Joe Casabona: Ever go to do something, a task for your business, yard work, cooking something for your kids, and suddenly realize that you're not sure where to start? It's not that you don't know what to do. You just need a little help organizing your thoughts. It would be a lot easier if everything is written down step by step. And that's where SOPs come in.
Most solopreneurs think SOPs are only for big companies with teams of 50+ people. But the truth is that even if you're a business of one, SOPs can save you time, reduce errors, and keep your business running smoothly, especially on the days when your energy or focus isn't there.
And today I get to talk to Layla Pomper of ProcessDriven, who will dig into how SOPs can simplify your work and help you automate and delegate, and even free up more headspace for the creative stuff that you actually enjoy.
I really loved this episode with Layla. We met at Craft and Commerce earlier this year, and I knew I had to get her on the show. So definitely listen in. She's got lots of great tips for us.
And if you're wondering what SOP’s you should create in your business, you can take my business Overwhelm diagnostic over at streamlined.fm/overwhelm. It's six questions, and based on your answers, it'll send you a personalized blueprint for how to create SOPs, free up your time, and do more of the things that you want to do. But for now, let's get to the intro and then the episode.
If you're overwhelmed by chaotic business that's stealing time from your family, Streamlined Solopreneur is for you. Hey, everybody.My name's Joe Casabona, and I've been there. And on this show, I will show you how to turn chaos into clarity, so you can stop checking your email at the playground.
All right, Layla, thanks for being here. I want to jump right into it.
Layla Pomper: Love it.
Joe Casabona: What's an SOP?
Layla Pomper: Okay, we are getting right into it. And SOP is a Standard Operating Procedure. It's a really fancy, buzzwordy term that scares a lot of people. So, for our purposes today, I want you to just think of it as a recipe, but rather than making cake or bread, you're making a result in your business of some kind.
Joe Casabona: Ooh, I love that analogy. I do acronyms, as we all do, probably, and I have one called the GAPS Framework, and it's Gear, Automation, Playbooks, and Support. And like, the Playbooks would be like the SOPs, but I really, I love the recipe analogy that I think that makes perfect sense. And do you need, like, I just work for myself, do I need SOPs? Like, it's just…
Layla Pomper: Yeah. So I mean, yes and no. Right. It's kind, if we think of it like a recipe, do you need a recipe for how to boil water? Probably not. Like, I think we can handle that. But do you need a recipe for your grandma's oatmeal cookies? I do. Like, I can't live without that.
And so if you are someone with a picture-perfect memory who does nothing more than boil water or the equivalent in your business, you're good. But for the rest of us, we forget things, and our brains are not great at storing stuff for years at a time. So yeah, I would say everybody could benefit from these.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, it's also nice to like not have to remember like, there's inertia or like there's an inertia killer in having to stop and be like, now how many eggs do I need? Right.
Layla Pomper: Uh-huh. Yeah, it's like the dumbest stuff, too. So if you think about, you know, anyone, any small business owner or freelancer, we have to send invoices. And there's that little comment section at the bottom of an invoice, where it's like a note to the customer,, and it doesn't have a default value, but if you leave it, it looks weird. Love to use this as an example because it's like, what am I going to do? Sit there and type a little thank you so much for shopping. Like, no, I'm just going to have it in an SOP and copy and paste it. Because the friction of having to think, what do I write in this silly little box? It's just not something I want to spend my creativity on stuff. And so if I can just grab the fabletic shirt, or I can just use the template when I was at a higher energy, I'm going to do a better job.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, it's like how if you do writing late at night or like whenever you're not at your best, right? You're like, oh, this is so good. And then you go in the morning and you're like, what the hell did I write here?
Layla Pomper: Did you just read the newsletter I was drafting Joe? Because that's exactly how I felt before this interview.
Joe Casabona: Too often for me, it's especially when I'm like watching a Yankee game and writing my newsletter just like I read it the next morning, and I'm like, what was. I was definitely watching the Yankee game more than writing this newsletter.
Layla Pomper: And you know when you come back to it, but you don't know in the moment. And that's the thing. Like, our energy fluctuates. But if we want to have a business that is really something we're proud of, it needs to go to a higher standard than what we can hold ourselves to. Because humans have moods and emotions, and we get sick and we get tired, and we want to watch the Yankees game. But our business, I mean, process-driven, doesn't watch the Yankee games. Sorry. And it needs to be showing up at the same level of quality for every person at every hour of the day. And that's just not something a human can do. So we need to help have systems to help us.
Joe Casabona: Right? Absolutely. And you work with small teams. I did notice that you added, like, are you a solopreneur? Small team, big team. Right. Are you a small team or are you like a business of one?
