September 30, 2025 • 38 mins
What if your most important KPI wasn’t about revenue, leads, or efficiency—but about people? In this episode, operations strategist Layla Pomper shares the story of her Death List KPI: a surprisingly human metric born out of emergency planning that reshaped her entire approach to resilience.
What started as a morbid exercise—writing down who her partner should call if she died—became a powerful reframe. It forced Layla to measure not just internal systems, but the strength of her external relationships. The result? A business that’s not only operationally sound, but relationally resilient.
What You’ll Learn
- Why a Death List KPI matters more than a perfectly documented SOP.
- How to structure your own list by category: legal, financial, operational, technical.
- The role of community as real business infrastructure.
- Why operators in particular need a stronger “village.”
- How one metric can cascade into redesigning your business model, marketing, and personal priorities.
Learn More About Layla Pomper
- (00:00) - Introduction: The Importance of a Death List
- (00:38) - Layla Pomper's Realization and Shift
- (01:43) - Defining the Death List
- (02:53) - Building a Resilient Business Community
- (05:08) - Implementing the Death List in Business Operations
- (35:29) - Conclusion: The Power of Community
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susan Boles (00:05):
If you don't have a good death list, you probably
don't have a good life. That'swhat my guest Layla Pomper
realized when she sat down tocreate an emergency plan for her
business and discoveredsomething unsettling. There
weren't enough people she couldtrust to help her partner
navigate the chaos if somethinghappened to her. What started as
(00:28):
bid planning exercise became acomplete shift in how she thinks
about community resilience andwhat actually makes a business
sustainable. Welcome to Calm isthe New KPI where we solve for
calm one KPI, one bottleneck,one business at a time.
Leila runs ProcessDriven whereshe helps businesses systematize
(00:49):
their operations. She is afrequent friend of the show
because we are business ops nerdfriends. And she has built her
career on documentation,processes, and making sure
everything runs smoothly whenthe owner of a business steps
away. But when life forced herto think about what would happen
(01:10):
if she couldn't step back in,she realized all those internal
systems meant nothing withoutthe external relationships to
support them. Her death listKPI, it's not just a calmer KPI
about emergency planning.
It's about measuring somethingmost of us never think to track:
the strength of our village. Andas you'll hear, building that
(01:33):
village changed everything abouthow she runs her business,
spends her time, and thinksabout what real resilience looks
like. One of your current KPIsthat you're paying attention to
is something that you havecalled the death list, which
sounds scary and creepy. And Iactually think it's super cool.
(01:55):
But at a high level, how are youthinking about what a death list
is?
And how did you come up with theidea as a whole?
Layla Pomper (02:04):
Yeah. I don't think it was very intentional.
Many years ago, I think I hadstumbled upon social media post
being like, do you have anemergency binder for your
business? And I was like, oh,no, I should probably make one
of those. And I kind of promptlyignored it until life events
forced me to really thinkseriously about what would
happen I disappeared.
And when I sat down and Istarted writing, all right, if I
(02:27):
were to die tomorrow, here'swhat my husband needs to know
and who he needs to get in touchwith to get help through
whatever would happen next. Irealized, well, damn, like
there's not enough people onthis list that I would feel
comfortable leaving him as asupport system. It kind of came
to be based on just scary lifeevents. And ever since then,
(02:47):
I've used that as a North Star,particularly for this year to
help me decide what should I bespending my time on.
Susan Boles (02:53):
So how do you think about the individual elements of
then what turns into your deathlist?
Layla Pomper (03:03):
Well, I guess I'm reverse engineering. So I guess
I should define this becausethis is a totally made up term.
So if people are like deathlist, what? The death list is
essentially list of emergencycontacts. Like if you have a kid
and you leave them with ababysitter, you give that
babysitter numbers to call ifshit goes wrong.
This is kind of the same thing.But for my business,
specifically for my partner toknow what to deal with. So when
(03:26):
I'm thinking about the names onthe list and what I'm really
looking for, the number that isthe right number. The way I've
been looking at it is here areall the things that I need to
manage in my business. Here areall the different avenues where
things could be crazy.
There's legal stuff, there'sfinancial stuff, there's
software stuff, there'soperational and team stuff. And
I view those kind of ascategories. And so when I'm
(03:47):
trying to think of names on thelist, if you will, I'm trying to
it sounds a little like MinMaxi, but I'm trying to figure
out how can I find people in mylife and build real
relationships with people whocould help in each of those
areas should something terriblehappen? And the beautiful thing
is, even if nothing terriblehappens, it's great to have like
(04:07):
a board of advisors in all theseareas of your life or your work
life.
Susan Boles (04:12):
So did this come along with creating an emergency
binder for your business? Or isthis something that is
completely separate in yourmind? It all started from that
honestly, because I I needed to
Layla Pomper (04:28):
create some kind of plan. And it wasn't until I
sat down to write that sectionof this chat GPT generated
template I was filling in that Irealized this is really where
I've got nothing. Theinspiration was from that
emergency binder. The realityday to day is that this is
something that's front of mindfor me when I'm doing my annual
planning, When I'm doing mybudget planning, it has
(04:51):
ramifications for how my moneyis being spent. Like, I'm
spending more time going toevents, building relationships
with people rather thanhunkering down in my office.
It's just a total 180 in someways shift of how I'm spending
my time because of this metric.
Susan Boles (05:08):
When you are thinking about the transition
from you as a leader of thebusiness to whatever happens
after that, you have a team, youhave a partner, and you're
primarily setting this up forhim to be able to handle things
if you were to be incapacitated.How are you thinking about him
(05:31):
coming into the business? Is theintention, like, he comes in and
runs things? Or it's he comes inand shuts things down? Like, how
are you thinking about thelongevity of the business?
And I guess, how does yourexisting team, because you do
have a team, how does that playinto that kind of calculus?
Layla Pomper (05:53):
Yeah. What I love about the challenge of the death
list is it requires you to kindof zoom out even further. So my
business day to day, we spend alot of time talking about how to
systemize operations so that theowner can leave and things still
work. So I've never really beenworried about the team being
able to continue to operate.Maybe I should care more about
that.
Susan Boles (06:13):
It's sort of an unfair question to ask you. So
like, I know that everything hasa process and a documentation
because that's what you do. ButI still think it's interesting
to see how you're thinking.
Layla Pomper (06:26):
Oh, for sure. So I've never really challenged the
question of like, could thebusiness keep running? I know it
could. I think growth would slowbecause there's certain
activities where because of thefunds of the business, the size
of the business, I cannot affordto replace myself on all of the
things to make it a trulyseparate entity that could grow
beyond me. But what'sinteresting about the Death List
is it kind of takes thechallenge level up a notch.
(06:47):
Not that the business owner isexiting by choice. It's that the
business owner is stripped away,removed, and you cannot access
them in any way, shape or form.It's like an extra challenge
level. And when I'm thinkingabout this death list, I'm in
the assumption that there is achoice. So actually, in my
emergency binder, if you will, Ilay out two paths of what I
(07:11):
would encourage.
There's a disclaimer at the top.It says something like, honey,
if you're reading this and I'mdead, I really don't care what
you do. I'm dead. Start off withthat, keeping it nice and
romantic there. And then I kindof outline if you want to keep
running it, everything's inplace.
But here's the stuff you'd needto hire for, and here's who you
can ask to help going throughthat route. I list out my team
members there who can helpspecify what do we need to hire
(07:33):
out for. I list out people whocould help him find people to do
that. I honestly don't expectthat to be the for him. And so
the other route is to how toshut it down.
And here's who you can talk toabout these different pieces.
