In today’s episode, we have John Cavendish back on the show. John is a very experienced seven figure seller who has been in and out of Amazon businesses and has done amazing things as a speaker at our Cross Border Summit events and other things. We are talking about outsourcing tasks – how to actually grow your business, how to find people to help you get to the next level. It’s a very interesting topic for you today. Let’s tune in.

Thanks so much John!

√ Webinar on Nov 12 (2 time slots)
√ John’s site Seller Candy (Affiliate link with discount offer)
√ John’s GFAVIP profile

Thank you John for bringing good information to us today, you always deliver good value.

Don’t forget to save the date – November 12, you’ll learn a lot at the webinar. John will be there, he’s really great and will give us a lot of his time. Make sure you grab that free option to get it. It’s gonna be short and sweet. Like we said, there is an offer. It’s a special price that is not online anywhere. Thanks for tuning in!

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[00:00:00] All right. Thank you everybody for tuning in to Global From Asia episode three, three, one video and audio, we’re talking about outsourcing tasks, having other people help you do your Amazon seller central your e-commerce business, to actually focus on the things that make the most for you. Let’s tune in right now.

[00:00:17] Welcome to the Global From Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down, into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michelini. All right, everybody. Thank you for choosing to listen to the show. As always this is your humble host, Michael Michelini here.

[00:00:39] I am in my leather jacket. I don’t know if it’s leather or pleather. My father-in-law’s spare. So, it’s getting chilly here. We are going to be in November when the show goes online. Well, you always bring good stuff for you, John Cavendish is back on the show. He’s a very experienced seven figure seller. Been in and out of Amazon businesses, still selling himself and has done amazing things as a speaker at our Cross Border summit events and other, other things in our community.

[00:01:09] And he’s always, always bringing the goods, bringing the good information for us today. We’re going to talk about, you know, how to actually grow your business, how to find people to help you get to the next level. And it’s, it’s a very interesting one. And we also have some special things to announce we’re going to do a live webinar.

[00:01:26] Save the date, November 12th. It will be short and sweet with a special, special offer. Of course he does have a service here and we do get a commission, honestly, but it’s a special price and he’s really, really generous to both you and to us. So if you wanna check that out, we have the show notes for the show, it’s globalfromasia.com/seller candy, which is the name of his business.

[00:01:47] We can get the link to the webinar if you still make it and other amazing things we’re talking about in this episode, as well as all our video, photos, we have amazing stuff there. So let’s go to the session. We did do this live again. We’re set. We’re trying to do more and more of these live streaming and video and audio.

[00:02:04] So you can get all the things you need. I think even if you’re not selling on Amazon, you can get quite a bit from this show, but it is based more for the e-commerce seller. Let’s tune in. As you can tell, we’re doing more live streaming live video events, we’re doing a course to just keep our game sharp.

[00:02:21] We have an amazing team making things happen here. If you like, like anyone to actually get on the inside, we have gfavip.com, our private community, our inner circle, where you can get into these live events and the networking sessions. These guests are amazing, and we have them there with you. So after the interview a little bit before the interview, you can get to know them.

[00:02:40] You can get to know others and our amazing community. But we still want to give this information to people that can’t make it, but if you’re wanting to get any insight and also get some relationships and networking, that’s what it’s really about, gfavip.com and thanks in advance. Okay. Thank you everybody.

[00:02:55] For choosing to download and listen to the Global from Asia podcast. I think I said it already, but I’m still excited. Seven years now, or seven years old. So I’m trying these new technologies and it’s online, on my softwares and we all as always have amazing, amazing people sharing. I’m so happy we have, with us, John Cavendish. He’s a friend of mine, you know, spoken at a few of our events about, you know, various Amazon, you know, Europe and Amazon, Amazon businesses.

[00:03:27] And he’s always been really active in our community and, and, co-founder in Seller Candy, which we’ll dive into, in to the show. Thanks a lot for coming on, John. Cool. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me again. Okay. Yeah again. You’ve been even all over the community and shared earlier. So today it’s a very important topic.

[00:03:47] I know, I know a lot of people were always interested in this. Like, you know, how do we get these tasks, you know, seller central or Amazon, or, e-commerce you know, how do we get out of this kind of like day to day and you know, getting into the weeds and getting on to the business. Right? So, but before we jump in, do you want to give us a little quick intro of your yourself and, and what you’re, where you’re at?

[00:04:11] Sure can do. So, yeah, as Mike said, I’ve been involved in the community for awhile. I’ve been an Amazon seller now for six years. I think I’m still selling on Amazon and actually now live coming to you from Vietnam cause I’ve been based here for about five years and yeah. Just like Mike, aiming to travel this year, aiming to not be necessarily in Vietnam the entire year, but part of it here.

[00:04:38] So I mean, Michael Hudson chats about that being stuck in different places. So yeah, I’ve been selling on Amazon for six years and we still have that business about two and a half years ago. I started an Amazon agency by like full service management agency. We did, you know, high ticket clients, bigger brands in the U S and Europe and help them to grow and scale.

