Think home-flip show, but for your back office. I learn how everything actually runs, then build the AI systems that run the back office. November's founder is Kelsea Jensen, and I am so excited about this one. Grab a matcha and follow along. I'll be updating this page every single week.
Kelsea and I first met in Arizona in 2024, two founders talking hair, business and big dreams over a sunny patio. So when she raised her hand to start her AI era, it felt like the most full-circle start.
the kickoff call
friday, october 30
first, the glitter
Kelsea started out as a hairstylist and, in her words, never set out to start a business. She was adding a little sparkle to clients' hair for fun, and the tinsel out there just wasn't up to her standards. Cheap strands, chunky application, not giving high-end. So she reworked everything: the technique, the placement, even the strands themselves.
Her clients couldn't get enough (even the low-key ones), and Goddess Glitter was born. Today she sells Glitterlites, certifies stylists to become Goddess Glitter Pros, and has a whole community of stylists bringing the sparkle to their own chairs.
the honest "before"
From the outside, it's all sparkle. Behind the scenes, Kelsea was the first to say it's a lot. Revenue finally broke out of a plateau about six months ago, and now operations are the thing standing between her and the next level.
"This is not a clean-your-house-before-the-house-cleaner-comes situation. It's going to be like, this is where I'm at."Kelsea, and honestly, iconic
A few of the things eating her time:
- Copy-paste admin. Keeping lead info up to date means hopping between three different apps and updating each one by hand.
- Sales that don't scale (yet). Her group sales calls convert beautifully, but they can't stretch across time zones.
- A community that needs a little tidying. Her stylist group is buzzing, which is a great problem, but it's hard to keep organized.
- gmail
- asana
- shopify
- klaviyo
- thinkific
- community box
- calendly
- zoom
- google meet
- zapier
Ten apps, and a whole lot of copy-pasting between them. Keep this list in mind for the big reveal. That's where I come in.
the dream board
Kelsea's ideas could fill a Pinterest board (and they literally will, she's sending me hers). What she's dreaming about:
- Going international, with Australia up first. Stylists in Canada and the UK are already asking, too.
- A few new offerings for her stylists, in the works now
- An elevated brand that feels like what sparkles in nature: magic hour, Joshua Tree, gold foil, goddess energy ✨
my favorite moment
We got talking about visionaries and integrators. The visionary dreams up where the business is going. The integrator builds the systems that get it there.
"I'm not the integrator. I do know that. And I've gotten this far."Kelsea
And that's exactly the point of her AI era. She keeps dreaming, and AI (plus me for a month) handles the integrating. 💕
the game plan
- Record everything. Meetings, sales calls, team trainings, all of it. AI can only take over what it can learn from, so we're starting with the data.
- Map every process. One master doc with how everything really runs, so there's a single source of truth.
- New AI besties. Kelsea's starting with Claude for thinking and writing, and Instinct, an AI that actually does the clicking and updating for you.
- A week of shadowing. I'm sitting in with Kelsea and her team every day this week to see it all in action.
Week 0 = complete. Let the AI era begin!
shadow week (spoiler alert: we did a lot more than shadow)
november 2–6
Five calls, a whole lot of screen sharing, and more "wait, it can do that?" moments than I can count. I spent the week learning how the team really works, and we were already racking up wins. Every win this month lands in one of three buckets:
- quick fix one-and-done, kills a recurring headache
- small win kelsea learning to think ops-minded
- big build a system that runs without us
- small win
Instinct, meet Kelsea's inbox. Her AI now drafts her email replies. On its very first try, it found a customer's Zoom link in her booking calendar and wrote the answer. She just reviews and hits send.
- small win
"Tell it once." Kelsea was pasting her signature back into every AI draft by hand. Instead: tell Instinct to always add it. Then she asked, "should I tell it my font too?" YES. That's the twice rule in action ✨
- quick fix
No more chasing names. About half of students were skipping their name when purchasing their pro certificate, so Kelsea had to reach out one by one. Now the form won't submit without it. Zero chasing.
- small win
Payroll from a photo. She snaps the handwritten hours, Claude does the math. Kelsea pinned the chat, so now payday takes about two seconds.
- quick fix
13 forms, one fix. Her important emails were hiding in Gmail's Promotions tab, so people were missing their sales calls. The fix: a text message opt-in on every sign-up form. All 13 of them. Now reminders land right where people actually look.
- small win
Sales calls, now with a coach. Her calls record quietly in the background (shoutout Fathom), and those recordings do triple duty. AI gives her feedback afterward, down to how many "ums" sneak in. It spots patterns across calls to sharpen her sales strategy. And it turns the way she naturally talks about Goddess Glitter into website copy, so the new site sounds just like her.
week 1: 4 small wins, 2 quick fixes · 1 big build in the works 🛠️
her data told a story
Once we connected Claude to her Shopify store and Klaviyo email account, we pulled wildly insightful analytics in minutes. I ran three sets:
- Who her customers are. Segmenting her clients to see who buys the most.
- What's selling. Which products are the stars, and which are just along for the ride.
- How her ads are doing. Which ones actually bring in buyers.
And since we love cute things, every report came back as a live page in Goddess Glitter branding, complete with toggles to flip between views. 💅 The biggest plot twist? Her best customers weren't who either of us expected. She's keeping the details close for now 🤫, but that one insight could change who she markets to.
"gothic angel" (aka show, don't tell)
Kelsea set up her own Claude account and asked it for an "edgy and angelic" website. It gave her full gothic angel, with a truly tragic font. 😂
So I showed her how to really design in Claude: instead of describing your vibe, show it. And this is where Kelsea surprised me. On her own, she thought to have Instinct grab her latest Instagram posts from Canva (the ones she's obsessed with), and Claude pulled the branding straight from those to design her site. Same fonts, same feel, same her. That's the unexpected win of this whole process: Kelsea is starting to think operationally, on her own. She landed on cool girl over clean girl: bold fonts, curves, and a big video front and center. The final colors? Saving those for the reveal.
my favorite moment: the inventory app
And that ops brain showed up again with her inventory, which is tricky. The same products live inside multiple different bundles, so the counts never quite add up. And this week, she's the one who came up with the fix: build her own little app that reads her sales and tells her when to reorder.
Week 0 Kelsea said "I'm not the integrator." Week 1 Kelsea is thinking in automations. 💕
This is the future I'm most excited about. Instead of paying for software that does kind of what you need and a lot of what you don't, you can build exactly what you want, and put your own cute branding on it. I can't wait to help so many founders do this.me, very excited
founder health is ops, too
Your energy runs the business, so it's part of the program. And big news: InstaLab is officially a partner! 🎉 We set Kelsea up with an account, and she'll be getting her full blood panel for free. More on that soon.
Want the story behind the signature moment? I wrote it up here: the twice rule.
ai clocks in
The first tasks officially get handed to AI. Cross your fingers and stay tuned.
fine tuning
Testing, tweaking, and making it all sparkle. Follow along to see what sticks.
the big reveal
The before-and-after, the hours saved, and what's next for Goddess Glitter. Don't you dare miss it 💕
xo, emmily