Daryl Blair Gonzales.

I run people ops and build its systems.

Eight years remote across HR and business operations. I help companies grow and then hold steady: build the people function, document how it runs, and automate what should not need a person.

See the work Download CV
Portrait of Daryl Blair Gonzales
Looking for
Head of People or People Ops lead
Fit
30 to 200 headcount, remote. US, UK or AU hours.
Currently
Operations Management Consultant, Clique Dance Studio
Also
Creative and account work with Propel
10 to 50+
Headcount scaled, then reduced
35+ / 80+
Internal hires, then contractors
5,000
Client videos shipped in ten weeks
Zero
Regretted attrition in two years
8 yrs
Remote, HR and ops

The short version

  • Built a people function from zero, scaled the team 10 to 50+, then ran the reduction back to 40.First HR hire at a Web3 agency. Hiring, onboarding, performance, comp and compliance, all of it new.
  • Hired 80+ contractors and shipped 5,000 client videos in ten weeks against a three month deadline.I taught myself to edit first so the hiring spec came from doing the job.
  • Built the HRIS, the hiring bot, the recognition bot and the booking platform these businesses still run on.Four internal tools at Growgami, three live sites for Clique. All shipped while running the people function.

Growgami/Clique Dance Studio/MyOutDesk/CXC Global, on contracts for Macquarie Bank, Deloitte, Oracle and Salesforce/DN Coded/Mammoth Media/Sitel

First HR hire. I built the function, then I had to shrink it.

Growgami / Web3 marketing agency / 2024 to 2026

Built an HR function from zero, scaled the team 10 to 50+, then ran the reduction back to 40. Both directions, same tenure.

A ten person async team hiring off a spreadsheet, onboarding by memory, no contracts template. I was brought in to make that a function, not a habit.

How the contraction went

Two years in, the market turned and I ran the reduction on the team I had built. Scaling taught me systems. The contraction taught me the part nobody puts on a portfolio: how to tell people honestly, how to sequence it, and how to keep the remaining team working through it.

  1. BuiltHiring, onboarding, performance, comp structure and compliance, from nothing
  2. Hired35+ people across 6 functions in under two years
  3. ReducedRan the reduction from 50+ back to 40, including the headcount modeling and the conversations

What that means for youIf your people function is a spreadsheet and good intentions, I have already done this job end to end, in both directions.

3 to 4 wks
Time to fill for senior roles. 1 to 2 weeks for junior.
Zero
Regretted attrition. No exits for performance or culture in two years. The only departures were medical, documented.
72
SOPs across 12 categories, covering every department
4
Internal tools shipped while running the people function

5,000 TikToks in ten weeks.

Growgami / client production project / three month deadline

5,000 client videos delivered in ten weeks against a three month deadline.

A client wanted volume the core team could not absorb. Fifty people, but they were execs, HR, devs and BD, not editors. I built a separate contractor bench from scratch: sourced, hired and ran 80+ editors against the deadline.

I could not write a job description for a craft I did not understand, so I taught myself to edit first. That set the quota, the test task, the rate and the review standard.

Why that mattered

Cutting my own videos told me what an hour of work actually buys. Hiring got accurate because the spec came from doing the job, not from guessing at it. We delivered two weeks early, and the side effect stuck: video editing is now something I take on directly, not just something I hire for.

  1. Sourced80+ contract editors hired and onboarded against a spec I could defend
  2. LearnedTaught myself editing to set realistic quotas, test tasks and rates
  3. Shipped5,000 videos in ten weeks against a twelve week deadline

What that means for youIf you need creative volume fast, I can source the team, write the spec and run the pipeline, because I have done the work myself.

5,000
Short form videos delivered for one client
10 weeks
Against a three month deadline
80+
Contract editors sourced, hired and managed for the build

Market analysis in January. Doors open in April.

Clique Dance Studio / Baguio City / 2026 to now

Concept to open doors in three months, on booking, ticketing and payment systems I built myself.

Crews here rehearse in parking lots and hallways, negotiating for concrete. We opened a floor so nobody has to. I co-founded it and run operations, which meant the booking, ticketing and payments were mine to build before anyone could rent an hour.

See how the three sites connect
Link hubclique-links Rental bookingclique-booking Event ticketingunight-tickets Apps Script logic Availability windows, conflict checks, seat inventory, 20% downpayment rule Google SheetsBookings and seat records DrivePayment proofs EmailManual verify, confirm
Clique booking site hero: Book a Studio, with a notice that online booking opens two days out and a link to message for same-day requests.

