Notion Mastery Review: Learning Notion for Business & Life from Marie Poulin
If you’re serious about using Notion as the backbone of your business, you'll want to go deeper than just the basics and Marie Poulin’s Notion Mastery course is a fantastic deep-dive into the practical application of Notion’s many functionalities.
Going way beyond the basics, Notion Mastery is a practical, project-based walkthrough of the many applications for Notion inside your business. Throughout the course, you work through each step to build out your own Notion homebase, create complex databases, and even learn some of the more complex formulas that really unlock Notion’s potential.
In this blog, I’ll be sharing an honest review of the Notion Mastery course from the student’s perspective and giving my thoughts on whether you should consider enrolling in the course as well.
What is Notion Mastery by Marie Poulin?
More than just a self-paced course, Notion Mastery is a practical project-based program that walks you from foundations to fancy formulas inside of Notion as you build out your custom workspace to manage every aspect of your life & business. Aimed specifically as solo business owners and small teams, you’ll progress from Notion novice to mastery in this hands-on program. In addition to learning pretty much everything you could want to know about Notion, you also built your business systems along the way!
You’ll also learn about project management and Marie’s particular approach to organizing projects. Plus there’s a supportive community, Q&A calls, workshops on topics ranging from Notion deep-dives to capacity planning.
What’s included in the program?
Notion Mastery is a very robust program but is broken down neatly into 4 core modules:
Hello Notion
Where you’ll learn all the basics of the Notion workspace and how to set up your sidebar ready to build out your workspace.
Notion Essentials
Building upon your foundational Notion skills you’ll start using Notion to build out core practical pages.
Notion Dashboards
Next up you’ll learn how to manage and manipulate your data as you design the dashboards for your workspace.
Notion Zen Master
Finally, you’ll streamline and optimize your Notion workspace with more advanced features and applications.
In addition to this action-focused curriculum you’ll also get instant access to:
Ongoing live trainings, workshops, and events including access to their entire training library
Office hours twice a month to ask any questions, see examples, and trouble-shoot your work
Online community in Circle to get your questions answered and connect with other Notion lovers
Solves database containing a growing library of walk-throughs and answers to complex or tricky student-requested questions and scenarios
Formula Fundamentals: a mini course that teaches you how to work with Notion's database formulas feature
Weekly Review Sessions to review your work, update your project progress and plan your weeks ahead
Template library with examples, and use cases from a variety of industries and niches
12 months of free updates and access to the community
How much is Notion Mastery?
The full price for Notion Mastery is $799 USD.
There are also two payment plans available: 2 payments of $419 USD or 3 payments of $280 USD.
No matter which option you choose you get 12 months access to all content, office hours, live events, and community support with an option to renew access after the first year for $79 USD per quarter.
Who is going to love Notion Mastery?
While Notion Mastery does cover everything from truly foundational Notion knowledge to much more advanced applications, I do think there are specific business owners who are going to be a better fit for the program. In particular, if you’ve tried out a lot of different project management systems or planners to manage your business and struggled to create a system to manage your business I think you’ll love Marie’s approach since she teaches so much about the actual planning process as well.
I’d also encourage you to test out using Notion before enrolling in the program as, like any tool, it’s beloved by some and not so much by others. Notion is more of an “empty canvas” than you may be used to, which is great since you can build almost anything you want, but does require having a clear plan for what you want to create to get started.
Additionally, you will need to be fairly self-motivated to truly get the most out of Notion Mastery as there isn’t necessarily built-in accountability, though you can definitely engage in the group and live calls to help progress through the content.
Areas for improvement
While the content is top-notch and the community is very welcoming, I personally haven’t been able to engage in any of the calls or live support due to timezone and availability issues. However, the team is very good about sharing replays quickly after calls so you can catch up if you aren’t able to join live.
Something else to be aware of is that the entire program is built out in Notion (which is amazing to see how they’ve built it!) but does mean you have to swap over to the Notion Mastery account when you want to access the content. It’s also quite heavy on text-only content with only a few videos so if reading isn’t your best learning style you might want to consider that as well.
Who is Marie Poulin?
Marie Poulin is a Notion Ambassador and Notion Certified Consultant and one of the largest figures in the Notion world. She and her program have been endorsed by Notion’s Founder Ivan Zhao.
Marie has used Notion for her permaculture diploma and now to run her Notion focused business and has spoken in length about how Notion’s layout, format and functionality works particularly well for her ADHD brain.
She also hosts a fantastic YouTube channel where you can get a sense of her teaching style with her many Notion videos.
Conclusion
While Notion is very user-friendly, it’s a robust tool with a lot of potential so if you want to speed up your learning curve or dive head-first into your Notion career learning from an expert like Marie Poulin inside Notion Mastery is a great idea. Personally, I’ve loved my experience inside the program and while I started out with a good understanding of the platform I’ve picked up tons of tricks to improve my processes and strategies to optimize my planning and project management workflows. If you’re serious about using Notion inside your business or becoming a Notion Consultant, I highly recommend enrolling in the program!
FAQs
Will Notion always be free?
From everything that Notion has shared publically, it seems like the free basic plan will remain free of charge. Teamspaces, advanced sharing and AI functionality require the paid plan but all the core functionality is available on the free plan.
Can I use Notion with AI?
In 2023, Notion released their Notion AI which is available on the paid plans and is a helpful content tool that can generate text based on your prompts and existing data.
Is Notion for Mac only?
While Notion works beautifully on Mac systems it’s also fully compatible with Windows as well. The new Notion Calendar app is available on web, Mac, Windows, and iOS.
How realistic is it to have a Notion career or business?
While Notion does regularly hire talented staff you don’t have to work for Notion to build a successful career or business around Notion. From Notion consulting to selling Notion templates, there are many ways to earn a living using your Notion skills!