[00:04:59] And then one of the things I realized with that business as I kind of grew it, and I’ve sent yes to that now is that there’s something in the middle. Like there’s some people who want an assistant bond ready for full management yet, or don’t want full management. And that can either be know Amazon seller, or it could be a bigger company who has a marketing manager.

[00:05:18] And you know, that all your managers, all that time is being taken up with seller central. So we want to develop a service somewhere in the middle. Yeah. Seller candy. Great, man. That’s that’s a cool story here. I think. We’ve been on similar tracks, you know, I’m stuck in China, mainland China, which is almost scary to say.

[00:05:36] I get some people angry, you know? There’s some angry people, you know, at China, but you know, I’m here and we’re all stuck where we are. It’s like the frozen year, like, yeah, for the last few years, you know, it’s been great to see you develop, develop your, you know, your businesses and growing within Amazon Space, e-commerce space and also in Asia, which is awesome too.

[00:06:00] Originally from the UK, I think, you know, originally from the UK, right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Living, I was living in London before I moved to Asia, but I’m from Nottingham. Okay. Nice. Yeah. Awesome. And I’m not going to dig into that cause I’m not. So I’ve only lived in London for a little bit, but, Nottingham sounds fancy.

[00:06:22] It does. Isn’t there some room. I was never, it was the gun kind of gun crime, capital of England.

[00:06:31] Is that what I’m thinking of? Nottingham pounds. Nottinghill in London, and palace, but, and I don’t think it was a good city where Robin Hood’s from. Yeah. Cool, cool. And, yeah, I know I was thinking of that and that actually kind of crossed the mind. Maybe that’s what an Amazon or e-commerce is.

[00:06:55] And, you know, I guess that’s what disruptive businesses, right? Raw robbing or disrupting, right. Disrupting traditional retail, traditional ways people buy online. And, and then the people like, like, like you and me and the listeners that are adapting to the online world, we’re, we’re benefiting, you know, we’re we’re, you know, we’re staying ahead of the curve and the trends.

[00:07:16] So, so you mentioned it a little bit, you know, I think maybe dive a little bit more into the struggle. I think the struggle, you know, of, you know, going online, doing a business is the team, finding the right people, getting the tasks done and not getting stuck in that day to day. So does that maybe share a little bit more about the journey there?

[00:07:38] Yeah. So everyone, you know, everyone who thinks about business talks about becoming the owner of the business, not the operator. And we kind of found that well, what I found doing my own business and also told a lot of people is that everyone wants to go straight from being the owner, you know, from the operator to being straight to being the owner.

[00:07:57] And that’s impossible. Like they have enough revenue, you don’t have enough experience. And if you do do that, you end up. Everything going crazy because everything spirals out of control because you don’t know how to manage these people. And that was my experience. Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:08:14] So basically what we want to do is create a service that lets you take the step from becoming the operator to the owner. So this is like a stepping stone, being able to outsource and get rid of the annoying everyday tasks that keep you busy, but don’t actually add value to the business. So the struggle really is.

[00:08:35] Every day, we’re working our business, working our business, feeling really busy, feeling tired at the end of the day, but we’re not necessarily doing things that add value, asset value to the business and gross revenue. It’s just busy work which is like beneath us, if we want to elevate ourselves to a higher level.

[00:08:51] Makes sense. Yes. We’ll get through, we’ll get into that more. And I think a lot of people I talk to are always struggling because one is a lot of times they do it themselves. There’s actually been some pretty good success stories, even on the show like we’ve had some people, they, they do almost everything themself actually, which is kind of crazy, but, or they sometimes have like one or two really, really skilled.

[00:09:17] Hardworking people that are highly educated can do like every, every freaking thing, you know, like there are people that somehow almost enjoy that. But most people are like, what you’re saying. I think we maybe want to kind of learn a little bit ourselves or get it started, but we hope to hopefully build a.

[00:09:37] Yeah, like you said, building a business, which is not a job, right. A job is something you need to do every day. And if you don’t do it, you don’t get paid. Right. But a business is hopefully something that’s earning money while you know, the dream is while you sleep, you know. You wake up and there’s money and new money in your bank account, you know, things are getting done without your needing to be involved.

[00:09:58] So, I think people probably know, but let’s just go through some of the major buckets of, of what kind of things do need to be done, you know? Or do you categorize these? How do you, how do you kind of like structure that in your, in your mind? Um, so the way I structured my mind is I tried to take a step back from FBA and think of it as a, you know, as any other business.

[00:10:21] So any business kind of fits into three buckets, which is, you know, sales and marketing, finance, and operations. So when we’re adding value to our FBA business, we need to be doing the product development or the marketing side of operations. That’s the way I see it. So finance and get a bookkeeper, outsource that as soon as possible, it’s a waste of time. Operations, like we can keep our self busy doing the really basic operational stuff, but that all starts also not adding value to the business.

