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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley reunites with Stefano Pretto, founder of Trainadz, to discuss building effective in-house Amazon PPC teams. They explore common hiring mistakes, the importance of clear KPIs, and structured management systems. Stefano emphasizes finding candidates with an ownership mindset, while Josh outlines a three-step hiring filter covering cultural fit, technical capability, and track record. Both agree that consistent accountability through regular meetings and performance reviews is essential. The episode concludes with actionable strategies for e-commerce brands ready to scale beyond seven figures through stronger advertising team management.

Here are a few action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Timestamps:

00:01:07 Introduction to Building an In-house Advertising Team
The host introduces the episode’s topic: building an in-house advertising management team for seven and eight-figure e-commerce brands.

00:02:14 Welcoming Stefano Pretto
The host welcomes back Stefano Pretto, founder of Trainadz, and outlines his expertise in Amazon PPC management.

00:02:44 Recap of Previous Conversation
Stefano and Josh recap their last discussion about when to use an agency versus building an in-house team.

00:04:37 Why Build an In-house Team?
Josh explains why an in-house team can be a significant competitive advantage for scaling brands on Amazon.

00:06:32 The Challenge of Managing People
Josh discusses the common entrepreneurial pitfall of not having a management system to hold in-house team members accountable.

00:08:28 Common Hiring Mistakes
Stefano highlights frequent mistakes business owners make, such as hiring the wrong person or setting incorrect expectations for them.

00:12:56 The Three-Filter Hiring Process
Josh shares his three-legged stool approach to hiring: personality fit, technical capabilities, and a proven track record of success.

00:16:51 Stefano’s Hiring Approach
Stefano details his similar hiring process, emphasizing cultural fit, a live PPC test, and in-depth interviews about their life.

00:22:28 Sourcing Top Talent
Stefano explains his strategy of using LinkedIn outreach to “steal” top talent who are already employed at other companies.

00:24:05 Josh’s Upwork Hiring Hack
Josh shares his tactic for finding great talent on Upwork by targeting new freelancers with zero reviews or earnings.

00:28:05 Structuring Your PPC Team
Stefano outlines how to structure a PPC team based on ad spend, from the founder managing it to building departments.

00:33:23 Accountability and KPIs
Stefano emphasizes the importance of weekly performance reviews and a consistent meeting cadence to keep the team accountable and focused.

00:36:21 Josh’s Management System
Josh describes his management operating system, which includes weekly planning meetings, daily huddles, and regular video reports.

00:38:14 The Competitive Amazon Landscape
The discussion turns to the increasing competitiveness of Amazon, requiring sellers to be more sophisticated and on top of their game.

00:40:14 Three Actionable Takeaways
Josh summarizes the episode’s key takeaways: determine your management style, build a robust hiring process, and implement an operating system.

00:45:52 Final Three Questions
Stefano shares his most influential book, favorite AI tool, and a brand owner he admires.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools and Websites
“Shopify“: “00:00:00”
“Meta”: “00:00:00”
“Amazon“: “00:00:00”
“BA Commerce“: “00:02:49”
“TikTok Shop“: “00:08:51”
“Claude (AI Tool)“: “00:41:40″Books
“The E-Myth“: “00:01:07”
“Good to Great“: “00:45:52”
“The Obstacle Is the Way“: “00:46:16″Tools and Websites
“Trainadz“: “00:02:14”
“Culture Index“: “00:12:56”
“Upwork“: “00:24:05”
“Indeed“: “00:24:05”
“Claude“: “00:46:28”

Videos
“90 Minute Hiring Playbook“: “00:11:52”
“Seven Meeting Framework“: “00:45:22”

Notable Mentions
“Ezra Firestone“: “00:01:07”
“Kevin King“: “00:01:07”
“Michael E. Gerber“: “00:01:07”

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!

Transcript:

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Stefano Pretto 00:00:00  When I speak with our clients, I see sometimes they got disappointed many times because maybe they hire someone. Expectation of what, a very high, and then they got the better results. Or and there could be many different reasons. They could be that maybe they hire the wrong person, maybe they didn’t manage them correctly, maybe they set the wrong expectation. So that is what I see is a is a bad feedback loop like it’s is they keep making these mistakes and then they think, okay, I’m never able to find someone who will be able to almost replace me, but there is always someone out there that is ready to take your, in this case, your advertising and effort advertising campaigns and make them so much better if you train them, if you give them the right direction, if you manage them correctly.

MC 00:00:53  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business. You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:01:07  I want to ask you one question. Who is managing the biggest expense in your ecom brand today? Because guess what? The biggest expense line item for most brand owners is advertising costs. So who is managing your Amazon PPC? Your meta advertising? Today we’re going to dive into a step by step playbook to build your own in-house advertising management team. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures. I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in e-commerce. Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael E Gerber, author of the E! Myth. Today, I am excited to welcome back to the show Stefano Pretto, who is the founder of train, adds. Stefano leads a team of more than 40 people focused on driving growth for seven and eight figure e-commerce brands on Amazon. They’ve worked with over 100 brands, including some of the top 100 sellers on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:02:14  And they do it in one of two ways. They either build and coach your in-house Amazon PPC team so that you own the system and never need an agency again, or they can manage the ads themselves and apply the advanced strategies to scale your brand profitably. So if you’ve ever wondered if you should build an in-house PPC team or how to do so, you’re going to love this conversation today. Welcome back to the show, Stefano.