Studio rental booking

Two studios, one hour minimum, 20% downpayment. The calendar reads class schedules and live bookings, so nobody pays for an hour that was never free.

clique-booking.vercel.app
U-Night seat picker: a theater map with a stage, VIP rows and general admission rows, seats marked open, VIP, yours or taken.

U-Night seat picker

300 seats, two tiers. Built for one show, written so the next event only needs a rebrand.

unight-tickets.vercel.app
Clique link hub: the Clique wordmark, a VIP pass banner, and grouped links for class pre-registration, A10DANCE, U-Night, studio rentals, merch, directions, house rules and rates.

Link hub

Pre-registration, rentals, tickets, merch, perks, directions and rates in one tap.

clique-links.vercel.app

What that means for youIf you want a business that takes bookings and payments without a front desk, this is the reference build. It runs on free tiers.

Four tools, and the problem each one was for.

None of these started as a build. Each started as something breaking often enough that buying the fix was too slow or too expensive. Together they replaced one paid subscription and took recurring work off four different people.

Notion HRIS

Fifty people and no system of record. The paid HRIS options were priced for companies further along than we were, so I built the lifecycle in Notion instead: records, onboarding, leave, performance and reporting, all connected.

It replaced the subscription entirely and it is still the system the team runs on.

Notion / Relational databases / Automations

Ori

Web3 candidates do not fill out corporate application forms. So I deleted the form and put a two minute conversation in its place.

Apps Script / Sheets / Vercel

HireSignal

Debriefs kept turning into whoever spoke last and loudest. I needed every candidate measured against the same six competencies, in writing, before opinions formed.

Gemini custom gem / Transcript, notes and CV in, weighted scores out

DapBot

On a distributed async team nobody sees anybody work, so good work goes unwitnessed. Every recognition tool charges per seat, so I built one that runs on free tiers.

Node.js / Slack Bolt / Railway / Supabase

People and ops
Notion / Airtable / ClickUp / Slack / Google Workspace / Zoho / Boolean search
Automation and build
Make / Zapier / n8n / Apify / Apps Script / React / Vercel / Railway / Supabase
AI and creative
Claude / Gemini / ChatGPT / NotebookLM / ElevenLabs / Canva / CapCut
Look inside Ori and DapBot4 screenshots

Ori, up close

It opens by saying what Growgami is and who it wants, which filters before it asks anything. Two minutes, quick replies, and an out for candidates who want context first. Every answer and CV lands in Sheets and Drive, so the pipeline stays queryable.

Apps ScriptSheetsDriveVercel
Ori chat interface: the bot introduces itself as Growgami's talent bot, states the agency takes crypto-native talent only, says the intake takes about two minutes, and offers two reply buttons.
Candidate intake, first screen

DapBot, up close

Five daps a week per person, reset every Sunday, because unlimited praise is worth nothing. Each one is tagged to a company value, takes an optional GIF, and can be sent privately when the recipient would rather not be posted. The Friday reminder and the weekly recap run themselves.

Node.jsSlack BoltRailwaySupabase
DapBot dashboard in Slack showing daps received this month, daps given this week, a level progress bar, the weekly reset countdown and a monthly leaderboard with filters.
Stats, levels, leaderboard
The Give a Dap form: pick a teammate, choose how many of your five weekly daps to spend, pick a value category, describe what they did, add an optional GIF, and a checkbox to send privately.
The give flow
The shoutouts channel showing an automated Friday reminder naming how many people have not given a dap yet, and a weekly recap post with the top recipient and a quote of the week.
Nudge and weekly recap

Some samples of my automation work.

Each of these replaced a person retyping data between two systems. Built in Make, running against live client data.

Keap invoices land in Airtable without anyone typing them

A Keap event fires, the scenario iterates line items, calls the API for the full invoice, then searches Airtable and updates the matching record. Zero amount invoices route to Ignore so they never reach the base at all.

MakeKeapAirtableIteratorRouter
Make scenario: a Keap watch event feeds an iterator, then a Keap API call, then an Airtable search and update, with a filter routing zero-amount records to Ignore.
Keap to Airtable invoice sync
See one more scenarioAirtable to a templated Google Sheet

An Airtable record spawns its own Google Sheet from a template

A webhook reads the record, a router splits it down two branches by criteria, each branch copies my Sheets template in Drive, aggregates the matching Airtable rows into it, then writes the new file back to the record.

MakeWebhookAirtableDriveSheets
Make scenario: a custom webhook gets an Airtable record, a router splits into two branches, each copies a Google Drive template, aggregates Airtable search results, writes to Google Sheets and updates Airtable.
Airtable to templated Google Sheet

What the people I worked for say.

