Yoni Kozminski 4:40
Yeah. So really excited to dig into some of the the meaty stuff that we’re going to talk about on this episode. My background I mean, you articulated a lot of it, you know, I born and bred Digital Marketer, that was my craft that was what I had done and you know, in the time where there wasn’t really social media for brands so actually launched missing These bands Australia, New Zealand’s Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Pinterest and was the largest Facebook media buyer for a couple of years there in Australia for Mercedes Benz. So you know, I really cut my teeth on the things that are real like brand building exercises and sort of through that journey and moving more deeply into E commerce. And Amazon really understood that, that experience coupled with, you know, right now the Philippines and sort of the incredible talent, you know, we talked a little bit about it before we hit record, but when you peel the curtain back, and you actually go past sort of like virtual assistants, and you find that management level talent that can handle real delegation of accountable tasks versus just sorry, accountability versus like tasks, it’s a whole different level. So going through that process and growing that brand that was ultimately acquired by THRASS CEO, I just understood that there was just this huge opportunity to have a material difference for a lot of sellers to emulate what we were able to achieve there. So that was the birth of multiply me essentially, we built it inside of this Amazon business in a micro experience and realize there was there was real legs there. And so that business now, three years on, we’ve placed well over 600 people into E commerce and Amazon businesses and beyond. And while we were building that business, we actually, I stumbled across a management consultant, who was x, Anson young and ended up working with her and on the back of that just realized, like, despite all the experiences I had building these types of organizations, there was a whole, there’s another level to this game, and one that I was aware of, I just never seen it with my own two eyes. And so pretty quickly, we started selling that process or selling that solution, after we built it for ourselves internally. And now we’ve got about 35 management consultants going into these larger ecommerce businesses and agencies helping really systemize them for scale, which ultimately led me into this whole m&a world, you know, working with a lot of brokers and investment bankers understanding that what we were able to deliver would actually have a material difference on the multiple that they could attract when they were selling the businesses, because operationally the founders weren’t tied to the outcome and what was happening the business. So we went down this journey, we connected deeply with global wired advisors who are leading investment bank in the space and sell his funding, who are one of the biggest capital lenders for E commerce sellers in the space as well. And, and we built this joint venture called southco, where we set up a $50 million facility to invest in E commerce businesses to grow them to exit over a two year period where we sort of take all these combined skills and resources and empower founders to make good decisions on what that journey looks like. So that’s getting you up to speed on a little bit of like, how it’s happened. And I think, you know, for anyone listening in, like, it’s less about me, it’s more about the fact that like, for all of you as well, you know, there’s whether you see it or you doing, there’s been like a material path that’s led you to whether it’s the accidental entrepreneur, and you found your way into building an incredible product that led you to this brand. But, you know, it’s all of these experiences that really, when you can bring them together and cross pollinate them, they can have real material power and value. And anyway, I’m just I’m rambling here, but I just wanted to share that, you know, it only became more apparent in the last few years, like what what my story was and what my journey was. And I think for everyone listening in, like, I think it’s important to understand where your skill sets are and aren’t and look to find ways to get better at the things you are good at and move away from those that you aren’t, you know, you’re never gonna be the best at everything.
Josh Hadley 8:40
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, what a great summary of kind of what led you to where you are today. And what an impressive journey for MultiplyMii to Escala to now South Col. I mean, we could spend the entire episode talking about just multiply me and then iscala on its own, and maybe we need to have like a whole series with Yoni. But today, one thing that I thought was interesting that you talked about their Yoni and I think this will tee up the rest of our conversation Well, is you talked about seeing an opportunity to increase the multiple when it comes time for exit, because of the processes in team that you’ve built into a business. So why is it so important to focus on the operating system and organizational structure of a business in order to increase and how does that increase the multiple that you will get?
Yoni Kozminski 9:34
Yeah, great question, Josh. So the way I would approach this, the way that I look at it, taking a step back before we get into the nitty gritty details here is that what any potential acquirer is looking for or what all of us really looking for in life when when you really strip it back is more time, more money and more freedom. And if you can build leverage where you are not a critical part od in the delivery and execution of what is happening inside of your business. And then that is a high value form of leverage. And so when you sort of bring that back into what SOPs, standard operating procedures, and I would say more like, more importantly, systems are inside of the business, if you can effectively achieve that in in a meaningful way, then ultimately, you know, I would say like, I’m not the poster child, but I’m a, I’m a product of what I preach, and that I’m able to, you know, be involved in three businesses that are each growing at different rates with very different business models attached to them. And that’s because we have really empowered the leadership team, we have real clear systems. And so coming back to it, for an E commerce business, the only way for you to grow is to get out of your own way. And so the reality is building systems, building processes, and empowering people to make the decisions. Most of the decisions, you know, the Pareto Principle 8020. And getting you out of your own way, becomes fundamental in your ability to grow your business.
