ClickUp™ Setup for Agencies Part 1: How We Manage Client Tasks and Monthly Workflows | Episode 166

this is the thing like this is the feature right here this is the part of process that no tool out there does well there isn't a single one so for what it's worth the structure of this i believe can be duplicated across like any project management tool you're using whether it's a kasana or reich or monday it's all like very similar in terms of like structure we have an automation built in so when a task is marked as done and the due date has arrived it marks the task as complete and it generates the new reoccurring task it'll change the status to complete and that task will go away thus allowing the next task to be created for the following month each client has an automation that sends an email all we need you to do is go to this page that links to the click up form submit some images of recent projects you did and then we'll get that up on your site when they fill that form out then it generates a task in the client requests folder that email automation by the way they can respond to that it's not a no reply email and then it'll respond in that task that automated that when we had like social media proofs we would email the client from like the activities section in the task we'd be like hey client here is your proofs and then we would send it and then they could respond to that and when they responded to that it would nest the reply to the proof comment in the activity of that we've tried i don't know how many there was a while there like weeks where i was just signing up for stuff just to see if they had this one feature i'm done moving do you unpacked in like a day or two days but you didn't talk at all i thought you died yeah i all i wanted to have it all be done so that monday morning i was ready to go so this was over fourth of july weekend and yeah we basically took two days to pack up two days to unpack and i told jenny like we're gonna do it we're gonna do it so i don't want this to drag out i really don't want to um my dad used to have a rule that we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it we're gonna do it in the military we unpacked in a single day like you had to be done um so it was like nobody sleeps until the entire house is unpacked and uh i can't do that because that's crazy right like i can't if i do that to to jenny then she'll have the trauma that i do so um that's not realistic but yeah we were able to do it basically in two days so that when the week started and yeah sorry i was like i was like i'm blocking everything out i'm going full focus and and we got it done you did there was a lot i wanted to send you but then like i had already sent you like two or three different things i'm like i can't keep sending him things he's not gonna pay attention before too i uh we moved into our place in like june 9th or something like that we're it's it's july 10th by the way it's july 10th for all of you uh hunter hunter fans uh in my calendar i have i have a reminder every year to uh send cody a meme of hisika's bear butt because it's july 10th uh but uh anyways yeah so it's been over a month and we are not fully unpacked yet we still have um a storage unit left uh so that's that's one out of three left to end back but so we we did me did the big move you're in chicago now you're you're big dog in chicago uh des moines is not real like it's not a real city um but at least people know it so anybody listening if you for some reason are in iowa and you're in des moines because that's the only place you're going to be if you're in iowa let me know shoot me a message on linkedin we can meet up uh it's pretty cool here i mean you jake you know i mean you've got fam here so yeah des moines is definitely the coolest part of iowa yeah uh yeah yeah well well i guess we'll get into it cool yeah i hope you enjoyed des moines you can drink the water now though right i've been keeping track of that yeah that was uh i think when people not from around here hear that they're like what are you talking about because it's such a specific water problem right we have high nitrate that's our issue here people are like nitrate so this isn't lead or you know any of the other common stuff that the epa kind of talks about and we're like no it's straight up from farming like the farm runoff hits the water it's all nitrate nitrate gets high and um yeah so i was thinking about buying the it's you can't just get like a normal brita filter or whatever you have to get a proper reverse osmosis machine in order to deal with nitrate and i was thinking about doing it but they're expensive and once we got here it was i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know like at a good enough point where you could drink it again they still have some limitations on like um lawn watering and things like that but it's drinkable you're good to drink it um it's just that if they were doing those other things then the like the demand would be so high that they couldn't keep up with keeping the safe drinking water part so yeah that part's nice uh chicago tap water is good i like it uh lauren refuses to drink tap water though she just she won't so we just have like kobias and on some bottles of water which i think is awful it's wasteful beef with it uh it's just gross like i i get it like it's just like it goes through all the city pipes and then like through the home pipes that are were built in the 60s and never changed and like i i get it i get it i really do but like at the same time it's just like microbes in your water that are usually beneficial for you than drinking purified water which i think is what we have right here uh yeah alkaline purified water there's no minerals in it so it's like you're not actually getting anything from it she likes bottled water yeah i mean she likes water good yeah because could you do like the the big jugs yeah we used to uh it's just kind of a pain you know just like we've i thought like we're in like almost a thousand square feet less than we were in minneapolis and uh i thought about getting like one of those like water cooler things like the big ones that you just take to walmart and whatever but this is more space that we just don't have anymore yeah all right business we failed at starting the business business yeah yeah here we go we're doing it all right so this is a listener request i can't remember who it was i think it was a i'm gonna guess i think it