Mike has 20 years in direct sales, training over 5,000 reps, and generating $20M in product

sales. He’s the author of 9 self-help books and founder of a charity providing 100,000+ meals to the homeless.
Mike has grown his multiple businesses and nonprofit to operate without him, achieving the “Time Rich” lifestyle.

Mike also hosts “The Better Than Rich Show” podcast and leads the community Automate, Delegate, Systemize.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Mike Abramowitz, the founder of Better Than Rich. Mike shares his personal and professional journey, including the challenge of managing his business while his son was in the NICU for 8.5 months. He discusses how he systematized and delegated his business to ensure its smooth operation, which allowed him to take time off without impacting sales. Mike also provides insights on strategic hiring, the importance of delegation, and the use of productivity tools like AI. He emphasizes the value of test projects in the hiring process and recommends resources for further learning.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Action Item #1: Systematize and Delegate: Identify areas in your business where you are the bottleneck and start the process of systematizing tasks and delegating responsibilities.

Action Item #2: Prioritize Delegation and Hiring: Assess your business infrastructure to determine which roles can be offloaded.

Action Item #3: Utilize Outsourcing and Virtual Assistants: Outsource tasks that can be systematized, such as social media management and marketing. Leverage platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, or Better Than VA for administrative and management-level staff.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Josh (00:00:00) – Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Matt Clark from ASM. Today I’m speaking with Mike Abramowitz. He is one of the founders of Better Than Rich. And today we’re going to be talking about a really challenging experience that he had where he navigated 8.5 months, where he was in the NICU with one of his sons, and he had to make sure his business ran without him. It put his back up against the wall, and he learned a lot from that experience. And he is going to show you how to systematize and delegate your business so that it can run on autopilot. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. Listen, Mike, I started my business back in 2015 and I grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years, but I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

Josh (00:00:44) – That made the path of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than it needed to. I made a lot of bad hiring decisions. I had to take money from my own personal account in order to fund payroll. Because of cash flow issues. I was stressed about whether our brand could survive during Covid when we experienced a 90% decline in sales. I remember wishing for a mentor that could guide me through the maze of scaling up someone who had been there, done that, and that could share all the secrets of helping me overcome all those obstacles. That’s why I’ve decided to offer one on one coaching and consulting, where I help share the nitty gritty cash flow frameworks, the sales strategies, and the operating systems that have helped me scale my own business. And because I believe in giving each entrepreneur my undivided attention. I only work with three clients at a time. But first, I want to make sure we’re a perfect match. So, I’m offering a completely free, no strings attached business strategy audit session. Valued it normally $10,000, but I want to make sure we’re a perfect fit first.

Josh (00:01:29) – So I’m doing that complimentary. And this is my way of showing you just how committed I am to your success. So, if this sounds like something you’re up for, drop me an email at Josh at Ecomm breakthrough.com with the subject line I want to pick your brain. And then let’s chat about how we can take your brand to the next level. Today I am excited to introduce you all to Mike. He has 20 years of experience in direct sales training, over 5000 reps, and generating over $20 million in product sales. He’s the author of nine self-help books and founder of a charity providing 100,000 plus meals to the homeless. Mike has grown his multiple businesses and nonprofit to operate without him achieving the time rich lifestyle. Mike also hosts the Better Than Rich show podcast. That also leads the community to automate, delegate and systematize. So, with that introduction, welcome to the show, Mike.

Mike (00:02:13) – Thanks for having me. Josh. Appreciate it.

Josh (00:02:15) – Mike, I’m super excited to have you on the show, especially because you’re 100% focused on how to help entrepreneurs systematize, delegate their business and kind of run without them.

Josh (00:02:24) – And I know in the communities that I run in, in the e-commerce space, that’s what everybody’s always talking about. How can I hire the right person? Who is that right person? What are the systems that need to be in place in order for me to scale? And so, I think you’re going to resonate really well with the listeners today. But I want to go back and we’ll go back in time here. And I want to talk about what you were doing with direct sales, the teams that you are leading, and then that kind of like hospitalization that ended up putting your back up against the wall, that then led to you helping serve other businesses.

Mike (00:02:52) – Well, the first thing I’ll say is everything I’m about to say. You should listen to Michael Gerber’s episode on this podcast because he is like the greatest when it comes to business systems. So, I absolutely love the E-myth and we’ve gifted that to many people. So, congrats to you for having him on the show and listener. You should go back and listen to that show for sure.

Mike (00:03:09) – my origin story is I’m the youngest of eight from New Jersey who moved down to Florida to go to college and went to the University of South Florida, and I started selling Cutco kitchen knives to pay my way through school. So that was my first entryway into sales and business. As I was pursuing my engineering degree, I bought my first house when I was 20. I had my mom pass and I took her life insurance money and bought a second home at 21 and then a third property at 22 after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So, I was setting myself up for a strong foundation in my early 20s. So that way I would like, retire at 40 and be a family man and a husband and be present because my dad owns a plumbing business and he, like, worked his tail off all the time. And he missed a lot of basketball games growing up. So, I just wanted to have a little bit more time freedom while also having his ambition. So, I was willing to grind.

Mike (00:03:46) – So I graduated college, paid my way through school and took a management position within Cutco and vector marketing and direct sales. So, during my 20s it was very much a grind. Rising grind works hard. It was like some people; my friends were like working corporate 9 to 5. I wasn’t working a 9 to 5; I was working 24 seven. I was like nonstop, and the reason why is because I was recruiting all these students and young professionals to sell Cutco and they all had my phone number. And then I had my clients who bought cocoa for me. There were like a thousand people who bought Cutco for me. They had my phone number and then my current team, as I was recruiting students and young professionals to sell the product line, they have a number. So I built the foundation of my business, where I was the bottleneck between three different audiences and three different parties. So think about the consequences of that. Through my 20s, I had a seven-year relationship that ended. Then the market collapsed and all those real estate in 2008, 2009 went down.

