Welcome to Cortado¶
You've just joined as a project coordinator. This doc is yours — it's the friendly version of how the next 90 days work. The longer SOPs (onboarding_plan.md, etc.) are for your onboarding mentor; you don't need to read them unless you're curious.
What we actually do¶
Cortado is a boutique consultancy focused on RevOps and go-to-market work for private-equity-backed companies. We help our clients build the operational machinery — pipeline, forecasting, sales process, marketing operations, compensation plans — that turns their revenue function from a guessing game into a system.
We are small. You will not get lost. The people you meet in your first week are the people who run the firm.
What you'll do¶
Project coordinators are the operational backbone of every engagement. The engagement manager (EM) and senior consultants do the thinking; you make sure the thinking actually gets delivered, captured, and remembered. Concretely, in your first 90 days you'll learn to:
- Stand up and run a project plan in Asana
- Take meeting notes that turn into action items that actually get done
- Help build Steerco decks (the big monthly client meetings)
- Onboard 1099 contractors when they join an engagement
- Keep our Box folders organized and findable
You won't be in front of clients in the first 30 days. You will be in client meetings as a silent observer, watching how the EM runs the room.
Your first 30 days at a glance¶
| Week | Theme | What you'll walk away with |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who we are and how we think | Able to explain Cortado in 90 seconds |
| 2 | The toolkit (Asana, Box, Slack, our deck bot) | Operating the tools without help |
| 3 | RevOps domain fluency | Reading an engagement charter and seeing the pattern |
| 4 | Doing the job | Owning the operational pack for your assigned engagement |
The detail is in first_30_days_checklist.md — that's the tickable list you'll work through with your onboarding mentor.
Who you'll work with¶
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Matt Trotter | Your mentor. You'll meet with your onboarding mentor twice a week the first month, then weekly. They run your GROW coaching sessions and are your first call for any blocker. |
| Bill | The partner whose engagement you'll be supporting. Treat his time as expensive — come to meetings prepared. |
| David Russell | Builds a lot of our internal tooling. You'll meet him Day 1 for the welcome. If something in the bot, the PSA, or the talent portal is broken, he's the right escalation. |
| Jen | Talent and HR logistics. First stop for paperwork, benefits questions, anything administrative. |
| Sander, TJ, others | 1099 contractors who join specific engagements. You'll coordinate their onboarding and weekly check-ins. |
What "good" looks like in your first 30 days¶
You don't need to be a Cortado expert. You need to be:
- Reachable — visible in Slack, acknowledging within 4 business hours
- Organized — your Asana board is current; your Box folders are tidy
- Curious — you ask questions in 1:1s rather than guessing
- Honest about what you don't know — "I don't know yet, I'll find out" beats winging it every time
If you do those four things, you're already in the top half of project coordinators we've hired.
What "bad" looks like (and how to avoid it)¶
These are the patterns that quietly kill internships. None of them are about IQ — they're about habits.
- Disappearing. If you're heads-down for three hours, post in
#interns: "Heads-down on X, back at 3." Silence reads as disengagement. - Trying to look smart. We have hundreds of decks and thousands of hours of client calls. Pretending you understand the RevOps Execution System on Day 5 is far worse than asking what it is.
- Skipping the boring stuff. Asana hygiene, file naming, meeting notes — these are the job. They're not below you; they're the leverage you give the EM.
- Going around your onboarding mentor. If you have a problem, your onboarding mentor hears it first. Don't escalate to David or Bill before your onboarding mentor has had a chance.
The communication norms you'll see everywhere here¶
You'll pick these up by osmosis, but here's the cheat sheet:
- BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front. The first sentence of any message is the conclusion or the ask. Context after.
- The 4 Blockers — When you give a status update in Asana, format it as: On Track / Off Track / At Risk + the 4 things blocking you. (Asana tutorial video 11 is the canonical training.)
- Public over private — Default to public Slack channels. DMs are for the rare confidential thing.
- Seven times, seven ways — Important messages need repetition. Don't assume one post landed.
Your first week¶
- Day 1: Get into every tool. Meet David, your onboarding mentor, and Bill. Read this doc and
first_30_days_checklist.md. - Day 2-3: Watch the Asana tutorial series and read the Cortado philosophy deck.
- Day 4-5: First 1:1 with your onboarding mentor, first observation of a real client meeting.
It's a lot. You won't absorb all of it. That's fine — the curriculum loops back.
When you're stuck¶
In order:
1. Try for 15 minutes on your own.
2. Search Box for the answer. Most things are documented somewhere — and the PMO Site (https://sites.google.com/cortadogroup.com/pmo/) is the place for terminology, presentation checklists, and project management reference material.
3. Ask in #interns or #revops.
4. Ask your onboarding mentor directly.
We'd rather you ask quickly than spin for hours. The bar for "is this question worth asking" is much lower than you think.
Welcome aboard. We're glad you're here.