Stefano Pretto 00:02:41  Happy to be back. Josh. Happy to be back.

Josh Hadley 00:02:44  Stefano. Last time we had a great conversation that was really kind of like the advanced stages or I guess like the beginning stages, if you will, of when you should use an agency, versus when it maybe makes sense to have your own in-house team. And it wasn’t just like a revenue threshold. You gave different like milestones that people should consider, you know, depending on your amount of skew, complexity, what your other, you know, your existing team looks like, whether you’re an expert in PPC yourself or whether you even want to be managing people.

Josh Hadley 00:03:20  So those were we talked about a lot of topics in there. We’ll save that one for another day if people want to go back and relisten to it. Highly encourage you to go listen to that one. But Stefano, it sounds like you’ve already had people that reached out to you from our last conversation. And what was it? What was the feedback that you were hearing, and what are the top questions that people ask you about PPC management?

Stefano Pretto 00:03:45  yes. We had a great conversation, and I feel like it’s perfect for business owners who want to build a department inside their business, so they see Amazon advertising as a proper department. They understand that they don’t have the time to manage it themselves. They understand it is so powerful. You know, it’s like ten, 15% of your total revenue is going to Amazon advertising. So they came to me and they asked me, who should I hire? What are the mistakes I should avoid? How can evaluate my PPC manager? Which kind of questions should I ask my PPC manager? So.

Stefano Pretto 00:04:18  Or how can I evaluate my PPC manager? All these questions that came up because they understood okay, I want to build the team in-house. And I think Josh you you have a team in-house. So we add them as well. And so you have a also your perspective will be great to understand how to find these people. So I think would be a great conversation to have today.

Josh Hadley 00:04:37  Yeah. No I agree with you. I think the number one thing people like the idea of is definitely having their own in-house team and not having it outsourced to an agency, and that’s one one unique thing that I find about you. This is why I’m willing to have you on the podcast because normally I’m not a big fan of agencies because genuinely speaking, I don’t think that they like. And look, I think it’s just the model in and of itself. They can’t fall in love with your brand or be so attached to your brand and think about your brand in their shower time. Like your own team. Like either a you as the owner would or be like your own team would.

Josh Hadley 00:05:19  And so there are different phases. Look, I had my own PPC agency as well. So it’s not that I’ve done this in-house. We started with a PPC agency and I think that’s the best place for people to start any anyways. But if you definitely want to scale on Amazon, I think having an in-house team becomes one of your biggest competitive advantages. And that’s where I see the future of Amazon look. Amazon’s only going to get more and more difficult. Amazon’s going to continue to grow year over year, the number of competitors on the platform are only going to increase year over year. So guess what I would argue is one of your biggest competitive advantages in the best moat that you can provide is extremely good team members. Honestly, team members that are even smarter than yourself as the business owner, that’s the mission that I’m on personally in my own brand right now is like, how do I go hire ridiculously smart people that are smarter than me? Because that’s a strategy that your competitors can’t see and they can’t replicate overnight, whereas they can go mimic my main images, they can go replicate my keywords and all of that stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:06:32  That’s that’s fine. But you can’t replicate the human beings and the, you know, experience the decades of context that we built with inside the team. So I t that up to say, like I’m a massive fan of building in-house. But Stefano, I would say this and you could also speak to this because you have a team of 40 people. I don’t know that managing people is. I don’t think that most entrepreneurs are cut out for managing people. And the reason why I say that is because I’ve had a number of conversations with entrepreneurs that have come up to me and said, hey, Josh, I followed your hiring playbook and I found this PPC manager or VA or whoever it is. But like, I’m not sure whether they’re actually winning or losing in their role, blah, blah blah. And I say, okay, well, how often are you meeting with them and what are those conversations look like? And are you reviewing their KPIs on a on a regular basis? And more often than not, the conversation is, oh, well, I mean, I email them every other day or so, but I haven’t had a zoom call with them for over a month.

Josh Hadley 00:07:44  And I’m like, that’s your problem. You have no management operating system in your business and look. Some entrepreneurs, they don’t want to manage people. They hate that process. They don’t want to set up zoom calls. Okay, that’s that’s cool. If that’s not you, you either have two choices. Either a you just continuously work with agencies in perpetual and, you know, perpetually, or you need to bring in an operator in your business that is going to be the person that’s holding people accountable, setting up reoccurring meeting sequences, keeping people accountable to their KPIs, etc.. So Stefano, you tell like, do you jive with that? Any disagreement? Like what’s been your experience with 40 people?

Stefano Pretto 00:08:28  Yes. So I feel like when I speak with our clients, I see sometimes they got disappointed many times because maybe they hire someone expectation with a very high, and then they got the bad results. Or, and there could be many different reasons. They could be that maybe they hire the wrong person, maybe they didn’t manage them correctly.

