I’ve been looking for the shortest distance between A and B my whole life.
As a kid I counted my steps. Inefficiency bothered me at a cellular level. Some things don’t change.
I don’t lie in bed at 2am thinking about the list anymore. It’s automated. I get a 7am briefing with everything I need to know and nothing I don’t. I haven’t opened my email first thing in the morning in months.
29 years running my own business. This was the system I needed the whole time. The technology wasn’t there.
Now it is. I built it for myself first. Then people started asking me how.
That’s the whole job now. Showing you what’s already sitting in the subscription you’ve been paying for.
Years In Business
Not in a boardroom. In the trenches, learning the hard way which hats to put down.
Years In Google Workspace
Long before Gemini showed up. That part changed everything.
Hours A Week Back
My own week, rebuilt. Yours depends on how much mess you’re sitting on. Mine was twenty years’ worth.
AI Courses Completed
Plus AWS, Tableau and Python. The last one at 55, with two good cries and a top-of-class finish.
I’ve done it backwards, so you don’t have to.
In 1997 I sat at my kitchen table teaching myself Quark Express, convinced I’d never figure it out. I did.
Then I built Taylor Design, named after my daughter. Seventeen years turning a 40-page real estate magazine into three publications totalling over 300 pages. Automated InDesign scripts did in minutes what used to take days.
I saw print dying in 2009, pivoted to web and social, and built Supernova Media. Named one of Canada’s top 10 social media companies, my work shared by HubSpot and PR Daily.
Then I burned out. Twice.
Because hustle isn’t a system. And busy isn’t the same as moving forward.
In 2023 I met AI and it felt like Christmas every day. I went back to school at 55. Learned Python and graduated top of my class.
Then I spent a year pointed at the wrong things.
I built carousels for days. Generated images for hours. I could make the technology sing, but my admin was the same mess it had always been. I was still in the weeds. Still thinking about the list at 2am.
So I stepped back. Audited my time and started over. I found out which tasks were eating my time and got my administrative house in order. Simply. And without a developer.
I was paying for five subscriptions on top of Google Workspace. ChatGPT. Loom. Calendly. Zapier. DocuSign. One by one, as Gemini grew inside Workspace, I cancelled them. I was already paying for what they were doing.
I learned I wasn’t the only one who’d done it in that order. Each of my clients told me the same thing. Both feet in. No plan. No idea what to build first.
AI-generated content doesn’t mean much if you’re still thinking about the list at 2am.
Nobody admires a foundation. No one has ever come to my house and complimented the concrete. But without it, nothing else stands.
So that’s where we start. The boring parts. The admin that’s been eating your week for years. We build the operating model first, and everything interesting sits on top of it.
Three businesses. Three pivots. One thing that never changed. The drive to find a better way.
I see it in their face before they say it.
Their eyes light up. I read a room whether I want to or not, and on a call I’m watching for that more than I’m listening for problems. That’s the moment that drives me, and it almost never comes from the shiny thing.
One woman didn’t know her Mac mouse could right click. She’d been working around it for ages. When I showed her, she flopped onto her desk in a heap. Relief, mostly. And a little frustration it was there all along.
Another lady was running a business with a partner who never wrote anything down. I told her to open the Gemini app and just talk. It writes it down, schedules the task, adds the calendar item, drafts the email. I watched her shoulders drop. She couldn’t wait to get off the call and go tell her.
Neither of those took more than a minute.
How I work
- I research your business before we talk. By the time we meet I’ve got your quick win ready, built from what you told me in the intake form.
- I talk about twenty percent of the time. You talk the rest.
- Every call ends with a recommendation. Sometimes that recommendation is to go do one thing yourself and come back in a month. I’d rather send you away with the right answer than book you for the wrong thing.
- Nothing we build needs new software. Just Google Workspace. The same subscription you’re already paying for.
- When we’re finished, my inbox stays open. That doesn’t expire.
It’s a fantastic program, Nancy. My favorite parts: getting the cobwebs off my Google Workspace and seeing how useful and valuable the ecosystem can be, and the client portal.
Simon Hillier
Workspace Elite
Podcasts, summits, workshops. Same message every time.
Global Leaders Summit·AI Revenue Summit·EverydayAI·Leveraging AI·The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise·BizStack·Mashup Lab
See the full list and speaking topicsYou’ve read this far. Tell me about a typical day.
Thirty minutes. I’ll have looked at your business before we start, and I’ll have something ready for you based on what you tell me in the intake form.
You’ll leave with a recommendation. Sometimes that’s a thing to go build yourself.
