Elesha Jacobs's 12-App IT Consulting Stack

Elesha Jacobs is an IT specialist running a boutique tech consulting practice. Infrastructure optimization, cloud migrations, automation implementation, and team training. Clients range from 10-person startups to 500-employee companies stuck with legacy systems.

Started consulting full-time in 2019 after a decade in corporate IT where bureaucracy moved slower than technology evolved. Now manages 6-8 active client projects simultaneously, each at different stages of implementation.

What makes Elesha different is the systems thinking. Most IT consultants just execute tickets. She redesigns workflows to prevent the tickets in the first place. Why manually provision servers when infrastructure-as-code exists? Why answer the same Slack question 20 times when documentation solves it once?

The Elesha Jacobs tools below reflect someone juggling complex technical work across multiple clients. Scheduling automation. Knowledge management. Development workflows. Communication hubs. Every tool either reduces context-switching or captures institutional knowledge that would otherwise live only in her head.

Calendly prevents the scheduling nightmare of coordinating across 8 different time zones. Discovery calls with West Coast startups. Technical training for East Coast teams. Check-ins with European clients.

Different meeting types have different durations and buffers. Discovery calls are 30 minutes with no buffer. Technical deep-dives are 90 minutes with 30-minute buffers before and after for context-switching. Training sessions are 2 hours with mandatory 15-minute breaks.

Availability windows protect deep work time. Meetings only happen Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays are for actual technical implementation work that requires uninterrupted focus.

Zapier integration creates Notion tasks and Slack notifications automatically when someone books. No manual tracking of who scheduled what. The system handles it without her needing to remember.

GitHub is where all infrastructure code and automation scripts live. Terraform configurations for cloud deployments. Ansible playbooks for server provisioning. Python scripts for batch operations.

Version control is non-negotiable in consulting. When a client asks "what changed between last week and this week," git history provides the exact answer. No guessing. No "I think I modified that file." The commits show everything.

Project boards track technical work separate from Notion's business tracking. Issues for bugs, feature requests, and infrastructure improvements. Milestones for deployment phases. Labels for priority and client tags.

Also serves as portfolio evidence. Prospective clients can review public repos showing infrastructure-as-code expertise and documentation quality. Code speaks louder than resume bullet points.

Obsidian is the personal knowledge base for technical notes that don't belong in client-facing documentation. Learning notes from courses. Project retrospectives. Troubleshooting solutions that might apply to future clients.

Linked notes create connections between technologies and solutions. A note on Kubernetes networking links to specific client implementations, troubleshooting experiences, and relevant blog posts. The connections reveal patterns across projects.

Daily notes capture meeting summaries, random insights, and things to research later. Weekly reviews consolidate scattered thoughts into permanent notes worth keeping. Most daily notes get deleted. The signal gets extracted and preserved.

Raindrop.io handles the technical documentation library. Articles, tutorials, Stack Overflow solutions all tagged by technology and problem type. Prevents re-googling solutions to problems solved six months ago.

Organized by technology stack and use case. Docker troubleshooting. AWS cost optimization. Python async patterns. Search finds anything instantly instead of digging through browser bookmark chaos spanning five years.

Slack manages client communication with dedicated workspaces per major project. Each client gets their own workspace with organized channels for different work streams.

Replaces email chaos with threaded conversations. Infrastructure questions stay in #infrastructure. Training discussions in #training. General updates in #general. Context stays organized instead of scattered across 400 email threads.

Also manages team collaboration on larger projects. When implementation requires coordinating with client developers, DevOps, and executives, Slack channels keep everyone aligned without CC-hell email chains.

Zoom handles the face-to-face when async doesn't cut it. Technical training sessions with screen sharing. Troubleshooting calls where seeing the problem beats 50 screenshots.

Screen recording captures training sessions for client reference libraries. Record once, clients can rewatch when onboarding new team members months later. Scales expertise without repeating the same training live every time.

Notion is the master project dashboard tracking all active clients. Separate database for each client with linked views showing cross-project priorities.

Client onboarding checklists ensure nothing gets skipped. Contracts signed, GitHub access granted, Slack workspace created, kickoff scheduled. Template gets duplicated for each new engagement.

Technical specifications live here in client-facing format. Meeting notes. Project timelines with milestones. Delivery checklists. The single source of truth when juggling 6 simultaneous engagements at different project phases.

Also tracks business metrics. Revenue per client. Hours logged versus estimated. Project profitability. What started as project management evolved into business intelligence showing which engagements are worth repeating.

Superhuman manages the email avalanche from 6+ active client projects. Keyboard shortcuts clear inbox faster than mouse clicking. Scheduled send ensures emails go out during business hours even when written at midnight.

Reminders prevent follow-ups from falling through cracks. "Follow up if no response in 3 days" automatically surfaces emails needing attention. No more manually tracking who needs nudging.

Grammarly polishes client proposals and technical documentation. Tech professionals aren't always great writers. Grammarly catches tone issues ("this sounds too blunt") and clarity problems before hitting send.

Particularly helpful for explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders. The readability score flags when explanations are too jargon-heavy for executive audiences.

Zapier automates workflow between tools. New Calendly booking creates Slack notification and Notion task automatically. GitHub issues trigger email alerts. Reduces manual busywork that wastes billable hours.

Freedom blocks social media during billable client work. Distractions are expensive when billing hourly. Twitter, Reddit, YouTube all blacklisted during focused implementation blocks. Can't waste client budget scrolling.

Dropbox handles client file sharing and project deliverable storage. Architecture diagrams. Configuration files. Training documentation. All organized by client and project phase.

Version history has saved projects multiple times when clients accidentally delete critical files. "Can you restore the infrastructure diagram from last week?" No problem, two clicks in Dropbox.

Shared folders give clients access without email attachment hell. Drop files in shared folder, client gets notification, everyone stays synced. Way better than 8 people passing around "ProjectPlan_Final_v3_FINAL_USE_THIS_ONE.docx".