In this Productivity like a Pro Podcast Episode by the Paperless Movement®, Tom Solid and Paco Cantero pull back the curtain on how they launched the ICOR® Journey Starter Kit—a comprehensive product with over 120 pages, 11 video lessons, magic slides, and growth assignments—in just two weeks with seven people working across different time zones. This isn’t theory about productivity. This is the ICOR® methodology in action, demonstrating how framework-first thinking transforms ambitious projects from chaotic to systematic.
Walking the Walk: Why This Case Study Matters
“We are preaching it every day to our community, to our members,” Tom begins. “But rarely do productivity gurus really apply their methodology to their own life and business because what they do is selling a course, and that’s their business.”
The Paperless Movement® operates differently. Tom and Paco have been using these systems for decades—individually at first, then realizing their overlapping conclusions about productivity led to the ICOR® methodology. Now, they walk the walk daily alongside their community.
The ICOR® Journey Starter Kit launch provides a real-world case study showing how Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Task Management, Business Project Management, and Business Knowledge Management work together under pressure with multiple team members.
The Reality Check: Seven People, Multiple Time Zones, Business Doesn’t Stop
Before diving into the workflow, Paco emphasizes what makes this achievement remarkable: “Seven people involved from different profiles—business strategists, designers, developers—working in different languages, synchronously in different parts of the world.”
And crucially, as Tom points out, “The business didn’t stand still. We still published videos. We’ve still been in the community. All these things were running still on autopilot because we have very well-defined work streams.”
This is systematic productivity’s promise: the ability to make focused pushes on new projects while existing operations continue smoothly. Most businesses face the choice between maintaining current work or launching something new. With ICOR® properly implemented, you can do both.
From Quarterly Goal Review to Starter Kit Launch
The project began where all strategic work should: the quarterly goal review. Tom and Paco analyzed their existing offerings—the Paperless Movement® Membership with comprehensive courses, the Inner Circle coaching program, the newsletter—and identified a critical gap.
“All we need is more traffic,” Tom explains. “We had the newsletter sign up, but just thinking about our own behavior going to websites, if I just see a newsletter there, you can sign up to a weekly newsletter, this is not really motivating me to sign up.”
The solution? Create an actual free product upfront that brings real value. Not a lead magnet, but something substantial—what would become the 120-page ICOR® Journey Starter Kit with complete video lessons and assignments.
This decision happened in Goalscape during goal setting, then immediately translated into ClickUp as a project. “There’s no goal without a related project,” Tom emphasizes. This is the ICOR® cascade in action: strategic thinking flows directly into tactical execution.
The Tool Stack Behind the Two-Week Launch
ClickUp: The Business Single Source of Truth
ClickUp served as the central hub for Business Project Management and Business Knowledge Management. Every team member could see what needed to happen and when, creating transparency without micromanagement.
But here’s the critical insight: ClickUp wasn’t the only tool used. The team also leveraged Heptabase, Airtable, Intervals (for the agency’s work), Dropbox for file management, and other specialized tools. “We are talking about interacting here with seven or eight different tools,” Paco notes.
The difference between chaos and system? Each tool had a specific purpose, and ClickUp linked out to all of them, maintaining a single source of truth without forcing everything into one platform.
The Personal-Business Boundary
One of the most important distinctions the team maintained: Business Project Management tools are shared, but Personal Task Management remains individual.
“When it comes to personal productivity on how to get things done that the team is working on, that is individual and can change from person to person,” Tom explains. “They use where they think about these stuff and then come back, and the conclusion ends up in this high level task.”
This challenges the common mistake team leaders make: forcing everyone to use the same personal productivity tools. As long as team members deliver on business commitments visible in the shared system, their personal workflow is their choice.
High-Level Task Management: Avoiding Work About Work
A critical principle emerged during the launch: keep business tasks at the high level. Avoid the trap of subtasks, sub-subtasks, and micromanagement disguised as detailed planning.
“When you see in Business Project Management all these subtasks, that’s when you create work about work,” Tom warns. “That’s where people start using subtask and then sub-subtasks and sub-sub-subtasks, which is nonsense.”
Instead, the team assigned high-level tasks to experts they trusted. A task might be “Design the PDF guide” or “Record video lesson 3.” The individual responsible then uses their own Personal Task Management system to break down and execute that work however they see fit.