Stefano Pretto 00:08:48  Maybe they set the wrong expectation. So that is what I see is a is a bad feedback loop like it’s is a keeper making these mistakes. And then you think, okay, I’m never able to find someone who will be able to almost replace me, but there is always someone out there that is ready to take your. In this case, you are advertising an effort advertising campaigns and make them so much better if you train them, if you give them the right direction, if you manage them correctly. And so that is what I see that sometimes, and that is the biggest mistake, is that they tend to go with the, let’s say, the cheap and easy solution. So let’s say they are in the interview process. They maybe have like 2 or 3 interviews. They ask a generic questions they don’t understand deeply PPC. And so they see, okay, this person could be a good one is only let’s say it’s only $1,000 a month and they make them manage $50,000 a month in ad spend, which is insane.

Stefano Pretto 00:09:48  You know, it’s like, why are we making this this decision? So that is the biggest mistake I see is to not think that the person managing your advertising should be a person who is almost a business owner, who is taking ownership of the company, as you said before, who is thinking about the companies, thinking about the products, how can we scale them more? And yes, after we added the management skills and if we have a good talent, that will make your life so much easier. Like, I was speaking with a client in MDS Milan and he was managing everything himself. So he’s doing 35 million a year and we help him to build a team in-house. And he told me, you changed my life, like in the end. And now this team is able to take care the stuff that I wasn’t really good at. And they’re doing that even better than me. So that is the power of building a team that most Amazon sellers, especially if they’re doing less than five minutes and don’t realize.

Stefano Pretto 00:10:49  And then when they start to make more than 5 million, they say, oh wow, if I just hire a top player in this department and I’m able to attract them and train them and keep them accountable, my business will keep growing. So that is the exciting part about building in-house. It’s very sounds very cool, but it’s very challenging to do, as you know. Josh.

Josh Hadley 00:11:10  Yeah. Well, Stephanie, you touched on this. I think it all starts from number one, kind of that interview process. But even before you get to the interview process, it all comes from the expectations that you have for that person. Because if you’re just like and again, this is one of the challenges, most people are like, oh, great. Josh and Stefano said, I need to build my team in-house. So I’m just going to go look for a PPC manager, and I’m going to go put that job on Upwork tonight. Okay, great. I love taking action quickly. That’s good. But you’re missing a fundamental premise in my 90 minute hiring soap playbook.

Josh Hadley 00:11:52  Nearly half of that time is spent in part one of a seven step process, and part one is defining the role, setting the expectations for what is it like? What are the actual things that you will be measuring this specific person on, to know whether they’re winning or losing in their role? What are the KPIs, the key performance indicators that you’re going to keep them accountable to? Because if you don’t start with that foundation, everything else that we talk about today, Stefano, like you might as well ignore it because if you’re not willing to like, take a step back, define the expectations. And I call it a role profile. If you’re not willing to do that, then you’re going to be off in La-La land to begin with. So that’s the way I see this as like step number one, document exactly what this person is responsible for and how you’re going to measure their success with KPIs. And then step number two is yeah, you go out and you go source talent and you get them into the process.

Josh Hadley 00:12:56  And this is where I’m really interested to get your take on this, Stefano. But I see it as like there’s three filters I have to go through before I’m willing to like make an offer to a candidate. Okay, okay. So let’s assume we’ve got a thousand people that have applied. I’ve they’ve submitted case studies for me as well. I’m going to jump on interviews with some of the ones I really like their case studies on. Okay, here are the three filters they have to pass through before I ever extend the job offer. Number one, I’m a big advocate of Culture index. This is like a personality profile assessment, but it’s more in the way that they work and the more the way they just kind of like think and operate intrinsically. Okay. Because we all know this. I’m. There’s visionaries out there that are just like. They’re forward thinkers. They’re living 20 years in the future. And then you have the people that are very much in the present that are like, can you tell me what to do? I actually don’t want to, like, just tell me what you need me to do.

Josh Hadley 00:13:55  Happy to go execute it. Those are two very different personalities and there’s 16 different archetypes. Save that conversation for another day. But number one is do they have the right personality fit in our culture index profile for that specific position? So that’s step number one. And I see this as a three legged stool. A three legged stool can’t stand up on its own if it’s missing one of these legs. So all three of these have to be a yes. So culture index is number one. Number two, do they have the technical capabilities. And this is where the case study that we give people is going to assess whether they have the technical capabilities or not. Stéfano in the advent of AI. Now, this has probably been more challenging than ever to know whether somebody actually knows what the heck they’re talking about, or whether they just went to ChatGPT or Claude and just pulled out like, oh, this is a great case study or a great audit of my account, but it was just AI’s audit of my account.

Josh Hadley 00:15:00  So anyways, I do look at like I want to know, do they actually know what they’re talking about in the case study? Part of the way that we try to like, you know, suss out whether they just used AI is like we asked them to record a loom video, and the loom video has to have their face in that little circle on there on the screen so that I can try to see, like, are they just do I just see their eyes going back and forth like this, or do I actually see them just kind of like being dynamic and talking through things? Because if they can be dynamic and confidently talking about it without a script, I think they know what they’re talking about. And then the third and final piece to the stool is do they have a track record of success in their career? So meaning throughout their career. Have they been promoted or risen to management level positions where they were managing other people? Do they have a track record of wherever they’ve gone? They’ve worked on big, influential projects.

