Case Study: How Emerging Destinations' Owner Went From Running Everything to Working 20% of What She Used To
A growing business running on good intentions and too many apps
Emerging Destinations is a travel representation company that connects tour operators, DMCs, and hospitality businesses from around the world with the North American market.
Jane and her team market their clients' properties, tours, and services to generate visitors and guests on their behalf.
The business was growing — but the operations weren't keeping up.
Jane came to us with two specific bottlenecks consuming most of her time: the new client onboarding process and the monthly client reporting cycle.
Beneath both problems was a deeper one: no operations manual, no documented SOPs, and a team where everyone had developed their own way of doing things.
Jane was the glue holding it all together — which meant she couldn't step away from the day-to-day without things falling apart.
She was also relying on too many disconnected tools and wanted to simplify and consolidate everything into one place.
A complete operations manual built from scratch
We built Emerging Destinations' entire operations manual from scratch in Notion — one source of truth for how the business runs.
Every process, workflow, and guideline the team needs to deliver consistent service is documented in the manual. No more everyone doing it their own way.
It covers:
For the new client onboarding process, we mapped the entire client journey from first touchpoint to last — step by step.
We specified who is responsible at each step, which tool is used, how often it happens, and exactly how it's done.
We also built the templates, checklists, and forms they need at each step, in Notion.
During our Knowledge Extraction Calls, we didn't just "extract" what they were doing — we also recommended how to simplify the process itself.
A full operating system for the entire business
After the operations manual was complete, we immediately started a second project: building out the full operating system for Emerging Destinations in Notion.
This became the central hub where the whole team works day-to-day — from KPI trackers to task management boards, clients' monthly reports to team surveys, and everything in between.
It includes:
This is also where we solved Jane's second bottleneck — monthly client reporting.
We replaced their Excel-based process with a live Notion tracker. We identified seven recurring monthly tasks each account manager needs to complete per client, standardized the format, and built a tracker that clients can access directly at any time to see what's been done on their behalf.
No more static spreadsheets. No more reports that nobody opens.
A third project — a second operations manual for another organization Jane leads
Jane is the Executive Director of APTA — the Association for the Promotion of Tourism to Africa.
After completing both the operations manual and the operating system for Emerging Destinations, Jane trusted us with a third project: building the operations manual for APTA.
The same approach, applied to a completely different kind of organization — a non-profit with its own structure, team, and processes.
The fact that Jane brought us a third project across two different organizations she leads says everything about the level of trust built through our work together.
Working 20% of what she used to — and a team that no longer needs her in the room
Jane went from being the person who had to be across everything to someone with genuine free time.
She's now traveling more, attending more conferences, and spending her working hours on strategic decisions rather than day-to-day admin.
With the business running on documented processes and her team working independently, she was able to focus on growth — and hit her monthly revenue target in January 2026, the first month after we finished the work. She's held it every month since.
Her clients noticed the difference too.
The new Notion-based monthly reports replaced spreadsheets that no one was reading. Jane's clients told her that nothing like it existed anywhere else in their industry — they could see exactly what had been done for them, presented clearly, at any time.
Ready to step back from the day-to-day?
We'll build the system that lets your team deliver — without you in the room for every decision.