This ART HACK helps me build creative systems

A painting I did in 2013 changed taught me an interesting trick I use when building systems for clients today.

The subject was a woman's face and her right hand gently posed below her chin.

My apartment in Denver circa 2013. Should I have blurred my feet? Do you owe me money after looking at this?

Anyone who has attempted to recreate human anatomy on the 2D plane knows that hands are HARD.

I was painting the hand over and over and over and over and over again, trying to get it right.

Finally I consulted a friend who was a much more skilled painter than me.

She watched me struggle for a minute and just said: "Turn everything upside down."

I flipped my reference photo and I flipped my canvas.

After that, the painting ✨unlocked ✨

I stopped seeing a woman's fingers and started seeing the actual shapes and colors I was trying to replicate. My brain couldn't pattern-match to "hand" anymore.

This painting still lives in my kitchen and I show it off proudly to guests, 13 years later!

I show this to guests to remind them I went to Art School so they know how insufferable I am.

SO what does this have to do with systems? Sometimes I turn my computer screen upside down when I'm building a Zapier automation! (I kid.)

What I mean to say is: its easy to focus on what we think a platform is for, we miss what it can actually do.

Last month I was working with a client who does brand work.

She has an onboarding questionnaire she shares with new clients in a Google Doc. The back-and-forth commenting feature is integral to how she works with clients.

She ALSO loved what Dubsado could do with forms (beautifully branded, automated reminders when clients ghost their own onboarding, etc) but did not want to lose the Google Doc features.

My first instinct: build the questionnaire in Dubsado because I'm biased :D

But what about the commenting back and forth?????? We can't lose that!

So I turned the painting upside down.

What if the Dubsado form wasn't a questionnaire at all?

What if it was a checklist? Then we could combine the two tools together, into a seamless experience for the client 😍

So that's what we built!

The Dubsado form has zero questions - only check boxes and instructions.

It looks like this

Not to brag, but I also created automations that CREATE the Google Folder, the Google Doc, and the Slack channel/invite as part of the Client Onboarding

Her clients gets the branded, automated Dubsado experience AND the functionality of the Google Doc.

Once you understand what a tool is actually made of (the real mechanics underneath) you can stop seeing it as what it's labeled and start seeing it as what it could be.

That's a huge part of what I do. I know these tools at a molecular level. And I know how to flip them upside down when your business needs something the manual absolutely did not account for.