GTM engineering + marketing automation

I build the systems that find, nurture and convert your customers.

Sales funnels · Lead generation · Cold outbound · CRM automation · AI systems

I connect your marketing and sales process from prospect lead qualified opportunity customer.

Stephen Ojo

Remote GTM Engineer · Marketing Automation Specialist

Toolstack

My GTM Stack

Lead Generation & Prospecting

Outbound

CRM & Sales Funnels

Automation & Integration

REST APIs Webhooks

AI

AI research AI personalization AI qualification

AI Coding Agents

The tools change. The GTM system is what matters.

Stephen Ojo

About

Stephen Ojo

I'm Stephen Ojo — a GTM Engineer and Marketing Automation Specialist working at the intersection of marketing strategy and technical execution.

You don't need another disconnected automation. You need a system that takes a prospect from first touch to customer. I combine GTM strategy, lead generation, sales funnels, CRM systems, outbound, AI and workflow automation to build exactly that — the sales funnels, outbound systems, CRM automation, lead-generation workflows and AI-powered sales systems that turn the right prospects into customers.

I don't just build the automation — I build the system the automation is supposed to support.

What I build

Marketing Automation

I build automated marketing systems that capture leads, segment them, nurture them and move them toward conversion.

This can include email automation, lead nurturing, reactivation campaigns, appointment reminders, customer journeys, CRM workflows and AI-powered follow-up.

The goal is to make sure leads keep moving even when your team isn't manually following up.

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Sales Funnels

I design and build sales funnels that turn traffic and prospects into enquiries, appointments and opportunities.

Using GoHighLevel and other CRM platforms, I build landing pages, forms, surveys, booking systems, qualification flows, pipelines and follow-up sequences.

Every part of the funnel is connected to what happens after the lead converts.

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Lead Generation & GTM

I help businesses figure out who they should target and how to reach them.

That means defining ICPs, segmenting markets, identifying target accounts, finding buying signals, researching prospects and building repeatable lead-generation systems.

The objective isn't simply more leads. It is better-fit leads that can become revenue.

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Outbound & Cold Email

I build outbound systems from the infrastructure up.

That includes domain and mailbox setup, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, deliverability, warm-up, prospect sourcing, enrichment, personalization, cold email sequences and automated follow-up.

I work with tools such as Clay, Apollo, Smartlead and Instantly to build outbound systems designed to generate conversations and meetings.

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CRM & Sales Automation

Your CRM should tell your team what is happening and what needs to happen next.

I build and organize CRM systems around the actual sales process — pipelines, stages, lead routing, lead scoring, automated follow-ups, appointment workflows, nurture campaigns, reporting and lifecycle automation.

I work with GoHighLevel, HubSpot, Zoho and RecruitCRM.

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AI-Powered Sales & Marketing

I use AI to make marketing and sales systems more capable.

I build workflows for AI-powered prospect research, personalized cold email copy, lead qualification, website chat, conversational AI, voice agents, data processing and intelligent lead routing.

The AI is connected to the workflow so it can actually take action.

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Integrations & Automation

I connect the tools that make up your GTM stack.

Using n8n, Zapier, Make, APIs and webhooks, I build workflows that move information between your CRM, outreach platforms, enrichment tools, forms, calendars and other business systems.

When something happens in one system, the next step should happen automatically.

Get started →

Approach: Anyone can connect two apps. The real work is understanding what should happen before that connection, what happens after, and why — strategy comes first, technology follows.

Best fit

B2B Startups

You are building your GTM motion and need the infrastructure to support outbound, lead generation and sales.

Founders

You want a repeatable acquisition system without having to manually manage every lead and follow-up.

Sales & RevOps Teams

Your tools are growing faster than your processes and you need your CRM, data and automation properly connected.

Marketing & Sales Agencies

You need GoHighLevel funnels, CRM automation and repeatable systems that can be deployed for clients.

How I build

My process

01 Strategy
→
02 Data
→
03 Funnel
→
04 Outreach
→
05 Automation
01

Strategy

Define your ICP, target market, customer journey, buying signals and conversion process.

02

Data

Build the prospecting, research and enrichment layer that gives the system the information it needs.

03

Funnel

Build the landing pages, forms, qualification flows, calendars, CRM stages and nurture journeys that turn interest into opportunities.

