Work
Six jobs every small business does, and a simple way to decide which tool handles each one.
Open your laptop and count the places your business lives. A notes app for ideas. A Google Doc for drafts. Canva for graphics. An inbox full of receipts. Three browser tabs you’re afraid to close. Each one made sense when you added it. Together, they make it hard to find anything.
More tools rarely solve this. A clearer structure does. Before you choose apps, decide what jobs your business does. Then give each job one home.
The six jobs
Nearly everything a small business does falls into one of these:
| Job | What it covers | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Create | Products, articles, templates, designs | What am I making this week? |
| Market | Pinterest, Instagram, newsletter, search | How will people find it? |
| Sell | Product pages, checkout, pricing | How do they buy it? |
| Deliver | Downloads, access, onboarding | How do they receive it? |
| Support | Customer questions, fixes, updates | What happens when someone needs help? |
| Measure | Signups, sales, saves, clicks | What’s working? |
Your apps should serve these jobs. When it works the other way around, the app’s layout quietly becomes your business structure, and you end up organizing around features you never needed.
Give each job one home
Go down the list and write the one place each job lives. A simple setup could look like this:
- Create: Notion for planning, Canva for design.
- Market: a content calendar inside that same Notion workspace.
- Sell and Deliver: Gumroad.
- Support: one email address, with a folder for customer messages.
- Measure: a single spreadsheet you update once a week.
Your list will look different, and that’s fine. The point is that every type of information has an address. When a new idea arrives, you already know where it goes.
Test every new tool with one sentence
Before adding anything, finish this sentence: “I need this because it will help me ___.” Fill the blank with one of the six jobs and a specific result. If you can’t, the tool can wait. A new app can feel like progress for a week and then become one more dashboard to check.
Keep three lists: Now, Next, Later
Structure handles where things live. You still need a way to decide what gets your attention. Three lists cover it:
- Now: what you’re working on this week. Keep it short.
- Next: what comes after, so you’re never wondering where to start.
- Later: good ideas with a place to wait. An idea can be excellent and still belong here.
Later does a lot of quiet work. Without it, every idea feels like it needs attention today.
Don’t reorganize everything tonight
The tempting move is a full weekend overhaul. Skip it. Write your six homes on a sticky note, then move things there as you naturally use them. A file you open on Tuesday gets moved on Tuesday. In a few weeks, most of your business will have found its place without a single marathon session.
Your next step
Write the six jobs on a page and fill in one home for each. If two jobs share a tool, that’s fine. If one job has four tools, that’s where to simplify first.
Want more ideas like this? The Letter brings you one practical idea at a time for building a business that leaves room for the rest of your life.
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