Hiring a virtual assistant could be the key to unlocking your Amazon business’s growth potential—but how do you get started? In this episode, Thomas Parkinson, founder of Fast Track FBA, dives into why top Amazon sellers rely on VAs and how to build a VA-powered team structure to drive profits and streamline operations. Whether you’re scaling with online arbitrage, wholesale, or building an eCommerce empire, this conversation will guide you in sourcing, training, and managing VAs like a pro.
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Maximize Your Amazon Business with VAs
Hiring a virtual assistant is essential for scaling on Amazon. Learn Thomas Parkinson’s criteria for determining if you’re ready for a VA and why sourcing VAs can drive your business growth faster than you might think.
The Ultimate VA-Driven Business Structure
Thomas breaks down his business’s team structure, which includes sourcing agents, purchasing managers, and an admin VA. Get tips on creating a streamlined organizational chart that aligns with your Amazon growth goals.
Essential Metrics for VA Performance
Discover the top KPIs Thomas uses to track VA success, from weekly spend targets to gross profit metrics, and learn how these indicators can help you grow profitably.
Hiring and Training Hacks for Amazon VAs
Whether you’re hiring through Fast Track FBA or on your own, Thomas’s proven hiring process, Google form assessments, and testing methods will save you time and ensure you bring on top-performing VAs.
Resources From This Episode
- Fast Track FBA: FastTrackFBA.com – Thomas’s company that helps Amazon sellers find and train VAs, especially in online arbitrage and wholesale.
- Amazon VA Job Description Template: Download Here – Free template from Fast Track FBA to help you craft a high-quality job listing for sourcing VAs.
- Fast Track FBA YouTube Channel: Fast Track FBA on YouTube – Insights on building and scaling Amazon businesses, sourcing tips, and more.
- Online Jobs PH: OnlineJobs.ph – A popular platform for finding Filipino virtual assistants for Amazon businesses.
- Seller Central Reports: Amazon Seller Central – Use Amazon’s own reports to track metrics like weekly gross profit and ROI for optimizing your team’s performance.
In Conclusion
Thomas Parkinson provides Amazon sellers with a roadmap for building a scalable business by effectively using virtual assistants. His advice on structuring your team, tracking performance, and optimizing your hiring process will empower you to focus on growth while your team handles the day-to-day tasks. Ready to take your Amazon business to the next level with VAs? Dive into this episode for all the steps to get started.
Transcript
[00:00:00] TEASER
And I, and I always say to people, people will say, I’m not sure if I should get a VA or I shouldn’t. And I say, don’t take my word for it. Just look at those people are ahead of you. Look at people who’ve done seven or eight figures. How many of them are doing on their own and how many of them have really a team?
It might be VA’s, it might be local staff. And you’d probably say the bulk of them, 99 or 95 percent will probably have got some form of help in the form of VAs or, or she say support
[00:00:26] INTRO
welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon sellers school podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e commerce empire.
A side hustle and anything in between and now your host Todd Welch
[00:00:47] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Cool. Thank you so much for having me. So to give you a little bit of background on my Situation or should we say my history? I’m obviously you can probably guess i’m from the uk and i’m 38 years old And I’ve been selling on Amazon now for about eight years.
I think it is like you said. So I started in the UK. That was like my first business and we scaled that. Oh my God. I scaled that probably about a year and a half ago, two years ago. The peak we ever hit was probably 3. 4 million pounds, about 4 million in a single year of sales, which was great. We had across that buyers sources Buying managers, even an operations manager to run that operation.
And that was 100 percent away to be clear about that, that operation. So online arbitrage. And then about four years ago or three years ago, I think it was, I started in the USA, same model away again. We created a U S a company. And I basically took the same thing. So I took the model where we have a purchasing manager, we have sourcing VAs, and we have an admin VA to run the operations.
We took that and started scaling that and we’ve hit over a million with that in sales, and that’s something that I really enjoy now, much better than the UK. Why? Because the margins are a lot higher. And then also about. I think it was five or six years ago. I started another company and this is while I was living in Vietnam, which was called fast track FDA.
And that’s probably where you might know me from, but YouTube channel, for example. And in that company we do leads, but our core kind of business is VAs. So helping Amazon sellers who are doing OA or wholesale. With sourcing because that takes up all the time. And I think right now, or should you say probably by the end of this year, we’ll hit about a thousand VAs that we’ve hired for over 500 clients, support them in that journey.
We’ve learned a lot. Like I share a lot in my journey. Amazon’s always changing. We’re always learning new things. And I share a lot with my clients and also as I was supporting them to scale, which is fantastic. And I absolutely love that. And I, and I always say to people, people will say, I’m not sure if I should get a VA or I shouldn’t.
[00:02:44] And I say, Don’t take my word for it. Just look at those people are ahead of you. Look at people who’ve done seven or eight figures, how many of them are doing on their own and how many of them have really a team, it might be VAs, it might be local staff, and you’d probably say the bulk of them, 99 or 95 percent will probably have got some form of help in the form of VAs or, or she say support.
And the idea is, is that you’re going to just use them to help you grow your business. And so. Don’t take my word for it. Just copy what other people have done, which is the way to grow a business, you know, but you’ve got to do it the right way. And hopefully today I can share some tips that’s going to help people.
[00:03:21] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. It’s important to learn from the people ahead of you and not make the same mistakes. And a lot of people who are starting a business, especially like a business selling on Amazon, they tend to be more technician kind of people. And so they’re like, do it, do it, do it, solve problems, do it, do it, do it, do it all yourselves.
And so it can be rather difficult to hand stuff off to a virtual assistant and actually trust them. Is that something that you struggled with at all in the beginning?
[00:03:59 ] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
No, I wouldn’t say I did, but the only reason why I said I wouldn’t is because. Age, my first job at a university and admittedly I failed university.
