Building a $5 million Amazon business using virtual assistants? Yes, it’s possible! In this episode, Todd Welch interviews Yoni Kozminski, co-founder and CEO of MultiplyMii, who has helped scale an Amazon business from $2 million to $5 million. They dive deep into hiring Filipino talent, building efficient teams, and creating systems that allow you to scale without getting bogged down.
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Building a $5 Million Amazon Business
Yoni shares how he scaled his Amazon business by leveraging Filipino talent and creating a strategic approach to team-building and delegation. Learn how focusing on skills rather than tasks can help grow your Amazon business faster.
Why SOPs and Company Wikis Are Game Changers
Implementing SOPs and a company wiki can save time and increase efficiency. Discover why Yoni insists on creating a self-serve knowledge base to empower teams to work independently without constant supervision.
Incentivizing and Managing a Remote Team
From salary structures to meaningful incentives, Yoni breaks down how to keep your remote team motivated and engaged. Learn his strategy for paying bonuses and managing talent without using time-tracking software.
The Future of Global Talent
Yoni discusses the growing importance of hiring talent from countries like the Philippines, how to avoid common mistakes in outsourcing, and the global implications of a connected workforce.
Resources From This Episode
- MultiplyMii Salary Guide: Learn the top 100 roles to hire in the Philippines and how much they cost. Download it here.
- Escala: Yoni’s process improvement consultancy that helps build SOPs and process maps. Learn more here.
- Time Doctor: Software for time tracking and managing remote teams. Learn more here.
- Hubstaff: Another time-tracking tool for managing remote teams. Find it here.
- Loom: A tool for asynchronous communication that Yoni uses to communicate with remote teams. Check it out here.
In Conclusion
Scaling an Amazon business doesn’t have to be daunting. With the right team, systems, and strategic approach, you can grow beyond $5 million, just like Yoni did. By leveraging top talent from the Philippines, building clear SOPs, and creating a system of accountability, you can focus on the bigger picture and achieve your business goals.
Transcript
[00:00:00:00 – 00:00:30:04] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Having not just you know, making that clear goals and delegation around specific skills clear, but also giving a repository or a company wiki or a knowledge base where instead of you getting sucked in every single time to give direct feedback and guidance, if you can build a, you know, S. O. P. S. and a company wiki that is self-serving or is a self-serve experience, Then that is a really fantastic way to do it.
[00:00:30:05 – 00:00:50:16] INTRO
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon sellers school podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale 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.
[00:00:50:27 – 00:01:46:09] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
What’s going on, everybody. Welcome to another episode. I’m here with Yanni Kosminski and we’re going to be diving into building a 5 million team using virtual assistants.
Now Yanni’s got a ton of experience. He’s got over 15 years of global digital marketing experience, creative advertising experience. And he actually has built an Amazon business where he took it from 2 million in sales to 5 million. He made 5 million in sales in one year and sold that in 2019. And now he’s currently running Multiply Mii, working there, building the top 5 percent of Philippines talent to help you build your business and grow your business using Philippines talent, which is all that I use.
So Yanni, I appreciate you coming on the show.
[00:01:46:17– 00:01:49:27] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
It’s a real pleasure to be here and I’m excited to sit down with you.
[00:01:50:06 – 00:02:01:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Absolutely. So before we dive into building the team, can you tell me a little bit more about your your background, which is quite impressive. You work for some big brands, it sounds like.
[00:02:01:03– 00:03:54:26] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Yeah, I’ll try and keep it dense, Todd. I don’t want to bore the audience. I want to get into the value, but The short of it is the first 10 years of my career, I worked in web development, design, content production, strategy, TV commercials. I was the largest Facebook media buyer in Australia for a number of years there working with the likes of Sony, MasterCard, Mercedes Benz, Medtronic.
I did a stretch in Los Angeles for three years where I was working with Sony and MasterCard and a few of the brands that I’d mentioned. I got into the e commerce game about seven years ago now and that was where I stumbled upon a couple of entrepreneurs who’d built a two million dollar Amazon business and I got involved and invested in that business and pretty quickly was able to grow it from pittance to revenue.
Two to five million was acquired by Thrasio on the back of that experience. I just realized that rather than going straight back into the Amazon game and outlaying a lot of capital and, and, and looking to do the same thing again I was really passionate about people, about creating opportunities and about effectively, you know, Giving the gift effectively that I was able to provide to that Amazon business in building a team, helping that company scale, removing the founders from the operation.
And so that was really where multiply mii was born. So. multiply mii, we do recruitment, like you said, of top talent in the Philippines. So a lot of people talk about VA’s virtual assistants. And for me, I look at the world where it’s about hiring people based on their skills and talents and not building task lists. because when you build those lists, all of a sudden you are at the end of the day accountable for the end of that list.
And so how do you actually structure it in a way. where you’re building highly functional teams who are accountable rather than task lists where you’re the bottleneck of your business.
[00:03:55:12 – 00:04:23:05] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, absolutely. It’s super important to have a good team. Without a good team, you’re, you’re just not going to go very far.
