My Simple “Answer Questions” Process for 75k YouTube Subscribers

This week Jared Bauman sits down with Layla Pomper, an accidental entrepreneur who created the company ProcessDriven. She helps small businesses turn their ideas into sustainable processes and increase their efficiency.

She’s had especially noteworthy success on YouTube where, after getting just 5k subscribers, she was fully booked with clients. Since then, she’s grown her following to over 74k.

In this interview she shares the details of building her business, how she leveraged social media to grow, and how she markets a “boring” niche.

Watch the Full Episode

Layla begins by sharing a bit of her story: how she left her dream job in Fintech and took two a few years to learn new skills, which led her to start a small business that she nurtured on the side. 

It eventually grew into the company she runs today: ProcessDriven, which helps small teams systemize their operations. She shares some of her stats: employees, YouTube subscribers, her clients to date—all of that growth being organic.

Layla talks about the unique situation that led her to put her content on YouTube and when she knew that it was a viable platform for her business. She shares exactly the kind of content she created and why it allowed her to attract clients.

She speaks about video creation, marketing her content and services, the hooks she uses, and how to market a “boring” niche.

Layla talks about the qualities she believes are important for creating a successful YouTube video and then shares what she believes are the gaps at businesses today, after having worked with thousands of customers.

She offers some actionable advice and software recommendations, talks about the mistakes people make when crafting SOPs, and discusses hiring.

Layla talks about the tools and systems she uses to become a better content creator and discusses repurposing content for different platforms.

To conclude, she shares some success stories from her clients.

Links & Resources

• ProcessDriven
• Layla’s YouTube channel
• Layla’s LinkedIn
• Asana
• Trello

Topics Layla Pomper Talks About

• Her backstory
• Why she created her company
• How she got initial clients
• Why she started using YouTube
• Getting clients from YouTube
• Standing out on YouTube
• Video creation
• Video details
• Optimization
• Actionable advice
• Choosing tools
• SOP mistakes
• Hiring
• Becoming a better content creator
• Repurposing content
• Success stories

Transcript

Jared: I met you originally at ConvertKits conference. I've had a few people on and I was really fascinated by your journey. I know we're talking about processdriven. co, which is your business.

Layla: So Process Driven Now is most known for having a YouTube channel with about 65, 000 subscribers right now. Grown all organically.

I have a team of six people. Full time employees and with contractors, we sit around 12 people or so at any given time. Let's fast forward a bit to where things are at now. We serve about 300 or so customers a year, and we've worked with 3, 000 clients to date in that kind of capacity.

Jared: So you started, Your now 65, 000 follower YouTube channel almost by accident as a video delivery service.

Layla: Yeah. At the time, I remember writing down my goal from YouTube was to pay for Loom. That was my goal. I wanted to get, you know, 10 or 20,

Jared: whatever it was a month. Yeah. Yeah. Loom is expensive. It's expensive, but, uh, you really, you really flip the script on that with, with YouTube. Very high level question.

What are the biggest gaps that you see having worked with thousands and thousands of customers?

Layla: The biggest thing I've noticed is that people from the very get go look at systems and processes and they view it as this terrifying thing that they don't want to touch with a 10 foot pole. The second and most tactical thing that I think anyone listening to this can immediately implement is, All

Jared: right, welcome back to the Niche Pursuits podcast.

My name is Jared Bauman, and today we are joined by Laila Pomper with ProcessDriven. co. Laila, welcome. Thanks so much for having me here. I met you originally at ConvertKit's conference. I've had a few people on that I met. So that conference has yielded some wonderful podcast interviews and You're the latest to come out of that, but you and I had lunch together and I was really fascinated by your journey.

I'm really excited to have you on to tell that story. Um, thanks for joining.

Layla: Absolutely. I'm excited to be here and shout out to craft and commerce for anyone listening to this great event. And I'm very glad we were able to connect there.

Jared: It's so true. It's so true. I feel like there's just a caliber of people there and everyone is both very accomplished.

Open to sharing how they got there and very nice all at the same time kind of all wrapped into one Yes,

Layla: yes, which is a rare combination to see but it was definitely my first craft and commerce and on to many more I hope

Jared: oh, I didn't know it was your first was my first too. So I will be there again for certain So, all right, um hitch aside and know their convert kit is not sponsoring this podcast.

Layla: Yeah, hashtag not sponsored

Jared: But hey, so why don't we we always like to start like this Catch us up. I know we're talking about process driven. co, which is your business. Very successful YouTube channel. We're going to get into how you built all this, but maybe catch us up on who you are and maybe some of your background prior to, to this, uh, to this, uh, venture.

Layla: Yeah. Okay. Well, it's not going to be a very impressive background, but I think that's what some people might be able to relate to. I quit a job that was my dream job in FinTech, um, with really no plan and a small nest egg, and I wanted to get. My next job, next rung up the ladder, and I needed a few more years of experience to get that.

I was debating going back for an MBA and realized that costs a lot, and I'd rather just get paid to learn that. So I started this little business thinking, ah, I'll do it for two years, learn a bit, and then I'll be qualified for that mid level job I wanted. Um, it's now been almost seven years and that business is now what process driven is.