My first job was managing bars. So I had like 120 staff. So immediately I had to learn straight away how to manage people. And at the age of 38, I think I’ve been managing people for like 20 years. So I’ve had, I’ve always had to learn that skill of leverage and managing people. But I do certainly see what you’re saying.
Most people are technical. They like the analytics. They love the opportunity, which is great, but then all of a sudden they just get to the point whereby. The business works, they love it, but they just run out of time. And they actually find that sourcing is a really hard part. And we always talk about it is like sourcing is the most valuable thing you can do in Amazon.
It’s really where we bring the value. It’s where we make the money. If you buy well, you’ve done it. If you don’t buy well, you’ve got problems, but it is the most time consuming part. And if you have a. Way or a process, which is working for you, whether that be an OA with suppliers or whether it’d been wholesale and how you find new wholesale suppliers or manufacturers or distributors, then that’s just a repeatable process, which is the foundations of business.
[00:04:58] And once you build a repeatable process, then you can hire people and get them to do it and hold them to the standards and then get similar results, if not. Great. People they’ll actually outperform you, which is amazing. So when that happens,
[00:05:20] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
yeah, yeah, for sure. And you mentioned earlier that you moved from the UK to another type of business that hired higher margins, but I missed what type of business that was.
[00:05:26] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
So we, so to be 100% transparent. We used to sell in the UK as well as the us, but we shut down the UK operation. Why? I was running 88 virtual assistants. I was running fast track, FBA I was running the UK operation, which was huge at the time. We were running the US operation at the time, and what we just saw was that the UK margin was declining and there’s reasons around like VAT and the OA model is very challenging.
I think the marketplace is like one ninth the size of amazon USA. So it’s tiny in comparison. Obviously the us is crazy big but the idea is and I just asked myself the question I’m making more money in the us than i’m in the uk. I spend more time on the uk Than I do on the us and why would I can and I was like i’m stressed and so therefore I was like I was talking to my coach and he’s like, why are you still running this business?
Are you just being stupid? Like, why don’t you take the time you spend on that and focus on this and then your life would be a lot easier and you probably make more money. So I was like, you’re right. And you know, part of business and part of what we do is, is we have to adapt. We have to change. And that was one of my life journeys that I went through doing that, adapting and changing and building a great business.
Getting the revenue and then shutting it down and then carry on with what was actually being more profitable, just like changing categories in Amazon.
[00:06:48] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Got it. Yep. So it’s still the same model that you’re doing the online arbitrage, or are you doing more of the wholesale reselling as well in the U S.
[00:06:58] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
So in the U S we do about 50, 50, 50 percent away, 50 percent wholesale.
And I think if you want to scale, if you don’t get into wholesale. It makes scaling a lot harder, but I think always a great place to start.
[00:07:10] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
For sure. And now I know we’re going to, we’re going to talk a lot about virtual assistants, but I think a lot of people would be interested, especially with a lot of the changes and things in Amazon.
And people have always been saying this, but they really seem to be saying it even more now that, you know, reselling is dead. Online arbitrage is dead. Dropshipping is dead. What are your thoughts on that? You’re obviously still doing it. Do you still see it as a viable thing that people can start doing?
[00:07:32] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Okay, so the way I look at the question is, what is arbitrage? Dropshipping, all that. It’s a fundamental level. It’s just trade it’s buying low selling high. It’s, you know, back in the day used to buy spices from India and sell them in the UK, for example. It’s just exactly the same, but it’s now, you know, now it’s online.
Now it’s a lot more digitized automated systems. You’re working off platforms and leverage, but it is still just trade. People are always going to want those goods. And if anything, as we’ve seen over time, people want more and more goods. We have a lot more disposable income now than we’ve ever had. It’s how you do that, which is adapting.
So is buying low selling high, which is fundamentally what arbitrage is. Is that going to die? No, not at all. Do you have to be more careful about how you do it? Looking at suppliers and particularly in the U S right now, we’re looking at, you know supply chain and making sure they’re legitimate.
Also as well, they’re not stolen goods. That’s a big problem right now. But. But also as well, when we look at suppliers, like I might think the supply is okay, but I say, it doesn’t matter what I think it’s what Amazon thinks, so therefore I have to operate to a higher standard. You know, even with things like section three.
So when we do our sourcing, we’re looking at that. We’re also, when we’re looking at the products or the brands we’re looking at, we’re now saying, are there other, lots of other sellers on that brand? Have they been selling for a period of time? And. Is there evidence that they’re safe? You know, the Amazon is not going to shut you down or that just, you know, remove that brand or it’s like a dangerous brand.
] The other one we look at now, especially gatings, you know, I think Funko got gated recently, Lego recently got gated, which is like, wow we see night come and go quite a lot. But the one thing we kind of think about now is if this were to be gated, what then? So can I sell it on Walmart? Can I sell it on eBay?
So again, what’s the, like the next distribution channels and why we might not utilize them right now. We are thinking about that. What’s the full back position. So is it as easy? No. Do we have to be more strategic in what we’re doing? Yes. Is it particularly challenging? No, I don’t think it’s that hard, but I think it’s just not as easy as it used to be.
But I think that’s the thing that you’re ever going to, you’re always going to see with any product. Platform maturing, but there’ll always be demand for these products. And we’ve seen that. So I think the model will continue forever in, in the shapes and foot sizes that we’ve seen it.
[00:10:00 ] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, I think that’s the big thing is that the market is maturing.
Government is getting involved, coming down on Amazon for things. And so that’s coming back on us and forcing us to ensure that we’re running our businesses, like real businesses, professional business, people, businessmen. Right. And you know, following the rules and everything else that Amazon has to do, and so they push that back on us.
