If you lead a small nonprofit, your work probably lives in a dozen places at once: your inbox (maybe more than one), a notebook from the last conference, sticky notes on your monitor, and a row of browser tabs you keep open because each one holds something you need to get back to.
I took Lisa Marshall's course earlier this year, and it changed how I run my week. Lisa is the founder and principal of Good Work Consulting, and she spent more than 15 years inside a growing nonprofit before turning her system into Work Management Makeover. In this episode she walks through FLOW, the simple method she uses to pull everything into one place, and shows how a few minutes of sorting (or a well-trained AI assistant) turns a pile into a plan.
We also talk about where AI fits, how to pick a platform without burning through a two-week free trial, and the nonprofit pricing worth checking before you buy anything. Lisa shared a discount for Nook listeners too: use code NOOK at workmanagementmakeover.com.
SHOW NOTES
What if every email, link, idea, and sticky note competing for your attention had one place to land, and you could sort all of it in a few minutes a day?
Lisa Marshall knows what it feels like when work comes at you from everywhere. She was the second employee at an education nonprofit and spent more than 15 years there, wearing just about every hat except bookkeeping. No matter which role she held, one thing stayed the same: it was really hard to get things done.
When her organization brought in a work management system, Lisa noticed how hard it was for her team to actually work inside it. So she set herself a challenge. Could she work in one tool for six hours without switching browser tabs?
What she built became the FLOW method: Funnel, Label, Optimize, and Work. It starts with a humble feature most platforms bury, email to create item, so emails, podcast notes, links, PDFs, and even photos of postcards all land on one "inflow" board. From there, a simple labeling system and Lisa's "work in 4D" take on the Eisenhower matrix turn a pile into a plan. In her course she sorts more than 50 new items in under five minutes, and now that she's taught Claude her rules, it takes about 45 seconds.
Today Lisa is the founder and principal of Good Work Consulting, where she helps purpose-driven professionals get to the strategic part of their to-do list. She turned her system into Work Management Makeover, an on-demand course of bite-sized videos you can finish in less time than a long lunch.
In this episode of Nonprofit Nook, Lisa joins Wendy, who took the course and hasn't stopped talking about it, to walk through how the system works, where AI fits in, and how to pick a platform without burning through a two-week free trial.
This conversation is about more than software. It's about protecting the focus nonprofit leaders need for the work that moves the mission forward, and building one place that holds all of it, from programs and projects to household to-dos and caregiving, so nothing important depends on your memory.
If you lead, volunteer with, support, or dream of starting a nonprofit, this conversation is a reminder that a little structure goes a long way: one place for your work to land, and a few minutes each day to sort it.
In This Episode
You'll hear Wendy and Lisa talk about:
How Lisa went from wearing every hat at a growing nonprofit to building a system that kept her in one tool all day
Why she thinks in terms of work management instead of project management
How the email to create item feature and your phone's share button turn everything into one funnel
What each step of FLOW looks like, from funneling to labeling to adding dates
How "work in 4D" helps you decide whether to do, decide, defer, or delegate a task, and when to just delete it
How Lisa uses Claude in Chrome to sort her board in about 45 seconds, and why AI works better inside a shared work management platform
Where to start if you don't have time for a course, and how to make the most of a free trial
The nonprofit pricing Lisa recommends checking, including Monday.com's nonprofit program
Connect with Lisa Marshall and Good Work Consulting
Website
https://www.goodwork.llc
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisarmarshall/
Work Management Makeover (use code NOOK for $100 off)
https://workmanagementmakeover.com
Nonprofit Power Up (free masterclass)
https://www.nonprofitpowerup.com
Join the Boss Table
A monthly four-hour Boss Day to work on your organization instead of in it, Wendy as your fractional strategic partner, and a table of nonprofit and business leaders learning from each other. Founding members pay $125 a month until the first 25 seats fill.
https://www.bosslevelengaged.com/bosstable
Connect with Wendy + Nonprofit Nook
Nonprofit Nook
https://nonprofitnook.com
Upcoming Nonprofit Nook Events
https://www.nonprofitnook.com/events
Wendy Kidd on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendykidd/
More from Boss Level Engaged
Boss Level Engaged
https://www.bosslevelengaged.com/
Boss Table
https://www.bosslevelengaged.com/bosstable
TRANSCRIPT
Opens with a cold-open clip from 13:29, then the welcome.
