The E-commerce Leader

TEAMS INTRO
[00:00:00]Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to talk about teams today. So Jason, I know you have got a lot of experience in this. I didn’t realize until we’d had a conversation about this recently, that you started your career in human resources and you had over eight, 10 years experience in that outside of the eCommerce space.
So I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Tell me about teams.
I love this topic. Um, yeah, I did, uh, start my, my career as a compensation analyst and mostly I was writing job descriptions for a couple of years and then became what’s called HR generalist where I worked with, uh, marketing department managers in a large [00:01:00] organization and help them hire fire.
Uh, team bill. Do you know, uh, problem solving in terms of org chart work and that kind of thing? Lay offs. Uh, I was a hatchet man. It was the best of times and the worst of times in many ways. And I love the topic of teams a lot. Uh, it’s one of the most challenging aspects of, I think a building. One organization is how do you do your, your staffing, right?
How do you do your teams? And so I’m, I’m excited for us to jump into it. Um, little anecdote to get us started. I think maybe it would be helpful, my, uh, hero in a way, I guess lately as Elon Musk, just because of what he’s creating. And I heard an interview with him on Joe Rogan’s podcast it’s amazing podcast.
Um, Joe Rogan started by saying, well, there was a part of the conversation where he said, I don’t understand. How you can possibly
Jason Miles: do Tesla Space X. Neural language
is a big company now. I mean, and the boring company, which is a tunneling company and, and whatever else he mentioned, like, [00:02:00] you know, all of these huge projects, not just projects.
I mean, these are massive companies. . Elon Musk. Basically, his response was, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean. Any in general when it’s trying to say like, how do you do it? How is it possible to have that many organizations? And Ilan said, well, I don’t know what people think I do, but I spent about 80% of my time on really hard engineering problems and trying to figure out engineering, uh, you know, issues to resolve.
And , you could see in Joe Rogan’s face and in his mind as I was watching on YouTube, he just literally was trying to, he was trying to extract some, some concept from Elon Musk that was like this magical, like how do you do it? And then any tried to keep digging in and just kind of kept blowing it off.
But afterwards I was, I was thinking about it, I was like. That was such a weird inner interchange. And even, you know, Joe even said to him, well, what about the, uh, the boring company? And [00:03:00] along said, well, that’s just a couple of interns running it. So, but I realized afterwards, um, implicit in all of the answer in that exchange, was it Elon Musk had a big team.
He has a team behind him for every company and in every context in which he works, he’s built a massive team and, and he’s got people who were head of operations, uh, space X, et cetera, et cetera. You know, there are people who are running these things, and for him to say that he spends 80% of his time working on engineering, math equations, and you know, the kind of technical stuff when he’s got that much company.
Organizational mass he’s leading is just fascinating. And so I was just, as I saw the interchange happen, I was like, okay, this guy is building some of the most interesting companies on the planet right now, and he spends 80% of his time on math and [00:04:00] science and engineering problems. It’s fascinating. So I think that’s a good starting place to say to ourselves, how can we build a system.
That has teams at the heart of it that are super effective, super efficient, and really make magic happen for our customers, for our, you know, for ourselves as owners. Um, and for our employees. And I, I guess that’s kind of the thinking behind the idea of working hard on our eCommerce teams. Um, so I, I guess we should probably start by saying, Oh, you know, how do we define our terms?
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: I was going to say is bringing it back down to earth and was literally from space X. I mean, like I’m, I’m a bit of a space nerd as well, so I’ve watched some of the videos of space X and that does sound, um, extraordinary. Just to reflect briefly on that, you know, Musk story, I think, um. I remember listening to podcasts with Seth Godin a while ago and saying, Mark Zuckerberg needs to spend less time coding and more time leading his teams.
Maybe Musk has kind of gone beyond that to the point where he’s built genius teams and he’s back to coding, you know, back to the [00:05:00] equivalent, the engineering side.
And Twitter
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Yeah, I have
was a different issue, a different issue. But
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Different issue. Yes. Well, let’s not get into that. How to manage Twitter may not be where he is.