[00:10:30 ] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Yeah, I agree. And, and I think for us is, and that’s the problem when people, like when people say, for example, they see people like you and me on social media and like, and I hate to call us influencers, but we do influence in a certain way. You know, we cut things down, we make it more, you know, shorter, more entertaining, like the sourcing process or how we do it, they’re like, wow, that looks really easy and like.
You’re seeing the highlight reel and they think getting into it’s really easy and it’s like the conceptually is there is hard work but at the end of the day whether it’s easy or not It’s still a business and you still got to treat it like a business and businesses are hard That’s why 95 of all businesses fell in the in the us in five years or should I say generally in the world?
I’d reckon but most people when they start this don’t realize actually like you’ve got to go through that learning curve and that takes time so Treat it like a business.
[00:11:20] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Treat it like a business and know that it’s going to be difficult. There’s going to be hard times. It’s not going to be all fun and games.
Like a lot of videos try to make you think so for someone who you know, they’ve, they’re selling on Amazon, whether it is someone like us doing online arbitrage, resale, things like that, or a private label seller. And they’re like, okay. I maxed myself out. I need to hire someone to help me out. What does that look like in terms of a first hire that you would recommend that people look towards?
[00:12:01] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
So I’ll try and keep it to just OA and wholesale because private label is a different game. And I don’t, I don’t do private label. And so the metrics and when you do it a little bit harder for me, like I don’t understand them. So I don’t think I’m. Qualified to talk about that but particularly around away and wholesale.
I can kind of get some really good advice. So internally within fast track FBA, whenever we. We don’t ever say no to people hiring vas but we do recommend against And we look at four criteria that we’re really interested in So number one have you done at least ten thousand dollars in lifetime sales now to you and me?
That seems like nothing but to a lot of people that is a lot and at a fundamental level That basically means that you can get a deal you can analyze it and say I like it or I don’t and you can explain why Ideally you’d want to be higher, but you really need to be able to say if someone gave you a lead You Do you know why you would buy it and like it or do you know why you’d reject it?
Because we all know there are a lot of very good leads which right now are profitable by the way But we still would never buy them So because there are other indicators that you’ve got to learn so at least 10 000 in sales shows that you’ve kind of bought sold You know what’s going on now number two We say you want at least five thousand dollars in cash or credit lines as a minimum But Why?
Because if you’re operating a 30 percent margin and you turn your stock in a three month period below that cash value, you’re not going to have enough money to invest in the deals that UVA gives you to make profit, to pay the VA and for you to take some money home. So if you don’t have that much cash.
It’s not worth it. Ideally you want more because your VA is going to do more And then the final ones are really number one or number three Sorry is going to be that you’ve got one hour per day to work with your VA if you’re in the states This is probably going to be a in the morning Because you want to have crossover time and to be clear what that looks like You’re going to have a one hour video call where you literally jump on a screen share and you analyze the deals live on the call and you explain why you like a deal and why you don’t.
The biggest indicator of you being able to transfer knowledge from you to your VA to get your VA to the standard that they need to be for sourcing is that one hour call, which is game changing. If you don’t do that, your VA’s performance will not get to where it needs to be. If you do it consistently and you do it well and communicate really well and talk them through on a live screen share, the VAs will start to understand what you, what you’re looking for, and they can go away and find more deals.
And so that’s number three, and that’s just an hour a day. And then we say an hour a day for month one. If it’s going well, then you’re going to do three hours a week for month two And then from month three onwards you do an hour per week where you jump on the call and do it And that’s where I am now, but you always need to have that contact and then finally Number four will be that you want to grow your business with vas and what you’re a team and the reason why we say this is because It takes time to learn the va to learn about you, but also you’ve got to learn how to be a leader This isn’t like The VA is a robot and they do exactly what you say.
No, you’ve got to learn how to communicate effectively. And that’s a whole nother skill set that takes a lot of time. So they’re the four things that we look at when people are saying, I’m interested in a VA, how do I know I’m ready? And that’s the four metrics we kind of judge it by.
[00:15:08] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep, for sure. A hundred percent.
So it sounds like to me, and those are all really good, good tips and metrics for sure. And it sounds like you’re recommending for people doing wholesale online arbitrage that for their first hire, they’re hiring a sourcing agent.
[00:15:23] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Correct. So to explain why I admin VA, by the way, that’s what I did. That’s what a lot of people talk about.
And I think it can be quite useful, but the problem comes as a. Sourcing is where we really make our money in this business. Number two is the fact that it’s the biggest time sink that we have. And when we talk about hiring people, we’re hiring labor and really you’re paying 3 per hour to hire someone else’s hour, if that makes sense.
So you’re making 15, you know, you’re selling, you’re making 15 an hour in your business right now, you can hire someone for three and it’s going to take them time to get to a level, but that’s great. Now, what we see is that. You can if you look at your calendar a 40 hour week You might be spending 30 hours a week doing sourcing and 10 hours a week doing admin Now if you hire an admin va You’re basically going to save an hour or 10 hours worth of week.
Now you kind of get a problem whereby most ad, most people who are looking for jobs, whether it be admin or sourcing probably want full time, or if they want part time, they only want to stay part time. So if they want to stay part time as your business grows, they can’t flex to help you out. But if they do want full time, then you’ve only got 10 hours worth of work, which causes a problem.
And then the other issue you have is that, again, we come back to the point that you’re trying to buy someone else’s time. So if you have an admin VA. You’re basically going to save one hour’s worth of work. You’re going to do one hour’s worth of training to save one hour’s worth of work with a source.
And it’s only, it’s quite limited. It’s a very linear, like one to one relationship. Not saying you shouldn’t get admin VA, so that’s later on, but with the sourcing VA, you could probably spend 40 hours initially training them up or getting them to a good point on your skillset. And then they’re going to continue developing that over time and get better and better and better.
