A community that was already working. We added the tech around it.
The HoLT is Lea Turner's community for freelancers, solopreneurs and small business owners, around five hundred of them. It runs on her platform, her brand, her rules. Over 2026 we partnered with her on the pieces around it, each one at its own address, none of them touching what already worked.
Do not rebuild the community. Add to it.
A thriving community is the worst place to arrive with a platform migration. Members know where everything is, the founder has a rhythm, and the value is in the people, not the software. So every piece we built for The HoLT sits beside the community at its own address, plugs into what is already there, and can be switched off without anyone noticing a hole.
What was already there
- A community of around five hundred members, run by Lea
- Nearly two hundred recorded masterclasses in the library
- Bookings and applications running on forms and spreadsheets
- A tent at Ideas Fest and a big idea for it
- More than one tech supplier, each with their own corner
What we added, each at its own address
- BarryBot: an assistant that has read every masterclass and signposts, never advises
- A World Cup sweepstake for the whole community, brief to launch in an afternoon
- A hub that takes masterclass bookings and applications straight into the CRM
- The Ideas Fest tent tech: the Human Treasure Hunt, a live photo wall, the big screen
- A members' directory the public can search, built once as a product
Four things, four addresses, one CRM underneath
An assistant that has read the whole library
Members kept asking the same question: "was there a masterclass on this?" BarryBot has read all 196 courses and every session in the library. Ask it anything and it tells you which masterclass covers it, who hosted it and where to watch. It signposts and never gives the advice itself, so the value stays with the people who made it. Public, on the HoLT's own domain, served by our own engine.
hub.the-holt.com/barrybot A 500-member sweepstake, brief to launch in an afternoon
Lea wanted a World Cup sweepstake for the community. Password gate, instant draws, a live leaderboard and cheat detection with a sense of humour, co-branded HoLT and NotLuck, live the same afternoon. It went down well enough that it became a product anyone can run for their own crowd.
holt.notluck.co.uk
Bookings and applications that land in the CRM, not a spreadsheet
Masterclass applications and bookings used to arrive through forms and get copied around by hand. The hub at hub.the-holt.com takes them straight into the CRM: every booking becomes a contact, a calendar slot and a note, with the emails sent as the application moves stage. Lea sees the whole pipeline in one place.
The tent tech at Ideas Fest 2026
We partnered with The HoLT on the tech for their tent at Ideas Fest: the Great HoLT Human Treasure Hunt, a bingo card of twenty humans played on your phone with every entrant landing in the CRM; a live photo wall that puts hunt photos on the big screen seconds after they are taken; and an all-day show mixing Lea's visuals with live leaderboards. Then the festival's internet died and we built an offline guide overnight, which pointed people back to the tent.
hub.the-holt.com/hunt
One CRM underneath, and nothing that has to be migrated
Every piece talks to the same NotLuck CRM: the hunt entrants, the masterclass bookings, the sweepstake sign-ups. So Lea gets one view of her members across everything, and each new piece starts from the data the last one collected. Her community platform, her site and her other suppliers carry on exactly as they were. That is the whole trick: add value beside a working thing, never underneath it.
The HoLT is Lea Turner's business community for freelancers, solopreneurs and small business owners. The community, its platform and the-holt.com are hers. We partnered with her on the pieces on this page.
the-holt.comOther systems, other industries
Paul Chapman came back to the UK after a few years away. We sat down for half a day, talked it all through, and he left with a solid plan of action and a new website already built.
Six thousand people at Ideas Fest 2026 lost the internet on day one, and with it the agenda and the map. We built a guide that loads once and lives on the phone, and had it in people's hands before the gates opened on day two.
A window-cleaning firm was losing jobs to missed calls. We gave them an AI agent that answers, prices the work and follows up on WhatsApp, day or night.
Got a community, a club or a crowd?
We add the tech around what you already run: the assistant, the game, the bookings, the screen. One CRM underneath, nothing to migrate. Tell us what your members keep asking for.