How Wingspan Integrated Marketing Took On More Clients and Created Clarity Using Our ClickUp System

We would be doing our daily processes, and then Suddenly we had 20 communities, 50 communities, 60 communities. We would have to onboard great websites for create clatter for so major projects happening. And it was like, how are we supposed to allocate this and get this out and move this, all of this happening simultaneously? We have to do it. So how do we do it? We will continue to grow, but we are very intentional about who is in our company. So we're not quick to, hey, let's just hire a bunch in. We had to make room for without being able to expand our building. So that's when we were like, it would be great to have a platform that didn't feel like, you know, a collection of folders we were assigning to people and saying, hey, you do your work and we'll figure this out over a communication channel. We wanted a flow. Zen Pilot took us and, like, had us soaring. We were like, wait. We didn't realize how much more we could be capable of. Zen Pilot made us feel like we were the only client.

Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special Zen Pilot story. My guest today is Emily Turi, operations specialist and Wingspan Integrated Marketing. Emily, how are you doing today?

I'm wonderful. How are you?

I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Just got back from the Easter break, which kind of spoils the time when we're recording this. But I'm feeling pumped, energized, and really, really happy to be interviewing you today. Heard great things about you from our team. I'll admit, I even reviewed some of the, you know, one or two chats between you and Maggie from our team, and the energy was just so good. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. And, well, the purpose of our conversation is twofold. First of all, as with a lot of our connections here at zenpilot, I want to get your best tips for people in a similar role in, you know, in operations to help our audience improve their operations, which is the whole entire purpose of what we do. Second, I want to talk about Wingspan and Zen Pilot working together and how that went from your perspective. As I recall, you're also the ClickUp champion on your team, is that right?

I am, yep.

Okay, so I want to dig a little bit into that as well into your role as the click up champion. And just the whole experience and the whole story of working with us, but that in a moment. First icebreaker question. What is the most fun thing you've done this year thus far?

Oh, dear. That's a very Good question. The most fun thing that I've done this year, like, wow, where are you in April? There's so many things to think about. Yeah, right. I don't know. Our family has been growing. My mom went from. We were saying the other day on Easter break, she went from two grandkids to nine in the course of about a year and a half, it felt like. So I feel like there's been so much excitement around growing children that that has actually taken up most of my excitement. And I'm a very proud aunt, so that has been very fun for me.

What's your favorite game to play with the kids? Asking for a friend. I've got a two year old always looking for good game ideas because we.

Have everything from newborn to a 16 year old. Yes, it's very fun. Everything from Beanie Babies to pickleball. So that's always very fun. We love Jenga. Giant Jenga is a winner for all. It gets a kick out of the babies. They laugh when it all falls and then the older kids get really excited to just keep building it. So it's a good one.

That is such a tough audience, right, to go the whole. But yeah, I can imagine how that might be super fun for all ages, literally.

That's great.

Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm glad I asked. This is already a little piece of intel that I'll be taking. I'm going to talk with my wife and my son, Jay and Jenga. How about it? Awesome. Okay. So for the first part of this conversation, I wanted to ask about your role, what you do at Wingspan? Like, you know, when people ask you at a party or otherwise, what do you do? How do you usually respond?