And that will compound. So now, and like I said, you basically start off doing. One hour per day, which is five hours a week. But by month three, you’re now only working one hour analyzing their deals, but you’re getting 40 hours worth of work back, which is incredible. And then what’s even better is once you’ve trained one VA to do it, you can then hire another one, and then you’ll spend probably the five hours to start with, and then the two of them will help improve each other.
If you’re getting good people. And so therefore it starts to compound. Whereas with admin, it’s a very linear relationship, you know, one hour for one hour saved. It doesn’t work too well where sourcing you do a lot more. So a lot of people say admin, I think sourcing because it’s just time sync. And also as well, the final point I’ll add is that when you hire an admin VA, let’s say for example, 3 per hour on a 40 hour per week contract is 450 per month.
You now just increased your cost by 450. So you have to do additional work. And if you’re working at a 10 percent or 50, say a 10 percent growth margin, just big, simple, you know, have to do four and a half thousand dollars worth of extra sales just to pay for that VA. Whereas if you’re doing a sourcing VA.
] They pay for themselves and generate more money So that’s why I really like them because they are a cash machine for you And so therefore they decrease pressure on the business and decrease pressure on you in cash and actually help you grow So that’s why I like it. I think it’s a much better way to go.
[00:18:31] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, I would definitely agree the sourcing agent as you said, I mean the the profit that they’re going to bring into the business is going to be immensely higher than an admin va who Is saving you time, which is Extremely valuable. You really can’t put money on that. But in the beginning of the business, you’re going to be in it doing it the anyways, and you need to be doing a lot of those things and making sure they’re done correctly.
But yeah, I definitely would not want to give up my admin VA because she does so many things that saved me time, like giving me reports on my, my rentals that I have and. updating my budget with the information on what I bought on Amazon, so I don’t have to find that stuff myself. So there’s tons of little things that save me time but a hundred percent correct that the, the money is made with the, the sourcing agents for sure.
[00:19:25] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Yeah, I think I’ll just kind of add to that. Like, so the model that I run is one purchasing manager, three sourcing VAs and one admin VA. And when we talk about if you’re at zero right now, how should you go? We like, Admin VA is a definitely part of it. You should hire an admin VA because you’re right. It doesn’t add value to your business administration, but ours is not very much.
So we always say like, you should do one sourcing VA first, get comfortable with it. Then you can do two, another two, one or two. So you’ve got two or three. And then what you do is probably hire an admin VA to start taking off that load. And also as well, you’ve now got enough deals coming in and off administration that now it’s going to fill up at least a part time admin.
Yeah, they’ll scale. And then you’re looking right. I’ll take one of those sources and train them up to be a purchaser and I’ll replace that source. So, so now I have a business whereby I’m not in the business. I’m working on the business and the same as me, like I have a great purchasing manager and she just literally has all the meetings, she holds the team accountable, I tell her what my problems are and then she will go away and make sure that gets delivered every single week and it makes my life so much easier.
And then also as well, like. I can work 40 hours a week on the business when I want to but also as well I can then go and take two months off and i’m not saying like 100 off I still have to do a couple of hours a week, but I know that there’s a good person there We’re finding products. We’re reordering products.
We’re getting them purchased. We’re dealing with all the administration set essentials dealt with So I’m so much happier and it’s a much better operation.
[00:20:51] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
So we, we went by that really quick. So say again, your, what you see as your ideal structure for the employees in your business, you said, agents, purchasing agent, admin.
[00:21:05] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Yeah. So I think about it. So you think the way I think about it is functions. So a lot of people like to design really complex, like organizational charts. For me, I’d say, try and keep it as simple as possible. Make it functions. And the reason is, is if you define what a function does, you know, the skills that they need to do, and then when someone leaves or something, you can replace it, try not to make roles for specific people because they become unreplaceable and that becomes a problem.
And it’s not to say that we want to fire our staff or anything. We don’t, but what you do want is a business, which is able to operate efficiently and effectively. So everyone has a standard role. You know, the KPIs and metrics, you know, what good looks like. And then second of all, is the fact that that business, if you want, as you want to grow it, it’s just improve, you know, making, hiring more of those functions.
So the functions are purchasing manager at the top. So they, their function is to run the whole business. They’re the line manager for all the staff. They do the physical purchasing. And for me and my business, they do the repricing as well. And they would do the accountability for the team members as well.
Then we have sourcing, which is finding products and they would be analyzing wholesale price lists. For example, in my team as well, they also deal with wholesalers, only wholesalers that we’ve already opened. So I’m not talking to the wholesalers anymore that, you know, the manufacturers, the distributors, my team sources are doing it.
] Not the publishing manager, but actually the sources. And they’re called like, we, we kind of treat them like account managers. And then they’d also do the OA sourcing. They would contact, you know, OA suppliers, ask for discounts. They would basically find the products. And so anything in regards to finding products, buying them, are those two functions.
And then anything which is not directly related to that. Is administration, which is invoicing, getting products from supplier to the warehouse, warehouse, managing that, shipping it into Amazon, dealing with Amazon, not repricing, but also the central functions, customer messages, account health, IP, all that things.
Also as well, chasing suppliers should say invoices. Or, or payments back even doing business P and L’s balance sheets, weekly cash flows, dealing with the accountants, my admin VA’s deal with the accountants before I do. I want to free up time. My admin VA’s even do my personal tax return before I look at it.
Like I have rental properties as well. They do that as well. Like the more stuff I don’t have to deal with, the happier I am. So get them to do all that. And find the people who love it. Like my admin VA loves it. And I’m like, I hate it. Thank you so much for being amazing, which is why I see finding the right people is so important.
