Zenpost: Turning a 10-app agency workflow into one system
Ten apps, one SOP doc, and a lot of hope. I built my way out of it.
The challenge
My agency ran client interviews and turned them into social content, but the back-of-house workflow was held together by ten different tools and one SOP document. Brand details lived in Notion. Topic research happened in one place, AI generation in another. Interviews got recorded as hour-long sessions that then had to be downloaded, uploaded to a separate editor, reviewed in Frame.io, scheduled in yet another tool, captioned by copying transcripts into Claude by hand, and reported on by manually pulling data from everywhere. Every handoff was a place for something to get lost or duplicated, and the whole thing survived on well-trained staff and hope.
The solution
Built Zenpost from scratch, solo, using AI-assisted development. Redesigned the actual recording workflow so clients record the specific clip they want instead of an hour-long session that needs to be mined for usable moments. Connected brand strategy directly to AI-generated topic ideas, saved into a database clients can review before every call. Built a full video editor inside the platform, captions, trimming, B-roll, music, all of it, so nothing needs to leave the system to get edited. Connected editing straight into smart scheduling with auto-generated captions and cover images. Built a client portal with full review and annotation, so approval happens in one place instead of bouncing between tools. Added AI-powered analytics so performance reporting happens automatically.
The outcome
Ten app subscriptions became one owned system. All clients live inside a single agency hub with visibility into reports and bottlenecks across every account. Editing time dropped because the system captures usable clips at the point of recording instead of requiring someone to hunt for them afterward. What started as a fix for my own agency's chaos became a full agency operating system now available to any agency running social video, website development, blog and SEO, email, or lead automation and CRM.
At a glance
Company: Zenpost, my own video-first digital marketing agency (same name as the resulting product)
My role: Founder, operator, and eventually the person who built my way out of my own mess
Timeline: Built solo in 8 months, after running the agency the hard way first
Stack: AI-assisted development, built from scratch
What I built: A full agency operating system that replaced a 10-app manual workflow with one
Who they are
Zenpost started as a done-for-you digital marketing agency. The core offer: interview business owners on Riverside, ask the right strategic questions, and turn their answers into social content. Good service. Real results for clients. Also one of the most fragmented back-of-house workflows I've ever run.
What was broken
Every single piece of the process lived in a different tool.
A Notion database held each client's brand DNA: their story, style guide, service offerings, everything that should've informed the content but instead lived in a doc nobody consistently referenced.
Topic research meant manually digging through competitor content to see what was performing, then separately using AI to generate topic ideas, with no system connecting the research to the output.
Every interview got recorded as one long Riverside session, 45 minutes to an hour, that then had to be downloaded in full.
That full recording got uploaded to a separate video editor, where someone had to hunt through the whole thing to find the moments actually worth clipping.
Finished clips went to Frame.io for review, with feedback rounds happening in a completely different tool than the edit itself.
Approved clips got uploaded to yet another tool for social scheduling.
Getting a caption written meant pulling the transcript with one tool, feeding it to Claude in another, and manually copying the result back into the scheduler.
Cover images came from a separate design tool.
Client revisions landed in the scheduler, but fixing them meant going all the way back to Frame.io and repeating half the pipeline.
Monthly reporting meant manually pulling data out of every one of these tools and stitching it together by hand.
Ten apps. Ten handoffs. Every one of them a place for something to get lost, forgotten, or done twice. The whole thing stayed alive on one SOP document, well-trained staff, and hope.
What I built and decided
Fixed the workflow at the source, not just the tools Instead of recording a full hour-long interview and hunting for the usable minute and a half afterward, I built Zenpost so you record the actual clip you want, on the spot. Ask the question, get the real answer, done. That one change cut editing time dramatically, because the system stopped generating an hour of footage to mine for thirty seconds of usable content.
Put brand strategy and content strategy in the same place Brand style guide and profile data live inside the platform and directly power AI-generated topic ideas. Topics get saved to an ideas database the client can review before the call ever happens, and I can pull them up mid-interview so I know exactly what to ask instead of improvising.
Built a real video editor into the workflow Once a clip is recorded, it's already saved and ready to edit, no downloading, no uploading to a separate tool. Full editing functionality lives in Zenpost: captions, clipping, trimming, B-roll, music, images, everything the old five-tool editing pipeline used to require.
Connected editing straight to scheduling Finish a clip and one click moves it into the scheduling calendar. Smart scheduling suggests the best time to post. The transcript's already attached, so captions generate automatically. Cover images get created right there instead of in a separate design tool.
Built a real client review portal Clients get notified when content's ready, click into their own portal, and review posts with full comment and annotation support, no more bouncing feedback between Frame.io and the scheduler. Once they approve, it publishes.
Closed the loop with analytics AI-powered analytics run automatically, so clients always know how their content's performing without anyone manually assembling a report.
The result
Ten app subscriptions became one owned system. All my clients live inside a single agency hub, where I can toggle between them, check reports, and spot bottlenecks in content production instead of hunting for them across ten different tools. I stopped tab-switching for a living. I started running an agency instead of babysitting a process held together by an SOP and good intentions.
What started as a fix for my own agency's chaos grew into something bigger. Zenpost now supports agencies running social video, website development, blog and SEO, email newsletters, and lead automation and CRM, all from one system. I didn't set out to build a product. I set out to stop losing my mind managing my own agency. The product came from actually needing it first.
The honest note
I built Zenpost because I was living the exact problem I now help other agency owners solve: a scrappy operation running on too many tools, too much manual handoff, and one document hoping to hold it all together. Every feature in Zenpost exists because I personally needed it to exist first.
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