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Operations Systems Consulting

Your business should not require your weekend to function

I help founder-led service businesses move the running of the business out of the owner's head and into clear workflows, written procedures and simple systems a team can actually follow.

Book a 20-minute fit call See what I do

Charlotte, North Carolina · Working with clients nationwide

Sound familiar?

You built something real, and now it only runs when you're in the room

  • Every decision routes back through you, even the small ones.
  • New people get taught differently every time, because nothing is written down.
  • Nobody is sure who owns what, so things stall waiting for permission.
  • Client work comes out differently depending on who touched it.
  • You've added tools, but they never became one system.
  • You need more capacity, but every hire so far has added chaos instead.

None of that means you built it wrong. It means the business outgrew the way it's being run.

What I do

Three places to start

Pick where it hurts most. Most people begin with the audit, then build from what it finds.

Step one · Diagnose

Operational Clarity Audit

For the owner who knows something is broken but can't name it.

  • A map of how work actually moves today
  • Where it stalls, and what that costs you
  • Who owns what, and where that's unclear
  • A prioritised 30-day repair plan
$250About one week

Step two · Build

Critical Workflow Build

For the business that needs one important process rebuilt properly.

  • One workflow redesigned end to end
  • A written procedure your team can follow
  • The tracker, dashboard or hub that runs it
  • Ownership rules and escalation paths
  • Training, handover, and a test that it works
$1,500Three to four weeks

Step three · Embed

Operating Hub

For the growing business whose systems need to work as one.

  • Two or three connected workflows
  • One central hub as the source of truth
  • Procedures, onboarding and document structure
  • Roles, decision rights and a review rhythm
  • Team training and 30 days of settling in
$4,500Six to eight weeks

Every build starts by mapping how the work moves and naming who owns what. The audit is that step sold on its own, for when you want the diagnosis before committing to the build.

Who this is for

Founder-led service businesses, one to ten people

Especially at the point where solo turns into a small team, and the way you've always run things stops holding.

Clinical & wellness practices

Scheduling, intake, follow-up and records that have to be right every time.

Professional & creative agencies

Client delivery that shouldn't vary depending on who picked up the project.

Community nonprofits

Small teams, many obligations, and reporting that has to hold up to scrutiny.

Where I stop. I build the system and teach your people to run it, then I step out. I'm not looking to run your operations for you long term. And where a system needs clear language to work, brand and message standards are part of the build, not a separate project.

Track record

Fourteen years fixing operations where mistakes are expensive

60 → 97%Quality scores on a service team, inside four weeks
40%Fewer operational questions after a self-service system rollout
200+Managers who adopted the tools and kept using them
160+Employees supported across eight managers

Most of that work was done inside federal operations and financial services, where procedures get audited and "we'll remember" is not an acceptable answer. The same discipline, sized for a business with five people instead of five hundred.

About

I'm Selene Powell

I spent fourteen years running operations in places where getting it wrong had consequences — federal service delivery and financial services. I managed teams, rebuilt processes that were failing, and led the technology rollouts that made new ways of working actually stick.

What I kept noticing is that the problem is almost never the people. It's that the way work happens lives in somebody's head instead of somewhere everyone can reach.

Now I do that work for smaller businesses, where the person holding everything in their head is usually the owner. I diagnose what's actually breaking, design the structure, build the workflows and tools, and train the people who'll run it. Then I hand it over and get out of the way.

The measure of a good engagement is that you don't need me afterwards.

Selene Powell, founder of Soothe and Sap Company

Credentials

  • MBA, University of Maryland
    Robert H. Smith School of Business
  • Project Management Professional (PMP)
  • 14+ years in regulated operations
  • Based in Charlotte, NC

Start here

Twenty minutes, no pitch

Tell me what's breaking. I'll tell you whether it's something I can fix, and roughly what it would take. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so.

Book a time Email me

selene@sootheandsap.com