[00:10:52] So we want to be there and marketing the products and developing new products. So that’s why we kind of asked the kind of way I silo it. And then Amazon, you can, you know, you can either silo the marketing as you know, Amazon marketing is marketing or you can do product development and operations.

[00:11:07] And they’re the two real ways of adding value to your Amazon business, improving your marketing, improving your products, everything else, it’s busy work. I like it. I, another suggestion, I at least, you know, another way I look at product development, I call it like R and D you know, research and development.

[00:11:24] Which is, I guess it would kind of structure under operations. It’s it is, R and D I think is in our operations. But, but yeah, basically, you know, I think any, any good businesses, any innovative business, right, is doing R and D, which is a cost, but obviously it’s an investment towards growth and yeah, if you’re not making new product, right, you’re probably gonna fall behind, you know, if you’re just.

[00:11:51] Milking the cash cows. You know, I’m thinking my, some of my school days, but you have those four segments to star the cash cow, the dog, and the, you know, the, uh, maybe average product, uh, sorry, I just didn’t prepare that one, but, but yeah, basically. Yeah, I saw, you’re basically saying, I at least accounted for finance ops marketing and product development as the four buckets.

[00:12:14] Well, the three buckets of any business should be finance, sales and marketing operations. And then we try and sub categorize everything under there. But even though I used to get rid of finance until you need a CFO or somebody through your financial projections, which is the most important part of finance, because you’re still going to be, have to be head of finance, unless you’ve got somebody who’s super qualified sales marketing also.

[00:12:35] Then if you think about that, you can, if you want to outsource some of that, so say a PPC agency or something like that, that you need to be heading up. Until you have a COO, somebody to cover that and then operations and product development where you need to be heading up that probably leading on the product development side, because you know, the easiest way to make money on Amazon is have the right products and then getting rid of all the stuff underneath.

[00:12:58] Cause that’s the bottom of the barrel. Like that’s the cheap, the cheap work, which is just to make sure everything keeps running day in, day out. Got it. Got it. Okay. That’s that’s great. Uh, another one is when do you think somebody should start to ask for help? You know, like when, you know, like you’re saying you, maybe you started by doing yourself, like I’ve had mentors or maybe I, don’t get offended by older people.

[00:13:24] Like, you know, There’s a lot of different ways to think about this, but they say you do everything yourself, you clean the toilet yourself, you sweep the floor yourself, you do every single part of the business yourself. I remember this guy, I won’t say his name, but it really was. And then later you start to hire that person that the things you either don’t want to do or can’t do, or you know, or does not, like you said, not valuable for you to do.

[00:13:47] But how do you know when’s the right time to do that? Is it financial or is it operations or both? Yeah, I don’t agree with doing everything yourself. I think it really depends on the skill set, so it’s good to understand how things work and, you know, if you follow the E-Myth, the E-Myth methodology, they do everything and build the process for it.

[00:14:11] The caveat to that is if you can find an agency like a smart agency to do things for you, have a better process than you. I think it’s better for them to put the process in place. That’s not what we do with seller candy, but. That’s a good way of another solution to doing that. I mean, I would get somebody as me personally, as soon as possible.

[00:14:30] I think anything about 15,000 a month revenue is a good time to move because you already started to scale. But the question that I asked myself is, do I still want to be doing this in a year from now? And if not, then I should be training somebody to do it as soon as humanly possible. Okay, because it’s going to take a while to get someone in place.

[00:14:49] It’s going to make sure that we, as long as we got the cash flow to make it happen, I want to make it happen. Yeah, no, I agree. I think, um, I think another way to look at it is. Make a 12 month budget or six month budget and hopefully have enough. You know, a lot of people are, we know a lot of people that are, I’ve done it myself, bootstrapping, you’re starting with like nothing, but hopefully the better way is hopefully having a budget of cash in your bank account where you, you know, you map out all your costs, even if you have zero sales or, or negative cashflow, but hopefully you have money in the bank too.

[00:15:22] Cover that cost of that, you know, team member or, or service for X, you know, six months, you know, I think it’s bill Gates or Microsoft. He says, you know, he tries to keep. Six months of operations with no income, which actually would be, you know, a lot of people right now are learning that the hard way with COVID, you know, like if you have zero sales for certain businesses, you know, like, can you, how long can you operate?

[00:15:43] So maybe also another way is I like the 15 K Mark, but also maybe if you want to start with somebody right away, you budget out like six months to a year of that cost, assuming zero. Zero sales or, you know, our burn, our burn rate, you know, burning money, which has meaning you’re spending more than you’re earning, which is another way, I guess it really depends how many times you’ve done this.