Lisa: If you feel like there are trains running through your brain all day with all the things you're supposed to do, then we might as well make a grand central station for you. That's really what the work management system is supposed to be.
Wendy: Hey everyone, welcome back to Nonprofit Nook. Today I'm joined by Lisa Marshall, founder and principal of Good Work Consulting. Lisa helps purpose-driven professionals get to the strategic part of their to-do list, the work that so often gets pushed aside by everything else competing for their time. What energizes Lisa most is connecting people and tools so that work life becomes just a little more manageable. She specializes in setting up sustainable systems and actually putting them into practice, from strategic plans and program management to operations workflows, and maybe even a sabbatical policy. Lisa brings a practical, hands-on approach that helps leaders spend less time spinning their wheels and more time on the work that moves their mission forward. Lisa, welcome to Nonprofit Nook!
Lisa: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here with you.
Wendy: I'm so happy you finally said yes. Folks, I've been annoying Lisa because I took her good workflow course, I fell in love, and it completely changed my life. So I kept telling Lisa she had to come on the show. There was no choice. I know you've changed the name. It used to be the Good Workflow course, and now it's Work Management Makeover, right?
Lisa: Work Management Makeover, yes. I want it to be more focused on the transformation, Wendy, and less focused on the tool.
Wendy: I love it. But I did like that you said "flow," and I know flow is part of this course. So talk to me about what that means to you, and how does someone know when their workflow is working?
Lisa: Maybe listeners have heard of being in a flow state, when you're really in your rhythm, honed in on the thing you need to be working on, enjoying it, and nothing is distracting you. Good Work is the name of my organization, but I want everybody to have a good workflow. To me, a good workflow is one that lets you get into that space as often as you can, where you can focus on what you want to focus on and use your time the way you intend, without things gumming up the works.
And it just so happens that FLOW is also an acronym in this case, like SCUBA or RADAR. Here FLOW means funnel, label, optimize, and work. I'm sure we'll get to that in a minute.
Wendy: It makes my nerd self very happy. That's probably why I loved your course as much as I did. Not only am I a system nerd, but the labeling made me very happy.
Lisa: It makes my nerd self happy as well.
Wendy: This is why we're friends. So, take me back to when you realized you needed a better way to manage your workflow, because I'm sure you weren't born this way. What was going on, and how did you figure out what you needed?
Lisa: There was a long period of time where I was like, man, it's really hard to get to everything. Why can't I make fetch happen? And I think lots of people feel that way. There's just so much coming at us all the time.
I had been at my organization for a very long time. I was actually the second employee, so I'd worn a lot of hats and had many different roles. The one thing that never changed was that it was really, really tough to get things done. We know that in nonprofits, and in small businesses and for solopreneurs, you have 17 different job titles. It's really difficult to zero in on specific things you want to get done in any given amount of time.
I wasn't the only one experiencing that frustration. Other folks in leadership decided they wanted to try out a work management system. I use that phrase intentionally rather than "project management," because I want everyone to think of these systems as the place all of your work lives, not just one project. Otherwise you get a Trello for this part of what you do, you use Asana for another piece, and then a collaboration you're part of asks you to use Basecamp. It's an alphabet soup. So instead of project management, I really try to think about work management.
As we started using that tool, I noticed how difficult it was for my team to get to a place where they could actually work in it all day. If it's supposed to help us manage our work and keep us on track, how can we make all of our work live there? Unfortunately, it's not enough to tell everybody, "Just use this thing now. Ta-da! No further implementation support needed." So I sat down one day and thought, my dream is to work in this tool for six hours and not have to change browser tabs. Is there a world where I could just have this platform open and get things done? How did it work for you? Because you did it, right?
Wendy: It totally worked for me. I definitely know when I'm doing well, because I'm spending a lot of time in Asana. That's my chosen platform. When I ignore Asana, I know I'm ducking my tasks. It's a very easy way for me to know how my flow state is going. Am I working in the tool, or am I ignoring it and just working out of my email? That's not productive.
