How Russmedia Scaled Team Impact Through Automations

Meet The Company

Russmedia Equity Partners is a private equity firm specialising in the acquisition, management, and operation of profitable niche businesses across Online Marketplaces, Consumer Apps, and SaaS sectors.

Founded in 2017, Russmedia has grown into a powerhouse with over 600 digital experts and a portfolio generating $200 million+ in group revenue. Their focus on maintaining strong market positions and sustainable margins has enabled them to achieve an impressive 31.8% IRR on majority investments, making them a leader in their field.

With a team of 14, Russmedia’s operations are centred around two pillars: the dealflow part, responsible for sourcing new potential target companies and the portfolio part which provides ongoing support to companies after a successful investment.

The Challenge

When we started our engagement, Russmedia Equity Partners already had a Notion System up and running and about half their team using Notion occasionally with a few power users.

Their setup was a good start, but couldn’t keep up with their high demands for efficiency and impact. In a fast paced, high pressure environment like Private Equity, every minute counts – and any minute lost to unnecessary friction in their digital workspace hurt tremendously.

The three key issues that we had to solve as quickly as possible were:

• Database Creep
• Core workflows remaining in inefficient legacy tools
• Too much time spent on manual, repetitive tasks

How we structured the Notion Consulting Process

The team at Russmedia already had a working Notion system and clear priorities, which meant that we could bypass the traditional audit phase and start with implementations from Day 1.

In order to deliver rapid and meaningful improvements without interrupting their day-to-day operations, we used our Seven Day Sprint Model.

Here’s how this Notion Consulting approach looks like in practice:

1. Weekly Sprint Cycles: We implemented weekly 30-minute check-in calls with key stakeholders. These focused sessions allowed us to align on progress and select 2-3 priorities for the upcoming sprint. This agile approach ensured we were always working on the most impactful tasks.
2. Immediate Impact: By focusing on short sprints, we were able to deliver meaningful workflow improvements from week one. This eliminated any lengthy ramp-up and helped to further increase buy-in from the team.
3. Real-time Issue Tracking: Throughout the project, we kept an Issue Tracker in Notion to coordinate priorities and give everyone on the team an easy way to highlight bottlenecks or add feature requests.
4. Direct Communication Channels: We set up a common Slack channel to establish a direct line of communication with the entire team. This allowed us to provide real-time updates on changes and quickly address any questions or roadblocks.
5. Iterative Improvement: In typical agile fashion, we continuously improved one area after another over the course of 2 months and 9 individual sprints. This iterative process made sure that we could quickly test new solutions and adjust based on short feedback cycles, making sure that the final result precisely met Russmedia’s needs.

Our Seven Day Sprint Model is tailored for fast-paced environments like private equity, where every minute counts. It’s perfect for teams that already have a Notion system that generally works, since it doesn’t interrupt the day-to-day operations.

By combining short sprints, direct communication, and continuous improvement, we were able to transform Russmedia’s Notion workspace in a short time while helping every team member to transition to the new system.

Implemented Solutions

Over the course of the engagement, we were able to resolve the three key issues the team was facing previously.

Database Creep

One of the most common issues with Notion Workspaces for team is database creep.

As Notion usage grows, so does the number of databases that are created by the team. At first, this seems fine and simply the normal way of building Notion. But soon, the workspace starts to clutter up, things are falling through the cracks and the time spent trying to find relevant information increases exponentially.

The team at Russmedia was already very disciplined in their Notion usage, but even there, database creep had set in.

To resolve this, we simplified their core database structure, connected related data and built automated dashboards.

The Deal Team had built most of the workspace, so they had a great setup for their dealflow, but it was isolated and didn’t connect with all the other elements they had to track in their system:

• Tasks
• Projects
• Docs

In the redesigned Notion Workspace, each of these core data pieces has a single, global database and is connected to all other elements.

That means you can open up any deal and immediately see

• All open tasks for this deal
• Any bigger projects that impact the deal
• Any docs, meeting notes, brainstorms etc. that are relevant for the deal

Workflows in Legacy Tools

The team had decided to go all in with Notion, but several key workflows remained in Legacy tools.

Among these core workflows was the quarterly planning and goal setting.

Previously, the team kept track of OKRs in an excel sheet. We moved the process into Notion and connected the new OKR databases with the already streamlined action system of projects and tasks.

Not only does this system make it easier to update and review OKRs – but every team member can easily see how their day-to-day tasks contribute to the bigger goals.

This is one of Notion’s superpowers and an easy win for any Notion-first company.

Automating Manual Tasks To Reclaim Time

With the optimised structure ready and all core workflows moved into Notion, we were ready to help the team free up considerable time by automating recurring manual tasks. We automated a lot of workflows, but two use cases stood out in particular:

• Weekly Task Reminders
• Automated Meeting Follow-Ups

The first automation is one of my personal favourites that I recommend to any team doing project management in Notion.

It’s a weekly summary of all your upcoming and overdue tasks for the week – sent either via email or posted to Slack, Discord or whatever main communication channel your team uses.

This automation is particularly powerful to help boost Notion adoption early on in projects.

In an ideal world, users would regularly check Notion and their personal dashboard to see all open tasks, but until this becomes a habit, sending out task reminders is a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

The second automation ties into Russmedia’s heavy focus on relationships and meetings. Internally, it’s easy to keep track of meeting notes and next actions, but external attendees can’t access the same information.

In order to bridge that gap, we built an automation that takes meeting notes, summarises them using AI and then creates a draft follow-up email. What’s more, every external attendee receives a list of any action items that were assigned to them during the call.

That way, external attendees receive a relevant follow-up without any additional work for the team.

Results and Impact

Here’s how our Notion Consulting Project impacted Russmedia’s operations:

• Easy to navigate personal dashboards, significantly reducing context switching and the need to search for relevant tasks
• Single Source of Truth for all documents and processes
• Core operation workflows like deal sourcing are fully integrated with the rest of the system
• Instead of having to spend hours searching for information, the right document automatically appears in the context where you need it