Josh Hadley 11:08
Yeah. And I think not only does that increase the, you know, the value of your business and the appetite for buyers to acquire you. But at the end of the day, if you truly have that desire to grow from seven figures to eight figures and beyond, right, that’s only going to be possible, if you build out a team and processes. They, you know, it’s very rare that you ever hear somebody that’s doing eight plus figures, and it’s just me and a couple of virtual assistants, right, like, that just doesn’t happen. And so it’s important to understand that this isn’t just, you know, when it comes time for exit, although this is important for exiting, it’s also important for your future growth of the business. So, Yoni, I know you have kind of people process and technology that you kind of walk people through, when it comes to, you know, consulting and overseeing their businesses. I’d love to kind of peel back the curtains. And maybe what we do is go through each of those individually, the people process, and then the technology. And what I would love to do is hear maybe there’s some case studies, and to have you pull back the curtain and show us like, what does the people look like in a $20 million Amazon business and FBA business? What does that organizational chart look like? And the processes? And then what technology are they using? And I feel like that’s going to give people some really good ideas and something to chew on, as they you know, want to grow their own business?
Yoni Kozminski 12:39
Yeah, yeah, I would be glad to share and, you know, like I, like we were talking about before, I’m an open book, I think, when I look at where I’m at today, and you know, I’m still I always think, is, even now I’m at the start of my journey, you know, I know, far less than I would like to at this point, and you know, I have this unquenchable thirst for knowledge. So I’m always happy if I can help shortcut anyone else’s reality and get them to a point where they don’t make the mistakes that I made through my journey, then you know that that feels very good to me. So to answer your question, or to sort of dive into it, so when when I look at a scholar specifically and how we approach it, so you’re right, we look at a system as the perfect harmony between people, process and technology. And one of the examples that I often like to give is that a lot of people when they start to build out their processes, they’ll just dive straight into the tactical execution of a specific process inside of a function inside of the business. And they’ll sort of build that, you know, step by step guide on how to, and one of the critical things that people often forget is that unless you’re dictating who is responsible for the specific step, and what is the cadence in that step that they need to achieve that and what the outcome should look like, then then it all sort of falls apart. And that’s like the simplest way, especially as we’re sort of on a podcast here, and you might be listening and not watching. That’s the simplest way to articulate that making these incremental changes to build a system as opposed to just a step by step guide can have a material difference, even in the most baseline example here. So how we look at it, like I was saying is people process and technology and I’ll actually start with a process component. So for a lot of business owners, they are very, everyone’s running a process like whether you’ve got it written down or you’re simply going through it every day, whether it’s just this rote, inherent approach that you take like you are running through a process and that might look like jumping into Seller Central if you’re an Amazon business and checking your inventory and then followed by like, Where does my PPC sit and then making sure that my listings and the healther arrived, so dive into helium 10 or Jungle Scout Are you Anything else for that matter that, you know that is in the space. So, so going through this process, but I think one of the fundamental things that that we do in our consultancy is that, rather than looking at any of one of these things in isolation, we take a top down approach. So looking through and understanding how each of these core functions inside of the business actually interact. So, I mean, I can even pull up, I can even pull up a screen share with you for those that are going to watch. So let me pull this
Josh Hadley 15:29
Let’s do it. So for those of you who are just listening, make sure you go check out the YouTube channel e-comm breakthrough podcast. And you can see everything that Jani is going to be showing us here on the screen, but he will verbally talk through it, as well as you continue to listen.
Yoni Kozminski 15:47
Absolutely, absolutely, I’m going to do the best job that I can talk you through it. And I think I’ll get to a pretty decent way. But what I’m showing you is a pretty old example, it’s probably a couple of years old of about a $20 million ecommerce business that’s predominantly concentrated on FBA, if I’m not mistaken, and has a DTC component too. So we are looking at their high level process maps. And so for every business, particularly ecommerce businesses, you’re typically going to see four to five core processes at at a high level here. So you have here, when I’m writing to you is one as defined by the client, or who we were working with, like they have a product research and development component, they now have a marketing component, inventory management, and customer service. And so this is really important to start at this higher level. Visual, you know, as we would call it, like the level one here is because if if you are trying to go straight into how you manage inventory, and if you are focused on how you are trying to handle order restocks what you’re actually losing is what is that interconnectivity between product development or marketing. And as it relates to how you actually manage your forecasting your sales and your demand planning around that inventory. So I just think, like, from a process perspective, having real clarity on what those interactions look like, and, and getting clear at that, you know, 30,000 foot level is only when it starts to make sense to start getting into what the you know, the things that people will typically refer to as as SOPs, I’d say, Josh, feel free to chime in or, or stop me at any point I obviously can’t see right now while I’m sharing. But I will keep running through if if not,
Josh Hadley 17:39
yeah, I love this. So why don’t you? Yeah, so walk us through. And I think this is important for everybody listening. He is showing you the processes that a $20 million Amazon FBA business is implementing, these are their core processes. And so like pay attention, like these are the exact same things that we do, and we have in our own business. And so it is important in in Yoni, why don’t you just walk us through maybe at a high level, what each of these processes are, and how they interconnect with each other, and what leads to what.
