Pivot Journeys is a professional development company that offers personalized career coaching and team development. They help professionals gain clarity, build confidence, and create meaningful connections while exploring new environments and perspectives. Their approach combines self-reflection, skill-building, and experiential learning to support individuals in their career development journey.

Pivot Journeys came to tsCreativ with more than seven years of information and processes scattered across multiple tools. This was causing the team to do repetitive work, lose track of information, and constantly connect synchronously to find even the simplest of information. They had stumbled upon Notion, but didn't know where or how to get started.

Over a period of three months, tsCreativ transformed their systems, bringing most of their workflows into Notion while adding complementary automations for meeting scheduling and data entry. We followed our process of auditing, architecting, building, iterating, and training.

Audit and Architecting

The auditing phase was completed 100% asynchronously, as Emily, founder of Pivot Journeys, preferred this method. She filled out tsCreativ’s "Day in the Life" survey and provided a series of Loom videos going through detailed workflows. Emily also provided copies of relevant spreadsheets and docs which were distilled into a series of insights and solutions.

We then took these insights and mocked up possible solutions in Figma. The goals during this phase were to cut out any unnecessary tools and workflows, centralize as much information as possible, and limit repetitive tasks, but not jump right into building anything.

The final output was an audit report, going into detail about the insights, solutions, and workflows. The report also served as a venue for asynchronous questions and answers, as well as an artifact for Pivot Journeys to understand next steps and rough timeline.

Building and Iterating

After the solutions in the audit report were agreed upon, we went into heads-down building. We first built out infrastructure in Notion, consisting of several core pages. These were a mix of dashboards and databases, supporting 90% of Pivot Journeys’ workflows. The main workflow was built around their Clients database, essentially a CRM pipeline and project tracker in one. Since each project was 1:1 with a person, this system was the core of their workflows.

The second key workflow was routing the information, collected while scheduling a video call, into Notion. Pivot Journeys used Calendly for all of their coaching calls. There was also an intake form required to schedule an initial call. We automated the copying of this information into Notion, using Make.com.

After the initial end-to-end workflow was built, we hopped on a video call to walk through everything. The Pivot Journeys team provided some synchronous feedback but also took a few days to gather their thoughts around what they wanted to keep and what they wanted to iterate on.

Training

Training is the most important part of any custom system build. Training first comes in the form of written and video documentation. This documentation was placed in Pivot Journeys’ workspace, so they had easy access to it as they used the system. Second, we provided three team-wide training calls. We first went over Notion 101, then using the system, and finally working through any issues. Each training was interactive, with the Pivot Journeys team engaging with the system and doing exercises.

Stand-by is the last part of training. This is the period of time the Pivot Journeys team had to use the system without any constraints. As they hit a speed bump, they reached out to us and we recorded a Loom to walk them through the workflow. After about two weeks of this, the Pivot Journeys team felt comfortable using the system for most of their day-to-day work.

When I was thinking of building a Notion system for my business it felt overwhelming as to where to start - how should I build it? Should I hire someone to do it? How am I going to learn this crazy system? And then I came across Thor. He built my team a system that is now integral to everything we do and I'm so happy with it! I slowly but naturally learned how to use the system and Thor was so patient with me as I learned how it all worked and troubleshooted my questions. The pace of our work felt manageable and he was super flexible with my schedule to make the build a process that didn't have to interrupt my day-to-day work. Thanks so much Thor!

– Emily Lamia

Conclusion

The Pivot Journeys project showcases the power of Digital Operations. We took a scattered set of documents and processes, and turned them into a streamlined Notion workspace that actually worked for their team. The key was our process: we dug deep to understand their needs, designed thoughtful systems, and made sure the team felt confident and empowered to use them. Now Pivot Journeys can focus on what they do best - helping people level up their careers.

If you’d like to increase your operational efficiency, schedule a complimentary discovery call with tsCreativ today!