Layla Pomper: Yeah, we are a small team. So the team size has really changed. We can nerd out about that stuff later, but I usually have about 5 to 12 people at any point in time on our team, but just a handful of full-time employees. So we keep it very small. I've always tried to keep process-driven the size of our average client. And so for the longest time, that was teams of eight. Now it's around a team of 10. And so between contractors and full timers, we try to kind of reflect our client because I think it just helps you understand the problems you're solving.
Joe Casabona: People say those who can't do, teach. But like, I have to be able to do, to teach. Right.
Layla Pomper: so agree. I mean, you and I talked previously about, you know, solopreneurship and all this stuff. And the reason I don't work with solopreneurs a lot of the time, I work with them once they have a team is because I'm not in that place anymore. And I feel like, like, Joe, what you do such a great job of is really understanding that balance of the solopreneur struggle and balancing parenthood and all of these other things. And that's what makes you so good at what you do. And I think we all need to kind of appreciate the fact that we're not that smart to be able to just make it up.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. And thank you. Thank you so much for the kind word. I'm definitely not. I'm not very creative. Like, I'm not creative in that regard. Right. Like, I'm creative in a lot of ways. But not in the...not in the… Well, let me try to solve a problem I know nothing about. It's kind of like how people will go to Disney World, and they'll be like, you know what they should do? And I'm like, they probably thought about that.
Layla Pomper: There's probably a story here.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Whatever you're about to say. Awesome. Okay, so you have a team, mix of… You said a mix of like employees and contractors, right?
Layla Pomper: Yeah. At our peak, we had, I think, around eight full-time and part-time timers mixed together. And then we've kind of really shifted over the last year or so to be more freelance and then just four full-time and two part-time.
Joe Casabona: Okay, so let's get into some kind of concrete things. I love to ask these questions. What tool? What's one tool you couldn't run your business without?
Layla Pomper: For me, it's probably going to be my task management tool. So I happen to use ClickUp, but if you are listening to this and you use Asana, Monday, whatever, Notion, all fine. But for me, that task management tool is really the heart of everything. It's where every single thing that needs to happen, how it's done, who's doing it, and when it happens. I think if anyone listening to this has no tools in their business and just a notebook, and they're like, man, what should I spend my first $20 a month on this? So, a task management tool.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, 100%. I'm gonna echo what you said. Like, don't, we're gonna get into specifics for us. Don't let, don't be like, oh, maybe I should use this. Use what works for you. Right.
I've tried every personal task manager under the sun, right. I'm like, I'll try Things 3, because that's really pretty. And then. But like, I'll try Omnifocus because that's really complicated. I always go back to Todoist because it has Zapier integration. Right. Like actual good Zapier integration. Not just email a task to your inbox. Zapier integration.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. And I'm coming from it from the team leader perspective. Right. And so like managing employees and access, there's these different factors that I think sometimes if you just listen to a podcast, you're like, oh shit. Well, darn it. Oh shoot. You need to make sure that you use Todoist because Joe uses Todoist, and that's not really the case here. So I love that disclaimer.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, for sure. Now, let me ask you this. Right, You, well, I know this personally about you, so we can edit it out if it's not public knowledge. But you are married. Do you have a different tool? I feel like I'm always putting people on blast with that for some reason, even though pictures of my kids are on the Internet. Do you have a personal task manager that you use with your husband? Because I know I've tried really complicated stuff with my wife, and now we just use reminders because we both have iPhones.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. I had the good fortune of having my husband work in my business in different periods over evolution, so I was able to get him to sip the Kool Aid of whatever the tool was at the time. So very fortunately, I'm able to use the same tool for everything. So we actually, as like a household, have basically the same thing that my business has. Like, here are the things that need to get done every month. Here's who's doing what. Because there's that old adage, clarity is kindness. And I just think being really clear about who's in charge of renewing the vehicle registrations is just a better way to live than finger-pointing. Not that I've ever done that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. My wife, I've not gotten her to sit much on Kool Aid because she's a nurse and she doesn't need to live in these tools. Like, she already has complicated tools at work, but she has learned that, like, calendars are my love language. And so now she makes sure to put everything on the calendar.
Layla Pomper: Oh, my gosh. My husband now uses Google Calendar. That was a big one. And now his, like, D&D group even has their own Google Calendar. Like, he's evangelizing. And I think that's a good testament to a system if it's simple enough that, you know, D&D groups are picking it up.
Joe Casabona: Yes, for sure. I love that. Now, this is a little bit inspired because I was looking at your homepage and I saw… Was it your, why 99, this is why 99% of businesses can't run without the owner, which, excellent intro, by the way. Just like immediately drives the point home. But you have a bunch of tools in the thumbnail. What are three apps on your phone for your business? What are the three main apps you need on your phone?
Layla Pomper: Three main apps on my phone. I have to look at my phone to make sure, because I don't really use my phone that much.
My task tool. Oh, our shared email tool. So this is one that I don't think gets a Lot of talk. But as much as I love not using email, it's a necessary evil still. So we use a tool called Missive, which allows us to basically share email inboxes, and it is a huge game-changer.