04

Outreach

Connect qualified prospects to the right channel and build the messaging, personalization, sequences and follow-ups.

05

Automation

Connect everything with n8n, APIs, webhooks, Zapier or Make so the system keeps moving without manual intervention.

The result: a connected marketing and sales system that works from lead generation through conversion.

Experience

Where I've worked

Sales Development Representative

Breezetalent.io · USA
July 2026 – September 2026 ▾

Built the company's outbound sales engine from scratch, taking the process from job-market signal discovery to qualified prospect and sales conversion.

Designed a prospecting workflow using Clay and Prospeo to identify companies actively hiring for relevant roles and turn those hiring signals into targeted accounts and contacts. Connected the workflow to Bloomberry's API to enrich and identify relevant job-listing data, then used OpenAI to generate personalized email messaging based on each prospect's company, role and hiring signals.

Set up and managed Smartlead for campaign execution, including prospect routing, personalized sequences, follow-ups and outbound infrastructure. Built the process around relevant buying signals rather than generic cold lists, allowing outreach to reach prospects at the point where their hiring activity indicated a potential need.

Managed the journey from signal → prospecting → enrichment → AI personalization → cold email → follow-up → sales conversion.

Result: 3% conversion to sales.

GoHighLevel Funnel Designer

AI Edge
June 2026 ▾

Built and launched a complete GoHighLevel lead-generation and enrollment funnel for an AI literacy training program partnered with a BC career college and supported by the BC Employer Training Grant.

Owned the project from strategy through implementation, including the page structure, conversion-focused copy, grant messaging, program presentation, lead capture forms, testimonials, FAQs and multiple CTA points.

Built the responsive funnel in GoHighLevel with a clear funding breakdown designed to answer common questions, build trust and move visitors toward enrollment. Connected the funnel to the required GoHighLevel automation and lead follow-up process.

Sales Funnels GoHighLevel Lead Generation Conversion Strategy Marketing Automation

Investor Relations Associate (Trial)

Heart2Beatz · Nigeria
May – June 2026 ▾

Heart2Beatz is a Nigerian participation-driven entertainment platform behind the flagship show Villa of Love. Brought on for a trial engagement to build and run investor outreach from the ground up.

Managed a 150+ contact investor CRM across three outreach waves, using Clay-based workflows to structure and scale the process. Ran outreach to 228 leads and built a 21-target sponsor pipeline worth $3.9M across Platinum, Gold and Silver tiers.

Result: 47% open rate and 15% click rate across the outreach campaign.
Investor Relations Clay CRM Management Sponsor Outreach Cold Outreach

Lead Generation & Automation Engineer

UK Distressed Property Market · Kelechi Properties UK
February 2026 – May 2026 ▾

Built an automated distressed-property lead generation and outbound system for a UK cash buyer.

Used the Companies House API to source 6,000+ real estate companies, then built n8n workflows to filter companies based on relevant Gazette notices, charges and other indicators of potential distress.

Enriched director and company information using Clay and Claygent, turning raw company records into qualified prospects ready for outreach.

Connected the enriched data to personalized cold email campaigns through Google Workspace, creating an automated process that continues to identify, enrich and contact relevant prospects.

Result: 30% booking rate from directors contacted.
Lead Generation n8n Companies House API Clay Claygent Data Enrichment Cold Email Automation

GTM Strategist

B2B SaaS Startup
2024 – 2025 ▾

Built the go-to-market foundation and outbound engine for a B2B SaaS startup from the ground up.

Started by defining the company's Ideal Customer Profile using firmographics, technographics and buying signals, then used that framework to identify the accounts most likely to need the product.

Designed and launched the outbound system around those accounts, combining prospect research, lead enrichment, personalized messaging, cold email and automated follow-up.

The result was a repeatable process for identifying qualified accounts and turning them into sales conversations rather than relying on broad, untargeted prospect lists.

Result: 14 meetings booked within the first 3 weeks of launch.
GTM Strategy ICP Development Lead Generation Outbound Cold Email Sales Automation

Case studies

Selected work

AI Literacy · EdTech ▶ Video included

Grant-Funded Lead-Gen Funnel for a BC Career College

AI Edge
GoHighLevel
AI Edge funnel home page AI Edge 'Why Most AI Training Fails' page
Problem

AI Edge, an AI literacy training program partnered with a BC career college and funded by the BC Employer Training Grant, needed a lead generation page that could do two jobs at once: sell the value of the program and make the funding angle impossible to miss, since grant-funded training converts very differently from a paid course. Without that funding story front and center, most visitors would bounce assuming it cost money out of pocket.

