Ops & Strategy for Thought Leaders & Changemakers
You've written the books, built the courses, run the workshops, and booked the stages. There might be a team of contractors around you: a designer, an editor, a social media manager, a VA, a publicist, an agent... or you might be doing a lot of it on your own.
What's usually missing is the person who owns making all those pieces fit together and ensuring that they ladder up to the business you wanted to build in the first place, the second you started putting pen to paper.
That's where we come in.
We work with authors, speakers, course creators, and other changemakers in the gap between needing more than a monthly advisor or coach and less than a full-time hire, and our job is to own the strategy and run the operations that get you back where you belong: sharpening and growing the ideas that built your business in the first place.
After seven years of working with thought leaders-turned-entrepreneurs, we understand that you're not the average business owner... and our frameworks reflect the dual focus on revenue and impact, from top-line strategy to in-the-weeds execution.
We are more than advisors -- we're partners, scoped to wherever you are right now.
Three Ways To Work Together
Not every business needs the same kind of support, so we’ve developed three paths that reflect how we commonly work with thought leaders and changemakers:
Operations & Strategy Partnership
Ongoing partnership for businesses with a team and looking for someone to own operations and strategy.
Operations & Strategy Diagnostic
One-time diagnostic ending in a road map for businesses looking to enhance operations and strategy.
Project Management Sprint
Bounded projects for teams needing a manager to create and lead a strategy-driven plan.
learn more about each:
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This is a core, ongoing relationship, built for thought-leader businesses that have outgrown a monthly advisor or coach but aren't ready for a full-time operations hire. You keep your team of contractors around content and delivery; we'll lead their management, and work with you to develop what's missing.
The ops side covers a task management system, SOPs, and a weekly standing meeting we prepare and facilitate. We also lead ad hoc process development and troubleshooting as it comes up.
The strategy side runs on our Binary Stars framework, built to balance revenue and impact. Through it, we generate a living strategic plan, a monitoring calendar, and ongoing KPI ownership and advising. We also include protected Founder Sounding Board sessions where new ideas get pressure-tested against strategy, because we've never met a founder short on ideas!
We work on retainer for these partnerships, set by a scope customized to you, and anchored to deliverables and complexity. Our partner clients usually end up between $2,500–$5,000, depending on scope.
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Sometimes, what you need before you need partnership is an honest read. The Operations & Strategy Diagnostic meets you where you're at to deliver a current-state assessment across task management, SOPs, meeting cadence, and strategy or KPI ownership.
A diagnostic usually unfolds over anywhere from 2-4 weeks, and results in a full read of your published work and core content, a gap analysis against organizations doing this well, and a 90-day roadmap for what to build first.
The Operations & Strategy Diagnostic is billed at a $3500 flat fee, and includes a monthly support call for 90 days following deliverable handoff.
Note that Operations & Strategy Partnership retainers build this diagnostic period into the first month of engagement.
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Sprint engagements are perfect for authors and creators looking for time-limited project management support of initiatives that expand their impact, like book launches or program build-outs, but who don't need ongoing partnership. We handle planning and ongoing management according to three stages:
Prelaunch maps the plan to a timeline, selects the key performance indicators that will help us evaluate project success, and aligns the team, calendar, and resources. Active Launch comprises the live window, where we're working the plan, putting out fires in realtime, and managing toward success. Postlaunch debriefs results against the success conditions we selected, and a conversation about what's next.
We direct the plan, the coordination, and the problem-solving; in many instances we can also provide hands-on logistics and execution support through a team of vetted contractors, disclosed up front so you always know who's doing what. Throughout a Sprint, we also maintain a client portal updated with a live dashboard that keeps the Revenue and Impact numbers that matter to you current, so you're never guessing where things stand.
We run one Sprint at a time, so it never competes with our retainer clients for attention.
use the “+” to expand the menu and learn more about each offer!
How We Work
Two things set us apart: a deep understanding of how thought leaders and changemaker-led businesses work, and a deep commitment to excellence in project management and operations.
Our proprietary Binary Stars framework conceptualizes revenue and impact as two interrelated goals -- and we know your business can't succeed without both. Regardless of which of the three paths above take you to us, we'll diagnose and track your goals across both areas, and tie them to a strategy you can actually understand and act on.
In other words… we want you living in that orange box!
How We Get You There
Our roots are in project management, and it shows in how our clients experience our work. Caroline Horste, our principal consultant, is a fierce advocate for project management excellence, and holds an MBA, a PMP, and is a proud Asana Ambassador while holding a Workflow certification. She has also served as the Vice President for Professional Development in her local PMI chapter since 2023.
Every engagement begins with a definition of strategy tailored to your thought leadership. From there, strategy filters into operations that run through one visible, shared tracking system, pulled from a working list of about 50 possible Revenue and Impact KPIs, narrowed to suit your work and goals.
From there, the client portal, featuring a live dashboard, stays current throughout the engagement, so you always have an honest, up-to-date read on where things stand, without digging through a task board or waiting on a status call.
Proof Points
One client ran her business from an email inbox and a single spreadsheet. Since working together, she's hired a team, taken a three-week unplugged retreat, released a full course portfolio, and doubled her revenue goals… all while spending less time in meetings than when she started.
Another client engaged us to lead a full book launch team (a publicity firm, an agent, an in-house design team, an editor, and an events outreach lead) while still keeping the work off his plate. We kept him in one meeting per week and protected the rest of his time for writing -- and still hit bestseller status.
Get Started
For all three paths -- Partnership, Diagnostic, and Sprint -- we'll start with a discovery call. We're as invested as you are in making sure we're a great fit for each other, and that the path you're on fits where you're going.
We'd love to start with a conversation and see where our work could take us together.