Vision Implementors
How Vision Implementors found their shared language with Bloom Growth
Company name:
Vision Implementors
Interviewee name and job title:
Eleanor Wellbaum, President and COO
Eleanor Wellbaum had been pacing the same island for months. Or so it felt.
As President and COO of Vision Implementors, an association management company serving 16 chapters of the Entrepreneurs Organization, she and her founder were running a business that had gone from zero to roughly 30 people in just a few years. The systems hadn’t kept up.
She was the integrator: data-driven, analytical, constantly pointing at metrics that needed attention. Her founder was the visionary: idea-first, future-focused, energized by the next move. Both were committed. Both were right. Neither could hear the other.
“We were on the same island, on opposite sides of the island, and there was this rainforest between us, and we had no idea someone else was on the island, because we couldn’t get through the forest.”
That was the state of Vision Implementors when they reached out to Patty Campagna, a Bloom Growth Coach already familiar to them through the EO community.
What growing too fast actually looks like.
Most companies dream of the growth Vision Implementors had. Going from a founder’s solo project to a 30-person team serving 16 EO chapters in a handful of years should feel like a victory. For Eleanor and her founder, it felt like running out of breath.
“That growth outpaced the systems we were able to build. I came in part of the way through that growth, so the growth was already happening before systems were built. It was a lot of playing catch-up.”
Three problems compounded.
Working in the business, not on it
Eleanor and her founder were so deep in the day-to-day that no one was steering. They weren’t pushing the business forward; they were keeping the business alive. They were both working 80-hour weeks.
Two strong leaders talking past each other
The Visionary/Integrator dynamic that drives a lot of growing companies forward was, for them, generating friction instead of momentum. As Eleanor describes it:
”We were communicating at and around each other. Sometimes even saying the same thing, but it was like the other person was on their own island and couldn’t quite hear what was being said.”
Numbers nobody fully trusted
Finance and data lived in reports, scattered spreadsheets, and inconsistent timesheets. The majority of the data that they had was rough and gut-based.
The team was floating. Then a storm would come, the water would rise, and the question Eleanor faced, quietly and privately, was whether they were going to drown.
Why Bloom, and why Patty
When the founder pushed to bring in outside help, Eleanor was skeptical. She was already running on fumes. The thought of adding more meetings to her plate felt impossible.
“I’m a little bit more of a skeptic with stuff like this. I barely have time to eat lunch, get up during the day, breathe, or see the sun. What do you mean you want me to do more meetings and more work?”
Two things tipped the balance.
The first was the model. Vision Implementors had looked at other operating systems and noticed something was missing.
“Our leadership team is entirely women who are extremely whole-person-focused, so I think we were looking for something that felt like there was some focus on people and feelings, and not just driving after unsentimental metrics every single day. That just wasn’t going to be a fit for our personalities and what our company culture is. Bloom really mirrors our company culture.”
The second was a meeting. The founder asked Eleanor to meet Patty once, reserving to her the right of first refusal. If Eleanor said no after the meeting, that was the end of it. She didn’t say no.
Patty was already a familiar name. She’d done training for EO forums and moderators for years. The trust was already there. But Eleanor is careful to note that wasn’t the decisive factor.
“I think we could have had some degree of success with something else - if you work a system, 9 times out of 10 it’s going to work. But when we consider the level of success we’ve found, the model (Bloom Growth OS™) itself is really what a lot of it has come down to. And the connection with Patty is the best kind of bonus.”
Ground zero
Vision Implementors is a distributed team. Eleanor lives in England. The founder is in North Carolina, USA. Most of the leadership team is somewhere else entirely. Their Bloom Day 1 happened on Zoom, and almost all of their Bloom work since has, too.
The team’s opening sessions weren’t about software adoption or process design. They were about something more foundational: getting two leaders who couldn’t hear each other onto the same page.
“We had never had direct and facilitated discussions around what we want for the business, where we think the business needs to be. Everybody was so in their own space, just trying to get the job done.”
Patty’s job, in those early sessions, was not to install a system. It was to clear the rainforest.
“Patty let us have space to work out some of these communication challenges, and help us see that we were on the same team. Instead of it being fire and ice or opposites, it was more like yin and yang. We have these strengths that are made better when they’re working in tandem. I don’t know that we could have resolved the communication challenges that we were having without her involvement. And I don’t think any of the other work could have happened without that foundational work.”
Of the 8 Essentials in the Bloom Growth Operating System (Growth Plan, People, Sales and Marketing, Meetings, Finance and Data, Process, Technology, and Relationships), the two that mattered most for Vision Implementors are not the ones most companies would predict.
People and Relationships: quantifying the secret sauce
Vision Implementors had always known their team was their advantage. They just hadn’t named why.
“We’ve always said that the people are the secret sauce of our company. But we hadn’t quantified what that meant. Bloom made us slow down and say: How did we get there? How do we protect that? How do we bring more of that in?”
The work that followed wasn’t theoretical. The team reworked their core values to match the qualities they actually valued in their people. They updated their hiring processes to ensure new team members reinforced what was working. They moved from hoping their culture would hold to designing for it.
For Eleanor personally, the people work landed somewhere deeper.
Patty really takes the time to understand the entirety of someone, where they’re coming from, and what’s informing how they’re showing up. It’s so much easier to be vulnerable—daring—and dream big when you know that you’re safe and honored. Patty is someone that deeply cares about not just the business, but you as a person.
Like it or not, we are still people at work.
Finance and data: from gut to pricing overhaul
The second essential was the messiest. Finance and data were the most broken areas of the business when Vision Implementors started with Bloom. Getting those right became Eleanor’s full-time focus for nearly two years.