Well, I started at Wingspan. It's so funny because I drove. You know, we all experienced 2020 in different ways. And so I started from a company and there was a lot of layoffs. And I actually came from digital marketing, a manager at a shift manager at Chick Fil A, if you're familiar with. And yeah, and then I went into cyber security for training, like to train about our software product over there in another state. And due to, you know, layoffs, I was kind of in a phase where I was like, all right, what do I do next? I drove by this beautiful white building, saw the name Wingspan on the front, very interested. And I was like, wow, what is this all about? Had no idea that it would become a passion and a love and, you know, a job that I. It's hard to call a job. You know, it's very rare. And a blessing that I can. I have trouble calling it just a job because I get to work with really great people and pursue passions that I didn't realize could be put into place in a workplace environment, you know. And so I started as an account coordinator. Our company started very small. Brad Caldwell, our CEO, started, you know, by himself and then with just a couple other people, and they started doing digital advertising on screens and government facilities around the city. He brought his. He brought his sister over from. From where she was working, and suddenly we went from a few digital screens to him hiring up to us now having over 200 communities as we have a niche in senior living, real estate, restaurants, and more. And we are all across the country and international now. So we. And that started, you know, just less than 10 years ago. So we went from so small to a group of 20 people and, you know, covering, you know, all over the country and international. And so my job as the account coordinator started as really kind of being that liaison between what does the client want? And then, you know, moving it through our team to bring out the deliverables and supporting them with what information we can send and receive and just making sure both our clients were taking care of just personally, and then how we can foster and take care of their. Their brand, their company, their service, whatever, you know, that was. And that includes what work we do for them. So whether that's creative deliverables, digital marketing, so advertising, the websites, you know, building from the ground up and then maintaining them, all of that stuff. So I had a really good opportunity my first year and a half working in the account coordinator role. So I really got down into the weeds of who our clients are and then what our teams do, like every individual. That's the wonderful thing about working for. Working with a small group is that I had the opportunity to get to know both the employee and the person and then how their mind works when they're doing whatever they, you know, whatever they're passionate and talented about. So that's how I started. And then we realized that as much as we wanted to say everything was working smooth sailing and perfect, we realized we were growing faster than, you know, our company size. Obviously, we went from, you know, the small clientele to very quickly growing into, you know, over 200, you know, borderline 300 different clients, for all intents and purposes, accounts. Oh, yeah. And so what we realized is we. We did a lot of things the same way or similar ways, but putting it into tangible processes where we could say we have, this is exactly what we do. And this is the way we do it either every time. And this is how we adjust. If that's not working, that didn't really exist for us. So. And I was very lucky that we went through. I got to go through the ebbs and flows. I think it's a wonderful opportunity. I had to go through the ebbs and flows of the size of our company being growing and then shrinking a little bit. You know, people going their separate ways. And then. So I got to navigate having few and then having a lot on our team it felt like to work around. And my president presented the opportunity. She said, I would really like to see how you could work on the operation side of things. And so triaging everything that comes in or most things that come in from our clients and then navigating how our teams are working. And it literally married perfectly into. I could not make this up into our transition into ClickUp. We went to from a different platform where it felt like we just, you know, we're constantly manualing, like, oh, we'll adjust from here. Adjust from here. And I got to pursue this new. I'm. I wake up every day excited to do what I do, and I get to, you know, we get to receive the, you know, client request and everything everyone needs. And then I get to work with our teams on established processes now. So now I get to. With the partnership of our vice president of operations, we get to see the internal flow of things and how that's taking care of both our company and our client and providing opportunity for growth that we are excited to see. So hopefully that helps give a little overview of.

Of course. Yeah. So you answered one question that I had on my mind. You know, looking at your trajectory through Wingspan. I was looking at this account coordinator role previously and now operations specialist. But I feel like the common element there is, like, being this liaison. Right. Helping coordinate everything. And that is. I think there's a lot of value in this, and if somebody can do that, well, that can really grease the wheels of an organization. So I wanted to pick your brain about that for a moment here before we start talking, you know, Zenpilot and all of that in a second. And ClickUp. Definite. We do like to talk and think. Click up on this channel. Tell me, you know, for people in a similar role, you know, operations specialist or in operations in general or generally, just, you know, trying to be a great liaison and trying to make all of the elements connect in a logical way. What. What is your number one tip to succeed in. In operations in this kind of role.

And this is something that I definitely had to get better at pretty quickly, but like over time is that we have both the wonder. It's, it's, it's the most beautiful gift to have, but it also is something you have to mitigate is that you have both external and internal voices, personalities. I mean, everyone is a different human. So in my role, especially if you are in any sort of operations role, whether it's external, internal, it's getting to hear everything, understand everything, but then take it to make it the best of everything. So, you know, everyone's brain is operating differently. And especially when you are either working for small company or you're handling a lot of the operations, whether on your own or with a small partnership, something like that, you're getting a lot of, well, I do it this way, but I like it better this way. And then you have some clients, you know, they want different things and so they have different personalities. And so it's a wonderful thing to get to hear all of this, but then you get to take it in. My biggest tip, I wanted to please everyone. I wanted everybody happy with exactly what they wanted. And the real, you know, it actually ends up slowing down things and actually making blocks in the road. When you're mitigating, well, this makes this person happy. But if we do it this way, it'll, you know, be harder on this team or, you know, so taking all of that information and being able to, hey, I understand you, I hear you. And then coming to a compromise and saying, hey, sometimes you're gonna have to adjust a little bit. We're all adjusting, but this is what's going to serve both of you together. You know, often it's usually like two teams working together simultaneously. But you know, whether it's creative, our web team, digital team, creative team, we're moving that into a place where we can marry everybody's feelings together and marry, you know, all that and then making sure that both our client and our processes are both taken care of. So that's a long winded way of saying take everything with a grain of salt. You can't please everyone.