was aj or josh it was one of the it was one of the one of the guys that write in quite a bit um but it was talking it was asking us to go through our click up process and just what our project management like the inside of our project management tool looks like and uh i know like some people use asana some people use like monday um and then like we used base camp for a little while so uh i ended up on click up because the last agency i worked with was using it um but before cody i was using asana and i was only using asana because the like someone i that owned their own like social media marketing agency back in like 2017 who i was talking with she was using asana and so then i started using it because they had a free plan and then uh cody and i partnered up i was still like using asana but it was just me and him so really it's just me using it and then uh we looked at base camp because base camp at the time was like just flat 99 and you got everything and that's all it was i think it's different now i think i checked up on it and it and it is different um but like they've revamped it or yeah like they revamped the pricing i could be wrong let's let's look real quick yeah base camp was it base camp software oh it looks real similar did they just increase the 99 oh yeah so now they have different they have a 299 they have a 15 per month per user they have a free forever like yeah this is way different than before when we did it was 99 bucks it was like you got everything which is one of the reasons why we did it because when we got base camp it was myself cody and then we had a full timer and uh but there was a lot of problems it was just very inflexible so it didn't have like you could have templates but then if you wanted to modify a template you'd have to rebuild it with the additional steps in and then there were like no really automated notifications or due date filtering or anything like that and it just kind of it works really well for i think like boutique agencies that have a lot of moving parts that want to get a bunch of team collaboration in on something where nothing is like the same with each client but that's not our model at all our model is extremely productized and things need to be templatized edited re-templatized and then like automated in terms of dates and scheduling and and assignments so our um the last agency i worked at they right when i started i think they were like three months into using click up it was brand new i think right before that they were using hike oh sorry reich they're using reich uh and there was a lot of people who were actually happy with click up which was weird because usually when you switch project management tools your staff is usually not happy um they like the tool they're using so when cody and i came to reassess our project management system we went with click up just because i was already familiar with it and uh i could just copy kind of the ultimate the optimizations they were making in theirs but modified a bit for our own use case so um going through all of this just keep in mind that this is like 99 me um because this is something i think i think everybody knows like i've been kind of heading the whole click up thing um there's a lot of the internal stuff um was a lot of cody's ideas and then i just implemented them but that'll be the internal stuff would be for next episode um this is all this is going to be like our overall structure of it and then how we manage client spaces and folders in this so for what it's worth the structure of this i believe can be duplicated across like any project management tool you're using whether it's a kasana or reich or monday it's all like very similar in terms of like structure there's features that are a little different i don't know actually you don't think so no because like i was gonna say there's a huge difference let me back up i'm gonna back up a little bit further um i think we've made a noticeable splash in productized services for agencies which is weird because we don't what that's bold like bold bold to say yeah um because i don't see where else it's coming from but we don't get proportional feedback to the amount of uh stuff that i'm seeing out there that's my take i could be totally wrong right it could just be being thinking that i'm cooler than i am right um but that's how it feels that's the impression that i'm getting and with that uh people still aren't really understanding there's a big difference between project management and process management all of these tools do project management and they do it very well actually most of them suck at process management when you start getting in there and you say i have a conveyor belt system and i want to be able to duplicate and tweak this they're not that great at it and click up was actually one of the best i remember i wrote down two there's another one i went back to look at it and they went under too um i can't even remember the name of it now but it's like click up can do it because click up can do anything but a lot of these other ones i don't even think once you when you get to the part of like specifically the repeating um monthly client marketing work as if it's a conveyor belt system like that most of the tools are not very good at doing you still have to do it yourself or something like that when it should be a pretty automated process um and that like that's some of them do it better and some of them do it worse and some of them there's like a limit to how much you can do of it anyway you're just kind of accepting that like for us it was click up is the best at doing it um but i also wanted to throw out that um i think some people too would think that this is probably like this should be more of a cody thing than jake thing and earlier on um jake you brought up you're like hey we gotta we gotta start like doing a better job with project and process because we're gonna start dropping things we're not gonna be able to keep track of it and i'm like yeah you're you're totally right i think it's very hard to do both you have procedure and then you have project slash project and then you have project slash project and then you have project slash process and you can put process with procedure that part's not hard but when you're managing the projects with it that's when like i would argue that those are different things in the same way that you have a technical writer and then you have a project manager right and if you're one