What I built

A full GoHighLevel funnel built end to end — strategy, copy, design and automation. A hero section leads with the grant messaging so cost objections are handled before anyone scrolls. Below that: a clear program outline, a testimonial carousel for social proof, FAQ accordions split between program details and funding questions, an embedded lead capture form, and CTA touchpoints at every stage a visitor might be ready to convert. Fully responsive and dark-themed to match brand identity, with the funding breakdown laid out clearly enough that trust isn't a blocker to signing up.

Result: Launch-ready funnel delivered end to end, with no external developer or designer needed.
Executive Search · Mining & Energy

Executive Search Lead-Sourcing System

Tektonic Talent
Clay Google Sheets
Clay table showing the mining prospect scoring template Clay Assets Table tracking project stage and recent signal per mining asset
Problem

Tektonic Talent needed to identify mining industry executives tied to specific countries and assets, but manual research was slow and naive filtering by company or self-reported location produced unreliable results — mining professionals are frequently FIFO or expat workers, so home location rarely reflects where someone actually works. The client needed a system that could distinguish genuine current responsibility for a target country from noise, without burning enrichment credits on irrelevant contacts.

What I built

A phase-gated scoring system in Clay judging relevance asset-by-asset rather than at the company level, with contact-finding logic, HQ-vs-site labeling, dedup logic and confirmed-only enrichment gating to protect enrichment spend. Built as one swappable country template and proven across 2+ countries without a rebuild.

Result: A tested lead-sourcing template that became the foundation for a full Phase 2 CRM automation engagement.
Executive Search · Mining & Energy

CRM Automation & Outreach Pipeline

Tektonic Talent
Clay n8n RecruitCRM Smartlead Google Sheets Google Workspace Google Alerts
n8n workflow overview for the Tektonic pipeline Clay to RecruitCRM to Smartlead intake workflow in n8n Long-cycle nurture workflow in n8n Smartlead reply and bounce routing workflow in n8n Personalized cold email preview generated for a Tektonic prospect in Smartlead
Problem

Following Phase 1's success, the client needed to scale from a manual research template into a full automated pipeline — one that could source leads, keep a CRM as the single source of truth, sync engagement data back from email outreach, and prevent automation from silently overwriting human edits. It also needed a far more rigorous classification layer for determining genuine current or recent responsibility for a target country, without relying on stated home location or company ownership alone.

What I built

A fully connected pipeline (Clay → Google Sheets → n8n → RecruitCRM → n8n → Smartlead) with RecruitCRM as the single source of truth and a sync-lock protecting manual edits from automation. A PASS/FAIL AI classifier judges country/asset relevance from evidence in a contact's own profile rather than assumption, feeding a cold email engine that references the single most relevant asset per contact. An automated 8–12 week nurture sequence and a Google Alerts–driven event monitor trigger fresh research only when something real happens, not on a fixed timer.

Result: A fully connected, automation-first pipeline handling 1,581 contacts across 608 companies, ready for live outreach with a scalable, country-agnostic architecture.
Real Estate

AI-Powered Lead Qualification & Booking

GoHighLevel AI Qualification
Problem

The business needed a way to engage and qualify website visitors without relying on someone to manually respond to every enquiry.

What I built

A GoHighLevel + AI qualification system that engages visitors, asks qualification questions, identifies lead intent and routes prospects toward the appropriate next step. The CRM tracks leads across stages including New Lead, Cold Nurture, Warm, Hot, Call Booked and Won/Lost.

Result: Reported 32% increase in revenue.
Beauty Salon

92-Service Sales & Booking System

GoHighLevel Zapier
Problem

The business had a large number of services that needed their own booking paths, along with a need to bring inactive customers back.

What I built

92 service-specific calendars connected to automated customer journeys. Customers could enter 30, 90 or 180-day SMS and email reactivation campaigns based on their activity — GoHighLevel and Zapier connected the booking process with the follow-up system.

Result: A complete booking and customer reactivation system covering the salon's service catalogue.
Self-Storage

Lead Capture, Sales Funnel & AI Nurture

GoHighLevel AI Chat
Problem

The business needed a better way to capture enquiries, provide quotes and move prospects through the sales process.