And I kind of organically grew process driven by accident, starting off as a virtual assistant into consulting. And now what we do is we help small teams systemize their operations. And it's been a lot of learning along the way as a first time founder and a first time manager. You

Jared: talked about how you just started this on the side, uh, just to kind of check a bit of a box, get some experience.

Layla: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jared: That's very different, I feel like, than a lot of people that start things, which is, hey, I need to make money, or I want to accomplish this, or I want to grow this. Like, what did the initial steps look like when that was the goal, versus maybe what a lot of people might be doing in their initial steps?

Layla: Yeah, so for me, my priority was learning, I would say that. So yes, it was checking a box, but really, I felt like I had to prove something first. I had to learn something, which to my younger self, I would say that was a completely false assumption. The early steps really involved just figuring out what the heck could I do that would be interesting enough to work on for two years.

Because in my mind, that's what I wanted to commit to. Two years of learning a business. And so I just started looking around me at the problems I already had encountered in my life. So not long before this, I had helped my now husband start a carpentry contracting business. And the thing that I spent most of my time on and I found most interesting in that avenue It was kind of the back office operations.

How do we manage all of these orders and bids and contractors? And it felt pretty natural to just latch onto that and go out to my local community. I went to networking events, all the things that pre COVID were normal and just start saying, Hey, I will help you as your assistant on back office operations.

And I really, I undercharged. I. Undersold. I sold features instead of benefits. I made every single mistake you could, but I got experience, which was really what I was after in those first, you know, first year, especially.

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Jared: what, um, you know, maybe catch us up on where things are now, we always like to kind of talk about the end and then we'll work backwards from it, like Where is Process Driven right now?

Layla: Yeah, before we lose people thinking, you know, we're all the way back in those early days. Uh, so Process Driven now is most known for having a YouTube channel with about 65, 000 subscribers right now. It's grown all organically. I have a team of six full time employees and with contractors we sit around 12 people or so at any given time.

We serve about 300 or so customers a year. Uh, small teams across the world who are trying to systemize their operations and we've worked with 3, 000 clients to date. Uh, in that kind of capacity. So we've kind of grown quite a bit over the last seven years.

Jared: Yeah. That is a lot of companies. That's a lot of systems to put into place.

I'm, I'm curious to get into this. I think a lot of people listening, um, are going to have maybe two ears or two things about this interview. Two different sides of them going as they listen, obviously cool story. Looking forward to hearing how you grew this and taking insights from that. But the process side of things, um, I'm sure you probably hear this a lot, but all of us could stand to do a little bit better.

With the processes we have in place, make ourselves more optimized, more efficient, let fewer things slip through the cracks. So there's almost like a dual interest in this interview that at least I have.

Layla: Yeah. I mean, you're not alone in that. And I think that has been kind of the uphill battle, battle of this whole arc that we've been on is there's this intrinsic interest from people who are in business of process system.

I need that. But at the same time, it's kind of like. A ghost. You can't quite see it. You can't feel it. But when it's haunting you, you know it's there. Um, That's kind of where I view process to be. And so making it tangible and something people know, Oh, I need that has been probably the hardest part of building out this business is the education.

Jared: Yeah, that's a good point. It's the dog that doesn't bark in many ways, you know?

Layla: Exactly.

Jared: So, let's get back to you in the first year, we're spending a lot of time meeting people and, and, and, and kind of growing your business in that regard. When did YouTube come into play?

Layla: So it was about, I want to say year and a half in, um, at that point I was working with clients one on one on different sorts of software and system projects.

So setting up an email management software, setting up a work management software. The besado setups, the whole gambit. And every time I would finish a project, I would spend time with my client on training. I would train them one on one often on here's how to use the beautiful thing you now have. Please don't mess it up.

And usually I would start sending them recordings of that call. And when they had questions after, I would record little, you know, one off video recordings, like Looms, saying, Oh, here's that question, the answer to that question you just had. Here's how you change that account setting. Here's how you send that email.

And at one point I realized, damn, Looms is expensive to really get the nice, nice plan of it. And why don't I just upload these to YouTube? It's, you know, they're not that private. I'll just, you know, anonymize the information and just share it with my client that way. And that started in 2019 where I started recording.

I want to say it was Cognito Forms, a tutorial for a client where I just said, Hi, Friend, this is how you click here. Uploaded it to Google or to YouTube, I should say, send it to the client. And then the video just lived on YouTube since then kind of growing in traffic. And the reaction I started getting over time, the number of views those videos started getting is kind of what made me wake up and pay attention.

That YouTube is probably not the best video storage platform, but is great as a social media and publishing channel.

Jared: So you started your now 65, 000 follower YouTube channel almost by accident as a, as a video delivery service.

Layla: Yeah.

Jared: Oh, that is okay. That's awesome. Um, yeah, yeah. Loom is expensive, but, uh, you really, you really flipped the script on that with, with YouTube.

Um, I mean, what, um, when did you, it's now, I would say at least it's gotta be one of your bigger growth channels for your business. Sure. I just, how did you start to. To, to see this as being a lead generation tool rather than as a, like a video delivery platform.

Layla: Yeah, so I would consistently get a few hundred views on these tutorial videos.

They were discoverable with SEO just by the naming of them. And then at one point I started getting some comments from different people. I was like, oh, okay, this is a thing. At the time I remember writing down my goal from YouTube was to pay for, Loom. That was my goal. I wanted to get, you know, 10 or 20, whatever it was a month.