But I should probably call outthat the number one people on
the quote death list is actuallymy employees. So my staff are
the number one people on thoselists for their respective
(07:55):
areas. They know 80% of thebusiness, thanks to what we've
documented. But it's that tricky20 where there's strategy or
vision or stuff that would neverhave been shared with the team
member where the death listreally fills the gap.
Susan Boles (08:08):
Yeah. I love the idea of thinking about it as
kind of like a decision tree.Like, hey, there are these
choices. Here's what happens inthis scenario. Here's what
happens in this scenario.
And all the resources to supportthat. So outside of your
employees, how do you thinkabout who should be a re a
(08:30):
resource? And how do you goabout finding those resources?
Layla Pomper (08:34):
Yeah. I only realized recently my younger
sister had her first kid and shewas talking about Godparents and
all this stuff. And I realized,that's kind of the same thing.
I'm not a parent. But for thoseof you who are, how did you pick
the Godparents for your kid?
I kind of view this death listto be the same thing, except
that you need a lot of them. SoI would say the majority of
(08:57):
folks are folks I've been inmasterminds with for years. I've
known for the majority ofProcessDriven's existence. And
that's how it's come to be. Forme, my threshold is I would
trust this person to give myhusband in the event of a
crisis.
I know that they would get on acall with Alex and say, hey, if
Leila was here's what I tell herto do. And they would be honest.
(09:19):
They wouldn't make a big dealout about it. I know that they
would have his best interest inheart. They would care enough to
just be helpful.
They're good humans with a goodcompass. And they know whatever
the subject matter is. So it's alot like finding godparents from
what I hear.
Susan Boles (09:38):
I love that. So you mentioned that the idea of the
death list is prompting youbeing more intentional about
building relationships withpeople in your network. Is that
the end result of you havinggone through tried to put people
in a in a spot and go, I don't Idon't really have a spot. Like,
(10:02):
I don't have a person for thisspot that I need a resource for.
Or did it kind of just naturallyevolve because now you're
thinking more, I guess, likecommunity minded in terms of
like, what does my communityactually look like?
And the idea of like being agood villager for the other
people in the village?
Layla Pomper (10:23):
It's definitely the latter in the sense that
this brought me to a new senseof awareness and it was less
like, oh, have a gap to fill.Like, I'm not that thoughtful
about it. But having the numberand kind of making a game out of
it of like, here's how manypeople I have on the emergency
contact list gave me a goodreason to take this seriously in
(10:43):
a way that community building inthis day and age is like a nice
to have. It's a fluffy skill.It's an if I have time, sure,
I'll attend.
And especially for me, mypersonality type, I'm an INTJ
relationship building is not anatural skill that I possess.
And so it takes conscious effortto prioritize and make it
(11:04):
important. And throughout thisentire year, I have made a
conscious effort in the events Iattend, how I focus my time. We
talked earlier before we startedrecording about LinkedIn. I'm on
LinkedIn not because I lovebeing on LinkedIn or because I
love social media.
No, I'm on LinkedIn and Icontinue to engage there because
it's a great way for me toactually stay in touch with
(11:27):
people and make that a habit. Iwould say this KPI, yes, is
measurable and actionable, butreally it's more about
reorienting my whole prioritysystem away from arbitrary KPIs
like revenue or months of savingin the bank. Like, these are all
important and I track them. Butas a human being on the outside
of my business, which is reallywhat the death list is about,
(11:48):
it's about my human existence.Tracking something there and
treating that just as importanthas really forced me to behave
differently, which
Susan Boles (11:57):
is the goal. I think that's an excellent point.
And I'm curious, since this issomething that sort of sits not
necessarily in the business andnot necessarily out of the
business, like, it kind of doescross that threshold in a way
that I think very few metricsthat we're thinking about, like,
(12:20):
in our businesses, most of themdon't cross outside of the
business. Is this something thatyou are now specifically
measuring or managing towards?So as I do with everything, I
built a routine to check back in
Layla Pomper (12:38):
on this. So I revisit this kind of emergency
document every six months. Andso I see the list of names and I
compare that to, well, who do Ineed to add? Who do I need to
remove from this list? And so Iam revisiting it and I revisit
it at the same interval that Ido, like major planning.
(12:58):
So I plan my budget for travel.I plan what projects we're
working on. Those two thingscoincide. So it's not like a
weekly metric that I'm goingthrough, but it's certainly
something I'm revisiting. And Ithink what you said about how
it's not inside and not outsideis a pretty key point here.
It's more like something thatwould be on the balance sheet,
right? Like, it's an owner drawof some kind where it's this
(13:21):
exchange from the outside worldto the inside world. And there's
not too many things we create inour business that's built for
our families. But I really viewthis to be that kind of thing
where it's really building thispassageway in the event of
someone else needing to stepover. And I like to think it has
ramifications for even now.
Susan Boles (14:40):
Resiliency in the business. Like, talk about
sustainability. We talk aboutbeing resilient. But actually
being able to really measure, isthat something that we are
accomplishing or just somethingwe're talking about, I think is
really challenging. And I thinksomething like how many people,
(15:00):
how many resources, you know,what does your community of
support really look like is suchan interesting aspect of that
because we do I think asbusiness owners, a lot of us
intellectually know that thecommunity we have that supports
us is useful, but I don't thinkwe really invest as deeply in
(15:27):
trying to, like you like yousaid, like, look for godparents
for our business.
We think about it as that personcan get me sales or that person
would be a great referralpartner or, you know, I use this
community for this particularresource. We don't actually
think about what does our realvillage look like? And what is
(15:51):
my place in that? It is a corecomponent of how resilient we
can be both as business ownersand as businesses themselves.
And I think this is a reallygood placeholder for that.
Like, maybe you're not actuallycounting the numbers of people
on your death list. Maybe youare. But the fact that you have
(16:14):
a death list and the fact thatthere are people from your
community there inherentlybuilds resiliency in a way that
we don't really think about Ithink.
Layla Pomper (16:24):
Yeah, I think what makes this so attractive to me
is my work is very much on theinside of businesses. It's the
opposite. It's what are thethings that allow our business
from the inside to continue tofunction? All the cogs and
gears. How do we the question,how do we systemize our
business?
I've been working on that,working on that for all these
years. And to your point, it'sthe external connections that my
(16:47):
work doesn't touch. And onewould argue almost no work in
the business space touches thatexternal connection. But it
takes a village to raise abusiness quip is there for a
reason because at the end of theday, if you were to disappear
and someone else steps in, theyneed that network. And sometimes
if we're thinking about an exit,like maybe the parents are
(17:09):
stepping down, the kids takingover the business.
There's a little bit more ofthat that can be kind of fudged.
Or maybe you're hiring a CEO andthey bring a network. That's
kind of interesting and thatcould get you through that
transition. But the death listforces you to have higher
standards by saying, no, no, no.This is your spouse.
This is your cousin. This isyour employee. People who do not
(17:31):
have any built up network. Howcan they piggyback on what you
have started to build to makethe transition easier in this
crisis time, which is a
Susan Boles (17:41):
little bit of a different scenario. Nobody wants
to be in that scenario. And Ithink a lot of the times we
avoid thinking about thatscenario because if we don't
think about it, then it won'thappen. But I'm curious as you
have kind of established yourdeath list, established this
plan, and then had theopportunity to maybe come back
and revisit it, improve it. Whathas the impact of having that in
(18:07):
your head, in your business?
What's the impact of that foreither you or the business as a
whole?