What I built

A GoHighLevel sales funnel with a quote form, AI chat experience, CRM pipeline and automated nurture. New enquiries were captured, qualified and routed into the CRM, with follow-up continuing automatically based on the prospect's activity and stage.

Result: A connected acquisition system from enquiry through automated follow-up.
Recruiting

Automated Outbound + CRM Infrastructure

n8n Smartlead RecruitCRM
Problem

Prospecting, outreach and CRM data lived in disconnected systems, with no reliable link between outbound activity and CRM records.

What I built

Connected prospect enrichment, n8n, Smartlead and RecruitCRM into one outbound workflow. The system checks that a CRM record exists before a prospect enters outreach — replies, bounces and unsubscribes automatically update the corresponding CRM stage, and enrichment data feeds into more relevant personalization.

Result: A connected prospecting, outbound and CRM lifecycle with RecruitCRM as the source of truth.
Accounting · US & Canada

Client Portal & Onboarding Automation

GoHighLevel Stripe DocuSign
Problem

An accounting firm serving clients across the US and Canada had multiple service tiers, each needing its own onboarding path — contracts, payments, document collection and portal access. Managing it manually meant clients got stuck waiting on the next step, contracts needed constant manual follow-up, and the team spent significant time moving clients between stages instead of the client's own actions driving what happened next.

What I built

A tier-based onboarding architecture in GoHighLevel (Silver, Gold, Platinum) connected to Stripe and DocuSign, so payment and contract status became automation triggers instead of manual checkpoints. The workflow carried clients through Payment → Contract → Onboarding → Document Collection → Portal Access → Completion automatically, with a client portal scoped to each tier and support for both US and Canadian markets.

Result: 60% faster onboarding, contract completion up from ~65% to 89%, and 10 hours of manual work saved per week.
AI Literacy · EdTech ▶ Video included

Grant-Funded Lead-Gen Funnel for a BC Career College

AI Edge
GoHighLevel
AI Edge funnel home page AI Edge 'Why Most AI Training Fails' page

The Problem

AI Edge is an AI literacy training program delivered in partnership with a BC career college and funded through the BC Employer Training Grant. The challenge wasn't just building a page — it was solving for how differently people respond to grant-funded offers versus paid ones. If a visitor doesn't immediately understand the program is funded, they assume it's another expensive course and leave before reading anything else. The funnel had to lead with that funding story, not bury it, while still making the program itself feel credible and worth committing time to.

Strategy and Structure

I mapped the funnel around the order a skeptical visitor actually thinks in. First, is this legitimate and is it funded. Second, what will I actually learn. Third, do other people like me trust this. Fourth, how do I sign up. That became the section order: hero with grant messaging up top, program outline next, testimonials for proof, FAQs to close remaining objections split cleanly between program content and funding mechanics, and a lead capture form reachable from multiple points rather than one buried at the bottom.

Design and Copy

The page runs a dark-themed design matching the AI Edge brand identity, built to feel modern and credible rather than like a generic course landing page. Copy was written to keep the funding breakdown concrete and specific rather than vague, since vague funding claims are what make people distrust grant offers in the first place. Every CTA was written around a different visitor intent — some ready to enroll immediately, others still needing convincing — so the page doesn't rely on a single conversion moment.

Automation

Built the full lead capture flow inside GoHighLevel, connecting the embedded form to automated follow-up sequences so leads didn't sit untouched after submission. Set up the funnel to be self-contained and fully responsive across mobile and desktop, with FAQ accordions and the testimonial carousel functioning cleanly on smaller screens, where most training-program leads actually browse first.

Outcome

Delivered as a complete, launch-ready funnel handling positioning, trust-building and lead capture in one build, with no external developer or designer needed to take it from brief to live page.

Full Walkthrough

Executive Search · Mining & Energy

Executive Search Lead-Sourcing System

Tektonic Talent
Clay Google Sheets
Clay table showing the mining prospect scoring template Clay Assets Table tracking project stage and recent signal per mining asset

The Problem

Tektonic Talent needed to identify and reach mining industry executives tied to specific countries and assets, but manually researching each prospect's actual work history and project ties was slow, and a naive approach — filtering by company or self-reported location — produced unreliable results. Mining professionals are frequently FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) or expat workers, so home location rarely reflects where someone is actually working. The client needed a system that could distinguish genuine current or recent responsibility for a target country from noise, without burning enrichment credits on irrelevant contacts.