Especially in an Amazon business, you might be able to build it to 500, 000 to a million dollars in sales, but you’re going to start running around with your head cut off. Those balls are going to start dropping. And, you know, at that point you really need to start outsourcing a lot of those tasks to people who can focus on them and hopefully do it better than what you’re doing.
[00:04:23:13– 00:04:25:08] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Absolutely. Couldn’t agree with you more.
[00:04:25:18– 00:04:23:05] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. So essentially you are the scaling guy. You’ve had a lot of experience in helping businesses and doing it yourself in scaling a business from one or 2 million on up from there and then exiting, which is awesome. I think there’s a lot of people out there that would love to be able to do the same thing.
So I guess the big question is how can someone emulate what you have done in Amazon.
[00:04:54:13– 00:12:04:18] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Absolutely. Well, I’ll walk you through it. I’ll just give one little added caveat of like what I’m working on as well. Just so that the information I share with the audience, you know, you understand that it’s coming from someone who’s actually dealing in this.
I have another business called Escala, which does process improvement. It’s a team of nearly 30 internally. I have a team of about a hundred. Team members where the bulk of them are in the Philippines, but our consulting practice actually goes into businesses, interviews, shadows, reviews. Understands the operation builds process maps and standard operating procedures to build scale.
So I share that bit of information before I sort of launch into almost a rant here because I am so passionate about what I’m about to talk about. I would say before we start to get into tactical components of the execution of like, how do you do this? I think the first and the most important thing for any Amazon business owner is to understand what their end objective is.
What is the vision around their business? And, What I mean by that, you know, Todd, you talked about the fact that, you know, people would love to sit and scale and exit their business and have, you know, some meaningful liquidity event and, and be able to do whatever they want for the rest of their lives. I would say that that’s definitely one really exciting approach to take.
Uh, I would just say though, if you can build a great Amazon business and then you actually build Strong profit margins into it. And you start with that in mind, you can also build a lifestyle business in this where you don’t have to have a liquidity event for you to have, you know, this, this incredible experience and you can continue to have a professional purpose.
I wouldn’t say, you know, I think too many entrepreneurs get wrapped up in the business being their identity. And I think you have to be very cautious of that. So coming back to it and talking about exit or lifestyle business the first and the most important thing is. You need to understand where are you driving to?
So what does that goal look like? Is it a lifestyle business? Is it an exit, a liquidity event? What does that number look like to you? You know, it’s different for every, every person. I happen to live in one of the two most expensive cities in the world. So a liquidity event probably needs to be a lot more significant if I’m, you know, in the Midwest or the South or probably even in Florida, where you’re at, just because of the cost of living in my particular geography.
So just coming back to that and saying, okay. I have a target. Once I have a target, I understand where I’m trying to drive toward. It’s about building that roadmap on how we get there. So you have your business goals and let’s say your North Star metric. So the thing that is your, your, let’s, let’s focus on exit because it’s what most people are probably more excited about than building a lifestyle business personally.
I like the idea of a lifestyle business, but I would say most of your listeners are probably not going to be in the same camp as I am. And so looking at it from that lens, let’s say that your North Star is that you want to hit 10 million of revenue and you want to have 2 million of profitability or EBITDA built into the business.
And that’s a really meaningful exit number. You know, you might look at a four or five, six X on that 2 million. And You know, where I am, wherever any listener is that,you know, should be a meaningful amount of money. You know, I think for, for most of us mere mortals here. So coming back to it. How do you actually get there?
Well, you need to understand the goals and objectives around the business. And those need to be tied into very clear accountabilities and project plans. And those accountabilities then need to be delegated to individuals because like you very accurately. called out Todd from zero to a million. You can kind of get your hands around everything, right?
You probably start to become a little bit less efficient at it from that half a million to a million dollars in revenue perspective, but you can get your hands around it when you start going beyond and you hit that one to 2 million mark, you know, things absolutely fall off. And like you said, the balls start to drop.
So you really need to build that framework of. Firstly, who are the first people that I’m looking to bring on to remove myself? How do I sit and play in the most effective seat so that I can drive forward? And so, I like to share for people, if this is you, if you’re sort of looking to hire that very first person. You know, let’s say you’ve worked through a little bit around your vision and how you hope to get there. How many products you want to bring to market.
I would say more importantly, you know, outside of what your brand identity looks like and how it’s all connected and things like that. It’s also very much focused on,you know, what are these incremental steps that, that you need to take in order to achieve them. So coming back to it, you’ll first, look at how you are spending your time if you’re starting off here, right? So, so what I like to suggest as a recommendation for people who are early on in this delegation game is looking at how you spend your time on your calendar. So for me personally, I block out every hour of my day is blocked out whether I’m working on, you know, let’s talk to the audience for a second.
If you’re working on keyword research, if you’re doing competitor research, listing creation, listing optimization,you know, if you’re an arbitrage business, if you’re looking to source the right deals, whatever, whatever it is you’re working on, just making sure that you’re really defining what you’re working on.
And at the end of the week, or let’s say a couple of weeks that you do this exercise, you’re able to actually understand where you’re investing your time. And I would mark things that must critically be you as a five. And things that could be potentially, you know, repetitive or repetitive or low hanging fruit.