Yoni Kozminski 18:18
So I think what I’ll actually do, rather than jumping into this one, this is the example of how they, as a business defined it, and what I think might might be more valuable, is actually showing you what the future state looks like. But let me take you through a few critical examples, here are things that that makes sense. And then I’ll walk you through in more detail what what the processes look like in in a more high value example of how we’ve actually restructured those processes. So like I was saying, you’ve got in this instance, how they saw four of these core processes. And inside of them, you have these boxes, which everything from discovering new products, to develop new products, to source new products, you know, that’s inside of product research and development. That’s what we’d call the process groups. And then each one of these individual boxes will be a sub process, I’m going to click down here at the bottom. And what you can see how we operate is we actually have now the, at a contribution level. So who is doing what and what are the decisions that they have to make each one of these boxes will have one of these flows. So the sourcing agent, I’m now inside of 1.3 source, new products will develop new product or upgrade new product, they’ll define the product specs based on the research conducted. These are the pieces of technology that they’ll use sheets, click up and slack, they’ll deliver a spec sheet and then they’ll move through. They’ll move through this whole process. Now, one of the things that you’ll notice in this high level process and I say like, you know, call it IP or not, I don’t think that this is something that is like I think if some thing that we’ve definitely figured out in time. But, you know, I wouldn’t say it’s at a level of IP, that wouldn’t be common knowledge by this point for businesses of this size, especially the ones that we’re working with. But one of the material differences in our findings for this business was the fact that there was a lot of confusion when they were moving from product launch to ongoing management of products that exist in market. And they’ll just be things that would go missing. And so one of the things that we made a recommendation was to have clear accountability and focus on the things that actually fuel the business. So obviously, for any e commerce or specifically Amazon Seller out here, you’d be hyper aware that when you launch a product, when you bring a product to market, the most important thing is getting that launch right over the first 90 days, you know, the BSR ranking, and where you sit and how Amazon indexes you and where they place you. You live and die by those first 90 days, in many cases, and getting that right is critical. So what I’m now going to pull up guys is the version of the improvements or the recommendations that we actually made for this specific business. So what you’re now looking at is the high level process maps of the exact same business, but how we have reworked that, that business to create a level of efficiency, accountability and focus that they didn’t have before. So what you’re actually seeing here, I’m actually going to jump between the two, just so just so I can explain. So before they had a marketing function. And in that marketing function, it was launched new products, boost traffic, manage social media community, evaluate SKU performance. So that’s how it was, as they saw how they were operating. What we’ve effectively gone and done here is we have the brand management and product management. So that is performance monitoring. They have listing management, external marketing, Shopify, Shopify marketing, social media, community management as their brand management, and product marketing function. Now, what we’ve also built is a another function that is focused specifically on product launch. So inside of the product launch function, you now have listing creation of launch strategies, and you have PPC management. So coming back to it. And again, if you’ve been through this process, and you understand the importance, but you also understand is when you create a listing the level of complexity, and how many interactions there are from inventory management, through to dealing with your suppliers and your packaging, design and actually getting that in market and then your listing creations and your keyword research and your A plus plus, you know, EBC content all the way through like there are so many things and so many areas that can go wrong. So just restructuring the business in that manner creates a level of focus and attention to detail where you are far less likely, obviously things can go wrong. We are all living in the E commerce environment. And it shifts from day to day, depending on where you sit and where you where the world is or where the businesses are. But I just think that that’s like a really tangible example, if you’re looking to understand like how you can build a level of focus in your process to deliver at a level that you know, that you you’d likely hope to achieve.
Josh Hadley 23:24
Yeah, I love this and Yoni what I think I take away from what you’ve just shared with us. It’s something that I’ve learned as well from a CEO coach. And it’s what’s referred to as the taxonomy of value. And basically, what you need to do is understand, there are many different levers that you can pull in your business right? There, there are endless things that you could optimize in your business, but what levers can you pull are going to provide the greatest return on investment in terms of what you are focusing your time on? A good example of this may be customer service, right? You could probably optimize customer service for days on end. But what type of return is there? If you’re focusing on customer service, right, and really building out your processes for customer service, it needs to be there as a baseline. But as Yoni kind of referred to, you’ve got launching new products, then you’ve got a whole other separate process of just maintaining and the brand management of existing skews and products. What are the you know, where is the biggest value lever that you can pull in your business time and time again, and will be basically just cut to the chase for you. For an Amazon based business. The two biggest value levers that you can pull are number one, launching new skews. That’s it. It’s very simple. launching new skews. That’s value level number one. That’s it. That’s it. Value lever number two is optimizing your existing skews, increasing that conversion rate, making sure you’re continuing to get the traffic you need to, and that sprinkling in external traffic and external marketing, if needs be. That’s it. Those are the two biggest value levers for any Amazon based business. And so, Yoni, that’s what I think is so interesting, as you walk through, here’s a $20 million FBA business, they were just kind of grouping that launch and product optimization into one kind of group, and then you’re kind of getting the diminished results. What I find interesting too, is it’s just as of, as of late, we extended a job offer to somebody in our business. And we just kind of restructured our organization to where we actually have two pillars in our business, we have a team that supports new product launches. And that’s all they do, right? Go through all the sourcing, the inventory, everything in the project management, everything that goes into launching a new product. And then we have a whole other department. The other pillar is focused on product optimization, we just hired a new project manager, that their entire job is to run all of the processes for optimization, and building out a team of brand managers that will be focused on that. So it’s interesting, you know that this is coming to fruition right now. But I would love to kind of point our conversation to Okay, now we understand, I guess, the core functions, the value levers in the business Yoni, what is, you know, tell me about the people. And ideally, what is an ideal organizational chart look like for an Amazon FBA business? Because as you mapped out, there’s a lot of processes that take place, it’s like, in you could honestly put one person on each of those processes, but then you might be a little top heavy, right, with a lot of overhead. So what is what does that kind of look like for, you know, maybe a 10 to $20 million FBA business, you have any idea or picture that you can paint for us of an Ideal Org Chart?
