Blue Sky Phoenix
How Blue Sky Phoenix Turned BasicOps Into the Central Hub for Their Distributed Marketing Agency
"I want BasicOps to be the place where all the things land. That's the hub."
— Michelle Coe, Founder
Meet Blue Sky Phoenix
Industry: Marketing & Web Design
In Business: 15 years
Users: 5
Websites Managed: 45
Active Clients: 12–13 ongoing engagements at any given time
Description: Independent marketing and web design firm offering marketing strategy, competitive analysis, SEO, AI search audits, website design, and digital and print advertising.
Running a boutique marketing agency means juggling dozens of clients, a distributed team spread across time zones, and years of institutional knowledge that can't afford to get lost. Michelle Coe, Founder of Blue Sky Phoenix, has been doing exactly that for 15 years, managing 45 websites, serving up to 13 active clients at once, and coordinating a lean team of 5, all working remotely. When she came to BasicOps, she was looking for one thing above all else: a single place where her team's work, context, and communication could live together.
Building Institutional Memory Across a Distributed Team
When you've worked with some clients for a decade and a half, continuity becomes critical. Michelle's biggest challenge wasn't finding clients — it was making sure every new team member could get up to speed on a long-standing relationship without losing time. BasicOps Notes became the solution.
"One of the reasons why I came over to BasicOps is because I was looking for a solution where I would have some sort of archived history over time, because some of my clients have been with me the whole 15 years that I've been in business," Michelle explains. "I can build context through notes. I'll put assets, content, brand guidelines, and long-term details into the notes section, and then refer to that when I'm assigning tasks to my team members."
With some team members operating in a different time zone from Michelle, that archived context is more than a convenience — it's a lifeline. A note left overnight needs to be findable and complete; there's no time to chase down context when a 24-hour window is already ticking.
Organizing Client Work with Projects, Tasks, and Notes
Michelle's workflow is multi-layered. Some clients are engaged weekly on marketing strategy while others call in for one-off website fixes. She uses BasicOps Projects to mirror that complexity, with dedicated project spaces for each client that bundle tasks, discussions, and notes in one place.
Her upgrade to a higher-tier subscription was prompted by discovering BasicOps' Templates feature. "I wouldn't have known about it, except that I was having a conversation with ChatGPT on how to improve my workflow processes, and I told it that I was working with BasicOps. ChatGPT told me about the higher-level tier and laid out exactly how I could set up my templates." She upgraded immediately.
The vision she's working toward is making BasicOps the definitive hub: the place where client assets, task history, brand guidelines, links, and communications all converge, rather than being scattered across Google Drive folders, email threads, and third-party documents. "As much as I can pull into one place," she says, "I want BasicOps to be the place where all the things land."
How BasicOps Has Changed the Way Michelle Works
For a solo agency owner managing a distributed team, the cost of miscommunication is measured in lost days, not just lost hours. BasicOps' project-based communication keeps all conversations attached to the work they're about, so Michelle's team doesn't have to hunt across Slack threads or email chains to find a decision.
She also praised BasicOps' support team after a note went missing mid-project. "I reached out to your support team, and they did some digging, found out what happened, fixed it, and actually found the missing note." With a remote team in different time zones, a missing note can mean a full day of delay, so a fast fix mattered.
Archived tasks in BasicOps let her go back months to see what was done on any client — invaluable both for billing accuracy and for onboarding new team members on long-running relationships.
Favorite BasicOps Features
Notes as Living Client Files. The Notes feature is the backbone of Michelle's knowledge management. Brand guidelines, content assets, archived decisions — they all live in Notes, linked directly to the relevant project. "Being able to just drop an image into a note, that in itself was a huge positive," she says. She's also looking forward to using tables in Notes (a recently-added feature) to organize monthly recurring work.
Archived Task History. Long client relationships generate years of decisions, requests, and completed work. BasicOps' task archive lets Michelle look back and ask, "We were having problems with this server 3 months ago. What was the problem?" — and get an answer without digging through email.
Project-Based Communication. With a fully async team, conversations that stay attached to the task they're about are essential. Michelle keeps discussions in each project rather than a separate chat, so context is always collocated with the work. "We have different people touching the project at any given time," she explains, and threaded discussions ensure nobody has to ask, "Wait, what did we decide on this?"
Templates for Repeatable Client Onboarding. Michelle is actively building out project templates to streamline how she launches new client engagements, whether it's a website design or a marketing strategy kickoff. Templates mean she can spin up a complete project structure in moments and adapt it to each client's specific needs.
"Ultimately, I'd really like to get things more streamlined. As much as I can pull into one place, I want BasicOps to be the hub, the place where all the things land."
— Michelle Coe, Founder