But they’re the three functions I think about and as you scale You like as we when we had a really big business doing four million The the only difference we had was instead of having a purchasing manager and we had a purchasing assistant So we still had one head and then we have a purchasing assistant and under them they would have teams of sources So that’s the only kind of next level up But we still just had like I think that’s three admin va’s in that operation because oa is very admin intensive
[00:24:03] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Very good.
I like it. Yeah, that’s a very good structure. Very similar to what I have going on. I do have an optimization team as well, since we do that part of it for our exclusive suppliers, but otherwise very similar structure to what you’re talking about there.
[00:24:21] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
And I think the reason why I say keep it simple is because you want to know there’s something I, I heard a while ago, which was every single person in your business, you need to ask them the question, how do you make me money?
Like not save me money, but make me money, which is really a slight difference. And like with your admin VA, that’s probably the challenging one. It’s like, I make you money by going back to the supplier, seeing if they’ve got discounts or asking that as well, like just building that relationship or like saving me money or working with the Other areas and what’s interesting is you really and then what you can do is you can get very clear kpis on how each Function helps the business grow and so when you have a problem, you know, this is your this is you your area You need to fix this and i’m here to help But I want to be clear.
I’m here to help. I’m not here to fix it. That’s your job.
[00:25:12] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. That’s important for sure. And if they’re not able to fix it or not willing to fix it, then maybe you got a little problem there. Correct. Exactly. It’s never a fun thing, but there’s always going to become a time where you got to fire someone or someone leaves and you got to replace them.
So you want to make sure the business is set up in a way that you can quickly and easily do that.
[00:25:36] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
I’ll give you a really controversial view. And I’m not saying this is right and people will probably like hate me for it. If you’re a new business owner, you probably want to fire your first VA hired. And the reason why I say that is because it’s probably going to be your worst hire because you’re inexperienced at hiring.
And second of all, You need to go through the pain of firing someone because whether it be now or later on in your life You are going to have to fire people unfortunately or let them go And if you’ve never done it before you’re going to resist it for too long And so therefore your business is going to suffer for too long So the quicker you kind of get over that like, you know It’s like breaking up with your first girlfriend the quicker you get over that the quicker you go I know what I need to do And then your business can move forward.
But most of the time, our first hire is actually a disaster, but we just don’t know it at the time.
[00:25:36] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. And it is an extremely hard thing because, well, number one, obviously it’s just a difficult thing to have to do to fire someone, but then also in, in the back of your mind, you’re like, man, if I fire that person, they are doing this and that and that.
Okay. And now I got to train someone else and figure that out. And so you put it off and put it off. But. When you actually do it and then replace someone, it’s, it’s never as bad as you think it is going to be in your head.
[00:26:55] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
There’s a, there’s a really good metric. I’ll share with people if they’re like wondering general rule of thumb.
Okay. The way to think about it I’ll kind of ask some questions, which will make, lead you into the right area. So Todd, obviously you’ve had a job before, I’m guessing. Is that right? Mm hmm. And in that job, were there people who were rubbish or shit? You were like, Oh my God, I just hate working with this person.
Like a colleague. Would that be right? Oh yes, definitely. And were there people who were like, you’re just amazing. Like, wow, you work so hard. You do a great job. Every time I ask you a question, you got the answer or you just seem to work incredibly fast. Like you’ve got it. Were there people like that?
You’re looking for them You want the people in your business and by the whole game of business when it comes to people management hiring people is just having people so that basically when you have a problem which is called an area of your business because they all take time you give it to this person and They just take it away from you and it’s like you get an error And you get light and load, you’re like, wow, you’ve just got this.
But if you’re having to deal with that person constantly, if you’re having to like help them, you know, and by the way, there’s a difference between helping and like, we’re still having this problem. Then if you’re still having this problem and the general rule of thumb I think of is like, they’re either a hell yeah, or they’re a no.
If that person isn’t hell yeah, probably want to change them because trust me, until you get that hell yeah, person, you don’t realize what they are. And when you get them, you’re like, wow. And your entire job as a leader of a business is to build an organization of people who are hell yes. And if you get that, You don’t even need to worry about running the business.
The business will build itself because the people in it are amazing. And I, when I, when I meet those people, and by the way, eight years later, I still have a lot of nose I need to deal with, but also as I start to see the value of like higher, slowly get the right people fire quickly and then find the hell years and then also as well, give them as much authority, accountability, power, everything they need, and just say, go do what you do best.
[00:28:51] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. And the, the okay employees can actually hold back the hell yeah, employees, cause they’re going to look at them and be like, well, why am I working so hard when this person doesn’t know what they’re doing or they’re not doing as good as I am. Correct. Yeah. Over time, it takes time for that demoralization to set in, but once it happens, you can ruin your whole team very quickly by holding on to someone that you shouldn’t for too long.
Yeah, completely agree for sure. All right. Very good. So once someone is hiring someone and they’re training them, do you have any processes for setting up the processes and tracking them and having those reoccurring tasks done so that when you do have to let someone go or bring on a second source or a third source that you can plug them in faster.
[00:29:50] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Best, best way I always thought about this is. Okay. This is really interesting because this is before you hire, you should do this entire exercise. We’ve done it many times. So what you want to think about is I would say when I used to do management in corporate world, we had what’s known as a 90 day plan.
So the 90 day plan is basically in the first month, they’re going to. Detract value from your business in the second month, they kind of break even in the third month, they add value. So after about 90 days, they, they’re about even also as well, it’s the probation period, which is great. So what you want to think about is at day 90 with your business, this VA or this staff member is now going to complete with you.
So the question you want to ask yourself is what do they need to know? Skillset wise, I need to make sure they’re taught. Now, what you’re probably going to think about before that, or the comp, the question of that is like, what are their targets? So what are their KPIs? And then the KPIs will generally say should be between five and 15 metrics, which they are solely accountable for.