Yoni Kozminski 27:08
So so it’s, it’s a pointed question. And I would say, with anything I’m going to share with you guys today, you know, eat a little bit of caution, because no two businesses are built exactly the same. And what works for one might not work for another, you know, one of the philosophies or why a scholar is built out the way it is where we do these, you know, three, four, or five, six plus month engagements, depending on the size of the business, some people will have us on retainer for years, literally on end, particularly like larger, larger businesses, is because you need to meet the business where it’s at. And so, you know, it’s just like, I would say, and, you know, we had a great chat about hiring before, Josh, like, going and finding a job description online, while it adds a bit of value and clarity, you know, I would say, getting insights on what that accountability chart looks like, and what the responsibility is attached to that and how that like, that’ll still be more valuable, but it still needs to fit your business where it’s at. And I’d even take it one step further and saying, like, the thing that people love the most about working with a scholar, like in a full service engagement, for me is like the most hilarious and trivial trivial thing is that they all want to see, you know, we have our own maturity framework analysis, where we pit you against, you know, similar businesses of your size and stature and all these things, and everyone wants to know, how they stack up and what’s, what’s even, what’s even, what’s even, like, more interesting I would say is that people will often try and negotiate with a scholar and say, Hey, like, I don’t care about all this stuff, I don’t care about my current state analysis, and where I sit, like, just build me like the good shit, you know, build me the future state. Get me there already. Like, that’s where I want to be. And, and the reality is, you can’t go from zero to five in, you know, in a day. And I’ll actually give you the example of myself here. I still to this day, when we were doing the first ever a scholar project, I still to this day have the lowest score that anyone has ever received. In an iscala engagement, I got a 1.3 out of five in the multiplying the sales function, which was one of like four hats I was wearing at that time. And what it meant is, you know, I just lacked a level of systemization in that function, because if I didn’t show up to work, there was no sales function inside of multiply me and, you know, for the last two years, I don’t, I’m not involved in multiplying the sales function at all that runs the way it should run. So it’s a really long winded way of, of just setting the tone before I’ve shared with anything, anything with you just saying like, we’ve custom built these things for the business and where they’re at in their structures and their current team and how things flows. So, having said all of that this is exactly how a $20 million settle that I’m gonna share my
Josh Hadley 30:08
journey. I think that I think what you’re alluding to, though, is super important for people to understand. Just because what we’re sharing today doesn’t mean, this is where you need to be tomorrow. It’s the same thing for our business. I love you know, as a CEO, I love sitting in that visionary CEO of, of planning what our business needs to look like in three to five years. And I think that’s an important role for a CEO. But you’ve got to build the ramp up to get to that point. That doesn’t mean you just go start hiring everybody you possibly can tomorrow, it means you take a methodical approach to where you can run your own team where PPC is in house where your project management, and you know, your your supply chain, even customer service is all in house. But you’ve got to do that by building things up over time. And creating role profiles, you know, job descriptions, and KPIs for those job descriptions, like Yoni alluded to, that are specific to your business. You can’t just copy my you know, role profiles, and my you know, job descriptions and paste them over into your business, because mine’s a little bit different than what yours is. So thanks for teeing that up, Yoni, I think that’s important for people to understand. But now what I would love to do, you know, is, is dive into what you’re going to show us here, and maybe just a few examples of like, Hey, here’s what some different businesses and their organizational or their gather or charts kind of look like for the audience just to spark some ideas. And as they start to plan out, hey, how do I build up my team? And, and really scale?
Yoni Kozminski 31:46
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I actually, before we even dive into that, I’ll share as much as I can, you know, there’s only a certain number of slides decks that I have, where we’ve wiped out like, client references and things like that. So I’ll share gladly what I can. But you brought up a really important point, Josh, and I think this is where people get things are often really wrong. And I’m guilty of it myself, probably more times than I would care to admit. But you don’t want to hire everyone at once. And you want to build incrementally based on the performance and the KPIs. And you really you teed that up perfectly, because what we’re looking at right now, on the screen is an org chart, back in 2020, of a business that was looking to grow over the course of 2021 into a whole number of proposed roles here. So on the screen, you can see existing roles, outsource roles, proposed roles, and shared existing resources. So geez, I mean, I’d have to like sit here and list out every single person, I would just say, check out the YouTube, you can actually see
Josh Hadley 32:56
let’s Yeah, let’s go through just Yeah, high level. I mean, even just talking through the org chart, I think that the listeners would find this very, very valuable. Because, again, that was the number one question at Camp e-comm is, what is your team look like? What is your team look like? So what let’s let’s dive in and spend the time here, Yoni.