[00:16:05] Like if you had a business before you got some cash and you’ve also run a business before, I would definitely start hiring early and go to negative cashflow, if it’s someone’s first time, like the cashflow scares people. So yeah. I, you know, I don’t, I’m not saying invest in our services of any service unless you know what you’re doing.

[00:16:21] Yes. You know, you’re comfortable burning this money because it feels scary the first time you burned money. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know about you. It still scares me. It’s on the path. Doesn’t it? You’re burning money. And if you know, this is the path to making that money, it’s fine. When you’ve done it before you had, you know, you’ve got your plan in place.

[00:16:39] That’s fine. The burn little word burn is a little scary, you know? Um, but try to think of it, like invest, you know, I mean, if burning is the core is the cool as a word, everybody likes to, you know, investors and business owners use, but we should also think of it as investing right by you investing in a team member or somebody or a 

[00:17:00] service, or, you know, whoever, you know, you, you have a service we’ll talk about, but don’t think of it as it’s a cost, but it’s an investment for you to grow the business, focus on the things that are more valuable for you to do.

[00:17:09] Right. So that’s another way to think about it, but, but yeah, so I guess of course you can invest up front or you could try to hustle and do everything yourself and not really spend. Money, but spend your time, right to do it yourself. I think the next one I have on the list is maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s, I kind of bucket the types of ways you can get the help of three virtual assistants in, I don’t like the word virtual assistant really, but I guess it means like an online

[00:17:40] Based worker that can do tasks for you, you know, but of course, hopefully you would hire somebody that has Amazon experience, you know, not just hire somebody that had no Amazon experience, but, uh, or at least experienced in whatever thing you’re trying to do, then there’s the full time. Maybe a 

[00:18:00] employee, but I almost feel like today’s one, especially COVID I feel like it’s almost the same now VA or full-time right.

[00:18:05] It’s just, but agent, agency, you know, is my other kind of question. So how do you, I don’t know, you have your, your, your, you know, your service, um, maybe that’s a whole new category, but maybe you can give us some ideas what people can choose from when they decide. To outsource, you know, how to outsource or not do it themselves.

[00:18:26] Yeah. So I think, yeah, like you said, VA has just become synonymous with, you know, lower paid employee kind of cause it’s the same thing. Having a full-time employee is the same thing. So, you know, we use the term VA or personal assistant just in the, to get in people’s minds. They’re in that Headspace, like this is our price points.

[00:18:47] So, yeah, as you said, there’s three different types. Um, it really depends on what level of person you’re looking for, whether you’re looking for somebody to get a specific result or whether you’re looking for somebody to help you grow the business long-term, or does that somebody on your team. So if you want someone who’s, you’re going to have to manage actively.

[00:19:07] I prefer that to be a higher paid employee, because you know, what we’re doing with Amazon is very repetitive. So there’s no necessarily that’s not necessarily a reason you should be spending lots of time training and managing somebody who is only doing small, repetitive tasks because that’s cheap and easy to find a find for service.

[00:19:27] Find someone like us finding a different service who can just deal with that stuff. But if you want someone who’s going to grow with your business over the very long-term, you want to invest the money in training and hiring and having them on the team, then that’s good. But you need to go to afford to pay them because like, there’s nothing worse than hiring somebody cheap.

[00:19:45] Training investing in them and make them irreplaceable because I’m sure you’ve done it. I’ve done it many times with people that they’re too skilled for now, then now they’re really what they’re really good value now because I’ve trained them up in this amazing stuff, but I’m not paying them enough 

[00:20:00] so they can go somewhere else and use their skillset if they wanted to that people don’t do that.

[00:20:03] But it’s more like if they have one leave or if you want another person you’re going to have to pay them a lot more. And then you’re going to have to equalize salaries anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I think a lot of us have been there, you know, you, uh, I also enjoy, you know, that’s kind of like what I like about the community in a podcast.

[00:20:19] I like to kind of educate people generally. So weather, but yeah, of course it’s the best is to hire. Somebody knows how to do it already. Right. Rather than train them. Cause there’s while my, yeah. Cause you’re going to spend a lot, a lot of time, like, you know, and like you said, they might, they might not work out or, you know, either you, as you.

[00:20:37] They might not fit in the culture. They might not, you know, maybe the rate, they find another rate of job somewhere else. So, yeah, it’s, it’s totally true. And I’ve learned the hard way and sometimes I still learn the hard way with that, but I think that’s also a struggle of hiring and managing yourself.

[00:20:52] Right. You got to kind of, it’s human. You’re dealing with people, right. People. So you gotta, you know, find them. Onboard them, train them, manage them, incentivize them, keep them like, you know, this management and you know, that’s why a lot of times people like Google and Facebook, because you don’t have so many people because people, you know, everybody has their life, they have things come up, you know, they’re, you know, so, yeah, you’re the managing people is always a challenge, right.

[00:21:19] Whether even the higher paid or lower paid, you know, you’re still managing that, that person. And then you said so that would be for the employee or the VA or the person that you’re hiring directly managing. I think then you said like skill specific tasks would be like an agency you met. Maybe I missed it.