What We Built

  • Phase-gating logic separating "Project" from "Operation" stage tags, so prospects could be filtered by where a company's asset actually sat in its lifecycle
  • Per-asset scoring for companies that own multiple assets across different countries, so relevance was judged asset-by-asset rather than at the company level
  • Contact-finding logic surfacing 5–10 relevant contacts per company, with hard exclusion rules to filter out irrelevant roles/departments
  • HQ-vs-site labeling to distinguish corporate/head-office staff from people actually tied to the operational site
  • Row-splitting and dedup logic to keep the dataset clean and avoid wasting enrichment credits on duplicate records
  • Confirmed-only enrichment gating — email and phone enrichment only ran after a contact passed relevance checks, not before
  • One swappable country template, built once and tested successfully across 2+ countries, proving the system could scale to new markets without a rebuild

Outcome

Delivered a working, tested lead-sourcing template that formed the foundation for a much larger Phase 2 engagement — the client expanded the relationship into a full CRM automation build after seeing this system work.

Executive Search · Mining & Energy

CRM Automation & Outreach Pipeline

Tektonic Talent
Clay n8n RecruitCRM Smartlead Google Sheets Google Workspace Google Alerts
n8n workflow overview for the Tektonic pipeline Clay to RecruitCRM to Smartlead intake workflow in n8n Long-cycle nurture workflow in n8n Smartlead reply and bounce routing workflow in n8n Personalized cold email preview generated for a Tektonic prospect in Smartlead

The Problem

Following Phase 1's success, the client needed to scale from a manual research template into a full, automated pipeline — one that could source leads, keep a CRM as the single source of truth, sync engagement data from email outreach back into that CRM, and prevent automation from silently overwriting human edits. The system also needed a much more rigorous classification layer: accurately determining whether a mining professional had genuine current or recent (3–5 year) responsibility for a specific target country, without relying on their stated home location or simple company ownership — both of which produce false positives in an industry built around FIFO and expat staffing.

What We Built

Architecture (Clay → Google Sheets → n8n → RecruitCRM → n8n → Smartlead)
  • Clay as the single origin point for all leads — never a sync target
  • RecruitCRM established as the single source of truth for contact data
  • Smartlead handling all email sending, firing engagement webhooks back to update RecruitCRM stages automatically
  • n8n orchestrating the Smartlead connection directly (bypassing Clay's native, more limited push integration) to keep RecruitCRM and Smartlead reliably in sync
  • A Google Sheets relay layer built specifically to work around Clay's Enterprise-plan-gated webhook/API columns, avoiding a costly plan upgrade
Data Integrity Safeguards
  • A custom "Sync Source" field (Automated/Manual) checked before every sync — once a human edits a record in RecruitCRM, Clay permanently loses write access to that record, preventing automation from clobbering manual corrections
  • Engagement updates from Smartlead webhooks remain exempt from this lock, so email activity still flows through correctly
n8n Workflow Layer (three distinct workflows)
  • Google Sheets–triggered intake — deduping and creating companies/contacts in RecruitCRM from new Clay data
  • Webhook-triggered engagement handler — updating RecruitCRM stages based on Smartlead activity (opens, replies, campaign adds)
  • A manual-edit watcher enforcing the sync lock
AI-Driven Country/Asset Classification System
  • A rigorous PASS/FAIL prompt classifier (iterated through multiple versions, including removing an intermediate "CHECK" state to force cleaner binary decisions) scanning a candidate's profile text for four independent signals: explicit country mentions, named asset matches, competing other-country ties, and portfolio-wide/global remit language
  • Hard-coded rule: company ownership of an asset alone is never sufficient for a match — evidence has to come from the person's own profile text or an explicit statement of remit
  • Home/residence location explicitly excluded from the decision logic to correctly handle FIFO and expat mining talent
  • target_country fed in dynamically per row from the company's actual operating location, with the list of known in-country assets pulled via a live lookup against a maintained Assets Table — keeping the classifier anchored to verified data instead of the model's own potentially outdated knowledge of mining geography
Cold Email Copy Engine
  • A first-touch email generation prompt consolidated to three clean inputs (name, company, linked asset record)
  • Single-asset-selection logic so each email referenced the most relevant project rather than a generic pitch
  • JSON-structured output (including an asset_referenced field) for easy QA
  • A separate company eligibility/classification gate (Keep / Remove / Manual Review) built country-agnostic from the start, so it could extend beyond the initial markets into new regions like the DRC without rework
Nurture and Monitoring Layer (built and tested)
  • An 8–12 week automated nurture sequence running on a weekly n8n loop, checking RecruitCRM for contacts due their next touch and pushing either lightweight, data-only content or fresh research-backed content depending on lead tier (roughly an 80/20 split), pushed to Smartlead as a single-step add decoupled from Smartlead's own native sequencing
  • Weekly Gmail reply-checking across all three warmed inboxes, moving any contact who replied into the "Replied" CRM stage (unless already marked Replied, Won, Bounced, or Client)
  • A news/event monitoring layer using Google Alerts, tracking each company plus trigger keywords like "hires," "appoints," and "expansion," delivered as an RSS feed read daily by n8n and matched back to the relevant company in RecruitCRM — triggering fresh enrichment and a tailored touch only when a real event was detected, avoiding wasted research spend on a fixed timer
Infrastructure
  • Domain and DNS setup (tektonicsearch.com)
  • Three Google Workspace mailboxes connected to Smartlead via OAuth, with DMARC configured for deliverability

