The E-commerce Leader

TEL Process Frameworks part 2 of 2
[00:00:00]Jason Miles: [00:00:27] in today’s episode, we are going to continue our conversation on the six process power principles. Michael, hope you’re doing well. I hope you ready to break it down for us today. In the prior conversation, we talked about principle one, two, and three. , before we dig into principle four, five, and six, let me just read the list again so that we can do a refresher in case somebody hasn’t listened to the first episode.
[00:00:48]Here are the six process power principles. Number one, review and examine everything in your business. That’s repeated. Number two, start with the end in mind. Number three, stand [00:01:00] on the shoulders of giants. Number four, focus on the critical few. Number five, move levels with awareness and fluency.
[00:01:09] And number six, monitor, communicate, and correct. So Michael, why don’t you break down principle number four for us, what does it mean to focus on the critical few.
[00:01:20]Michael Veazey: [00:01:20] I love this topic not to be talking about it again. So the critical few really is referenced by Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week, which has become a bit of a cliche reference for a lot of online entrepreneurs. But I still think it’s a very, very well written book and it’s stood the test of time very well.
[00:01:33] We’ve talked about this before, so I’m going to talk about that very quickly. The REA D we talked about revise, eliminate, automate, delegate. In the team 10 episode we talked about, and revise is basically the same as. principle number one, which is make sure you re revise, re-examine everything, and then eliminate, automate and delegate, which is very valid, but we’ve talked about it before, when we’re talking about the revision, piece, I want to talk about another sort of sub principle, which is three X 80 20 or the 80 20 of the 80, 20 of the 80, [00:02:00] 20, which sounds like gobbledygook.
[00:02:01] What does that mean? Well, 80% of results come from 20% of input. Most people. No, this and then do nothing about it. that means that you really need to examine what you’re doing every day, but it goes much deeper than that because that means 80% of that set of results comes from 20% of that input. In other words, 64% of your results come from 4% of your actions or indeed activities, people, products, and 50% of your results come from less than 1% of the stuff you do, which means that if you’re feeling particularly lazy, slash effective, all you need to do is really identify those.
[00:02:36] Really critical few things and make sure that at the very least, you’re doing those well and your business will do okay. And if you do 4% of the staff, while it’s going to do very well. So what is lovely about this is that if you break things down, whilst you have to do more mental work, initially, when you’re reviewing stuff, when it comes to the day to day work, you can do a fraction of the work you were doing before.
[00:02:57] Literally. And get most of the [00:03:00] results, which I think is a beautiful thing. what are your thoughts on this? Obviously very famous principle, the Pareto principle, but have you actually found it useful in real life?
[00:03:07] Jason Miles: [00:03:07] Oh, sure. Yeah. I love the idea and concept and try to apply it frequently. I, you know, in the prior episode I mentioned that I feel like we’re finance focused. E-commerce operators. And then this is where we play this out frequently. So, you know, just one example from, not from our business, but from one of my coaching clients, when we began working with her, it’s probably four months ago or so, the first thing we did was look at a profit and loss statement for the prior year.
[00:03:34] And it just wasn’t a lot. There was a lot of sales, but not a lot of profit. And I, and we asked her what her goals were and she said that was the number one goal. She really needed her system to be profitable. And so we put together a set of goals. And this week actually in the conversation, we, we reviewed the most recent profit loss statement and, you know, look back at the prior life, five months.
[00:03:58]and one thing stood out [00:04:00] and that was her, top line revenue number had not grown. In the direction that she had wanted to with the speed at which she had wanted, but her profit had grown incredibly well, and year over year is set to just be like a double, or more. And so it’s totally revolutionized her business. she was focused on the top line number when we started talking. And then , when we kind of dug into it, we were like, well, this bottom line number, the profit numbers, that’s the thing to focus on. and we came to the conclusion that at the end of the day, you have to focus on what matters in your business and then apply 80, 20 thinking to that.
[00:04:41] And I think that’s the first thing to think through is how do we apply. This 80 20 idea where we really narrowed down the extraneous stuff and get eliminated. Focus on the core ideas in your business that are really central to your success based on your definition [00:05:00] of success. And I guess that’s how I apply it, is, you know, you really want to apply tactically in your business.