Mike (00:04:31) – So as -$130,000 in debt, near bankrupt 400 credit score, my relationship ended. I had unhealthy eating habits. Now I’m working my tail off and trying to climb myself out of this mess. You could almost imagine what life could have been like for Mike Abramowitz during my 20s. So from this painful place and these pain, the painful consequence of working, that’s why I do what I do right now. So you fast forward a little bit into 2012. I went to my first Tony Robbins event, and that’s where I learned at that event after I walked across fire. And now. The seven time fire walker, he said. My mess is my message. And from there I spent 2013, 2014. That year, I spoke 300 hours to the Pinellas County School District, figuring out what that message was, taking this value of my 20s, and what all the lessons were. And I turned that into my first book grab Tomorrow Your Best Year Ever. From there, that also was turned into nine books, turned into a local charity called PB and J for Tampa Bay, where peanut butter jelly sandwiches for the homeless and we provided over 100,000 sandwiches there.

Mike (00:05:25) – But the challenge was I was still constantly in demand. So when I met my now wife, we started dating in 2014. I was constantly on the grind, so I hired my first business coach. I heard of a business coach in 2016 to help me systemize my business. How can I buy back time? He had experience in corporate in India, scaling a company from 6 million to 30 million, and he had a team of 1400 underneath him. So he came back to the States and started teaching small business owners how to corporatize their small business to buy back time. I was one of his students and clients. That’s essentially 2016, 2017, 1819 to help prepare for the unpredictability of what happened with Covid. But it was all under the umbrella. So I can work from home, be a dad, be a husband, and have a business. They could run without me. But I started putting those systems in well before I actually needed to. So that’s like the origin. And I could get into a lot of the weeds of success and everything that happened with my son, of course.

Mike (00:06:11) – But I know there’s a, you know, there’s a lot to unpack there, but if it makes sense, I can just keep ranting. But, of what happened next. But that’s like the origin story.

Josh (00:06:18) – Yeah, I love that. Well, I love that. You know what I hear through your journey here, Mike, is that you had lots of ups and downs. It wasn’t just like smooth sailing. I love that it sounds like you had to pivot multiple times, and you were always kind of looking to try to get to that next level, and you’ve been trying to kind of figure out those unlocks. And it sounds like this business coach kind of made a significant impact in that. What were some of the, I guess, the mindset shifts that occurred to you as you started working with that coach to begin with?

Mike (00:06:44) – Well, number one was how do I remove myself as a bottleneck, right? Like I’m the point of contact for everyone. So how do we remove that with the least amount of consequence?

Mike (00:06:51) – And that’s tough. I mean, these clients and these talents and these recruits were all under one expectation. So I had to shift what were my boundaries? What was I willing to tolerate and not tolerate anymore? So I had to figure out what are my priorities, what are the things I want to protect. So it started with I want to protect my mornings, and then I want to protect my evenings, and I want to protect my weekends. So it’s like if I wanted to protect those things, how can I communicate that explicitly? They’re not in the wrong. But when they were, when they reached one of my boundaries, how can I communicate effectively to say, hey, this is out of bounds. So redirecting them. So it was like really one conversation at a time. A customer texted me on a Saturday. I respond right away and say, thank you so much. I can’t wait to serve you. I’m going to get back to my office. I’m going to get back to my desk, and I’ll be able to help you on Monday unless this is urgent.

Mike (00:07:32) – Is that okay? Oh, absolutely. And then when I respond to them and I get back to my desk on Monday, I say, hey, by the way, moving forward, instead of calling me or texting me directly, would it be okay if you sent me an email? So that way my virtual assistant, if it’s something that they can help with, they can help you first and then they can take it to me and then send me a message. At that time it was WhatsApp. They could send me a communication and then bring it to my attention, and then I can be like a barrier to Mike. So it was like creating that for the clients, for the recruits. It was like, let me get a cloud phone number. So instead of them reaching out to me, reaching out to a cloud phone number for these prospects that wanted to work with us. So that way they would reach out to a cloud phone number and then direct them to that cloud phone number to book up their interview, because I was dealing with students that that’s how they communicate.

Mike (00:08:13) – Like, just send a text message to this phone number and, you know, we’ll give you the information for an application to be considered for the position. So to meet my audience where they’re at. So that was an avenue that we did. Then we put a scheduling tool inside the text response. So there was a VA managing it. This again before the cool sophisticated technologies was as relevant as it is now. But then we put a scheduling link in there, and then they would book a schedule and get on our calendar at a time where we can support them. And then from an internal team, instead of them texting or calling me, built out internal communication through WhatsApp. So that way anyone who is already behind the scenes with us, they would send a voice memo or a text message inside of WhatsApp channels, and there were designated channels for specific types of groups. So if they were brand new, they’re in this channel. If they were experienced, they’re in a separate channel. There was one channel for the whole team.

Mike (00:08:53) – If they were leading a department, only that department was in a specific channel. So I had different channels for different types of communication and conversations. And then every individual had their own private coaching channel with me, my senior staff member and a virtual assistant. So a senior staff member could answer if I’m not around and a virtual assistant can answer with any resources or any support that is below the pay grade of myself or my senior person as an example. So we could still overdeliver for our recruits. Those were really our clients, but at the same time have barriers between communication. So this was an infrastructure that we really started with. And from there it was like, okay, that’s what we want to build. Now that we figure out what we want to build, let me build. Those are the boundaries. Let me build exclusive, exclusive communication guidelines. So that way it’s very easy. So that way these parties understand how we want them to communicate with me and with us. Then from there is number three which is the system.

