Scaling Strategy | EmpowerYOUniversity
Boosting EYU's lead capture rate by 300% by pioneering a business strategy overhaul to enhance CX.
AT A GLANCE
EmpowerYOUniversity (EYU) is a startup teaching professional soft skills to high-school students. Despite glowing testimonials, EYU struggled with internal alignment & lacked market presence, reducing the inflow of new clients.
I worked with EYU's leadership to assemble a 5-year roadmap focused on scalability & improved marketing.
IMPACT
As UX Strategy Lead, I:
Outlined EYU's business plan
Streamlined internal CX practices
Developed & executed a 5-year roadmap
Improved EYU's digital lead capture site (in-progress)
To comply with my NDA, I have redacted proprietary information. All information in this case study is my own & does not necessarily reflect the views of the company.
PLATFORM
5 Year Roadmap
Business Context Canvas + Plan
Web Presence
TIMELINE
May – August 2025 | Q2
12 weeks
TEAM
Founder
Director of Marketing
MY ROLE
UX Strategy
CX Research
UX Design
User Testing
RESULTS
25 business goals
targeted in 5-year roadmap to ensure scalability
30+ stakeholder needs
considered & supported in the roadmap
300% increase
in customer lead capture rates over 60 days
THE PROBLEM
EYU lacked the presence & structure to market itself & grow.
EYU's founder, Matthew V. Pirtle, has helped dozens of students unlock their professional potential, with past mentees working at companies like JPMorgan Chase, Google, & more.
Despite this, EYU has faced difficulties in expanding. A lack of vision alignment among leadership impeded coordinated efforts to grow, stalling momentum & putting EYU’s future at risk.
EYU founder Matthew V. Pirtle (left) & his class of young professionals at a networking event.
Despite strong, hyper-personalized offerings, EYU has a weak marketing strategy, resulting in limited market presence & performance.
My role was guided by 3 central goals:
Align
internal leadership
Standardize a central vision to unite EYU's leaders & strengthen processes.
Enhance
annual scalability
Restructure internal practices to reduce growing pains as EYU expands.
Increase
lead capture %
Expand EYU from earlyvangelists to SOM by capturing new leads.
THE SOLUTION
We created a 5-year roadmap emphasizing internal structure development & digital marketing adoption.
Our team developed a detailed 5-year roadmap featuring 25 high-level goals designed to strengthen market presence & organizational performance.
Blending swimlane & timeline, the roadmap's flexibility afforded the ability to adjust plans as the organization evolves.
2024 Q2 through Q4 high-level alignment & marketing goals, built out in Notion.
Actionable goals & metrics aligned leadership & enabling unified expansion.
Each high-level goal was broken down into 20+ sub-goals outlining steps with measurable outcomes.
This provides a clear list of tasks for leadership to discuss during check-ins, promoting consistent communication & reflexive growth.
Each high-level Notion goals includes research repositories, task lists, & dated discussions to establish coordination.
I tackled Step 0 on the roadmap: building a recognizeable brand.
EmpowerYOUniversity's existing branding was minimal. To build trust & jumpstart the lead capture process for the Marketing team, I designed:
Branding package
Digital & print style guide
V1 web & social media presence
Email marketing campaigns
EYU's V1 website was launched in August 2024, leading to a 300%+ spike in lead capture.
DISCOVERY
I surveyed EYU's business landscape to support my knowledge of trends, regulations, & competitors.
I explored key drivers to surface important considerations, urgent challenges, & potential solutions.
Altogether, my team:
Analyzed 50+ research papers & articles
Interviewed 3 education stakeholders & 2 hiring managers
Surveyed 40+ past students
A close-up of our Mural board syncing team communication, research, & insights. This section focused specifically on education trends.
70 discoveries were organized into a Business Context Map Canvas to frame discussions on forces that shaped EYU.
Prioritized research insights were shared with EYU leadership, who contributed their 20+ years of education experience to recommend additional considerations.
Together, we identified & prioritized the most critical contextual factors to guide & refine our strategic approach.
EYU's Business Context Map Canvas®, detailing important factors impacting the business landscape. Template ©The Grove.
With a stronger understanding of drivers surrounding EYU, I pivoted to uncover where leadership struggled.
I interviewed EYU’s leadership team to learn:
Core business goals
Existing organizational structures
Internal pain points
By identifying where visions & strategies were misaligned, we uncovered key areas of disconnect & developed a list of practical tasks to align operations & team priorities.
15+ hours of discussions sorted by topic & reference into a Mural board to highlight key insights.
3 overarching concerns emerged:
Lack of a
Holistic Plan
Nonexistent goals created misaligned action & stagnation.
Lack of
Structure
Limited coordination resulted in confusing & conflicting actions.
Lack of Communication
Stakeholders had difficulty prioritizing discussion topics.
DESIGN
I restructured EYU’s Business Model to unify stakeholders across marketing & service provision.
I collaborated with the founder to identify & prioritize key findings from stakeholder interviews, then rewrote essential parts of the business model to be clearer & less jargon-heavy.
This gave all team members a shared understanding of the organization’s priorities & direction.
EYU's Business Model
I facilitated an affinity mapping workshop to encourage communication & spark cross-pollinated ideas.
A “Rose, Thorn, & Bud” workshop created space to share key interview insights, celebrate wins, & highlight areas for improvement.
We explored “buds” as solutions to “thorns,” aligning around actionable ideas to help EYU grow beyond current roadblocks.
Affinity mapping diagram grouping shared ideas from stakeholder interviews & the workshop.
Thorn, Rose, & Bud exercise.
We prioritized our ideas into an implementation timeline, outlining a feasible & metric-based task list.
Building on insights from our workshop, we prioritized ideas using:
What's on Your Radar (WoYR): Grouping ideas into 4 focus areas (lead capture, operations, marketing, & community collaboration) & organizing them on relevance.
Effort–Feasibility Matrix: Evaluating WoYR ideas by comparing organizational value against effort, pinpointing actions the team could focus on immediately.
A WoYR based on our Rose, Bud, Thorn.
Final ideas from our WoYR organized into an Effort-Value Matric.
LOOKING FORWARD
EYU still has a long way to go.
EYU is still in its infancy, with strong potential for meaningful impact. To grow, the team must prioritize clear communication, consistent coordination, and strategic marketing.
With a more aligned leadership team and an actionable growth plan in place, EYU is now positioned to expand its reach and empower even more students.
RESULTS
I researched, built, & enacted better practices to help EYU better empower students.
Refining EYU’s business strategy wasn’t just about streamlining workflows – it was about creating systems that truly empower young students.
With a stronger marketing strategy, improved digital lead capture, & a clear roadmap for growth, EYU is now better positioned to reach more students & support them in becoming the best versions of themselves. I'm honored to continue supporting EYU's journey & excited to see all that the organization becomes in the future.
MY TAKEAWAYS
Ask, ask, & ask again
Don't know something? Always do more research
Consider your scale
Problems are multilevel – small changes may have big effects
Leverage SMEs
Use your teammates' expertise to build better solutions
Manager Feedback
Matthew V. Pirtle
Founder & Mentor
I have had the pleasure of observing Laiba grow from a dedicated student to a consummate professional. Her journey has been marked by a consistent thoroughness, creativity, & an unwavering commitment to excellence. She has, & continues to do, great things for our organization, helping us better support our students.
Laiba is a true professional whose skills will be an invaluable asset to any team.
Other Projects
Currently
Completing my BFA in UX Design @UNT while doing freelance & contract work. Advocating for the value of design thinking. Always down to chat (reach out anytime!)