[00:21:38] specific outcome. So, you know, it could be an ongoing relationship. Somebody who’s super skilled, like more skilled than us agencies, the way to go in my experience, because you’re going to get someone who is, or you’re going to get an agency who is responsible. So they are tied to the outcome. You know, they’re a hundred percent tied to the outcome.

[00:21:59] You don’t have any employment costs if you’re hiring locally. But also, you know, they’re make or break on what they said, deliver, and I liked that. I like, you know, you might be paying them more than you’re paying an employee, but you have a set outcome that they want to get to. Yep. Yep. I agree. I agree.

[00:22:19] Okay. It kind of actually almost purposefully leads into the next question I have is, you know, KPIs or metrics or how to know what they’re doing is good or how to, how to, you know, I don’t know if it’s different for an employee or a team internal versus external, but you know, what are some ways in, especially within Amazon or e-commerce, what are some metrics that you would suggest to use to, you know, even you’re using a service like yours or agency, you know, what are some things people should look at?

[00:22:49] Of course there’s top line, but you know, what are, what are some other ways. So I think self-managed people, I mean, that’s the same with all people that want to employ, but self-managed people, 

[00:23:00] especially the work from home especially at the assistant level. So we want people who can solve problems with minimal interaction.

[00:23:07] So there’s two different levels. There’s our service level where it’s very easy to monitor results because you’re looking for outcome, you know, we’re trying to fix things. We’re trying to. Get to a certain result as quickly as possible. So super easy to monitor. And then if you’re working with agency, it’s all about having an agency that tells you what the KPIs should be or asks you for the KPIs and gets down to a set of KPIs that they’re going to be judged against because the best people want to be, want to be monitored.

[00:23:33] The same thing with good employees as well. They’ll ask you for KPIs. You shouldn’t need to give them KPIs. Great. That’s great, man. Um, and then what are some that you would suggest, you know, uh, generally in, um, but it really depends on our level it’s response time. It’s getting to the right result. It’s interaction, speed of response to you, to the customer, but also with Amazon.

[00:24:02] That’s the KPI. We get our cell phone and how long it takes to solve an issue. Okay. So it’s an agency. It’s going to be, you know, revenue strategy where we all were against the plan on having a plumbing. Fine. Those are helpful. Thanks for sharing. Um, next question is the mistakes water? No, you, you you’ve been at, you’re selling yourself.

[00:24:25] You know, you’ve been an agent you’re doing an agency or sell a candy water, you know, I’m sure you’re seeing trends that the sellers make off over and over that are almost probably annoying to you now. What are some of them that you see that we can learn from. I mean, there’s some generic ones to start with, like, you know, hiring too fast, like hiring too fast.

[00:24:47] You know, you get sick of the hiring process. Like you start hiring. And then especially if you’re hiring in a, you know, through like a platform with lots of people applying like assistance, you get volume and volumes horrible. 

[00:25:00] You’re like, Oh, I’m gonna get this amazing person. You get 250 applicants. So you need some way of dealing with that.

[00:25:05] So you need to have a real outcome. I need to get the best, those Nova. So hiring too fast. And that’s linked to firing too slow. It’s horrible. And people go, especially when you know, they’ve left other things for you, but if they’re not a good fit, they need to go as soon as possible. But that’s kind of tied to the investment in the person.

[00:25:23] Isn’t it? Like you don’t want to invest in the person and then, uh, and then them disappear, but also you don’t have to let them go. So you don’t get too emotionally invested in that. And you know, we all want to be good people and support these people and not just let them go into nothingness. Yeah. Um, so I guess the next one is pitfall would be training from the ground up.

[00:25:45] Like I mentioned before, like we need somebody who knows what they’re doing already. Um, people can be trained in our systems, but they need to have the right analytical mindset, have some experience. And, you know, just be curious, like if someone can solve a problem themselves, then it’s going to be a hell of a job training.

[00:26:04] Okay. I guess another one, not taking training and management time into account, you know, we value our time highly, and if you’re not valuing your time at minimum $50 an hour, then you should be evolving your time more ideally, a hundred, 200 bucks an hour. So that’s, if we’re spending 10 hours a week managing for somebody managing somebody.

[00:26:23] Really really adds up. So not taking that into account, um, and then hiring for the wrong role. So the biggest one that people do is they hire for the wrong roles. Like we find this because we do outreach through a few different platforms, like occasionally Upwork. Don’t tell upwork, you know, we’re looking for people who are hiring too many people, hiring the roles in that company.

[00:26:44] Shouldn’t be hiring for like build me an Amazon business. Um, do some product research for me, do product development for me. Like that can be done. If you talk to them high level agency or person, you gotta pay a lot of money to develop a product for you or somebody who’s an Amazon expert. And for some reason, they weren’t willing to help you for 500 bucks an hour.