Lisa: It truly is not productive. If people go to my website, goodwork.llc, I have a blog post about what it's actually like when we try to work out of our inbox. My thesis is that your inbox is not your to-do list. That's no way to live.
Wendy: It ends up being that until you have a work management system. So what made you say, "I need to make this a course"?
Lisa: I started telling people about the system and helping them set it up, and they liked it. I thought, maybe this isn't just a weird thing that works only for me. One of my ideal customer profiles is nonprofit professionals, because part of the ethos of the nonprofit sector is "do more with less." Do all the things, even though you're one person.
So I thought maybe there's a way to share this with more people and make it something they could have unlimited access to. I wanted it to be an on-demand course, with videos as bite-sized as possible, that came with everything people would need to be set up for success. That was my North Star when I was turning it into a course.
Wendy: I think it's a very successful course. Do you want to walk people through what they get? I could tell them, but I'll let you so it's not my interpretation.
Lisa: Sure. In the course we start with a little background on why it's so difficult for our brains to keep track of everything, and the challenges our modern world presents. Your work is coming from everywhere. You've got your email inbox, maybe more than one. You've got 75 browser tabs open, and you keep them open because each one has a thing you need to get to.
Wendy: Absolutely. It's a to-do item.
Lisa: Then there are sticky notes, probably at least one or two notebooks, especially if you go to conferences, or a digital notebook like OneNote. When you take your dog for a walk, you're probably listening to a podcast that's at least sometimes work-related. So you bookmark it, or use an app on your phone to say, "I'll get to that later." And we know that's where things go to never be seen again.
Wendy: Exactly.
Lisa: So our work is everywhere, and it's really difficult to access things when you need them. Any work management tool worth its salt has a very low-key feature that isn't talked about much. You may even have to dig for it, which is part of why I created the course, because folks didn't know it was something they could do. Did you know about email to create item in Asana?
Wendy: I peripherally knew, but I didn't think about how it affected my day-to-day. And let me just say, the reason I asked you on is that I want people to hear your process for thinking about their workflow. I've been using work management systems for a long time, but I wasn't thinking about everything on my plate and how to bring it into one space, which is what your whole workflow concept is about.
I not only track my work work, I also track all my caregiving work in my system. I track my household tasks. I've invited my husband into it so we can track things together, and we have his sister in there so we can track caregiving for his parents. When you describe the system, I want everybody to realize you're not just talking about a nine-to-five job. You're talking about anything you work on consistently, brought into one place so it's all visible.
Lisa: Absolutely. You can use it that way. If you feel like there are trains running through your brain all day with all the things you're supposed to do, then we might as well make a grand central station for you. That's really what the work management system is supposed to be.
So we use this humble concept of email to create item. All the demos and screen recordings in my course are based on Monday.com, and if we have time at the end we can talk about why I chose Monday. But any good system will have this feature. You toggle on email to create item, and you get a very long, unruly email address you'd never remember, something like 76 characters.
Wendy: It's very strange, yes.
Lisa: You save that as a contact in every email account you use. To your point, Wendy, it could be work stuff, life stuff, a secondary email, or a hello@ or info@ address for your business, any account where things might need attention. You save it as something meaningful, like "my business inflow" or "my business to-dos," whatever you'll remember. Then you start forwarding things to that address.
Now, fine, you can forward emails. So what? All we've done is recreate your inbox somewhere else. But so much of what you do, you do on your phone or a tablet. When you're listening to that podcast while you walk your dog and there's an insight you want to remember, you bookmark that moment and use the share button on your phone to send it to your inflow board. Or you have all those browser tabs and app-ens open. "App-en" is a new word. It's when something happens on an app.
Wendy: I love that.
Lisa: You can take that link and forward it to your inflow board. A PDF freebie you want to look at later, an article you read on your phone in the Atlantic app, a photo. I've forwarded postcards from North Texas Giving Day campaigns that I thought were very clever. I take a picture of the physical mail and send it to my inflow board and say, "I'm going to look at this in seven months when I start planning the next North Texas Giving Day campaign." What are the chances I'd ever do anything with that postcard if I saved it physically?