Josh Hadley 00:16:02  They’ve made good impacts into the businesses they’ve worked on. Or do they have a pattern of, wow, this guy’s really got the short end of the stick. He keeps getting laid off every job that he’s been at. Guess which one I want to hire? I want the person with the track record of success, because I don’t need to be somebody else’s redemption story. If they’ve been laid off time and time and time again, there’s so many there’s billions of people out there that I can go find somebody that has a really, really good track record of success and has never been laid off. So those are like the three legs of the stool that I look for before we ever even consider giving an offer. Stefano, you’re hiring PPC managers and specialists all day, every day. What does that look like from your perspective and how do you assess talent?

Stefano Pretto 00:16:51  It’s actually very similar approach. Joshua I love also how you call them. The first step is always cultural fit. We call it cultural fit. Making sure that the PPC manager is a fit for the company, for their values, and because different business owners, they operate in different ways.

Stefano Pretto 00:17:08  For example, I have a client. He’s a big advocate about being proactive, like someone who who must answer very fast, for example, at the email or slack messages is one of the things that he wants to have. So PPC manager took maybe two days to answer the email that was off. So obviously that always starts from the business owner. What are the values of the business owner? Because the business owner most of the time is the one sharing the values with all the team. So this is like your sir Josh. The first call is a cultural fit. The second one is the same as a PPC test. Obviously only for the people who. Who pass through the first test. We always do calls. We prefer to do calls because we don’t have many candidates. Since we are way more careful about the people we source for our clients. And we also understood how to find these people and also to find for our for our, for our company and for the PPC test. 100% agree with you.

Stefano Pretto 00:18:02  Now with AI is tricky. You know they can do they can create a report, you know. So especially for business owners, like if you don’t understand the PPC deeply, you could get, you know, like they could tell you a story and you could believe that story. So that is why I, I like business owner who at the beginning of their journey they learned a bit about PPC. So they have they know enough to be dangerous. They know enough to understand if this PPC manager is telling me the truth or not, or if they really don’t want to be involved in the process. They hire us and we do that for them. But that is what we do. We jump on a call and we ask them to do a PPC live together. So we see how they think. That is what we care the most like. And we keep asking, why are you? Why do you utilize the bid in that way? And we keep asking why. And if they come to us and say yes.

Stefano Pretto 00:18:53  It’s just an SOPs. I was following my previous agency. That is not a good answer. It’s like it’s good. Okay, that it was funny as a piece, but I want the person who is building the SOPs, the person who is thinking about the strategies for the account. So that is the second step and the third step. And this is something we stole from a client that we had recently is a is a very in-depth conversation about everything about their life. Like we start from the personal side and we go to the professional side. And one Lupa like to do every single time is to ask about their previous experience. What were their responsibilities and why did they leave their job? I always do this loop. I learn it from the founder of Aids, sleep, the mattress company. And you want to understand, especially the last question why did they leave the previous company? Did they? Did they decide to let them go? There was a the size of the company and they were the first one to leave.

Stefano Pretto 00:19:52  And then I asked her a question like, but why did they let you go and not other people? So I want to ask this challenging question on the professional side and on the personal side, I like to see what they’re doing outside work. Are they pushing themselves? Like, are they trying to improve in different aspects of their life? Because advertising is a growing market. It’s always evolving. I don’t want someone who is. It’s better to say, but it’s a bit stuck. Who is has many personal problems. Maybe it’s a different stage of life. I want someone who is eager to learn, who is putting themselves out there and say, I can do this and I want to improve. I feel like it would be a great fit for the company, and obviously you need to sell them to join the company if they are top players. So this is the is the same process. Josh, I feel like you describe it much better in terms of with the names as well. So but it’s it’s very similar.

Stefano Pretto 00:20:46  And our approach.

Josh Hadley 00:20:47  I love and. Yeah. So you talked about like the who hiring method. It’s a great book. Definitely. Like we follow the same process. It’s like walk me back to high school. What were the extracurricular activities that you were participating in? Because like you’ll find the people with a track record of success were also the team captains of their basketball or volleyball team, or they were the student body vice president or whatever it is, captain of the debate club chess club. It doesn’t matter. But like there like history will leave you clues of success as to whether they’re going to like, rise to the occasion or not. So big fan of that. Love that you’re doing the live interviews. That’s taking it to another level. And I like and I think that’s the only way. You know, especially as we try to navigate that for ourselves in the future. It’s like, how do you rule out AI? Just BS in you? And I like that option of just like, hey, we’re going to go live on this thing.

Josh Hadley 00:21:48  Walk me through your thought process and you just keep grilling them y y and yeah, you don’t want SOP followers, you want SOP builders. Love that phrase. And so I love that. I think it’s really like we’re on the same wavelength there. You did talk about this, which I’m really interested to get your thoughts. I’m going for a thousand applicants per job and you’re like, we’re a little bit more laser focused. So my question is where are you sourcing candidates from? And like where do you get them to where I’m going after a thousand you’re going after, I don’t know, 5025. Yeah. Talk to me about that.

