications” within the application of Notion. It’s an intuitive experience that helps people understand what they’re doing in such a free-ranging tool like Notion, and really focus in on a particular slice of their work or data, one at a time. It helps people do their work better.

I’m very proud to have carved out my own little slice in influencing the way people use Notion. I’ve even had the opportunity to showcase it live in Notion’s headquarters in San Francisco. I’m also very proud to be building one of the top consulting agencies, especially now that we are trusted by Notion to help with some of their most valuable customers. It’s validating and rewarding and I definitely could not have done it without my partner and team. It also feels like it’s just the beginning and the sky is the limit. We are one of two solutions partners sponsoring their first ever in-person conference October of 2024 and will be working alongside the Notion team to offer live consults to attendees.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
– Notion is a lot of fun to use, even as an individual. You should try it.
– Obsession is a great indicator of potential for success.
– Calculating risks doesn’t always reduce them, but it makes you more comfortable with them.
– Be nice to people. These days, it’s a competitive advantage.
– Proverbs 22:29: Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.

Pricing:

• Our services range from 5-15k/mo. Factors include size and complexity but also additional services like API integrations or bespoke workflow builds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.notionstate.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshredd
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/theJoshRedd
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JoshRedd