And at one point I lost a big client. This was when it was a little bit of like an economic shift in the local area I was in. And I lost a big deal that was like, I want to say 20 or 30, 000 contract for a project that was going to take up about a quarter of my time for a period. And I realized, shoot, I've got nothing to work on.

And so I shifted my focus. I was like, what if I just make a bunch of videos during this time because I've got nothing else to do. And in the course of, I want to say, Two weeks, I created 30 videos on an old flip phone or webcam, depending on the week and uploaded all of them, scheduled all of them on YouTube to fill up about three months of content and started publishing, I want to say two times a week.

And I just threw it out there. I had no idea what would happen. I just had seen a few comments come in. Let's try it. And within the course of a few months, it really grew and grew. And even at a thousand subscribers, I started seeing clients come in. By 5, 000 subscribers, I was fully booked. Like I had a wait list of, I don't know, I want to say four to five months out, just from 5, 000 subscribers on YouTube, which is very different than other niches in the YouTube land.

Jared: Wow. So, and again, I'm trying to just unpack this. Were you, um, how were you creating clients out of YouTube videos? Because, and I think it's, I think a lot of people are listening to this. That, this is probably the question they're trying to think like, you are a service provider. Yes. And you're creating videos that are helpful tutorials.

How are you bridging that gap between, cool, now you can go do it yourself because I just taught you versus, hey, you can hire me now.

Layla: I think one thing I accidentally did well by using YouTube as a video storage is the way I decided what videos to create. We're clients asking me questions. There was not one video I created in those early days.

That was not an exact quote of a client's question. And so I knew people who would work with me or people who were like my clients ask these questions. And so that directly related to videos that helped. So picking topics that my clients care about attracted my future clients. Uh, I think the second thing is I played the SEO game.

So I focused on how to X, Y, Z content. Where no one cares if they know your face or not, they just want someone to give them the answer. And my focus was always on specific, detailed things that you couldn't find on the internet otherwise. And I would always mention in the video, Hey, I have a business, you can work with me on X, Y, and Z.

So the tutorials were always specific enough that they didn't give away the whole farm. Um, but they did at least let you know that hey, I'm somebody who can help you with these types of things that at the time, uh, were often not at all covered inside of YouTube.

Jared: You mentioned that a lot of your initial videos, and maybe now still to this day, although I don't think so judging by your current setup, but your first videos were flip phone videos, not edited.

Yes. All this. Oh yeah. Like, the whole bit. I'm guessing they're still around too. You could probably go dig and find them. Oh, they are. Yep, I know. I've got a few of those myself. But, you know, nowadays we think of YouTube as highly produced, very edited, and we're going to get into your, to your process, by the way, for the people listening, you know, you do have a process now, but going back to the early days, why did they rank so well?

Why did they do so well? You know, especially given that they kind of go against the grain of what YouTube videos stand for. Now, I realize, by the way, I'll just caveat 2019, 2020, different era of YouTube, but still. There were a lot of very well produced kind of focused videos on that at that time too, but yours stood out.

Layla: You know, it still kind of boggles me how that happened. I will say, as you alluded to, I used an old flip phone or a webcam, a cheap webcam for 20 bucks. I used no lights. I had a window. And I didn't edit almost any of my videos. That's how I was able to produce so many in just two weeks of not having a client come through.

Um, I think what stood out as I focused on the content and that seems kind of silly, you know, it's silly when you think about all the different strategies out there at YouTube, but it's really the thing that has stuck with me since the beginning, those first 30 videos, the marathon of filming them, I really was just able to play, my focus was just getting the reps in, getting the volume.

And by not editing almost any of them, I was forced to become a lot better at how I speak and what I say and how I express myself. And so I think by removing the distractions, I was able to make better content and I was able to move quickly. I think I, I mentioned this, but this is something unique to my story.

A lot of the tutorials I started making, I really focused on things that were not served by YouTube at all. So I was one of the very first ClickUp publishers, one of the very first CognitoForms. There were many topics in software that were coming of age at that time, and I saw that no one was covering them, because I couldn't send anything to my clients.

So I created what was missing, and that also gave me a huge leg up, versus if I was trying to create a, you know, how to time block video. That's an incredibly competitive niche, as opposed to the early days of, say, ClickUp.

Jared: Right. Right. Okay. Let's fast forward a bit to where things are at now. I'd love to hear more about your process for YouTube video creation and then, um, some of the optimizations you've made.

I mean, we've got to get into a little bit of optimization stuff. I was combing your YouTube channel earlier to try to kind of find which direction to go with those questions, but we'll get to that a bit. Um, Nowadays, what does a, what does a video look like for YouTube and how do you go about creating it?

Layla: Yeah, it's got, definitely gotten a little bit more sophisticated. I now have lights that aren't a window and a camera that's not a flip phone. So you can tell I've, I've invested here. Um, I would say the main thing that's changed is I actually go into videos with a little bit more intentionality.

Something I've been trying to study this year is the art of being a creator. Honestly, until I hit 50. 5, 000 or so subscribers when we met at craft and commerce. That was really the first time I was like, you know what? Yes, I am a creator. And so I've been kind of dedicated in this last quarter, two quarters to learning the craft.