He’s the best example, I guess. But yes. Um, it is fascinating. I mean, I think that certainly what you’re implying, I guess is that a really strong team can just basically be the company in lots of ways so that they run the company and you focus on the bit, you have a genius in, I suppose, which comes back to the idea of focusing on your genius.
Mmm. Interesting. So just to tee up a few things, the fact that you were. A job description, expert hiring, firing, team building, and organization charts. I mean, those are all topics we’re going to have to deep dive into. I think because having an org chart is something that I’ve never seen most of the small eCommerce businesses I worked with.
But I think that’s probably a mistake.
So let’s start off with some really simple question what, what do we mean by team? Um, in the first place? Are we talking about employees? Are we talking about virtual assistants? What, what are you. What do you have experience of on what are your clients do.
when I think about [00:06:00] it, I cast a really broad net. I mean, I, I consider service providers on our team. I can, you know, anybody involved in the process of accomplishment. Is in my mind, on my team, it could be a Fiverr gig person. Now they come and go real fast. You know, there’s 24 hours later. I don’t remember who they were, but, uh, but sometimes team members start as a service provider and then they become a trusted.
Uh, part of the process for some somethings. So, so I cast a really wide net. Um, and then of course you’ve got ongoing, uh, contractors, 10 99 contractors or virtual assistants if they’re international. And then, um, then go from there, part time employees, full time employees, and then co founders. And I would even include, because we have a charity, um, but we have a lot of volunteers.
Who are team members. Um, and, and all of them, in my view, are just as, and there’s no real rank there in my view, in terms of the employment status. You know, I think a good volunteer is just as important as a good w two employee,
[00:07:00] Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Yeah.
in, in my mind, at least, that’s kinda, I just kinda flattened it in my mind that everybody’s important, um, to get things accomplished.
So that’s kind of how I look at it.
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Hmm. And I think what strikes me in the commercial world that the equivalent of volunteers is, um, you know, for example, consumers of the dolls, you know, the doll clothes patterns. That you guys would use a pixie fair. Presumably some of them help spread the word because they’re massive fans. And I can guess you incentivize them to do that.
So that kind of includes, um, consumers who are voluntarily, you know, spreading the word. So that’s an interesting, very, very broad definition as you saw with you big picture thinking. Um. So. Okay. Then let’s come to another thing that you flagged up the other day with one of your quotes from the other podcasts.
Probably in the process podcasts, you’re saying Dean Jackson was saying, don’t worry about the how to do things, which is a process type question. Think about the who, and, um, I know you’ve got some thoughts on that because I mean, the, the alternative extreme, I would say. Okay. One extreme is very common in the eCommerce space, particularly on Amazon.
Anyway, create a bunch of SLPs and then [00:08:00] hire, you know, very, um, unskilled, cheap staff. And that’s quite common. Then the opposite extreme, I guess would be the who rather than how thing, hire some geniuses and then worry about the process. Maybe Elon Musk is in that lucky position by the sound of it. So what are your thoughts on that?
That question.
Well, I, when I first heard the Dean Jackson quote, and if you’re not familiar with it, he, that you kind of outlined it there. He basically pushes people to find the who not, not, you know, try to stress out over how to do something. And so his phrase that I think they had him in Denso and said, are you who’d up?
Do you have your who? Um, and, and I, when I first heard that it was almost like. Catnip or something like candy or something like that. Oh yeah, I love this. I love this. This is so great. And then the more I thought about it, and, and no disrespect to them at all because they’re both genius marketers and business operators, but the more I, I kind of stewed on that idea, the more I ran into a fundamental flaw in the logic and the flaw in the logic.
It was, I reminded, I was reminded as I [00:09:00] meditated on it. Thought about it, of what I used to talk to managers about when I was coaching them as an HR generalist. And the, the, the sad fact is, or the reality is, um, if you hire a hundred people, you will have an average group of people. So the fallacy in many people’s thinking is that they are special and that they can somehow hire special.
Well, the fact is, your average. Um, and maybe if you think you’re above average, everybody does. You’re not probably, uh, and as soon as you get in a big enough cohort or the right cohort. And so as, as managers, people would always come to me like, you know, I would talk to a manager and be like, okay Bob, you know, what are you looking for?