“For us, having one place where all of that [finance and data] lives has been really helpful.”
What the numbers showed, once they were consolidated, was clarifying. The team could finally see where the pricing model needed to evolve to match the value they were delivering and the cost structure of the business they had become.
Then came the harder part: doing something about it.
“It’s a big, scary thing to announce a price increase to your clients. The empowerment that I’ve experienced because of Bloom has given me confidence to execute things like that without paralyzing anxiety.”
Vision Implementors completed a full pricing restructure with their clients, the kind of work that only becomes possible when the underlying numbers are clear and the leadership team is aligned enough to execute together. For Eleanor, the deeper return was never going to land inside a single fiscal year. It was about building a business with the footing to outlast any one chapter of its growth, and to keep its commitments to the people inside it.
What the platform actually does
For a leadership team of four, the platform’s job isn’t to be a daily destination. It’s the place where the work lives between meetings, and the place that holds everyone equally accountable inside them.
A few features stood out for Eleanor.
Headlines, for filtering the noise
“Our team had a habit of putting everything in Slack—all of the time. It’s been a game changer to have headlines where people know they can put their announcements (good or bad) and know it will be remembered. We don’t have to have this constant shared stream of consciousness through the workweek.”
The “Obstacles and Opportunities (O&O’s)” framing
“One of our core values is having a growth mindset. So for me, Bloom offered alignment in looking at things as opportunities. That has always been really valuable to me, especially as someone that can be a little bit more skeptical and cynical.”
The org chart and growth plan
Forcing the team to document an org chart surfaced gaps they had been carrying without naming them.
“It gave some awareness to the team. Realizations like, “Oh—Eleanor is doing 4 jobs right now. This is something to work on, and it’s an opportunity that, if resolved, would let us grow more because one person’s not doing so much.”
A living system
Most of all, the platform grows with the company. From the org chart to KPIs to business growth plan, each piece feeds the next, and priorities shift accordingly.
What it looks like now
Two years in, Eleanor describes Vision Implementors with a different vocabulary.
“Two years ago, it felt like treading water most days. Now, we have two feet firmly planted on the deck of the boat, and we can ask: where can we go? We’re not just staying in place. We have built these things to actually move the company somewhere, which is not something that existed before.”
The metaphor she keeps returning to is a vessel: “We built the raft, and then we built the boat, and now we’re working on building the cruise ship.”
The data backs it up. The Bloom Weekly meeting runs nearly every week; in the last twelve weeks, Vision Implementors ran their Bloom Weekly in all twelve. The leadership team has stayed on Bloom continuously since October 2024.
From fear to dreaming
For Eleanor, the next chapter is the one she’s most excited about.
“We’re finally in a spot where we’re able to stop moving from a place of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty (which is where things have been for me at least). We can start to dream from a place of security and confidence. I think that will be very special.”
The plan is no longer about catching up. It’s about expansion: growing the work beyond EO into YPO and other peer-group organizations, developing tech solutions for the associations they serve, and continuing the people-first work that has defined the company from day one.
Between the big days
Bloom’s structured journey includes the major foundation days (1, 30, 60, 90), then quarterly and annual sessions. But for Vision Implementors, the coaching relationship has lived in the spaces between.
“Patty Campagna has been a really great neutral third party for me—like a sounding board. She’s a huge resource and the reason that I’ve been able to work on a lot of my self-doubt and imposter syndrome, because, to be seen and valued outside of people that we see all of the time—that’s invaluable.”
Eleanor’s advice for skeptics
Eleanor recognizes herself in the leaders she’d talk to about Bloom Growth: the analytical ones, the skeptics, the ones who’d rather see the data first.
“What is there to lose? Some money, sure. But even if you take away a few lessons, then I would venture the ROI is there. And best case, you end up in a situation like we are, where your ROI is above and beyond what you could have imagined, and everything is different two years later.”
Key takeaways
- The right operating system mirrors your company’s actual values. Vision Implementors chose Bloom Growth because its emphasis on People and Relationships matched a culture that puts heart first.
- A coach unlocks the work the platform can’t. The technology held the team accountable. It was their Bloom Growth Coach, Patty’s facilitation that resolved the communication breakdown that made all the rest possible.
- Quantifying what’s already working protects it. Vision Implementors knew their team was their advantage. Bloom helped them name why, codify it into hiring and core values, and design for it.
- Data clarity makes hard decisions possible. With finance and data centralized, the team had the confidence to execute a major pricing overhaul that pays for the entire Bloom investment in year one.
- Operating systems should be living, not laminated. The org chart, plan, and KPIs evolved with the business, moving from setup work to strategic asset over time.
Ready to find your shared language?
Vision Implementors went from treading water to running a coach-led, data-backed restructuring that pays for itself. If your leadership team is fighting the same fights month after month, or your growth is outpacing your systems, the right combination of coaching and software can change that.
About Vision Implementors
Vision Implementors is an association management company serving member-based nonprofits, with a primary focus on local chapters of the Entrepreneurs Organization. In an industry where most associations rely on individual hires, Vision Implementors offers a team-based model, with what the team describes as a "detail whisperer" approach to the small things that make member experiences feel personal and polished. The company handles paid administrative staffing for boards of directors, including events, retreats, and the broader operations these organizations rely on to run well.
The company was founded by Ronnie, who returned to the workforce after time as a stay-at-home mom, joined an existing association management firm, and then started Vision Implementors when the entrepreneurial bug bit. That origin still shapes the culture today: a flexible, people-first environment with a team that is predominantly women and roughly evenly split between full-time, part-time, and event contractor roles.