[00:05:06]and that’s, you know, Tim Ferriss, his book, I remember he talks about. Having some clients who just killed them and how, you know, all of his clients are great, but set for like these three guys who were just idiots. and those three people caused 80% of his stress and drama. So I think this has to be applied very tactically to come, to affect.
[00:05:29]specific outcomes in your business that really can make a huge difference. .
[00:05:33] Michael Veazey: [00:05:33] . I think the idea of focus, On particular things and which you choose to focus on is, is very, very critical because you have, you over-engineer some process that is unimportant then isn’t going to make much difference. But, yeah. Nevertheless, you, you can probably apply the principle of digging down to the critical few across the board, but I agree that it’s gotta be specific
[00:05:51] Jason Miles: [00:05:51] so principle five is move levels with awareness and fluency. What do you mean by that? What goes into that stuff?
[00:05:59] Michael Veazey: [00:05:59] So this is [00:06:00] probably a reference to something that’s not a new to a lot of people, which is Michael Gerber’s E-Myth revisited framework of the, entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician, or rather, I guess the other way around. Most people start off by being the technician, doing everything in their business.
[00:06:11] And if you followed some course in order to do whatever, Facebook advertising to drive to your Shopify store, private label products on Amazon, whatever it is, chances are you’re very much in the weeds. And. an interesting concept that a guest of mine brought out recently, which is Dillon Carter, who runs various things, including Venn drive, is a CRM tool for wholesale, but he’s done a lot of Amazon wholesale stuff, and he says, look, you’re going to need to move between levels.
[00:06:33] It’s not question of not working in your business. That actually can be a good thing. As long as you’re using the time to document the process. I think you need to bop between levels. So if you’re doing something, you’ve got to get it done. First of all, there’s a reason you’re doing it, so you work as the technician, but then if you document it, you’re effectively work as the manager.
[00:06:50] How can we make this process repeatable more efficient? And then as the entrepreneur, sometimes you’ve got to zoom out. Maybe it’s even once a week, once a month with your coach, examine, should we even [00:07:00] be doing this process? Is there a better way of achieving our longterm goals? So you’re going to need to move between those levels.
[00:07:05] I thought that was a. A really excellent observation of Dylan’s because, it’s one thing to think about those three different levels and the implication is entrepreneurs better than technician and for grownups. And actually the truth is you’ve got to move between them in the messy, real, everyday process of creating a business.
[00:07:21] So that’s really what I meant by that. And what’s your experience of, of that sort of reality in your everyday work with your clients?
[00:07:28]Jason Miles: [00:07:28] we all get to define our own role within our business, and I think it’s critical for us to be able to document what we do personally and then ask the question, could I hand this off and do that? Well, but, but maybe you don’t hand it off. Maybe your zone of genius in a business is. One specific thing, and you ultimately, I’ve used this phrase in our prior conversations, ultimately get to the place where you’re focused on your highest and best work and that you get to the place where everything else is handed off.
[00:08:00] [00:08:00] And the level that you’re operating at is the level that ideally only you could do, but you better. Yeah. As we’ve talked about, you better have somebody else who can do it. Your understudy for when you want to sell or move on or be the owner and not the definition inside your business.
[00:08:17] so, yeah, I think over time you end up moving through Levels and. I’ve used this example before in a prior conversation where we had an employee leave and cinnamon took over the role and cinnamon’s first comment to me after a couple of days was she was doing stuff we didn’t need to have done. And I think it’s a lesson of being aware of all the process in your business, being fluent with all the process steps, reviewing them quarterly or twice a year, maybe, I don’t know, once a year, you know, there’s some stuff you can set up in a business and you never even think about it again, and that’s a mistake you.
[00:08:53]and so I think that’s where my mind goes with this idea of you’ve gotta be the shepherd of these [00:09:00] processes. And they’re yours. I mean, they’re, they’re a business asset that you’ve got to care for and steward in a way, .
[00:09:06] So, final principle is monitor, communicate, and correct. How do you do that?
[00:09:13]Michael Veazey: [00:09:13] Well, lots of things. First of all, I just want to reflect on be the shepherd is more or less leads very nicely into this. And you’ve already mentioned a couple of times about measuring what’s actually going on, looking at the profit and loss statements, for example, for yourself or for your clients’ businesses.
