The business behind the build.
Melissa Eisenbrandt, M.A., PCC, runs Royal Coaching Colorado, her leadership coaching business. She does individual and group coaching and workshops. Before Brightwood, she prepped every session by hand, onboarded each new client from scratch, wrote her own follow-ups and typed her ICF hours into a spreadsheet. She was our first coaching client. Her system ran with her real clients from April to August 2026. It wrote her call recaps, prepped her sessions, onboarded new clients, logged her ICF hours and sent her a brief each morning.
Hear directly from Melissa Eisenbrandt, Royal Coaching Colorado.
The work around the work.
Melissa's coaching worked. The work around it was the problem. She prepped every session by hand, onboarded each new client from scratch and wrote every follow-up herself. After each call she had to find the transcript, email the action items, file her notes in the client's folder and log her ICF hours.
Every new client added more of that work. Her clients also emailed to ask for resources again: the one she mentioned last session, or the one she sent a few months ago. She answered each of those emails herself.
The same resources, asked for again
Clients emailed to ask for a resource she had mentioned, or one she sent months before. Each request was one more email to answer.
ICF hours trapped in a spreadsheet
Individual hours on one tab, group hours on another, typed in by hand after every session.
Every client onboarded from scratch
No system for it. Welcome emails, resources and follow-ups were all done by hand every time, in whatever hours were left after coaching.
A system around the way they work.
We built a private system around the way Melissa already worked. It ran from April to August 2026. Here's what it did.
A brief before every call
Before each session she got a short brief on the client: their last three sessions, open to-dos and progress. She walked in ready without reading back through months of notes.
Recorded calls filed to the right client
When a recorded Zoom call ended, the system matched it to a client by email, then by name, and saved the transcript to that client's record. If it couldn't tell who the call was with, it saved the transcript for her to link by hand.
Recaps after recorded calls
After a recorded call, Claude wrote a summary, key takeaways and action items. When the call matched a client, that client got a recap email with those and the recording link. If nothing useful came out of a call, no email went out and she got a warning instead. Two days later, a check-in was drafted for her to approve.
Commitments tracked between sessions
What a client said they'd do was saved as a to-do, so it didn't fall through the gap between sessions. She could see what was open for each client.
ICF hours logged in one step
She picked the client and the session length, 45 or 60 minutes, and hit save. The row went straight into her ICF sheet, with individual and group hours on their own tabs.
Onboarding from her intake form
After the onboarding call, Claude read the intake form and her notes and wrote a starting goal, three to-dos and a welcome email in her voice. One email carried the welcome note, her starter resources and the client's portal link.
A private portal for each client
Every client got a private portal with their resources, action items and session recaps, made for them when they joined.
An assistant she could ask
She could ask it something like what she covered with a client last month. It answered from that client's own records, so she didn't have to dig through files.
One place to run the day
At 8am a brief listed the day's sessions, overdue to-dos, follow-ups and anything waiting on her approval. Her dashboard showed the same things in one view.
What waited for her
Check-ins and emails the assistant drafted waited for her approval. Session recaps went to clients on their own, in the format she asked for.
More room for the coaching.
For four months the system ran with her real clients. She started each day with a brief, her clients got a recap after their recorded calls, and new clients got their welcome, resources and portal without her setting them up. The system was paused in August 2026.
months live with her real clients, Apr to Aug 2026
code changes shipped to her system, Apr to Jul 2026
It's magical. It took me like 5 seconds. Holy moly.Melissa Eisenbrandt · on linking a recorded call to a client