Two Growing Brands, Twenty Team Members, and a Slack Thread That No One Can Find.
CE Learning Systems runs two brands under one roof, both focused on education courses, while speaking to different audiences. They had a full weekly event calendar and an ever-expanding contractor network. By most measures, it was thriving.
But from the inside, it felt like organized chaos held together with Slack messages and outdated spreadsheets.
The Problems Many Opportunities
The two Operations Directors, Brenda and Mary, were doing everything they could. But the company had grown faster than the systems supporting it. What had worked when the team was small and scrappy had stopped working, and suddenly the cracks became impossible to ignore.
There was no standard way to do things. No single place to go for information. Processes lived in people's heads, in email threads, and in spreadsheets saved to one person's personal computer. If that person left, the knowledge and work went with them.
Leadership also had no way to see what was happening across departments. Opportunities fell through the cracks.
The team was capable, the systems weren't.
When Brenda reached out, she described it as needing help with ClickUp automations and workflows. That was part of it. What CELS really needed was an operational foundation built to support a 20-person business that was going to keep growing.
Laying The Foundation
Before we started building, we did a deep-dive diagnostic to understand how the business flowed: how work moved across departments, where it broke down, and what team members needed to keep projects moving forward.
From there, we mapped an org chart, connecting each part of the business to the person who would own it.
This gave clear responsibility to each role, and clarity how each department would function inside their new ClickUp hierarchy.
Marie Kondo Would be Proud
A Place for Everything
For each department, we built a process library and handbook. Knowledge that lived in people's heads now lived somewhere anyone on the team could have access to.
We created standard views and processes, so everyone sees the same structure without reinventing the wheel for each project.
And it looked good.
We used brand colors throughout and created aesthetically pleasing layouts; because a system that's nice to look at is one the team will use.
A Marketing Team with a Plan
The marketing calendar went from reactive to structured. CELS was planning marketing week to week, often reacting to whatever seemed the most urgent in the moment.
We built dedicated planning spaces for every platform, with content drafting, scheduling, and a quarterly and annual calendar for webinars and events. Their talented team now plans 3 to 6 months ahead.
Live Webinars, Chaos-Free
Impact CE hosts several live professional education webinars every week. For each one, speakers need to be scheduled and briefed. Moderators confirmed. Attendees registered. Marketing planned.
The event coordinator was managing it all through emails and comments, and it was a scramble to keep up.
Now every event runs through a defined pipeline.
The contractor directory put every speaker's specialties, availability, and rates in one place, so booking the right person is easy.
The coordinator sees event statuses at a glance. Marketing is automatically tagged when it’s time to step in. Follow up with speakers & contractors is intentional. And every workshop follows the same standard process, every time.
A System Adapted to the Team, Gets Adopted by the Team
After the initial build came the adoption phase. When teams are given a new system, reality doesn't always match what was designed on paper.
We spent the next few weeks understanding how the team used the new systems. We adjusted as we went, refining based on feedback, and adapted the system specifically for them, to match how they work.
And in this case, the adoption phase turned into the expansion phase, as we built more systems, more efficiency, and a 3-month engagement turned into 11 months of operational upgrades & support.
⭐Don't Just Take My Word For It
“We were barely scratching the surface when we reached out to Rachael for some guidance on a project. Rachael immediately became a valuable partner in mapping, building and implementing systems that we can carry forward, and use every day! No regrets, we wish we would’ve found Rachael sooner!”
“She’s been able to translate the complicated pieces of our business into actionable items on ClickUp, making it easier for teams to communicate in streamlined ways. Our updated systems have us in an awesome place to scale up going forward.”
What CELS Looks Like Today
Two growing brands, twenty team members, and a system that brings it all together.
Marketing plans quarters, not weeks. Events move through a pipeline the coordinator can see at a glance. New team members onboard into documented processes instead of picking things up by asking around.
Now, as the business continues to grow, the backend will grow with them! 🎉
Yes, Your Business is Different From Theirs
Maybe you don't run weekly webinars or manage a full team roster. But if any part of reading this felt familiar, if you recognized the feeling of holding too much in your head, of having a capable team without the structure to let them prove it, I'd love to hear about it.
Click below and let’s chat. About where you are at. And what might help that!