person doing both of those things um well you're amazing if you can do it um but i just straight up told jake i was like i can't i need your help if uh if we're going to do this so that's why um jake leads the charge with click up yeah well and there's um you know i also had like firsthand experience of like so my last agency they they hired zen pilot who are the um co-hosts like the the guy who's who owns zen pilot they're like their whole business model is basically like click up optimization for agencies and um i think they're pretty pricey but my last agency would spend a lot of money on on that because they had um funding so um i was able to basically like duplicate a lot of the things that they were doing just because zencast or a lot of the things that they were doing were zen pilot zencast zen pilot was in there um and uh some of the stuff did make sense some of the stuff i didn't agree with but i think a lot of the stuff was tailored to what they were trying to do and their business model not zen pilots but um leverage lab business model i think was flawed when they started the project so um what i meant by like the structure though i meant like like spaces folders lists tasks subtasks like that's that's pretty much fluid across all all of them um yeah there is one thing in good point click about there's one thing in click i don't like though and it's that you can't have subfolders and i'll get to why i i think i'll get to why i think i wrote it down in my notes but um i'll just start with like the high level view of of what our entire dashboard looks like and so for starters we we have the business plan so there's like the there's like free starter business and then business plus so we have business and the reason why we have that is because i wanted the uh automations i believe you get automation in starter but i wanted automations with conditional logic and that was important um the business plan also has timesheets so if you have a business plan and you have a business plan and you have so we can track contractor time and just like regular time and in dashboards and um build those comprehensive reports and then sso is important so single sign-on um people just being able to use their google account to connect to uh click up and sign in it's just a security thing i would just if if we could have every tool that we have be sso that'd be great uh we don't have to worry about things getting hacked and um sign-ons are literally tied to emails which means that when and if an employee gets fired or leaves then we just disconnect their email workspace account and then they can't access any of the tools so that's why sso is important um so click up is designed in spaces and this is like tiered down so like spaces folders lists tasks subtasks and that's and that's how that spacing breaks down so our spaces we have five of them in order they are clients internal work operations growth and template management uh the only ones the only one that are that i'm really going to focus on today is the client space because this has like the most amount of stuff in it and then like in terms of like automations and things like that and then all the rest of them i'll talk about in the next episode um maybe i'll get to some of them in this one but so in the client space every client has their own folder so like i think some people will have like one folder for clients and then every client will be a list ours is it starts higher than that so it's every client has a folder and there are three different folder colors green means active and green means active and green means active and active marketing gray is just their hosting or they're inactive and then yellow means they're onboarding i'm going to switch my my browser panes here okay um the colors aren't really that important and when i was managing this i would just i would forget like a client would get done onboarding and i'd forget to change them to green and we just had like tons of oranges um or yellows i guess um it wasn't until angie came on board and she became the operations assistant where i was like hey this is not your job like now you manage these color schemes and the only reason we have them in there because it's it's that much easier to find clients who are onboarding um we can just go in there and be like oh there's that client that's onboarding uh all the clients are also ordered alphabetically so this is a really weird feature about click up but they don't automatically order things alphabetically or have an option to do so so when angie creates a new client folder she has to actually go and drag it to the alphabetical spot that it's supposed to be in uh so in those folders each client folder has two lists they have client administration and they have monthly so in client admin that's like where all the ad hoc tasks are like emails reporting calls um things like that for like tracking and note-taking purposes if we're not actually doing like the monthly tasks if we have to track time responding to a long email or if a client calls that's where i'll track that time and then monthly is for all the monthly service tasks so whether they're like hosting or just doing monthly marketing so like um do we have like one off tasks so like what a one-off task would be like google workspace setup that wouldn't go in the monthly the monthly list that would go in the admin list and then we would just um do all those tasks in there close that out and we'd archive that or just close it out um in monthly this is like where our productized services go so like the foundation is our seo ppc and website management a productized service that list or those like three tasks will go into that list and then they on a monthly basis and i will get into how those reoccur so uh i'm just kind of going over high level right now and then i'll get like deep into it and stop me if you have questions or cody or if you think uh i should elaborate on something yeah like if i'm a listener and i'm like hey i want to know about this i haven't hit that yet but i'll do it i'll like raise my hand or something yeah so there's a couple nuances first one um they can't they can't automatically be alphabetized by default i have to do that manually or and just do that manually somebody does and it's dumb um there are two folders above all of the client folders so like if we have one client that starts with letter a we've got two folders above that that aren't clients and one of them