[00:09:25] And really, that comes down to the monitoring thing. , it’s one thing to say. Okay person go and do this process that I’ve created. But if you fire and forget is going to come back to bite you too. To mix metaphors because I think there’s what I call the Sorcerer’s apprentice syndrome, which is when you create something, you give it to a piece of software in the worst case scenario, or you give it to conscientious, but non-communicative VA and you don’t check in on the results, you can mass produce rubbish very swiftly as they say, rubbish in rubbish out, as they say in, in the computing system.
[00:09:55] So. The thing, the solution is you really have to monitor what’s [00:10:00] going on. Communicate clearly up front, but communicate during processes, like, you know, for example, I’m getting, podcast episode, editing back off my plate for amazing FBA and 10K Collective cause we produce, over a hundred episodes a year.
[00:10:11] So, I created a process. I give it out to somebody, but I say, okay, send me a result of first draft of that, if you like, in the same as you’re getting a product physically made in China. It amazes me how many clients say, Oh, do I need to really get a sample back? I say to them, well, so you’re honestly telling me you want to create a thousand units of something, ship it all the way across the world to America and have it reviewed.
[00:10:33] In the very first instance by a bunch of really fussy Amazon buyers, and as soon as I say that, they go, okay, I get the point. So you’ve got to have points of reference where you monitor and correct course. so my, question to you is a fun one. Why have you seen systems go horribly wrong by amplifying a mess?
[00:10:49] And then how have you or your clients corrected that
[00:10:52]Jason Miles: [00:10:52] it’s a good question, but before I answer, let me just ask the question. Sourcers,
[00:10:56] apprentice
[00:10:57] syndrome. That’s a fun phrase. Did you come up with [00:11:00] that
[00:11:00] phrase where.
[00:11:01] Michael Veazey: [00:11:01] I did. I mean the Sorcerer’s apprentice, I did not invent that. So an old, probably by Hanson, Christina Anderson or somebody. It’s an old fairy tale,
[00:11:08]Jason Miles: [00:11:08] well, yeah, I mean, I think there’s lots of horror stories we could, we could draw upon as examples as it relates to communication and monitoring going wrong. I think as a manager, the hardest thing to do is to correct people’s behavior. You know, it’s a, it’s a little bit like this process where you want to train somebody on something and then you.
[00:11:28] You quickly can see whether they got what you meant or not. especially, , when you work with a VA for the first time to set up a process, a good example of this occurs where you say something and then you really have to work diligently to say, do you understand what I’m asking? And you, you know, you kind of have to manage people through this process of ownership of an action set or ownership of the process and watch the outcome. And as business owners, that is the job of the manager is to constantly say, are my people doing [00:12:00] things in the way that it was intended? And there’s so much degradation of quality and loss of quality. It can happen in that communication process where.
[00:12:13] Either people don’t understand the big picture, they don’t have the same level of sophistication or care. Uh, there’s so many ways, so many ways this can go badly and, and we see it in our business all the time where we’ll, you know, we reflect on handing something to someone and then how it’s gone. And it’s a constant process of tune up.
[00:12:35] And to your point, , you’ve got to hand it off, monitor how it goes, and then communicate back. And sometimes the communication can be, Mmm. It’s know, it’s, it’s hard to correct people’s behavior, and, revisit what you previously said, cause clearly they didn’t hear it. They didn’t get it or they’re not understanding it.
[00:12:52] And that’s always the hardest part of, I’m working with people, you know? Can you, you got to do that with, Velvet glove, responsibility, [00:13:00] if you just say, well, I just don’t want to talk about that issue, it seems awkward, then you’ve abdicated responsibility of parts of your business.
[00:13:07] You can’t do that. when you do that, it just falls apart and you learn those lessons quickly. so let me ask you what, do you mean by communication? How do you document or how do you do the communication piece with your team members when you’re going through this process of, following up and clarifying how things should be done?
[00:13:26]What’s that look like in your business? is that video calls? Is it screen sharing? Is it emails? Is chats? what do you do.
