Portland, Oregon

The un-fun part of running your business, organized.

I help small businesses and creative service providers get their administrative work in order: sort out the workflow, set up tools that fit, write the process down, and train the people who will use it.

Set up a 20-minute call

Sound familiar

Where a week leaks

Digging through email threads to find out what was agreed
Clients texting your cell at 9 pm, then "did you get my message?"
A proposal that takes four hours and gets revised three times
Chasing an invoice for work you finished a month ago
Spreadsheets that were fine until the third vendor and the second revision
A first hire who needed more of your time than they saved
Three tools that each hold part of the picture and none of them agree
Everything that matters living only in your head

How it works

Understand first. Build only what earns its keep.

We map your week

You walk me through how work actually moves through your business today: where requests come in, where orders, messages and invoices live, and where things stall. I find the handful of tasks worth fixing and the ones that aren't.
I set up tools that fit

Where your current tools can do the job, I prefer to improve them rather than add another one. Where they can't, I'll recommend something that fits your team and budget, and tell you what it costs. Automation and today's AI tools help with the repetitive parts; you approve anything that goes to a client.
I write it down and train your team

Every build comes with a plain-language guide and a recorded walkthrough, so your team or your next hire can run it without me. If you want ongoing support after that, there is a plan for it below.

Offers

Three ways in, starting small.

Every engagement begins with the audit. Prices are starting points; the written plan from the audit gives you a fixed quote before any build begins.

The Audit

$950credited toward a build you commission within 60 days

A close look at how your administrative work runs now, and a written plan for what to change.

Before we meet: a short questionnaire and a look at the tools you already use
A two-hour working session with you on Zoom
Within five business days: a written plan with the fixes ranked by effort and payoff, three you can do yourself, and a fixed quote for anything larger
A 30-minute follow-up call to go through it

The plan is yours to use with me or with anyone else.

The Build

from $2,500fixed quote set in your audit plan

The changes from your plan, set up and working, with your team trained to run them.

An agreed scope in writing before work starts
Setup inside your existing tools where practical, or a recommended tool if not
Testing with your real data and a review round with you
A written guide and a recorded walkthrough
A handoff session with whoever will run it day to day

Timeline depends on the agreed scope, how quickly I get access to your tools, and your turnaround on approvals. Most builds are planned in weeks, not months.

Care

from $1,000per month, after a build

Ongoing support so the system keeps working as your business changes.

A monthly check of every workflow I set up: still running, still accurate
Fixes when something breaks, such as a changed login, a renamed field or a new form
Up to five hours a month of changes and additions
Training for new team members
A one-page monthly note on what ran, what broke, what changed

Only offered after a build. Month to month; either of us can end it with 30 days' notice.

Software subscriptions (for example a project tool or form builder) are billed to you directly by the vendor and are not included in these prices.

I am not a bookkeeper, accountant or tax advisor. I can organize how financial information flows into your bookkeeping; the bookkeeping itself stays with your bookkeeper or accountant.

Examples

Two systems I built for my own businesses

These are internal projects, not client work. They are the reason I started offering this.

Internal project

Monthly books for three businesses

The problem: Income arrived through five channels (card payments, Venmo, checks, a studio's pay periods, and a course platform), each with its own export. Closing a month meant a half day of downloading and copying, and it kept getting skipped.
What I set up: A monthly close that reads payment records, email notifications and calendars into one classified ledger, flags anything unrecognized for a human decision, and produces a profit and loss statement in the format my accountant wants. A written procedure covers the short monthly step that still needs me.
Tools: Google Sheets, Gmail, Stripe, Google Calendar, a scripted monthly task using Claude

Internal project

Enrollment and payments for a vocal training studio

The problem: Course enrollments, payment plans, a student portal and the email sequence that followed each sale lived in separate places and were stitched together by hand after every purchase.
What I set up: Checkout that records the sale and the student, tags the student in the email tool so the right email sequence starts, and keeps payment plans in one place. A written guide covers the steps that remain manual.
Tools: Stripe, Supabase, Kit, Netlify

About

A singer who runs three businesses

Courtney Freed
Portland, Oregon

I'm a singer and a voice teacher. I also run three small businesses: a vocal training studio with online courses and a student portal, a family-safety company with two apps in the App Store, and a live performance calendar with a band to book and venues to invoice.

For years the admin side of that ate my evenings. Vendor emails, client updates, bookkeeping, scheduling, follow-ups, the invoice I forgot to send. Over the past year I rebuilt the back office of all three so most of it runs without me. Today's tools made that possible, but the tools were the easy part. The hard part was knowing which fifteen minutes of a week were worth fixing and which weren't, and that only comes from running a business yourself.

I've spent twenty years teaching, which turns out to be the half of this work that matters most. A system only sticks if the people using it understand it, and explaining a process clearly, then writing it down so it survives without me, is what I'm best at.

I'm still growing on the technical side, and I'll say so when something is outside what I've done. If your tools are different from mine, the first call is where we find out whether I can help.

What I won't do: sell you a tool you don't need, automate the part of your work that is the work, or tell you something will help when I don't think it will.

Talk

Start with a 20-minute call. No obligation.

You tell me what eats your week. I tell you what I'd look at first, whether the audit makes sense for you, and if it doesn't, what I'd try instead. Nothing is sold on this call. Email me with a couple of times that work and I'll send a Zoom link.

Set up a 20-minute call freedcreativeconsulting@gmail.com