we use the pound sign or hashtag depending on how young you are um pound client requests that just keeps at the top and then we have we have another one right below that with an emoji in the front of it that says evergrow client admin and uh i said that keeps it at the top like alphabet like it alphabetizes it but we could just manually put it up there um you know it just visually represents us like it's easier to spot uh so in client requests this is actually where a um a view so like there's a in each folder and or each whatever you go into whether it's a space a folder a list or uh yeah or a list there's a views at the top and you can have like a list view or like a board or a gantt or whatever just different ways to visualize your tasks or data within that um that project and uh in the client request they have a there's a list view and then there's a form view so a form view is basically just a form that we built that we can send to our clients and they can fill it out and create like uh or give us information to then create project pages on their website these project pages are just basically beefy gallery pages for projects they recently completed and uh when they fill that form out then it generates a task in the client request folder with their with their their name on it and then they can fill it out and then they can fill it out So then Eva goes in there and she checks that periodically to see if there's new client requests. And then if she does, then she drags that task to the appropriate monthly folder. And so I know this now, it sounds like it's a one-off project that should actually go in admin, but it actually goes in a monthly because this client or this project page thing is actually a component of our productized SEO service. It just requires our client's input and those get queued up. They don't get like automatic due dates or anything like that because a really good example is we have one client who just onboard with us, but in our SEO processes, we have four months of SEO work for the first four months. She submitted two project requests. I had to tell her those project requests aren't going to get done for five months or it's going to be a month five and month six that we do those because we have four months of. Of additional work to do. Well, and it's in their best interest for that, right? What's that? It's in their best interest to do that because we do these in order of priority. They could tell us to prioritize it over it and sure, we would do it, but we would be like, well, we have higher priority stuff for SEO. So yeah, we just queue it up. So that's client requests. And then in the Evergrow client admin folder, so this exists because the PPC team. Or Angie and Lisette spend five minutes per day on each account doing budget pacing. So time tracking in 50 different client accounts is not efficient. It is something we used to do or we used to make them do. It was a complaint that was brought up that was like, not a complaint. It was more like, hey guys, this is like not efficient. And so I think they came up with a solution to say like, we should just have one task in here where we just start at the start of the day and then we end it when we're done doing budget pacing for all the accounts. So then what we're. Yeah. Yeah. I'm raising my hand. Here it goes. All right. I raised it. This isn't a question. It's more of a side quest because people are like, it sounds like Angie's doing a lot. Yeah. So something worth clarifying too, because Angie helps with all internal operations. And part of that, like a lot of process procedure project, that management stuff is her. And it's actually like we asked her if it would be advantageous to have her on some accounts that she's managing, not most of them, right? I'm trying to think of a comparison. So typically in agencies, as you get bigger, people move up into more managerial roles, not necessarily admin, just managerial. And with that, you're in meetings all day and you're not doing as much actual client work and that sort of thing. So the expectation is that your billable client hours decrease or they shrink down because you're going to spend more time managing and less time doing the stuff. And because of that, if you have like a 80% ideal billable goal, those people, it might only be 50 or something, right? So Angie has a small handful of accounts because it's really good for her to know when something changes in the process. She doesn't have to be taught, right? She might not know it as well as somebody else who has a lot of accounts, but because she at least has a few, it's not complete shock when she has to go in and see like, wow, the entire interface changed and I have no idea what's happening because she was familiar with it already before. And not just because she documented it, but because she was actually in there for a little bit. It'll get a little weird. Well, no, I thought about this too, because it'll get a little weird when like we have either her or someone else where like that's her full-time job is documentation and procedural documentation. And they're no longer have like in accounts anymore. That'll probably get a little weird, but then we have to create a system in place to be like any minor change that happens needs to be notified like immediately. So then the full-time person could then handle that. But yeah. So this is, we also have this client admin for like website updates and like health checks. And so this is something like, again, Angie does like the 15th every month, just goes in updates, plugins and checks everything. But then it takes like two minutes per. So like going in and like switching between, I don't know, 15, or I guess this would be like 60 clients. It's just not, it's just not like time efficient. So she just starts the task and then just goes through it all in half a day, if that. And then what we can do then with time reporting is we can divide the total time tracked in a month and the number of clients we have, and then just ensure that that doesn't exceed two hours per client for the PPC stuff. Cause we know that if we allocate roughly four hours per client in what they're paying per month, then that PPC task should not have hours that equal more than two per the amount of clients that we have. And if it does like significantly like if it's three hours per client, then that might be an issue. Then we'll have to dig into that deeper, but we haven't had issues with that. So