Yoni Kozminski 33:15
Okay, I’m happy to do that. What I’ll also say, and, you know, putting my multiplying the hiring hat on, I turn so many people away from working with us as a business. And, you know, while while that’s not great for our business, revenue and profitability growth, I think it’s a smart move. Because if you haven’t done this before, if you don’t have the right experience, exposure, mentors, the right people around you that you can turn to, you’re likely going to get it wrong. So if you’re building out a function or a team for the first time, and you don’t hire, you know, I like to hire top down, whereby I’m looking to bring in a subject matter expert that can build out that team. And I can guide them on what are the expectations and we can work together and they can focus on actually bring those next levels, a lot of people like to build bottom up without bringing in sort of the people that are doing the nitty gritty lead legwork and delivering but it requires an added degree of focus and attention. And there’s pros and cons to both things can’t get out of control as quickly. But coming back to this, on this chart on this org chart that we’re looking at, you can actually see here that the you know, for for odd proposed roles here, they actually have when, what quarter, we would recommend that these roles should be hired and also what the trigger would be to actually dictate why you would hire this person. So if we’re looking at this org chart, we’re looking at obviously the CEO sitting across the top and then we have the C O sitting just below with a dotted line to the CFO. So for us in our language like dotted lines is typically a shared management or resource. So in this company, the CEO and COO worked very closely in and work with the CFO, you can see it’s part time. So that would likely indicate that that fractional I would imagine in nature. So moving down, they have five core, high level managers that sit across the business. So they have their product development and design manager, and below them since their product researcher and their sourcing associate. So they’ve coupled together, like we were showing you the other side, everything that’s product research and development into one reporting line that comes back into the CEO sitting below the CEO and the CFO is a little bit less connected, but I would say, you know, holds a lot of the critical answers here. The next function, they’ve, they’ve isolated their design function, so you have a vacant role where they’re looking to bring on a creative director. And then below that there’s a designer and a copywriter. So I’m historically a digital marketer. And I’d say like, some of the things that will work for you or I have seen work most effectively, is when you actually bring together a cup, let’s you know, let’s use sort of a very heavy DSC brand. You know, having that designer, copywriter, and web developer, and creative director sitting together in a silo, where they can really focus and produce work quickly, as opposed to having every single resource filtered in across all of the different businesses. So let’s say you’re Amazon, and you’re also ecommerce or JC focus, potentially considering splitting those teams so that there’s a faster turnaround time and delivery, that’s one way that you can approach it. The other way you can approach it is to actually bring in a project or traffic manager to actually build out, you know, for 246 weeks, however long your sprint cycles will look and actually go in, build out all of the time allocation deliveries and start to funnel that into a single delivery mechanics. So there’s this like, like I was saying before, there’s different ways that you can build this and there’s no one that is 100% Correct, that say, how effective your processes and your systems are internally, and how you want to share resources becomes also one of the considerations, you know, you might be able to get more done with less people and not hire, you know, three designers, because you’re using, you know, DTC retail and E commerce and you building these siloed teams. So just things to consider. I’ll keep, I’ll keep my making my way through it. But like, I just continue to reiterate, I want to give you guys options, and just more so get your head in the right place to think through like, what is actually going to work for me from an org chart. And I would say at a management level, you know, what is my cadence of reporting? How do I prevent these siloed functions from being siloed. So internally, we love POS traction as as a business operating system, and it is an incredible thing to have what’s called the l 10. Meeting to level 10 meeting once a week, sitting with all of senior management and getting a pulse of what’s happening in the business based on KPIs expectations, and talking through any of the challenges that actually come up. So just a few additional things to consider. So let’s let’s get me
Josh Hadley 38:30
100%. Just second, that statement there. That level 10 meeting has become like gold for our business, we implemented it over a year ago. And that is a meeting that we do not miss that that thing will never move off the books. We don’t skip it, we don’t reschedule it, like there’s so much value that comes from that meeting. So just echo 100% What you said there Yoni and for our listeners that don’t know what we’re talking about, go check out EOS traction level 10 meeting, simply Google it, watch the YouTube videos on it, it will become a fundamental piece of your operating system for your business. Because everything that God is talking about if you don’t have a reporting structure, and a way to actually coordinate the work that’s going on. You don’t need these team members. It’s all just going to be complete chaos to begin with. So having that organizational that operating system in place even at an early stage is what’s going to prime you to be able to scale and hire these these team members that we’re referring to. So Yoni let’s keep going.
