THE SENSIBLE PLAN / PHOENIX, ARIZONA

Make the complicated useful.

Marketing, websites, and systems that earn their keep.

I help businesses and community organizations work out what's getting in the way, then fix it. Clearer marketing, better follow-up, less unnecessary work. No corporate circus.

Led by Lisa Ramirez. 25+ years in marketing and enrollment. Still hands-on.

Lisa Ramirez
FOR BUSINESSES & NONPROFITSNeed something sorted?Marketing, websites, communications, and processes that need to work better.See how I can help FOR LEADERSHIP & RECRUITERSLooking for the person behind the work?25+ years in marketing, enrollment, investment decisions, and building teams.Meet Lisa

I don’t go looking for unnecessary complication. I just find it very difficult to watch people live with it.

Then the questions start.
WHAT I DO

What needs fixing first?

Sometimes it's the marketing. Sometimes it's everything that happens after someone gets in touch. I'll help you find the problem and do something about it.

Not sure where the problem starts? That's fine. We can work that out.

Tell me what's not working
Why I do this

I like things to work properly.

If the same information is being entered three times, nobody quite owns the next step, or the customer has to work far too hard to do something simple, I struggle to just walk past it.

Why are we doing this? Who actually needs it? Where does it break? What happens next? Who owns that bit? Could we enter it once instead of four times?

That instinct has followed me through higher education, contact centers, multi-school marketing, travel, community organizations, websites, email, events, signage and automation.

Six Sigma gave structure to something I was already inclined to do: define the problem, remove what adds no value, improve the process, then keep testing.

There’s usually a better way. The useful part is finding it.

Selected proof

At some point, the numbers need to back up the story.

$30MManaged and reforecasted annual media budget.
800+Additional student starts versus the prior year while cost per start fell 9%.
161Schools supported across 30+ education brands.
35Employees in the centralized inquiry contact center I built and scaled.
15%Enrollment conversion increase in the first year of contact-center operations.
84% / 50%Appointment show rate / enrollment rate in a multi-school pilot.
Career evolution

Different jobs. Same habit of asking why.

I don’t think of my career as a stack of job descriptions. Each chapter added another part of the problem I wanted to understand.

Collins College

Start with demand.

Marketing, media, inquiry goals, rebrand, second campus.

Learned to connect creative decisions, media investment, and student demand, not just campaign activity. Answered the Game Design advertising calls from home, which is a very quick way to learn what an ad actually promised.

Apollo College

Then follow the inquiry.

Five locations became 21.

Started a two-person inquiry pilot in Phoenix. That pilot became the foundation for a model we could prove and expand.

Carrington

Build the operation behind the promise.

18 campuses + online · 8 states · $30M media · 35-person inquiry center.

Scaled the inquiry model to 35 representatives, supported its rollout in Sacramento, and hired a manager to run daily operations. Led digital acquisition specialists and managed $30M in annual media investment, connecting demand to student starts.

Cadence Education

Scale without losing the local reality.

161 schools · 30+ brands · parents and families.

Brought consistency to local marketing and inquiry follow-up without losing sight of each school, market, and family.

Colling Media

Pressure-test from the outside.

Performance acquisition and inquiry optimization.

Saw acquisition from the agency side, sharpening the link between campaign performance, lead quality, and enrollment.

University of Advancing Technology (UAT)

Connect institutional priorities to the student experience.

Brand strategy · academic positioning · student journeys.

Brought market intelligence to academic strategy and helped evaluate emerging opportunities without sacrificing brand equity. Modernized CONNECT orientation and aligned personalized digital and direct-mail nurture around the student journey.

SELECTED WORK / REAL-WORLD RESULTS

An idea is lovely. Somebody still has to make it work.

These are real projects with real constraints. Limited budgets, busy people, competing priorities, and the occasional system that should have been retired years ago.

My part is to work out what needs doing, build or improve it, and stay involved long enough to see whether it actually works.

A plan is only useful if someone follows through.

Scottsdale Elks Lodge #2148 project overviewAmerican Legion Post 44 project overviewEP!C Travel Agents project overviewRocky Point Bar Crawl project overviewDipped & Twisted project overviewChandler Arizona Adventures project overview
In their words

The people I’ve worked with can take it from here.

The world could use more leaders like Lisa.

“She didn’t make excuses or blame others when we were behind on goals. She simply doubled down and worked harder to achieve.”

Jeffrey Berris · Account Manager · former direct report

I grew more under Lisa than in any comparable stretch of my career.

“Lisa set a clear direction, gave us real decision-making authority, and trusted us to execute, then backed us when it counted.”

Jeff Dempsey · SVP, Head of Web Strategy & Conversion Rate Optimization · former direct report

Lisa definitely gets it.

“Analytical and insightful and, most importantly, intuitive on not only what moves consumers but why consumers are moved to engage with a brand.”

Peter Capper · Co-Founder & President · agency partner
Perspective

Useful beats hype.

Technology

I’ve lived through one “this changes everything” already.

My early career included Unipalm in Cambridge, the company behind PIPEX, the UK’s first commercial internet service provider. The internet did, in fact, change everything. Eventually.

Which is probably why I’m less interested in whether AI is impressive than whether it is useful: does it solve a real problem, improve the experience or help people work better?

How I work

I’m not precious about the process. I am about the result.

I’m used to making progress without a perfect brief, an unlimited budget, or a room full of people to delegate to. Work out what matters, fix that first, and improve the rest as you go.

The Sunday Supplement

I was raised on Sunday papers, not personal brands.

Practical notes on marketing, systems, AI and the occasional thing that should have been simpler.

Published when there’s something worth saying. Occasionally G&T-assisted. After work, obviously.

Published · November 1, 2026

You Can’t Market Your Way Out of a Broken Promise

Before spending more money attracting new customers, find out what happened to the ones you already had.

Difficulty ★★★☆☆ G&T ★★★☆☆

Read the edition

The Reckoning: The leads were never the problem. The hallway was.

See The Sunday Supplement

ARSENAL · ENGLAND

Arsenal supporter. England supporter. Consequently rather good at separating optimism from forecasting.

Or, put another way: hope is not a strategy.