Those might be a one or a two. Once you can sort of aggregate them out, you can say, right, here’s 20 hours, 30 hours, 40 hours that could be spent on one set. So the mistake that most first time, you know. the first time, not entrepreneurs, but first time delegators or people trying to bring on teams for the first time, you’ll try and look for this catch all, this jack of all trades and master of none that can just do all these little bits and bobs or you build a task list and what you’ll find is you won’t get someone who can, you know, they’ll do things just good enough to get it done, but not at the level that’s even remotely close to what you want to achieve.
So I’d say first, to give you a really sharp example here. Have a situation where in keyword research and PPC management and these more analytical tasks that are, you know, numbers and data driven, you can build a role where they’re doing multiple things, but that it’s the same skillset. Cause you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where the same person is doing your keyword research and your PPC management and they’re also doing your design work. And they’re also doing your product development work. You know, think about yourself. We all like to think we can do everything. But the reality is there’s a handful of things that we’re really good at. Stay in your lane. So, I’ll pause there for a second, Todd.
Because like I said, I was and did go on the rant that I went on. And if there’s anything in there that you want to dive into, I’ll take a breath and a sip of water.
[00:12:04:28 – 00:13:00:02] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. One, one addition to that, I would say as you’re doing your work through the day and you find yourself procrastinating doing something, that’s probably something to look at outsourcing as well because you’re procrastinating for a reason. Because you don’t really want to do it. Maybe it’s something that you have to do, you know, like maybe some cash flow forecasting or something. You should probably do that yourself, but other things that can be outsourced if you’re procrastinating, that’s something good to look at.
But yeah, I, I agree 100 percent with, with everything you said, writing down, just have a notepad next to you, you know, a lot of people like to do everything digitally. I like to have an actual notepad. A lot of the times where you can just write it down. It’s just more convenient and easier. And you do that for a week or two and really find out what you’re gonna be able to outsource to an employee for sure.
[00:13:00:23 – 00:13:05:10] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Absolutely. I mean, I can keep going on my, uh, on my diatribe here if you’d like.
[00:13:05:28 – 00:13:07:20] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Absolutely. Keep going. That’s great.
[00:13:08:07 – 00:17:28:11] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Awesome. So, you know, so, so that’s sort of the first step, right, is to identify what is the right role. you know, as it relates to, to VAs or the Philippines and let’s just bucket in like emerging world talent.
You know, there are limitations. You know, and I say this with utmost respect and I say this as someone who leverages the Philippines. I would say, Better than most people definitely that I know, but I would say I’d be in a, in a pretty solid bracket here in order for you to get the most out of talent in these emerging worlds.
You have to remember a few things. I think the first thing is in a lot of cases. This will be the first, you know, the first family member that’s likely had a higher education. So the generation before were, you know, working really hard to actually put their kids through college for the first time.
You know, sometimes this might be the second generation, but in a lot of cases, the first generation, just looking at the Philippines for a second, population’s 120 million people. So it’s a third the size of the U. S. the U. S. Produces two million college graduates a year. The Philippines 600, 000.
So it’s almost one to one from a ratios perspective producing and it’s continuing to close the gap. So, what’s more is Filipinos, you know, the educational institutions are all in English. So they’re actually learning English and being tested in English and inside of the remote work space. 95 percent of college educated community.
You see Filipinos having really good English skills, but coming back to it, where they have good English skills, they haven’t had the same number of years or generational educational experiences where they have, you know, the high level management ability and strategic, directive that, you know. Someone in, you know, who’s very fortunate growing up in a first world Western country.
I grew up in Australia. I was afforded certain privileges that, you know, a lot of us or most of you listening to the podcast probably aren’t too dissimilar to the, you know, to the very fortunate things that,
That I’ve also been privy to. So, so coming back to it. Up to about a middle management level or layer is likely where you’re going to get to.
So, you know, I’ll have team members that can definitely direct traffic and, and work through the projects, but it’s, it’s rare that they’re actually coming with the strategic guidance and saying. This is the new product that you should be creating. It’s sort of without any sort of hands on guidance or S.O. P. S. or any sort of clarity around that. So just understanding sort of those limitations, I think, is really important. But coming back to it, if you give these things right, you know, depending on where you sit. if you’re a solopreneur and you’re building a team of 3,4,5,6, even 10, you can manage that as long as you’re giving the right guidance, the right briefings, the right insights, you can build a really powerful team from You know, everything from Amazon brand managers to PPC managers to designers, keyword researchers, even product researchers.
If you’re building the criteria where you give them the parameters, then that will do fantastic work. You know, and just as an example, if you check out our multiply mii website, you know, everything that you see on there has been created by My Filipino team. So I’ve got a full time web flow developer cost me about $800 a month to have her full time in house, you know, and you can do the same for a Shopify developer, you know, the graphics that you see in the animations and the copy and the content and the SEO, like my SEO specialist project, all of these roles are purely based in the Philippines. And, you know, if you look at what it would cost me to work with an agency, you know, just having sort of five or six of these full-time team members would probably equate to someone just buying your PPC effectively for, you know, for like to outsource your PPC to an agency.
so, so just to share, like, if you have the right, uh, management temperament, If you are clear on what you are looking to delegate, and if you are able to effectively bring it together and manage, then you know, you’re getting sort of, you know, I don’t know if 10x is the right term here, but you’re getting sort of someone dedicated to work on your business versus outsourcing it to an agency that might be working with 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 other businesses and giving a portion of one individual’s time for it.