[00:27:06] But no, you shouldn’t be outsourcing that stuff. You should be outsourcing the busy work you’re doing every day. So you can concentrate on a marketing and probably development, marketing, product development. The only thing you should be doing. To be making money. Awesome. Awesome. This is really, this is really cool.

[00:27:23] Yeah. You know, I have done that. I flipped from Upwork. Uh, you know, usually we’re hiring, but you flipped from Upwork to being an employee, looking for a job. And I read some of the job descriptions and I’m like, wow. And the worst is, there’s not another one is they’re just totally unclear. They don’t have, they don’t even, they are so many, I haven’t looked lately, but I remember I read, like they just wrote like two sentences, like title is like, yeah, like you say, like, I need somebody to research, product, find product and, uh, you know, like, Description is like, I’m looking to hire somebody that can help me make $1 million.

[00:28:02] I wanna say something. So, and then they, they wonder why they get bad applicants, you know, or they, or like you said, they, uh, they try to hire somebody that’s, uh, wouldn’t want to be hired if they knew how to do that. Right. Like find me a million dollar a year earning product, you know, like if I could do that, why would I apply to do that for you?

[00:28:26] All right. Let’s go. What yours? Yeah, I agree with that one. So, so it’s one of my more last kind of questions. Also. There’s a couple people attending. We can leave chats, we can add it to the show. Uh, and then we’ll go into the networking mode after for those on here. But, uh, you kind of answered it, but let’s maybe dive a little bit.

[00:28:47] So once they start to answer, you know, once you start to get. You know, these, the right tasks in the right people. There’s I think we feel like talking about traction too, is a good one. Gino Wickman getting the right people into the right seats. I feel like even, even kind of mentioned, it feels like we both have read that and we’re referencing that in some of the discussions here, like the corporate structure, the structure of the buckets.

[00:29:10] But, so you’re saying like the main, the focus of the seller, the owner would be your let’s maybe dive a little bit more. So what would be like a day to day? Have somebody like, you know, finally got on the business and they’re an Amazon seller and they’re a, well, you know, marketing and product development.

[00:29:30] So maybe you give us some ideas of what that would be. Yeah. So basically focusing, I think on revenue generating activities. So as like process improvement, new products, advertising improvement, deals with JV partners, they’re all things that we could be doing. So, you know, ideally rolling out a bed, not checking your sales, not getting a load of messages from, uh, checking your customer service messages and getting angry.

[00:30:01] Somebody found out yeah. This night or the, uh, yeah, the inadequate thing that’s happening. Um, the person that knows the customers, trying to rip you off for like a free one or something. Yeah. I can deal with that. Like there’s always going to happen. And so you just need to, your customer service person just needs to be good enough to be a, this guy is trying to try it on again, doing a bit of research, checking this guy didn’t actually receive his product and then it doesn’t need to get raised to you.

[00:30:26] And I can tell you once a week about it, that’s the level we want to get. Um, so yeah, focusing really on. I think ways in which we can add value. Yeah. Um, it was actually in a recent podcast I did on my, I was just me on the microphone. That’s calling it, I call it artist and garbage men. So I think, uh, the artist is the product development person or finding a new product opportunities.

[00:30:55] You know, I, the garbage man is the data, the data analytic person. And they’re the ones that are, uh, Looking at the numbers. So I think you can do both. You can be, it’s like left brain left brain, right brain. But I think those are the two core skillsets of a Amazon e-commerce seller. Right? Finding new products, knowing your market, knowing the trends in your market, and then digging into that data.

[00:31:19] Right. Looking at your metrics, looking at your competitors, you know, like, you know, we’re missing Canton fair right now, but you know, and trade shows, but you walk around with sellers, right. And you walk around. They can look at a product, you know, and you can, if you’re really good, you can, you can almost know if this will be a good product or not for you, you know, like, and you don’t even end up, you know, the price, you can look at it.

[00:31:45] You like, you can know, like, You can know, like you don’t even have to look on Amazon or Alibaba, you know, like this, I could probably buy for this price and I could probably sell it for this price. You know, I think that’s where you should be focusing. Right? Knowing your industry, knowing like how much products cost to make and how much products cost to sell within hopefully a vertical or a niche that you’re in.

[00:32:08] Like, if you’re you’re the expert on this category or this group. Right. And then that’s what you should be focusing on. And yeah, like. Which is, uh, which is not going to be so possible if you’re, like you said, rolling out of bed, checking your, uh, seller central messages and dealing with some customer that’s, you know, like complaining about.

[00:32:29] This doesn’t fit good on my stomach and, uh, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then like you said, get, then you get your mindset off, right. It messes up your whole day. You’re not creating value, you know? Um, and there’s tons of that, you know, whether it’s Amazon e-commerce any kind of business or life. Right. So, so I totally agree, John.