Right? Yeah, that's very true. I think that that's a challenge that a lot of people can relate to. Honestly, I wanted to dig a little deeper here. Actually, you already started alluding to this, but I would love to get a little bit more in terms of what are the specifics of how you communicate, you know, this whole situation of compromise. What I mean is, do you have specific phrases you go to? Do you Prefer to break this news, you know, it has to be a meeting, or it's better via email or in ClickUp, for example. Have you got anything there?

Yeah, because I do want to say that the biggest part of you can't please everyone is, but you can help everyone. And so at first, before, you know, we really had strong processes in place, and we were adjusting those. It was just a lot of back and forth, and it was often done in the middle of projects. So we would be in a project, and we were really addressing a greater change that we could have made, which was wonderful, but it would stop in the middle of a project. And so what we started to do is implement the, hey, make sure you get down how you're feeling and how that's affecting you and how you feel like it may be slowing down, or on the other hand, something that you've noticed could really help in the future. And so maybe you do note it in that during that time that we're processing and saying, hey, this reminded me of this, and that's fine. But then saying, all right, it's. It's kind of the team collaborative version of take this offline. Like, you can make a note of it. And then my opportunity being, you know, the operations specialist, and then working with our vice president of operations, we said, then bring it to us. Give us your notes. And then we take the feedback and are able to hear it from other teams and saying, hey, how do you feel like this is working for you? And maybe they say, hey, this is working great. And saying, well, we think this is a way we could make it better. So I think the biggest difference for both our company's culture, our processes, and the way our clients are being taken care of is starting that offline approach. So saying, we want to hear it all. We want to hear how we can be better. Give us your notes. Not in the middle of a project, so make a note.

Right.

And then let's take this out. And so we often have, like, you know, individual huddles. And then I get to brainstorm with our. With my. My partner in crime and operations, and we get to see what kind of marries these things and how we can turn it into a larger process. So taking it out of projects and making it into a process.

Okay, I. I hear you. So it's almost like, you know, there's a time to fly the plane. Tell me if this metaphor makes sense.

Perfect.

But there's like, there's a time to fly the plane, and there's a time to. I don't know, switch out the engine, improve the process, so to speak. That's what I'm getting from what you're sharing here. Super cool. And I feel like we're getting really close to the topic of processes and improving them. So I think at this point I would love to start probing you a little bit about the Zen pilot story. And I want to do a classic Disney movie. Life was like this before or I think on Twitter everybody says it's like the Pixar storytelling framework. Never mind. There was this person called Emily. Every day she acts. But then this, in this case partnership with zenpilot came in and so some stages kind of in between happened and now life is why, you know, like a different state. I hope that that's understandable. So tell me, you know, what was life like before our two companies met each other?