I would just want to highlight is that with the outsourcing to an agency, they’ve got domain expertise. They’re working on multiple accounts. They’re doing a lot of learning. And so that’s part of what you’re paying for. If you have the knowledge and you’re an absolute Jedi when it comes to ranking and listings and everything that relates to that, then you’re probably better off just taking your knowledge base and handing it over to someone who can actually handle it in house and commit that that level of time toward it.
[00:17:58:22 – 00:19:05:20] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, and as you mentioned the one of the big keys there and where a lot of new people to hiring fail is Being a good manager of these people And these employees and creating SOPs and processes and procedures that you want them to fail, you know, don’t just expect them to come into your business and you can be like, okay, go ahead and do my PPC.
They’re going to do it. It may or may not be anything close to what you’re hoping they would do, you know, so you need to give them guidance and understand they’re, they’re just like an employee here in the U. S. Think about when you started your most recent job, for example, and what you had to go through to learn everything in the business.
They’re going through the exact same thing, just like any employee. employee, wherever, you know, the people are listening, if you’re U. S., U. K., Canada or wherever, it’s the exact same process. I think a lot of people forget that and just think they’re going to get a VA and just, they’re magically going to do everything for you without a lot of instruction.
[00:19:06:00 – 00:23:21:08] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Well, you bring up a really important topic and I think this is true, like you’re alluding to, for whether they’re onshore, offshore, local, remote, so much of getting these things right is about building a proper onboarding. plan and giving them the opportunity to learn your business and the way in which you go about things.
And if you fail to do that, if you don’t invest the time, then you know what you put in is what you’ll get out. So, you know, you’re spot on there. if you’re not investing the time, you can’t just expect that I hired a VA and they’re now just going to solve all of my worldly problems. You know, at the end of the day, No one’s going to be more passionate about your business than you are.
And so what you really need to do is, is you need to provide them a solution or provide them guidance so that they can get excited. And some of the things that you can do to actually motivate and ensure that you’re getting the very best out of whoever you’re hiring is actually building an incentive program that is aligned with their output that is connected to your business goals and objective.
Just to give you an example, let’s say you’ve got a product researcher that you’ve brought on, you know, like your thousands of products a year or hundreds of products a year. Thousands might be a little bit too aggressive. Hundreds is, is significant in and of itself, right? So. You know, if you look at it and you work backwards and you say, my goal is to launch a hundred products this year.
Okay. Let’s keep it even more realistic. What you would need to actually come up with as a framework to launch a hundred products is you’re probably going to have to look at, you know, maybe even a thousand potential products speak to You know, 500, or maybe not 500, but five suppliers that could produce 500 products and continue to whittle it down so that you can actually launch a hundred products.
So if you work backwards and you look at bringing on that product researcher, then the KPI and some form of incentive or performance bonus that you could bake into, it would be right. I need to produce a hundred products, which means I need to come up with five hundred products. So if they can come up with, I’m terrible at math here, but however many products that is a month, right?
Um, if they can come up with, you know, whatever, 150 products a month, that’s too many, but you get my gist. then effectively that is what is going to set them free to Excel. That is what is going to ensure that your business is driving on the track that you have set out for it. And if you can reward your team for, for achieving these goals, then it’s really a win, win.
And that’s a really simple way. Again, when we think about the salaries that you pay for talent in the Philippines and emerging world talent, you know, just use my, my video, sorry, my video, my web developer for a second here. Our goal was to launch five websites for the year and we were to pay her an 800 bonus each time a website was launched throughout the year.
You know, that’s significant for her. It might even be 200 bucks every time there’s a website. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s already a, you know, a considerable amount, 20 percent plus of her pay. in a month. So to give her that 20 percent bonus is, is considerable here. So just thinking about it in a way that strategically aligns and rewarding your team.
Just remembering that, you know, the cost of living in the Philippines is between 60 and 80 of that in the U S. So these are like really meaningful numbers for talent who really want to be put to work and want to grow, want to grow their skill sets, want to advance in life. So it’s, you know, it’s a really beautiful marriage And it sounds like Todd, you’re doing very much the same as I am.
You know, the way I sort of look at it is that it’s not about exploiting talent. You know, for us with multiply me, we pay healthcare, social security, HMO, Phil health, 13th month. That’s how we get such high-quality talent is we offer benefits that most companies don’t offer. And therefore, it’s a massive attraction and retention tool. but it’s also.
Just being a good person, um, but you’re providing them with the opportunity. That’s also supporting your business. And so it’s just a, it’s a beautiful sort of give, give, win, win scenario.
[00:23:22:28 – 00:24:06:12] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s pretty much exactly the way we’re doing it. Hiring the people for the specific tasks. I like that you guys are paying the benefits and things like that.
We don’t pay insurance or anything like that, but we do have two weeks paid time off, paid Filipino holidays and things like that. And like you said, that goes a long way to attracting some of that top talent that’s out there. What are you guys seeing for the, the wages currently for different Filipino employees for different parts of different job types that an Amazon business would use?