[00:32:48] Yeah. I mean, especially, especially if you first like the first thing in your morning, right? So many people check, email, check, seller, customer service. Uh it’s. It’s tempting, but yeah, you try not especially, or if you’re still going to do those things, try to do them. I would suggest after you, at least got your more important things done, the, your valuable things done in your mindset, and it’s still a mindset like, well, business is mindset.

[00:33:10] Like whenever. Like I, you know, anyone’s having a, not so Stella time, which happens to everyone. I think, especially as people who are always trying to push and achieve more things and try new things, there’s always like lulls and down times and bad times, we will go through them and. That’s when I really realized it’s all mindset.

[00:33:30] Like the people that succeeded, just the people that can have consistency for the longest period of time, at least to build a system around themselves. So they know that about themselves so that whenever they want to do this there for a couple of weeks, that’s fine. Yeah. And that’s the reason to have stuff.

[00:33:46] If I want to just pay for two weeks, then I wanna be able to do that without going crazy. Yeah, it’s a, I’m reading another, I’m actually reading for a second time compound effect by Darren Hardy it’s is recommended by he’s also a community you might’ve met him. Roland in Taiwan is, uh, basically, basically, um, I should get him on the show.

[00:34:08] He hasn’t been on a show yet, but he’s done some workshops and things, but, uh, basically you want to have your friend Mo and your friend Mo and he says in the book is momentum. And you don’t get momentum until you get consistency and a habit too, you know? Cause yeah, like if your, if your brain is fried and you’re always thinking about the

[00:34:29] You can like, you know, the day-to-day operations, you can never really get to that level where you’re actually on your business. And it’s not just, it’s not about being lazy, right? Like, it’s about being able to make more strategic decisions like in your, like, even this podcast right now, we’re trying to invest.

[00:34:46] Research these new softwares, trying to be more creative, trying to try new things. But if you’re, if you’re stuck in the currently just maintaining where you’re at, you’re not going to get to that next level. So, so, um, this is great, John. Thanks. Thanks for sharing. So let’s, let’s talk, we’ve got a couple things to share.

[00:35:03] One is, this is the podcast, although we are streaming this on Facebook and we have some people in here, so it’s not a webinar we are, but we are going to do a webinar together, um, where, um, Just like you’re saying, try to be on the business. We’re trying to prepare in advance. So it’s going to be a couple of weeks away.

[00:35:20] But I think when the show goes online, we’re being more organized here at global, from Asia. So this show will go online November. Second or third, and then we’re going to give people about a week and we picked a date to November 12th, which is a Thursday, and we are going to try two different times.

[00:35:42] John’s really great. You’re giving us a lot of your time. So we’re going to do a morning session and Asia time, which is evenings in the US, unless you’re a night owl. In in, in Europe, it’ll be like 3:00 AM in Europe or something. And then we’re going to do a second session in the evening, Asia, which will be more like, for Europe and Asia.

[00:36:02] Well, unless you’re a crazy night owl in America, but we’re gonna have two different sessions. Um, do you want to share about what you’re gonna share in the, in the webinar? That’s maybe not in today’s podcast? Sure. Yeah. So what I’m going to be sharing is how you can get a fully trained and useful assistance up and running in under a week, uh, with no training, no hiring costs, no management time and no payroll by payroll headaches.

[00:36:26] Awesome. Um, so basically I’m going to share some of the ways that we regularly save our customers like 15 plus hours a week of Amazon management time. Awesome. That sounds really great, man. And we’ll have that link show on the show notes, and then, um, you can choose your time slot and get on a reminders and it it’s totally free.

[00:36:46] And, we’re going to have full SOPs and bonuses and there, you know, we’re trying and, uh, trying to make that the most or by, and you’ll have slides. So we’ll just be video and audio, but we’ll have some presentations to see, and I’m excited. Actually. I want to. I want to learn that we’re, we’re getting back.

[00:37:03] I go back and forth to the e-commerce. So we’re, I’m not currently selling, but, um, I think I mentioned to you, I’m actually starting to sell again for some things, and I’m still early stage, but we are always looking at ways to, uh, do it better than, than, uh, each time as all, as all of us are. So, and then

[00:37:26] Well, we do want everybody to go to the webinar. I guess that’s the focus for today of course, is registering for the webinar, but maybe either you can’t make it or, uh, which really sucks. Or maybe this is after the webinar date, Sellercandy.com, but I think you also have something special for what we’ll actually, maybe we won’t say it on the show, but there’s probably something special for listeners on that.

[00:37:47] You know, if they. Well, we’ll link to a special page or what’s the deal. There are, hopefully I’m not saying something wrong, but I think it’s fine. There is don’t miss the webinar. Like we’ll be offering special pricing now specifically for your, for your audience and we can answer questions live. And this is the most by far the most efficient way for us to talk and answer questions about seller candy.