Mike (00:09:41) – How do we build out the if then all the processes, policies and the technologies that support this? That’s where creative thinking takes place. So it’s like if they have a question, then I want to direct them to this. And building out those flowcharts is a lot of what Michael Gerber talks about in the E-myth. That’s really what we started rolling up our sleeves on. And we’re talking about this over the course of like two years, three years of drawing this. Out on weekly conversations. So that’s why what I do now is more like an installation type of events and workshops versus like coaching, although I do coaching, but coaching is like one hour here and let’s have this conversation over the course of time versus what I’m really building out right now is installation. Like, let’s show up for like a designated time to workshop this stuff, get this one thing finished, and then we’ll move on to the next thing. And then it’s like maintaining and managing that. Then we install the next thing.

Mike (00:10:23) – So installation is really helpful. But it got me there. It just took a lot longer than I would have anticipated or like at least, but in hindsight. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of context. I could go in a lot of different other directions on onboarding these people properly and actually the hiring process and the training process and the retention process. But just that as an example, was a huge, huge, barrier that I had to create in order to make sure that my attention and my energy was being protected. So that way I can have a little bit more time to work on the business and not in the business as much.

Josh (00:10:52) – Yeah, I love that. And, you know, my biggest takeaway from that experience that you shared there, Mike, is that, you know, this was done over the course of 2 to 3 years, and it was layering one SOP upon another. Right? It’s figuring out this flow. It’s figuring out that flow. And it wasn’t done overnight, wasn’t done in a week, and it wasn’t done over just one month of just like, I’m going to disregard everything else and just focus exclusively on this, you kind of need repetition.

Josh (00:11:12) – You need to see what questions you get then, okay. We haven’t, we haven’t covered this. How do we SOP this out and create these templates and flows in order to systematize that. So I love that. And I think we’re going to go really deep here. But before we go even deeper and get into more kinds of practical applications and how you work with other clients right now to install these methods in their own business. I want to hear from you that story about being in the NICU, what was your level of involvement at the business? Because I’m sure that kind of came at you out of nowhere. You could not have predicted that. Right? And I know you were not necessarily planning on being in the hospital with your son for, you know, almost nine months. So tell me more about that and what that forced you to do in your business and learnings that you can share with our listeners.

Mike (00:11:53) – Yeah. Well, I appreciate the question, Josh. So here’s the context that all of these systems I was building out were well before the circumstance.

Mike (00:12:00) – So the best time to work on the roof is when the sun is shining, as JFK says. So I think that’s relevant. Covid was really the test when everything went virtual. See, I was preparing to be a virtual company before. It was a cool thing to do. Like I was running zoom interviews and meetings while everyone else in my company was doing live in person. So, just for context, context purposes, the interview we would have, we would have people come to our location, physical location to interview, we would have them come to our physical location for training, and then we would do in-home presentations at the client’s home. So it was like taking that type of model and turning it into everything virtual was quite the task. So that’s just kind of context there. So we did that behind the scenes innovating for our company. But then when Covid hit, it was like everything went crazy. On trying to move to the remote. But we were already there. So it was just let’s implement.

Mike (00:12:49) – So during 2020, we provided 1000 jobs, we had five locations, and we did $2.5 million in sales that year. Because we were poised, we were ready for it. I took an 18 day road trip with my wife, and we did $100,000 sales weeks without me there because we were poised and ready for it. We have predictability dropping. Reload. Someone quits. There was a depth chart of people that were already being trained in the pipeline behind someone that were like, dying for these leadership roles, but we had that predictability. We had the role that the depth chart created in our org chart created, for this reason, because we were just like promoting from within. It was really fantastic. We had an offshore team, we had our stateside team, and everything was clicking for context. The all-time record in that sales category was about 2.6 million lifetimes of the whole company, and we fell just short of that that year. So just for context, the company has been around for like 70 years.

Mike (00:13:33) – So, it was pretty, pretty solid, the type of results that we put up. What happened? The real test, though, to your point, Josh, was December 31st. New Year’s Eve 2020 was when my son was born. He was born at £1, four ounces. So he measured 23 weeks, born at 26 weeks. So my wife and I had no idea what to expect. I just let my staff know. I don’t know how long we’re going to be in the hospital with him, but like, it’s all up to you now to run the ship. You know what to do. You have the systems and they ran it for eight months. We’re in the hospital with him. My wife was working at a corporation. She had to leave that to become a full time medical mom. So when we got out of the hospital, September 10th, 2021, I called my coach and I said, hey, do you think we could teach people, other business owners how to do what we did for my business? Because my business ran without me and still produced a quarter million in revenue, six figures and profits without me there.

Mike (00:14:14) – and it was able to be executed. How was it being executed? Because I’ve simplified it. McDonnell defined the business. What I would do is I was in the business. I would leave the hospital, put on a shirt and go to my office and record videos. So that way it was still me doing it. But my staff would facilitate videos of me teaching the parts of what needed to be taught, or it was interactions with me, but it wasn’t necessarily real time and live with me. So I would just go there, record a bunch of things. I updated my website, my back end to create a better portal and user experience. I put videos on learning management software. I landed on things, so that way it could take like a course and take someone through a course or curriculum with me. So that way it wasn’t necessarily me who was having these conversations, and it was pre-recorded of the three of us imagining what the journey was going to be for these humans. So that way I could just record and build on their behalf and take them through the experience and the journey.

Mike (00:14:59) – Premeditated. So these are some of the things that I was doing from the hospital and designing from the hospital, where I didn’t have to be inside the business, working on some stuff to make the experience for my user, the staff and the user, the client or the recruit as predictable as possible. So then again, I got to the hospital. My business coach said, let’s find out. So we became business partners for what we’re now doing better than Rich, where we help entrepreneurs, hiring entrepreneurs create systems inside their business, installing right now AI powered delegation. We have an agency where we will install a team of virtual assistants that understand and are powered by AI into the business for them, and we have some of that coaching installation of our company. But we’ve now had hundreds of business owners. It’s not necessarily to help them prepare for the hospitalization of their kid, but it’s like to help them take a vacation. Like Andrea, she took a three week road trip or a three week vacation to Arizona with her kid and left the business, and it still worked fine.