Layla Pomper (18:14):
I think there's one behavior that I've noticed
really change because of it.Well, first of all, I've gotten
even more morbid in my format ofjokes, but that was a pretty low
bar already. But the other oneis I realized when I went back
because I think I've onlyreviewed it two or three times
since I've created it justbecause of the timeline that
it's been. This all really cameup about one year ago when the
(18:37):
crazy life stuff happened. Andin each of those visits, what I
realized is the people I feelcomfortable putting on that list
are people where I've asked forhelp, for lack of a better word.
Some self awareness came of thislist and I realized, man, I
offer help a lot. I try to writeif I'm in a mastermind group or
whatever. I try to give asuggestion at every time. But I
(19:00):
noticed myself really beingreluctant to ask people for help
or for opinion or to pick theirbrains because it is rude unless
you've established this rapport.Please, no one message me asking
to pick my brain.
That's not what I'm saying here.But I realized that. And the
people I did put on the list arepeople through some string of
events I had that encounter withwhere I was like, Susan, I am
(19:23):
absolutely stuck on thisprocess. I'm trying to figure
out like, what do you think Icould do? And that experience
gave me the confidence to know,oh, they could be a godparent to
this business for lack of abetter word.
And it actually forced me tostart making a practice of
actually asking for help, whichsounds so simple now that I'm
saying it out loud.
Susan Boles (19:44):
It's so hard, hard, especially I think in the
business community where thereare so many spaces where you go
in hoping for vulnerability,right? Like you'll join a
mastermind hoping that everybodywill be vulnerable so that you
can be vulnerable. But I thinkthe ratio isn't always there.
(20:07):
Right? And sometimes we get intothese groups where we're hoping
for support.
We're hoping to create avillage. And what you end up
getting is sitting in a roomwith everybody talking about how
fantastic things are. And thenyou are sitting there in your
own head being fantastic for me.And I have been in those rooms
(20:30):
where things aren't going thatspectacular for me right now.
But if nobody else is gonna bevulnerable, I don't feel
comfortable being vulnerable.
And I think being willing to bethe person who takes the first
step of like asking for help cansometimes open the floodgates of
(20:51):
now everybody's okay asking forhelp because we've now realized
it's a place of this could be myvillage and not a place of we're
just all talking about all thegood things that are happening.
Anybody who's been in businessfor any length of time knows
you've got peaks, you've gotvalleys. There's real value in
(21:13):
being willing to put yourselfout there and ask for help. And
something that I was reallyfocused on at the beginning of
the year was really deepeningrelationships with people I
already knew. Like, people thatI was like, I would really like
for this person to be a genuinefriend instead of an
(21:33):
acquaintance.
And actually went down therabbit hole of like, how do you
make friends? Right?Essentially, the question is,
how do I go about figuring outhow to make friends with
somebody, particularly we're allonline. Most of us have never
met each other in person. PeopleI've been friends with for a
decade, never met them inperson.
Right? How do you build thatrelationship when you can't just
(21:56):
be like, let's go for a coffee?There's the overcoming, like,
how do I actually contact thisperson? Email fears feels weird,
booking a Zoom call, like you'reyou're asking for their time.
Like, what are themethodologies?
And it's really interestingbecause like you, the thing that
I have found that almost hasuniversal success is asking that
(22:19):
person for help or for theiropinion or or just to be the one
that's like, hey, how are thingsgoing with you? Which it feels
weird to be like, this is anintentional thing, but I think
it's true.
Layla Pomper (22:34):
Yeah. And I think what's nice about the Death List
framing for that is it's notlike it's transactional. And I
think there's that risk, right?If someone's like, I want start
being more intentional about myrelationships. It's very easy to
be like, oh, you're a socialladder climber and you're like,
you should be on The RealHousewife.
We're not trying to be a Bravoshow here. It's just choosing to
be more intentional with how ourtime is spent. As a side effect
(22:56):
of this, because I am a totalnerd and like five years ago I
committed to tracking my timelike militantly. I know that
because of this practice, mytime on social media in its
broadest form more thanquadrupled this year versus
previous years. And I'm not onany social media for the record,
but I do post on LinkedIn now.
(23:17):
And like, I'm in Marco Polo'sand WhatsApp's. And that's kind
of like my social mediaexperience. And I probably spend
like an hour and a half a weeknow, which I'm sure is still low
by Instagram or standards. Butthat's a lot for me across all
of these different channels. Andthat's an intentional choice.
It's investing in these kinds ofrelationships. And I think it's
(23:39):
something I would have viewed asa waste of time, honestly, in
the earlier years. Would be likesocial media, what? No, I should
be marketing.
Susan Boles (23:47):
My behavior of where I'm communicating with
people has changed. I'm still onLinkedIn. And a lot of what I'm
doing on LinkedIn these days isless content and more DM
discussions with other peoplethat are on LinkedIn or in
WhatsApp chats or having Voxerswith people. Yes. And so I'm
being more social, I think, thanI had been before, but it's not
(24:13):
happening publicly.
It's all happening inessentially like tiny private
rooms that happened because ofan event I went to or because of
somebody I met in person thatall of a sudden we were able to
transition from where emailpeople who kind of talk maybe
(24:33):
like six every six to twelvemonths ish will like circle back
and be like, hey, how arethings? And then you have like a
thirty minute Zoom chat to catchup and you go away for another
year. There is an element that Ihave found about like meeting
somebody in person that allowsthe shift from like, this is a
(24:55):
digital relationship to now thisis like a real relationship,
even though the communication isstill digital.
Layla Pomper (25:03):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (25:04):
I love the idea of this one piece in your business
that has kind of cascaded acrossyou as a business owner, your
approach to business, yourapproach to marketing, your
approach to support, really allcascaded from this one place of
realizing that your villagewasn't strong enough.
Layla Pomper (25:27):
Yeah. And we didn't talk about this, but just
for like the nerdy operationsfolks out there, it did have an
impact on the business itself.Based on this deathless KPI, we
started doing interviews. Like,I know you obviously have some
interview stuff going on. I'venever done interview stuff.
I did here or there someunintentional collab things over
(25:48):
the years. But after this year,we had started doing one on one
interviews with people. Andsometimes it was people I knew.
Sometimes it was people I didn'tknow. But we worked in
intentional one on oneconnection time for the sole
purpose of buildingrelationships.
Like we've spoken, you and Ibefore about how podcasts, it's
not always the best way to getin front of more people, but
(26:09):
it's a fantastic way to get infront of one wonderful person
and talk with the person thatyou are speaking to. And I look
forward to our chats here,Susan, because of that. And that
was one way that our businessmodel shifted because of this
KPI. It was almost like a corevalue was installed by just
tracking this metric. And theother thing is on our
fulfillment side, we've beenadapting like a membership
(26:31):
model, and we're looking at anoperators event coming up here
in the next six months.
These are all things that areall directly sourced from
realizing the power of in personevents, the power of community.
And it's just figuring out thisway that how do you infuse this
kind of priority into the entirebusiness? So it's not just
something you're doing in yourfree time, but it's a flywheel
that you have to do as part ofthe core business. And yes, a
Susan Boles (26:55):
side effect is it helps this extraneous factor,
but it also strengthens thebusiness and puts community and
village building into the fiberof what the business is. When
you are in operations and whenyou are in process, it is so
easy to start to view thebusiness as just a series of
(27:16):
cogs. Right? Like, it's justthis system that goes with this
system and this other one overhere, and they're all connected,
and we're documenting them. Andlike, when you're on the
operations side of businesses,businesses all start to look the
same.