And so when I go to create a video, I come down and I think of what is the concept, what's the thing I want to hit on, this is almost always still to this day, based on a customer or an avatar message. So. Every time somebody joins my email list, I ask them a question of what would you like to see my next content be about.

I collect all those answers and I comb through them to create my video topics. That or my team, you know, anything that we have that happens that we really know our clients will care about, that is shortlisted. Then an idea gets into the research phase. So that's when I'm trying to figure out how do I actually approach this topic in an interesting Because my niche is, let's just call it what it is, it's pretty

Jared: boring.

That's a question I have. How to market a boring niche, because it is boring.

Layla: It's so boring. And no one wants you to go to them and just say, hey, you need your SOPs. It just doesn't work. So, uh, what I've really focused on now is, what is the hook and what is the packaging that will get people to actually click on this?

I've really been trying to work more on marketing to problems rather than solutions. Uh, as someone who wasn't a trained marketer, this has been a real shift. But funny enough, the core content, how I produced the video, the, the core script has remained almost unchanged for four years. It's just bullet points of things I want to hit on.

I've taken some from Ali Abdaal's advice of, you know, Always using listicles where you can, and I just film it all in one sitting, and if I have multiple scenes for a video, I'll move the camera and film them like that, uh, but it's very, very simple, and all of the editing gets handed off to a video editor.

I involved in proofing and then it flies and we see what happens.

Jared: I like that you did touch on it. I was kidding when I was laughing, but like, I wasn't. It's not the sexiest of topics, you know, and a lot of listeners are going to be doing businesses that are maybe really profitable, but not, not in like really trendy topics.

Now that's an opportunity. And a challenge, you, you hit on a little bit about how you focus on problems, that sort of thing, like, how are you talking, how are you getting through, how are you getting people to watch a video on SOPs, for example, because that's one of your number one videos, like, it's got, you know, a lot of watches, you know, but like, how are you, uh, keeping people engaged in the video, all the, all these kind of things.

Yeah.

Layla: I, uh. I think it's something I'm still learning, honestly. I started this video doing tutorials, and it really wasn't until this year, 2024, that we've been full in on process, because for a long time I truly believed there's no way I'm gonna get anybody to watch a video about how to write an SOP.

That's so far down the funnel. No, one's going to click on that. Um, and then we had a video earlier this year that I think is at maybe 250, 000 views right now. It just blew up overnight, basically. And it was all about process. And that really made me realize, Oh, wow, we can do it. And what that video did and what I've been trying to emulate ever since.

Is it really hooked people with the things they're tired of hearing about? The very opening of the video is, you know, you hear these business people talking about, you need to, you know, buy more employees to make basically all the generic advice. We covered that as the hook of the video. And then the body of the video said, none of that stuff actually matters.

It's as cringy as you think it is. Here's what you actually need. And that kind of transition of just acknowledging the bore factor and embracing how different my channel is. It's what we've been using successfully on the videos we've been able to have pop off since then. Uh, and it also has helped by the fact that I demographically stand out in my niche, which is useful as well.

I'm pretty much, I think, the only woman creator in this space. And so that also helps me because oftentimes when I'm making fun of status quo, I do dress up in a suit and tie and, you know, play into that whole fact as well.

Jared: Yeah. That one's at 270, 000 views. Oh, yay. So, must be going up by the thousands per day.

Okay. Bye. Yeah, um, let's talk about, um, some of your, uh, like, when it comes to some of the other intangibles on YouTube. Uh, I just want to hear if you find these to be really valuable and important as you've grown your channel. Things like thumbnails. Um, uh, additional elements that you bring, um, um, transitions, your editing process, how highly edited do you feel the videos need to be?

Has that gone through a transition? What other components do you think are important to a successful YouTube video for your account?

Layla: Yeah, I think, really, until I hit 40, 000 subscribers, I don't think I cared about any of those things. And for anyone listening who's at the beginning stage, I would just ignore all of it.

All of it, if I was, you know, to do it again, I don't think most of it matters that much. It didn't matter for me. I had shitty thumbnails and you know, nothing was planned and it still grew. Um, I think now, you know, around 30, I was like, all right, let's get intentional here. Now we do do some intentional work about retention.

So using the listicles, like I mentioned, that kind of step one, step two, step three, that helps with that follow through. Um, in terms of editing, the big thing I try to do is change scenes. So I started off, you'll watch my early videos. They're all just talking head with a screen share. As we move into videos now, I always script videos to have multiple scenes.

So I'll film, you know, half the video facing like this, half facing like this, moving the camera around this only 80 square foot office and making sure that there's a change in setting wherever possible, uh, silly things like incorporating costumes and acting into videos has been something I have. Uh, really enjoyed and I think that is a testament to kind of back to the question of how to make the boring interesting.

I've stolen many of those things from other niches. So in like relationship videos I've watched or psychology videos, they will have these acting skits where the actor plays two people. And so I stole that for the process space of acting out difficult workplace environments. And I think those kinds of creatively stealing like an artist, especially from other niches, Um, are a really great way to innovate and what I try to do inside the videos themselves.

Jared: Yeah. That's, that's good. All going back to this idea of not only marketing what you do in a way that people want to watch, but going back to like, it's a tough topic to keep people interested in, you know? And so there's a lot of good tips for people who are listening, who maybe have a struggle with making their videos, their content interesting, and this could apply outside of video creation, by the way, you know, your emails, your blog posts, all your content, right?