Mike (00:15:48) – we’ve helped Tamara grow her company and add more positions into her company to create more predictability. We helped Molly create a system to add more predictability on their client maximization on the back end. So just I mean, there’s hundreds of examples of people that are buying back their time, but also installing upgrades to their systems. And it’s been quite magical. And again, we’re fairly new. We’re recording this April of 2024. But we’ve had this let’s find out the approach of what the marketplace needs. And let’s create a business that solves those problems. And now that’s what we’re doing.

Josh (00:16:17) – Yeah I love that, Mike. And what a fantastic journey. And I love that you’re, you know, providing real insights in and helping other business owners. And I know that’s what our listeners are going to be really interested in hearing over and over again. What are the main questions that I get asked whenever I’m at business conferences or whenever I’m teaching others how to hire management level staff overseas? The number one question people have is, who should I hire first and what’s their role? So that would be my question to you, Mike, if you’ve got a business owner.

Josh (00:16:43) – They’ve crossed seven figures in revenue kind of on their own. Maybe they have a virtual assistant or two that have been helping them with, you know, customer service stuff on Amazon and things like that. but there’s not necessarily a formal leadership type person other than that business owner. Who would be the first hire that you would recommend and how do you help them understand who is the right person for them to hire?

Mike (00:17:02) – I love the who question, I really do who, not how. Dan Sullivan is a great resource. I’m going to take it a different direction though, Josh, because I do question the infrastructure first before the who. Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel is a really great resource, and he talks about the replacement ladder. And what I’m hearing in the question in this example is administrative has been offloaded. So what does that mean? I have a bunch of followers and doers handling the administration. But now I need to add on some. Been there, done that, some more expert level type of people as you climb up the replacement ladder so you have administrative.

Mike (00:17:30) – Then there’s marketing and client fulfillment, those kinds of interchanges and of which one holds priority depending on the business. And then there’s sales and then there’s leadership. So if we go in order of the replacement ladder there’s administrative and sales, there’s administrative and marketing there and client fulfillment. So you do need a team of virtual assistants and doers that are supporting each of those departments. But more than likely, the business owner is asking the question as they’re saying, I’m the head of marketing, I’m the head of client fulfillment, I’m the head of sales, and I’m also the head of leadership. So we want to try to figure out, yes, there’s doers that are supporting me as the head of these departments, but how do I find an expert? Been there, done that to install as the head of client fulfillment, as the head of marketing, as a head of sales. So that way I can be strictly in leadership and have these heads and these experts and be there, done that in those other departments, that those heads will also have a team of doers and a team of administrative and a team of support of doers in these virtual assistant roles.

Mike (00:18:20) – But I got to find these expert level people. If I understand the question and context, would you agree? Like that’s kind of where we’re at right now. Does that resonate?

Josh (00:18:27) – Yeah, 100%. And I think that they do have a lot of doers and they see it as they are wearing all the other hats though, right? They are the leadership team. So here’s another follow up question. I know you’re going to dive deeper as well, but the next question is going to be, well, if I want to go get a supply chain manager that’s going to work on the fulfillment side, right. How are we importing our products overseas? How are we getting them shipped into Amazon? There’s a bunch of changes with Amazon inbound placement fees. So with all of those challenges, I need somebody that’s an expert. Now, if I’m to go to the market right now, I’m going to be looking at paying six plus figures to find the right type of person for my business. Right.

Josh (00:19:01) – That’s a so-called expert. Right. And then you question like, well, I don’t necessarily have that much profit. I’m giving away over half the profit at this point to pay this person’s salary. Is that worth it? And I think that’s kind of like the carousel that people go around. They’re like, I can’t outsource that. It’s too expensive. So tell me how you kind of break that down.

Mike (00:19:18) – So it’s a great question. It’s a great concept because the concept is the person that I want to install into this business or this section of my business has as a cost. There’s an expense to it. Totally cool. Makes sense. So there’s two options. Option A is okay, I bite the bullet. I’m going to hire this person. It’s going to cut into my profits. But the time and energy that it helps me buy back, I need to be intentional with redirecting that time and energy to another piece of my business that will grow and generate a higher return. So it’s not that I’m going to spend a hundred.

Mike (00:19:47) – I’m going to spend six figures on this person, and I’m going to go home and make a sandwich. I’m going to install this human into my business so that if we do the math, let’s just do some math. Let’s say if I’m going to hire someone at $100,000 and this person’s going to work 40 hours a week for. Two weeks a year. That means $100,000 divided by 2000 hours is $50 an hour. So I’m going to be hiring someone at $50 an hour to do a $50 an hour job. What is my value to the business? Well, if I’m someone listening to the show and I want to make, let’s say, $500,000 for the year, okay, I want to take home a half a mill, and maybe. Maybe I used 300,000. I want to take home 300,000, and I want to work 40 hours, and I want to work 48 weeks a year when I take four weeks off. That’s 1920 hours in exchange for 300 K. That’s $160 an hour. So essentially I’m going to pay someone $50 an hour so I can buy back my time to do activities that are valued at $160 an hour or more.

Mike (00:20:41) – I, as the owner, need to get very clear of what are all the activities and tasks that are deemed $160/hour or more, and how I can buy back that time with this person. I’m going to pay $50 an hour too. So that’s number one. That’s really going to be option A. Option B is how can I, as the owner of McDonald, apply or simplify this process. So that way I can have someone that can do the task instead of paying them $50 an hour of the task. I can simplify the task. For someone at $25 an hour can actually fulfill and do it. So therefore I brought my margins down through simplification, kind of like what I did with my organization. I simplified it where someone offshore and an 18 to 19 or 20 year old college kid can run the business for me as me, just not by me. By creating more predictability and simplification. Not every business is going to be able to do that, but that’s why I think that those are the two options that I see and that shows up for me.