Stefano Pretto 00:22:28  We had also that approach in the past where there was a lot of volume, and I tried to build some, some ways to stop them to, to go through the funnel. And then we found out that the LinkedIn outreach, by far, is the best way for us to find talent, because what we found out that the best talents are already employed in a company, and we need to find a way to steal them.

Stefano Pretto 00:22:52  All the people that I that are my best, colleagues, I stole all of them. Like, So I remember sending cold messages to these people on LinkedIn and doing that, at scale. And how can you find these people? Most of the time I was hiring for our agency, so. So I was looking at other agencies, and I was seeing that, okay, this is the agency’s ad agency, Europe. Then I go and look at the people working there, and I built my my message that I was trying to sell them. The company in the end, is a sales funnel. I’m trying to convince them that they need to answer my message. That was my only goal with that message. And then the next step was to make them to jump on a call. Most of the time if you do cold outreach, you’re not able to ask them to fill out a form. They will not do that. So you need to get them on a call. So initially I was doing that.

Stefano Pretto 00:23:46  Then we hire an HR manager and then now we have an HR outreach manager. So we have we have one person now dedicated on doing that. And LinkedIn is still by far the best place we do it. I’m curious from your side, Josh, what is the best platform or way to find these people?

Josh Hadley 00:24:05  Fascinating. Yes, LinkedIn. We’ve actually seen pretty good success as of late with like indeed. But my biggest hack still is today. Anybody that’s new to Upwork. So in Upwork there is the kind of like, I don’t know, Rising.

Stefano Pretto 00:24:25  Rising talent.

Josh Hadley 00:24:26  Uprising talent, they call it, right. I select that and I want them to have earned $0 on Upwork, and I want them to have zero reviews on Upwork, because like anybody that’s on Upwork, those are people that have probably like probably ten different clients that they’re trying to juggle and make a bunch of money from. Right. So I don’t want that. I want somebody who is like, wants to be all in just on my business.

Josh Hadley 00:24:55  I want their shower time at the end of the day. Right. They’re thinking about the business. So we will specifically target those people. And what I have found more often than not, the best team members have been people that are leaving their corporate job somewhere else. Like, if they’re in the Philippines, it’s like, I’m tired of the three hour commute. One way I’m going to try this work from home gig. I’ve heard about it and I’m done working for the BPO or whatever it is, and I’m going to try my hand at this. We have found somebody from another US company that we were able to poach because of that, that he was like still working for his US client. But he was like, before I make this shift, I’m just going to put my stuff up on Upwork. And so we scooped him up and he never added another client on Upwork. Same thing with our project manager. They were at IBM Supply Chain Manager. They were at, Coca-Cola. So it’s like, okay, like we’re getting really good talent that again, they’re they’re looking for something different, but they’re not they haven’t made that formal move yet to leave their job.

Josh Hadley 00:26:03  So again, it’s not that everybody and rising level talent is is that way. But that’s been the pattern that we’ve found. So we’re still on the mass appeal. I have done some LinkedIn outreach. The one constraint is because I don’t want to set up individual calls like you’ve done. You’ve had an HR manager. I don’t need that many people to be sourcing all the time, so I don’t have an HR manager. But what we are doing is yeah, we’ve dabbled in that for higher level roles, senior level roles. I have done that where I will set up calls because you’re right. Like you can’t just be like, cool, fill out my application. They’re like, bro, I’m already employed like this. I don’t need this. yeah. You know.

Stefano Pretto 00:26:49  It’s funny you said about Upwork because it’s where I started. I remember my I found my first client and I had zero reviews, zero money earner from Upwork, and I applied to this job and this massive supplement brand from Europe. They hire me as a PPC manager in-house, full time.

Stefano Pretto 00:27:08  I, I forgot about that and such a good point.

Josh Hadley 00:27:12  Josh Goodwin for them. They got you full time.

Stefano Pretto 00:27:15  They got me full time for a few years. So also so that was a good experience. I’m actually. I was at the university with. Nope, not much experience. I had my small brand and they still hire me. So that was, it was very grateful. I sent him a message a few a few months ago.

Josh Hadley 00:27:34  Love it. Sounds like it was a good win both ways. So, Stefano, talk to me about, let’s say. All right. We have hired people. Talk to me about what team structure looks like for most brand owners. What do you think? Like PPC management? Like that department? How many people does it need to be? How many ason should they be managing, or is it more revenue management than it is Ason number management? talk to me about how you’ve seen that work successfully in other brands.

Stefano Pretto 00:28:05  Yeah. So there are lots of ways you can analyze these, because there are based on the number of products, based on the number of marketplaces, based on the number of new products you launch.

Stefano Pretto 00:28:17  So I just spoke with a brand that they’re investing 2 or $3 million a month in Amazon advertising, and they have a team of ten PPC managers, and there is a head of Amazon and other team members. Usually what we see at if you spend less than $10,000 a month in Amazon, realizing most of the time it’s the founder or the business owner or one of the partners managing the PPC because it’s not the amount. We are still in the product market fit. We’re still trying to figure it out when we set the spend goes to 10 to 20, between 20 to 80,000. They start to feel like, okay, maybe I don’t have enough bandwidth to manage my PPC properly. So and they needed to create this seat with responsibilities, as you said. Like what is the outcome of this position? And in that case, what we see is that they might hire someone a part time. So maybe they hire someone part time as a freelancer, or maybe they hire an agency. They try agencies at this point, but let’s say they hire in a house.