And then the third one, I'm not gonna count filming stuff on here. So the third one is actually Gather. Gather is, and this is a little bit more team-based, but if you're in a community with other people, it's also cool. Gather is a virtual kind of world. Think like Farmville, but integrated with Zoom. And so I use that for my team. And so we each have our own virtual office. Anytime we log into work, we log into this Gather place, including on our phones. And you can kind of walk around the office to talk to people. And it sounds really weird, but it's actually the best thing we've ever done for having our fully remote team kind of talk a lot more often.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I mean, it adds like a, like a level of buy-in. Right. Because you're not just like kind of sterily sending off a Slack message, right? Yeah.
Layla Pomper: Yeah, or scheduling a meeting for like a five-minute conversation. That was just so regimented.
Joe Casabona: Around the idea of idea capture. Right. When you are, when you are struck with an idea, does it immediately go into ClickUp or is there like something? Because, like, I have Notion for a lot of project management, but like, Notion is terrible for quick capture. So like, I'm usually just putting it in Apple notes.
Layla Pomper: Mm. Yeah. So I think this is one of... Maybe not the first system I have people work on, usually. But it's definitely a huge relief if you're someone who's an idea generation machine, which Joe, I know you are. I am. Like anyone who creates content, you naturally are. There's that weird space where you're like, I have this thought, and if I have to store it in my brain since I know I'll forget it, like grandma's cookie recipe, it needs to go somewhere.
But if I put it in front of other people or I even declare it online, all of a sudden it feels like an obligation, and it's just like too much. But if I just put it on a sticky note, it'll also disappear. So what I do is, yes, I put it directly into ClickUp, but I have kind of a separate area.
Now, on the laziness factor, because you mentioned Notion's a bit hard to add things into ClickUp same kind of thing. I've created as many shortcuts as I can. So having things like a little form that's saved on the homepage of my phone, where I can just open the form, type the idea in, submit, and it goes into ClickUp as naturally as possible. Those kinds of things really help. But it's purposely in the same spot, yet separate from where work actually happens.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. And that's such a, this is a really good thing to think about, I think. Cause, like, a wall of, like, 400 Apple Notes is just very, that's very overwhelming to a lot of people, myself included. And so, like, I have a weekly startup routine where I'll go through and, like, process the ideas. Sure. But I like this idea of, like, this is the reason I use Obsidian for, like, my personal knowledge management, and then, like, Notion for actual work stuff, I think because it's like, if all of it was just there, I'd be like, oh, right. Oh, what is this idea I had five years ago? Maybe this is good.
Layla Pomper: I agree. I agree. And, you know, I think there's something to be said for also acknowledging how your brain works. I did a video on YouTube about, you know, the best task management tool for your personality type. And the reason I did that video is because we would have conversations like this, and I would describe how I just dump everything in and I sort it later. But other people, like yourself, they'll put it in one spot, they'll process it all at once, and then they'll put it into their tool, and neither way is wrong.
But if you're someone who likes bullet journaling and you like the ritual of rewriting things each day, guess what, you're gonna love, Joe? What? You described the process of separating input from actually reviewing. If you're someone like me who hates bullet journaling with a passion, I could never get into it, then you probably like this other approach. But they're all right. They're just different ways of processing information.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah. And understanding how your brain works is just like a really… Do you have advice for that? Because I think, like, it's really easy to hear, you know, whoever Alex Hormozy be like, just hustle, right? Just like work weekends. Yeah, bro. Work weekends make $100 million in books.
Layla Pomper: Success is lonely.
Joe Casabona: Right? Yeah, exactly.
Layla Pomper: Gosh.
Joe Casabona: But, like, I'm like, I can't. I can't do that. Right? Even if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't do that. I care too much about my family, weirdly enough. So, like, right, so, like, people hearing us talk might be like, I don't know how my. Like, I'm not. I haven't noticed how my brain works. That's not. That's the least charitable way to put it, I think. But I haven't deeply considered the best way to work, understanding how my brain works, maybe it's the way to put it.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. I would say the first thing is, like, knowing this, hearing this conversation alone was probably gonna be an unlock for some people that there are multiple ways that are all right, and that's step one.
I think step two, I would say, is start paying attention to who you follow, their, dare I say, brain wiring. Right. We talked here about bullet journaling. Right. I hate bullet journaling. If you hate bullet journaling, you might identify with some of the other things I do. Like, if you love bullet journaling, that's a red flag that some of the things I like, you probably won't.
I think it's very easy in the influencer age to be like, well, Hormozi uses school, so I need to use school.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Layla Pomper: And we have to remember the way he or she are wired. If we start paying attention to these subtleties of how, you know, Joe. Joe's very aware of how Joe's brain works. Let me hear how he talks about things. The things I find in common are probably a good indicator that I can follow what works for Joe, and it'll probably work for me as well.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Super good. I'm going to recommend the Cortex podcast. Have you listened to that? It's real good. It's CGP Grey who makes, like, the informational kind of stick figure videos on YouTube, and Mike Hurley from the Relay Network.