For repeatable processes, the team uses work instructions (standard operating procedures) rather than subtask hierarchies. This maintains clarity without creating bureaucratic overhead.
Weekly Goals: The One-Per-Day Highlight System
Paco shares a key coordination mechanism: “Every single week we have five at least main tasks—one per day. That’s the piece of advice that we always recommend: having one of those weekly goals per day that becomes the highlight of that day.”
With a one-week scope, dependencies become easy to manage. If Tom needs a specific asset for the membership, the team can organize work so it’s delivered when needed. The weekly rhythm creates both urgency and achievability.
This weekly goal system kept all seven team members aligned across different time zones without constant synchronous meetings. Most work happened asynchronously, with brief synchronous coordination only when necessary.
The Final Push: Knowing When to Go Synchronous
In the final hour before launch, three people—Tom, Paco, and a designer—worked synchronously to polish the last details. “There are moments we need to distinguish when synchronous and asynchronous makes sense,” Paco explains. “There are moments that it makes sense to work synchronously, and there are some other moments that make much more sense to work asynchronously.”
This flexibility matters. Having a system that supports both modes means you can work efficiently most of the time (asynchronously) while still being able to coordinate quickly when needed (synchronously).
“The moment that you see that everything works without friction, it’s a sense of release, you know, of control, of knowing that things will go right,” Paco reflects. “Of course there were mistakes, but you can perfectly correct the things the moment that you can perfectly detect them.”
The Tool-Agnostic Foundation That Makes It Work
Throughout the launch, the team used different tools for their intended purposes:
– Heptabase: Visual thinking and concept development
– ClickUp: Project coordination and Business Knowledge Management
– Airtable: Content database and automation triggers
– Intervals: Agency-specific project tracking
– Dropbox: File storage and management
– Goalscape: Strategic goal setting and visualization
The common thread? Each tool served a specific function within the ICOR® framework. The team understood concepts and workflows first, then selected tools to support those workflows.
“You need to use the right tools for the right things that they were designed for,” Paco emphasizes. “Every single piece of software was dedicated—we used them the way they were conceived.”
This is framework-first thinking in practice. When you understand your workflows systematically, tools become interchangeable servants rather than dictating masters.
The Team Factor: Why Many Productivity Methodologies Miss This
One insight both Tom and Paco emphasize: most productivity methodologies focus exclusively on the individual. But busy professionals always work with teams, requiring different approaches and tools.
“That’s why we also cover the team area, that it’s something that many productivity methodologies don’t take into account,” Paco notes. “They are fully focused on the individual, but the thing is that a busy professional is always working with a team.”
The ICOR® methodology explicitly addresses this with separate frameworks for personal and business productivity. Your Personal Knowledge Management doesn’t need to match your teammate’s system. Your Business Knowledge Management must be shared and accessible.
This distinction allows for individual optimization while maintaining team coordination—the best of both worlds.
When Systems Work: The Sense of Control
Looking back on the two-week launch, Tom reflects on what systematic productivity really means: “The business didn’t stand still. We still published videos, we’ve still been in the community. All these things were running still on autopilot because we have very well-defined work streams. This makes it so efficient that we can make these pushes with new projects.”
Paco adds another crucial point: “People think that the moment that they have the pro system, everything is perfect. No man. The thing is that you can fight against imperfection. You can resolve mistakes. You can better handle unexpected things.”
The goal isn’t perfection—it’s having systems that help you respond quickly when things go wrong, detect problems early, and coordinate solutions efficiently even with multiple people involved.
“That’s that sense of security that a pro system brings to place,” Paco concludes.
The Proof Is in the Product
The result of this two-week systematic effort? A comprehensive 120-page guide, 11 complete video lessons with accompanying magic slides, 11 growth assignments, and full lesson summaries—all delivered as a free starter kit.
This wasn’t achieved through heroic all-nighters or unsustainable sprints. It happened because the ICOR® methodology was already in place, tools were properly aligned with workflows, the team understood their roles, and both personal and business productivity systems worked together seamlessly.
Tom and Paco aren’t just teaching productivity—they’re living it daily and sharing the real-world results. The ICOR® Journey Starter Kit itself demonstrates what becomes possible when you move from tool-hopping chaos to framework-first systematic productivity.
If you want to experience the result of this two-week systematic launch and see how the ICOR® methodology can transform your own productivity, check out the ICOR® Journey Starter Kit and discover what walking the walk really means.