Yes. So I am very lucky that I walked into a very rare and good type of like, group of people that we all wanted to work together and they wanted, you know, we had a general flow of, hey, this is how we are going. We, how we receive our stuff from our clients, our requests, their needs. This is how we are looking at their information. This is what we need to do. So we would take that and we would work together. But everything felt like when you're on, you use the plane, which is perfect for wingspan and I'm going to ironically move to a train. So, you know, work. We're, we're on this, this train and we're really doing great and we're all on the same, you know, like, car together. It's going great. But if something would get slightly turned on the track, it was like, wait, it felt jarring, even if it was a little bit and we could correct it right away, okay, we'll get back on. But then something else would be off and I'm, it could be as little as, hey, we never expected this type of change or request from a client mid project or it was, we never expected these team members to be out this week because of X, Y, Z reason. So for lack of a better phrasing, we had no lottery proof method and it felt like, you know, I, I again I will reiterate because I feel so lucky to say this, but we had a rare group of people and we're in a smaller group of people that it did take time out of processes but when things would go different than we always knew it, which is never the case, but we generally could expect things as soon as something came unexpected, we're like, halt, wait and Sometimes again, it would. It would be. We needed to change date. We needed to move a date up. Suddenly we're in the midst of our daily. You know, we have certain deliverables we kind of pursue on a daily basis. And we're like, oh, yeah, we're so, you know, we know how. How this runs. And then, you know, a day would come up, it would be a Friday morning, and we call them fire alarm. We'd have fire drills, and we'd have things that would. And, you know, that's our fun way of saying something came unexpected, Are we ready for it? And usually we were ready for it as we were doing it, which means we probably wouldn't want to say, you know, like, we weren't really ready for it, but we were getting ready for it while it was happening. And it could again, you know, it was something that happened that day and be off or, you know, and it would go away, and it would be like, okay, we handled that situation. It could be a technical thing or something else, but it was in the midst of other projects going on. So we were like, how do we, you know, mitigate all everything else that's going on when we have to handle this, especially being a small company with a large clientele? And then sometimes it would be, hey, we're on these processes. Oh, yeah, one of our clients, because we do have clients in senior living. So it would be, hey, actually, they want to start on work right now. And so we would be doing our daily processes, and then Suddenly we had 20 communities, 50 communities or whatever, 60 communities. We would have to onboard. Great website for, create clatter for so major projects happening. And it was like, how are we supposed to allocate this and get this out and move this, all of this happening simultaneously? We have to do it. So how do we do it? So before this time, it was all right. You go this direct. It literally was what you would imagine a fire drill would be. All right, you go in this direction. You know, kind of people, you know, we. Our personalities were probably a little less calm than a fire drill would be. We were like. But we had to take a minute and be like, how are we supposed to allocate this? What are we supposed to do? What do we do with timelines? How are we supposed to handle this all at once? Um, and we were like, all right, sounds very hectic. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Um, and so then that's when we knew that the more our clients were growing, it felt like sometimes on a weekly basis, you know, like, I was talking about My niece and nephews going from two to nine. It was the same with our community. Felt like we had, you know, a good amount. And it was like, suddenly we have a great amount and it's growing and it's beautiful and it's wonderful. But it was. We like the size of our company and we will continue to grow. But we are very intentional about who is in our company. So we're not quick to, hey, let's just hire a bunch in. We want it to be intentional. So with whoever we had on board, how could we not turn the unexpected into. From a fire drill into, okay, well, it's a good thing that we have this in place if something happens. So whether it's a lottery, proofing it, people are out, or something is coming in that we didn't expect, that we have to make. We have to make room for without being able to expand our building. So that's when we were like, it would be great to have a platform that didn't feel like, you know, a collection of folders we were assigning to people and saying, hey, you do your work and we'll figure this out over a communication channel. We wanted a flow.

So the issue was having a system that would allow you to kind of adapt to these foreseen, unforeseen obstacles. And, you know, there's a big influx of clients to be able to calmly respond to it or to have, like, a proven way of scaling or moving resources to accommodate for basically the new business. Am I getting that right?

Yeah. And being able to foresee, instead of, hey, we, you know, we have a great accounts team, but it's a small group of team. And so they're the ones that are kind of taking the changes, taking new stuff, changing stuff, and delivering the message to our teams to adjust. So we didn't have a foreshadowing bringing up. I. We didn't have the next step always in place. We only had what was in front of us. And in life, that's great. You have to handle whatever's in front of you. But when you are a marketing agency, you always have to be one step ahead. So our processes would slow down because we're like, what do we do next? All right, I'm going to get the next thing in place. It wasn't already ready that as soon as this person or this group or this part of the project is complete, this is where it moves to next. It was, we'll figure that out once it's ready to move. So there was no, like, foreshadowing Preparation for the next thing. Hey, I'm ready for this next part of the project to come in. It was constantly in time that we were doing processes, not one step ahead.

So tell me now how that connects, you know, the challenges you were facing, how that connects to moving into ClickUp and to meeting our group of ClickUp nerds here.

I was doing all I could to not do the time.

Old.

