Founder's Leap

The frightening moment when someone decides to take the plunge and go full-time on their own project, without a backup job.

Hi! Welcome to the Founder's Leap newsletter.

I’m JD, and like many others, I'm trying to start my own business.

This involves failing a lot and learning from these failures. This often happens without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for a long time - it's been over a year for me.

Hearing about others' success helps shortcut this process. It also gives me motivation to keep going.

Founder's Leap is my way of sharing the knowledge from successful people.

It's for those who are forever with one foot out the door, yearning for the right moment to leave. It’s for the ones that are tired of making someone else money while moving their own needle. It’s for the ones who are about to quit.

They have made it, and so can you.

In this issue of Founder’s Leap, we take a look at the personal journey of Layla Pomper, founder of ProcessDriven.

Layla never intended to own a business - in fact, she was actively trying to avoid it - but nonetheless, even though that was not the initial intention, she quit her job and ended up creating a thriving business.

Layla now makes a personal income 3 to 5 times what she did in her job, and gets to help companies with their processes.

Today, Find out her motivations, challenges, and the strategies she used. She took the Founder’s Leap from a secure job to a fulfilling entrepreneurial life.

What you will find today

• Founder’s card

• Background and current work

• Founder’s Leap and Monetization

• Growing as an entrepreneur

Founder’s card

Background and current work

Tell us about yourself, your background, and the path that led you to where you are today.

It actually goes way back for me. I grew up the daughter of business owners. Everybody in my family owned a business. And I saw how trying, tiring, and exhausting that was.

So I was determined as a young person to never own a business, ever.

I worked hard, got a scholarship, went to college, and my whole goal was to get out of small business land and fast forward.

I took the founders leap, as you described, after getting my dream corporate job. And it turns out it was the best choice I've ever made.

What are you working on at the moment?

Now, I run Process Driven, and our mission is to make small businesses sustainable so that they're the exact opposite of what I saw as a kid growing up. We started off doing a lot of software training, but right now, most of our time is spent teaching our program, ProcessDriven Foundations, where we teach people how to systemize their operations.

But right now, I'm excited about building out a new program that aims to build a community of small business operators to swap notes and network globally.

There's usually one person who's holding the whole business together and that person is usually the only one.

And so we're trying to build out a community where people who are the operations person for a small business can come together and swap notes and get to know other people from across the world, across the globe, different industries and niches.

Founder’s Leap and Monetization

How long did it take you to earn the same you did from your job?

I remember seeing the invoice on my phone and turning to somebody. I was at a business event, and I was like, I just did it. I just crossed the number.

It took about a year and a half to replace my entry-level corporate finance salary, which made it a bit easier.

How much do you make now compared to what you did at your job?

It differs each year. That's a shift, and sometimes, people struggle with entrepreneurship. So there are times when the business has made 20 times what I made as a salaried employee at corporate (but I don't get that).

My pay has generally been three to five times more.

But this is after two years of making 0.1x. So I always want to give that caveat around numbers, but that's about where I'm now, and that's plenty.

Why did you decide you had to fully commit to your company - taking the Founder’s Leap?

There were two moments for me.

One was quitting my job. I was being moved within the company to my dream position, which was overseas. I was looking forward to it. It was everything I had wanted, what I had gone to college for.

And when I got that offer, and they started going through the passport process, I realized I was miserable.

I had finally gotten my dream job, which I'd been working towards all my schooling, and I felt absolutely dread.

I knew I was eventually going to try to move areas. And I remember talking to my manager at the time and being like, “Hey, I really want to move into this area and do this.”

And they had mentioned something like a two to five-year timeline.

And I remember my eyes bugging out and thinking five years?! Five years to do something that's not going to make me hate myself. I'll be a zombie by that time. I can't do it. I can't wait five years.

And so I quit the job thinking that I would kind of go do something else just to get some experience and then come back so I could get that mid-level job I really wanted.

It was purely because I'm going to get paid to learn by starting this thing, and who cares if it works out? I've got enough savings to get by. That was the initial leap.

The second moment, as I was working on that, I realized, oh, wow, this could really be something. That was when I decided to really go all in on the business. This was about nine months later when I realized, oh, this is something I might want to stick with.

And I went all in on the business once again, and it's kind of been going ever since.

What was the scariest moment on the whole journey since leaving “regular job”?

I think I made it less scary because I didn't go into it with a lot of intention. I think if I had a family to support making $200 a month, some years or some months, that would have been the scariest moment.

But because I had savings and I didn't have a family to support, that wasn't that bad. Honestly, I think the scariest stuff was actually around other people, especially hiring for the first time.

Then, the very first virtual assistant I ever hired was committing employment fraud and was stealing from the government. And I, you know, I just hired her a few months in, I got this scary letter from the IRS, basically saying, you know, just this big, long scary thing calling me to court and all this other stuff for just hiring my very first assistant.

And it turns out it was totally fine, thanks to having a contract. That would be a lesson I would share with everybody, but it scared me so badly.

Imagine your very first hire was committing fraud and trying to blame you for it.

It was just. It was scary.

Growing as an entrepreneur

What marketing channel was the most important for your growth?

The main channel is definitely YouTube.

And honestly, I would say until I started incorporating YouTube into the business, the business, really, it was kind of that hockey stick again, where it was really slow word of mouth.

When I started creating content mainly for my clients, but then other people who weren't my clients started to see it. That's when everything started growing.

We have other channels, you know, we nurture on email, LinkedIn, all that stuff. But honestly, YouTube is by and large the one that has changed everything. And Google search kind of encompasses all of that.

Based on your experiences, what key piece of advice would you offer someone considering starting their own business?

I think the biggest thing that somebody needs to have in place (besides just some savings, because, again, prepare for those two years) I would say incredible self motivation. Even more than self discipline.

Most people I know who started a business around the same time I did, my friends and peers, they've gotten out of it mainly because they haven't been able to keep their foot on the pedal the right amount without burning out.

That is the most important skill that I've relied on through the ups and downs over the past six some years.

You almost need a minimum level of it just to, to get through the hard part, because the start, the first year, first three years, are so much harder than year four and year five.

It just gets progressively easier.

But most people burn out at 18 months in. Most people I know close their business at 18 months.

Where can people learn more about you and your products?

People can find out more about me and my offerings on our website, https://processdriven.co, and our YouTube channel, https://processdriven.co/youtube. They can also connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laylapomper.

Thank you for joining us in this issue of Founder’s Leap, and a special thanks to Layla Pomper for telling us her amazing story.

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See you in the next issue,

JD