Stefano Pretto 00:29:17  Most of the time they hire a part time at this stage and again depends on the number of products. But let’s say that you have a small catalog in one country. Most of the time is one part time person. I’m not a big fan of part time, as you said before. Josh, I like people to think about my business all day long. I want them to be really involved in the business. And so even at this stage, if you can, I will try to hire them full time because a great PPC manager can help you in other parts of the business. Most of the time. And then when you go above, let’s say, $1 million a year in ad spend, we said you must have a PPC manager in-house and here you can decide to have it maybe in Europe, maybe in Asia, or maybe in North America. For most brands that are spending $1 million a year, we see Europe and Asia are the places where people hire, not in North America. North America is mainly for mainly VC founded businesses or businesses that are already much bigger.

Stefano Pretto 00:30:16  And then when you start to spend more than 250,000, I feel like is when you start to build a team or even more than $100,000, $100,000 a month in Amazon. You just have to build a team. So you maybe have a BBC manager, and maybe you think that this PPC manager can lead the department. Or maybe you think he’s not the right person. So maybe you need to hire another one that you think could be could be leading in the department. But that is the the, the framework we like to use is mainly about ad spend. But as you said, it is also depending on the number of products. For example, I know you have lots of products Josh, so I guess you have way more people even when the ad spend was lower I guess.

Josh Hadley 00:30:57  Yeah, yeah yeah, definitely. Like I think it’s more of an Asin number than it is like a revenue threshold, but for sure, because like as soon as you have multiple product categories, you ultimately want to have like PPC managers that own very specific category.

Josh Hadley 00:31:16  So they are watching only these assassins and not trying to make blanket rules. Well, this worked for this product category, so surely it should work across the entire account like no, it worked really well for that category, but not another category. So again, that’s why I say like team members can be some of your best competitive advantages because you could have somebody like watching like a hawk. Exactly what movements are happening in that specific market, that product category, your competitors, etc..

Stefano Pretto 00:31:46  100%. Like I was speaking with this team, with this team, PPC team, they knew the BSR of each of their competitors like that is the level. And every single day they wake up and watch their BSR to make sure they don’t lose the seller. And so the structure, like usually it started very simple with maybe a PPC manager and then it can evolve based also on the on the volume of work for the PPC manager, and here you need to have an honest conversation with the PPC manager. And, And yes, if you found a top player, hopefully they will be very honest with you and they will tell you.

Stefano Pretto 00:32:22  Yes. I need more more help or I need more training or whatever. And so you you keep, you keep building your team, like, overall, we sit, when, when you start to have, 4 or 5 EBC manager, you start to segment by category or by product launches or by type of products or by countries, and then you have a head of Amazon, head of Amazon PPC. But when I was managing even PPC in-house, I was managing 200 K with different markets, and I feel like it was a bit too much because you cannot really focus on the top products. So and so. Yeah. So it really depends on the catalog and the amount of ad spend.

Josh Hadley 00:33:05  Yeah. No. Totally agree I love that. Talk to me about how you keep your team accountable. Share with me what are some of the core KPIs that you think other brand owners need to be following, and how do you what’s your management philosophy look like? Yeah.

Stefano Pretto 00:33:23  So I’m a big fan of trust but verify and keep people accountable.

Stefano Pretto 00:33:27  So I as you said at the beginning of the this conversation, Josh, like I had a call with, with a client that they were spending 500 K a month in Amazon advertising and they didn’t have like a weekly performance review, which for me was insane. Like it was like, so for me, it’s just a let’s start with the basics. Let’s make sure we have a weekly cadence. What do we need? You, let’s say the CEO, business owner, brand manager and PPC manager and supply chain manager, let’s say, and let’s just analyze the data and let’s analyze the high level data. And then let’s go on a parent facing level and let’s see if we are achieving our goals. Are we doing better than the previous week. And that is what I, what I keep thinking about our most successful clients. They know their numbers. They know their numbers very well. And you can do that by keeping people accountable. By jumping on a call. Okay. What is the cost of that product? Why are sales are decreasing for this presentation.

Stefano Pretto 00:34:25  What’s happening in the market. And that is what I see the the most successful business owner we work with. I’m very privileged as I can see how a business model making $300 million a year, how is operating his Amazon business. I see it, he’s on top of things. Maybe he’s not checking the details, but he’s asking the question, you know, and we expect the team to answer with a with a clear answer like whether they know what they’re doing. What you don’t want is that they you jump on a call, you ask a question, and they have no idea on what’s going on. Maybe could happen, maybe the first couple weeks or the second week. But after you want someone who is on top of the numbers, who understand the numbers, understand the market, understand what what they need to do or what they need to change. So that is my philosophy. Let’s just set the basics. We click all one hour color usually on Tuesday because you’re waiting for the data for the previous week.

