If You Have a Day Job, You Need Systems Even More (A Case Study With Christi Dorsey)

Christi Dorsey calls herself the 1099 Queen and she’s earned the title. For nearly 30 years, she’s been building income on her own terms alongside a demanding full-time career, most recently with the DC government. Christi is a textbook example of someone who needs systems: when your day job doesn’t leave room for dropped balls, your business backend has to work just as hard as you do.

Christi runs TasteSymmetry, a food science and nutrition consulting company she founded in 2011. With a bachelor’s in dietetics and a master’s from Columbia, she spent years auditing food safety operations across the globe before channeling that expertise into her own consultancy.

But as she stepped into 2026 with a brand new website and renewed energy to grow, she realized her client experience wasn’t keeping up with her front-end refresh. The emails were piecemeal. The follow-up was inconsistent. The backend didn’t match the business she was building.

That’s when she joined Email Like You Mean It and became the very first person to sign up for the live round. Here’s how it went.

Why Christi Decided To Join Email Like You Mean It

 I’ve been stalking you for like two years. And I mean that literally — I’ve listened to all of your podcasts. I actually listened to one this morning on the way to the office. I think it was two or three years ago I ordered one of your email templates. The way you approach your customers just resonates with me, so it made it easier to say, “Okay, I want to take ownership of this,” not just the front-end, making things look pretty, but I wanted to make sure I was really understanding the backend for myself.

One of the reasons I wanted to hit the reset button was that I recently launched a new website and with that new site I was building out for 2026, I really want to take my customers through the entire journey, not just piecemeal emails and proposals here and there. I want everything to work together so my clients are getting the best experience possible.

Email Like You Mean It was exactly what I needed to tie that together. So far it’s been great. I’ve loaded all of the emails we created through the class into Dubsado and I’m testing it out as we speak. I’ve been live with the new website for about a week now, so we’ll see how it goes.

Writing Your Emails Forces You To Look At Your Customer Journey And Quite Often, Give Your Services an Overhaul. Was That Your Experience?

I gave my services an overhaul, but the one offer that you and I worked on still holds up in value today. I call it the Foundation Experience. Most of my clients are in the food business. I like to call them corporate dropouts who want to work in the food space because they have a recipe or a product they want to get into retail.

I take them through the entire process, almost like a concierge service. When we work together, I work with Cornell University’s Food Venture Center to get their products tested for what’s called a scheduled process, which ensures their products can meet the shelf life requirements of whatever retailer they decide to go with. From there, I handle the nutrition analysis and anything else they need (for example: sell sheets, product specification sheets, very detail-oriented food science work), to get them ready for distribution.

Within that offer, clients can choose from different services depending on their needs. I have about eight services listed on my website right now, and they can pick up to three or four, ranging anywhere from $800 to $3,000 depending on what they need. The Foundation is really about rooting them in whatever it is they’re building.

Having Your Emails Do The Heavy Lifting For Your Offer Eco-System

In this space, from my foundation offer, the next steps could be layered with additional products, or it could expand into something like website work or something else they need. But all of that came out of necessity from the client.

I don’t see myself as a do-it-all person where I’ll take on anything just because someone asks. This side hustle that I’ve had forever (because again, I’m the 1099 Queen), does something really specific for me. One, it relaxes me. Why? Because it’s mine. I own it. I don’t have to answer to a boss. Plus, I can work when I want, set my schedule when I want. But most importantly, it gives me a creative outlet for a side of myself I always knew was there (I just didn’t know what to call it).

Writing Your Client Experience Emails With My 3P Framework and AI Systems Squad

It felt amazing to be able to get these done. Not only was I able to apply what you taught me, but when I actually put those three Ps into Dubsado, my emails finally had some personality. They didn’t feel generic anymore. The new emails sound like me. You took me through the entire lifecycle, from the initial invitation email all the way through to the closeout, and I felt like, okay, my work is done.

That’s really the main reason I wanted to join Email Like You Mean It: to take what you’ve given us and actually apply it to my business, because there was a real void there. For years I was just sending emails on the fly, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I want things to be succinct and in one place.

Because I have a full-time job, I can’t be scattered across different spaces sending urgent emails at all hours. I want to support my clients, but I also have to have structure for myself. Email Like You Mean It was a great start in moving that forward.

What’s Next After Writing Your Client Experience Emails

It pains me to say this because every time I want to make more money, it feels like money just goes right back out the door, but I’m planning to sign up for Systems in Session. That really is the next step in setting myself up for success. And having all these emails in place but not being sure where everything lives in the bigger picture, it just makes sense to go there next.

I could even hear it in the other members during the class, everyone kept asking, “What do we do with the workflows? How do we put all of this into place?” And you kept saying, “Let’s start here first and we’ll get to that in Systems in Session.” I can see the trajectory now, and honestly it feels natural.

I’ve already updated a few of my proposals in Dubsado as well. That was part of the plan. I wanted to tighten up the emails, clean up the proposals, make sure everything matches and feels fresh and cohesive. Systems in Session is the next step to tie it all together. It might break my bank, but that’s okay.

Keeping Ownership Of Understanding Your Systems (Why Done-With-You Is Better Than Done-For-You)

I understand wanting Systems in Session people to do Email Like You Mean It first, and then you have people like me who say, “No, let me try to figure some of this out myself first.” Because I do want to learn it for myself.

There’s something about getting into Dubsado 3.0 and working through it myself that gives me ownership over my own process on the backend. I think that’s a responsibility you have to take seriously going in.

I’ll also say, and I mean this kindly, I noticed some people in the group were doing the work, but also leaning pretty heavily on you to almost do it for them. When you have high expectations of someone, it’s easy to look at them like a crystal ball and think, “She’s just going to fix everything.” But you do have to make time for this, and you have to show up ready to do the work. What helped me was that I was doing the prep ahead of time, so when you said, “Okay, everyone needs to do this by tomorrow” in my head I was like, “Already done. I’m good.”

You have to show a willingness to do the work before you even get in the room. That way it doesn’t feel like hand-holding. You have to take some level of ownership.

I do like your current approach because it encourages continuous learning and troubleshooting… but just to the right degree. That’s exactly what I need.

What Would You Say To Someone On The Fence About Signing Up For Email Like You Mean It (Specifically If They’ve Been In Business For A Long Time)?

Good question. I think it really depends on where someone is in their business. For me, I’d been using Dubsado for a little over two years going into year three, and some of my service offerings had changed. I’ve changed, especially coming out of the pandemic. And technology is moving at such a fast pace that you have to keep meeting your customers where they are.

Because I have a nine-to-five, I need to be able to communicate with my clients without being physically present. Email Like You Mean It gave me the confidence to communicate in my own voice, but with a structure that works while I’m asleep, while I’m commuting home, before I even get to the office. That’s been the real blessing in all of this.

I actually have an email going out to a client today at four o’clock and I scheduled it that way because she mentioned that Friday afternoons work best for her so she can review things over the weekend. It’s those little details that make the difference. And that same email I’m sending her? I’m essentially sending a version of it to five other clients. So why not make it part of a workflow that goes out automatically at the right time on the right day without me having to think about it? That’s the gift.