Oh, don't use the word in the definition. I was trying not to use, you know, what we didn't have that ClickUp has provided and that we didn't know how much we needed. So what I love to say is, you don't know there's a mess to clean up until you realize you're in a mess until you see it. And so I was a little nervous about the transition, I'll be very honest, because we had, you know, been using the same software, you know, platform software for a long time, and it wasn't, I wouldn't call it a process platform. It was just a place we could kind of keep projects in place, you know, in a place to access. So I was a little bit nervous about changing things up, but I was very, you know, reassured by, like, our team. And I knew that they wanted the result. So I knew it was going to be money at first, but I was like, the only way that we're going to, you know, do better, be better, is to find, you know, find ourselves in the mess and clean it up. So when we were introduced to ClickUp, it was actually our director of our web team who was like, hey, guys, I think I found something that was good for us. And I, you know, coming from one of the companies I used to work for, we had used our previous platform so much so long that I was like, no, I. But I know how to do that. And so I had a little bit of resistance at first and I was like, change things. What? But probably within, I kid you not, the first couple of weeks before we even connected with a team from Zen Pilot for ClickUp, when I was just getting around in and I was like, okay, there's something here. And being able to just see how the possibility. But that's all it was for me. It was like I could see there being possibilities, but the minute I started creating my first template, I was like, oh, this is game changing. And when I tell you this is, you know, the. How we went from this to this and what our company not only could take on, but felt like they could take on with ease was just insurmountable. You Know, before we would be in the middle of, you know, doing our daily work and say, hey, we have 12, 16 clients that we need to onboard in the next two, three, four weeks. And it would be like, all right, how are we going to do that? We just got through a project of onboarding over, you know, a brand new website of over almost 50 communities and all of, you know, and starting to, you know, we're starting to work on their collateral. And I have not heard. My heart doesn't race a bit. It's like, all right, like we do not. I mean it's so even keeled and I was, I could not have predicted this is what would come. And it, it's not because it were perfect. It's because we finally have the. There is always going to be a next step. There is a lottery proof method to having templates. I. Templates have been a dream for me. Some people say I'm just great at organizing. I sometimes thought I was just neurotic, but I was like, wait, no, this is how it's coming into play. This is how it's working for me. Because I was able to work for a few months prior to our migration into ClickUp, creating templates that our team can just implement and say, hey, we know we can just start. And it was never, hold on. We have to plan every step so far ahead and then have all of that planned. Something go different, go awry or have something new come up and say, well, now what are we going to do? And so we didn't have date remapping, we didn't have. Our accounts team was trying to get the information while implementing one thing at a time, one task at a time, from our, you know, our previous platform to suddenly being like, I have the journey in place and we can adjust as we go now. And so I, you know, if we had the same clients in the same onboarding and the same projects this time last year, literally like almost to the month, I would have said, no, there's no way. Like, we would love to, our team would love to, but we just can't. So that's kind of that, that's the.

Difference that it makes, right. When you have templates and processes in place, there's just so much intake, so much more intake of business that you can do. I love the feeling that you described. You know that feeling of, okay, a bunch of new work came in, but we're feeling pretty, pardon the pun, Zen about it now.

Yes, absolutely. Just put that in. I just saw that.

Right. So I'm Thinking, okay, so I'm seeing you kind of excited about ClickUp you mentioned, not you. That's even before you meet our team, you know, you're excited about templates and this whole potential. So now tell me about how you're feeling and kind of how it went when the ZenPilot team actually came into the picture. How did it go from your perspective? And also, you know, you became the ClickUp champion in that time. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, and that was the wonder. This was such a wonderful opportunity because, you know, we, our company gets really excited about doing more, but they say, you know, burnout happens when you don't expect it, it just comes. And so my fear going into this was, okay, so we're going to try this process platform, hoping that people start feeling zen about what they're doing and not, oh my gosh, we can't handle another thing. But then implementing ClickUp whilst our company was still doing the work that they were doing. So I was nervous because I was like, am I just going to do this on my own? Because originally, you know, our director of technology, our web director was, you know, started kind of being our pinpoint person and he was like, I got to do we have a two person web team. He was like, I got to do my work. And he was like, but Emily loves. And I. Luckily I have been here since getting to know both our team and then seeing both the most messy of it and then seeing also like kind of what works. And so although I don't have a perfect view, you know, perfect bird's eye view, I did feel very excited and comfortable feeling like I could take a lot, take every part of our team into what we need and then knowing I could adjust from there. So my, you know, I had a fear going into it that I was going to be doing it on my own. And then our fearless team, Maggie and Nicole came in and they were, I mean, they're still. I can't. It's hard to be like they were just our coaches and now, you know, Maggie's moved up, but they became like our true, like friends. Like, they were better than little, what do they call it? Clippy and Microsoft Word. Way, way, way back when, they were like the far beyond upgrade. Like always there when you need and saying, hey, even if you don't think you need us, are you sure? And being like, oh, wait, yes, yes, I do need you, because I wanted to feel like I could do it. And they were like, you don't have to do it. On your own. You know, that is something I've grown on to. Being in the operations specialist is, hey, guess what? Now you don't get to do it. You don't have to do it on your own. And so they were there. We had weekly meetings which were, you know, I would tell them, I don't know if I'm gonna have much to talk on today other than what you're training us on. And suddenly they had to. Maggie was like, all right, our time. And so we'd have to schedule in time. But she was very, you know, both of Nicole and Maggie. Anytime that we had follow ups, it was, hey, we're an email or an emergency slack message away. And so I never, at any time, I was like, wait, people are there for us. And, like, not just kind of, you know, it goes into the abyss of customer support. But I felt like there's that saying that says, to one person, you know, or to the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you may be the world. Zen Pilot made us feel like we were the only client and they were our world. And so it. I would. I couldn't tell you if I didn't already know that your team had, you know, the Zen Pilot team, I should say, had more clients. I would think, are you sure we're not the only ones? Because I feel like I'm taking all your time. They were so. The relationship they fostered was so. And I, you know, being in my role and being in marketing, we've dealt with every span of vendor, customer service you could think of. And I have never felt more like, am I taking all of your time? Like, you're so responsive and you're so personal about your approach to everything and not just, hey, well, we tell our clients this when you have this problem or this question. It was, I see what you need this for. I see how you want it to work, so let me help you make it work. And she, and meaning Maggie and Nicole would say, this is the way you have always done it, but try this. And once I was on board with it, I was like, I can't wait to convince my own team to be a part of this. Because I didn't know we could be so much better. I knew we could be better. But it was Zen Pilot that fostered this incredible relationship where we were like, you know, we have a saying. We. We take our clients to soar to new heights. Zenpilot took us and, like, had us soaring. We were like, wait. We didn't realize how much more we could be capable of. When we had a group of, you know, these two ladies who were telling us, like, hey, let's make it help make it work for you, not just make the system work. Not. This is what we tell our clients. I mean, if anything, they were anecdotal stories about clients. And, hey, this is how it worked, and this is what it was able to work for them. And everything was personal and tailored to us and to what we needed and even to me. They started to pick up on how I operate and how I was able to kind of receive information. I tend to like more. I tend to like the why. And, hey, how is this going to work? Instead of just taking information saying, like, I guess so, whatever, or being resistant, I was open to them saying, I see, this is the kind of work you're doing, and this is a way that I think ClickUp is going to be able to support you. And all along the way, it. It again, I can't express it enough or emphasize it enough that it really did feel like we were. We must have been their only client. I mean, I feel always needy, but they were like, no, but I was like, oh, okay. And so that was. That was extremely rare and wonderful to have them.