It's all the same functionality,which is why operators can so
(27:37):
easily move between one nextbusiness because the checklists
and the SOPs and all of thosepieces can be pretty much the
same across any business,regardless of industry,
regardless of like, you know,there's a little tweaks, like,
do you have an inventory basedbusiness or not? Like, there's
little tweaks, but I think it'sso easy to start viewing it all
(27:59):
as just checklists and cogs andautomations and systems. And
inherently, it sort of takes youaway from the humanity that
businesses are actuallyextremely human. And it's so
easy to forget about that in thesea of the cogs moving. And
(28:21):
Yeah.
I love that you are seeing thatimpact in your business. And
it's kind of like pulling youback out. You mentioned earlier
about how you're inside thebusiness versus like the outside
the business. And I love thatthis enables you to cross out of
the business, cross out of thecogs, and reconnect with what I
(28:45):
think is the best part abouthaving a business, which is the
community around you and aroundyour business.
Layla Pomper (28:53):
But what I think is interesting about this key
metric or however we want tothink about it, this metric
that's become a value. It isforcing me to make this into a
business because I'm not contentwith it just being initiative.
When I get obsessed withsomething, want like the whole
team behind it. Let's make it athing. And then I get even more
obsessed where I'm like, I wantmy clients to care about this
thing, too, because it's soimpactful for me.
(29:14):
I think they would also valueit. What has been really
fascinating about thisparticular one is when I'm
working with operators, theydidn't go through the shit I
went through to scare me awakein this. You need your village
thing. I'm talking to a lot ofpeople who are in the shoes I
was in five, seven more yearsago. And so it's interesting to
(29:36):
try to persuade other people toview their death list or to view
their village as somethingthat's important to them, to
view community as somethingthat's an operator skill set.
Candidly, it's been an uphillbattle. Speaking of stuff you're
trying to figure out, gettingpeople to recognize it's not
just about knowing how toautomate or to streamline your
customer service thing. So ithappens in two days instead of
(29:57):
three. That's not as knowing whoyou can call on the phone, who
operates a business that doesthat every day and have them on
speed dial. Because mostoperators like I'm extremely
social by operator standards.
And let me just tell you, thatis an extremely sad bar to set.
Most operators don't know oneperson who does what they do,
(30:20):
period. And so it's beeninteresting to take this KPI and
prescribe it for lack of abetter word, or at least
evangelize for it to a broaderskill set. And maybe I shouldn't
be pushing this so hard onclients, but I just feel like it
adds so much value that I wantothers to see the value of it,
too.
Susan Boles (30:38):
I was talking to my partner Josh about this the
other day and trying to describehow different operations is from
other areas of the business.Right? So I hang out with a lot
of marketers. Marketers have tobe some of the most social
collaborative people in businessI've ever met. Right?
(31:00):
Like, I haven't done a lot of,like, formal marketing training,
but I would consider myself apretty good marketer because I
just sit in the room withmarketers and listen to them
talk, listen to themcollaborate, listen to them be
social. And similarly, evenfinance people are social.
They're supportive. In multiplefinance groups where, like,
(31:25):
we're all collaborating andchecking on different processes
and who's using which softwareand what have people found to be
really effective. And operatorsare so weird because they don't
do any of that.
They don't they do not, like,come out of their silo. I do
(31:47):
think it's a limitation. And Ithink part of it then expands
operator industry wide. And Ithink part of the problem is
when you're a really goodoperator, it looks really easy,
and people think you're notdoing anything. Right?
Like, really good operationstend to almost end up being
invisible. And because we're notin more of a community, we're
(32:12):
not more verbal about that. Wedon't talk about that. And I
think it does end up limitingand deprioritizing operations as
a whole industry. And I think alot of it ties back to nobody's
being social.
Nobody's being collaborative.
Layla Pomper (32:30):
Yeah. And I mean, could even go more basic if
we're gonna geek out inoperations is I don't think
there's language to talk aboutit. The Death List doing it
personally, I realized I wasn'tasking for help enough. And I
started to realize asking forhelp is a thing that I need to
think of as a thing thatrequires effort. The term
operator doesn't even have adefinition really.
Like, what does it mean to builda process? Like, what does it
(32:52):
mean to automate something?Like, we don't even have the
language to start theconversation to know how to
start talking about this. So Ithink it's been fascinating
seeing this Ripple effect, and Ihaven't figured out how to go
through it. But I've been tryingto replicate the journey I've
been on for the last, I don'tknow, about twelve months
focused on this metric insidethe business for almost the same
(33:15):
period of time.
Literally the month after thistraumatic event that triggered
the death list, I started themembership in the business
again. And it was this call forcommunity, this call for
connection. That was definitelynot an accident looking back on
it. And as I'm saying this rightnow and now we're here a year
later trying to figure out howto evolve it. And like, is it an
(33:36):
in person event?
Because like you and I havetalked about here, in person
events are such a magical way tobuild those deeper connections
that are friendships, not justlike, hey, can you fix my broken
PC? So it's trying to replicatethat through.
Susan Boles (33:50):
I love that. So is there anything you think we
should talk about that wehaven't touched on yet? I would
just
Layla Pomper (33:55):
say you don't need to have a near death experience
to start doing this. This issomething that anyone can sit
down right now listening to thisand write down if you
disappeared tomorrow, who wouldyou want your significant other
or your right hand person tocall for help getting through
the next twenty four hours ofchaos? You might find that your
list is huge. Congratulations.You don't have to listen to the
(34:19):
rest of this.
Oh, wait, we're mentioning thisat the end. Maybe too late. You
just wasted thirty minutes ofyour life. But for the rest of
you, if you have a resultsimilar to I do, where you have
a handful of names and you'relike, that's it. That's all I
have to show for the last decadeof my life.
There are so many actions youcan also take. And I think just
by writing that list, it willbring attention to this and
(34:41):
you'll start to see yourbehaviors change as well. And
maybe like what Susan and I aretalking about, you can start
then pressing that forward andpaying that forward by working
it into your business or intowhat's to come next.
Susan Boles (34:53):
Honestly, my whole philosophy is that the only way
we beat AI is that we all bandtogether. Yeah. Because I'm
like, the more human we can be,the better off all of us and all
of our businesses will be. Sothank you so much for coming and
talking to me about dying. It'sa little bit of a dark topic,
(35:15):
but I actually think it's such agood window into hope.
Like, the looking at the darkallows us to then figure out
like, how do we build? How do webuild a village? And what does
that look like?
Layla Pomper (35:29):
Yeah, if you don't have a good death list, you
probably don't have a good life.
Susan Boles (35:34):
What Leila built with her death list KPI wasn't
just an emergency plan. It was acomplete redesign of how she
approaches relationships,community, and business
resilience. She pulled twocritical levers from the Calmer
framework that transformed herfrom somebody who avoided
networking to somebody who seesvillage building as core
(35:57):
business infrastructure. First,she redesigned her business
model around values and people.Instead of treating
relationships as a nice to have,she made community connection a
measurable priority.
She shifted from viewing hernetwork as transactional to
seeing it as foundational. It'sthe external support system that
(36:18):
makes all of her internalsystems actually work. Second,
she changed how she thoughtabout efficiency and operations.
So rather than just optimizinginternal processes, she started
investing time and relationshipsthat create real business
resilience. She began spendingan hour and a half a week on
(36:40):
what she calls social media.
But what's really relationshipbuilding through LinkedIn DMs,
WhatsApp groups, and Marco Poloconversations. That's time she
would have previously seen aswasted and is now recognized as
essential infrastructure. Andthe result is a business that's
not just operationally sound,but relationally resilient.
(37:03):
She's a founder who went fromoffering help, but never asking
for it to someone who modelsvulnerability and builds genuine
community. And her deathless KPIis a metric that forced her to
confront an uncomfortable truth.
