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Quick Snapshot
- Client:
- Common Ground Development Group
- Role:
- Fractional CMO
- Industry:
- Hospitality & Urban Community Development
- Engagement Length:
- 18 Months
- Scope:
- Brand architecture and narrative, built from zero.
- Digital operations overhaul.
- Community presence and local partnerships.
- Investor pitch deck for expansion.
- Team hiring and training.
- Results:
- 37% revenue increase year-over-year.
- 28% improvement in customer satisfaction scores.
- Two grants awarded during engagement.
- Repositioned a legacy property to serve a new, younger target audience.
- Upgraded booking, management, and customer systems to align with modern expectations.
- Developed brand foundations, including narrative, values, visual identity, and messaging
- Created investor-facing decks and redevelopment proposals to support expansion.
A full presentation for potential public and private investors into the development of the space.
A sharp take on how “community” is too often used as a vague aspiration. You walk through how it shows up in actual brand systems—events, partnerships, internal culture, and space design.
A behind-the-scenes look at how I helped one team turn a guiding principle—“We’re owners and we act like it”—into everyday behaviors across the company.
The Situation
Common Ground Development is a San Francisco-based urban developer with a specific mission: help community-oriented businesses and nonprofits gain access to high-traffic commercial space. They had acquired a former motel in Reno's downtown economic development zone and were transforming it into something that had no clear category: a long-stay property designed for traveling professionals looking for coworking, community, and connection.
The concept was genuinely new. Not a hotel. Not a co-living property. Not a traditional extended-stay. Something at the intersection of all three, with an explicit commitment to revitalizing a downtown corridor that was still finding its footing.
They needed a brand that could hold that complexity clearly enough for guests to choose it, investors to fund it, and a new team to represent it, all at once, in the middle of a pandemic.
What We Found
The property was operational, but the brand didn't exist yet. There was a vision for what the space was for, but it lived entirely in the founders' heads, and no version of it had been translated into anything a guest, a hire, or an investor could encounter.
Operations were running on legacy systems built for a different property and a different guest. Booking, communication, and check-in processes reflected what the building had been, not what it was becoming. Every guest interaction carried that friction.
The team that would carry the brand forward hadn't been hired yet. Whatever we built had to be buildable into the people, not just the materials.
The Approach
Brand architecture and narrative
We built the brand foundation from the beginning: values, positioning, voice, visual identity, and messaging architecture. The goal was a brand clear enough that a new hire could read it and understand not just what to say, but why. That standard is harder to meet than it sounds. Most brand documents describe a feeling. This one had to make decisions.
We also produced an investor-facing pitch deck that translated the brand vision into a business case, with brand pillars, concept rationale, and financial projections to support the expansion fundraising.
Digital operations overhaul
We replaced the legacy booking, payment, and communication systems with modern platforms built for the guest experience the brand promised. Stripe for payment processing, a hotel management platform that supported remote check-in and check-out, Slack for internal team coordination across a distributed staff during a period when in-person management wasn't always possible.
The systems shift mattered for two reasons. It reduced operational friction for guests. And it gave the new team the infrastructure to deliver the brand consistently without depending on heroics.
Team, community, and local presence
We hired and trained on-site managers, building their onboarding around the brand first and the operations second. They needed to know what the space was for before they could represent it well.
As downtown Reno began to reopen, we launched early community activations with neighboring businesses, positioning the property as a participant in the downtown revitalization, not just a building in it. The grants that came through during the engagement were a direct result of that positioning: the property was legible as a community asset, not just a hospitality business.
What Changed
For the first time, the team had a shared answer to the question guests would inevitably ask: what is this place? That clarity moved through every interaction. Check-in felt intentional. The space communicated its purpose. Staff could explain the concept without reaching for a founder to fill in the gaps.
The operational changes held that clarity at the systems level. Guest experience improved not because anyone was working harder, but because the friction between the promise and the delivery had been removed.
- 37% increase in room revenue, year-over-year, following the operations overhaul
- 28% improvement in customer satisfaction scores, based on in-stay surveys and booking platform ratings
- 2 grants awarded during the engagement, validating the property's positioning as a community development asset
- Investor pitch deck completed and deployed to support expansion funding
The brand foundation that was built during this engagement was designed to outlast it. The systems, the training, the narrative infrastructure: all of it was built to perform after the work was done.
Client Feedback
"Jessica excels at creating comprehensive, strategic plans with clear, actionable steps tailored to each team member. Her approach ensures efficiency, minimizes overwhelm, and empowers the entire team to move forward with confidence."
— Stephanie Martin, Managing Director, Common Ground Reno
A Note on This Work
This engagement is a good example of what makes building in an emergent category different from building in a known one. When there is no existing template for what the business is, the brand has to do more work. It has to make the concept legible, not just differentiate within a category. That is a harder problem, and it requires a different approach to the diagnostic.
What I learned here is that the systems and the story have to move together. A clear brand narrative placed on top of outdated operations creates a gap the guest will notice and the team will feel. The work that drove the revenue and satisfaction numbers was the integration: brand and operations rebuilt in the same direction, at the same time.
What It Looked Like in Action
A curated selection of brand, content, and messaging assets developed for this project. These visuals reflect the strategic thinking behind the identity—how it shows up across decks, web, print, and storytelling touchpoints.
Kind words from clients