Mike (00:21:30) – And of course we can go in the specific directions of that. But that would be my response to how this person might want to think about making this decision.

Josh (00:21:37) – Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. So I guess then walk me through. Let’s say I’ve got four different leadership hats that I’m wearing right now. I’ve got a supply chain, which is going to be my fulfillment. I’ve got advertising, which for an Amazon seller that’s our biggest expense is going to be PPC management. Right. And again, hiring an expert in that field. Amazon’s constantly changing. So it’s not something that you can just create an SOP and rely on what was working five years ago I think is going to be outdated in six months. Right. So how do you know which one to focus on first? Right. Would I go for the supply chain? Do I do PPC first or do I do something that’s product research and development, sourcing etc.. Right. And I think that’s the challenge that so many entrepreneurs are like. Where do I even begin? Because everything seems to be on fire, right?

Mike (00:22:21) – Well, like I said, I referenced the resource of Dan Martel, and I think, you know, the replacement ladder is what makes sense.

Mike (00:22:28) – I mean, that’s the question that you’re asking, which is the pay per click. Well, that falls under marketing, right. And the manufacturing falls under fulfillment. Right. So it’s like which one do I start with first is really the question. Well which one is going to be more significant to start with in your business. I would question and again this is going to be page 83 inside of buyback your time, where he talks about the key hires you must make and buyback your time. So I just want to reference that because it is a great resource.

Josh (00:22:56) – Here’s what that is a good one. And it tells me a great day to follow too. Yeah, yeah. People aren’t following him. You should be following Dan Martel for sure.

Mike (00:23:02) – And here’s what I would say. If I’m the business owner and I’m torn between the marketing paperclip or the fulfillment, I would question, I only have the budget for one. Which one of those brings me more energy and which one of those drains my energy? And if I had to get a comparison of those two as a business owner, I could only fund one.

Mike (00:23:19) – I’m going to fund the one that has the highest drain of my energy, so that at least I can still do the other one, but it doesn’t create as much of an energy drain for me as the owner. Until I can get my money back and my time back and recoup the investment from that key hire that I put in, put in the other one to then fund the next one, that that’s that would be my response to that. So for me, I would have a little bit more energy with marketing than in fulfillment in this example. So I would put the key person into the fulfillment, and I would take on the brunt of marketing because I would explore other avenues in addition to pay per click. I would because pay per click is expensive. So taking $100 million leads, how can I tap into my warm networks of 1 to 1? And my warm networks have one to many that is in my control. So pay per click is very much one to many cold traffic of people that don’t know I exist.

Mike (00:24:08) – How can I leverage 1 to 1 of cold traffic? How can I leverage 1 to 1 with warm traffic and one to many with warm traffic? That would mean I would take my virtual assistant team. This is what I do. This is a strategy that my team does for me, going through every one of my friends that need an avatar. So I will go to ChatGPT. This is my process. I’m peeling back the layers here for you, for your audience. I hope this makes sense. I go to ChatGPT. I have ChatGPT pulled out of me. I have some prompts for this and I’ll be doing these as some virtual install summits. If you wanted to hang out with me. A low ticket for free is what I’m going to be doing for these. So, ChatGPT has a conversation. Here’s the problem. Help me reveal exactly who my avatar is that I want to, I want to market my products to have the conversation follow these prompts. Cool.

Mike (00:24:46) – Now I know my avatar. Great. Help me with my writing style and my tone so I can communicate with this avatar. Go back and forth. I have some prompts for that pull out of me, my writing style, my tone for this avatar, then my brand ethos help me pull out and create a brand ethos of exactly. What? My. How my company is positioned in the marketplace now I have three playbooks that are predictable through ChatGPT: a playbook on who my avatar is, a playbook for how I speak and write for my avatar and the brand that I am representing as the owner of my company. I take those three. Then I say, ChatGPT, I’m going to tell you, I’m going to train you on my avatar, my writing style and my brand. I want you to learn that. So that way I can do a few different things for this avatar. Great. Do you learn? Did you learn these things? You know these things. Great. Now hey, we’re going to directly message this avatar.

Mike (00:25:29) – 20 times a day through cold outreach on LinkedIn and Facebook helped me craft a message that resonates with them. Great. Now we have a message that resonates with that. Great! I want to create a 30-day content calendar for the three main platforms of Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn that also speaks to this avatar. I want these posts to be no more than 300 words, and I want to make sure that all of them connect with my avatar and with an understanding of my brand identity and what we do as a company, and what our products and services that we offer. Great. Create the content calendar. So now I have my content calendar on my social media. I have a messaging strategy I’m going to be directing directly to my avatar. I’m going to take this. I’m going to send. I’m going to create a video of me doing it one time to my virtual assistant team. Camcorder method as D’Amato talks about. They’re going to take that camcorder method. Turn it into an overview, an SOP, like a standard operating procedure or an overview playbook.

Mike (00:26:13) – And they’re going to execute posting the content on my behalf, sending those messages on my behalf, finding those prospects on social media on my behalf and executing for me as me, just not by me. So that way I can create engagement with that avatar who might be buying my product. So in addition to the pay per click, I can add a warm outreach methodology to a 1 to 1 and a one to many on using my digital business card called Social Media in order to try to bring people’s attention to my product and to my offering. That’s off the platform, but then I could bring them onto Amazon. Here’s the benefit of that is they don’t they’re not going to be scrolling and comparing you against others. I had this conversation yesterday with someone in e-commerce. He has eco-friendly cups that he sells. I said, If I’m going in on an eco-friendly paperclip, I click on it and I see your cups. Okay, it’s two for 25 bucks, but right next to yours, if I know nothing about it, is five for $20.

