How CAKE TM Marketing’s “Small but Mighty” Team Used AI to Sharpen Their Strategy and Client Delivery
When you’re leading a high-performing creative team, the challenge isn’t about fixing what’s broken—it’s about unlocking new ways to grow without losing what already works.
That was the opportunity Kelly Prior, CEO of CAKE TM Marketing, saw when she invited us to guide her team through a LEAD.AI Framework™ workshop during their annual strategy day.
Her “small but mighty” crew of account managers, operational leaders, and designers already delivered exceptional results for their clients. But Kelly wanted to give them space to pause, reflect, and explore how they could work together even tighter—and where AI might open fresh opportunities.
The session was designed as both learning and discovery:
First, we introduced the LEAD.AI Framework™, which maps where leaders can use AI to Learn, Engage, Automate, and Deploy in order to focus on what truly matters.
Then, the team broke into whiteboard mapping sessions, identifying “hot spots” in their workflows—from onboarding and reporting to social content and client engagement.
Finally, through a round of affirmations, team members validated each other’s observations, surfacing shared patterns and building alignment on priorities.
The walls quickly filled with colorful notes:
Deploy: Quick-turn strategy docs, re-active client requests, social tiles, reporting.
Engage: Past-client reactivation, high-touch personalization, smarter file organization.
Automate: Deliverable handoffs, email summarization, onboarding templates, invoicing.
What emerged was more than a brainstorming exercise—it was a roadmap for Kelly as a leader. The team had effectively told her, in their own words, where AI could create the most leverage and where collaboration could be tightened.
The impact was threefold:
Shared clarity: Each function surfaced its pressure points, and the group saw the overlaps.
Collaborative buy-in: The affirming exercise built trust and reinforced collective ownership.
Practical next steps: Kelly left with a clear picture of which AI solutions to explore first, guided by her team’s voice.
As one team member reflected:
“We already work well together, but this gave us new eyes for how we can grow stronger.”
Last Word
For Kelly, the session delivered exactly what a strategy day should: not just vision, but alignment—and a tangible path for scaling excellence without losing the human touch that makes CAKE’s client work stand out.
Because growth isn’t about adding more—it’s about creating space for what matters most.