Um, so let's walk a little bit into this process, into this optimization game that you, that you're in all, all day, every day. I know your target client are going to be businesses. We, you know, we're talking before we hit record, um, uh, anywhere from, you know, um, high hundred thousand dollar revenue per year to many, many millions of dollars per year, but what have you learned from these businesses?

What are the biggest gaps? Very high level question. What are the biggest gaps that you see? Having worked with thousands and thousands of customers that people have and how they run their business and organize their setup.

Layla: I love this question because this is what I could talk about all day, every day.

In fact, this is, you know, this is now what the YouTube channel is. It's just me nerding out about this research. The floor is yours. Okay. Well, not to bore everyone here. But the biggest thing I've noticed is that people from the very get go look at systems and processes and they view it as this terrifying thing that they don't want to touch with the 10 foot pole.

So they view it to be intimidating. There's so many marketers preaching how intimidating and hard it must be. And so, Because they're paralyzed with fear, they never even get into it. It's kind of like sales in that regard. People say, Ugh, sales, ah, run the other way. Even though you kind of need it. Uh, the intimidation is a big thing.

The second and most tactical thing that I think anyone listening to this can immediately implement is writing things down. Specifically, things that go wrong. Most people, when I see going into the systemization lane, they're trying to build process for something, they build on hypotheticals. They're like, ah, you know, what could happen?

Ah, this could happen in the future. We should maybe do this in case of that. We live in this land of hypotheticals, and I specialize in working with small teams of, you know, three to thirty people. At that scale, you don't have the luxury of tons of free time. So systemizing for hypotheticals is guaranteeing that at least some of the time, you're absolutely wasting your time.

Instead, I try to point all of my clients towards recording mistakes when they happen. Even if it's just in a spreadsheet, in a notebook, in a journal, on a whiteboard. That list of mistakes is your list of things to systemize. Because you know 100 percent certainty that's going to present a real problem that you're going to face otherwise.

And that rooting in reality is something I think most process consultants and operations people lose sight of as they get into the more heady spheres.

Jared: When you say rooting in reality, I think a lot of people will. A lot of people are solopreneurs. They're listening. A lot of people have small teams. Um, uh, What does that look like in a practical sense for people with really small teams or people just doing it on their own?

Layla: wherever you put your tasks and make a section, a folder, a list, whatever it's called in your tool of choice called mistakes. And every time a mistake happens, the first thing you do before you even solve the mistake is write it down there. That's all it needs to start as.

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Jared: That transitions very well.

You said to do list. You have a video that I really liked that was the best tool for your personality and I thought this was really cool. I wanted to ask you about it. Um, it's really themed. I mean, I'm looking at my notes here, so that's what's kind of fun, but it's really themed around kind of tools online like Trello.

Todoist, these sorts of things, but clearly you're bullish on software to help you manage and organize your day. Let's start there, but I do want to get into kind of maybe some of your recommendations for how to pick a software to use. You know, we could go the personality route if you want, because I like that video, but just in general.

Um, yeah, let's, let's, let's get into how to, how to organize this sort of stuff.

Layla: Yeah, well, when it comes to organizing, I, yeah, I'm bullish on software simply because my sweet spot are these small teams. You know, you're not at a point where you're going to have enough middle management where you can just use people to fill the gap.

And at the same time, you're big enough or you're wanting to grow big enough that you don't want to just have to have your entire business limited by what you can remember. I am someone with a comically bad memory, and so it was very natural for me in business to start recording things. I've noticed people who are very good with their memory, like my husband and his business.

That's a harder uphill battle to convince them, but as you grow, that reaches a point, whether it's two items like my brain or 200 items like his brain, where you just max out. And so, yes, I think every team out there, whether your team is you and you, or you and 49 other people, absolutely needs some kind of shared work management software, whether that's, you know, It's a Trello board, Asana, ClickUp, SmartSuite, whatever tool you choose to use.

The most important thing is that it's there and it's shared. I do have a personality video that also helps shortlist that.

Jared: It's good. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll try to see if we can include that in the show notes, but, um, I mean, how does somebody pick between, as is, there's a load of questions, so, uh, I get that.

We don't have enough time to, to really get into it, but. From a high level, how does somebody like pick between an Asana, a Trello, you know, even some of the other ones like a Notion, a Basecamp, like, you know, it seems very overwhelming for those of us who are not in the process world. To some degree, I know at my business, like we just landed on one and we just stuck with it.

Yeah. That's what we do. But like, how do we get into that? It hasn't picked one yet. Like what are some things they should look out for in selecting between the ones that are available?

Layla: Yeah, I will say 80 percent of in this category, 80 percent of the tool value is just tasks, assignees, and dates. If whatever tool you're using can accomplish that of what do we have to do?

Who has to do it? And when does it have to get done? If, if it does that, well. You're probably okay when it comes to the nuance of notion versus Asana or whatever it is, you're looking at 20 percent difference in experience, 20 percent shiny features, 20 percent new templates, whatever it might be. Uh, so my first.

Step would be to don't overthink it. Jared, you said, like, you already said that you have a tool that you're using. And for most people out there, that's the case. And I would say stick with that in almost every instance, because the tool that your team actually wants to use is the tool that's going to work the best.