Mike (00:27:01) – I could get more cups for less money, but they’re not eco friendly, he says. I’m like, all I see is five for the price, for less money than your two. However, if I saw your content offline and the reason I came to Amazon was from your marketing content, I’m not. I already have trust in you, even if that’s a better quote unquote deal. I’m. I already have trust because I already know you and I trust you. I’m just going to buy your stuff. They’re not even appealing to me. So there’s an advantageous benefit of influence in the marketing outside of pay per click. and again, that’s my hat because I have 20 years in marketing and sales. So I have more . It’s more of my genius. It’ll bring me more energy. But if someone hears all this and they’re like, like, I don’t know what the f you just said, that’s like another language. I’m a manufacturing person. Great. You probably want to focus on that side of the business and offload what I just talked about the marketing side, because that’s what’s top of mind for me, if that makes sense.

Mike (00:27:48) – Josh.

Josh (00:27:49) – Yeah, no, I love that. And I think, Mike, the key here is we peel things back is that if you’re going to outsource something else, right, you need to have a clear idea of what are the activities that you are going to kind of replace that time bucket that has now been offloaded. What are you going to fill that with? And if you just dig yourself deep into more administrative tasks that are not actively growing revenue, that’s where that becomes the problem, right? And you’re going to feel like, hey, where’s all my profitability going? Why did I even hire this person? I’m making less money because if you just fill it with administrative stuff, that’s where you get into trouble. So, Mike, I want to go back, maybe even a more basic question, which would be, let’s say somebody has gotten their business to seven figures and they don’t have any virtual assistants. Right. What would you recommend? And what are some tasks that, like an executive assistant, can help you do? Which is a very basic task, like what are things that business owners should be doing for their business, what are tasks that they should not be doing for their business?

Mike (00:28:43) – I love this question.

Mike (00:28:44) – Josh. there’s too many. There’s a lot that we can offer. And the context is that’s why I started the agency. I didn’t want to get into an agency model of, like, helping business owners use virtual assistants. the origin of that. I’ll do a Cliffsnotes and I’ll answer the question in March 2022. We filled this base with 20 entrepreneurs, $5,000 apiece and taught them business systems. And at that event, I had my team of like 12 or 13 virtual assistants working for me. I said, would any of you be interested or excited about my team working for you and getting stuff done for you? And I said, out of the 20 of you who would be excited about this, I’ll do a beta test with five of you, and I had ten of them raise their hand. I’m like, all right, I’ll do it. Tend to be. So they paid me a very nominal fee. And it was an experiment. Can my team, what my team does for me, do that for them? And now that we have like 60 to 70 clients later and we have a 35 to 45 person team, this is a service that we now provide where the team that does work for me will also do work for our clients that use our service.

Mike (00:29:32) – So I love this question because it is a pain point that a lot of business owners overlook because of the control issue. They’re like, I could do it better. I could do it quicker. The challenge is that they’re thinking about the task. Yes, you can do the task, but if the task is easy to do, then the task is easy to delegate. So whenever we do a task, I train all of our students to say, you do the task once with the intention that that is the first and last time you ever do it. So it’s not to get the task done, it’s to get the task delegated. So any task that you’re doing, including inbox managing, color management, social media, video production, graphic design, literally anything that falls under an umbrella of administration. If you don’t know what that is, go to Indeed.com, type in the task and you see how much it costs for somebody else to do the task. If it’s under $25 or $35 an hour, it’s probably going to fall under this administrative rate that an offshore virtual assistant can do for you as you, just not by you.

Mike (00:30:20) – That’s an easy audit that you can do. I actually have a time audit workbook that I can give, as does anybody who would like it. and it’s 25 pages long. It has a whole list of, like, all the low value tasks that are under $25 or $30 an hour that you can offload. so without belaboring that and going through every specific, I’ll just go through a couple of top ones that I think would resonate most. Number one for me was getting me off of social media. So everything social media, besides like maybe creating the content, but even that can, with proper AI prompts can get offloaded. So commenting could be done in your tone with an AI powered virtual assistant like managing the inbox can be done, and the process there is if they don’t know how to respond to your inbox inquiry, take a screenshot, send it to me. They send it to me on slack, and then I respond on slack, letting them know how I want them to respond to that inquiry. And that’s the same thing with my email inbox.

Mike (00:31:06) – To do so. That way I don’t have to be distracted by the platform. So during my business hours, which is 9 to 4 Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and 9 to 2 on Friday, I go to my slack and part of my time on slack is just fielding those screenshots that my team is sending me, asking me how they would like me to respond. And every time I show them this is how I would respond to that scenario. They’re all simultaneously building out a SOP of this is how Mike responds to this scenario. So guess what? Six months down the road, they have a whole scenarios playbook, and lo and behold, I have less requests and less requests and less screenshots in my slack because now I’ve been training them on how to handle these different scenarios, one conversation at a time. So now my inboxes are pretty much managed for me, to the point where last summer, June, I took a three week road trip with no technology at all, and all of my inboxes were managed for me as me, just not by me because I created this predictability.

Mike (00:31:51) – So having a virtual assistant that understands my tone and understands how to use AI and respond for me as me, has been really critical. And then the content publishes it out 30 days in advance. So have the prompts, have the calendar created, having a VA and then the Vas clicking the buttons and putting them up. They have access to my photo library, so I have Google photos on my phone. I have an iPhone, but Google Photos was the easiest. So every time I have a video or something on my phone, they have access to it so I can take nude selfies anymore. But you know, hey, you know, we have to pick our battles. I’m just kidding. But that’s so that’s so that’s what they have access to so they can pull from that content and post content for me, as me, as an example. So everything social media, everything inbox managing my appointments. So my calendar, making sure that my calendar I have calendar events for every I have about 25 total events, but there’s maybe like 8 to 12 that are most popular.