That's amazing. That was so nice to hear. I'm grinning from here to here, basically. I think a lot of people can see that. Thank you so much for saying that. So I'm mindful of, like, the time that we have for this conversation, et cetera. I didn't want to ask you about, like, you mentioned a lot of the help from Nicole and Maggie. And, you know, I'm sure they're going to watch this. I am going to totally relate what you just said. So for the people. For the people who are maybe a little bit less familiar or they want to kind of picture it a little bit better. Could you share, you know, just before we start wrapping up here, just one specific, like, example or like, a hairy problem, maybe a feature that they helped you untangle or some specific, specific thing so that, you know, people can have like a. Like a vision in their minds about that.

Yes. I think for our company, the biggest difference. And it was inside, you know, something we had. The template process was huge, saying, hey, let's take. And that, you know, that takes adjusting to how in that it's truly a template. So you do sometimes have to adjust to what your project actually needs. But inside of the template, for the very first time, we had red light means go. And so that was something we had to adjust to. But people were excited to find I suddenly had messages. And they're like, where's my. Where's my red light? Am I ready for it? So with ClickUp, there is. And this is. I'm using ClickUp 3.0. I'm already so past 2.0 that I don't remember what it used to be. But whenever it was, yeah, I'm like, that keeps getting better every day. Whenever it was someone's time to finally work on something, they had this nice red dot that said, you are a go. You're blocking the next thing, but it's a good thing. It means, hey, you don't have to see 20,000 things on your horizon, which I will also get to my second favorite thing, but you don't have to look at the next 20,000 things you have to do in the year or, you know, in the next month. Because before all our team would see. Each individual would see the next month, two months, three months of work they were going to get into if all went well. And they never knew unless they got a ping that it was time for them to edit something or time for them to create something. And so it was constantly a waiting game in a constant game of, are you ready for me? Is this ready? Do I have the information yet? Now, our accounts team doesn't even have to trigger our team to start to our. Like, I'm going to use our creative team as a very specific example. They were constantly in the waiting game of, I can't start on this because I don't have enough information. And our, you know, poor accounts team is trying to do their best to get that from the client, but saying, I know, I know, I'm trying, I'm trying. And so it was a constant check in every day throughout the day. Are you ready for me? And then when they finally were, it felt like, all right, we need to get this done fast. And so everyone would be in the middle of doing something and their attention would be, oh, no, I have this, you know, thing that I have to attend to right now because they messaged me, you know, they sent me a DM that this needs change. You know, suddenly it was, oh, and this goes into how we've created news and dashboards to filter out things that are not ready. So things that are in waiting, meaning it's not ready for them yet. So they each and I help work with all of them to have dashboards and views that say, hey, these are the things for today and this week that are ready for you now. So no one Is, you know, occasionally we'll have a message and say, you know, hey, do you feel like we'll get this information soon? So I can make sure that I'm continuing to prioritize, but for the most part, people are saying, hey, it says it's not ready for me, so I can keep working on the things that are ready for me. No one is, you know, rarely interrupted in the middle of a project because they. They have what they need to do for the week, they don't have what they're likely going to do for the next month. Glooming at them in the face. They have a view that says, hey, today this is all you got. And then suddenly, if something comes up that's ready for them, it pops up on their dashboard, it pops up on their view and say, hey, ready for you to work. And there is just that Zen comes into play again where people feel comfortable knowing that things are ready for them when they are ready for them. So having templates connected and having, you know, all of those pieces and someone working in ClickUp, soon we'll see. Or if you are working in it now, will see that if you have all of your little pieces literally connected, you have all of your dependencies. I was looking for that word on hey, this can't start until this happens was game changing. And suddenly there was also a Zen in our culture because it wasn't people shouting, hey, we need this, we need this, we need this all the time. Or, hey, I'm waiting on this, I'm waiting on this, I'm waiting on this. And I'm like, you almost were like, where are my earbuds? Like, I don't know, I can't. I can't filter out what's actually needed right now. And so. Or they would be like, hey, I finally got this edit. And I'm like, when is it due? And they're like, well, three months from now. But they just gave me this now. And I'm like, but it's not the priority. But they're like, but I have it now. And saying, wait, hold on. And so having those dependencies and having that, like, foresight into what's coming, beam changing, and people could finally say, hey, I only have to work on things that are ready for me. Novel idea. We just didn't realize that simple idea was missing this whole time.

