Client Case Study: Tamara Bennett, Owner of Southern Adoornments Decor
Meet Tamara Bennett, Creative CEO of Southern Adoornments Decor, a thriving paint/craft education business serving 200+ students at live events and hundreds more through her membership, the Painters Clubhouse.
When Tamara first reached out, she was drowning in the day-to-day operations of a successful business that had grown beyond her ability to manage solo. Sound familiar?
If so, you’re in luck. I sat down with Tamara to talk about how we got her from working in the weeds to fully focusing on being the creative visionary.
You can read the summarized version in this post or watch the full video below.
The Challenge: Success Was Suffocating Her Creativity
Tamara started her paint education business out of necessity – her family needed additional income after her husband returned from deployment. What began as solo paint parties in church fellowship halls evolved into a booming online membership.
But success came with a price.
By 2020, Tamara’s business had doubled, but so had her stress levels. Despite having an online business manager already, critical things were falling through the cracks:
- An entire launch went out without emailing their list (discovered only after the fact)
- Team communication was scattered across Facebook Messenger, email, Voxer, Asana, and Facebook groups
- No clear task prioritization system – Tamara often felt like she was holding the team up
- Launches felt chaotic and overwhelming despite their success
- Systems existed, but weren’t being utilized effectively
“I was just throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to see what sticks. We were trying to remember what we did during the last launch, but we couldn’t quite repeat the process.”
Eventually, she realized she needed someone who could not only manage operations but also provide the strategic leadership and emotional support that comes with being a CEO. That’s where I came in!
The Hesitation: Starting Over Felt Scary
“I was really hesitant to switch because when you’ve been working with the same person for so long, they know you. They know your business. And it’s scary to hire somebody who doesn’t know a thing about your business.”
Like many creative CEOs, Tamara worried about:
- Having to start from scratch with someone new
- Whether a new OBM could understand her specific business model
- Losing the institutional knowledge built with her previous team member
But during our discovery call, something clicked and put her mind at ease.
“The things you were saying, the questions you were asking – you had already done a little bit of digging on my business to say things like ‘I see you could work on this, this, and this.’ Those were things that were already in the back of my mind that I knew were problems. The fact that you had picked them out before you even met me made me know you knew your stuff.”
What sealed the deal was a combination of operational expertise and comfort in finding someone who could serve as both a strategic partner and, as Tamara puts it, “business therapist.”
The Transformation: Going From Firefighter to Visionary
One of the biggest reasons Tamara and I started working together was that she felt she was spending more time in the day-to-day than doing the stuff that moved her business forward (and fueled her creative fire).
After 90 days of observation and integration, we completely overhauled Tamara’s operational foundation.
Launch Management Adjustment:
- Created comprehensive launch asset libraries with every detail mapped out
- Implemented master info docs so team members never had to hunt for cart close dates, links, or bonus details
- Established clear role definitions for each team member
The result: “The last couple of launches we’ve done have felt lighter, smoother, more organized. I’m like the dancing bear – I just show up and do my performance. I don’t have to worry about all the other parts.”
Task Management Clarity:
- Prioritized daily task system with clear due dates
- Eliminated the constant “What do you need from me today?” Voxer messages
The result: “I can take the whole day off and go hang out by the pool, but I can log in and see my tasks for today, tomorrow, and the next day. Some days I can be completely done with my work in 2-3 hours tops.”
Content Planning Proactivity:
- Membership content planned 3 months in advance
- Guest artist bookings scheduled quarterly
The result: No more last-minute content scrambling. A win in a league of its own!
Communication Streamlining:
- Consolidated team communication from 6+ channels into organized systems
- Clear documentation of all decisions and conversations, leading to more efficient workflows
The result: No more searching through 15 different DMs trying to retrace conversations.
Team Empowerment
- Clear role definitions and expectations
- Direct access to documented processes and decisions
- Faster problem resolution through proper systems
- Empowerment to work independently without constant CEO input
The result: “They have a lot more clarity around their role and more ownership in their role. Before, there was a lot of cloudiness as to who was really, truly in charge of what. Now their roles are much more defined, and they can really take ownership.”
Not Just Operations, But Also Strategic Support
Beyond operations, Tamara gained a strategic thinking partner. On a practical level, this includes:
- Quarterly check-ins to identify tasks that can be delegated
- Mastermind debrief sessions to turn learning into actionable plans
- Fresh perspective on stuck problems: “What if you tried it this way?”
- Continuous optimization conversations
The Results: Freedom to Create
“I can just take the day off and go to the pool if I want to, and know that everything is taken care of. It’s really nice to see all of that working in the background and me not having to worry about it.
It’s taken a ton of weight off of me and allowed me to get back into the joy of creating and the joy of the side of the business that I enjoy more, and take all of the heavy stuff that I don’t enjoy off my plate.”
Tamara has also said that she finds a huge sigh of relief in having a strategic partner who is there to make sure her ideas move past the parking lot. “If I tell Chynna an idea, she’ll jot it down and come back to it later and be like, ‘Back in the spring, you mentioned you might want to do X.’ I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that. I do want to do that.'”
The Bottom Line of Hiring an OBM
“If I were to start over again today and start a new business, there’s no way I would get more than probably two years into that business without an OBM. It’s the biggest gift as a business owner.”
The transformation with Southern Adoornments Decor didn’t happen overnight, but the results speak for themselves. Her business now runs smoothly whether she’s by the pool, at a mastermind meetup, or painting the day away at one of her live events.
Ready to transform your creative business?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the day-to-day operations of your growing business and ready to reclaim your time and creative energy, let’s talk about how strategic operational support can transform your business too.