Wendy: Or find it again. It's going to end up in the trash because I got tired of seeing it on my desk every day.
Lisa: Exactly, it's clutter. So anything you can take a picture of, have a link for, or use the share button on, you forward to that inflow board. And again, we don't want to just recreate an unruly inbox in a new place. That's where the acronym comes in: funnel, label, optimize, work. We've funneled everything with the email to create item address. Now we label everything. This is a video podcast, but I'm not going to get into screen sharing right now. That's what the course is for.
Wendy: Right. You can go to the course and watch her do this visually.
Lisa: Please don't drive and sort. Don't vacuum and sort. That's not the kind of multitasking we want.
Wendy: But that's what I love. You teach that part of your daily work is going in and sorting everything you've sent to your to-do list, instead of having to look it up on a notepad, in the notes app, or in an AI recording. It's all sitting there because you've emailed it, and then you teach us how to sort it.
Lisa: Exactly. And we want the sorting to be really fast, so there's a method to the madness. Most good work management systems have a variety of views: Kanban boards like Trello's columns of cards, Gantt charts, table view, calendar view, a plain list. We use different views to sort items quickly. The proof is in the pudding: in the course you'll watch me sort more than 50 items that were newly added to the board in less than five minutes. It's totally manageable.
Wendy: It was amazing to watch. If you watch that part, it's hilarious. You're sitting there thinking, I have so many things on my to-do list, it's going to break my brain. And then Lisa shows you how to sort it all in five minutes.
Lisa: Then there's a multi-tiered labeling system for organizing and categorizing things, and that's where you get to customize, because the labels I need are different from the labels Wendy needs, which are different from what each listener needs. I have plenty of ideas and starter sets of categories, but you get to customize them.
Then we optimize. That's where we start adding dates and asking ourselves, how important is this really? Maybe listeners have heard of the Eisenhower matrix. We have a riff on it that I call work in 4D, the fourth dimension of your work. Are you going to do it? Decide, meaning think about it? Defer it? Or delegate it? And sometimes defer also means delete. If it's not urgent and it's not important for you yourself to do, why is it on the list?
Wendy: When was the last time you set aside real time to work on your business or nonprofit instead of in it? The Boss Table gives you that time. It's my online membership for business owners and nonprofit leaders, and it includes a monthly Boss Day: four hours of protected, focused time to finally get to the work that moves your organization forward. You'll also have me as your fractional strategic partner. Bring an idea you want to test, a decision you're weighing, or a plan you want live feedback on, and we'll work through it together. And you'll have a community of peers to ask for help, share ideas, and learn from. For-profit and nonprofit leaders sit at the same table on purpose, because they have so much to learn from each other. The first 25 members get a founding rate of $125 a month. Join us at bosslevelengaged.com/bosstable. I'd love to see you at the table.
Lisa: So we do that, and then you're ready to work. That brings you to W.
What's new is that, no matter how you feel about AI, it exists in the world now. Any work management platform you use is going to offer AI tools, and you may already be using large language models like Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT, or Gemini. I personally use Claude, but ChatGPT has a similar feature. You can train your AI to sort and organize things for you. I actually use Claude in Chrome. I've taught it my system. You tell your AI, "This is how I'm sorting things, these are the rules, this is what I want you to look for." And with Claude in Chrome, I can watch Claude do the labeling and the optimizing for me. So it's not five minutes to sort 50 items anymore. It's about 45 seconds.
Wendy: So crazy. I love it so much.
Lisa: There are other AI tools as well. I've added a video to the course that shows you how to make a funneling board just for your AI agents. Using agentic tools and processes, you can send things to that board, and the agents will iterate on them or do whatever you want, then come back to you and ask for further input. If there's a grant you want to investigate and you know an AI agent could get you 60% of the way there, you can put Claude on it, or put Chatty G on it. And I say Claude, but y'all, we all know it's Claudette.
Wendy: It's Claudette. I completely agree.