And hearing how CGP Grey's brain works is just like, it's a little scary, and also like. Like, it was like, eye-opening to me because it's like, my brain doesn't work like this, but I can see kind of shades of it. Like, he has focus modes for, like, every moment of the day. He time-tracks literally everything he does, and it's just like, yeah, like, hearing how his brain, like, hearing that is probably a good, like, barometer for, like, where you're at on the scale between, like, not productive at all and, like, hyper document everything like him. So I would recommend that just, like, pick a random episode from, like, the last year and you'll. You'll get it. It's. I love. I love that show, though.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. Oh, one more little hack I'll share, which is, like, very, you know, not everyone's gonna agree. Personality types are also useful for this, for all of their flaws. You know, the Enneagram, Clifton, there's so many different strength things out there. Most of them are baloney. But, if you buy into any of them, you know what your type happens to be.
A hack that a friend of mine turned me onto is going to the author's about page. Oftentimes, on people's websites they will publish like, oh, I'm an INTJ, I'm an introvert, like all these other things. You can then kind of use that as a shorthand sometimes for at least how people think that they work or think that they think. And that can also be a helpful barometer.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I, you know, I can never remember the exact letters from my Myers-Briggs. I know that in relation to Harry Potter characters, I'm Professor McGonagall. So, I always look up McGonagall, Myers-Briggs and I'm like, oh, ENTJ maybe. Definitely an extrovert. For sure.
Layla Pomper: I believe that. I believe that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. Yeah. That one's not a shock to most people.
Okay. So, I've been asking this question for the last few episodes, and I've gotten a really good kind of like not, not pushback, but not the expected answer or whatever. It's like the spirit of the answer. So it is the exact wording is walk me through your most productive day. And I'm curious to see how you would answer that.
Layla Pomper: Okay. Walk me through your most productive day.
My most productive day would look like getting up early, making a cup of coffee, and literally sitting right down in this seat and having absolutely nothing on the calendar, having absolutely nothing assigned for me to work on. And by the end of the next four to five hours, I will have gotten done more than a reasonable week. That's my very productive day. And then I'm at the gym or something by like 6pm.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, love that. I like a lot of what you said there because it's like you recognize the things that need to happen for you to have that day. And then you, you didn't say solid eight hours of work, right? Four to five hours. I think it was the best four to five hours. Right?
Layla Pomper: Yeah. And then I do like just generally, I do like a two-hour lunch every day. I don't do a full siesta, but I pretty much do nothing for two hours in the middle of every day. And then I work a little bit later till like six because I would rather just have that really long break.
Joe Casabona: I like that. Now, are there days where you like ensure you don't have meetings on your calendar or like, is it? Yeah. So like, how does that work for you?
Layla Pomper: I didn't always have this luxury. I will say that I think this is something that maybe I could have done earlier on, but I certainly didn't when I was just, when it was just myself. For those first few years, it was anytime a client wanted to book a console, call like, I'm there, because I needed to make that money, needed to pay that rent. You know, that's how it goes.
But these days, I block off two days a week for no meetings, always. And then I have two other days that only get booked for certain things. So, like, today is podcasts. So if I have a podcast, like a wonderful one with someone named Joe, then I will be here. But otherwise, I have no meetings on Wednesdays. And Fridays, I have no meetings unless I have, like, coffee chats or masterminds. That kind of stuff I tend to do on Fridays, but again, often not. So I'm pretty bad when it comes to meetings. Just one to two days a week, usually.
Joe Casabona: Same.Same here. Last year, when we didn't do summer camp, we didn't do summer camp again this year. But I thought, all right, well, since there's going to be at least two weekdays where I'm not working, the rest of my weekdays need to be available for people who want to meet with me. And that led to just, like, such an unproductive summer.
And so this year, I was like one day a week. If it doesn't, if it does, and unless people want to, like, pay for a coaching call right then, then it's like a couple of extra days. But one day a week is my only meeting day. And that was really important because I knew that Tuesdays I'd be like in a blender and have a lot of meetings. But other than that, I knew, like, the other days I was working, I could actually get work done.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. And that's such a huge unlock. Like, I didn't start, I do meeting Mondays. So I do all of my meetings back to back on Mondays, the ones that I do have to have with contractors or team or whatever, and just marathon, done. I don't get anything done on Mondays. That's fine.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Layla Pomper: But then Tuesdays, it took me a long time to realize I just need to block off Tuesdays for filming for YouTube, for me, my highest energy day. Just do the content work. And I swear, it took me three, four years to realize that's a really important thing to do. And if I had just done those two things in year one, I can't even imagine how much easier my life would have been following the advice that you're sharing here.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Well. And it could be hard to see it, right? I mean, did you come from like a gainful employment into your, Right. And so there's like no rules to meetings when you're full-time employed, right?