Migrating software is a huge commitment. If you are going through that though, or you're shopping for the first time, uh, I usually like to look at how people work offline. So the personality video we've kind of talked about is something that started off as just an off the cuff rant I did in a live stream where I was like, You know, we all need to stop worrying about software.

Just look at your offline life. And I basically categorize people by their offline organization habits. Do they like sticky notes? Do they like notebooks? Do they like whiteboards? Based on that, there is a software that best reflects that style of organizing. And that video is a good reference for this.

I'm actually thinking about making some kind of like online quiz that can make it even easier for people. But I would look at what works for you right now, what worked for you in college, or high school, or, or elementary school, and just bring that forward. If you have a group of people, you would have a conversation with the group.

Are all of your people sticky noters? Okay, you probably want to go with Trello. Are all of your people, uh, really into bullet journaling and your whole team has a bullet journal for some reason? Notion is going to be your best friend. Uh, these kinds of principles are really going to make it easier to stick to the tool because it's already familiar to you and how your brain is wired.

Jared: What's the biggest gap with businesses, individuals that you see that maybe have this setup, but aren't using it? You know, like they have a Trello, they have that all there, but they just don't go to it. And so it's not giving them much benefit. They're listening, probably feeling guilty right now, probably feeling like I need to listen to this, but I don't want to listen to this.

That person that maybe has gone to the steps of setting it up, or has it organized, but isn't using it at all, or to the fullest of its extent.

Layla: I see this a lot, especially with folks who are moving into software for the first time. Um, if you're in this position, recognize that it is a very fixable position to be in, and the reason you feel like, ah, it's not quite doing enough is usually one of two reasons, and often it's both.

Reason number one. is you are using a tool that is a shared task manager, but you're actually using it as a group of individuals. And from a process perspective, a lot of the work we do on process building is the same. Our goal is to get everybody all agreeing on here's how we're going to do things. So if you have, say, your Asana account set up, and every person has their own list with their own name on it, Don't be surprised when that asana list doesn't do anything for anybody and no one checks it.

Because you're basically just saying, Hey, keep doing your own thing, but log into this tab. That's adding no extra utility that's just making people's lives harder. If, however, You were to create in your Asana account or your Trello account or your to do list, you create an area for your email pipeline where all of your emails are organized with every single step to create them.

And everyone's working together on that. All of a sudden that adds a new utility, new value I wouldn't have by looking at my own whiteboard or my own sticky notes. And so I'm going to be more inclined to use it. So that's reason number one. When people build a shared tool, but it's individually. You're defeating the whole purpose.

Second reason that we see this happen is because we're not all in. So we set it up and then we kind of back off of it, probably because we're afraid. I've seen this a lot of with people who are like OG business owners that are used to working on desktop apps. There's a fear of losing information, of losing trust, of losing control.

And so for whatever reason, we self sabotage our migration into a cloud tool. And we don't put anything there that we don't already have in our head. We don't store anything there we don't also have a copy of in our email. We don't add any files that we don't already have in our Google Drive. We don't trust the tool to have anything unique, because we're afraid it's going to go away.

And by not fully putting anything into it that's unique, it doesn't have any unique value. And so we find ourselves still relying on our other systems, including our own memory, rather than actually relying. On this tool that's supposed to expand us beyond the limits of our own memory.

Jared: Yeah. Uh, it's, it's, it's to some degree you're exactly right.

Like having, analyzing the way it's being used I think is really good. I'm trying to think back on times when I haven't used the tools to the fullest extent. And that's, that's a really good way to look at it. I want to ask you a question about SOPs, about standard operating procedures. I feel like they come, they, they come in so many different shapes and forms, you know?

Um, I run a marketing agency, so I get introduced to a lot of clients, SOPs, and you'd be shocked how varying and how different each business does them, right? Some are hard to call really an operating procedure and more just like a brain dump. They're not organized, they're not, they're not segmented, they're not, they're not produced in a way that somebody else can follow unless you like know that person's brain.

Others are like 78 page books about how to do something that shouldn't take 78 pages and they have screenshots and they, and they're overwhelming and you don't even want to look at them. Like big question. But what are the big problems that you consistently see that mistakes that people make when it comes to putting together standard operating procedures?

And again, we're talking a lot of people listening are content creators that have several people on their team, smaller teams, like speak maybe more to them and what you see.

Layla: Yeah, so let me back up one second for anyone listening who's like SOP, standard operating procedure, what is it? Think of it like a recipe.

That's easiest definition I can come up with. You know, you got your ingredients. You got step one, two, three. How do you make the cake? It's your recipe. The mistakes I see around this are exactly what you hit on. Too big, too small. What even is it? It seems like every single organization under the sun and every business book you can find has their own definition and none of them go together.

So, uh, what I would suggest for a small team, especially a creative team, is to focus your SOPs on areas where they will actually help you. So, think of them as a recipe. Would you write down a recipe for how to make cereal in the morning? Probably not. Probably not. You know how to make cereal, most people on your team know how to make cereal.

Please spare us the 12 page SOP on how to make cereal. We don't need it. Instead, especially around creators, think about what happens around your process that is absolutely repeatable, boring, and easily, you know, makes mistakes during it. For me, it is organizing files and footage. Oh, gosh. Organizing files and footage, something I always mess up unless I have a checklist.