I think it's funny. Like I think everybody knows or has heard of an agency where they have a, they have like a project in their time tracking tool for literally tracking time. They're like, I spent five minutes tracking time and I'm going to log that in the time tracker. I'm making fun of you a little bit. If you're one of those agencies, like we're just being silly now, if that's, if that's what we're doing there's good and bad ways to handle all of that. This was just a really good and efficient way to do it. Otherwise you're spending almost as much time in there saying that you're doing the thing as you were actually doing the thing. And it's not a good use of time then. Yeah. You cut out there for me for a little bit. I'm curious to see how that will load in the final, the final one. Hopefully it doesn't get cut completely, but if it did, that's okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. It'll be a long lost mini cut. Yeah. You keep like freezing up. I can hear you like just fine, but like every now and then you stop or freeze. I wonder, man, I hope it's not, we talked about the wiring in. I'm not wired in, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, technically not either. Yeah. So we talked, this was like when I was tearing everything down to move and I messaged shake, I'm like, Hey, I'm unplugged, right? I'm on wifi. I'm not through ethernet. Is that okay? Like if it's a problem for the podcast, let me know. And he's like, no, it's fine. It's going to be okay. I'm like, okay. But if it's not, let me know. So hopefully it's not. Cause I don't want to even, well, the weird thing now is yeah. Similar thing. I can just reach out and touch the router. Um, which is the same thing for you now. Right. That's right by you. It's like under my desk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway. Uh, well my router is also like plugged into the wall electrically or not, not electrically, but with like a, just like a, like a wall plug. Like there's no like ethernet or phone jack or anything like that. Oh yeah. And so like, so my thought, I was like, it doesn't matter if I wire in, it's still wireless. Like it doesn't, it doesn't matter. It's not jacked into anything. I don't know. I don't know how it works, but I don't pay for internet. My landlord does. So, uh, all right, well, we'll move on. Uh, where am I at? Okay. So, uh, yeah. So that's just how we manage those now, like Eva doing SEO, she will track her time individually in each client. Cause sometimes that does require every client requires more work. She has to go into search console every month for every client to actually look at data and see what can be done. Um, if that's the case, I'm not sure. So I'm not sure. So I'm not sure. So I'm not sure. So I'm not sure. Um, okay. So when you click into a client folder, so remember how I said there's different views at the top for like client folders and there's different views for lists, the view for the client folder, I guess, and the list, because it's, it applies to both. Um, there are two of them, or I guess there's, sorry, there's three of them. There's a task or list view. That's like the most common one, which is to see all the tasks in order of what needs to be done. There's a dashboard view, which is relatively new. And so what the dashboard actually does is it shows, or it, it accumulates, um, their tasks and time estimates and shows how much time we have spent on that client in a month and how much time is remaining. Uh, it also shows individual team member team members tracking time as well as the cumulative time. So, um, and, and click up, there's a feature on all the tasks that you can do where, uh, you can track time obviously, but if you add a time estimate, which is another built-in field, um, then, and you build a report on this and you put it in a dashboard, it'll tell you how much time is remaining of the time estimate for that task. So if we roughly have four hours, it's like four and a half hours per client, given our budget labor constraints, two hours are allocated towards SEO. Two hours are allocated a 1.5 ish or two or allocated to PPC. Um, but in the time estimates, this is where it gets a little unique in the time estimates. There's only two hours and 15 minutes in there because 15 minutes is applied to website updates and maintenance. And then two hours applied to SEO. So there's only a little bit of time in there. So that's why the time estimates don't equal four hours or four and a half hours in each client view, because half that time is tracked in an administrative task in a different folder. So when we're exceeding time on the dashboard, what that's basically saying is, uh, for that client, what it's basically saying is we're spending too much time on SEO. Um, but also, um, if we set does track time for the PPC tasks, uh, task in the, um, actual client folder that tells me there was something unique about that client. Like we need to build a custom landing page. Uh, Cody, I see your hand raised. I did it, but I didn't realize when I found out I could do it here. Such a boomer. Like I should have figured that out. I struck the struck bits episode. Remember? I know, I know it's embarrassing. I just like starting to repeat things. I know I said to people too, that's the, that's the true sign that you're getting old. I think you're like, ah, it's the same funny story. I've definitely told you three times. It's hereditary. I got that from my dad at a young age. Yeah. I was going to say that. Did we say out loud that at least that's full time? did we ever mention that here i don't think so did we at least that's full time now yeah yeah 40 she's a good new adult so she'll listen to this yeah well we only require 32 but she refuses yeah um it's great it's great we we're hitting milestones we did team meet up we kind of we basically said what needs to happen where we need to get we're not fully there yet but we're you know part of the way enough to do this and uh it's been awesome it hasn't been very long but it's been awesome for so far anyway yeah she's definitely taking advantage of the amount of work that is that can be done and is like working on it and uh we'll bring her into the podcast arena relatively soon we got some internal projects we're trying to wrap up with ever grow and then um she'll start helping me with uh editing and growing the podcast uh but yeah i'm just i'm straight up the detractor of this episode i should i