That is, I mean, wow. You described, you know, like, everything, both the kind of the state of Zen that we want to lead people to, as well as the kind of the state of slight. Very slight. You Know, chaos that we try to try to help solve. That was so awesome. And I know what you mean about dependencies about red light means go, because there's two icons, right? There's the yellow icon, which means something is blocked by something else. You can't start on it. That's the stuff you filter out because you don't need to be thinking about it right now when you have the red icons, which is you are blocking somebody else, but you are not blocked. You can start on this, you can unblock somebody else. Go. Yes, that so, yes, perfectly clear. But if somebody listening to this is not clear on the, on the ClickUp nomenclature, then I just wanted to. To clear that up. You mentioned that you have got a second favorite thing. Have we got time to cover that?

Yeah, no, that was just going into, going into dashboards and views because people were finally. And this goes into time tracking too. Previously, we were not taking into account how much time we would be spending on clients, both on a daily basis and then just over the month. So, you know, the reality is we're a business, so we're charging people for our services. And so we would be charging the clients the same thing. And then, you know, we weren't time tracking, to be very honest. Our people, you know, our teams, myself included, were not actually tracking time per client. And so we were not seeing, you know, and when our CEO, our president, our chief growth officer, vice president, they were doing the work to foster the communication and grow our business, they weren't able to see, and we weren't able to see, oh, my goodness, this is how much time we're spending on this client, this community, this, you know, project. And we have certain clients that are on a monthly retainer and then some that are on an hourly retainer or by three project or an hourly retainer. So suddenly it was so easy to hit a little timer on the top of our screen and say, all right, this is the task it's going to apply to, and then start your work on it, stop the timer, and you don't have to think about it again. And suddenly we went from, well, we spend a regular amount of time. Oh, my goodness, we didn't realize we went up 300% and in the work we were doing from them, something like that. Where. And at first it was hard to get used to as it felt like, oh, this is another thing we have to do. You know, we have all this during the day. How are we supposed to keep up with our time? And for us, me being us being me and the vice president of operations. We're like, this has very little to do with your time in and out of the office or time in and out of remote work. No being online. But more to give you credit for the, the, this is the very least hours that we're at least spending on this client, this project on a daily basis. And when they saw like, oh, our time, you know, and the time wasn't even just for our clients, what about those times that were spent on the back end doing research to better services for our clients? What about that time we spent to find this vendor that is going to work well for printing for this client and to help our company. And so once we started taking account and making it very easy. And if you are not in ClickUp yet, there's literally a timer on the top right of your screen right there and it's got a little play button on it. And whether you are, you know, manually entering something in on the back end of, you know, like after the fact or my favorite thing is the timer. I literally can be like, I'm working on this. And we have multiple personalities, multiple like attentions. But you know, we're. Our minds are always looking at a bunch of things at once. But it also allowed us to say, instead of working on six things at once to the best to a 70%, how about I put my timer on and while that timer's on and I'm working on this one thing. So whether it's five minutes or 20 minutes or an hour on something, I'm setting that timer to, I'm devoting that time to this one thing. So we had very focused time. And then so there were two wins. One, you could focus your time by setting a timer. And then we were also seeing in our clients, we're seeing how many hours we're putting in to serve them to the best of our ability and with all of the, you know, care and purpose, you know, and intention we have in the world. But we are finally able to see just how that was being distributed across our portfolio of clients.

