How a Brand Strategist and Designer Scaled Her Systems Without Scaling Her Workload

BY THE NUMBERS

The Business Behind the Brand

Nicte Cuevas has been building Nicte Creative Design for years — doing the kind of branding work most designers don’t even attempt. She doesn’t just make things look good. She goes deep into strategy, into language, into the cultural values and emotional texture of a brand before a single visual decision gets made. Her clients leave with something that actually holds.

But the systems running behind that work? They hadn’t kept up with her. Nicte had tools she believed in, processes she had tried to build, and a genuine understanding of what a good client experience could look like. What she didn’t have was everything working together. Inquiries came in through a form that funneled into Dubsado, but the welcome packet had an access issue that affected most of her clients. The intake form asked everything she needed but sometimes asked it at the wrong moment. And when a project started, the work of managing it was split across too many places.

She came into this Glow Up knowing exactly what she wanted to fix. She just needed someone to build it.

What She Came In Wanting to Solve

An onboarding experience clients could actually get through

Nicte had a welcome packet. She had a Loom video walking clients through the process. She had an intake form designed to pull the kind of answers that inform real design decisions. But something kept breaking between intent and execution. “Eight out of 10 clients experienced that email glitch — they can’t access it,” she said on the kickoff call. The portal link wasn’t working reliably, and when clients couldn’t get in, they’d email her, creating a cycle of manual cleanup that was never part of the plan. The goal was to get clients through onboarding smoothly, without her having to intervene every time.

A way to stop managing projects across too many places

Nicte used Dubsado for client communication and Infinity for project management, but the two weren’t connected. She’d send a mood board through Dubsado, get a response by email, log the decision somewhere in Infinity, and then start the whole cycle again. “I have too many pieces here, there, there,” she put it simply. She wanted Infinity to become the real hub for each project — where clients could review work, ask questions, give approvals, and stay oriented in the process — without her manually bridging the gap between tools.

Service tiers that were easy to sell and easy to deliver

One of the things Nicte was actively working to shift was the mix of clients she was taking on. She wanted to focus more on established businesses ready for a rebrand, while also offering faster, more accessible options for clients who just needed color strategy or a brand check-in. The problem was that each offer type required different onboarding, different timelines, and different communication — and none of that was set up distinctly. Everything ran through the same general workflow, regardless of what someone had actually purchased. She wanted each tier to have its own clear path from booking to delivery.

Room to step back without things falling apart

More than any single system, what Nicte wanted was capacity. She was doing the creative work, managing client communication, handling the administrative side, and keeping the Infinity boards up to date — all of it herself. “Anything that cuts time off my life would be great,” she said. With the right infrastructure, she could bring on contractors, delegate project tasks, and protect her time for the work that actually required her.

What Was Built

A client journey that doesn’t require constant supervision

The first thing that changed was how clients move through Dubsado after they book. Rather than relying on the portal — which had been the source of so many access issues — the new system routes everything directly to clients via email. The welcome packet goes out immediately after booking with everything they need to get started. The intake form follows 24 to 48 hours later as a standalone link, not buried inside a portal that clients couldn’t reliably access. If the form isn’t completed within a few days, a follow-up reminder goes out automatically.

This small change — separating the welcome packet from the intake form, and delivering both by direct link instead of portal — resolved the issue that had been creating friction for the majority of her clients. She no longer has to track who completed what or chase people down before she can start a project.

“I love just the way that you’re bringing process and the ways that you’re describing things.” — Nicte, during the kickoff call, when the new onboarding flow started taking shape

Infinity as the project home from day one

Once a client is booked, a Zapier and Pabbly automation creates their project board in Infinity automatically — no manual setup required. From that point forward, Infinity is where the project lives. Clients can see where they are in the process, review deliverables, submit approvals, and ask questions, all in one place. The board is designed to show clients only what they need to see, with a clean, phase-by-phase view that makes it clear what’s happening now and what comes next.

For Nicte’s branding projects especially, this matters. Her process involves multiple decision points — intake, brand strategy, stylescape review, design development — and clients have historically not always known where they stood. Now they do. When it’s time to choose between two stylescape directions, they get a form inside their board. When they submit their decision, it creates a task automatically. There’s a documented record of every approval, and no one has to piece together an email thread to figure out what was agreed on.

“I can’t wait. I really think it’s very similar to my process — Dubsado is great to get leads in the door, but the true management of the project, it just doesn’t work well.” — Nicte, on why moving project communication to Infinity made sense

Three service tiers, each with their own workflow

Nicte’s three offers — Brand Pulse Check, Color Strategy Analysis, and Branding/Rebranding packages — now each have their own onboarding logic, scheduling expectations, and delivery structure. A client coming in for a Color Strategy consultation moves through a completely different path than someone starting a full rebrand. The intake questions are scoped appropriately. The timeline is set correctly from the start. The welcome sequence reflects what they actually purchased.

This means Nicte can sell any of her three tiers knowing that the experience on the other side is ready. She doesn’t have to manually adjust the flow based on what someone bought, or remember which version of her process applies. Each path is built and waiting.

“It would be a huge piece of mind for me — because then that way I know, okay, here’s what I integrate.” — Nicte, on what having distinct workflows for each service tier would mean

8 automations keeping everything connected

Across Zapier, Pabbly, and Infinity, 8 active automations now handle the handoffs that Nicte was previously doing by hand. When a new client books in Dubsado, the booking triggers a cascade: their Infinity board is created, a FreshBooks client record is set up, and the team is notified — all without Nicte touching anything. Other automations handle Gumroad purchases flowing into Mailchimp, WooCommerce purchases routing to Flodesk segments, and internal notifications that prompt next steps at the right moment. Her tools are no longer isolated. They know when something happens in another system, and they respond accordingly.

What Changed

“Thank you SO MUCH Ashley! I can’t express how much your strategic brain has given me peace of mind. You helped me see gaps and took me from scramble to scale ready.” — Nicte Cuevas, Nicte Creative Design

Before this Glow Up, Nicte’s business ran on her attention. She was the one who noticed when a client hadn’t completed their intake form. She was the one bridging Dubsado and Infinity by copying and pasting information between them. She was the one manually updating project boards, chasing approvals, and holding the whole thing together through force of personal follow-through. It worked — until it didn’t, and until she had to.

Now the same energy she was putting into administration goes somewhere else. Clients move through onboarding without her hand-holding it. Projects open in Infinity automatically. Approvals have a clear home. The tools talk to each other. When Nicte sits down to work, she’s doing design and strategy — not inbox management. And when she’s ready to bring on contractors or step back from the day-to-day, the systems are already set up to support that transition.

“I have no idea how much this has been a long time coming,” she said at the end of the kickoff call. That’s the thing about the right infrastructure — it doesn’t just solve today’s problem. It opens up what comes next.

Ready for infrastructure that matches the work you do?

If you’re running a creative service business and your systems are running on manual effort and memory, Nicte’s story is worth sitting with. The work was always there. The operations just needed to catch up.

A Glow Up with Solution Integrators is a full operational build — designed around how your business actually works, delivered in two to six weeks, and built to grow with you.

Book a discovery call or to talk through what this could look like for your business.