Outcome

Delivered a fully connected, automation-first pipeline handling 1,581 distinct contacts across 608 companies, ready to run in live outreach campaigns — with data integrity protections, a defensible AI classification layer grounded in real evidence rather than assumption, a working long-term nurture and event-monitoring system, and a scalable architecture the client could extend to new countries and markets without rebuilding the core system.

Accounting · US & Canada

Client Portal & Onboarding Automation

GoHighLevel Stripe DocuSign

Overview

I built a comprehensive client onboarding and portal automation system in GoHighLevel for an accounting firm serving clients across the US and Canada. The goal was to replace a largely manual onboarding process with a structured system that could handle different service tiers, collect payments and contracts, manage document submissions, and give clients access to the right portal experience based on their package. The final system connected GoHighLevel with Stripe and DocuSign while using automated workflows to manage the entire onboarding journey from payment through completed onboarding.

The Challenge

The firm had multiple service tiers, each requiring a different onboarding experience. Clients needed to complete contracts, make payments, submit documents, and receive access to the appropriate resources. Managing this manually created several problems — clients could get stuck waiting for the next onboarding step, contracts had to be followed up manually, and document collection required repeated communication. Different service tiers also needed different access and onboarding paths, and the firm was spending significant time moving clients between stages manually while trying to maintain a consistent experience across US and Canadian customers. The objective was to create a system where the client's actions automatically determined what happened next.

The Solution

I designed and implemented the onboarding architecture inside GoHighLevel around three primary client tiers — Silver, Gold and Platinum — each with its own onboarding workflow and access logic while remaining part of the same overall CRM ecosystem. Once a client entered the onboarding process, their progress could automatically trigger the appropriate next step:

Payment → Contract → Onboarding → Document Collection → Portal Access → Completion

This removed much of the manual coordination previously required from the firm's team.

GoHighLevel CRM Architecture

I configured GoHighLevel as the central system for managing the client journey. Client records, onboarding status, workflow triggers, communication and access logic were structured around the CRM. Rather than creating disconnected processes for each service tier, I built a structured automation framework that could identify the client's package and route them through the appropriate onboarding experience — giving the team a central view of where each client stood while automations handled the repetitive operational work.

Tier-Based Onboarding

One of the core parts of the project was building separate onboarding logic for Silver, Gold and Platinum clients. Each tier could trigger different:

  • Onboarding communications
  • Contract requirements
  • Payment requirements
  • Document collection steps
  • Portal access
  • Client resources
  • Follow-up actions

This meant the firm could offer different levels of service without manually managing every client's onboarding, with workflows responding to client actions and onboarding status rather than relying entirely on staff to remember what should happen next.

Stripe Payment Automation

Stripe was integrated into the onboarding process so payment status could become part of the automation logic, connecting the commercial side of the process with the operational side. Once the required payment condition was satisfied, the appropriate onboarding workflow could continue automatically rather than requiring someone on the team to manually verify payment and move the client forward.

