The Art of Building a Winning Team: Tips and Strategies for Scaling Your Business

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The Art of Building a Winning Team: Tips and Strategies for Scaling Your Business

Andrew GillilandAndrew Gilliland is the President of Action Holdings, an e-commerce asset management company. Andrew is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder of iSpyPens, a pioneering discreet tech solution that protects life, property, and peace of mind. He is a Florida native and graduate of the University of Tampa, where he earned his BS in information technology.

Dave Hunt
David Hunt of Action Holdings leads several platforms, including vendor onboarding, budget allocation, and acquisitions. Beyond his entrepreneurial duties at Action Holdings, David is also a product designer at PeopleReady, an industrial staffing agency specializing in on-demand labor and skilled workers. David graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia, earning his BFA in visual arts and new media with a concentration in graphic design.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • What is Action Holdings and its mission?
  • Andrew Gilliland and David Hunt share the challenges of being business owners
  • The employee performance review process
  • How to measure employee success and progress
  • Time management and delegation for operational efficiency
  • Strategies for understanding when it’s time to hire

In this episode…

Being a business owner has its advantages, such as being your own boss, impacting the world, and the potential of high earnings. However, entrepreneurship has many trials and tribulations.

Hiring personnel who meet all the necessary requirements is a common challenge for many businesses. Business leaders Andrew Gilliland and David Hunt share that successful employees fit the company culture, are excited about their job responsibilities, and work efficiently. One strategy to ensure you’re hiring A-players is to conduct employee reviews every three to four months. Create an evaluation document with three metrics: effectiveness and performance, KPIs, and team culture. As business owners, time is valuable, so leadership should be comfortable delegating responsibilities. Conduct time studies to analyze which tasks require more attention, then draft standard operating procedures for those items. This may also indicate that it’s time to hire specialized roles.

In this episode of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, Josh Hadley welcomes Andrew Gilliland and David Hunt of Action Holdings for a special strategy audit. Andrew and David share their takeaways, including the importance of employee performance reviews, how to measure employee success and progress, and how to create processes to manage time.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure ecommerce owners grow to eight figures. Of course…

I started Hadley Designs 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 go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

As a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. Email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com with the subject line “Strategy Audit” and tell me why your business should win the free audit for the chance to win and don’t worry, if you don’t win the free strategy audit this month, you’ll automatically be entered for future months.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

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. Join Josh Hadley, an eight-figure e-comm business owner and investor, as he interviews highly successful business owners get ready because you’re going to learn specific actions you can take today to help your business reach its full potential and leave a lasting impact on the world.

Josh Hadley 0:37

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 E. Gerber, author of the E-Myth, and Ryan Deiss at Digital Marketer. Today, I am speaking with Dave Hunt, and Andrew Gilliland. And we just conducted a strategy audit for their business, and you get to listen in on all the takeaways that we found for them. This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven-figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. Listen, Dave and Andrew, you know that I started my business back in 2015. And it took me seven years to grow it to an eight-figure brand, I made a lot of mistakes along the way that made the path of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than it really needed to. I wish I would have had a guide along the way that would have been able to help me navigate some of the obstacles or the mindset shifts that I needed to experience. And so for those of you who have hit similar plateaus, and you’re looking for those next steps to take in your business, then go visit eCommBreakthrough.com That e-comm with two M’s to learn more. And as a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month, I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session, at no cost. All you need to do is email me at Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com, and in your subject line, say strategy audit, and then plead your case as to why I should choose you and your business to work with for this month. And the best part is you guys get to listen in on a strategy audit that was just conducted here with Dave and with Andrew and their business that they are running, and you guys can have the the listeners could have a similar opportunity to come run their business, through my processes, let me share kind of some of my insights. And ultimately, my job is to make sure you come out of that audit session with 10x the value so that you can go 10x your business and be off to the races. So with that introduction, Dave and Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, thank you.

Andrew Gilliland 2:42

And you definitely just 10x ‘d the value that we went in with. So thank you.

Josh Hadley 2:49

Well, I appreciate you guys reaching out and raising your hand saying that you guys were interested in having a strategy audit. And this was a super fun strategy audit. One thing that I was super impressed with is you guys came prepared. You had a whole Google doc of questions that you wanted to ask me, you’ve provided the financial statements in advance, you let me know like how much revenue is being generated. You also provided me like your overall business plans, your annual goals for the brands, links to your products like that allowed me to come in, show up prepared to your audit session. So you guys came prepared. And I think that’s partially why you got 10x the value from all of this. But Andrew, you kind of led the conversation. And you had a lot of questions. And many of them kind of centered around your brands and kind of the organizational structure and how to, you know, scale up your brands that are already doing more than seven figures. But how do you take it to the next level? Let’s start here first, Andrew and Dave, why don’t you guys just share with the audience? You know what it is that you guys, do? You have multiple e-commerce brands. Tell us what it is that you have going on?

Andrew Gilliland 4:06

Yeah. So in simple terms, we have a holding company called Action Holdings. We are an e-commerce asset management company based in downtown Tampa, Florida. The business was started five years ago, but I’ve been doing e-commerce since I was eight or nine years old. And we’ve formulated Action Holdings to organize the various brands that we’ve launched, acquired, and will build in the future. So that’s a little bit about action holdings.

Josh Hadley 4:46

So it’s like you’re almost like a mini aggregator in a way you’ve got multiple brands under one roof and you’re trying to scale them all right.

Andrew Gilliland 4:54

So I get this question a lot and the short answer is not quite so we Do not consider ourselves an aggregator. We just kind of like a family owned set of brands that we’re managing, like our babies. So we say no to that question when it comes up, because a lot of aggregators are taking in these assets and kind of just throwing them into the wild west. Action Holdings doesn’t do that, we look for very specific deals that we are confident we can provide specialized attention in to grow.

Josh Hadley 5:32

Awesome. I love that. And I think that’s important, like you’re approaching it with a very specific, you know, target. And you’re, you’re not just acquiring anything just to acquire it. Right. I think that’s super important. And that definitely showed up in the way that you guys approach your business plans, as well, which I think is impressive. So, Andrew, why don’t you kind of lead off with, you know, stating what was kind of one of your biggest questions that you had walking into the audit? And what were your hopes of what you were going to get out of the conversation today?

Andrew Gilliland 6:03

Yeah, so they, as I said to you, Josh, our team is good. We’re above average at most of the e-commerce related things that we do. But people has been one of the biggest challenges for our company, making sure we’re bringing in the right people, putting them in the right seats, and doing the best that we can to grow our team, and business. So that was one of the biggest challenges that we came in with. You walked us through all of the behind the scenes of Hadley designs, and showed us simpler ways that we can effectively lead and manage our growing team. And we are going to implement the I forget the name of the document, but what you showed us as a simpler way of handling performance reviews, hiring and firing so that we can attract and retain a level talent.

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