You can have all the systems inthe world, but without the right
people to support them, you'rebuilding on quicksand. So here's
(37:26):
your tiny action. Sit down rightnow and write your own death
list. If you disappearedtomorrow, who would you want
your partner or your key personto call for help in the next
twenty four hours? Don'toverthink it.
Just write down the names bycategory, legal, financial,
operational, technical. If yourlist feels robust,
(37:48):
congratulations, you have builta village. If it feels a little
thin, you've just identified themost important infrastructure
project in your business.Because the truth is community
isn't just nice to have, it'sthe difference between a
business that survives and onethat truly thrives. Until next
time, stay calm.
If you don't have a good death list, you probably
don't have a good life. That'swhat my guest Layla Pomper
realized when she sat down tocreate an emergency plan for her
business and discoveredsomething unsettling. There
weren't enough people she couldtrust to help her partner
navigate the chaos if somethinghappened to her. What started as
(00:28):
bid planning exercise became acomplete shift in how she thinks
about community resilience andwhat actually makes a business
sustainable. Welcome to Calm isthe New KPI where we solve for
calm one KPI, one bottleneck,one business at a time.
Leila runs ProcessDriven whereshe helps businesses systematize
(00:49):
their operations. She is afrequent friend of the show
because we are business ops nerdfriends. And she has built her
career on documentation,processes, and making sure
everything runs smoothly whenthe owner of a business steps
away. But when life forced herto think about what would happen
(01:10):
if she couldn't step back in,she realized all those internal
systems meant nothing withoutthe external relationships to
support them. Her death listKPI, it's not just a calmer KPI
about emergency planning.
It's about measuring somethingmost of us never think to track:
the strength of our village. Andas you'll hear, building that
(01:33):
village changed everything abouthow she runs her business,
spends her time, and thinksabout what real resilience looks
like. One of your current KPIsthat you're paying attention to
is something that you havecalled the death list, which
sounds scary and creepy. And Iactually think it's super cool.
(01:55):
But at a high level, how are youthinking about what a death list
is?
And how did you come up with theidea as a whole?
Layla Pomper (02:04):
Yeah. I don't think it was very intentional.
Many years ago, I think I hadstumbled upon social media post
being like, do you have anemergency binder for your
business? And I was like, oh,no, I should probably make one
of those. And I kind of promptlyignored it until life events
forced me to really thinkseriously about what would
happen I disappeared.
And when I sat down and Istarted writing, all right, if I
(02:27):
were to die tomorrow, here'swhat my husband needs to know
and who he needs to get in touchwith to get help through
whatever would happen next. Irealized, well, damn, like
there's not enough people onthis list that I would feel
comfortable leaving him as asupport system. It kind of came
to be based on just scary lifeevents. And ever since then,
(02:47):
I've used that as a North Star,particularly for this year to
help me decide what should I bespending my time on.
Susan Boles (02:53):
So how do you think about the individual elements of
then what turns into your deathlist?
Layla Pomper (03:03):
Well, I guess I'm reverse engineering. So I guess
I should define this becausethis is a totally made up term.
So if people are like deathlist, what? The death list is
essentially list of emergencycontacts. Like if you have a kid
and you leave them with ababysitter, you give that
babysitter numbers to call ifshit goes wrong.
This is kind of the same thing.But for my business,
specifically for my partner toknow what to deal with. So when
(03:26):
I'm thinking about the names onthe list and what I'm really
looking for, the number that isthe right number. The way I've
been looking at it is here areall the things that I need to
manage in my business. Here areall the different avenues where
things could be crazy.
There's legal stuff, there'sfinancial stuff, there's
software stuff, there'soperational and team stuff. And
I view those kind of ascategories. And so when I'm
(03:47):
trying to think of names on thelist, if you will, I'm trying to
it sounds a little like MinMaxi, but I'm trying to figure
out how can I find people in mylife and build real
relationships with people whocould help in each of those
areas should something terriblehappen? And the beautiful thing
is, even if nothing terriblehappens, it's great to have like
(04:07):
a board of advisors in all theseareas of your life or your work
life.
Susan Boles (04:12):
So did this come along with creating an emergency
binder for your business? Or isthis something that is
completely separate in yourmind? It all started from that
honestly, because I I needed to
Layla Pomper (04:28):
create some kind of plan. And it wasn't until I
sat down to write that sectionof this chat GPT generated
template I was filling in that Irealized this is really where
I've got nothing. Theinspiration was from that
emergency binder. The realityday to day is that this is
something that's front of mindfor me when I'm doing my annual
planning, When I'm doing mybudget planning, it has
(04:51):
ramifications for how my moneyis being spent. Like, I'm
spending more time going toevents, building relationships
with people rather thanhunkering down in my office.
It's just a total 180 in someways shift of how I'm spending
my time because of this metric.
Susan Boles (05:08):
When you are thinking about the transition
from you as a leader of thebusiness to whatever happens
after that, you have a team, youhave a partner, and you're
primarily setting this up forhim to be able to handle things
if you were to be incapacitated.How are you thinking about him
(05:31):
coming into the business? Is theintention, like, he comes in and
runs things? Or it's he comes inand shuts things down? Like, how
are you thinking about thelongevity of the business?
And I guess, how does yourexisting team, because you do
have a team, how does that playinto that kind of calculus?
Layla Pomper (05:53):
Yeah. What I love about the challenge of the death
list is it requires you to kindof zoom out even further. So my
business day to day, we spend alot of time talking about how to
systemize operations so that theowner can leave and things still
work. So I've never really beenworried about the team being
able to continue to operate.Maybe I should care more about
that.
Susan Boles (06:13):
It's sort of an unfair question to ask you. So
like, I know that everything hasa process and a documentation
because that's what you do. ButI still think it's interesting
to see how you're thinking.
Layla Pomper (06:26):
Oh, for sure. So I've never really challenged the
question of like, could thebusiness keep running? I know it
could. I think growth would slowbecause there's certain
activities where because of thefunds of the business, the size
of the business, I cannot affordto replace myself on all of the
things to make it a trulyseparate entity that could grow
beyond me. But what'sinteresting about the Death List
is it kind of takes thechallenge level up a notch.
(06:47):
Not that the business owner isexiting by choice. It's that the
business owner is stripped away,removed, and you cannot access
them in any way, shape or form.It's like an extra challenge
level. And when I'm thinkingabout this death list, I'm in
the assumption that there is achoice. So actually, in my
emergency binder, if you will, Ilay out two paths of what I
(07:11):
would encourage.
There's a disclaimer at the top.It says something like, honey,
if you're reading this and I'mdead, I really don't care what
you do. I'm dead. Start off withthat, keeping it nice and
romantic there. And then I kindof outline if you want to keep
running it, everything's inplace.
But here's the stuff you'd needto hire for, and here's who you
can ask to help going throughthat route. I list out my team
members there who can helpspecify what do we need to hire
(07:33):
out for. I list out people whocould help him find people to do
that. I honestly don't expectthat to be the for him. And so
the other route is to how toshut it down.
And here's who you can talk toabout these different pieces.
But I should probably call outthat the number one people on
the quote death list is actuallymy employees. So my staff are
the number one people on thoselists for their respective
(07:55):
areas. They know 80% of thebusiness, thanks to what we've
documented. But it's that tricky20 where there's strategy or
vision or stuff that would neverhave been shared with the team
member where the death listreally fills the gap.
Susan Boles (08:08):
Yeah. I love the idea of thinking about it as
kind of like a decision tree.Like, hey, there are these
choices. Here's what happens inthis scenario. Here's what
happens in this scenario.
And all the resources to supportthat. So outside of your
employees, how do you thinkabout who should be a re a
(08:30):
resource? And how do you goabout finding those resources?