Stefano Pretto 00:35:16  Let’s just start there. Let’s make sure that we do that. And then what you can do, what we also like to do is maybe a weekly Friday recap of all the action that we took with our slack message. What I can quickly review. What are the action you took over the week? What are the the action you’re trying to do the next week? And so and so we keep this rhythm that way on Tuesday, we set the action we plan to take, and on Friday we close the loop. And we keep doing that over and over again. And the best, the best business owner I’ve seen that they make that loop so fast, like they really push for speed bias to action is one of the the biggest thing I see now across many Amazon brand owners that are determining on Amazon. And so if you wanted to, to move faster, you need to put pressure on the team in a, in the right way. And I feel like if you start with these two things quickly knitting and on Friday a recap where you give them feedback.

Stefano Pretto 00:36:13  It’s already like something that I don’t see business owners doing on the Amazon side. What’s your what’s your take on this?

Josh Hadley 00:36:21  Yeah, 100%. Every single one of my Amazon PPC team members will have a Monday morning. We will come in. We’ll have what we call our 411. It’s like, how did last week go? What are your priorities this week? What are the tests you’re going to implement? What where’s the market moving. Okay. So that’s we start the week off that way. Then we have daily huddles where it’s like, all right, tell me about your win yesterday. And what are your three priorities for today. Every single day. And then they will also send a report that is going to be a loom video walking me through. Hey, here’s the performance. And then I get to give them feedback to say, hey, well, what are we doing over here? Why is this not working? And I can ask them more detailed questions and again, it keeps them a accountable.

Josh Hadley 00:37:09  B it allows me to give them feedback and coach them up. And we can do that asynchronously. But at the end of the day, it goes back to just what you talked about. Stefano, I know the numbers. I know where I’m at with market share for every one of my product categories, and I know what’s winning and what’s losing and why, and I am in the details. And as you’ve stated, like that’s what the best business owners know, the worst ones are just like, oh yeah, I mean, we had a call a month ago and things are fine, like I made, I made a bunch of money from the business and it’s like, okay, well, five years from now you won’t be making a bunch of money from the business if that’s the way you’re operating, because you’ll you’ll just be worked over by people that are in the details day to day. And here’s the biggest challenge Amazon is the most competitive arena for business owners on the earth. And I say that because there’s no better place to go sell products than in Amazon US, period.

Josh Hadley 00:38:14  So you’ve got the best entrepreneurs, not just from your state, not just from the US, not just from North America, but from the entire world. You have some of the best entrepreneurs all competing for the same customer 100%. That’s extremely challenging. But it also means like, hey, you’ve got to up your game. But B it’s also really important for you to know, like what arena you’re playing in. And if you truly want to be in the top 1%, that means you’ve got to walk into an arena of, you know, 100 people and come out as the winner. If you want to be the top 0.01%, like you’ve got to walk into an arena of 10,000 people and become like the only one standing at the end of it. So that’s the challenge on Amazon, but it’s well worth it. That’s why there’s so many people in there.

Stefano Pretto 00:39:06  And I will say, like, sometimes I just don’t realize how lucky they are to be in that position. So they feel like everything will be like that, like everything will be fine.

Stefano Pretto 00:39:17  It’s not like competitors are coming. You know, we see that the market is getting more and more competitive. Sellers are becoming more sophisticated. You know, like they understand, okay, Amazon is a distribution channel. I need to be in the brand. It’s not only about the product, it’s about the marketing side. I need to hire great people. So we see that there are some sellers that are that are maybe enjoying the good times, you know, like from when 2020 to 2024, this kind of of e-commerce was was great because there were fewer competitors. But now it’s getting more competitive. You know, you need to be on top of your game. And when I see our best clients, even people like you, just you see, okay, it’s getting way more competitive. Like you need to do your homework. You need to make sure you put the work in to. To make it. To make it successful. To make it also sustainable. Because if not, you will. As soon as the sale starts decreasing, you start to freak out and you don’t know what to do.

Josh Hadley 00:40:14  Yeah, you’re exactly right. That is. That is exactly where we’re at. And it’s only going to become more competitive and only more sophisticated as time goes by. Stefano I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. You let me know if I’ve documented this correctly or if there’s something else that we’re missing. But action item number one is getting the mindset of determining are you the type of business owner that is willing to roll up their sleeves and manage people? Or are you the type of business owner that likes to be absentee and you just want to work with agencies? It’s okay, but you need to truly understand who you are first and foremost. Because if you’re just going to, you know, Chase in-house team management? Just because we said so today. Like you’re going to really struggle because hiring somebody is only the beginning. And it’s the day to day management where the rubber really meets the road, where performance truly ignites itself. So that’s action. Item number one is like determine is this a competitive advantage you want to build in your own business? If not, then you know and go build the competitive advantage somewhere else.

Josh Hadley 00:41:30  There’s plenty of opportunities to do so otherwise. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two is have a robust hiring process. Stefano you touched on this and you hear it from a lot of clients. Well I found somebody on online jobs and they were $600. And I don’t understand why they didn’t work. And it’s like okay well walk me through. How did you vet them? Did you understand their culture, index their personality. Did you go through a case study with them? Did you go through a track record of performance, interview with them? And 99% of the time. And the answer is no. Okay. So that’s your problem right there. So I think like before you’re able to build an in-house PPC team effectively, you’ve got to build your in-house recruiting team. And you don’t need a team. But like what’s your recruiting funnel look like? Because at the end of the day it’s just a sales funnel. The sale is the ultimate person that you bring in and that you hire.