[00:38:12] I’m sure we’re gonna be selling a, you know, sending out a replay, but that’s going to be a pretty short amount of time after. No, this isn’t going to be one of those super long webinars where we keep you on forever telling you stuff. It’s going to be short and sweet. This is how the service works. This is, you know, this is what you can do with it.

[00:38:28] These are, you know, the stat terms. This is the offer wedding specifically for you and the bonus typically for you. And then the questions like we’re going to get through fast. Like we know people need this service, this isn’t like a roundabout way of saying, Oh, this is the problem. This is the solution.

[00:38:41] You know, we know you need the solution. Yep. So, uh, we’re gonna keep it short and sweet and answer questions. Ready. This is going to be super action packed super fast, and hopefully there’s a time that everyone can make it to the webinar. Great John this, I mean, we always, we’ve worked together, you know, into various ways and events and, uh, your previous, all your things.

[00:38:58] So you always deliver great value just like today. And, uh, I like you’re straight up, you know, we’re going to sell something there, but it will be a really special price. So definitely don’t miss out. And, uh, and an offense, no matter what, they’re going to learn a lot. I mean, you’re, you’re a very established seller and you’re always sharing so much, so, all right.

[00:39:14] We’ll link that in the show notes and, uh, hopefully about a week after the show goes live, that’ll give people enough time. Okay. And, uh, there will be like a small replay time, but it won’t be forever, but definitely you guys don’t miss out. We’ll be there. John me we’ll have a community there who makes some great, get some knowledge, get some, uh, attention totally free.

[00:39:34] I guess that’s all we have for now. Right? John? Yeah, that’s it? No, thanks for having me as always Mike. So I’m going to switch to the table mode. We have a couple of people here, um, for that benefit for those people. But for now the podcast recording is over. Thank you for tuning in, are you a gladiator?

[00:39:52] I really consider Amazon sellers or e-commerce sellers as the modern day gladiator, because it’s, it’s, you know, it’s an arena, you know, we’re in the ER, we have the, you know, the audiences, the customers, and then we have Amazon is the guy. You know, as the, as the Lord, you know, and, and there’s competitors trying to like, you know, cut our heads off.

[00:40:14] And I really respect the seller. And with our last business, we did Lin the show called the e-commerce glare and it became a book it’s, uh, gotten great feedback on Amazon is super, super cheap. It’s actually super valuable. We also have a mastermind for that too. If you want check it out. E-commercegladiator.com for the book and the mastermind and more info there.

[00:40:34] Appreciate it in advance. Thank you. All righty. Well, thank you for tuning into this show. I I’m sure you enjoyed John, good friend of mine and also in our community. And it’s, it’s really great to see him grow. And I’m really, really excited about what is happening to Seller Candy. And if you have time.

[00:40:53] I dunno if the show we give you about two weeks from this show, when I line to get into this a webinar, it’ll be linked in the show notes at globalfromasia.com/sellercandy, and make sure you grab that free option to get it. It’s gonna be short and sweet. Like we said, there is an offer. It’s a special price that is not online anywhere.

[00:41:14] And. It also supports the show here. That will be a little bit of a commission to us. So thank you in advance for even considering the show. You’ll learn a lot at the webinar. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll get a very special offer as well, just to fully transparent here. That’s what I like about John.

[00:41:31] He’s a really straight shooter guy and he’s built many great businesses and, and, uh, that’s what it is for you too. Right? We’re building longterm business here. You know, we’re not the hit and run kind of a community here where building, you know, friendships, we’re building business, we’re growing our companies, building our brands, whether it’s a personal brand, a product.

[00:41:51] Brand a service brand because that’s all it really is. You know, I saw some video at a Gary Vee lately is like onstage. He takes a shoe off, his Nike. He says, this swoosh is worth a trillion dollars or a billion dollars, you know, billions of dollars. The shoe itself is a commodity. Right. But it’s that trust that that product is good, that people know that logo.

[00:42:12] And that’s what we’re doing here, here at the show. What John is doing in his product brands and his service brands and what I hope you are doing as listener, because that’s what it takes. And sometimes you got to refund a customer, you know, maybe you don’t agree with sometimes you got to make a hard decision or, you know, sacrifice.

[00:42:30] You know, I could be watching some, uh, Netflix right now, but I’m recording this intro for you or outro, you know, in, in the podcast. So I do hope you enjoy again, if you want to grab that free webinar, I’ll be there. John will be, there will be already some people that were on the live show that are, are signed up.

[00:42:45] So if you want to grab that, get the link globalfromasia.com/sellercandy and as well. You could see other cool stuff. We spent quite a bit of time making this long page. We have a core quote we’re working on more and more, a little, little, you know, tidbits of info links and, uh, and bonuses and info.

[00:43:04] So check it out. globalfromasia.com/seller-candy. I’m Michael Michelini, the host here, episode 331 over and out. Thanks for coming with the all the way to the end. To get more info about running an international business. Please visit our website at www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com.

[00:43:28] Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.