Mike (00:32:32) – So I have a communication guideline that if it’s this type of request, then use this event on Calendly to book me. And that Calendly is connected to my one calendar when everything flows through. So I have an SOP for calendar management that pairs with inbox management. everything. Graphic design I am. I do not want to be spending time on Canva, so if I need something done, I go to ChatGPT. I say help me create a graphic image for this. And I said pretend. Pretend to be an expert graphic designer giving instruction to an elementary graphic designer, giving them detailed outline and a very simple form of how to turn this content into a graphic image. And that gives me an outline and I just offload that and say, hey, I’d like this done by Friday. Can you get that to me? And somebody and then somebody will create that for me as an example, to the point where now I’m getting to a point where they could understand how to have that conversation with ChatGPT great for themselves.

Mike (00:33:17) – I’m still working through that at the moment, but that’s the goal for that. Everything. videos, creating reels, taking podcasts, using opus clips as a tool that the team uses, having them put something into OBS clips, pulling out the best features shot, making it look a little bit better. Using AI to figure out what is the best captions and hashtags for these videos, put it out on a repurpose on social media and YouTube. Another one is a podcast guest for me. So here it’s finding shows that they could, you know, think I could be a really good guest on reaching out to these to these, podcast host adding some value, making sure it’s authentic, make sure it’s in my tone, make sure it feels really good and align updating my bio sheets and make sure everything’s up to date, reaching out on my behalf and connecting me to hot podcast host so I can get on there shows I’ve now been featured. This is my, I’ve been booked now on 69 podcasts so far since September.

Mike (00:34:00) – So right now it’s April. So 16 podcasts so far. And it’s been working really well. I’m on a goal to get to 100 with my goal before March. I just fell just short at 69 by the end of March. So what’s so, what about this? These are all examples that they’re doing that they could do for you, that they’re doing for me. marketing that helps with marketing. Every time I finish a client call, I am taking notes. I’m taking notes in the convo, but I don’t want to go into the CRM to like, send the email. So they go into the CRM and send the email, things like that. Managing the CRM. All of that needs to be managed by someone else. Sending communication out to our team, to our clients, making sure those automations are set up the right way. I don’t I don’t want to be worried about any of that stuff. I have a team that worries about that for me. and this is just off the top.

Mike (00:34:39) – I’m just giving some examples, but making phone calls, like, just confirmation calls. So, like, if, if I want, if most things are reminder sequences for me, but a lot of our clients have more of like they need a phone call, like a personal reminder, like one of our clients uses, for their installation of their high end lights that they install. So it’s like, hey, you know, your technician is going to be out there. Do you have any questions for the technician before he comes out? I’m sure you got the text in the email, which you want to make sure you got. Great, because they’re like super high end luxurious types of things. And they wanted to give that extra personal touch. So our team makes those calls for them. For example, another owner of a property management company, every inquiry, every time an inquiry comes in, like we need this done for our property, our team is the first to call those people and say, hey, we got your inquiry.

Mike (00:35:20) – Is there any other context that you want to give to me? So I could mention that to the maintenance team? It’s just because our team will get to them faster than the maintenance team. So that way it’s putting them at bay and being like, oh, wow, they’re really on top of it. So we can get to them a lot quicker and then take notes, source that information and give it to a maintenance team for them to contact them. So yeah. All right. I know it’s a loaded question, but these are just examples off the dome. And again, I have that workbook that has tons of examples in there too.

Josh (00:35:44) – Yeah. If you can share that workbook link, we’d love to include that in the show notes. I think that would be super valuable to our listeners.

Mike (00:35:49) – So rich.com/90 day plan is where it is right now. Now I know this is going to be airing. It might not be me doing those 90 day delegation planning sessions.

Mike (00:35:58) – However, right now I am so better than com slash 90 day plan, nine zero day plan in that link is not linked to my calendar right now. And you’ll hop right on my calendar. I’ll literally have a 30 minute conversation with you to pick apart what are the things that can get delegated. But in that link is the 25 page time audit workbook that not only has the low value task, but also the high value activities. So it’s like, great, I bought these this time back. What should I do? There’s a whole section of that workbook to help you map your mind map. What are all the high value activities like strategy and strategic partnership and some of those things that might be a little bit more higher value than the lower value.

Josh (00:36:29) – Perfect. Excellent resource. There might now be a couple last hits I want to do quickly like let’s do 62nd responses here. number one let’s say you do want to go hire somebody. Where do you go? Higher administrative staff as well as management level staff.

Mike (00:36:44) – 60s or less. So Fiverr, Upwork, if you have a lot of time and want low money for administration, then you could go to Indeed.com or online. If you also want to have a little bit more time on your hands, you could go hire a company to find them for you, which is a little bit more money, less time. But if you want a team installed, go to better than Vdot, better than rich.com. We’ll put our team in your business for you. We give you a whole team of people, not just one more. On the administrative side, if you want experts, I would highly recommend you to build out a process called the Pareto Talent Distribution by Kazim Islam. He was a guest on our podcast on how to run indeed ads, and how to interview these people in a way that we have them read themselves out, through your intense application process, as long as you have a very good application process, you could have people weed themselves out very quickly and let the cream rise to the top.

Mike (00:37:26) – And then his suggestion is pay 10% above the watermark for the standard industry. So that way you can attract the best people as well.

Josh (00:37:32) – Awesome. Those are great tips. Last question here for management. expert level type of talent, do you have to source them domestically or could they be outsourced?

Mike (00:37:42) – Oh no, they could be outsourced for sure. Oh, we had, our technology person that helped us with our Click-up was out in Eastern Europe. We’ve had some of our web developers out in Europe as well, some in Pakistan and India. Most of our team is in the Philippines. So a lot of talent, even in Canada, the dollar, the US dollar goes further in Canada, lots in Latin America. So yeah, you can 100% find top tier talent anywhere in the world. You just need to be explicit with what your expectations are and what the position description is and have, have that communicated ahead of time. And I very much recommend a very quality test project that you incorporate into your hiring.