Layla Pomper (08:34):
Yeah. I only realized recently my younger
sister had her first kid and shewas talking about Godparents and
all this stuff. And I realized,that's kind of the same thing.
I'm not a parent. But for thoseof you who are, how did you pick
the Godparents for your kid?
I kind of view this death listto be the same thing, except
that you need a lot of them. SoI would say the majority of
(08:57):
folks are folks I've been inmasterminds with for years. I've
known for the majority ofProcessDriven's existence. And
that's how it's come to be. Forme, my threshold is I would
trust this person to give myhusband in the event of a
crisis.
I know that they would get on acall with Alex and say, hey, if
Leila was here's what I tell herto do. And they would be honest.
(09:19):
They wouldn't make a big dealout about it. I know that they
would have his best interest inheart. They would care enough to
just be helpful.
They're good humans with a goodcompass. And they know whatever
the subject matter is. So it's alot like finding godparents from
what I hear.
Susan Boles (09:38):
I love that. So you mentioned that the idea of the
death list is prompting youbeing more intentional about
building relationships withpeople in your network. Is that
the end result of you havinggone through tried to put people
in a in a spot and go, I don't Idon't really have a spot. Like,
(10:02):
I don't have a person for thisspot that I need a resource for.
Or did it kind of just naturallyevolve because now you're
thinking more, I guess, likecommunity minded in terms of
like, what does my communityactually look like?
And the idea of like being agood villager for the other
people in the village?
Layla Pomper (10:23):
It's definitely the latter in the sense that
this brought me to a new senseof awareness and it was less
like, oh, have a gap to fill.Like, I'm not that thoughtful
about it. But having the numberand kind of making a game out of
it of like, here's how manypeople I have on the emergency
contact list gave me a goodreason to take this seriously in
(10:43):
a way that community building inthis day and age is like a nice
to have. It's a fluffy skill.It's an if I have time, sure,
I'll attend.
And especially for me, mypersonality type, I'm an INTJ
relationship building is not anatural skill that I possess.
And so it takes conscious effortto prioritize and make it
(11:04):
important. And throughout thisentire year, I have made a
conscious effort in the events Iattend, how I focus my time. We
talked earlier before we startedrecording about LinkedIn. I'm on
LinkedIn not because I lovebeing on LinkedIn or because I
love social media.
No, I'm on LinkedIn and Icontinue to engage there because
it's a great way for me toactually stay in touch with
(11:27):
people and make that a habit. Iwould say this KPI, yes, is
measurable and actionable, butreally it's more about
reorienting my whole prioritysystem away from arbitrary KPIs
like revenue or months of savingin the bank. Like, these are all
important and I track them. Butas a human being on the outside
of my business, which is reallywhat the death list is about,
(11:48):
it's about my human existence.Tracking something there and
treating that just as importanthas really forced me to behave
differently, which
Susan Boles (11:57):
is the goal. I think that's an excellent point.
And I'm curious, since this issomething that sort of sits not
necessarily in the business andnot necessarily out of the
business, like, it kind of doescross that threshold in a way
that I think very few metricsthat we're thinking about, like,
(12:20):
in our businesses, most of themdon't cross outside of the
business. Is this something thatyou are now specifically
measuring or managing towards?So as I do with everything, I
built a routine to check back in
Layla Pomper (12:38):
on this. So I revisit this kind of emergency
document every six months. Andso I see the list of names and I
compare that to, well, who do Ineed to add? Who do I need to
remove from this list? And so Iam revisiting it and I revisit
it at the same interval that Ido, like major planning.
(12:58):
So I plan my budget for travel.I plan what projects we're
working on. Those two thingscoincide. So it's not like a
weekly metric that I'm goingthrough, but it's certainly
something I'm revisiting. And Ithink what you said about how
it's not inside and not outsideis a pretty key point here.
It's more like something thatwould be on the balance sheet,
right? Like, it's an owner drawof some kind where it's this
(13:21):
exchange from the outside worldto the inside world. And there's
not too many things we create inour business that's built for
our families. But I really viewthis to be that kind of thing
where it's really building thispassageway in the event of
someone else needing to stepover. And I like to think it has
ramifications for even now.
Susan Boles (14:40):
Resiliency in the business. Like, talk about
sustainability. We talk aboutbeing resilient. But actually
being able to really measure, isthat something that we are
accomplishing or just somethingwe're talking about, I think is
really challenging. And I thinksomething like how many people,
(15:00):
how many resources, you know,what does your community of
support really look like is suchan interesting aspect of that
because we do I think asbusiness owners, a lot of us
intellectually know that thecommunity we have that supports
us is useful, but I don't thinkwe really invest as deeply in
(15:27):
trying to, like you like yousaid, like, look for godparents
for our business.
We think about it as that personcan get me sales or that person
would be a great referralpartner or, you know, I use this
community for this particularresource. We don't actually
think about what does our realvillage look like? And what is
(15:51):
my place in that? It is a corecomponent of how resilient we
can be both as business ownersand as businesses themselves.
And I think this is a reallygood placeholder for that.
Like, maybe you're not actuallycounting the numbers of people
on your death list. Maybe youare. But the fact that you have
(16:14):
a death list and the fact thatthere are people from your
community there inherentlybuilds resiliency in a way that
we don't really think about Ithink.
Layla Pomper (16:24):
Yeah, I think what makes this so attractive to me
is my work is very much on theinside of businesses. It's the
opposite. It's what are thethings that allow our business
from the inside to continue tofunction? All the cogs and
gears. How do we the question,how do we systemize our
business?
I've been working on that,working on that for all these
years. And to your point, it'sthe external connections that my
(16:47):
work doesn't touch. And onewould argue almost no work in
the business space touches thatexternal connection. But it
takes a village to raise abusiness quip is there for a
reason because at the end of theday, if you were to disappear
and someone else steps in, theyneed that network. And sometimes
if we're thinking about an exit,like maybe the parents are
(17:09):
stepping down, the kids takingover the business.
There's a little bit more ofthat that can be kind of fudged.
Or maybe you're hiring a CEO andthey bring a network. That's
kind of interesting and thatcould get you through that
transition. But the death listforces you to have higher
standards by saying, no, no, no.This is your spouse.
This is your cousin. This isyour employee. People who do not
(17:31):
have any built up network. Howcan they piggyback on what you
have started to build to makethe transition easier in this
crisis time, which is a
Susan Boles (17:41):
little bit of a different scenario. Nobody wants
to be in that scenario. And Ithink a lot of the times we
avoid thinking about thatscenario because if we don't
think about it, then it won'thappen. But I'm curious as you
have kind of established yourdeath list, established this
plan, and then had theopportunity to maybe come back
and revisit it, improve it. Whathas the impact of having that in
(18:07):
your head, in your business?
What's the impact of that foreither you or the business as a
whole?
Layla Pomper (18:14):
I think there's one behavior that I've noticed
really change because of it.Well, first of all, I've gotten
even more morbid in my format ofjokes, but that was a pretty low
bar already. But the other oneis I realized when I went back
because I think I've onlyreviewed it two or three times
since I've created it justbecause of the timeline that
it's been. This all really cameup about one year ago when the
(18:37):
crazy life stuff happened. Andin each of those visits, what I
realized is the people I feelcomfortable putting on that list
are people where I've asked forhelp, for lack of a better word.
Some self awareness came of thislist and I realized, man, I
offer help a lot. I try to writeif I'm in a mastermind group or
whatever. I try to give asuggestion at every time. But I
(19:00):
noticed myself really beingreluctant to ask people for help
or for opinion or to pick theirbrains because it is rude unless
you've established this rapport.Please, no one message me asking
to pick my brain.