So now at the end of every time I film, I have an SOP that just says. Organize the files, here's what you call them, here's where you find the template, and here's where you put them. Because every time if I don't do that, I miss a step. That is kind of where you want to focus your SOP energy. On things that are boring, but have a cost of messing them up.

So often I see, especially creators, try to systemize their creative process. And I think that's a huge mistake. Uh, not only is an SOP going to be very challenging to make for your creative process, It's going to be very, not so helpful. For areas where you're very creative, like painting on the canvas, just let that happen.

Where you want the SOP is for how to stretch the canvas, prep the canvas, package the canvas. The things around the creative process is where you want to focus. And after 5, 10, 20 years maybe, when you're looking to hire a team of creators to replace you, then let's talk systems and frameworks for the creative process.

But for most folks, it's That's not going to be until way later in the game.

Jared: Good point. Okay. Uh, good transition. Hiring. And I had a question for you on hiring. So, you kind of said at the outset, like, you, you don't need to hire more people. You just need better systems. Everyone's been at that stage. Well, I, I, I would, I want to lean into that because I don't think anybody really wants to hire more people.

You know, it just feels like the necessary end to the problem that's on there. Um, on their hands. And I've, you know, again, been there so many times, like, do we need another person or do we just need to do a better job at getting stuff done? Someone who is, who is looking at hiring someone, what would be the counterpoint that you would offer?

Why, you know, how would they go about not hiring that person? Again, big question. I keep asking these huge questions, but how would someone go about not hiring someone or at least considering not hiring and evaluating it differently to figure out if they really need to hire someone to help them out with a task, a process?

Layla: Yeah. So, Jared, I think this is perfect because I actually, I just wrapped up filming a video about this topic, so I'm primed on this answer. I have my own official rule of thumb. As long as everyone listening to this promises to not hold me to it, because what works for me may not work for you, consult your hiring people, whatever.

For me, my rule of thumb is pretty simple. If I have something in the business. That I know drives value, meaning I know it works. I know it makes me money. I know it serves a client. If I know it drives value and I know exactly what it is, I know exactly how often it happens, how much time it takes me or someone on the team, and I know that getting somebody else to do that would free up time for something else that drives value, it's generally a good time to hire, but that is far less often than the second reality.

When I feel like there's just too much to do. When I feel just under capacity, where I feel like I just stretched thin, when I get those feelings, that is absolutely a sign that I should not hire. Uh, that is a sign that usually there's a process and streamlining challenge at place. So if, it's kind of like indirect and direct sources of pollution if anyone took an environmental science class in high school.

If you can point to exactly what the problem is, that's usually an area to hire, especially if it drives value, not, you know, just something because you want to do it. And if you can't point to it because it feels like it's coming from everywhere, that is almost always a system and process breakdown.

Jared: That is a very good distinction.

That is, okay. Um, You took me a

Layla: month to get to that one, so I'm glad it resonated.

Jared: That's a very good distinction. Okay. I like that. Um, and let, let's wade into a topic that's not on our agenda, if that's okay. Uh, normally I wouldn't throw you into the bus like that. Uh, I kind of am letting everyone know we didn't put this on our agenda, but I know I want to talk to you about it because it's transitioned well to it.

And we, it's basically what we talked about at lunch at Crafting Club. And it is your transition to being a content creator and how you're going down that row. We've got a few minutes left, so maybe I could ask you some questions. And I want to know most importantly, how you're using all your experience with organization optimization systems.

To kind of help become a better content creator. I know that there's been a focus for you on email. You know, I know that that's what we talked about at lunch. And I know that you have all this, you're wired to think about things in a way that's really unique compared to a lot of us who are listening, me included.

So. Like, how has all of this played its role in how you've expanded as a content creator, especially recently?

Layla: Everybody, especially an entrepreneur or creator, you have to play to whatever your strengths are. I wish I had the complementary strengths of, you know, relationship building and hyper networking.

I'm not as good in a crowded room. And so I've found what I am good at, which is Locking myself in a room talking to a camera, people like yourself one on one, and building out workflows. Once I kind of recognized that that was my natural lane, as someone who was not a trained marketer, but needed to figure out how to become one to grow this business.

I started to think about what types of marketing play into that strength. Because kind of like our question about pointing to hiring problems before, I couldn't point to a strategy that I'm like, Ooh, if I just hired this person who was an expert in this style of marketing, it would work. I wanted to test it first and see what worked.

And I kind of stumbled along the world of emails. And I think emails and email funnels have a lot of overlap with process building. You're building these experiences that people go through at their own pace. And I would say that was kind of my core focus when I was getting into this, I want to say last year.

Um, building out the experience for how someone can go from watching a YouTube channel to finding a link to getting on your email list, what experience they have once they're there, and what you kind of then serve them up to be as helpful as possible. Designing that to be as unique as possible has been kind of the main way I've tried to, uh, get my YouTube audience off of YouTube.

Uh, I think in addition to that, Uh, two way communication with folks. So this is again, email, but also LinkedIn. I've been using LinkedIn a lot more to have two way conversations with people I, uh, publish for. I think a lot of times YouTube creators focus on it as a form of self expression or publishing when really it is an act of service.

