Headline Metrics
- A repeatable creative-review workflow across 16+ clients — clients reviewed creative where the work lived, ending the email-and-Slack copy-paste loop.
- $101K/yr saved through an Agency Operating System built for a seven-person team serving 16 clients.
The Challenge
A seven-person paid-media and creative-production agency served 16 clients. The team managed ongoing ad-platform work, produced static and video creative, handled client feedback, and coordinated growth work across every account.
The operation ran through Notion, but it was not one operating system. Creative production followed one fixed template. General work lived in a separate catch-all flow. The client database stood apart from both, and reporting relied on an embedded scorecard sent manually.
The biggest break was client review. Every creative produced in Notion had to be copied into email or Slack, then the feedback stayed in that second system. The agency had reached the point where the founder's setup could no longer carry the team cleanly as it scaled.
The Solution
We designed and built an Agency Operating System on ClickUp that brought client delivery, creative review, account data, and onboarding into one operating layer.
- In-platform creative review: clients entered as guests and reviewed creative where the work lived, replacing the email-and-Slack copy-paste loop.
- Unified client delivery: the two Notion task flows and the client database became one architecture for creative work, general tasks, and account visibility.
- Automated onboarding: a Zapier workflow duplicated a complete client folder and its automations whenever a new account entered the system.
- Operational handoff: the build included process documentation, live team training, and post-launch refinement of routing, due dates, statuses, and tags.
The Results
- The creative-review portal replaced the cross-system review loop across the 16-client book, keeping the work, feedback, and approval path together.
- The Agency Operating System shipped, the full team trained on it, and the founder's outstanding fix list was closed five days after training.
- The two Notion task flows and client database became a single operating system with a CRM view.
- New-client workspace creation moved from manual setup to a repeatable automated template.
- The agency continued running production work through the system after launch.
Quotes
"Our biggest pain point right now is essentially every creative that's done in Notion, then has to get copied into an email or Slack for review. And then the review happens in the email or Slack is just a nightmare." — Founder