That's not what I'm saying here.But I realized that. And the
people I did put on the list arepeople through some string of
events I had that encounter withwhere I was like, Susan, I am
(19:23):
absolutely stuck on thisprocess. I'm trying to figure
out like, what do you think Icould do? And that experience
gave me the confidence to know,oh, they could be a godparent to
this business for lack of abetter word.
And it actually forced me tostart making a practice of
actually asking for help, whichsounds so simple now that I'm
saying it out loud.
Susan Boles (19:44):
It's so hard, hard, especially I think in the
business community where thereare so many spaces where you go
in hoping for vulnerability,right? Like you'll join a
mastermind hoping that everybodywill be vulnerable so that you
can be vulnerable. But I thinkthe ratio isn't always there.
(20:07):
Right? And sometimes we get intothese groups where we're hoping
for support.
We're hoping to create avillage. And what you end up
getting is sitting in a roomwith everybody talking about how
fantastic things are. And thenyou are sitting there in your
own head being fantastic for me.And I have been in those rooms
(20:30):
where things aren't going thatspectacular for me right now.
But if nobody else is gonna bevulnerable, I don't feel
comfortable being vulnerable.
And I think being willing to bethe person who takes the first
step of like asking for help cansometimes open the floodgates of
(20:51):
now everybody's okay asking forhelp because we've now realized
it's a place of this could be myvillage and not a place of we're
just all talking about all thegood things that are happening.
Anybody who's been in businessfor any length of time knows
you've got peaks, you've gotvalleys. There's real value in
(21:13):
being willing to put yourselfout there and ask for help. And
something that I was reallyfocused on at the beginning of
the year was really deepeningrelationships with people I
already knew. Like, people thatI was like, I would really like
for this person to be a genuinefriend instead of an
(21:33):
acquaintance.
And actually went down therabbit hole of like, how do you
make friends? Right?Essentially, the question is,
how do I go about figuring outhow to make friends with
somebody, particularly we're allonline. Most of us have never
met each other in person. PeopleI've been friends with for a
decade, never met them inperson.
Right? How do you build thatrelationship when you can't just
(21:56):
be like, let's go for a coffee?There's the overcoming, like,
how do I actually contact thisperson? Email fears feels weird,
booking a Zoom call, like you'reyou're asking for their time.
Like, what are themethodologies?
And it's really interestingbecause like you, the thing that
I have found that almost hasuniversal success is asking that
(22:19):
person for help or for theiropinion or or just to be the one
that's like, hey, how are thingsgoing with you? Which it feels
weird to be like, this is anintentional thing, but I think
it's true.
Layla Pomper (22:34):
Yeah. And I think what's nice about the Death List
framing for that is it's notlike it's transactional. And I
think there's that risk, right?If someone's like, I want start
being more intentional about myrelationships. It's very easy to
be like, oh, you're a socialladder climber and you're like,
you should be on The RealHousewife.
We're not trying to be a Bravoshow here. It's just choosing to
be more intentional with how ourtime is spent. As a side effect
(22:56):
of this, because I am a totalnerd and like five years ago I
committed to tracking my timelike militantly. I know that
because of this practice, mytime on social media in its
broadest form more thanquadrupled this year versus
previous years. And I'm not onany social media for the record,
but I do post on LinkedIn now.
(23:17):
And like, I'm in Marco Polo'sand WhatsApp's. And that's kind
of like my social mediaexperience. And I probably spend
like an hour and a half a weeknow, which I'm sure is still low
by Instagram or standards. Butthat's a lot for me across all
of these different channels. Andthat's an intentional choice.
It's investing in these kinds ofrelationships. And I think it's
(23:39):
something I would have viewed asa waste of time, honestly, in
the earlier years. Would be likesocial media, what? No, I should
be marketing.
Susan Boles (23:47):
My behavior of where I'm communicating with
people has changed. I'm still onLinkedIn. And a lot of what I'm
doing on LinkedIn these days isless content and more DM
discussions with other peoplethat are on LinkedIn or in
WhatsApp chats or having Voxerswith people. Yes. And so I'm
being more social, I think, thanI had been before, but it's not
(24:13):
happening publicly.
It's all happening inessentially like tiny private
rooms that happened because ofan event I went to or because of
somebody I met in person thatall of a sudden we were able to
transition from where emailpeople who kind of talk maybe
(24:33):
like six every six to twelvemonths ish will like circle back
and be like, hey, how arethings? And then you have like a
thirty minute Zoom chat to catchup and you go away for another
year. There is an element that Ihave found about like meeting
somebody in person that allowsthe shift from like, this is a
(24:55):
digital relationship to now thisis like a real relationship,
even though the communication isstill digital.
Layla Pomper (25:03):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (25:04):
I love the idea of this one piece in your business
that has kind of cascaded acrossyou as a business owner, your
approach to business, yourapproach to marketing, your
approach to support, really allcascaded from this one place of
realizing that your villagewasn't strong enough.
Layla Pomper (25:27):
Yeah. And we didn't talk about this, but just
for like the nerdy operationsfolks out there, it did have an
impact on the business itself.Based on this deathless KPI, we
started doing interviews. Like,I know you obviously have some
interview stuff going on. I'venever done interview stuff.
I did here or there someunintentional collab things over
(25:48):
the years. But after this year,we had started doing one on one
interviews with people. Andsometimes it was people I knew.
Sometimes it was people I didn'tknow. But we worked in
intentional one on oneconnection time for the sole
purpose of buildingrelationships.
Like we've spoken, you and Ibefore about how podcasts, it's
not always the best way to getin front of more people, but
(26:09):
it's a fantastic way to get infront of one wonderful person
and talk with the person thatyou are speaking to. And I look
forward to our chats here,Susan, because of that. And that
was one way that our businessmodel shifted because of this
KPI. It was almost like a corevalue was installed by just
tracking this metric. And theother thing is on our
fulfillment side, we've beenadapting like a membership
(26:31):
model, and we're looking at anoperators event coming up here
in the next six months.
These are all things that areall directly sourced from
realizing the power of in personevents, the power of community.
And it's just figuring out thisway that how do you infuse this
kind of priority into the entirebusiness? So it's not just
something you're doing in yourfree time, but it's a flywheel
that you have to do as part ofthe core business. And yes, a
Susan Boles (26:55):
side effect is it helps this extraneous factor,
but it also strengthens thebusiness and puts community and
village building into the fiberof what the business is. When
you are in operations and whenyou are in process, it is so
easy to start to view thebusiness as just a series of
(27:16):
cogs. Right? Like, it's justthis system that goes with this
system and this other one overhere, and they're all connected,
and we're documenting them. Andlike, when you're on the
operations side of businesses,businesses all start to look the
same.
It's all the same functionality,which is why operators can so
(27:37):
easily move between one nextbusiness because the checklists
and the SOPs and all of thosepieces can be pretty much the
same across any business,regardless of industry,
regardless of like, you know,there's a little tweaks, like,
do you have an inventory basedbusiness or not? Like, there's
little tweaks, but I think it'sso easy to start viewing it all
(27:59):
as just checklists and cogs andautomations and systems. And
inherently, it sort of takes youaway from the humanity that
businesses are actuallyextremely human. And it's so
easy to forget about that in thesea of the cogs moving. And
(28:21):
Yeah.
I love that you are seeing thatimpact in your business. And
it's kind of like pulling youback out. You mentioned earlier
about how you're inside thebusiness versus like the outside
the business. And I love thatthis enables you to cross out of
the business, cross out of thecogs, and reconnect with what I
(28:45):
think is the best part abouthaving a business, which is the
community around you and aroundyour business.
