C.R. Daniels Onboarding

Today's Call

What We're Covering

Welcome & Introductions10 min

Names, roles, and who owns what on each side.

Where This Project Sits5 min

The five phases ahead, and why today opens Phase 1: Strategy.

How We'll Work Together8 min

Communication cadence, decision logging, and the brand architecture and timing questions we need your read on.

What's Coming Next12 min

The Strategy Workshop Prep Pack, its due date, and the workshop itself.

Open Questions10 min

Whatever's on your mind — today's topics or anything else.

Meet Your Team

Who's Working On This With You

Chelsea Drusch

Strategist

Sets the direction the rest of the project builds on — turning your goals into a clear plan, a site structure, and the requirements everyone downstream works from. Once that plan is set, Chelsea holds the line on scope.

Tim Holdsworth

Website Project Manager

Keeps the project moving — timeline, logistics, and coordination across everyone involved, on both sides. Tim is your first call on anything about where things stand or what's next.

Jo Phillip

Content Manager

Owns your content strategy and copy, turning what C.R. Daniels needs to say into pages built for the audiences who actually read them. Jo is responsible for that copy from first draft through final, approved version.

Alice Huntley

Designer

Owns the visual system and every page layout, building a design that reflects your brand and works for the people using the site. Design decisions run through Alice, start to finish.

Ana Paradis

Developer

Owns the technical build, turning approved designs into a working, tested site. Ana is accountable for build quality and performance before anything goes live.

Signed & In Progress

The Strategy Phase, In Detail

This is the phase you're in right now — here's everything it covers, in order.

Research & Internal Alignment

Our team audits your current site and market position, and gets fully briefed internally before we ever meet.

Your Prep Pack

A short homework packet on goals, audiences, and priorities — so workshop time goes to decisions, not discovery.

Strategy Workshop

A live working session where we align on KPIs, audiences, site structure, technical requirements, and design direction together.

Strategic Synthesis

We turn workshop input into a KPI & measurement plan, technical requirements, a risk register, and a competitive read.

Site Architecture & Sitemap

We translate your priorities into a full site structure: sitemap, navigation, and page-level priority — primary, secondary, and tertiary. This becomes part of what you review and approve at the Strategy Presentation.

Strategy Presentation & Revisions

We present the complete strategy — KPIs, site architecture, technical requirements, and risk register — and take one consolidated round of your feedback.

Strategy Sign-Off

Once you approve the strategy, it becomes the foundation everything else gets built on.

What Happens Next

Scoping, Pricing & Timeline Approval

Once you sign off on the strategy, we scope and price the Content & Design, Development, and QA/Launch phases based on what we now know — then bring that scope, price, and an initial timeline back to you for review and approval.

Strategy Approved → Scope & Price Approved → Phase 2: Content & Design

During the Strategy Phase

What We Need From You

Return your Prep Pack — point of contact, access details, and the rest live in the pack itself.Due Tuesday, Sept 22
Share any existing strategic or business plans — anything you'd want us to read and factor into the strategy, beyond what Backroom has already given us.
Sync on a date for the Strategy Presentation — scheduled after the workshop, once the deck is ready.To be scheduled

For This Conversation

Three Things We Want to Align On

You're C.R. Daniels' brand strategist of record, and your Brand Pressure Index raises a few open questions that touch the site directly. We'd like to work through these together, before they turn into rework.

Brand Architecture and Site Structure

Your Brand Pressure Index counts six active brand names and seven divisions on C.R. Daniels' current site, with no throughline connecting them. It also names the defense-versus-commercial split as a real carve-out option. Before we lock in a sitemap, we need your read: one unified site, a separate defense/government property, a standalone Dandux presence, or some combination.

Visual Identity Timing

Your brand guidelines work covers messaging and positioning, not a visual system — logo, color, and typography aren't on either team's plan yet. We're deciding site architecture now, inside Strategy, with Content & Design right behind it. We need your timing before we get there, so we're not designing pages against a brand identity that isn't decided yet.

How We Coordinate

You'll keep leading the brand relationship with C.R. Daniels, and they'll always know when Weidert's involved — that part's settled. What's still open is how the two of us work together day to day, and how invoicing runs across both engagements. We'd like that settled before Content & Design starts, not during it.

Lessons Learned

What We're Getting Ahead Of

These are patterns we've watched play out on past projects. Here's what you can do to avoid them, and what to expect from us in return.

The Quiet Scope Creep

A quick tweak once content is locked rarely stays quick — design adjusts an approved layout, dev rebuilds a finished module, QA re-tests the page, and launch slips. Five days late in content review has turned into ten days late at launch on past projects. Flag a wanted change as early as you can, even mid-review; it's far cheaper before sign-off than after. Expect us to log every change the day it lands and tell you plainly whether we're absorbing it, adjusting the timeline, or invoicing it, rather than letting it quietly stack up.

Decisions Nobody Can Find Later

When updates live across email, Slack, and memory, nobody can say for certain what changed or why. Bring decisions back to the project folder rather than settling them in a side conversation — a hallway chat or a quick email doesn't count until it's logged. We'll keep every decision, change, and meeting note in one Communications Log for your project, so if it was discussed, you can find it there without asking us to reconstruct it.

A Price Locked In Too Early

Quote a website before the strategy is set, and the number is a guess, not a quote. That gap gets filled with padded buffers, or a client eating the difference later. Hold off asking us for a build price until strategy wraps — we won't quote before we know what we're building, and that line protects you as much as us. Once strategy is signed off, expect a price built on real scope, not a placeholder.

Launch Day Treated as the Finish Line

Teams walk away right after go-live, and the lessons from the project disappear with them. Plan on staying engaged for a few weeks past launch — that's your warranty window for fixes, a short CSAT check-in, and our internal retro, and what you tell us there shapes how we run your next phase of work. Expect us to treat launch the same way: a milestone, not the finish line.

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