Shane Gring

I build the operations a growing business has outgrown: without it having to hire a full-time COO or CMO. Growing businesses hit a point where how they got here stops working. The judgment stays with the few people who built it. The standards hold because the same people keep holding them. The work ships because those people keep shipping it. The team can't move faster than they can. That's when the company needs someone inside the work, building the operating layer the team can run on. I started my career in AmeriCorps at a Habitat for Humanity site in Colorado, where I built my first operating systems — the kind that turn good intentions into completed houses. After that, community and program operations at USGBC. Then workforce and platform operations at IWBI, building the systems behind a global health-and-buildings standard now applied to 5.1B+ square feet across 131 countries. Today I run Certainly, a cooperative that productizes the operating-layer work for businesses that have outgrown the way they've been running. Current and recent clients include DRVN (golf fitness certification and platform), TeamBuildr (marketing operations and AI integration), SEAM (social-impact standard for commercial real estate). The job is always some version of the same job. Map how the business actually works. Get the methodology, the standards, and the decisions out of the few heads they live in. Build the operating layer the team can run on. AI is the best tool we have for it, and we will use it. But it isn't the point. The point is whether the thing the business was built to do actually keeps happening when it scales. Architecture geek. Long-suffering Detroit sports fan. Miami University grad. Pittsburgh, four daughters under six. If you're hitting the wall, book a call at shanegring.com.