Yoni Kozminski 39:39
Absolutely. Yeah. We knew we were talking to our people when we when we started this conversation. So yeah, I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised. You’re also on it. And it Yeah, we we’ve been running it for years now and it takes time just on that it takes time to get it right. But when it does, when you do get to that level of you know Internal trust and confidence and understanding around that meeting, it’s just invaluable. So continuing to move through guys. So we talked about the product development function, the creative function inside of this business. Now let’s move into the operation, the operations manager now sits on top of what can only be described as the largest function inside of this business. So like we were talking about before, it actually breaks down in here into these three different functions from launch, to brand management, and then supply chain. So for launch, they have a launch manager, under that there’s an analyst and then followed by a Marketing Associate. And then also, they’re looking to bring in a PPC specialist that’s focused on launch and brand. So again, we went through a lot of this in in the last slide that I pulled up, but you know, that they’re bringing these clear reporting structures that align with launch and the Strategy that tasks that attaches to that. And then they move over to that brand management and the ongoing nurture and management of anything that slides. So you have a brand manager, now that sits under that Operations Manager, give an analyst as well, that specialize in everything that’s managing the ongoing and then you have a marketing assistant. So the team structures actually look, actually that they look exactly the same, because they are the same one is focused on brand management versus launch. But you have analysts dedicated and you have marketing associates dedicated. And that’s following that same pod structure, where you’re able to turn things around really quickly, you get those feedback loops that you’re looking for. And, you know, I think it’s, it’s one way that you can approach it, that when you are this large, makes sense, I’d say if you’re smaller, then you’re going to probably liked Lee have shared resources. So it’s about really having the right KPIs and building the right structures that will enable you to achieve more with less. But we’re talking about a $20 million business here. So then the next function, we’re talking about supply chain, so they have a vacant supply chain manager. And then under that they have a customer service rep, another customer service rep they’re looking to bring in, and then a data encoder, which I’m not exactly sure how interesting it’s, yeah, I’m not exactly sure. But, you know, I wasn’t the one working on the project far smarter people than I was. And again, this comes back to this business and how they’re uniquely set up. And so without those insights, it becomes tough to make any sort of judgment call here. And then under that supply chain manager, you have the logistics coordinator. And in the last few areas, we have a Shopify Marketing Manager, which is sitting outside of anything that relates to the Amazon functions here in the Launch Manager and brand manager, and just shows that clear distinction of how they are focused on Shopify, in a silo. And, you know, obviously, when we talk about Shopify, that Shopify marketing manager, really, you know, a DTC marketing manager here, there’s a whole lot of other things that are going to come on the back of that, and you know, we can’t see on the slide, but I could only assume that there’s likely external resources that are handling things like email marketing, and SEO and PPC, you know, Google AdWords, PPC management and, and things like that. Because it’s a totally different beast, as we all know. And then the last function we have here is the HR and admin where you know, at this, at this size, and this level, you know, it starts to become a pretty important function inside of the business
Josh Hadley 43:50
Yoni this, this is amazing. And I know we could probably spent the next hour continuing to share example, after example, but I think that this has painted not only for myself, but especially for our listeners, just another way and opened up our minds, hopefully, to creative ways as to how other people a $20 million dollar FBA business has structured their team. And again, like we’ve said multiple times, it needs to be unique to your business. So don’t see this as like, this is a cookie cutter approach, I have to follow this. Frankly, my org chart looks a little bit different, a lot of the same type of roles, but sitting under a different, you know, management roles. But it’s important to just understand that fact. So Yoni as we start to wrap up here, let’s dive into that technology portion. And maybe we can just touch briefly on it. And really, I would love to dive into maybe the actionable types of software or technology tools that people should be implementing in their business again, that allows it to scale.
Yoni Kozminski 44:58
Yeah, so I’ll I’ll hang on that last point. And that’s, that allows it to scale up because it’s above my paygrade. When it comes to giving you all the insights around, what are the tactical executional software’s, from the helium 10s, to jungle scouts to, you know, Data Dive and beyond, I don’t have those answers for you. Not anymore anyway. But what I can say when it comes to scale, having a very clear project management tool is critical. So, you know, I didn’t pull it up on the screen, but we are huge were evangelists effectively for click up. For us, it is just such a high value tool, not just because it’s really reasonably priced, but because the ability to integrate all of your company wiki, SOPs, training videos, documentation, which is funny, it’s probably the largest amount of work that we do is actually building out our formatted SOPs and training videos and documentation. We haven’t talked about it today, you know, for most people, what I’ve shown versus what you would anticipate as an SOP is very different. The last levels of four and five is when you start to get into those working instructions and all of the activities perform. And so coming back to it from a technology standpoint, having a project management tool that allows you to both run the flows, and also houses all of the information, you know, less is more. And rather than trying to have every piece of technology under the sun, really getting clear on the things that will move the needle for your business. And from a scalability standpoint, there is not going to be a single thing better than having the right project management tool in place.
Josh Hadley 46:44
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I feel like I’m speaking to my soul brother or something, because we also utilize clickup, and we’re evangelists of clickup, as well. It allows us to do everything that we’re doing, as we talked about the two core pillars. For our business, we’ve got project management team that focuses on the processes in clickup, for product optimization, halting that uses clickup, to focus on the processes for product launch and development. And so that is the tool is there any other tools that people excluding Amazon specific tools, any organizational related software tools that you recommend, you know, people should implement into their tech stack.