Layla Pomper: No. Yeah. I went from full-time employed to coming from a background of parents who are business owners, but like the small business owner type, who worked seven days a week. And so in my mind, working five days was already a luxury. I had the wrong mindset.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, but it's like what we're constantly told, right? I mean, like, there's like a mindset journal that's like, here's how you stay productive every Sunday. And I'm like, duh, I'm out.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. Nope.
Joe Casabona: Nope. Absolutely not. I mean, like, you know, if I'm feeling motivated, I'll write my newsletter on a Sunday or whatever. But like, no, every Sunday. Right? Like if Sunday’s for family, for me. And so that's really important.
When I was at the University of Scranton, we had a no-meeting Friday rule, and it was the loosest of rules because I had meetings on Fridays.
Layla Pomper: Oh, gosh, that's the worst.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, I know.
Layla Pomper: I think separating that like work ethic. We're from Pennsylvania, so that East Coast work ethic was very much ingrained into my brain, just, you have to work hard to get somewhere. And that's partially true. You know, sorry. Yeah. Hormozi's slightly right. But also not nearly as hard as what I thought I had to be. You know what I mean? Boundaries.
Joe Casabona: Right. There's like, there is. I mean, there's a reason that Hormozi just made $100 million in a book launch. Right? I could tell you that I make different choices. Right. I didn't go to CEX this year because it was my kid's first day of school, or their first week of school, and my son was getting on the bus for the first time, and I wanted to see that. And so, like, I'm bummed I didn't go, but I'm, I would have been more bummed to miss that.
So, let's move on to you doing a lot of SOPs. How does that translate to automation? Right. Like, automation is like my favorite thing in the whole world. One of my toxic traits is like over-engineering stuff. So when you build out SOPs, do you focus more on delegation or automation? Is it a mix of both?
Layla Pomper: Yeah. So kind of the way we approach systemizing businesses, because that's what we do. We help teams systemize, and there's a whole lot involved in that. But really, it's habit formation. It's giving them the skills and the habits to become basically like you. Because some of us are naturally wired, the rest of us can learn that skill. And for us, SOPS is kind of under the how category. So if you want to figure out how to do something, you can create an SOP for it. If we think of SOPs like recipes, so this is grandma's cookie recipe. This shows me how to send an invoice, how to edit my podcast, and how to do whatever.
The SOP is a written instruction. If you want to automate the thing you will need to do, whether you're giving it to a human to do or to a robot, is to have that written instruction. Because if I'm going to go into Zapier, or if I'm going to go with Make, or if I'm going to start hodgepodging together different things, I'm going to need to know exactly what needs to happen in what order, and exactly what that memo should say on my invoice, for example. And so I like to use SOPs as the first step, because an SOP is like a dumb automation. It's something you can give to a human or yourself and say, Hey, if it's not perfect, use your little human brain and fill in the gaps.
Well, if we were to give an imperfect SOP to a robot, to an automation, well, they're not going to use their, their, their robot brain. They don't have one. They're just going to do exactly what you say, even if it's incorrect. So I like to think of automation as almost the step two after having some kind of written recipe.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, perfect. I think this is, like, part of the reason why I'm wired that way. Right. I have a master's in software engineering. I wrote code for a very long time. And we would always say, like, you know, a student or a fellow classmate of mine would say, Oh, the program did it wrong. And we would always say, the program does exactly what you tell it to do.
So, there's something, there's a flaw in what you've told it to do. And the same thing with automation. I always tell people, are the inputs clear? Are the outputs clear? Like, is what you put into it always going to be the same? Is what you get out of it very obvious? It could probably be automated.
Layla Pomper: Yeah, exactly. And when we think of recipes or SOPs, I like to go with the baking metaphor. If you have a recipe, it gives you the ingredients list, that's your inputs, and it also usually on a recipe site, besides all the spammy ads, you'll see the picture of the cake. You can be like, Oh, this is what it's supposed to look like. So you've got your inputs and your outputs, and that's why the recipe can make sense. And arguably, AI is going to be coming for recipe websites.
But when it comes to our business, those inputs and outputs are imaginary. And so if we just ignore those, we don't even know where we're ending, where we're starting. We just started playing around with Zapier and say, hmm, what could I automate in my business? We run the risk of just tinkering, and unless you are an engineer brain, you're probably going to end up wasting a lot more time than if you just held back a little bit and figure out, like you said, those inputs and outputs, the ingredients, and the picture of the cake.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Imagine it's like I've been playing Hogwarts Legacy. I don't know why Harry Potter's. That must be why Harry Potter's on my brain so much. But Hogwarts Legacy a super fun video game. It's an open world, right? It's like a big open world game. And so I think, probably like you, just running around doing stuff is tinkering. But if you're really keen on the story, you need to follow the mission breadcrumbs or read the cheat code guide.