Josh Hadley 00:42:34  But again, if you want to go, it’s like running Facebook ads. Not everybody that sees my ad is going to be the right customer, but it’s a sales funnel, and I get people, the right people to ultimately click the buy button. So likewise, I need to get people to first apply, then be willing to jump through these hoops and then, you know, be willing to join us and maybe leave their other job. because I have such a compelling offer for them. And that’s truly. Like you got to up your game, Stefano, you’re doing this like we didn’t even talk about this, but, like, how do you woo somebody over and poach them from there? Like, I kind of like my job. And the only reason why they would be willing to work with you is because you cast such a bigger vision and mission for the business that they’re like, that’s pretty darn cool what you’re building. I want to come build with you. And then you, as the job of the CEO, like your job turns into sales and you’re selling the company vision and mission to recruit a level talent.

Josh Hadley 00:43:36  And then my third and final action item here is implement an operating system in your business. This applies whether or not you’re hiring PPC in-house. You obviously have either an agency or you have some other virtual assistants. If you don’t have a meeting framework that we just discussed as Stefano mentioned as well. Hey, at the beginning of the week we have a level set. What are the priorities etc. and then we have regular touch bases throughout the week and a report due at the end of the week. And this is how we get a good quick feedback loop. If that’s not happening in your business today with any team members that you have, go and implement that. Because again, you can’t just hire somebody, then just be like, yeah, they should be winning from day one, right? It’s like, no, it takes it’s at least six months to like truly train somebody up to where you’re like, all right, I think I can let go of the reins a little bit more now. So Stefano, that was a that’s a long list of action items there.

Josh Hadley 00:44:36  But anything else you would add? Anything I’m missing there.

Stefano Pretto 00:44:39  I feel like maybe the last point is about the the market is getting more competitive. So putting the time to think about this and you don’t need to invest so much time, you know, even if you spend like watching your video about how to set it up, set up the the scorecard or even like the setting up the meetings. It takes maybe four hours of deep work. It’s like once you set up the process and you have in mind, okay, this is what I need to do, and then you do it. It’s not much work. Let’s be honest okay. And so like do the basics. And if you do the basics very well, you would be way ahead of other other, other sellers because the market is getting more competitive. So we need to make sure we’re doing the basics very well. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:45:22  Love it. Really well said. And again, I do have another video on YouTube that’s about the seven meeting framework that every business should be implementing.

Josh Hadley 00:45:32  So you can go check that one out. In addition to the 90 minute, you know, how to hire a player talent video that I put out as well. But Stefano, you always drop lots of gold, lots of wisdom. So let’s go through the three final questions. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Stefano Pretto 00:45:52  I just been through my honeymoon. so. And, I read the many clients, suggested me this book. Good, too great. And so many good. things that I would suggest to read like that is, I would say, more professional. a personal one that is my favorite is obstacle is the Way Ryan holiday. So I would say this is personal. This is a bit more professional. Good too. Great.

Josh Hadley 00:46:16  Yeah. Those are both fantastic books. The obstacle is the way. Good to great, really good recommendations. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and how have you been using it?

Stefano Pretto 00:46:28  Well, I’m always using cloud, so I’m always inside cloud.

Stefano Pretto 00:46:34  Cloud Coworker. We made many videos about that. And I like it for for our clients, to do analyze the data very quickly. For example, market share analysis. I love that, you know, before I had to download the scoop, they put the data in a Google sheet or using any other software. Now I can do it on cloud and I can train cloud on what I want to achieve. So for me, cloud could work using projects using MCP and there are many out there right now. That is still by far the best thing you can do with AI or in my case.

Josh Hadley 00:47:08  Yeah, totally. Constantly be building. The game continues to change so quickly. So you’re on the right right path there. Third and final question who’s a brand owner that you’ve been impressed with that you think deserves a shout out?

Stefano Pretto 00:47:22  I will say like this. yeah. I’m really I’ve been really impressed by what he built with this company, and I don’t know if he likes to be public, but this, he’s doing is doing very well on Amazon.

Stefano Pretto 00:47:35  Nine figure and the bias to action and how much how how like how many things he’s he’s doing to achieve his goals, which is $1 billion on e-commerce sales at such a young age also. And I met him in person and that was a very surprising. It’s very inspiring to see that. Well, that is the level I need to achieve. If if I want to achieve these goals, that was very impressive to see. To be honest. And I don’t see that many times.

Josh Hadley 00:48:09  Well, we’ll have to see if we can get him on the podcast, see if he’ll come out to light. Exactly. Stefano, this has been a great episode. If people want to learn more about you want to have them train their in-house team, where could they reach out to yet?

Stefano Pretto 00:48:23  You can go to trainers.com or you can contact me on LinkedIn. You will find me under Stefano Trento.

Josh Hadley 00:48:29  Awesome. Stefano, thanks again for your time today.

Stefano Pretto 00:48:32  Thank you Josh. It was a good conversation.

MC 00:48:35  Thank you for listening.

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