Lisa: So you get Claudette on it. People might ask, why do that in a work management tool? Why not just use your AI account? You could. But going back to Wendy's example, she's managing work with a team. Her partner is part of that team. Caregivers are part of that team. It's not wise or easy to share an AI account with someone else.
Wendy: Not interested. I've trained Claudette for me, and she doesn't need to serve anyone but me, thank you.
Lisa: You don't need to get rate limited because your partner decided to relandscape the front yard. That's a them problem, not a you problem. So that's a reason to use your AI agent inside the platform. When I really got into Claude and Cowork, I wondered, is everything I said before a fib now? Is it obsolete?
Wendy: Absolutely not.
Lisa: I really believe you still need it, because there's more searchability inside a work management platform, and you can collaborate when and if you're ready to.
Wendy: Absolutely. And one of the things your course taught me is to use the automation tools built into the platform you've chosen. I've used Asana for years, and I don't think I'd ever set up a rule or automation in it until I took your course. When I got really grooving on setting up my system using your methods, I went to Claude and said, "Here's the kind of board I want to create and what I'm trying to track. What else should I track, and what automations can I put in?" Claude came back with how it would set up my board and my automations, how a task could automatically move here, show up there, or send an email. I was like, holy cow, I didn't know I could do any of that.
So Claude helped me set it up, and now when I tell it I'm working on something specific, it can go into my work management system and reference what I have set up in the task, and use the other tools I've set up. It doesn't have to retain all of that in its memory. It can see it and work with me. I always say Claudette's my best virtual assistant. Well, she's just following the rules we've set up in my work management system.
Lisa: It's totally true. And the other nice thing is that everyone can still have their own AI account. Say you're working with contractors in your business or organization. Depending on your AI use policies, they can use their own AI to get updates and work on tasks for the project they're part of, but they have the hive mind, all the updates and context from everyone involved in the work management system.
Wendy: Absolutely. Let me roll it back a little. Say someone is listening and thinking, "I don't even have time to do the course. I'm going to jump in and try to make this happen." What's their first step?
Lisa: Obviously they have to make the email address.
Wendy: Well, first they'd have to choose a platform, and we'll come back to platforms in a minute.
Lisa: Yes. Once you have a platform, you need the email address. Then once you're in there, start looking at everything you're sending and think about the trends, the buckets of work. Then go into the template center for whatever tool it is, so you can see the different views and the different ways of organizing the same information. That might get you thinking about how to organize it so it's easy to find things and easy to quickly delegate and optimize, like adding dates. When's the next time I want to care about this? That's how I'd get started.
Wendy: So it sounds like the first step is really identifying your work buckets, because you can't choose a platform or do anything else until you've identified what you do. What are we tracking? What's the work, and what's the life stuff?
Lisa: That's a good point. Then when you start looking at platforms, you may see one comes with a two-week trial. Two weeks goes by real fast. Honestly, in the age of AI, what I would say is you don't have time not to take the course and have somebody tell you, "Do it this way." Learn the rules before you break the rules. You could literally sic your agent on those videos and have it give you the TL;DR: "She really does talk a lot. What are the nuts and bolts? Give me the rundown."
Wendy: I don't think you talk too much, but somebody else might. So you're saying sign up for the course, then send your AI through the course.
Lisa: You totally could. You could Claude-in-Chrome that stuff, or get the transcript and load it into Claude. And if you do try out a couple of different tools, absolutely use AI alongside that. Maybe you try two tools at the same time and see how they're alike or different. Ask friends and colleagues what they use.
Wendy: And you're saying use AI because AI already knows you.
Lisa: It already knows you. Even if you're new to AI and haven't trained it much, it can still give you a good summary of the core concepts and the steps. So even if you're not setting those steps up right away, you have that context when you start trying tools during their two- or three-week free trials. Ask colleagues, "Can you email to add things to your to-do list? What features do you love? What don't you like?" And obviously figure out pricing.
I built the course and did all the demos in Monday because a fair number of my operations clients are nonprofits, and Monday has a very generous nonprofit discount program. They offer 10 free licenses, and they have a few versions of their work management software. You can find out more on their website. I'm not going to give you a referral link, because you're going to get the plan for free, so there's no referral fee for me. I promise I'm not just repping for Monday.
