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real builds, real bottlenecks

Things I made absurdly useful.

A few bottlenecks I have closed for businesses in and around Lake Geneva, WI. Different problems, same pattern: find the manual leak, build the exact tool, hand back the hours.

Custom portalWorkflow automation

A 50-step onboarding that runs itself

Lake Geneva, WI vacation rental management company

The bottleneck

Bringing each new property online meant about fifty small tasks across several people, tracked in a sprawling spreadsheet and a board someone had to remember to update. In peak season, steps slipped and the owner ended up running it all from memory at night.

What I built

A private web portal for the whole team. Starting a property clones the full step list, and a cascade moves it forward on its own: finish a step and the next person is prompted automatically, with details attached. Steps can be put on hold without freezing the pipeline, daily nudges chase anything stuck, and a dashboard shows every property at a glance.

48
steps automated end to end
0
handoffs left to memory
1
dashboard for the whole pipeline
AutomationWeb integration

A local events calendar that updates itself

Lake-area tourism and hospitality business

The bottleneck

Keeping the website's "what's happening" calendar current meant a person hunting across multiple sources every week, copying events by hand, and constantly missing things. It was tedious, slow, and always a little out of date.

What I built

A pipeline that automatically gathers events from several local sources, removes duplicates, and updates the website's calendar on a schedule, with links back to each venue. The weekly manual hunt became a hands-off routine that keeps the page fresh on its own.

5
sources merged automatically
Weekly
manual updates eliminated
Auto
dedupe and publish
Custom platformNo POS needed

An affiliate network for local businesses

Lake Geneva, WI local-business marketing network

The bottleneck

The idea was a local affiliate program where partners send customers to participating businesses and everyone tracks redemptions. The catch: it could not require every business to install or change a point-of-sale system, or nobody would join.

What I built

A lightweight platform with separate portals for businesses, affiliates, and an admin, built around a simple code-and-PIN redemption flow that works at any counter with zero new hardware. Sign-ups, tracking, and reporting all live in one place.

3
tailored portals in one system
$0
new hardware for partners
1
shared source of truth

Your bottleneck could be next.

Tell me the thing your team keeps doing by hand. I will tell you how to make it absurdly useful.

Start a project → emily@emilyadams.org