[00:24:07:00 – 00:31:10:28] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. And I promise you, anyone who’s listening, Todd probably doesn’t even know that this exists on our website, but we’ve got a salary guide that gives you the top hundred roles to hire in the Philippines and what they cost at a junior, mid and senior level. And what’s more, and we actually just released it.
So you couldn’t even know about this Todd is that we have an Amazon specific. ebook that takes into account sort of a small Amazon business and a larger Amazon business and how you can structure the roles for onshore versus offshore and then what those salaries are and also the full job descriptions.
You can download the free editable job descriptions as well and it’s all clickable in these ebooks and I mean I would assume you have show notes so I’m happy to share with you these links to make life. Easy for those listening. So, you know, I can rattle off some numbers for you, but that’s, that’s probably the best.
And it’s the most accurate source. We update it twice a year and it’s so that we make sure that we are, you know, we do it for ourselves to make sure that we’re, you know, identifying what the fair market rates are, but obviously super helpful for anyone who’s hiring in the Philippines to understand, are they, you overpaying, underpaying, water market rates, and you know, how can I attract the best talent?
So that’s why we produce the photos. It’s funny. I’m going to sit here, Todd, and get myself back on track and say, you know, when we started talking, you know, one of the key topics was how to build a 5 million Amazon business. And I’ve sort of steered us a little bit off the course, but, uh, I think maybe just to bring us back to that.
You know, I shared in my experience growing from 2 to 5 million. The business was acquired, um, just to share a little bit about the team structure that we had there and how it operated and how you can actually sort of leverage your team. So I can also try and pepper in with that, you know, from again, go to the resource that’s in the show notes and you can sort of, you know, fact check the numbers that I’m trying to, You know, I’ll give you an approximation here, but just to look at it.
So when, when we were at 5 million in revenue, um, the team consisted of, we had a graphic designer, you know, we were a company that had, we had probably 30 SKUs, I would say 30 to 35. 35 SKUs live. We had, um, we had one brand, um, called Nature’s Blossom and you can see all this stuff online. Anyway, Nature’s Blossom, it was a grow your own bonsai tree kit.
And that had sort of like 15 variations. And there was a few other products that we had that were a little bit more complicated than that one. But we had, One full time graphic designer that would work on everything from the, you know, ABC and A++ content and the listing images. and they, you know, you would hire today someone like that between about $800 a month.
And I would say at the upper end, maybe $1,300 a month for a considerable amount of experience for roles like that. Honestly, unless you’re quite a premium brand, you could probably get away with sort of the, the, you know, more junior end of the spectrum cause it’s not. Typically the most complex of, you know, of content, you know, not creating necessarily animation work or things that are really complicated.
So we had a graphic designer, we had a customer support function, you know, as everyone here knows how important it is to respond quickly to any thing that comes in on Amazon. So we actually had a team of three. And the way we had structured it was that there was sort of like these, you know, Eight hour rolling shift.
So we always had someone live that we could respond to in really quick succession. And, and that was how we were, were, were building it. So actually I think it’s scaled out to five people in the end. And for us, you know, we were getting quite a few inquiries, so it was important. So I would say take on or consider like how many, uh, questions, you know, and reviews and things like that, that are coming in that you actually sort of, Match those requirements.
We had someone who was specifically dedicated to PPC. So there were full time PPC campaigns, everything from the reporting to the media buying itself. And, you know, we sort of built this balances and checks, if you will, to make sure that you know, we were spending quite a bit of money, particularly around Christmas time on media.
So that was something that we had a sort of a more watchful eye on. As a result, we had someone who was doing like the product research as well. So that was also a component. But at the start, It was sort of that hybrid role that I discussed a little bit earlier on. And that role also was about a thousand dollars a month.
if memory serves me correctly. We also had inside of it a brand manager, an Amazon brand manager, and they were the one who were responsible for really, you know, that would be inside of seller support or seller central rather often in seller support, unfortunately. But, but they would be the ones who would be keeping an eye on anything that was Going on and would also be sort of solving for a lot of problems that they were probably at about $1, 300.
They were a little bit more experienced, a little bit more senior and probably at that time in the business, they were the most senior. team member and I would say one really important role and I knew this because I’d worked in agencies for 10 years before sort of stepping into an Amazon business was we had a project manager.
I think it’s a role that many people forget to include in their business, whether it’s just they forget or they’re unaware that this is a skill set that exists, but you know, when you have someone who is solely responsible on making sure that Products to set life and that all they are doing is speaking to all the different stakeholders to make sure that everyone has what they need and they’re Being delivered in a timely manner.
It’s a game changer. I mean, you’re, you know, if you’re listening here, you know, you’ve made the decision to spend 30 odd minutes of your day to learn and you’re going to hear some things hopefully that I’ve shared and that we’ve talked about that you’re going to think those are really actionable insights and then you’re going to be the person who’s going to have to action them and something has got to give.
There’s only so many hours in the day. So if you can sort of Free the burden of your mind of like that task completion, uh, aspect and at least like for me, I find that a really heavy, arduous weight where if I feel like I, you know, it’s like almost having a million tabs open in your brain, if I can know that like, Every day I can power down and I don’t need to think about, is this getting done?