don't even know why i showed up you i'm gonna shut up and express hasn't come up yet uh i went last night oh you're muted last night oh you're you hear me no yeah i can't yeah i went last night i went last night um but i hadn't done it for a while i actually overdid it for a minute probably like two weeks because jenny was traveling and then i don't want to cook and then it was right there so i had too much and then she's like hey we can do payment express i'm like actually not right now like why i thought you i thought you'd be like actually yes like lauren made too much uh she made orange chicken and rice homemade two days ago and well we should actually she made too much because i cut up too much chicken uh and so uh i've i've literally been eating it since dinner two days ago for breakfast lunch and dinner and i just had it again for this for breakfast and now i've got to finish it for lunch i guess or like i almost sent i was gonna send a screenshot this morning because i put in the points of how many points i now have um because it's a lot just keep it growing and so like and just like maybe there's like guinness will take you on as a world record holder i'm sure there's somebody out there who doesn't even care like they have double the points that i have and they don't mention it at all they're just like they love it that much or something i don't know i don't think so i really am i'm really gonna shut up now here i go all right all right okay so in addition uh to the time tracking on the dashboard view we also show a summary of recent notes um which is another view that i'll get into in a second um and then the links to those notes and an activity view of what tasks subtasks or comments were recently completed or updated so on the left with the time tracking in the middle we have notes and on the right we actually have like the activity view of like who's doing what and like when that was done um i don't ever look at that really um but it's just uh usually it's just when people like commenting and tasks or like closing them out if it's productized there's usually not a lot of weird activities it's usually just like very like oh wow july 2nd this task got closed out weird you know right like it always happens so always happens the same um okay the third view is a notes view so every client has a notes and meetings view um this is for when we have calls with clients regarding their website or marketing strategy and then like those go there so what we do is we create a primary notes document and then you can nest documents within those and so when you nest documents in like the left-hand navigation it'll show you like the primary like notes and meetings document and then it'll show like indented documents after that and then if you click on the primary notes document in the body of that it'll have like a list of the links to all the other documents uh that are nested in there so what i do like for the nested documents is i just name those the date of the call or the notes um so when i'm like when our clients like yeah we had a call like last month i'll go to the documents i'll find the the meeting note that had that date and then i'll go in there and i'll look at the notes that i wrote down um it'd be cool to like eventually uh i'm sometimes i'm bad at taking notes sometimes i'm good but it'd be cool to eventually get like uh a transcription of the phone call and just have ai take notes and just plug it in and i know i think clickups already got that capability to do that but uh just not something i've totally explored yet uh and then um so the cool thing about like click up documents too is that when you write something you can highlight it and then you can uh right click and make a task out of the highlighted text and it'll take the what you highlighted and it'll make it as the task name so you can like and then it'll tag like highlight i comment tag that part in that document as a clickable task so uh it it makes things like super easy for note taking um okay monthly list so uh we went through like the the views and then i think the admin maybe the admin list but monthly list okay so this is like for the reoccurring marketing tasks as i explained before uh we offer the foundation as one package but it's split into three tasks monthly website management which is angie seo which is eva google ads which is at least that uh these this is like a weird nuance but i'll explain um why like this is so important for us but these tasks reoccur on the first every month when the team member is done with the task there is a status for done but not complete so click up has basically three types of statuses they have like in progress which is like you will usually like in progress client review like internal review whatever then they have a done status which could be you can name that whatever you want it could be like on hold or like waiting for feedback or whatever and then you have like a complete and what complete does is it actually like deletes the task like archives it and so it's like it goes away done that that done task and click up is really important for us because um and it should be for a lot of agencies because what it does is it marks it as done so when you create filtered views and like the primary dashboard which we'll talk about um everything dashboard what's called we'll talk about that uh next episode but um it doesn't include those done tasks they're there so you can access them easily but they're quote-unquote done when they're complete they don't exist anywhere so um uh here's the problem so uh let me back up to my notes here okay so we have an automation built in so when a task is marked as done and the due date has arrived so there's that like a conditional or additional logic i guess um the first of the following month uh so like that's when the due date is it's the first of the following month so when the when the task is marked as done and due date has arrived it marks the task as complete and it generates the new reoccurring task so when those two conditions are met the due date plus being marked as done it'll change the status to complete and that task will go away thus allowing the um the next task to uh be created for the following month okay this is a workaround because click doesn't quite have this logic totally built in so marking as done removes a task for to-do filters and out of the main line of sight we establish this marking a task as complete screws up the