CORE Strategy
Brand Identity
Process Improvement
When a former federal hiring official turned her expertise into a resume-writing business, she envisioned building a company that would allow her to work from home, spend more time with her family, and help job seekers navigate the complexities of federal hiring. For nearly a decade, however, her business remained little more than a side project, bringing in only occasional clients and far too little revenue to support her financially.
She knew that without a strategy for growth, she would have to abandon the idea of entrepreneurship altogether and seek traditional employment. That’s when she turned to the CORE Business Strategy Workshop.
The business had been open for 10 years, but it operated more like a monetized hobby than a thriving enterprise. The owner wanted to make the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, but without a clear growth strategy, the company couldn’t support her family or her goals.
The stakes were high: either build a viable business or walk away.
Over two days, I facilitated the CORE Business Strategy Workshop, a structured process designed to align teams around a shared definition of success and translate that vision into a practical, 100-day action plan.
Day One: Defining Success Together, we clarified company values, identified target audiences, and articulated strategic goals. The team left with a shared sense of purpose and alignment.
Day Two: Planning the Strategy We prioritized the company’s goals against customer needs and walked through specific customer journeys, ensuring the strategy was both customer-focused and actionable.
Drawing on my expertise in strategy, facilitation, and Lean Six Sigma, I guided the team through exercises that not only uncovered opportunities but also gave them ownership of the path forward.
The workshop revealed several critical opportunities that transformed the business model:
Recurring Revenue Through Career Growth: We discovered that federal applicants are eligible for promotion after 12 months. This insight reframed each client not as a one-time project, but as a long-term relationship. By offering annual resume updates, the company could grow alongside its clients’ careers.
Expanded Service Offerings: Higher-level federal positions require Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) and Mandatory Technical Qualifications (MTQs). The company later developed these as premium add-on services.
Job-Focused Support: Clients were less concerned about resumes as documents and more focused on landing jobs. Recognizing this, the company created a new program to help clients find relevant federal vacancies, increasing their chances of success and driving more resume business.
The impact was immediate and dramatic:
Within a year of the workshop, the company grew from handling a resume or less per month to generating six figures in annual revenue.
Early growth was exponential, with revenues doubling month over month. After the first year, the business stabilized into a healthy pattern of 10–15% annual growth.
The owner achieved her personal goals of working from home, spending more time with family, and leading a business that made a meaningful impact on people’s careers.
The owner described the workshop as motivating and energizing, noting that her team felt a new sense of ownership over the company’s trajectory. She herself felt more confident and focused as a leader.
Looking back, the workshop’s success was rooted in two key factors: the engagement and buy-in of the team, and the owner’s unique expertise as a federal hiring manager. Together, these elements made the CORE workshop a turning point moment when a struggling side business transformed into a sustainable, growing enterprise.
Case studies reflect individual client experiences and are provided for illustrative purposes only. Results vary by business and are not guaranteed.
A national wholesale distribution company wanted to expand its reach and modernize its presence. While much of its revenue came from large repeat customers, the leadership team saw opportunities in launching new product lines, including a socially impactful campaign to provide school supplies and backpack stuffers to underserved students.
The problem? Their existing branding was dated, their web presence was “ancient,” and their product catalogs lacked the polish needed to inspire trust with new customers. Without a cohesive identity and consistent marketing tools, the launches risked falling flat. The company would have been left with costly inventory and missed opportunities.
Two large-scale campaigns (one general distribution brand and one school supply program) needed to connect with distinct markets. Success depended on building credibility, appealing to new businesses and nonprofits, and delivering a brand system flexible enough to adapt annually. Without strong design and strategy, both campaigns faced the risk of poor adoption, costly storage of unsold products, and slowed cash flow.
I partnered with the leadership team to design complete brand identity systems and new catalogs.
Research & Alignment: Defined business goals, built customer profiles, and gathered market references. Through collaborative discussions, we distilled the true purpose of each launch and clarified brand voice and aesthetic direction.
Creative Exploration: Developed mood boards to align preferences with market parameters. From there, I built logos, color palettes, style guidelines, motifs, and templates tailored to each campaign.
Catalog Transformation: Organized complex product data into clean, branded page templates in Adobe InDesign, with style presets to ensure future consistency.
The process combined strategic clarity with creative execution, ensuring that both the broad distribution brand and the focused school supply program would resonate with their respective audiences.
The brand work leaned into the company’s shared customer experiences: pallets, boxes, and schematics. From these insights:
Neutral but Trustworthy Design: A monochromatic palette sourced from cardboard colors conveyed reliability and fit across a wide range of products.
Orthographic Standard: By using orthographic imagery (inspired by product schematics and delivery boxes), the brand established a consistent and recognizable visual standard.
Hexagon Motif: Derived from the geometry of a delivery box viewed in orthographic perspective, the hexagon became a strong visual element across both brands.
The backpack program applied these design principles differently, using orthographic views and hexagon-based patterns to create a distinct but related look. Sales teams reported that the imagery generated trust and credibility, helping them connect with schools and nonprofits.
Both campaigns launched successfully and exceeded expectations:
7-figure revenue in the first year across hundreds of business and nonprofit customers.
The catalog system became a reusable asset, streamlining annual product updates.
The success of the branding work led to further engagements, including a new website and a custom bulk-order store that streamlined the shopping experience and added credibility.
The leadership team was thrilled with the results, and much of the company’s success came from referral-driven goodwill, especially for the school supply campaign. By offering products at generous pricing, the company built trust and reputation alongside revenue.
Looking back, the only change I would recommend would be launching the custom web store earlier. It ultimately became a vital tool for efficiency and credibility. Implementing the web portal sooner could have accelerated success even more.
This project applied Lean Six Sigma methodologies to streamline the end-to-end process of a technical writing service. The primary goals were to reduce cycle time, eliminate waste, and improve both efficiency and quality through process standardization and data-driven decision-making.
The technical writing team faced significant inefficiencies that limited throughput and profitability:
These issues led to missed deadlines, high costs, and limited capacity for new clients.
Using Lean Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology, the process was examined and rebuilt for efficiency.
Mapped the full service process to identify customer expectations, deliverable quality measures, and value-added vs. non–value-added activities.
Collected data on:
This established a baseline for both process speed and quality.
Decomposed the workflow into key sub-processes:
Through time and value mapping, waste was identified in:
Key improvements included:
To sustain improvements:
The optimization delivered transformative results:
By applying Lean Six Sigma principles, the technical writing service achieved a scalable, efficient, and quality-driven operation. The initiative not only increased throughput and profitability but also established a culture of continuous improvement grounded in data and standardization.
"Turn Messy Into Measurable"
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