I used to have a magazine with that, that's probably just on the Internet now. It's just like YouTube videos will show you exactly what to do. But if you don't want to tinker, if you don't want to kill time wandering around the world, then you need those instructions, those step-by-step instructions first.
Layla Pomper: Right? Right. And it's so much faster to kind of, it sounds weird, but it's faster to go slower long term. Unless you are that weird 1% that can just jump through all the hoops, which even I like I do a lot of automation stuff. I wouldn't do it. You just learn so much by writing it down. And it doesn't have to take long. Five minutes, ten minutes of saying, here are the things that happen, here's what the text should say, before you start going into all the little bits and bobs and all the different apps and tabs. That will help you make the process better. Better still, if you actually use it first.
Joe Casabona: Yes, people who have watched my live streams know that I do just jump into it sometimes. What they will also know is probably half the time it ends with, oh, well, I guess I couldn't do that thing I thought I could do with Zapier. Right. So, you know, I've happened to make it monetizable content. But, you know, if it's just something for your business and this is not really what you do in your business, I wouldn't recommend it.
Layla Pomper: Yeah, well, what you're doing by basically playing it on hard mode is you're building a skill. You're building your skill to be able to improve it. Most business owners and freelancers, we don't need to build the skill that you have, Joe. Like, we don't need to spend 10 years becoming an automation wizard. We need to get our business done. We need to get work done with as few mistakes as possible.
So for us, doing it 10 minutes at a time is probably going to be faster than trying to go around and build. Become an automation wizard in our free time. Because most of us don't have enough free time as it stands. Like, we need to go tug a tree instead.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, for real, right? I mean, that's the reason I don't edit these episodes, right? I could learn how to edit. I don't want to do that.
Layla Pomper: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: That reminds me of the Modern Family quote, Phil Dunphy. Like, the car was in neutral rolling down the hill, and they're trying to stop it. And he kept, he keeps yelling, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Right? Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And that's just like, that has always stuck with me.
Layla Pomper: Yeah, Yeah. I think it's funny how you kind of like learn these lessons the hard way. And I'm sure there's people listening who are like, nah, nah, nah, that doesn't apply to me. No, no, no, it does, my friend. It does. And please learn from this.
Joe Casabona: It's like the opposite of what we were saying with, like, task managers or tools. Right. There are some things like, if it works for you, if it works for you, this is just kind of a universal truth, right? Like, unless you're like a savant, right? Then you're probably not. You're probably not listening to this podcast. Right?
Layla Pomper: Exactly. And, hey, one more thing I want to hit on before we move on from this. For people who are super lazy, like, we've talked about some lazy ways we could build the skill of automation. We could not really build the skill, but get it done.
There's also that other option, which is what you said with editing here, which is we just hire somebody. I know, we talked about solopreneurship and all this other stuff, but when you hire somebody to do something for you, one of the hidden benefits is you get their SOPs, you get their process, it's all done for you. And so a lot of times, I think people worry about their first delegation. They're like, oh, gosh, $20 an hour for that virtual assistant to send my invoices. Ahhh.
But a good virtual assistant knows how to send an invoice properly and has a protocol that he/she, they go through in order to make sure that the invoice is sent correctly, and you don't have to create it. So that's the laziest option, which is a great one to go down.
Joe Casabona: It's a great option. Right. Like, I mean, I, gosh, did I do a podcast episode? I might have done an episode on this where I talk about how I made a mistake of trying to do something myself instead of hiring the expert whom I interviewed on this show. And I was like, Oh, I'll just take what she said on the episode and do it. And then didn't work out. I ended up hiring her anyway. Right.
Layla Pomper: So, yeah, that's how it goes.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know we're coming up on time. I do want to ask you what it's, like what's one of your favorite automations that you have for your business?
Layla Pomper: Hmm, that's a good question. Favorite automation. That's, there's so many tiny ones that really make a big difference. I would say the biggest one is actually somewhat manual. So I'm kind of cheating in the automation arena, but it happens automatically, so I'm going to consider it an automation.
But we have an automation in our task management account that basically every week we check for things that have kind of slipped through the cracks, meaning they're overdue, they've missed an assignee, they've missed a due date. Someone at some point said, Ah, I need to do this thing. I put it on this area that says, yes, we have to do this. And for whatever reason, life happened, and that didn't come through. And so this automation basically just surfaces those and says, Yo, guys, like, did you mean to just ignore this? Pay attention. And that automation has saved our butts so many times because often someone will be out of the office and that thing will be on their plate, but we wouldn't see it or you know, something just slipped because we inputted a task on the run, on the fly.
And yeah, having that automation basically makes sure that we don't break any promises because that's something that's really important to me as a person and a business owner, that I don't say integrity, but integrity as a practice. Like if I say we're going to do something, we're always going to do it.