start date so if a task is marked on the fifth like complete on the 15th the task will automatically reoccur on the 15th and set the due date to the first the following month for when our when we set our due dates just like the task that was closed out so like give you an example that task that was just closed out started on the first like it was created on the first and it said hey uh when this task is closed out or it had an end date of the following month of the first right so it starts on the first and so like july 1st the due date for that is in august 1st uh it has a um once it gets to the 15th that's like even marks us as complete then it's going to recreate that task and then it's going to set the due date to the first of the following month which is the end of the following month so it's going to set the due date which is the same first as a previous task which just totally nulls the whole point of it what's supposed to happen is the first is supposed to happen and then the task is supposed to recreate so then it says then the rule is okay automate the first of the following month so then it'd be september 1st that that due date is now there so um what i learned from click up support when i was going back and forth on this was uh a task cannot live in limbo they have to be somewhere that's from click up support so marking as done but not complete and setting the automation up is what makes this work um you took yourself off me yeah i wanted to say out loud this is the thing like this is the feature right here this is the part of process that no tool out there does well there isn't a single one like and if there is and you're listening and you know of it let us know because we've tried i don't know how many there was a while there like weeks where i was just signing up for stuff just to see if they had this one feature because all of them have everything else really right i mean they have different ways of doing it but for the most part you can mimic that but this this is the thing that click up can do even though it's not perfect and that was important for when we first started this and i said like all of these project management tools can do what i'm talking about they can't do what i'm talking about you can structure your things the way that i'm doing it but the manual work is is um far less than click up because of what you can do now it it's a little funky in a lot of places and it requires like a little mix of frustration and patience and and working with click up click up support's great like they have a feature in click up where you can record your screen and then like literally just like create a task out of it and send it to support and support can like remote into your um into your space and then troubleshoot it and so when i was telling them what i was wanting to do they're like i know exactly what you're trying to do um it's not a feature we can't like tasks can't live in limbo but here's a workaround and like so support will always give it a chance and uh it usually does work so all right next um okay so there is an automation to set the due date to the first of the following month, like I explained. And we have the task type attribute set to monthly. So basically you can put other tasks in that marketing list, like I mentioned, like the project page task. But if I create that or move that in there, the automation should not set that due date to the first of the following month because it's a one-off task. We're gonna prioritize that manually because it's one-off. And so we have a task type, which you can set in ClickUp, you can set attributes for tasks. Like they have built-in ClickUp ones and they have like custom ones that you can do. And you can change the fields to like dropdowns, tags, or like custom text or whatever. And so we have a dropdown one and that tells you what the task type is. And usually it's like monthly or like, I can't even think of it right now, like one-off or something like that. But this automation says, hey, only do the due date. Automation when the task type attribute is monthly. And then, and that's how it knows which due dates for which tasks to automate. Okay, so another automation that exists in the client folder is, let's see. Oh, it's to assign the client attribute. So we have another dropdown, client custom attribute. So when a client gets added to ClickUp, their business name gets added to a dropdown field in this global attribute. And that then gets assigned to all the tasks in their folder. This allows you in the everything space, which we haven't talked about yet, to create filtered views of like very specific tasks or very specific clients, or actually see which tasks are for which clients. Because if you don't do this, you're just gonna get a bunch of tasks that you don't know who they're for. So we have an automation that says when, how does this, how does, how is this worded here? So the automation exists in these folders to automatically assign the client attribute to a task in that folder when it's created or moved. So like if Eva takes those project pages and they just move it, those project page folders or a task, and she just moves it to the appropriate client folder, that automation will fire and it'll assign the task attribute for the client for that. That, that's like one of the only manual things you have to do is we have to set up the folder. We have to, we have to actually, change the, we have to, we can duplicate automations from folder to folder, but then we have to go into the automation that we duplicated and then just change that one condition in there to say, change it from this client to this client. And then, but then you do it once and it's done. So what other functions? So like here, like that was, that's pretty much how, like how the entire client setup works. A couple, like I think one other function in there that is worth mentioning is each client, has an automation that sends an email near the beginning of the month. I can't remember which date it's on. It's like the, we send an automated report on the 3rd. I think it's the 5th or 6th. So I would try to space out when we email clients to make it seem like our communication is expanding the whole month. So we send an automated report on the 3rd. And I think it might even be on the 15th, actually. It's like on the 15th, we would send what, we have an automation that sends the client, the primary contact email on that client. This is another thing that