Wendy: Monday.com is not sponsoring this episode, unfortunately.
Lisa: Not sponsoring this episode. But you get 10 free licenses, free for life, on the Pro plan, which is a solid paid plan. And you get a 70% discount on any licenses beyond those 10. That's pretty affordable, and for small to medium-sized nonprofits, you can get pretty far with 10 licenses.
Wendy: Absolutely. And there are so many other platforms, y'all. There's Trello, like you mentioned. I use Asana. I'm such a goofball: the reason I love Asana is that it literally shoots a unicorn across the screen once you've completed enough tasks. I like the little dopamine hits. I know some people use Dubsado or 17hats, which I think are a little different from what we're talking about. ClickUp is good. I've used ClickUp.
Lisa: I've heard of people using ClickUp. If it's more CRM-ish, there are pluses and minuses to that.
Wendy: Well, I use Asana as my CRM, so your work management system can be a workaround for a lot of things. It just depends on how you set it up. But definitely look into nonprofit pricing, like Lisa mentioned, because a lot of them give great rates. Most of them require you to pay for at least two seats, because the intent is for you to collaborate or delegate with someone. If you're like me and Lisa, you're paying for two seats just for yourself. But I'm able to invite my husband and others, and they usually get free access to one board. If you want to invite somebody to just one project, you can do that. There's so much you can do with these. We encourage you to play with them.
Lisa: Absolutely. And if people are feeling stuck, or they want to bring this to their team, I love doing implementation support for teams. There's a lot of value in bringing in someone to warmly demand that people use a new system, instead of someone inside the organization, who already has enough to do, being responsible for the success or failure of a new endeavor.
AI has also made it possible for me to work on projects that didn't make financial sense for me before, especially for nonprofits and small business owners. I've found efficiencies with AI in my own workflows that let me take on smaller projects and get them done more quickly, which means you, the customer, aren't waiting. It doesn't take nearly as much time to get things set up exactly the way you want, whether that's inflow boards or other shared spaces. I have some special sauce for on-demand training and support, too. So if you know an inflow board or a to-do list board is just the beginning, I'd love to talk with you and nerd out on it. It would be so fun.
Wendy: Lisa and I are always going to be able to nerd out on these things. So, Lisa, how do people find your course? Tell them where to go.
Lisa: For Nonprofit Nook listeners, I have a promo code. It's NOOK.
Wendy: Love it.
Lisa: Go to workmanagementmakeover.com. I'm sure there will be a link in the show notes. When you get there and enter that code, you'll see what a deal it is, and you'll say, "Flippin' heck yes, I have to do this."
Wendy: What is the deal? Tell them what they get.
Lisa: Usually the course sells for $197. I like to say you can turn your work life around in less time than a long lunch, and that's really true. It's about two and a half hours of content total, maybe two hours and 45 minutes now with the new AI classes. You get unlimited access; as long as the internet exists, these videos will be there for you. Nook listeners can use the discount and get the course for less than $100: $97.
Wendy: Oh my gosh, that is huge. Thank you for giving my listeners $100 off, Lisa. That's amazing.
Lisa: Absolutely. I want it to be useful, and I don't want there to be a barrier to entry. There's a great FAQ on the page. And you can find me on LinkedIn, or at my website: Good Work, not plural, no S, just goodwork.llc. My email, and maybe even my phone number, are on my LinkedIn profile. It's easy to find me.
Wendy: Thank you so much for coming on and talking about this. I know some people will listen and think, this is a promo show for her course. It's not, guys. I really want you to hear the basic principles here: have one space where you're focused on your work all day, instead of switching between tabs. Even my neurodivergent friends would agree, the more switching you do, the less you get done. So we want you focused in one place, and we're giving you suggestions for places to do that. Pay attention to the tools and what they can do for you, including automations and what AI can do to help you get set up, because setup is the hardest part. It takes the most time, but once you've done it, you're going to have a good workflow. We hope everyone gets that from this episode. Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. And guys, I'll see you next week on the next episode.
Lisa: Bye, y'all.