Well I need to hire a PhD in whatever anthropology. It’s like, do you really need a PhD in anthropology? Cause. Those guys are pretty hard to find, you know? And, uh, so we’d have this conversation and then I’d say, well, what do you want the PhD in anthropology to do? [00:10:00] Uh, well, we need them to, uh, go onto this website and fill out some forms every day.
Like, well, you know, and you start to really boil it down and over time. And I did that year after year, what I realized was the best thing I could advise to a manager. It was. Make jobs that are so simple. You could have an intern do the job, or, uh, entry-level worker do the job. And that way you’ve made it, you’ve created a process that’s easily achievable.
And when you do that, what happens is you can hire rank amateurs. You can hire brand new college graduates, you know, hire people right off the street. Um, because you’ve engineered it in such a wise way that they don’t have to be geniuses. You’ve done the genius work of, of organizing it so they can be simpletons with no disrespect.
And, uh, and that way, you know, the benefits of that model. Are there a way, Oh, that’s [00:11:00] expensive. They’re way easier to find on the whole, if you have to do it three or four or five times, an average person can do the work because you will. W w we’ll pick average people. Um, and uh, you know, it’s just a smarter model.
So I, I’m afraid the who not how thing is cool until you actually need to start hiring people in mass and building a team, and then what you realize is your process better.
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: I think it’s very interesting. I think what
It better depend on you’re wise, you know, engineering have a simple plan that anyone can execute. I don’t know. So, so that’s where my thinking has gone lately on the who versus how debate, I don’t know.
What are your thoughts on that whole
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: If you’re in a physical product space, for example, is going to make your life one heck of a lot easier.
Somebody who’s utterly amazing at Amazon seller central, which I’ve experienced as a business partner, and that. Really is, is, you know, and they are super bright people and they’re not common, and you may have to pay them well, including give them equity is the most [00:12:00] expensive form of payment for a successful company.
Of course. Um, but then what you’re implying is that at the point of scaling, you need to be able to make a system work with average people. So I guess that brings me to the when question or, or what point then, I suppose it brings us to stages of scaling, um, stages of hiring stages of. Team building. So let’s, what, what do you think are the stage I was about to ask you, what do you need to do at the early stages, but for me, could you, let’s take a step back from that.
What are the stages do you think of hiring for, um, any commerce business that starts off with one person, they’re gonna make their first hire, I guess what, what do you, how would you break up the stages after that?
Um, well, yeah, I mean, I think the first thing to realize is, Mmm, you’re the first employee in your business that you have to [00:13:00] manage. And, uh, managing yourself can be pig hassle. Managing your own weird behaviors is probably the worst job or challenge, biggest challenge you’ve got. And so the first stage is you, you know, and you’ve gotta be hyper hyper-efficient.
Yes. You’ve got to be, uh, you know, a manager that wears four or five hats. Yes. Marginally competent. And you know, a few things. You’re the, you’re the first. Uh, you know, employee. And I think that’s a really important thing to think through. You know, like for example, um, and I, you know, I have a, I have a list of, uh, team principles I will be talking about later in different episode.
But, you know, a few examples come to my mind on this whole idea that you’re, the first is a, there are e-commerce. Um. One of these, I guess you could say. You know, people who want to be into the, into the space and they will not pay for any training or coaching. All they want is the freebie. They want the, you know, [00:14:00] quick video, the webinar or the article, they just won’t pay for education.
And there’s a balance there. There’s wisdom in being frugal, but all things being equal, if you were going to be a. Pharmacist. I don’t think you do that on the back of free YouTube videos. Um, you know, if you’re going to be in any trade skill. Yeah. I mean, even a blue collar trade skill, you’d say, where’s the tech
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Yeah.
I can go to. And so, you know, if you’ve got this mindset that I’m not going to pay for any training, all these guys on the internet are scammers or whatever, whatever, then you’ve really created a mental barrier. You’ve got it. You’ve got a bad culture in your organization of one. And, um, and so I think those are, you know, some of those principles start to immediately become relevant when just when you’re just with, you know.
The initial stage of starting your e-commerce effort by yourself. And then of course, you get to the point of, you asked this question, [00:15:00] should I have a co founder or a, uh, an equity partner?
And, uh, the, and it’s a whole different
topic. And then after those things you get to, how do I add team members to
effectively help me scale up?