we change. When setting up a client folder, we have an automation that we send a client in email from ClickUp that just says, hey, just so you know, like there's this really cool feature that can really help your SEO. It's called project pages. And all we need you to do is go to this page, which I created a page on our website at Evergrow Marketing that links to the ClickUp form. And I was like, all you have to do is just fill this form out, submit some images of recent projects you did, and then we'll get that up on your site. And that'll really help your SEO. So that's like another point of contact that we just automate in our client folder that just automatically send to them. And so like Cody, I know you've probably noticed we're getting a lot more project pages lately, which has been super great. And I'm excited to see how those start rolling out. But yeah, it's just another way to, for us to keep our client communication up while keeping our product ties cost low and our value high. So there's like a million more things we can do with ClickUp and automations and like emails and all that stuff. Like clients can even, that email automation, by the way, when it goes to a client, it comes from Evergrande Marketing ClickUp. They can respond to that. It's not a no reply email. And then it'll respond in that task that automated that because the message comes from a task. It comes from the SEO task. So they can respond to that. So my last agency, we used to do it when we had like social media proofs. We would email the client, we would email the client from the mess, from like the activities section in the task. We'd be like, hey client, here is your proofs. And then we would send it. And then they could respond to that. And when they responded to that, it would nest the reply to the proof comment in the activity of that. And it was super helpful. We don't use that currently here. And it's not relevant for us, at least right now, but it'd be a really cool feature if you're looking for that. That's everything from the client side. If I kept going internally, man, it would just be like an hour and a half episode. Yeah. ClickUp is one of those tools that there's a few of them, like different tools at different levels of depth, right? And Wix Studio is a heavy one, right? Like you can go deep. Not, there's like the second layer. I just said the second layer. This is like more anime. Like you mentioned the, who'd you say? Hunter Hunter. I feel like nobody's seen Made in Abyss, but it's so good. Like it's so cool. And people should totally check it out. I think you, you have to go to High Dive to watch it though. And High Dive is like not very good. It's really the only thing that they have going for them. But if you spend five bucks to watch it, it's totally worth it. Cause anyway, they have layers. Um, Wix Studio has layers. So do Ogres. That strikes the other, the mental, uh, jump that I made. But the, the web builder, right? In Wix goes so deep because it's no code. I mean, it can go more than that too. You can, you can code, but without code. And that's what everything, I've been trying to do lately is how much can I do with no code? Um, and there's a lot, but you have to go deep. ClickUp is one of those tools that unless you go and explore it, you're not going to know just how deep and what it is that you can accomplish because you can make it do almost anything that you want it to. And yeah, I will. I will say there's a caveat too. Cause like the more you get into it, I think the more bugs are going to find, um, and like the more frustrating it can become. It can do a lot. Does it mean it should, um, it should match like your model for, and like we, my last agency we worked at, they put their whole business in ClickUp. They had their procedural documentation in there. They had literally everything. And that's not us. Cause the minute we start eating ClickUp, I don't want to migrate everything away. I was about to say that I was going to mention it because, uh, it's come up before. And I know a lot of people do that where they're like, well, Cody processes, you can talk about processes and procedures and projects, but you can put it all in ClickUp. You're totally right. You, you can, if you want to have your procedure documentation and ClickUp too, you can do that. Um, it's the same thing as buying a domain at your web host, right? Can you do it? Yeah. Is it free the first time you buy it for sure? What happens if you don't like them? Right. I mean, there's benefits to putting all your eggs in one basket, but what if the basket catches on fire and that's the, that's the concern. So we space it out. Yeah. It's important to have your, this is a side note, but it's important to have your procedural documentation I think in a, in a like linkable view where, where people can access it that way you can still integrate it. It's like the, the benefit to having your procedural documentation and ClickUp is that you can link to it in tasks and you're just staying ClickUp. Alternatively, you can link to like, we put everything in Google drives so we could just still link to the Google drive and it opens in a new window or new tab and then it's, it's just there. So like, I mean, it's not that different except now we have a layer of security. Yeah. It depends how fancy you're being with your documentation. Right. With your actual procedures. Some people make full blown wikis. Right. And then there's plenty of tools out there that do that. And they're really cool. Um, I think it's overkill for a lot of marketing agencies to do that. Um, just because you're not referencing things in the same way. It's mostly just how tos. Everything's a big how to. So, um, yeah, we like it. Yeah. I think eventually I'll do like a blog post and a video about like our actual ClickUp setup. It'd be a little weird though. Cause I, I would lure a lot of stuff out, the client names. I'm sure they don't want their names blasted all over the internet. I don't care. Like I, I would give somebody our entire client list. Like I don't care. You're not, you can't good luck poaching them, but, um, I'm sure they don't want their phone ringing. So, yeah, that's weird that people do that, but I know that they do. Yeah. Just weird malicious intentions, but well, everybody, I stay tuned for the next one where we talk about our internal, uh, stuff and ClickUp. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. See ya. I'll see you next time.