You know, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty exciting thing for me. So I would say that’s probably one of the other roles that is really, really valuable and really helped us to, you know, accelerate our product development and launch and improvements really helped us to, to bring everything together. So just sharing that that’s from memory.
Those are the roles. I mean, uh, it’s, uh, it’s hard to remember all those years ago, exactly. But in that guide that I spoke about, speak about. it’s actually all there. So, so I probably should just pull that one up.
[00:31:11:19 – 00:32:11:24] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Very good. Yeah, we’ll definitely put the link to that in the show notes.
That’ll be a valuable piece of information that people can grab. But yeah, what you, you know, you were doing a private label business. My business is wholesale selling other people’s business or selling other people’s products. So very similar employees that we have, but we also then have the, the sourcers who are going through spreadsheets and stuff like that.
Otherwise, very similar to what you guys have going on there, because we do part of the agency aspect of it as well, where we’re helping these brands, um, optimize their listings and stuff like that. So very similar. employees that we’ve had for our business as well. Now I’m curious, you, you mentioned wages in monthly dollar amounts.
Do you guys typically pay by salary a monthly salary rather than hourly wages?
[00:32:12:00 – 00:35:33:22] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
So We pay monthly salaries. That’s definitely how we operate as a business. And that’s how we support the clients that we work with. You know, we’re sort of working with businesses that are looking to bring on and scale full time talent.
so, so I’m saying that’s from, from, from my perspective and some of the important things that I would consider. If you’re hiring in the Philippines and if you’re going it alone, you know Todd, you might be really familiar with this, but listeners, if you’re not, there’s, there’s something called the 13th month that exists in the Philippines.
And for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, uh, how it works, and this is a government mandated benefit that exists in the Philippines. So even if you’re not sort of doing things. You know, through a Filipino entity and those things, and you’re doing it, you know, via whatever wise transfer or PayPal or however you’re operating and however you’re finding talent, paying in December, effectively a double month is what 13th month is how it actually is calculated is you accrue.
One twelfth of your salary each month that you’re employed. So if someone’s worked for you for a full year, they’d get a double month in December. If they’ve worked for you for six months, then they would, and it’s from June through to December, then they would receive effectively one and a half times what that, what their salary is for the month of December.
So that’s a really important benefit for Filipinos. Culturally, it’s typically spent on. on gifts for the family for Christmas. It’s not about like a savings plan. It’s really like it’s a, it’s a really beautiful part of the culture and something that, you know, part of the part of the culture that I’m very fond of.
I would say that’s, you know, that’s a high value thing to consider. That’s pretty easy for you to implement. The things that are a bit more challenging to implement will be you know, private healthcare and social security and HMO and field health. There’s. You know, there’s platforms that you can leverage to do that, that will you know, like an EOR, employer of record, will enable you to do that solo.
You know, we also offer it as a service, even for people who have hired, you can come and we can handle your payroll and health care and social security just for you. Without the search fees and all of that, we can just help manage that on an ongoing basis. But, but I’m just sharing all of this to say that like, these are meaningful things when you look at it as an example, just to give you the, the breakdown of what it costs.
It’s about, you know, let’s say on average about $65 extra a month to pay the healthcare and social security and HMO benefits at a raw. sort of cost perspective. So, you know, you can even work through and have them self-administer again. It’s like, I’m getting probably too technical here and you know, maybe this is for a follow up conversation, but just to share, like the important takeaway here, when you talk about paying a monthly salary is that, you know, always sort of understand from a ratios or implications perspective, like, You know, a hundred bucks to you might not be significant, but when you’re getting paid a thousand dollars a month, you know, that’s 10 percent of your wage.
And so if you’re sort of really looking at what that can impact from a support perspective and especially from a bonuses perspective. you know, it’s pretty meaningful for your team. And, you know, it, in many cases, especially when you’re, you know, Multimillion dollar sellouts, it’s a rounding error for you.
[00:35:34:09 – 00:36:35:01] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, and just to break that down, to give people a perspective, $1, 000 a month, if they’re doing a 40 hour week, that’s only about $5. 76 an hour which to us, you know, in the U. S. or wherever you are, that’s probably not A lot, unless you’re in a third world country but to them that’s pretty good pay.
For example, I remember one of them telling me that they were a nurse previously before coming working for us. And as a nurse, they were getting paid $5 an hour and they had to commute an hour each way to the hospital and on a dangerous road. So that’s why, you know, they, they really value these work from home positions that they can get and you can get.
College educated computer programmers and business experts and stuff for five, six, seven dollars an hour pretty readily, especially if you’re offering those benefits and stuff that you’re talking about that’s really going to make you stand out.
[00:36:35:14 – 00:37:25:12] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
100 percent 100 percent it’s a really important, uh, you know, it’s a really important breakdown for people to understand and, you know, even when I hear that, that the minimum wage in Australia now is something like $30 Australian an hour, which probably breaks down to $20 or $21 US an hour.
