Elle J Design — Team Alignment

Read this first. Twenty-two thousand words collapsed into five punch lines.

Made by JD on 2026-05-04. These anchor everything below.

Client snapshot.

Where she works — location context for the team

Why this matters for content: Elle's clients are typically NOT full-time Colorado residents. They live in major US metros (mostly Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, plus Front Range Colorado), and they own these mountain homes as second / vacation properties. They visit periodically, often for ski season + summer. This is why "second-home design" is a major content track.

The "SDA archetype." Anchored to a real repeat-client couple.

A married couple in their mid-40s to early-50s. Primary residence in Texas (Houston, Dallas, or Austin metro). Second home in Breckenridge, Colorado. They hired Elle for four separate projects, then asked her to start her own firm because they trusted her so much.

Tilt 70/30. Three franchises locked.

Detailed pillar definitions and topic libraries (12-20 prompts each) are in the content engine doc on the Cowork shared drive.

Three days a week are pre-decided. The team never has to ask "what should we post Monday?"

From client assets to a finished post.

[CLIENT INPUT]   [TEAM CAPTURE]   [IDEATION SOURCES]
(Elle)           (Illume)         (this stack)
       \              |              /
        \             |             /
         ▼            ▼            ▼
        ASSET BANK + CONTENT QUEUE
        (Notion DB, tagged by project + pillar fit)
                     │
                     ▼
            WEEKLY PLANNING (Mon AM, ~30 min)
            Plan 2-3 weeks out, never same-day
                     │
                     ▼
              CONTENT BRIEF (per post)
              pillar + topic + hook + assets
              + slide structure / shot list
                     │
        ┌────────────┴────────────┐
        ▼                         ▼
   CAROUSEL PATH              REEL PATH
        │                         │
        └────────────┬────────────┘
                     ▼
        CAPTION + HASHTAGS + VENDOR TAGS
                     │
                     ▼
            PRE-PUBLISH GATE
            (1-page checklist)
                     │
                     ▼
              ELLE APPROVAL
              (Tue EOD batch → Wed approve)
                     │
                     ▼
              SCHEDULE → POST
                     │
                     ▼
              METRICS LOOP
              (saves, DMs, profile visits)

The three input streams

• Client input (Elle): project photos, floor plans, vendor info, voiceover recordings, asset drops to a shared folder.
• Team capture (Illume): site visits, vendor visits, B-roll footage, showroom trips.
• Ideation sources: topic libraries (in the engine doc), public questions (research Stream 1), reference library (saved competitor formats), calendar slot triggers.

The Asset Bank

One Notion database. One row per asset. Without this, every post starts with "what do we have?" The bank means we filter by pillar fit and pull what's ready.

The five triggers (what kicks off content creation)

• Calendar slot trigger — "Plan Set Mondays for the week of June 16 needs a draft. We're queuing 2-3 weeks ahead, so we draft this in late May."
• Asset arrival trigger — "Elle dropped 50 Frisco kitchen photos this week. Triage them, queue the best for upcoming Project Reveal slots."
• Vendor opportunity trigger — "Elle is at the slab yard next Thursday. Plan a Slab Saturday post for that visit; capture the assets while she's there."
• Topic queue trigger — "Frankly Wednesdays week 5 in our queue is 'out-of-state owner workflow.' Check what assets we have to support it; if not, request from Elle."
• Reference save trigger — "Christine saved a great carousel format from another designer. Use it as inspiration for an upcoming brief."

Planning horizon: always 2-3 weeks ahead. Same-day production isn't realistic. The Monday meeting plans the third week out. The second week out is in production. The current week is finalizing approval and publishing.

Role split

Two-person production minimum (designer + reviewer). A single person catches their own work less reliably; the second pass catches voice drift.

Cadence target: ~10-12 posts per week on average (within Elle's contracted 8-12/week range). Three days are pre-decided by franchises (Mon, Wed, Sat). The other 7-9 fill from pillars.

All canonical data in a YAML index. Ask in natural language. Get specific answers.

All files in the Cowork shared drive. Team and agents both read from one place.

Strategy + execution layer

Research (background reference)

Live Notion artifacts the team uses

• Asset Bank Notion DB (to be created week 1) — see schema in workflow section
• Project Vendor Sheet (to be created week 1) — handles per project
• Sales CRM page for Elle — already exists, points to all locked decisions
• Action Items DB — week 1+2 setup tasks

Live deployments

• Team alignment deck (this document): elle-j-design-research.pages.dev
• Pre-decision research summary: /research-summary.html

Future idea (parked)

A client-specific NotebookLM as a single source of truth for the whole team. Integration complexities with Claude Cowork need research before committing. Captured under JD's "NotebookLM Integration Roadmap" project. Not in current scope.

Illume team tasks only. Elle's items tracked separately on the weekly call.