Make with Notion 2025: How We Built This – Community Edition (Alejandra, Dave, Jenny)

Notion’s biggest payoff for individuals and teams isn’t just smarter pages—it’s a repeatable way to turn community knowledge into practical workflow systems. Across three consultants, the through-line is that overwhelming tool choices and fast-moving AI capabilities become manageable when people share templates, compare approaches, and align on one measurable pain point at a time.

Dave Desperetes frames the shift as a “productivity renaissance” comparable to the Renaissance era: guilds created spaces for cross-trade learning, printing press scaled access to ideas, and new techniques made complex structures possible. In his case, Notion started as personal time blocking during early 2020, then expanded into tracking everything from journals to workouts and habits. Sharing his setups led to selling templates, which then turned into consulting work—made possible by a global network of creators answering questions, jumping on calls, and sharing how they built.

As clients’ needs evolved, Dave says projects moved from building workspaces to redesigning entire workflows using Notion automation and AI. The challenge became alignment: team members adopt tools at different speeds, and “building anything” isn’t the same as building the right thing. His practical framework—“labs”—starts with collecting what’s not working using Notion Forms, then consolidating ideas into a single focus area. He highlights meeting management as a recurring example: agendas may be organized, yet discussions drift toward planning instead of execution. Once the one target problem is chosen, AI blocks can recommend what to build and why, and Notion’s database builder can turn plain text into functional databases and even Mermaid diagrams that clarify relationships between systems.

Dave also emphasizes that effectiveness depends on adoption, not just construction. Teams need to understand the change and why it helps them work smarter, or the system won’t stick. He cites concrete uses: generating proposal drafts from meeting notes, and surfacing fundraising updates and blocked initiatives on investment meeting pages so teams can act on relevant information in real time. The core message is that focusing on one pain point can free up “hundreds of hours,” because it helps teams find root causes and prototype solutions instead of endlessly tweaking templates.

Alejandra Sien Vueos adds that community functions like regional guilds—especially when localization and cultural context matter. Her path began with a travel journal in 2020, then grew into a library of 70 templates shared publicly, eventually leading to Notion Ambassador status. In 2023, when Notion and Español launched, Spanish-language momentum expanded her client base across Spain and Latin America. For consultancy, she argues that discovery must be grounded in what already works, what the growth catalyst is, and what limitations—like security requirements and KPI definitions—constrain teams. Her example with O (a Spanish tech company) shows how aligning those three areas enabled a “real source of truth” in Notion: shared collaboration pages, clear action buttons, centralized metrics with agreed definitions, and real-time updates across operations, finance, and project management.

Jenny Familíaro closes the loop by treating Notion as a design tool for decision-making, not decoration. Her early work—organizing variations of copy for a Blizzard game launch—taught her that visuals can guide action. Over time, she built process dashboards and feedback trackers that make deliverables, risks, and missing requirements visible. She describes a “creative compass” approach: give teams clarity, connection, and creative freedom by making process visible through hierarchy, database relationships, timeline views, and color-coded visual cues. Jenny also credits community support for overcoming comparison anxiety while building a consulting business, arguing that structure designed with intention fuels creativity and helps clients communicate value clearly.

Together, the three stories converge on a single practical insight: community-driven learning plus disciplined problem selection turns Notion’s flexibility into systems people can actually use—and that can become the foundation of new businesses.