So they are not other people are influencing them. Like they have the authority. Sole authority or accountability to influence and so therefore they’re going to be which we say the metrics you look at now Obviously you want those KPIs those metrics to be metrics which are going to drive the business forward So let’s talk very specifically about sourcing VA is one of the key metrics you look at So there are three key ones But you can add a lot of other ones in as well and I’ll kind of give you an idea So the three key ones we look at are going to be Actual gross profit achieved.
So we can buy deals all day long, but if they don’t actually make us money when they sell on the Amazon marketplace, cause the price crashes, we don’t care. So actual gross profit. And we track that on a weekly basis. Second KPI metric we look at is estimated gross profit. So this is how much profit do we think we’re going to make from the deals that we’re buying?
So this is today. This is this week because actual gross profit is a lagging indicator. Estimated growth profit is a leading indicator since this week And then the final one we look at is spend because spend is a great metric and we want to see them grow So we have key metrics to look at now if people are interested there.
Generally, we look at when we do sourcing va’s Minimum, we look at 500 Dollars per week, spend month one 1, 000 per week, month two, 1, 500 spend per week, month three, 2, 000 spend per week, month four, and so on. About 2, 500, it will level off, but it can go higher. If you know your business model and maybe you do wholesale, you’ll get much, much higher quicker.
[00:32:19] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
And you mean that money that they’re spending on product that they found? Correct
[00:32:25] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
And obviously that goes through your sourcing criteria. So if you’re like, you know, 30 percent ROI, 15 percent margin, for example, et cetera, you know, price and things. So they’ve got to meet that criteria. So this is, and we classify it as deals that I’ve actually purchased.
So I don’t care if you found it and I haven’t purchased it. That doesn’t matter. I’m only interested in what I’ve purchased because that means it’s met the requirements. So they’re the three kind of key KPI metrics in our business. We also noticed that ROI is really important. So we want to track the ROI actual of products being sold.
We also want to track the average sale price because we noticed that if you get a higher value, the business is easier to grow, whereas low value becomes more of a challenge. And then we have some other metrics where we look at the variation between estimated natural gross profit and some other things which kind of help us to understand.
So they’re the kind of key KPIs. Now that’s what we’re going to track them on, on an ongoing basis. Now, on top of this, what we will do is Oh, one second. What we will do on top of this is to say, once we’ve got the key KPIs that we’re going to track them on, we need to make sure they know how to actually do them all and that they’ve learned how to do it all.
So that’s a really important thing. So at 90 days. KPIs. So from zero to 90 days, we need to make sure that we train them up on the skills to achieve those results. And we start seeing progress towards them. So I think I’ve talked about it earlier that if you’re talking about spend initially, spend is going to be right.
Week 1, I want 500. Week 2, 500. Week 3, 500. Week 4, 500 spend. Now week 5, which is month 2, I want 1, 000 spend. So we’re going to teach them sourcing techniques and we’re going to track those KPIs through. And so what we’re going to do is start at 90 days and then we’re going to work our way back. So what are the targets need to be achieved at?
60 days, 30 days, and then zero. And then on that to achieve this target, what training do we need to provide? Cool. And then when we think about the 90 day target, we go, what the skills are going to need, they need to probably, so we, when we do it in the VA academy, we’re like, so what’s one of the tests that we do for when we hire our VAs?
We do, can they use a calculator tool? Can they match products from a supplier to Amazon? And can they do both of those two processes quickly? Because they’re a fundamental part of it. So we test for that on mass. And then when we do the training, we do the training as part of that. So before we’ve even hired, like, like before we’ve even hired, we’ve already defined success criteria at 90 days.
[We’ve broken it down into 60, 30 and zero. We now know what we need to test for when we get the applicants. And then what we do is we then go, what are we looking to recruit for? And then we can start asking the questions. So the questions are like, you know, I would probably ask questions around So tell me about like.
Your last job was it a bit boring, you know, because sourcing is really boring. Sorry to swear But like, you know, it’s like no or like do you like really adventurous stuff? like how long do you spend on the computer and I will try and ask questions on the inverse not like Do you like to spend a long time computer?
I might I wouldn’t ask that because I go. Yes, I go like Oh, man, like I get so bored on the computer. You must get really bored at work And if they answer yes, and i’m like they’re not the right person But they go no like I really love staying on the computer for 15 hours a day Right mouse clicking searching looking at products you like You’re going to be amazing.
So I want them to disagree with me in my interviewing process. And that’s, that’s fundamentally the whole process we go through. And what we’re really trying to do is just filter and train so that as of month three, we’ve got someone who’s hitting the results we’re looking for. They’re shown evidence of adaptability, learning, and coaching, and then we’ll feel confident they can go forward.
That makes sense.
[00:35:58] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, absolutely. Very good. So it, are you then, I’m curious. Yes. Are you giving them accounts and such to go through or they’re, it’s entirely them, they have to go out and find the accounts and then find the products and recommend them for purchasing.
[00:36:19 THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA]
So the way we do it within our business is I’ll kind of start with the end and then I’ll work back because I think that’s important.
So when we talk about wholesale, wholesale is three parts, finding and opening suppliers, analyzing price lists, putting orders together and reorders and negotiating prices. So as much as I love my staff, I still don’t think they would be good at opening up suppliers. And for the simple reason, the fact that number one, there’s very small mannerisms in the way we talk, like, hi, this is, this is sir.
Tom CEO of fast track FBA. You’re like, we just don’t talk like that. Like anyone would spot that. And then the second one is you’ve got to get on the phone and call a lot of these people and build the relationship, which someone from a different culture can’t do. Obviously I can do it from the UK because that’s quite a nice point.