Joe Casabona: And yeah, word is bond is what my brothers and I would say, word is bond.
Layla Pomper: Yeah, that's a good one.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Right, I love that. And actually, this is something that's been really top of mind for me lately is that you're using automation to better human interaction and human relationships. Right. Like someone just added me on LinkedIn. It was like Hey Joe, I saw you did, you interact with this content? And I'm like, we know each other personally, and so I understand what's happening, but like this is a weird miss, and so like I've been really big on like don't let automation take the humanity out of what you do. Like, help you put more humanity into what you do.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. One of our values is to make work human, and I think that's where this comes into it. Actually, now I have another automation example of what I was doing. We took a brief break here, and I opened my email and I saw one of these alerts.
One of the automations I've set up recently is that every time we have a new client join, because we have courses, so we don't necessarily get to meet them. I have a Zap set up that looks at that person's information and then sends me an email summarizing, like, here's who this person is, here's their business, here's their website. And it's just so cool to get this like detailed basically email to myself every time someone joins, where I can kind of get to know someone asynchronously, which is the same thing. It's making it more human on a scale that you just wouldn't be able to do by going in and checking your, you know, Kajabi account every single hour. That wouldn't be sustainable.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. So now let me ask you, gosh, I'm really sorry if you already said this, but is that based on a form that they filled out, or are you using everybody take a drink for the 2025 drinking game? Do you use AI?
Layla Pomper: Okay, so here's one of my soapboxes, Joe. I hate forms. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. I hate surveys, I hate forums, I hate asking people anything because, and I think this is like introversion coming out.
I'd rather observe. And so a Lot of the things that you're seeing in this particular one are based on information that we've passively absorbed, like their email address and then looking up their domain. And yes, AI will then pull their domain and just get me a summary of their website.
But I don't like asking people to tell me things if I can observe it instead. Because I think our self-assessments are not always as accurate as our behaviors.
Joe Casabona: Right. I'm really good at multitasking, which is something a lot of people say. Like a hundred percent of people who have said that have lied about or not lied. We're wrong about that. Right. None of us are going to be multitasking.
Layla Pomper: Visual thinking.
Joe Casabona:Yeah. Right. Yeah. So like I think that's really smart. I don't know if I gave you the benefit of like most filling out the form that I sent to you for this, but usually when I invite somebody onto a podcast, I fill out the form, I have a little text expander snippet and I pass all of the form fields that I know via a URL to the form so that they only really need to upload their preferred headshot and like tweak their bio before booking the time. Right. And so like, it's also a lot shorter than like the apply to be on the show because I'm inviting you. I know, I want you to, I want to have you on the show. So I'm all for making them fill out as little information as possible.
And I think that the way that you're using AI in this case again helps you show up. Right. Because it's either you're not going to find this information, or you're going to have AI send it to you, based on, I assume like a pretty strict prompt that's like don't make stuff up.
Layla Pomper: Exactly, exactly. Just send me the summary of the LinkedIn company page and stuff like that. So it's just like a few lines, but it's enough that I know this person that when I see them in a co working call I can say hi like it just builds that association just like you would if it was in the real world.
But I do wanna say on the parameter note, I feel like that would be a very good piece of future content for you, Joe. Cause peopleare listening, they're like what the heck? They're passing along values to a form. What? That's one of those like hidden ninja things that is so simple once you learn it. That arguably might be people's first intro into automations that you definitely need to produce more content on.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, and I get a lot of compliments on it too. Like, your onboarding process is like wizardry, right? And I'm like, yeah, thank you very much.
And this is the last question I want to end on, because your YouTube videos are great, and then your newsletter is basically like a riff on your more or less right. On the YouTube video, what is your high-level overview? What's your content creation process? Like?
Layla Pomper: What is my content creation process? Oh, it's changed a lot over time. Right now. I'll give you where it is right now. Right now, every quarter or every month, depending on the season we're in, I sit down with a friend, a guy, a consultant who's really good at YouTube, and I'm like, yo, Josh, here's the things I'm really passionate about. Here are the questions I've been getting.
And this contractor helps me develop like, what would be a good way to package this into YouTube videos? And normally, the conversation, which is about an hour, ends up with a bunch of question marks and like way too many pieces of content for what we could actually produce in a quarter because we do about three to four videos a month. So what I will do from there is post a ridiculous amount of polls. And I know I just said I don't like surveys, but I do like polls. And so I will take all of the video ideas, the questions, the topics, and I'll put them on our YouTube community tab or LinkedIn or both and ask people.
So like today I posted online being like, well, what's the bigger problem for your team? Getting team buy-in or knowing how to systemize things like that to help me pick which categories of topics to work on. Usually, there's a clear winner.
And then from there we kind of schedule out. We usually have about 13 videos in the pipeline at any time, which is about a quarter. And we have kind of this set flow for how a video gets scheduled, the stuff that goes into it.