[00:13:32]Michael Veazey: [00:13:32] good question. I mean, I’m not saying I’ve got it down perfectly. my preference is for, calls. I think that Nathan Hirsch, who’s very, very experienced, obviously having run free up and now. Outside of school along with Connor and his co founder. it says don’t bother with video calls with people in the Philippines
[00:13:49] cause they’re obviously that internet isn’t very good; sometimes they’re very shy about their spoken English. My preference is to do that if I can, but if not to set aside a time to at least. chat back and forth on Skype. [00:14:00] A lot of people use Slack as well. I think whatever it is, you need to have a frequent communication with them and whatever the form of meeting it is.
[00:14:06] I would just reference Verne Harnish’s excellent. “Scaling up” rhythm, which one I’ve done. It has worked really well to a large degree. I’ve been very spotty with my implementation of this, and I think that’s reflected in some more issues coming up than should have done or that we could have nipped in the bud earlier So it starts with the idea of the daily huddle of 15. Five 50 minutes and then a weekly huddle of 60 90 minutes. So you have a very regular rhythm of
[00:14:30] contact with
[00:14:31] Jason Miles: [00:14:31] I’m not familiar with his system. So what’s the Verne Harnish methodology? How does it work?
[00:14:36] Michael Veazey: [00:14:36] to start with the daily huddle felt five to 15 minutes. You basically are three questions, you know, what are you working on? What problems have you got, , what are you doing next?
[00:14:44] And then if a problem comes up, you don’t deal with it then and there, which is quite elegant cause you generally have most of your team. maybe up to 10 people. and then you take maybe that person aside and just deal with whatever’s come up. So it’s very good for catching problems and just monitoring your spending versus places that one [00:15:00] wobbling or they all good.
[00:15:00] The weekly huddle, you’re going to review your quarterly priorities to make sure you’re tying it in with monthly or quarterly priorities and focus on one or two main topics are probably your. Focused for the quarter and monthly meeting, similar ideas, but you’re trying to get across a bit more maybe of the culture of what you’ve learned or some bigger issues.
[00:15:18] And then of course, you’ve got to have a quarterly planning meeting. And this is where I find that the masterminds I run in London are very helpful because it gets people literally physically away from the office or their computer at home and reflecting on the things they need to do to move the needle over the next while and getting some impact from other people.
[00:15:35] And that’s an obvious thing to have a weekly coaching call as well. So those are slightly different things, but either which way you, that frequency I think is very important and the rhythm of it is important as well.
[00:15:46]mean, how do you find that stuff in your business? Do you have a sort of regular meeting rhythm, with your team?
[00:15:52] Jason Miles: [00:15:52] You know, we do. It’s different for pixie fair business team. Versus our charity team versus the author [00:16:00] speaker is, you know, my coaching stuff. so I guess I could describe each for the, charity. We have a Monday call. It’s a zoom meeting, but some people are local, so we’d done, you know, part of the group is local in-person Monday morning at 10:00 AM and then part of the group , is through zoom.
[00:16:16] You know, they dial in for it, they’re a video call. and then what we’ve done as a group is we’ve done an annual planning meeting, so we don’t do the quarterly, kind of focus. We just do an, an annual, and that’s been really productive. You know, it really helps. And the weekly stuff is a, is a, I think a fairly effective time.
[00:16:35] We have a to do list, take away someone documents. in every week there’s an agenda that goes out early Monday morning, like 7:00 AM I’ll send the agenda so people know what we’re talking about. If there’s anything for them to review, I’ll attach it, that kind of thing. And then I also include the prior weeks to do list so that people see what we agreed we were going to do in the prior week.
[00:16:57] And you know how it is. It’s. Five [00:17:00] minutes before the meeting. People are finishing some of those to do lists, things or whatever, including me. I kind of operate that
[00:17:05] way sometimes
[00:17:06] Michael Veazey: [00:17:06] there’s nothing like a deadline for getting stuff done, especially if you’re a fast start, like you’re me. I mean, having a deadline and some accountability in front of a lot of other people, which is one of the many reasons why regular accountability meetings are important.
[00:17:19] I think.
[00:17:19] Jason Miles: [00:17:19] Yeah. Yeah. , I think the thing I do that the Verne Harnish model recommends is we don’t generally do a unique or different monthly or quarterly meeting. Now, cinnamon and I do review of our monthly and quarterly profit and loss statement, and we do have communications that go out for pixie Faire in particular.