But from the Philippines, it’s a very different, like doesn’t work so well. So I do the opening of suppliers and I don’t mind doing that. Like that’s absolutely fine. I think that’s where we get the best results, but once the supply is open, so we’ll then give the account to a sourcer. And by the way, this would be an existing source who’s already proven themselves.
So they’ll, you know, I’ll introduce them. So like, hi, this is Bob. Bob’s in my team. He’ll, he’ll talk to you going forward. And so I’m still there, but I’m not really doing anything. My Bob’s having the conversations, analyzing the price list, going through it all now. So that’s kind of like at the end. But when we talk about say like month two, it might be the case that we give them existing supply lists that we already know how profitable they are, how good they are, why we’re just trying to test to see how good, how good they are adapting to it.
Or we might give them an area of saying like. These suppliers you should be asking for discounts these suppliers You should be asking if we can do bulk orders these suppliers even away, by the way these suppliers You should saying hey, I know you have this product. Are you going to get it back in stock?
We’d love to buy a lot of it. So again asking these questions and if I’d be very tactical about it My purchasing manager will literally say every week everyone show me five emails that you’ve sent to suppliers where you’ve asked for a discount You’ve asked for something that we don’t normally do and so therefore you’re trying to train the team to do that So that’s been really helpful And then when we talk about early in week one or so you say month one is really going to be around What we’re really trying to adapt or understand is can they work fast?
And we have ways to test that by the way, like you probably think I’m a bit Controlling. It’s not that there’s a video that I released whereby there’s a Chrome extension, which can track your, basically you can download your history from Chrome. So we look at number of URLs opened and we look at ASINs viewed.
So we’re looking at in a typical day, how many of you URLs are you looking at and how many ASINs you’re looking at? So it’s an invert. It’s a kind of correlation speed. So we’re like. My normal sourcing VA, I think in a week we’ll do like seven or 11, 000. Don’t quote me on that. It’s just, I’m thinking atop my head, but if we’re seeing this VA is getting like one or 2000, we know immediately something’s majorly wrong.
Because this is kind of the indicators before so we’re looking can they do speed? Can they start finding good oa deals? We will point them in the right direction. We’ll say we’re interested in beauty toys Grocery, for example We’re not we don’t do those but the idea is is we’ll point them in the right direction We’ll tell them the brands we like and then we’ll say go to town But we want to see what they come back with, but as they started to show an ability to adapt and improve their speed, then we’ll start letting them into more and more, but what I certainly won’t do is give them like my best supplier from day one, because that’s just gonna be a nightmare.
That’s not something we’ll do.
[00:39:49] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep.
Okay. Very good.
Yeah. I like it. It’s again, very similar to the types of things that I do. So we’re right on track with that. If we go back to the hiring process do you have, so you gave some tips for the interview. And obviously if they want to make it really easy, they could head on over to fasttrackfba.com and grab one of your pre vetted people. Okay. But let’s say they choose well, I’m, I want to try to do this myself. I’m going to onlinejobs. com or some other place. Do you have recommendations for when people are just initially putting that job posting out there that can help sort through people because you get hundreds of applications sometimes, especially for something like a sourcer.
[00:40:39] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
I’ll kind of talk through the whole recruitment process that we do and try and adapt it to like an individual. So it’s very similar to what we do But we do it a lot more automated and we have a lot more checks and balances in process So there’s two parts we do in FastTrackFDA and I think you can literally copy this to do it yourself I reckon i’ve probably interviewed.
I don’t know maybe three thousand five thousand people in my life So there’s a lot of interviewing. Admittedly, I’ve done 20 years. I’ve run bars, you know, it’s just like churning through people every year, rehiring. And the one thing I kind of understand is that while I, while I’ve done a lot of professional training for interview, I still make a lot of mistakes because we’re human beings.
And it could be that I had a heavy night the before, or I’m a bit hungry. And then therefore I hire someone who I don’t, if that makes sense. So what we try and do in the FastTrack FBA, which I think is very applicable if you’re doing it on your own, is you, you first of all, do the, do the Advertising and then recruitment process and then the training process is actually a second stage of recruitment and vetting and assessing And so that and I would be very mindful of that.
So for example in fast track fba A very high level we advertise in lots of places. We go through a four stage assessment process, which is stage one is called why do you what are you looking for? Very fundamental. So are you available to work now? What’s your salary expectation? So even though we advertise 25, 000 PHP on the website, people will be like, I want 35, 000.
I’m like, Oh, so like, no, we’re not interested in you. So. Do the expectations match now the second stage will be motivation to work So we have an assessment that we run them through Which is basically like how motivated are they to do this job and we want a certain score The third assessment is the one that I talked about earlier, which is we’ve written a custom test, which is sourcing So can you match products from amazon?
Or from a supplier to Amazon. And really, fundamentally, you could do this yourself in a Google form, go find five products whereby they look slightly similar to other ones, probably your old deals whereby, you know, they’re mismatches and see how many of them actually match them correctly and how many don’t figure out the mismatch.
And then we do, can you use a calculator tool? So if you use the Amazon calculator. Seller calculator. So basically, can you work out profit in ROI using the buy and sell price? And can you get the figures right? And then can you do that fast? So we time the test, which is quite useful. So you might do that process, but getting to record it on loom, for example, or like OBS.
And then the final one we do as an interview, and we actually use AI interviewing software now, a third party application, but it’s a very standardized interview, and we’re looking at like, do they move the mouse? What’s their scores? Are they alt tabbing? You know, what’s their, what are they saying?
We’re looking at that. Because we realize that interviews are very subjective. And then we go through, once you’ve passed that, you go through to training. And then training, by the way, in the training, we do time tracking. And so those people who don’t want to do time tracking, Nope. We’re not going to have you at all.
