I've worked in many different industries, from hospitality to higher education, and I even did a couple months at UPS. One constant over the past 20 years has been my love of startups. I've worked my way up from intern to vice president and seen the insides of companies from pre-seed stage to scaleups. I'm not afraid to roll my sleeves up, so while I love applying my experience to strategy, don't be surprised if you see me writing some knowledge base articles as well.
Classic customer experience move. I’ve got the online blueprint, but the post-its just make the magic happen. // Taken by TF
STYLE
I’m probably different from the consultant you’re used to working with. I only take on projects that make sense for my experience. If I can finish up sooner than promised, I will. I want to be impactful, so if I know your team can’t handle taking over a project after I’m done I will absolutely tell you. And if it’s not a good fit, I’ll do my best to recommend you to someone else.
Timelines range from 1 day sessions to 6 months of in depth work (sometimes longer if timing works). I do have “on-call” clients with contracts that have spanned over a year as well. I like to make sure there's enough time to make a meaningful impact with enough takeaways for the team to run with on their own. And if necessary, I love to use my network to help companies hire someone full time to carry on with strategy / execution.
Actual Saturday afternoon at a former startup. When I say I’ve helped build startups from the ground up, I have the Ikea allen wrenches to prove it. // Taken by TF
WHAT I DO
The core of my freelance work revolves around community building and customer experience strategy (sometimes execution) for product-driven tech companies, as well as event production (small events to producing conferences or helping companies that sponsor conferences). Because of my experience in several startups, I also do some dabbling and enjoy (in case you couldn't tell by the Trish of All Trades part) working on projects around professional development, career coaching, customer support & success, employee experience, and implementation of tools (Zendesk, Tettra, and Salesforce to be specific). I also do some on-camera video work (recorded over 15,000 short videos for one of my first startups) and voiceovers.
Types of projects I've worked on:
creating a new community strategy, and helping to hire a community manager
customer journey mapping of an organization, and identifying spinoff projects (for me and for the team)
identifying a community platform and creating a launch strategy
content creation, from writing to videos, that enhance the customer and employee experience
community and customer-facing employee training
defining power customers / community members through user interviews and developing programming to elevate them and the brand
producing events, conferences, or running sponsorship opportunities
Some more informal feedback after serving as an advisor during an Alternative Spring Break volunteer trip. // Taken by TF
CLIENT / COLLEAGUE RECOMMENDATIONS
You can check out the recommendations section on my LinkedIn (I have over 65) to hear more about what I've done / what it's like to work with me, but here are a handful of excerpts:
“Before we had in house customer success resources, we were able to bring in Trish to quickly create some onboarding videos for us. Speed and quality were both high priority for us and Trish was able to provide both. She’s great on camera, was able to create her own scripts, and kept the project moving along quickly to hit our deadlines. The videos came out great, and our customers really engaged with them.”
“She helped us kickstart an event marketing program and spearheaded our sponsorship of a half dozen events across the US and Europe. She was a natural extension of our team, working cross-functionally to advise us how to allocate a 6-figure marketing budget to find best-fit customers and get an ROI. We trusted her to independently manage external relationships with event sponsors and come up with detailed execution plans, and she nailed it.”
“Her ability to quickly synthesize the knowledge and work flows of different teams and provide actionable, cross-functional insights helped freshen focus on new projects and ways of doing things. Not only did she share valuable observations and learnings, she also generated tangible tools and documentation that we’ve continued to derive value from.”
“Trish is extraordinarily people-focused and always knows how to make others feel special, from her colleagues to customers. This is great from a brand perspective, but the big difference is that Trish is genuine in her interactions and works incredibly hard to represent the customer voice.”
“Trish is one of the hardest-working, most dedicated people I have ever met in the world of Community. She is passionate about her work and is a natural in getting people as excited about her team/company/product as she is.”