Marta, co-owner of Northline Cabinetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan, joins the show to walk through the moment a bounced check — buried under 11,200 unread emails — led to a $2,000 walnut slab becoming firewood, and the systems overhaul that followed.
The walnut incident: Fabricator Danny cut an irreversible piece after a deposit check had already bounced — three days earlier — with no signal reaching the shop floor
Northline Cabinetry's setup: Six-person custom cabinet and built-in shop, 12 years in business, running on a spiral notebook, a whiteboard Monday schedule, and one shared Gmail login for three people
The real problem: Bank, supplier, and communication systems that never talked to each other — money moved in one place, work got ordered in another, info lived in a third
Rule #1 from the consultant: Don't rip out the existing system first — keep the notebook running in parallel for three weeks to avoid dropping live jobs mid-transition
Notion as shared brain: Every active job got its own page — client, address, deposit status, materials ordered, template date, install date — filled out live in the office, not emailed as a template
All-in-one ops platform: A second layer sitting between the client and everything else — quote form, estimate signing, deposit collection, and real-time payment notifications all routed through one place
The referral: Marta's accountant flagged that a $2M business shouldn't run out of a notebook and connected her with the host, a consultant who sets up systems rather than just recommending them
Sources: NotionSubscribe: workingsmarter.jgiebz.com
Eric: ...so wait, back up. You cut the walnut. You had already made the cut.
Marta Kowalski: We had already made the cut. My guy Danny is standing there with the router in his hand, and I'm on the phone with the bank, and they're telling me the check came back three days ago.
Eric: Three days ago.
Marta Kowalski: Three. Days. Ago.
Eric: Oof.
Marta Kowalski: And walnut slab, the piece we used, that was a two thousand dollar piece of wood before we touched it. After Danny's cut it's firewood, basically. It's a very expensive cutting board now.
Eric: And you found out because... what, you were just doing the books that night?
Marta Kowalski: I was doing deposits on a Sunday like I always do, and I'm scrolling the Gmail, and I see the notice from the bank buried under like forty other emails, half of which my brother had already deleted from his phone because he thought they were spam.
Eric: Okay. Okay. So for people listening, tell them what Northline actually is, because I think the shape of the business matters here.
Marta Kowalski: Yeah. So Northline Cabinetry, we're in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Custom cabinets, custom built-ins, the occasional big kitchen remodel. Six people counting me and my brother Marcus. We've been at it twelve years this fall.
Eric: Twelve years. That's not a startup problem, that's a...
Marta Kowalski: That's a "we should know better" problem, is what it is.
Eric: I wasn't gonna say it.
Marta Kowalski: You can say it. I say it.
Eric: So how were you tracking jobs before the walnut incident?
Marta Kowalski: Spiral notebook. One notebook. It sits on the corner of my desk. I write the client name, the deposit amount, the date, whether the countertop template is done. And then the Gmail inbox, which is shared, meaning me, Marcus, and our office person Steph all log into the same account.
Eric: All three of you, same login.
Marta Kowalski: Same login. And Marcus deletes stuff. Steph archives stuff. I star stuff. It's chaos, it's just... it's chaos with a system, I guess.
Eric: Chaos with a system. I love that.
Marta Kowalski: It worked for eight years. Then it stopped working.
Eric: Okay so let me play back what I'm hearing, because I want to name the actual problem before we get into what you did about it. It's not really the notebook, right? The notebook is fine for six people. The problem is you've got money moving in one system, the bank, work getting ordered in another system, your suppliers, and communication happening in a third system, Gmail. And nothing talks to each other.
Marta Kowalski: Nothing talks. Nothing talks.
Eric: So the deposit clears, or doesn't clear, and there's no signal that reaches Danny before he picks up the router.
Marta Kowalski: Right. Danny works off the shop schedule my brother writes on the whiteboard on Monday morning. Whiteboard doesn't know about the bank.
Eric: Whiteboard doesn't know about the bank. That should be a t-shirt.
Marta Kowalski: Please make it.
Eric: Okay, so how'd you find me? Because you didn't call me, someone sent you my way.
Marta Kowalski: My accountant. She's the one who, after the walnut thing, she sat me down and said Marta, you need to stop running a two-million-dollar business out of a notebook.
Eric: Bless her.
Marta Kowalski: Bless her. And she said there's a guy who does this kind of consulting, small shops, blue collar mostly, and he'll actually set the thing up, not just tell you to go set it up.
Eric: Which is the whole trick. Because most people, if I just tell them "go get software," they go get software, they open it, they close it, and it sits there.
Marta Kowalski: It sits there. Yep.
Eric: Alright so tell them what we did. Or, actually, let me tell them what I saw when I first came in, and you tell me if I'm remembering it right.
Marta Kowalski: Go.
Eric: You had, I think, four kitchens in progress. You had somewhere between eight and ten deposits sitting in various states of "did it clear, didn't it clear, is it a check, is it a wire." You had a Gmail with I want to say eleven thousand unread.
Marta Kowalski: Eleven thousand two hundred and something. Yeah.
Eric: And the notebook. Which honestly, the notebook was the most organized thing you had.
Marta Kowalski: The notebook was the crown jewel.
Eric: So the first thing, and I want listeners to hear this because it's counterintuitive, the first thing I did was NOT rip the notebook away from you.
Marta Kowalski: No.
Eric: Because if I take the notebook, you have nothing. You're flying blind for a week while we set up new tools. That's when jobs get dropped.
Marta Kowalski: That's when the next walnut gets cut.
Eric: Exactly. So we kept the notebook for the first three weeks. What we did instead, we set up two things in parallel. One was a workspace in Notion, just for you and Marcus and Steph, where every active job got its own page. Client, address, deposit status, materials ordered, template date, install date. Just the page. Not fancy.
Marta Kowalski: And you made me fill it out for the current jobs, sitting there, in the office, with you.
Eric: I made you fill it out with me watching, yes, because I...