[00:17:40] On a monthly and quarterly basis for our business partners, you know, for the, for the designers in our system and that, and that’s really a kind of communication tool we use. Um, and, and, us to go through all the numbers to really, you know, have things at a high level that we can present. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think various businesses, I do it differently.
[00:17:59] In the [00:18:00] VA business, I really do a daily check-in via Skype. And it’s really about tactical, uh, implementation efforts activities based on the standard operating procedures we have set up for each VA. And it’s really just about touching base, you know, how are you doing? What do you need? How can I help encouraging them?
[00:18:17] I always try to really leave them with a, thank you so much for your hard work. Great job today, great job this week. Hope you have a great weekend. You know, really try to in that system, give them. Affirming positive feedback. I don’t know. Maybe I should do that with all my teams more than I do, but for the VA’s, for some reason, I always have tried to lean into that and really be a positive.
[00:18:40]encourage er every I can, you know.
[00:18:43] Michael Veazey: [00:18:43] I think that’s really important. And I, I’m by nature may be very hypercritical of myself, and that means I can be very critical of others very quickly. And I try and remind myself that, especially with VA’s, because various things, first of all, they’re mostly in the Philippines, although I have had people in the States.
[00:18:57] But, um, so within that [00:19:00] culture, yeah. And as we’ve mentioned before, that it is very important to emphasize the positive because they’ll take criticisms very seriously, which makes them good employees in a lot of ways, but you have to manage that. The second thing is when people are working remotely, they can feel quite cut off.
[00:19:12] So you’ve got to generate extra emotional energy just to communicate that gap, which might be a bit over the top in an office, at least in British culture. You know, w we’re not very effusive, and if you’re a bit more sort of America say, awesome job, man, great. Then it kind of works actually in that context.
[00:19:25] Whereas if you did that in Britain, you might kind of look at somebody and think like, yeah. What are you? Are you trying to borrow money from me? What is it? You know? But if you do that when it’s, when it’s in a more Americanized culture, the Philippines plus the perfectionist Asian thing, I think that makes it very, very important for me to remember, not to be too British and stingy with my praise and be more generous.
[00:19:44] And also the other thing to say is that as Nathan says, Nathan Hershey, we’ve referenced before, very good at process of communications. to err on the side of over communication rather than under with a virtual team, cause it can feel very cut off and not part of a team at all. So those are my my feelings [00:20:00] on that.
[00:20:00] Jason Miles: [00:20:00] Yeah. Well, let’s wrap this up. so do you want to do a recap of the six principles again, walk us through, , those, just as a reminder and take away?
[00:20:09] Michael Veazey: [00:20:09] Sure. So the six power process principles are principle number one, review and examine everything that gets repeated more than once. Number two, start with the end in mind. Number three, stand on the shoulders of giants, or at least those who’ve gone before. Number four is focused on the critical few.
[00:20:26] Number five is move levels with awareness and fluency. So technician, manager, and entrepreneur. And number six is monitor, communicate, and correct.
[00:20:37]Jason Miles: [00:20:37] Great stuff, man. I love this framework. So I hope our listeners have gotten a lot out of this one. We’re going to continue to do these, deep dives into e-commerce leadership principles, and, we’re liking the feedback we’re getting as well. We’ve gotten private messages. We’ve gotten, people who are talking to us, our coaching clients have said they’ve been listening.
[00:20:56]one review that we just got, not too long ago said, [00:21:00]I love when people speak my language knows. Stainable business will ever be built on tactics or hacks, and Michael and Jason know that, and share with actionable strategies that will actually help you move forward forever. Not temporarily until the next trend comes along.
[00:21:17] And so I love that little review of the show, and if you’re listening in and enjoying the show. go leave a review. Now, one things I learned was that the reviews from the UK listeners show up in the Apple iTunes UK version. I can’t see those. And then the reviews from the U S people show up on the USI.
[00:21:37] You can’t see those. So it’s fun for us to be able to share these. But if you’re listening to this, we really love a review and of course, subscribe so that you get unnotified when the next episode pops up, I’m trying to do several a week. And we’re going to keep putting them out here because we’ve got a lot of great, great, business owners and our network, and we are honored, really honor to serve them.
[00:22:00] [00:22:00] And, , so this is one of the ways we can that. And so with that, let me just say thanks again for all your insight and tips. Michael, this has been a great conversation.