Mike (00:38:16) – So that way I would do a paid test project, and that way you could weed out some people, those when we bring on an expert level, we pay them ahead of time for the task. So when I brought someone into one of my positions for a company, I paid them $100 at a time to do the task and said, when will you get this task done? They gave me the deadline and they did a great job. There is the risk if they take 100 bucks and leave, that’s the best hundred dollars I can get because now I didn’t waste six months having this person in a position on a leadership position on my team that would have done a terrible job, but instead with a test project that I paid her ahead of time on and crushed it on. That allowed me to see, okay, that she could do a really good job. So it is a little bit extra dollars out of pocket. But man, it’s a great, great, strategy that served me.

Josh (00:38:52) – Yeah, I think that I would second that. Obviously, when I talk about my hiring process, that test project is the best indicator of job success. It’s far better than predicting job success from any personality test that you give somebody. It’s far better at predicting success than any interview. As well. So how they perform on that test project is how they’re going to show up. So it makes all the difference in the world. Now, Mike, as we start to wrap up here, I’d love to leave our audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I’ve noted. You let me know if I’m missing something here. So action item number one, it is getting very clear with what the value levers are in your business. So you need to get very clear with how you actually generate revenue and profits in your business. Because if you cannot identify that, it makes hiring and offloading other roles very challenging because you will get caught up doing more administrative tasks if you’re offloading things to other people, rather than you being very clear with what is it that I need to do to produce revenue for the business? So that’s action item number one.

Josh (00:39:49) – Understand the value levers in your business action. Item number two is once you’ve identified those value levers in the business, then go through what Mike talked about. You know, what brings you energy, what takes away from your energy. Where do you need to have experts in your business? Where do you need just doers and administrative people and then start breaking down? What are the tasks that need to be offloaded and ideally creating some role profiles? Right. Identifying here are the roles that need to be hired for. Here are the KPIs that we’re going to use that are going to track and measure success for that person okay. And then this is something that gets done over time. And I think that’s what leads to this kind of action. Item number three is you need to be planning now for the future business that you want to be owning 18 months, 24 months from now. Because this is not a quick week. I’ve now systematized my business. This is an ongoing process for me. Sounds like you’re doing this actively right now.

Josh (00:40:39) – Like you always have somebody or an administrative person texting you and saying, hey, we’ve got this new scenario. How do we reply? That then adds to your SOP book, right? And so you continue to build upon that year after year, and that’s where you can delegate. And as Mike talked about, be able to walk away from the business for a period of time, as you mentioned, for three weeks, you weren’t connected to technology. And yet the business still ran without you, and you were able to run your business as well while your son was in the NICU. Right? Things that you cannot plan on. You can do that. But it takes, you know, building that roof while the sun is shining like you talked about. So, Mike, is there anything else that I missed that you would give as an action item for our listeners?

Mike (00:41:14) – Great synopsis. So scoreboard. No, no, no, the score of the game. Right. And then it’s like, what are the rules on how you get points scored.

Mike (00:41:21) – Right. And then who are the who’s that you’re going to be bringing on to the team to play the game? It’s a very, very great synopsis and a very simple way to recap what we talked about. I love it.

Josh (00:41:30) – Awesome. All right Mike, here are the three questions I love to ask each guest. So number one what’s been the most inspirational book and why.

Mike (00:41:37) – So about your time has been the playbook I mentioned. I’ll stick with that one because it has been the, it contextualizes all the thoughts that I had and puts it into one resource. So it’s super helpful. It’s stuff I was doing, but then it’s like, oh, wow, this is an actual print of words. That is, it shows me how to execute some of the things I was already doing. So I highly recommend it. It’s fantastic.

Josh (00:41:56) – Awesome. That is a great book. I’ve also read that one as well, so I recommend that as well. All right Mike, question number two.

Josh (00:42:02) – What is a new productivity tool or software tool that you’ve recently discovered that you think is a game changer and why?

Mike (00:42:08) – it’s hard to not say jagged, specifically because I spend probably 60 to 80% of my white space time and my schedule on ChatGPT, but it’s very much more about the prompts. So right now it’s having a conversation. So it’s like drawing out of me, interviewing me, asking me these questions. What else am I missing here? pretend to be an expert CEO of an eight-figure company and help me see what I’m not seeing. What are. How can I simplify this process even more? If I was going to delegate this to my staff, if I was going to teach this to someone who knows nothing about what I’m talking about, and as a standalone prompt, how can I make this even more simple and even more direct as a standalone? So like, these are the questions/conversations I’m having constantly, which GPT four and then I test it on Gemini, or I test it on cloud.

Mike (00:42:49) – Cloud or I’ll test it on 3.5. So that way it shows me is my prompt actually simple enough where something that of lower intelligence can actually execute or do and it is frustrating and all hell and at the same time extremely of high value of making something that can be complicated and making it as simple as possible. So that’s what I use AI for right now.

Josh (00:43:09) – Awesome. I love that you’re basically using AI as almost like your board of advisors, or almost as like a consultant and in business coach for yourself, I like that. All right. Question number three here, Mike, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Mike (00:43:24) – I was there, Ryan. Ryan. Ryan Moran of capitalism. I had coffee with him in San Antonio when we were at a front row retreat and he is just such a fascinating human and his whole concept of building a seven-figure company, a figure company and scaling it, he makes it so damn simple, and he’s gamified it.

Mike (00:43:40) – I highly recommend his work. It’s really fantastic.

Josh (00:43:43) – Awesome would echo those same sentiments as well. This has been a great episode. If other people want to learn more about your services, they want to follow your show. Where can people follow you?

Mike (00:43:52) – Right now I would use the same link better than rich.com/90 day plan. That link will direct you to the workbook. It will direct you to booking a consultation. And also it will give you some opportunities. I’m sure you converse around the site a little bit more about what we’re up to, but that link will be the best link. Better than rich.com/90 day plan 90 day plan.

Josh (00:44:09) – Awesome. Well Mike, thanks again for your time and sharing your wisdom with us.

Mike (00:44:13) – Thanks for having me.