Skyrocket Studios Doubled Client Load per PM with ClickUp

The Challenge

"We were trying to promote people, but we didn't have the numbers"

Joby knew the frustration of switching between tools and hunting for information. “Sometimes we don't even know where to find stuff. Is it going to be in a drive somewhere? Is it going to be in a doc somewhere?”

Client approvals added another round of work. For every review, a relationship manager had to assemble a deck, send it to the client, collect comments, and relay changes to the creative team.

For leadership, the challenge was visibility across a fully remote agency, without looking over people’s shoulders or putting timers on their laptops.

Joby ProvidoProject Management Lead, Skyrocket Studios

"We had an information scavenging culture. Everybody's asking, what did you do? What's the report for this? And the information is only as good as what people put in."

The Solution

From the cheapest plan to "our one source of truth"

The move to ClickUp started small. After a look at Asana and Trello, Skyrocket signed up for the cheapest plan "just to try it," Joby says. Then it grew on them. A few experiments later, ClickUp is the agency's one source of truth. Getting there meant rebuilding four things: how work moves between teams, how clients approve it, how effort gets counted, and how leadership spots trouble.

One task crosses four departments without a single nudge

A single Facebook post at Skyrocket touches four departments: copy, copy QA, design, design QA, two rounds of client approval, then the digital team schedules and publishes. All of it lives in one parent task with subtasks for each stage, on a board grouped by a custom process-flow field. "What people need to do is just watch their column," Joby says. Work lands, gets done, and moves on.

Joby ProvidoProject Management Lead, Skyrocket Studios

"Four different departments collaborating on one post, without having to say on Slack, 'Guys, it's your turn.' Everything's on ClickUp. That's what we love about that one."

No more approval decks, and six more clients per project manager

Clients now get a shared ClickUp view where the work already lives. They approve or comment, "and it just goes around and around until they approve it." This is Joby's favorite part: "That's what we really love. We don't have to create a new document just for them to approve."

Joby ProvidoProject Management Lead, Skyrocket Studios

"Before, they were handling something like maybe six clients at a time. Now I can give them eight to twelve, because we can do everything on ClickUp."

Rocket Points let Skyrocket score effort without clocking hours

Every task carries a custom number field called Rocket Points, roughly one point per estimated hour. Close the task and the points land on a weekly dashboard for department heads. The target is 32 points a week. "If we feel that this task can be done in one hour and you finish it in 30 minutes, good for you. You still get your one Rocket Point." When client work is slow, people log a growth activity or take on a "mission," Skyrocket's word for small internal improvement projects. Points already feed promotion decisions and improvement plans.

Red, amber, green: how Leadership sees a smoking account before it burns

"Last year, we had some clients leaving," Joby recalls. So Skyrocket started a daily check: project and relationship managers set a red, amber, or green status on every client in their list. Red is burning, amber is smoking, green is fine. Leadership scans one list each morning and knows where to step in. "If something's smoking, we can smell it, and upper management can step in and kill that fire."

Joby ProvidoProject Management Lead, Skyrocket Studios

"The CEO was very happy and was telling me, Joby, I noticed there's this big, big change. We've been keeping our clients very well. None of them are really leaving. And one of the things he attributes it to is the daily RAG status built on ClickUp"

The Impact

Twice the clients per PM, and a year without losing accounts

Joby lists the wins the way you'd expect, efficiency and one place for everything, then adds the one that matters to him. "I think project managers are happier. Just happier people."

Up to 2x the client load per project manager. Six accounts each became eight to twelve. Joby measures it in bandwidth: "They have more time to take on more projects."

Clients stopped leaving. Last year, Joby says, a few clients left Skyrocket. This year the CEO told him none are really leaving, and he puts part of that down to the daily red, amber, green check: project and relationship managers flag every account each day, so leadership steps in while a problem is still "smoking" rather than after the client has gone.

One to two hours back per campaign. Joby's rough estimate of how much templates save compared to rebuilding the same campaign structure each time.

130 remote people, measured without a stopwatch. Rocket Points dashboards show department heads who is lagging and who is carrying extra.

The numbers aside, the change Joby talks about most is the mental load. Project managers used to hold every next step in their heads. Now it sits on a board everyone can see. "If you can visualize things, then it's less stressful than if everything were in your head." The teams that use ClickUp well have started asking PMs to load tasks earlier so they can start sooner. People aren't hunting for information anymore. They're asking for more work.

Looking forward

What Joby is pushing next

Joby's job, as he puts it, is "to effect change in Skyrocket," and the CEO has given the go signal. The next push is adoption. Training is being split by role, so working teams learn the essentials, leads learn to build dashboards for their team's load, and client-facing staff get their own track. A few clients are trying ClickUp Chat as an alternative to Viber, Telegram, and WhatsApp. The team is also testing what AI can do with ClickUp data, starting with weekly client reports.

By January, Joby hopes the 32-rocketpoint target is policy rather than encouragement.

Within just three months of Joby taking over the rollout, Skyrocket saw its first real results with ClickUp. His advice to any agency trying to grow is the same thing he did: "Play with ClickUp and see what works, then build on that. Fail early, fix it, and get 1% better every day. In 100 days you'll have a perfect system."