That's awesome. Awesome. Yeah. You know, with timers, that's funny. I wrote about them more than once in our Zenpilot newsletter. First class operations, zenpilot.com, under resources, you'll find it watchers, listeners, if you're interested in that. And it really is like that. Whereas, you know, if you actually devote 100% of your attention to something, it's like a laser beam. Right. So much more effective. Awesome. I have got one final question to you and then, you know, I want you to share with our watchers and listeners kind of where they can follow you, follow Wingspan, et cetera. But the one final question, and you can make your answer short or long, here is what would be one piece of advice that you would have for somebody who's considering working with Zen Pilot? What would you say to them?

Be patient with yourself and then know that you are going to have to live in the mess to see it clean up. And you will see it, you know, and I said that earlier, but it was hard at first cuz I wanted to see it cleaned up before I saw the mess. But the reality is, is you don't know what you need until you're in. And the more that I got frustrated, the more I realized I needed ClickUp. So the more you know, and so. But being patient with yourself, that sounds very simple. But that was my hardest battle. And Maggie can attest to this. One of Zen Pilot's great director of customers can attest to is that I was my own roadblock from the beginning. I wanted everything ready and in place right away. And so I would freeze when I realized how much I could do with ClickUp and how much I wanted it to serve my team. Taking that all at once and saying, you know, great, like I just want this all done at once. And then getting frustrated with myself for not having it all figured out right away. Even with migration, I wanted to have all of the answers before I knew what questions they were going to ask. And so I, I feared that. But then it helped me learn. So when you're patient with yourself and know that you can literally only take the next step. I remember my infamous last words. No, my famous last words. Maggie was introducing us to templates and she was like, let's get a step few templates just to see how they work. And I said, what if I get all the templates our company needs by next week, by our next meeting? And she was like, oh, okay. And like she knew, but she wanted me to see that, like, hey, you got to take the intention with every little thing. And so I was able to say, okay Emily, you can only do the next thing. And so whether that means one template at a time, whether it means, you know, taking one process at a time, whatever it was, be patient with yourself and only know you can take the next step at a time when you are onboarding, when you are in it, when you are learning. So hopefully that helps someone.

Thank you so much for sharing your advice for somebody, you know, considering working with us here at zenpilot. Thank you so much, Emily, for this whole conversation. Wow, that was awesome. And what you said about being patient and just focusing on the very next step. I love it when these kinds of conversations veer away from operations and project management into something you might hear from a life coach. And I really needed to hear that today. So thank you personally and for this whole interview. This has been super, super fun. And just for this last segment, I wanted to ask you, where should people follow you? Where should people follow Wingspan? Where do you want people to go and click, and who to talk to so that they get to meet you, work with you or anything else?

Yeah, yeah. I'm not as exciting as my team is. Follow me. I mean, I am on Instagram, but just my first and last name, Emily Turi. But more importantly, our company is on LinkedIn. We're on Instagram, wingspan, reach.com so that's w I n G S n p a n reach.com and we're also on LinkedIn. And if you email, you know, we have, if you go on our site, we even have a portal for inquiries that come right through me through ClickUp. And so I get to say a little hello. And so we, you know, people can submit, you know, their inquiries there if they're interested in working with us, seeing what we're all about. Follow us on LinkedIn. We offer a lot of marketing advice and just some. Some fun updates here and there. So, you know, follow along and if, if anyone happens to be watching that we'll get to work with soon. I'm excited to hear from you.

That's awesome. All right, so thank you once again for this chat. Anybody interested in ZenPilot, if you're watching this on our YouTube, definitely subscribe for more interviews like this, more operations advice, and We've got awesome ClickUp tutorials as well. Check them out on our YouTube page. We're on LinkedIn as well. Go to zenpilot.com and you'll get free ClickUp guides and a bunch of other stuff that will help you get your work done better. Avoid chaos, create clarity, and achieve the state of Zen that we're all about here at Zen Pilot. Thank you once again, Emily. And yeah, to everybody watching and listening. Have a nice day.

Sure. Bye.