DocuSign Contract Automation

DocuSign was integrated into the onboarding workflow to automate contract handling. Contracts were built directly into the onboarding journey, letting clients receive and complete the appropriate agreement as part of the process, with contract status used as a trigger for subsequent onboarding actions. This significantly reduced the manual contract chasing required from the team, turning contract completion into an automated milestone instead of another item on someone's manual follow-up list.

Client Portal

I configured the client portal experience around the client's service tier, with staged access and tier-specific permissions so clients only received the resources relevant to the package they purchased. The portal adapted to the client's onboarding status and service level as part of the overall CRM and automation system, rather than giving every client the same experience.

Document Collection

Accounting clients often need to provide multiple documents before the firm can begin or complete certain services, and tracking these requests manually created delays and extra communication. I built document collection as a defined stage of the onboarding journey, guiding clients through the required steps while giving the internal team greater visibility into onboarding status — reducing back-and-forth and making it easier to spot clients who hadn't completed the required steps.

US & Canada Market Support

The firm served both US and Canadian customers, so the system needed to accommodate both markets. I built multi-market support into the onboarding architecture, including currency handling and market-specific considerations within the client journey, so the same underlying system could support clients across both markets without separate onboarding infrastructures.

Automation Logic

The workflows were designed around events and conditions rather than fixed manual checklists. A typical client journey looked like:

New Client → Payment → Contract Sent → Contract Completed → Onboarding Started → Documents Requested → Documents Submitted → Portal Access → Onboarding Completed

At each stage the system triggered the relevant action — if a client completed a step, the workflow moved forward; if not, the system triggered the appropriate follow-up rather than requiring the team to manually check every client, creating a much more predictable onboarding operation.

Outcome

60%
Faster onboarding
89%
Contract completion (up from ~65%)
10 hrs
Saved per week

Beyond the numbers, the biggest improvement was operational consistency — clients were no longer dependent on someone remembering every step of their onboarding process.

Skills & Deliverables

CRM Architecture CRM Automation Workflow Automation Client Portal Configuration Tier-Based Access Control Stripe Integration DocuSign Integration API Integration Payment Automation Contract Automation Document Collection Automation Multi-Market Onboarding Client Lifecycle Automation

Key Takeaway

This project was more than simply building a few GoHighLevel workflows. I designed the onboarding process as an interconnected system where payments, contracts, documents, CRM records, client access and communication worked together — producing a faster, more consistent client experience while removing hours of repetitive administrative work from the firm's team every week.

Reviews

What clients say

★★★★★ 5.0
“

Stephen built out the core of our Clay prospecting engine and did a great job. He took a detailed brief, pushed back sensibly where scope went beyond what we'd agreed rather than just building past it, and delivered a clean, well-structured setup that does exactly what we needed. Communication was clear and consistent throughout, and he documented everything with a full walkthrough so the team can run it without him. Straightforward to work with, honest, and genuinely knows his stuff. We've already taken him on for the next phase, which says it all. Highly recommend.

Danny Shaw
CEO, Tektonic Talent
★★★★★ 5.0
“

Steve was fantastic to work with on our Companies House project. He is incredibly detail-oriented, hardworking, and consistently delivered accurate, high-quality research. His communication was excellent throughout, always keeping me updated and ensuring tasks were completed efficiently. Steve is reliable, proactive, and clearly committed to producing great results. I highly recommend him to anyone looking for a skilled and dependable freelancer.

Deep understanding Went above and beyond Proactive communication Exceeded expectations Strategic thinking
Kelechi Nwachukwu
Founder, Kelechi Properties UK
“

Stephen did an excellent job auditing and fixing our Smartlead setup. He resolved our SPF, DKIM, and DMARC issues, improved sender configuration, and fixed our sequence merge tags and personalization fields. Great communication, strong email deliverability knowledge, and he clearly explained the root causes and fixes. Highly recommended for Smartlead, cold email, DNS, and deliverability work.

Leisha Smith
Ecommerce Owner

Contact

Your marketing and sales system should work together.

If you're generating leads but struggling to follow up…
If your CRM is messy…
If your sales funnel isn't connected to what happens after someone submits a form…
If your outbound process depends on spreadsheets and manual work…
Or if you have a stack full of tools that don't talk to each other…

That's where I come in.

Tell me what you're trying to sell, who you're trying to reach and what's currently slowing your growth. I'll help you figure out what the system should look like.