Why? Because it’s probably going to be a problem. Number two, when they find deals, we go back through the time tracker and go, how did you find the deal? Because if you’re working for other clients, you’re probably just going to copy the deal and give it to me. But if we can’t figure out how you actually did it, then we’re like, ah, there’s a problem here.
And then number four, we’re looking at, we do a very kind of like structured training program where it’s like we will train you on Keeper and then we’ll do a test and then we’ll measure your test and then we’ll answer it and score it immediately. And then we’ll go through to the next training and test it.
It’s very training, testing, very training and testing. And we’re always looking to see, are they hitting certain KPI benchmarks throughout that training program? And so for you, for anyone doing this right now, coming back to your question is. When we look at the application process, and if I was to do it on my own now without FileStripe FBA, I would do.
I would create a Google form, which is a test, which could filter quickly. I know a lot of people talk about put the word banana in the thing, like that’s helpful, but really like, I just want people who can do the job. So if you’re willing to do a form, ideally it should take 10 to 20 minutes, not too long.
So then I would do my applications. I’d be careful about where I post as well. Like we, we don’t do online jobs anymore and we don’t do definitely never did Facebook groups because we sound too many people are sharing and there’s too many VA’s recycled and experienced VA’s don’t have the experience.
They’re just bad experience. So we use a lot of like. Job boards in the Philippines. We use a lot of influencers to help promote us a lot of referrals we have. So again, get your candidates from great places, ideally people where they’re not existing VA’s to share deals. And then the idea is run them through like a Google sheet, a Google form assessment program.
And then you probably want to filter them down. So I would probably give them like five ASINs say, here’s a buy, here’s a buy price, here’s the ASIN. Record me a loom video of the analysis. So then when you get the loom videos back, you can analyze them and say great I can see how they analyze deals fantastic Then i’ll go run them through some training and training would be really simple Go grab videos for my youtube channel watch this Go do something and i’ll put them on time tracking for the 40 hours a week and I pay them for this time And then i’d want to start seeing the results and then again do what I said when they find a deal go back and find Out how they found it and you’re just and then what you’re also looking for is those people who ask good questions And ultimately you really want to take on like Two to five people initially and then start filtering it down to the one you really like and I know it’s gonna cost you a lot more people are like the money right now is not the Consideration it’s you know, I think I don’t know if you know like if I talk about metrics month five Spend per week.
We talk about 2, 500 in my business, a bad week for a VA is 5, 000 spend. A good week is 30, 000 spend. And admittedly, that’s more wholesale, but just understand that like. A normal va we talk about is 2500 a bad va 5000 admittedly because we know what we’re doing But a really good va is 30 000. That’s like six times increase So this is why you really want to make sure that you’re not just interviewing one You’re testing and actually you care about only results So therefore you’re testing five for example, and you filter it down to one But you want to pay them for their time you want to do that because then you’re gonna get good candidates And that whole journey has got to be quick as well because good candidates go fast You so I do that and then you filter them down, five people, five people, five people, you, you’re my winner.
And then one of the kind of hacks that we do sometimes as well is to say that while we’re doing a 40 hour per week, we want you to work 50 and we want you to do 40 hours of work 10 hours of watching YouTube videos to get even better. And we expect you to get these results and we’re going to try and push them.
Why? Because we’re not interested in people who just want a job. Yeah. Yeah. We want people who want to buy a house for their family. That’s it.
[00:47:32] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yep.
Absolutely. I love that. And I love the couple of tips in there that you brought up creating a Google form with some kind of exercises and stuff you want them to do, or I think even better that loom video and have them actually analyze some ASINs and determine if they would be good buys or not.
Cause that’s going to be that’s going to eliminate a ton of people, those copy and paste appliers, you know, they’re applying to hundreds of jobs and really help the, the ones that are actually able to do the job stand out. Yeah. I agreed. Awesome. And I did notice as well that you have a free Amazon FBA virtual assistant job description.
That people can download. So if people are interested in that, we’ll have that link in the show notes for you to check out and definitely check out fast track FBA. If you want to, you know, jump to the front of the line, so to speak, and get someone that’s already pre vetted. But even then you got to still do the training in your own business, right?
You got to make sure don’t expect them to just come in and be the saving grace for you all the time.
[00:48:45] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Yeah, I think the way the best analogy I can give to people is we find a really good people who are coachable work hard And we want to do a good day’s work for our for our clients And then number two, we train them on all the foundational stuff.
So manual sourcing What is the buy box how to operate navigate the tools to do all that? And now they know how to do sourcing and they’ve proven it they can get results But what do you do? You now take that person and you teach them specifically what’s working for you. So for example, I go to Walmart, I look at beauty and I use this coupon code.
This is how I’m finding deals. And they will just do that for 40 hours per week. Now we, that’s what we recommend to our clients. And then on top of that, we also give a 12 week unlimited replacement policy. So if for any reason the VA quits, they don’t get the results or quite simply, they change the color of their hair.
It doesn’t matter. We will replace that VA for you, give you a new one, and we reset the 12 week timer back to zero. And you can do that as many times as you like. So what we want to do is just make sure you have a great experience. You come back and use us again and we charge a one time fee for it as well.
So you pay the VA directly with not even an ongoing cost.
[00:49:52] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I think that’s a perfect place to wrap it up, Thomas. This has been fantastic. I appreciate you coming on the show.
[00:50:00] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
I love it. And thank you so much for having me.
[00:50:02] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Absolutely. Have an awesome one.
[00:50:05] THOMAS PARKINSON |FOUNDER OF FAST TRACK FBA
Take care.
[00:50:05] OUTRO
This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School Podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow Amazon seller. And always remember, success is yours if you take it.