And I think figuring out where people are stuck and what is the next question that comes into their head after they watch the video tells you what to put in that email sequence, which tells you what to put in that sales page, which then tells you, um, what to put in that offer and viewing the whole thing as a customer experience process map has been kind of my way of conceptualizing YouTube to offer, but it's certainly not my strength.

I will say that.

Jared: The, the, the LinkedIn, um, mention that you had is, is, is something to kind of plan a little bit on. Um, many people, myself included, do one side of this business better than others, you know? So, like, I, um, I send emails out, uh, frequently and I feel like I'm more in my sweet spot there. But, you know, ironically, YouTube, I like make a video and then three months go by.

And I hear that from a lot of people. Like people will say like, Oh, I really should be taking my content that I publish here and I should also be publishing it on LinkedIn or I should really be taking this content that I'm doing on YouTube and I should be turning it into an email or I should be turning my email content into a YouTube video as a process person, like.

What have you found is your solution to being on multiple platforms and kind of using the same content across different mediums?

Layla: Process person in me always said, repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. And for the first four years, I really did. I was everywhere. And around four years in. Maybe five, uh, we just stopped.

We completely reversed course and cut back to just YouTube and email. And if I was to do this again, I would shut down the process part of me, pick up that creator part of me and say, Hey, create for the platform. You will get better results on one platform than splitting. So what I did and what I would recommend are completely different.

I think in this case, I wasted a lot of time on social media that didn't serve. And we've been, we went about a year and a half or so without any real social media presence and saw no difference whatsoever. Uh, which might be helpful to others in the early stages here. Moving into the process lane today though, we did decide to open up LinkedIn again.

And mainly because we wanted to have a way to have two way conversations with our audience. Email was okay for that, but not great. And YouTube community tab is eh, all right. But LinkedIn was a really great place to have those conversations. So we had an intention beyond just visitors to our website. And so that guided us to add a second channel from the process perspective.

Once we had a strategic reason for being on LinkedIn, the process was really smooth because all we're doing is repurposing and kind of expanding what we're actually posting. So everything that's on LinkedIn for the most part is also on the YouTube community tab. It's a, you know, two for one kind of deal we have.

It took no extra work for us other than the five minutes of copy and pasting to two different platforms to schedule natively. And we've actually seen a lot of growth there over the last month. We've gone from, I think, 30, 000 impressions on LinkedIn per month on average to 1. 3 million last month, which is kind of insane.

Um, yeah, just through kind of consistently posting shorts and other content on LinkedIn.

Jared: Wow. That is a good story. Okay. Yeah. That was a LinkedIn. That's fantastic. A final question from me. Tell us a story, whether from a client or from your own business, where, you know, um, systems. Thanks. Uh, helped to optimize, reduce costs, uh, change output, like give us a little kind of tangible story that you can share about, you know, just I think what people stand to gain by leaning into all this.

Layla: Yeah. I'll amalgamate some of our most common stories, but one of the one that comes to mind is someone who had a team, they were an agency. Marketing agency and they had about 30 people or so. They were in this messy middle. They were scaling up very quickly and everything was a hot mess. Everything felt chaotic.

They thought their project manager Asana was to blame. And so they came to me and they're like, we need to switch software. Nothing's working. And when we peeked under the hood, it turns out it wasn't really the software's fault. We, we were able to switch them over because that's what they were set their mind on.

But the real problem were some of those habits, which is really what process is. It's the personal habits people have picked up over the years that actually aren't serving them as well as they think. When we peeked under the hood and we looked at how they were producing their podcast content and their other creative deliverables like their blog, There was so much repetitiveness, retyping information multiple places, reproducing, you know, a case study here and a blog here when they could all really come together, a lot of wasted time and energy.

And what we ended up shifting towards was kind of consolidating their business to just a few key pipelines, three areas of the three major things they produce, which were all media formats. And as they went through and rolled this out, they were able to actually change the jobs of the people in the business.

They went from having, I think it was three full time project managers to one. So if you do the cost of salaries, that's a very significant shift just by changing their structure for their work and changing their attitudes about, you know, what is an SOP and how do we organize what we do? And those project managers were able to shift on to actual strategic work that were guiding the business towards the future, as opposed to just.

You know, did you do your task by the due date? Kind of project management.

Jared: I bet there's many more stories like that. I can only imagine what that kind of stuff looks like in practice. Um, Leila, this has been great. Where can people follow along with what you do? Um, we've talked about the YouTube channel, but you know, where are the different places that you're found these days?

Layla: Yeah, the best place to hang out with me is on LinkedIn. So my name, Leila Pomper, you want to get more of our content, get more sense of this whole, you know, random system stuff we've talked about, head to processdriven. co slash snapshot. That's our free operations audit and where I get most of the data that we then turn into videos.

It's from that audit. So you can be part of the research and also get some more insight about your own business with that free quiz.

Jared: That's awesome. Layla, thank you for joining and I hope I see you next year at Craft Commerce. You will. See you there.

Spencer: All right. Appreciate it. Talk soon. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the Niche Pursuits podcast.

I just wanted to remind you that if you are ready to start building smarter, faster, and easier internal links, check You should check out Link Whisper. You can get 15 off Link Whisper when you use the coupon code PODCAST at checkout. Head over to linkwhisper. com and use the code PODCAST in order to save 15.

Thanks again for listening.

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