So you can literally get probably more qualified, you can get more qualified, you can get four people for the price of someone who is. I don’t know, 15 years old, 18 years old in Australia that actually has no work experience in the field at all. So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s going to be really interesting as we sort of move forward in there.
Years in the decades to come what you know what the global workforce environment looks like and what the competitive landscape looks like.
[00:37:25:27 – 00:38:11:25] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
yeah, yeah. And I’m sure there’s people out there that probably don’t like the idea of paying someone $5 an hour, but you know, it’s just it’s the nature of the global economy that we’re in.
And if you want to help lift. say the Philippines up and make more money by employing more people there, you’re going to see the wages slowly go up. I mean, I’ve seen them rise rather significantly over the last two to three years. for some of, some of the positions that I have by a dollar or two an hour, you know, some of that’s due to inflation, but others is just, you know, a rising boat kind of lifts all ships, so to speak, as the saying goes.
[00:38:12:02 – 00:39:40:02] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Absolutely. Yeah. Look, uh, the also one important thing to, to just call out as well is that, you know, depending on where they live, if it’s Manila or more, you know, more provincial Philippines, it can be up to 80 percent the living costs. So, you know, when you start talking about five, six, seven, you know, $10 an hour, that’s, that’s like, that’s good money.
you know, and we have definitely in our consulting team, we have people that, you know, surpass those kinds of hourly. Salaries, but I mean, you know, you’ve got to look at it from a commercial perspective and say, what would this cost me to hire it locally? And if you, you know, I think that that, you know, I hope, I hope you take a lot away from what we’re talking about today, but if you take nothing else away, you really need to look at it from the commercials and you have to say to yourself, what would it cost me to actually bring this person on here locally?
You know, is that circa 60,70, 80 thousand dollars a year, $100, 000 a year for someone who’s like, you know, mid, mid senior level and adding a tremendous amount of value. If I can get the same person for $30, 000 or $40, 000 for as a 100, 000 and I’m getting the same output, you know, that’s the way you should be looking at it and not, well, I should be paying instead of $5, maybe it should be $4, 50.
I’m paying too much. You’ve probably missed the point. If that’s how you’re sort of framing. You know, you’re looking at it really myopically as opposed to at a high level of what’s the impact to business.
[00:39:40:06 – 00:40:23:02] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, yeah, for sure. For those, for the positions like we’ve talked about, PPC and sourcing and things like that, that are technical roles are really good for outsourcing to the Philippines.
But like you said, as you move up, if you start getting into that upper management and things like that, um, that’s where you definitely start seeing a major benefit of hiring. locally, not necessarily because the Filipino employees can’t do that, but because the people who live in the country that you’re in are going to better understand the culture and the business aspects of how things work and managing those sides of the operation.
[00:40:23:21 – 00:40:24:16] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Couldn’t agree more.
[00:40:25:07 – 00:40:41:10] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
So how you’re paying monthly. So I’m curious, are you doing time tracking or are you just monitoring KPI’s and making sure they’re hitting them? Or how are you tracking to make sure people are doing the work you need them to do?
[00:40:41:25 – 00:41:58:10] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Yeah. Yeah, really good question. I do absolutely zero time tracking.
I’m, Personally, like very opposed to it. My philosophy is that I don’t really care how much you work. If I’m really clear on the objectives and goals and you are too as a team member, then it’s about outcome and not input that, that sort of derives the value that you create. I think what I’ve found as well in taking that approach is I attract a certain caliber.
And, you know, it’s pretty evident if you’ve got the right review process and protocols in place, you’ll know in three months if you’ve got the right person or you don’t. So, you know, I’d say, let me take, let me step that back for a second and say, I historically had used tools like called Hubstaff, like Hubstaff and things like that.
Yes. Especially when I was doing like more fractional work and it was like, you know, 10 hours of this person and 20 hours of this person. you know, that was something again, when, you know, I’m going back probably close to 10 years ago now where that stuff was more important, but I, but I, I look at it now at the size of people.
You know, business that we’re at and sort of the vision that we have in the direction. it seems counter to what we’re building toward.
[00:41:59:00 – 00:42:54:07] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, yeah, we, I do use a time doctor is a software that we use for tracking, but we also use, what I look at more is our scorecard. We have a scorecard with all of the KPIs, the key performance, indexes that we want them to be focusing on and meeting.
And so that’s really what I base pretty much everything off of. If they’re not hitting their goals, you know, what’s going on? Why aren’t you hitting your goals? What can I do to help you reach your goals and tracking that way? So yeah, I think, A lot of people like having something like Time Doctor or Hubstaff to, to track it to make sure people are working.
But at the same time, there’s a lot of benefit to, you know, just focusing on the results. And if they’re getting the results done, then we’re good to go.
[00:42:54:12 – 00:44:02:02] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And there’s no, you know, to your point, there’s like, there’s no wrong or right way to approach it. But I would say. Just to sort of restate, like I have found most effective if I’m really clear on the goals and objectives and my team are really clear on the goals and objectives, you know, we build out Q3 and Q4 you know, project objectives and how it aligns.
And so that helps keep both me honest and the team honest. And I found that that works best to me rather than the You know, sitting and, you know, I also kind of, you know, you got to take a long, hard look at yourself as well. Sometimes we can be really critical. I know I was when I used to watch people’s, you know, it does all the screen shots and you see that there.