And most importantly, I'm not in charge of that flow. That is the biggest unlock for me as a creator. I have a project manager, and her whole job is to yell at me. I hired somebody, I pay her full-time to yell at me, amongst other things that she does.
Joe Casabona: That's incredible.
Layla Pomper: Yeah. And she manages that whole pipeline, all the freelancers and myself, who is the worst contributor to that pipeline. And I just try to make sure we're always at least three videos to five videos ahead in that queue. And then from there, like you said, we repurpose. So things go into newsletters. Things go into shorts and other stuff. But a lot of that is team-led, which is nice.
So, the newsletters are actually drafted by my team member, and then I rewrite them to tell a personal story or something like that. So it's as hands-off as possible because I find that that's what makes the content actually feel real, is if I'm not thinking about is the grammar right and is the spelling right and oh, my God, I need to get it done by Wednesday. I can just be like, oh, here's the story behind the scenes of this video.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Great. Few really great takeaways here. Like, you talk to a YouTube expert. Right. Because this is like my flow is basically, oh, I should make a video about this. And then like, I spend too much time on the packaging, and I know it's not very good.
Layla Pomper: Terrible packaging.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Just like, I hate making thumbnails. I made one where, like, my hand, like, my hand. I had two different pictures of me, and I used the hand from one and I'm just like, what have I become?
Layla Pomper: Yeah. And I did that for years. Like, I was in the same boat. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to be good at all of it.
Joe Casabona: Right. And I would say, like, part of it is, like, you probably do have to do the process a little bit to know, to understand it, and delegate it out, but.
Layla Pomper: Exactly. We never know what good is.
Joe Casabona: Right. Yes. And, like, delegate sooner rather than later because, like, I do, there's a lot of inertia to making two thumbnails that you're gonna a B test on YouTube or a lot of effort, rather. Yeah. It's too much work. And I don't. I don't. I don't think I'm good at it, and I don't particularly like it. And the ones that I, the ones that I always think are going to do well, don't.
Layla Pomper: You don't.
Joe Casabona: So I don't know. Yeah.
Layla Pomper: Dude. I feel like the favorite, my favorite question to ask YouTubers is like, what's the video that you're so proud of that did terribly? Because we always have them. It's never aligned. And I think just separating that and really putting somebody in charge of putting the bow on things gave me so much freedom to just focus on the content. But, you know, the first six years, I did all of it, so. Or almost all of it, so I think it's a very normal spot to be in.
And one other thing I didn't say, but you're an AI automation nerd that I want to mention, is the other source of ideas that I bring to that YouTube dude that helps with packaging is from my audience. So actually, whenever anyone joins my email list, I send them an email saying, What is the main challenge that you're looking to solve right now? Or something like that. If there's, if I can make a video on any topic, what would you want it to be on that kind of thing? And that goes right into kind of a spreadsheet that I then pull up in that YouTube thing. So it's not just my own ideas.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, really smart. I need to. So my takeaways from this episode are that I need to change the first question that I ask people who join my mailing list because I do not get a lot of responses. You know, and I know the problem I'm making. Right. It's like, what's your biggest problem? And it's like, that's such an open-ended. What's my biggest problem today? Or like. So I think it's more like I need to finesse that a little bit.
Do more polls. I like the difference between a poll and a survey. Right. It's like, it's like when you get an email from a brand that's like, hey, we'll give you a $20 gift card if you fill out this survey. And if the survey is like more than one page, I'm like, I'm out. It's not worth 20 bucks.
Layla Pomper: Right, right.
Joe Casabona: But if it's like five questions, I'm like, yeah, sure, why not? Right. Or if it's like a poll, even better. Right. So I really like that distinction.
Layla Pomper: A or B.
Joe Casabona: Yes, exactly. Layla Pomper. Thank you. So I'm going to hold on. I'm going to do that again. Joel, Reset. I was too far away from the microphone.
Layla Pomper, thank you so much for joining us today. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?
Layla Pomper: Head over to processdriven.co. That's my website that has all of the goodies, including the YouTube channel and all the nerdy stuff we've been talking about today.
Joe Casabona: Nice. And I do have. I'll say on the air, I do have another link for the show notes. I don't know if you, It's been a while since you submitted this. go.processdriven.co/joe. Didn't realize how much that would rhyme, saying it all.
Layla Pomper: It rhymes so well. Go to go.processdriven.co/joe wasn’t it?
Joe Casabona: Yes. Love that. I saw that. And I got really excited because I do the same thing, right? And I'm. Yeah. So love that. So that'll be in the show notes as well as, like, a bunch of stuff that we talked about here. But thank you so much again for spending time with us today. I really appreciate it.
Layla Pomper: Love it. Thanks for having me.
Joe Casabona: And thank you for listening as always.
Until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.