Client Case Study | The Spark Your Story Lab
The Book Nicole Almost Didn’t Write:
A three-year partnership, one finished book
A neurodivergent creative founder, buried in the business she built. This is the story of what changed when the backend stopped being hers to carry.
The Spark Your Story Lab
Honed Her Craft, Built a Business
Nicole created her business to teach writers how to tell their stories. Spark Your Story Lab is her signature program: a creative nonfiction course built around one of the most original frameworks in the writing education space. Using the periodic table of elements as a teaching structure, she created a way into creative nonfiction that was entirely her own.
So what could be wrong with a seemingly successful, thriving business? Pull back the curtain and Nicole was dealing with much more behind the scenes.
Hitting a ceiling
Her Success was at Capacity
The problem wasn’t her offer, her audience, or her revenue potential.
It was everything holding her back.
DIY’d to the ceiling
She had built a successful business alone, and for a while that worked. But there’s a limit to what one person can carry.
Wired for the wrong work
A neurodivergent founder built for creativity and big ideas, spending most of her day on the things her brain was never built to do.
No structure to hand off to
Communication had stopped. Retainer deliverables and website builds were quietly slipping past their dates.
Everything landed on her
Every moving piece that wasn’t the creative work routed through Nicole. New offers struggled to get built.
No creative space
The backend wasn’t just eating her time. It was eating her capacity to grow, create, and show up fully for the business.
Growth capped at one person
Every new offer, client and idea had to pass through one person. The business could only move as fast as Nicole could work.
The more she pushed, the more scattered things became.
“I just wanted to send a message now to let you know how much I appreciate you and everything that you have done for me and for my business over the last couple of years, I feel like I’ve grown a lot with you and in our conversations, in all the things that you’ve taught me, and in the many ways that you’ve supported me, I’ve gone through several phases of pretty big growth, and I’m so glad that I had you alongside me to do that.”
The switch
Notion Kept Everything in Nicole’s World
She was running a growing business out of an elevated notes app, which is the operational equivalent of keeping it all in her head, with extra steps. Notes don’t have deadlines. They don’t assign owners. They don’t tell you what’s actually blocking a launch versus what just feels urgent because it’s the tab you have open.
Moving everything into ClickUp gave the business a structure it could actually grow into: projects with owners, launches with timelines, and a system that could hold information instead of just storing it.
Before with Notion
- Used as a personal notes doc, not a team operating system
- Tasks lived as bullet points; no owners, no deadlines, no accountability built in
- Nicole had to manually chase every follow-up herself
- Everything routed through Nicole; nothing was set up as a shared source of truth
After with ClickUp
- A proper operational hub built for a team, not one person
- Tasks assigned to people with deadlines so things can move without Nicole chasing them
- Full visibility across every project and deliverable
- Removed Nicole from the operational loop without removing her from the business
- A business that functions around Nicole’s strengths rather than demanding she operate against them
- Made delegation real rather than theoretical
“I am really enjoying the peace and calm of working with you!!! Wish I’d found you 100 years ago.”
The work
Three phases of the reset
Foundation overhaul
Ashley came in, assessed how the business was actually functioning, and mapped out what needed to change. Nicole needed a platform that could sustain the growth she was headed toward.
- Full assessment of how the business really ran
- A road map for what had to change, and in what order
- Onboarded into a custom ClickUp workspace built to fit her business
- Entire operation migrated from Notion into ClickUp, built with growth in mind
- Systems and workflows from scratch: documented, repeatable, team-facing
- Automations that cut the admin workload nearly in half
Full operations flip
One objective: take everything off Nicole’s plate except the one thing only Nicole could do. Offers, content and teaching stayed with her. Everything else was handed off.
Strategy partnership
Ashley became Nicole’s strategic thinking partner. The decisions that used to sit on Nicole’s plate alone (sometimes for weeks) now had someone to work through them with.
- Pricing conversations and offer development
- Deciding what to build next and how to position it
Not task management, but a full operational and strategic reset that remapped the business’s capacity entirely
“I just wanted to let you know that you mean the world to me and I’m so grateful for everything that you’ve brought to me and my work over the last few years there’s no way I can put a value on it. It’s been incredible.”
As a result
A New Chapter… Literally
None of these are accidents. They’re what happens when a founder stops spending her energy on the wrong things and gets it back for the right ones.
She wrote a book
The thing that needs a long stretch of uninterrupted thought and a mind that isn’t already full of the hundred other things due by Tuesday.
New, aligned offers
Offers that reflected the deepest and most authentic part of the business, not some half-baked ideas thrown together.
A Friday money date
A weekly ritual to review the financial side of the business that had previously felt inaccessible. Small and practical, representing something much larger.
Opportunities that landed
Collaborations and conversations that had always been possible, but couldn’t land when there was no space to catch them.
A team that runs the business
Work moves in ClickUp with owners and deadlines, whether or not Nicole is in the thread.
Creative freedom
A founder finally in relationship with her own business, rather than at war with it.
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