Yoni Kozminski 47:31
So outside of the, you know, the executional lag, from research to tracking to things of that nature, I think something that we use pretty heavily across our businesses is Mirror Mirror board. For us, just building out a lot of the logic and the workflows and how you know, I showed you, I can’t remember what that tool is that we used to build with. But now, we build everything in Miro. And we’ll actually have it built link to all of the clickup Wiki information, like everything is like hyperlinked and very clickable and easy to use. But I would say like, I use personally, Miro a lot just to build out my logic for for anything that I’m doing. I use it as like a sandboxing exercise where I’m trying to understand like, what are the critical paths? And how do I approach this? And how do I actually move forward. And Jay is our product team. It’s crazy every week that I sit in on our product meetings. It’s just wild what they’re able to do and how much they leverage, you know, a tool like mirror. So I would say again, from an operational standpoint, that’s something that’s been highly valuable for us so
Josh Hadley 48:42
amazing, amazing. Well, Yoni, this has been an amazing conversation. I know I’ve taken away a lot of actionable strategies, and I love to leave the audience at the end of each episode, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. And so Yoni, here are the three actionable takeaways that I’ve noted for our listeners today. Let me know if you think I’m missing anything. But number one, you need to understand where you are in your current business, and also casting a vision of what you want to become. Because this is where it all starts. If you want to maintain a small team, right? Because there’s certain entrepreneurs that are like, I have no desire to manage everything that you just shared, Yoni, that scares me to death. I do not want to do that. And if that’s the case, then one of the best things that you need to do is just focus on what you’re currently doing, and probably preparing to exit that business. Because growing it is going to require adding those management layers adding those team members, because it’s going to start becoming, you know, unmanageable, to an extent so getting very clear on what your end goal is and your your exit. plan, so to speak, that would be action item number one, action item number two is getting clear with what the value levers are in your business. This is going to be different for every single business. For an Amazon business, I think, you know, we talked about this. Number one, this seems to be a shared value lever across every Amazon business is launching products. But for other, you know, ecommerce sellers, they may have found a sweet spot with external marketing, whether it be with tick tock ads, or click funnels, or, you know, having a whole, you know, funnel system that they can do upsells through and, and things like that, get very clear with what those value levers are. So that as you do your annual planning, and as you project your next three to five years, and you decide what resources am I going to dedicate to what aspects of my business, do it to the ones that are going to provide outsized returns on the amount of time and investment that you’re going to be putting into that. So again, go through understand, hey, if I focus on supply chain management, like what value is that going to provide, compared to if I start focusing on external marketing for my Amazon business? What value could that provide? And then you’re going to have to put together some quantifiable metrics. This could be a whole podcast episode in and of itself of like, how to actually go through and, you know, how do you build out these hypothetical scenarios, with mathematical, you know, equations, so to speak, so that you can accurately estimate what type of value this could bring to your business. Last, but not least, is to document your processes. And I think that’s the important step here that you talked about Yoni in terms of utilizing clickup In mero. Board. Because again, if you have this team, but no clear processes, number one, it’s going to be very hard for you to go and make that hire. And when that hire comes on board, they’re going to be confused. And they’re frankly speaking, they are not going to succeed in that role. Because all you’ve done is you’ve said, I have a problem. I don’t know what to do, but go figure it out. And you know, for certain roles, I guess that could work. But for the most part, if you’re not very clear with what the KPIs are, and creating that scoreboard, I like to call it for that particular role, so that that new team member knows if they are winning or losing, then it’s going to be very challenging for that person to succeed. You as the business owner will get frustrated, they as a team member will get frustrated, and they will up and leave. So I can’t emphasize enough setting those KPIs having clear job descriptions, and those documenting those processes for those roles. So I know that’s a mouthful with three actionable takeaways. But Yoni, is there anything else that I failed to mention here?
Yoni Kozminski 53:02
I would say no, I think you’re absolutely crushed that. And, you know, if you don’t catch any other aspect of the episode, that’s what you should be listening to. What I will say, though, is just to bring us all together for someone listening to think like, Well, okay, these are all great advice. And it’s really going to help me scale. But let’s say, let’s say let’s distill this down and say, you know, one of the things that we notice, or one of the things when people ask, like do systems to process really helped me in my business, what’s the real material impact? Outside of, you know, the high value products acceleration? Think about it, you know, we call it the hero product rule. And the real question you have to ask yourself is, you know, let’s say you got 30 skews live in market, I guarantee any person listening here, or most people will have one, two, maybe three hero products and the rest of the 27th probably, you know, performing nicely, but nowhere like those top three products. And so what would it look like if you could invest the same level of time, attention, focus, and love to those 27 other products that your top three performed, I guarantee you that all of a sudden, your business looks quite different. So when you implement a lot of these things, like that is a key problem that it solves outside of when you can get yourself out of it, you know, the visionaries time the person who loves you know, doing the things that actually grow the business and, you know, if you’re thinking about exit, you know, have the material impact on improving the multiple as you go to sell it, you know, these are the things that you really need to be implementing in order for you to have that ultimate success. So, I think you I think you hit it dead on the head,
Josh Hadley 54:45
and you tied it up with the bow, pretty right there and you summed it all up. Great. So let’s go into the final three questions here that I love that I like to ask every guest. So number one is what has been the most influential book that you’ve read, and why, and maybe it’s a whole book list that I think you have.
Yoni Kozminski 55:06
Yeah. So, I do have a whole book list and you know, I’m an absolute bookworm. I try and get through a book every every other week realistically, as my as my goal, I would say, the most influential would be the one that really started this entire journey for me, and the thing that really got me into like, personal professional self development, like all the things that I love to learn and grow. And that’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. So, you know, I’m seeing you nodding, Josh, I’m not surprised at all, that you’ve probably likely read that book as well. And, you know, I think that it’s just one of those fundamentals, if you’re trying to get a level of clarity, it’s just timeless. And, you know, I’d say like, one of the things that I take from it, and how I like to live my life and how I’d say, I brought a level of calm to my life that that nothing else has is, he looks at the world. And one of these habits is the this as the three spheres, the sphere of impact, the sphere of influence, and a sphere of sorry, sphere of impact, influence and control. So no concern, concern, influence and impact of the three spheres. So if anything is outside of my sphere of impact, that I can’t actually have a material impact on it, then I’ll look at that next sphere, can I influence the outcome? Anything that is not in anything that is in my sphere of concern, things that I can’t materially have an impact on? I don’t invest time. And so you know, for anyone who gets to know me, I’m, you know, I couldn’t say I’m a political anymore, but I have like a very low level of political aptitude. And that’s surely because I don’t want to invest my time in something where I’m just one vote. And so why spend a disproportionate amount of time getting a level of knowledge and something that I can’t influence or have like a material impact in. So anyway, I’m getting deep into it here. But that’s, that’s the book. And that’s one of the, you know, one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in life from it.