"His work ethic, creativity and proactiveness allowed us to experiment different strategies resulting in cost effective growth and improve operations and research using the latest technologies such as AI.

His experience with people management creates a well knit team that can keep up with the business KPIs and north star metrics.

Both an achiever while letting others shine. You can count on him when things require creativity or a step back to maintain pace and keep things in order when the going gets tough."

Co-founder and ownerClique Dance Studio

"Daryl takes a loose brief and turns it into something that actually moves. He's quick to pick up a new style, a new tool, or a new client's voice, and his output keeps the quality bar high even when the timeline gets tight.

He's easy to build with. He asks the right questions early, takes feedback without ego, and makes the people around him sharper by sharing what he's learned.

Reliable in the quiet way. You hand him something and you don't have to chase it. When a project needs an extra push, he's already on it."

FounderPropel

How I actually run it.

Two things get asked in every interview, so here they are before you ask.

Building a team

No two people own the same thing. Overlapping roles are where accountability goes to die, so the first thing I fix is the map.

Then I show the work before I hand it over. Do it in front of them, let them run it, then stay close with feedback until the system is theirs. Experience teaches faster than a document, but nobody gets left alone with it on day one.

Hiring

Referrals first, then job boards, then targeted outreach. For senior roles I treat hiring like business development: find people by their proof of work, start a real conversation, build the relationship, then bring the role once there is something to bring it to. That closed three senior hires at Growgami.

On pay, I was honest that we were under market, and I made sure compensation moved as the company did. That is why nobody left for a better offer.

What I can do for you.

Sometimes one of these. Usually three at once, which is the job I have actually held for most of the last decade.

HR and People Ops
A function that runs without you watching it. Hiring, onboarding, performance, comp structure, contracts and compliance, documented so it survives the next hire.
Business operations
Processes your team actually follows, and reporting your exec can act on instead of reformatting.
Admin and EA support
Calendar, inbox, CRM and records handled, so your week goes back to the work only you can do.
Marketing ops
Campaigns and content shipped on schedule, with the employer brand to make hiring easier.
Real estate VA
Contract to close on concurrent files. Five years of it, no missed deadlines.
Automations
The manual retyping between your systems, gone. Built in Make, Zapier, n8n or Apps Script and left documented.

And two I picked up on the way

Graphics and short form video editing. Not the reason to hire me. I learned editing on the 5,000 video build and kept going because I like making things, so brand assets, decks and social cuts come free with the ops work instead of going out to another vendor.

Ten years, seven roles, one direction.

Started on a phone queue at a call center. Kept taking the part of the job nobody had documented.

2020 to 2025

Executive VA and Transaction CoordinatorMyOutDesk, US real estate

Five years of contract to close on concurrent files. Contracts, deadlines, escrow, every party in the deal.

2019 to 2020

Workforce Relationship AdvisorCXC Global, Australian market

Contractor lifecycle for Macquarie Bank, Deloitte, Oracle and Salesforce.

2017 to 2019

Operations and People LeadDN Coded

Three roles in two years. Two shift production supporting 120+ staff.

2016 to 2017

Customer Service RepresentativeSitel

Where it started.

Earlier roles, the overlap, and education

Also

Head of Business Development and Partner at Mammoth Media in 2020, and Copywriter and Researcher at DeFi Philippines in 2023, part time, which is where the Web3 literacy came from.

On the overlap

My MyOutDesk client moved from selling properties to renovation and rentals and cut my hours to part time. That is why I went looking, and why Growgami starts inside those dates. The client eventually wound the engagement down for market reasons, not performance. No two full time roles were ever run at once.

Education

BS Business Management, major in Human Resource Development Management. Remnant International College.

The other half is not a hobby.

Sixteen years dancing. President of 10TATIVE, a Baguio collective, where I choreograph and direct multi crew showcases.

Directing a show is operations with an audience. You cast it, you count it, you build the run of show, and on the night it either holds or it does not. Same instinct, different room.

The lit Clique Q mark mounted on a black wall inside the studio entrance.

Creative portfolio

Open it

Choreography, direction, brand and design work, kept in its own deck so this page stays about operations.

If the function does not exist yet, that is the fun part.

dblair.gonzales@gmail.com
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Hiring teams

Head of People or People Ops lead, 30 to 200 headcount, remote, comfortable on US, UK or AU hours. I want the level where I can change how the company runs, not just process what it hands me. Philippine and international employment context.

Founders and small teams

Ops architecture, booking and workflow platforms, process documentation, and the creative production to go with it. The Clique stack is the reference build.

How to start

Send one message with what is breaking. I will reply with whether I am the right person and what the first two weeks would look like. No deck required.