The Best ClickUp Implementation Path for Agencies with Layla Pomper
Key Takeaways
- Separate the process from the software. ProcessDriven's mission is better day-to-day process, and ClickUp is the current tool of choice, not the point.
- A self-serve membership costs a fraction of consulting because the risk sits with you. Nobody vets or diagnoses your team one-on-one, so you have to show up ready to learn.
- Three months is enough time for a go-getter to build a ClickUp foundation and the habits to go with it. Twelve months is for continuous improvement.
- You can outsource setup, but you can't outsource learning. Done-for-you is a short-term win unless someone stays on retainer to update the system every time your process changes.
- Ask why before buying a build. If the answer is that you want it done fast, plan for how your team will learn the tool.
- ProcessDriven is training on how to record what you do. ZenPilot is operational consulting for agencies. Layla describes them as complements that solve two different problems.
Gray MacKenzie hosted this episode, after a quick sponsor read for TextExpander. His guest was Layla Pomper, founder of ProcessDriven, which helps teams under 100 people systemize their operations with ClickUp. They cover why ProcessDriven moved from consulting to a membership, how Layla talks people out of done-for-you builds, where she refers them instead, and how she’d describe the difference between ProcessDriven and ZenPilot.
ProcessDriven is obsessed with the problem, not married to ClickUp
Gray opened by asking when ProcessDriven would switch away from ClickUp. Layla called it the wrong question.
“I firmly believe that if our mission is to help people have a more effective process, meaning how they actually do things day to day, we cannot pigeonhole ourselves into thinking ClickUp can do everything… We’re obsessed with our problem we’re solving, not so much married to any particular way to solve that problem.”
ProcessDriven teaches process and ClickUp as two distinct things, peanut butter and jelly that go together without becoming one. That matters most for someone new to the tool and still dazzled by it. It also means admitting a ClickUp feature, automations for example, isn’t right for every team.
“We need to be prepared to have that conversation if we’re going to sit here, as we do at ProcessDriven, and say your system’s not the software. Well, how silly is that to say if we’re only supporting one software?”
ZenPilot’s version of that check is the Blueprint phase at the start of every engagement.
Why a membership costs a fraction of what consulting did
ProcessDriven went fully to courses and memberships about a year and a half before this conversation: one product, eight employees, and a framework Layla says has run through roughly 2,000 teams. A member had just asked why the price is so low compared to consultants. Her answer is about who carries the risk.
“Because we can’t vet you necessarily, we can’t necessarily one-on-one diagnose things, we’re relying on you to do that self-diagnostic and you to come with that preparation and interest in learning. Because of that, we charge a smaller percentage of the value to be made.”
ZenPilot, she says, sits at the other extreme: because it filters who it works with, it can charge a greater share of the end value. The membership mirrors what she used to do one-on-one for five or six figures: a course path to a first quick win (clearing a pile of overdue tasks, writing a first SOP), then weekly live calls, a monthly group mastermind, peer groups and a forum. She calls it a consultant-on-call model.
Three months to a foundation, then graduate
Gray asked about churn, the standard worry with a low-cost membership. Layla says the model was an accident: she was a consultant who wanted to offer ongoing support, and open-ended “contact me any time” projects were a recipe for stress. The two membership lengths came from real project timelines.
“If you are a go-getter, three months is substantial time for you to set up a foundation in ClickUp and to start getting those habits down… We have the 12 months for people who want to not just build it but go through that continuous improvement process.”
“I want people to graduate. I don’t view it as necessarily a great thing if people are around for five years… Our program is about building the foundation. Not all houses have the same kind of foundation. Not all houses need the same foundation.”
She says the team is the first to tell people no: move on to EOS, or go to ZenPilot, if that’s the better fit.
You can outsource setup, but not learning
The question Gray most wanted to ask: what happens when a member says, I’ve got the design, can you just build it for me? Layla has a whole YouTube video on this.
“I strongly believe done-for-you is a short-term win and still opens up the opportunity for long-term problems, unless you have that person who’s doing your done-for-you services on retainer to fix it every time your process changes, to teach your team every time a new person comes on.”
Her first question back is always why.
“You’ll save time on setup, so how are you going to learn the tool? Oh, you’re going to learn it all by taking apart the whole machine and then putting it back together and hopefully get it? You can’t outsource learning. You can outsource setup, but not learning.”
People who still want a build get referred to consultants like ZenPilot, more than 20 times a week by her count. She estimates ProcessDriven turns away millions of dollars a year in done-for-you revenue. Training is a different skill from executing, and she’d rather be very good at one.
How Layla describes ProcessDriven vs ZenPilot
People ask both of them about the difference, and Gray admits he’s too biased to answer. Layla isn’t.
“I really view ZenPilot as not just ClickUp setup… I view you guys as doing operational consulting for agencies. Operational consulting requires very in-the-weeds knowledge of a specific space. It’s a different kind of thing than training, which is where I live.”
Gray’s version: ClickUp is the Trojan horse that brings people to ZenPilot, and what they buy is clarity for the whole team. ProcessDriven, in Layla’s words, is a process systemization company, and she wants it to be the first search result for a one-person contractor trying to write down what they do so the business doesn’t kill them.
Layla points people to processdriven.co/hub, and the full conversation is on YouTube: watch the episode.