Josh Hadley 57:09
Yeah, it is a fantastic read. If if people haven’t read that highly recommend the seven highly effective Habits of Highly Effective People. I mean, I know I botched that title. But Stephen Covey, great book, you’ll find it. Yes, you will, it will be one of the top results. Next question here. What is your favorite productivity tool? Or maybe it’s a new software tool that you’ve discovered? That’s going to be a game changer that you think? Yeah, I
Yoni Kozminski 57:39
mean, you can’t look past G. ChatGPT. I mean, it’s just crazy what, what that’s already doing for the world. And you know, how we’re integrating it into our product. And yeah,
Josh Hadley 57:51
ChatGPT? Yeah, I kind of want to echo and piggyback off of that. One thing that I think is unique, Alex, we’re Mozi recently put out a video. And he he told his team, how do how do I get ChatGPT to replace you and your role? Right? Like he tasked each of his team members to go figure out how do I replace you with ChatGPT, not to say, I’m going to replace you and fire you. But he had them go through their processes and say, What of these processes could actually be improved and expedited through ChatGPT and AI so that they are able to focus on more high value levers and tactics in the business. And he had some fantastic takeaways. So one that you guys can go check out and again, I would ask your team to do the same thing. All right, laughing your Yoni who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the E commerce space? And why
Yoni Kozminski 58:53
ton of people ton of people that I respect in this space, you know, we talked about camp e-comm You can’t look past the Brandon Young’s of the world and, you know, just a level of like tactical and also just commercial knowledge that a guy like that has. So there’s heaps of people, you know, I’m not gonna go down my laundry list, but I’d say some of that also just resonates with me to my core, and someone that just looks at it at such a high level is Adam Runquist. So Adam heist, I think he goes by are the highest channel on YouTube. You know, I mean, both of these guys have become good friends of mine, but in particular with Adam, I mean, the way he looks at it, he just takes such a professional approach to how he operates and how he builds leverage and, you know, he’s just, if you’re not following Him, if you’re not watching his YouTube channel, you know, it’s fun to get on.
Josh Hadley 59:49
Awesome. Both of them highly recommend, as well. Yoni as we wrap things up here. Where can people follow you? I know you also have a special offer or gift you would love to leave with our audience that has a $3,000 $3,000 value attached to it. So why don’t you tell people more about that and how they can reach out to you?
Yoni Kozminski 1:00:12
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. So if you ever want to hit me up, I’m Yoni Kozminski, LinkedIn, like on LinkedIn, or just Yoni at any of my companies at MultiplyMii, We Are Escala or South Col is.co. So email me on LinkedIn, you know, I’m around. And then in terms of the offer that we have for your audience, so we’ll build a unique code. But some of the stuff that I was showing you on, you know, through this was actually one of our goals inside of our Escala is to democratize process improvement consulting. And so what my co founder lippy who’s the brains of the operation, here, he went through and actually documented out, like, from an educational standpoint, how to do what we do, how to build out your own systems, how Escala methodology inside of, you know, 130 plus ecommerce businesses, how we’ve actually delivered value. And so, you know, it’s like, maybe 20 hours worth of content, 84 lessons and everything from accountability charts to or building out your org charts, SOPs, training, videos, documentation, all of the stuff that I hadn’t even gotten to I think even elements around Clickup are in there. You can find in that course. And yeah, like Josh said, it’s $3,000, I can’t remember what we said the discount was, do you remember,
Josh Hadley 1:01:38
I don’t think we put that in there. But there will be a disc it’s a mystery offer. So what people need to do is they need to go check out the show notes, there will be a coupon code, and it’s a mystery offer. And you can get a discount off of this, but super valuable.
Yoni Kozminski 1:01:55
So I’ll tell you guys just to build a little bit more hype as to why you need to go to the link. I’ll say that it is it is significant. You know, this is not a five or 10, or 15, or even 20% Discount here that we’re prepared to offer to the audience. But you’ll have to put it in, go to the website and check it out to actually see what that number is. So get to the YouTube channel and watch it as well guys, you
Josh Hadley 1:02:19
can see you can see to some of the stuff we talked about some of the stuff you can learn. I love it. Well, Yoni thank you so much for your time today. This was super valuable. And hopefully we’ll have you back on the show later on. And we look forward to following your progress with South Col and all the fun business ventures you have going on. So thanks again for joining us.
Yoni Kozminski 1:02:40
Thanks for having me. I’d be glad to talk about everything from hiring and recruiting all the way to growing your business tags that made so I’m back whenever you want me.
Josh Hadley 1:02:49
Awesome. Thanks again.
Outro 1:02:53
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