ONLINE BUSINESS TECH & SYSTEMS SPECIALIST
Hey, I’m Steff
I run Tea Break Digital. Here’s the short version of what I do:
- Tech and automation for online businesses, mainly funnels and launches
- Work with founders, coaches, course creators, and authors past the DIY stage
- Take on a small number of 1:1 projects each quarter
- Also build digital products for service providers who want to build it themselves
Here’s the longer version…
ONLINE BUSINESS TECH & SYSTEMS SPECIALIST
Hey, I’m Steff
I run Tea Break Digital. Here’s the short version of what I do:
- Tech and automation for online businesses, mainly funnels and launches
- Work with founders, coaches, course creators, and authors past the DIY stage
- Take on a small number of 1:1 projects each quarter
- Also build digital products for service providers who want to build it themselves
Here’s the longer version…
Growing up, I was a nerdy kid. Not in the teacher’s pet way, more in the wanting-to-understand-how-things-work way. I did get good grades. But some rules were hard for me to follow.
I got in trouble more than once for wearing nail polish and too many earrings with my school uniform. I never really understood what either had to do with learning, which I’d thought was the whole point of being there.
I guess I was never built for the system society tries to squeeze you into. That’s a big part of why I started a business. It’s also, I think, why the work I do now looks the way it does.
How the work found me
I did everything the “become-an-adult” starter pack tells you to do: went to university, got a decent job. I even managed to get one in the sector I studied.
The problem was I was miserable there.
I was excellent at the work. I just couldn’t see how any of it made a difference to anyone.
So in 2018, I started Tea Break Digital. At that point I didn’t know what it was going to be exactly. I just knew I wanted to work for myself.
I started out as a virtual assistant doing general admin, inbox management, that kind of thing. Then I landed a role as a tech VA for two course creators I’d admired for ages, with the possibility of growing into funnel work.
Within the first year I was doing exactly that, taking over the funnel and automation work that had been hanging over the COO’s head.
I worked with them for several years across launches, funnels, integrations, and the whole architecture of how their business sold and delivered things.
Eventually the business pivoted out of courses, and the work changed with it. By then I’d done enough to know where I wanted to go next.
How the work found me
I did everything the “become-an-adult” starter pack tells you to do: went to university, got a decent job. I even managed to get one in the sector I studied.
The problem was I was miserable there.
I was excellent at the work. I just couldn’t see how any of it made a difference to anyone.
So in 2018, I started Tea Break Digital. At that point I didn’t know what it was going to be exactly. I just knew I wanted to work for myself.
I started out as a virtual assistant doing general admin, inbox management, that kind of thing. Then I landed a role as a tech VA for two course creators I’d admired for ages, with the possibility of growing into funnel work.
Within the first year I was doing exactly that, taking over the funnel and automation work that had been hanging over the COO’s head.
I worked with them for several years across launches, funnels, integrations, and the whole architecture of how their business sold and delivered things.
Eventually the business pivoted out of courses, and the work changed with it. By then I’d done enough to know where I wanted to go next.
A client who didn’t trust the system
I’ve been working with one client for about five years now. She’s an author & speaker with a n email newsletter, and when she came to me, she didn’t trust the system.
Starting out, we met weekly. She wanted to go over every metric, every tag, every number. It was clear she’d been burned by some people in the past. It sounded like they hadn’t really known what they were doing and she had to wrangle the answers out of them just to find out what was going on inside her own account.
So I spent the early months overhauling her account and showing her what was actually in there. Documenting everything. Making sure she could change things herself if she ever wanted to. After that, each quarter I’d audit her account and find things that weren’t quite serving her, then rebuild them around what she actually wanted her list to do.
One quarter, I realised her re-engagement automation wasn’t doing what she needed it to do. It was the standard sequence recommended by the platform, set up by a previous consultant. Technically it worked, but it didn’t track the stats she actually wanted. So I built her a slightly unorthodox automation that made sense for what she wanted to know about her email list.
After a few months, she stopped needing to understand every single metric. These days, we meet once a quarter. If she needs something new built, she tells me, I work with her content writer on options, and she picks the one she prefers. What had once been a burden is now doing work in the background. She just makes the decisions only she can make.
A client who didn’t trust the system
I’ve been working with one client for about five years now. She’s an author & speaker with an email newsletter, and when she came to me, she didn’t trust the system.
Starting out, we met weekly. She wanted to go over every metric, every tag, every number. It was clear she’d been burned by some people in the past. It sounded like they hadn’t really known what they were doing and she had to wrangle the answers out of them just to find out what was going on inside her own account.
So I spent the early months overhauling her account and showing her what was actually in there. Documenting everything. Making sure she could change things herself if she ever wanted to. After that, each quarter I’d audit her account and find things that weren’t quite serving her, then rebuild them around what she actually wanted her list to do.
One quarter, I realised her re-engagement automation wasn’t doing what she needed it to do. It was the standard sequence recommended by the platform, set up by a previous consultant. Technically it worked, but it didn’t track the stats she actually wanted. So I built her a slightly unorthodox automation that made sense for what she wanted to know about her email list.
After a few months, she stopped needing to understand every single metric. These days, we meet once a quarter. If she needs something new built, she tells me, I work with her content writer on options, and she picks the one she prefers. What had once been a burden is now doing work in the background. She just makes the decisions only she can make.
What I’m doing now
I work with a small number of founders each quarter on the tech and automation layer of their businesses. Funnels, launches, the systems that hold everything together once a business is past the DIY stage.
Most of them come to me when they’re planning a launch, building out a new offer, or realising their current backend isn’t going to scale with them.
Alongside the client work, I also build products. It’s the same thinking I bring to my 1:1 work, in a form people can implement themselves on their own timeline.
If you’d like to work together, you can see what that looks like here.
If you’d rather stick around for the longer game, I send occasional notes from inside online businesses.
How I think about backend systems, launches, and the kind of work that keeps things running. Sent when I’ve actually got something worth saying.
If you’d like to work together, you can see what that looks like here.
If you’d rather stick around for the longer game, I send occasional notes from inside online businesses.
How I think about backend systems, launches, and the kind of work that keeps things running. Sent when I’ve actually got something worth saying.