I built a custom client portal for my agency in under a month

Allison Esposito Medina, Founder, Willa · Published October 30, 2026

She studied legal studies and politics. Now startups and professional service firms hire her to automate operations, and she built a full creator portal for OnPulse Agency using Claude.

Kimberley Bueno, Founder, Bueno Consulting (AI and product consultant, AI instructor) and OnPulse Agency (creator talent management)

I went to school intending to work in law. I double majored in Legal Studies and Politics at UC Santa Cruz and was planning on law school. Life took a different route, but the fascination with complex systems never left. Today startups and professional service firms hire me to take their most tedious work off their plate: client intake, document generation, status tracking, email workflows, the tasks that eat hours every week. I build custom automations and AI systems around how each team actually works. When that work gets automated, people get time back for work that genuinely requires a human mind.

Most people use Claude for about 10 percent of what it can do. Someone signs up, asks a couple of questions, and walks away thinking it is just another chatbot. Meanwhile I am building entire operational systems with it. Automations running while I sleep. Client dashboards. Internal software. Workflows that used to eat half my week, handled in minutes.

A few months ago, I decided to solve one of the biggest friction points in talent management. At OnPulse Agency, we manage creators and run brand partnerships. Traditionally, talent management means endless status emails: "Did that brand reply yet?" "What is the status of my contract?" "Where are my performance numbers?"

Instead of buying off-the-shelf software that never fits, I built our own portal from scratch with Claude.

In under a month, I shipped a live portal where our creators log in and immediately see every brand currently being pitched on their behalf, a live deal pipeline tracking each partnership from pitch to signed contract, and one dashboard tracking campaign delivery and performance.

No more digging through email threads or updating spreadsheets. It gave our roster complete transparency, cut communication overhead, and I am still building new capabilities into it.

I also teach. I ran Claude Office Hours for Willa in June (rated 5 out of 5), then a four-part Claude build series taking people from a blank screen to a launched web app. In September I taught a session on Codex, OpenAI's coding agent. Knowing one tool well is useful. Knowing how tools differ is what makes you the person who picks the right one.

I remember how it feels to want in and not know where to start. That is why I love showing people how this works.

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