Layla Pomper (28:53):
But what I think is interesting about this key
metric or however we want tothink about it, this metric
that's become a value. It isforcing me to make this into a
business because I'm not contentwith it just being initiative.
When I get obsessed withsomething, want like the whole
team behind it. Let's make it athing. And then I get even more
obsessed where I'm like, I wantmy clients to care about this
thing, too, because it's soimpactful for me.
(29:14):
I think they would also valueit. What has been really
fascinating about thisparticular one is when I'm
working with operators, theydidn't go through the shit I
went through to scare me awakein this. You need your village
thing. I'm talking to a lot ofpeople who are in the shoes I
was in five, seven more yearsago. And so it's interesting to
(29:36):
try to persuade other people toview their death list or to view
their village as somethingthat's important to them, to
view community as somethingthat's an operator skill set.
Candidly, it's been an uphillbattle. Speaking of stuff you're
trying to figure out, gettingpeople to recognize it's not
just about knowing how toautomate or to streamline your
customer service thing. So ithappens in two days instead of
(29:57):
three. That's not as knowing whoyou can call on the phone, who
operates a business that doesthat every day and have them on
speed dial. Because mostoperators like I'm extremely
social by operator standards.
And let me just tell you, thatis an extremely sad bar to set.
Most operators don't know oneperson who does what they do,
(30:20):
period. And so it's beeninteresting to take this KPI and
prescribe it for lack of abetter word, or at least
evangelize for it to a broaderskill set. And maybe I shouldn't
be pushing this so hard onclients, but I just feel like it
adds so much value that I wantothers to see the value of it,
too.
Susan Boles (30:38):
I was talking to my partner Josh about this the
other day and trying to describehow different operations is from
other areas of the business.Right? So I hang out with a lot
of marketers. Marketers have tobe some of the most social
collaborative people in businessI've ever met. Right?
(31:00):
Like, I haven't done a lot of,like, formal marketing training,
but I would consider myself apretty good marketer because I
just sit in the room withmarketers and listen to them
talk, listen to themcollaborate, listen to them be
social. And similarly, evenfinance people are social.
They're supportive. In multiplefinance groups where, like,
(31:25):
we're all collaborating andchecking on different processes
and who's using which softwareand what have people found to be
really effective. And operatorsare so weird because they don't
do any of that.
They don't they do not, like,come out of their silo. I do
(31:47):
think it's a limitation. And Ithink part of it then expands
operator industry wide. And Ithink part of the problem is
when you're a really goodoperator, it looks really easy,
and people think you're notdoing anything. Right?
Like, really good operationstend to almost end up being
invisible. And because we're notin more of a community, we're
(32:12):
not more verbal about that. Wedon't talk about that. And I
think it does end up limitingand deprioritizing operations as
a whole industry. And I think alot of it ties back to nobody's
being social.
Nobody's being collaborative.
Layla Pomper (32:30):
Yeah. And I mean, could even go more basic if
we're gonna geek out inoperations is I don't think
there's language to talk aboutit. The Death List doing it
personally, I realized I wasn'tasking for help enough. And I
started to realize asking forhelp is a thing that I need to
think of as a thing thatrequires effort. The term
operator doesn't even have adefinition really.
Like, what does it mean to builda process? Like, what does it
(32:52):
mean to automate something?Like, we don't even have the
language to start theconversation to know how to
start talking about this. So Ithink it's been fascinating
seeing this Ripple effect, and Ihaven't figured out how to go
through it. But I've been tryingto replicate the journey I've
been on for the last, I don'tknow, about twelve months
focused on this metric insidethe business for almost the same
(33:15):
period of time.
Literally the month after thistraumatic event that triggered
the death list, I started themembership in the business
again. And it was this call forcommunity, this call for
connection. That was definitelynot an accident looking back on
it. And as I'm saying this rightnow and now we're here a year
later trying to figure out howto evolve it. And like, is it an
(33:36):
in person event?
Because like you and I havetalked about here, in person
events are such a magical way tobuild those deeper connections
that are friendships, not justlike, hey, can you fix my broken
PC? So it's trying to replicatethat through.
Susan Boles (33:50):
I love that. So is there anything you think we
should talk about that wehaven't touched on yet? I would
just
Layla Pomper (33:55):
say you don't need to have a near death experience
to start doing this. This issomething that anyone can sit
down right now listening to thisand write down if you
disappeared tomorrow, who wouldyou want your significant other
or your right hand person tocall for help getting through
the next twenty four hours ofchaos? You might find that your
list is huge. Congratulations.You don't have to listen to the
(34:19):
rest of this.
Oh, wait, we're mentioning thisat the end. Maybe too late. You
just wasted thirty minutes ofyour life. But for the rest of
you, if you have a resultsimilar to I do, where you have
a handful of names and you'relike, that's it. That's all I
have to show for the last decadeof my life.
There are so many actions youcan also take. And I think just
by writing that list, it willbring attention to this and
(34:41):
you'll start to see yourbehaviors change as well. And
maybe like what Susan and I aretalking about, you can start
then pressing that forward andpaying that forward by working
it into your business or intowhat's to come next.
Susan Boles (34:53):
Honestly, my whole philosophy is that the only way
we beat AI is that we all bandtogether. Yeah. Because I'm
like, the more human we can be,the better off all of us and all
of our businesses will be. Sothank you so much for coming and
talking to me about dying. It'sa little bit of a dark topic,
(35:15):
but I actually think it's such agood window into hope.
Like, the looking at the darkallows us to then figure out
like, how do we build? How do webuild a village? And what does
that look like?
Layla Pomper (35:29):
Yeah, if you don't have a good death list, you
probably don't have a good life.
Susan Boles (35:34):
What Leila built with her death list KPI wasn't
just an emergency plan. It was acomplete redesign of how she
approaches relationships,community, and business
resilience. She pulled twocritical levers from the Calmer
framework that transformed herfrom somebody who avoided
networking to somebody who seesvillage building as core
(35:57):
business infrastructure. First,she redesigned her business
model around values and people.Instead of treating
relationships as a nice to have,she made community connection a
measurable priority.
She shifted from viewing hernetwork as transactional to
seeing it as foundational. It'sthe external support system that
(36:18):
makes all of her internalsystems actually work. Second,
she changed how she thoughtabout efficiency and operations.
So rather than just optimizinginternal processes, she started
investing time and relationshipsthat create real business
resilience. She began spendingan hour and a half a week on
(36:40):
what she calls social media.
But what's really relationshipbuilding through LinkedIn DMs,
WhatsApp groups, and Marco Poloconversations. That's time she
would have previously seen aswasted and is now recognized as
essential infrastructure. Andthe result is a business that's
not just operationally sound,but relationally resilient.
(37:03):
She's a founder who went fromoffering help, but never asking
for it to someone who modelsvulnerability and builds genuine
community. And her deathless KPIis a metric that forced her to
confront an uncomfortable truth.
You can have all the systems inthe world, but without the right
people to support them, you'rebuilding on quicksand. So here's
(37:26):
your tiny action. Sit down rightnow and write your own death
list. If you disappearedtomorrow, who would you want
your partner or your key personto call for help in the next
twenty four hours? Don'toverthink it.
Just write down the names bycategory, legal, financial,
operational, technical. If yourlist feels robust,
(37:48):
congratulations, you have builta village. If it feels a little
thin, you've just identified themost important infrastructure
project in your business.Because the truth is community
isn't just nice to have, it'sthe difference between a
business that survives and onethat truly thrives. Until next
time, stay calm.
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