You know, they’re messing about on Facebook for 10 minutes here. Like the reality is we all need our mental breaks. No one can sit there and work, you know, nine hours straight, eight hours straight and not lift a, you know, a finger off of the task at hand. It’s not. It’s not realistic. So, so I’d say, you know, if you’re taking that path as well, just acknowledge you know, acknowledge that they’re also human just like you.
[00:44:02:09 – 00:44:54:26] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. And those programs can be tricked as well. We, we had to let a couple people go for doing that using some kind of program that was making it look like they were moving their mouse around and their keyboard around. And, but I think the important thing is, is we didn’t catch them. By looking at time doctor or the time tracking we caught them because they weren’t meeting their goals and then we went and looked at the time doctor stuff and we’re like these guys all have like 1 percent downtime and the rest of the team has like a 10 to 15 percent downtime like what’s going on here?
so then we started looking at the screenshots and seeing that was just Like flipping between pages and stuff like that. So those programs can be tricked as well. So you, you gotta focus on the metrics and that’s the best way to, to track it and make sure they’re actually doing what they need to be doing.
[00:44:55:06 – 00:44:56:25] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
I agree with that.
[00:44:57:08 – 00:45:17:25] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
All right. Awesome, Yoni. So what, what have we missed? Anything? obviously we can sit here and talk about this for, for hours and stuff, but any big things that we have missed somebody that’s, you know, just getting started or has maybe even been doing this for a while, some key tips and tricks that people can take away.
[00:45:18:02 – 00:47:08:06] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
I would say that the key, Maybe some of the key things that I would consider including is that having not just you know, making that clear goals and delegation around specific skills clear. but also giving a repository or a company wiki or a knowledge base where instead of you getting sucked in every single time to give direct feedback and guidance
If you can build a SOPs and a company wiki that is self-serving or is a self-serve experience, then that is a really fantastic way to do it. I would also say that can roll into an onboarding plan really quickly. So if you do experience you know, turnover, I would say rapid growth, and you need to sort of like have two and three of the team members that you’re bringing on. Then that can save you a lot of valuable time. And that’s definitely something that, you know when you talk about scaling a business. Especially when going through rapid growth is a really, really valuable thing. I would say, you know, when it comes to things like time zone. if you can build the right systems working asynchronously, so like Philippines and, you know, and Pacific time is virtually like 12 hours apart, I believe.
And so. You know, to have someone there are people that will really prefer to actually work that graveyard shift and that’s been a byproduct of the relationship between the Philippines and the U. S. But for those that don’t and not to miss out on great talent, I have, you know, some team members that are in the U.S. On Pacific time where the time zone isn’t isn’t great between where I sit and Pacific time we work using tools like loom asynchronously and so like work gets done while they’re asleep while I’m asleep and you know, you can actually extend out, you know, Output if you can get into the right cadence, I would say those are some other elements that I would add that could add some, some meaningful benefit.
[00:47:08:19 – 00:48:02:00] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s important to keep in mind if you’re in the U S or Canada, that it’s a 12-hour difference. I’m on the Eastern time zone and it’s 12 or 13 hours depending on daylight savings or not. And. They don’t mind you, typically you can find people to work overnight, but, you know, think of the people here in your country that work overnight, they, they tend to become kind of zombie-ish over time, right?
Because the human body is not designed to do that. So if, if it’s a position where you don’t have to have them work overnight, and you can maybe just overlap with yourself, Two, three hours in the morning so you can have meetings and stuff like that if you need to. that can really go a long way to help them work better, perform better, and have a little bit more of a normal lifestyle in the Philippines.
[00:48:02:07 – 00:48:03:00] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Absolutely.
[00:48:03:14 – 00:48:08:28] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
All right. Awesome, Yoni. This has been fantastic. Where can people connect with you?
[00:48:09:04 – 00:49:00:04] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Well, if you wanna, if you’ve listened this far in, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, Yoni Kozminski. You can find me there if you can spell my name and multiply mii spelt MII is our website where, you know, like I said, I’m happy to share with you Todd in the show notes, some of these resources, but you’ll find it all on our website as well and you know, if you’re an agency owner building an agency, there’s one that shows you how to build that. If you’re, e commerce. There’s one that shows you how to build that as well. And Amazon’s a little bit more geared toward private label, but coming back to it, you know, you’re just switching out that product research for someone who’s going to scour through.
Opportunities to actually purchase, uh, you know, inventory and move products. So, you know, it’s very very Nuanced difference that you know, you’re all really smart and you’ll figure out what those roles should and shouldn’t be.
[00:49:00:14 – 00:49:09:12] TODD WELCH | CEO AND FOUNDER OF WELCH PRODUCTS LLC
Yeah, we’ll put all those links in the show notes and you can find those over at amazonseller.school as well. But again Yoni, I appreciate it. You have a great one.
[00:49:19:16 – 00:49:11:17] YONI KOZMINSKI| C0-FOUNDER CEO OF MULTIPLYMii
Likewise. Thanks for having me again, Todd
[00:49:12:00 – 00:49:26:05] 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.