But those first two steps are, you know, those are big
topics by themselves.
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: That’s such a good
answer. It wasn’t what I was expecting You are an expert
in HR, I guess,
certainly in that sphere. But I know that other people that I’ve worked with who are experts like Nathan Hershey, we both know, for example, um. Very sharp guy when it comes to hiring and the culture thing is interesting that you pick on that as creating a culture when it’s just you, because I think you’re right.
If you’re frugal about things versus wasteful versus completely never invest in training, those are going to show up when you hire your first person. I guess if you’re going to say, right, I want you to do Facebook ads for me, and they could say, well, I’ve got a bit of experience, but how? How am I going to be trained in that?
And you just say, yeah. Figure it out. Go and look at YouTube. That’s one approach. And then the other one is, I’m going to pay for you to go on a course. And you know, there are in between [00:16:00] stages, but you quite right. That actually, that probably sets a profound sort of tone for how the culture works. So.
Alright.
one. Are you on another one of those? It’s kind of a fun, fun train of thought here. Another one of those is, uh, your emphasis of quality standards. You know it, you start as an eCommerce operator. And the first question is, well, what’s your standard for quality? For anything, I mean, for the product you’re going to make for the product listing, for the copywriting, for the photography, most people, if you, okay, so I use the phrase, you know, like on the whole, people are average on the whole e-commerce sellers are also average.
If you go, let’s look at a hundred listings on Amazon, they’re going to look pretty average. You know, if you just raise your quality standards, uh, you know, by 20%, 30% above everybody else, you’ll stand out. Now, see there, I’ve just suggested a culture, um, a mindset. Now you do, you know, that’s a culture thing inside your company.
Um, uh, w whether you have [00:17:00] employees or not, but the level of sophistication and quality. Now, some people err on the side of, you know. Being PR analysis by paralysis, by analysis, they, they obsess over, um, you know, getting something perfect and therefore never launch it. There’s an error on that side, but most times stuff just stinks.
I mean, most, most of the time stuff is just P, you know, it’s just not competent work. And so having the culture where you say, Oh, I’m going to ma, I’m going to do my best to find out how to make this way above average. So that I compete at a level that most of the competitors would be like, dang, they’re good at photography, or, dang, they’re good at video.
They’re dang, they’re good at, you know, and, and I can just tell you, my wife and I started our business. She has a visual standard for her work that is off the charts and like, so for photography, that kind of stuff, her videos are amazing. I don’t mind [00:18:00] is maybe C plus level. B minus level. So when I do projects on my own, they can frequently be really bad.
When we do projects together, there’ll be amazing. And you know, I’ve done self publishing books, my self publishing books, pretty mediocre, you know, in terms of covers and interior layout, stuff like that. When I do books with McGraw Hill, they’re amazing. So I think that quality bit is, is, uh, is crucial
cultural piece too.
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: What you’ve come back to is, I guess a branding question, a cultural question. It’s also, we need to get this right before we hire people.
Question, which is like a whole thing. But what’s interesting to me is you’ve just articulated, um, that you could be as a brand, really excellent, very, very high standards in certain areas. And only. You know, certain level of standards in others. So in your eCommerce business where you’re selling the dolls patterns and stuff, understandably, the visual element needs to be great, and that’s where cinnamon’s incredible standards are so good.
Whereas a book, I guess is about words, and you and I are very [00:19:00] meticulous. We’re both sort of very words focused people. And I guess that’s why we’re doing a podcast, not a YouTube set of beautifully produced video slides or something. Right. Um. So I think that’s part of the cultural identity, I guess is where you put your emphasis, right, is what’s incredibly important to you as a founder that you hope resonates with your tribe of followers and, and buyers.
Um,
So that’s a, that’s a starting point. Starting point is get your mind right. Okay. Get your culture right before you move on to team. and it doesn’t immediately play out. It doesn’t it, you know, if you’re, uh, uh, um, hack on quality, what are you going to hire? How are you going to hold anybody accountable?
You’re going to hire somebody who’s marginal and they’ll do marginal work and you’ll have a very, very marginal product product. One, just one example. You mentioned a brand. How always in a brand on Saturday, I had a work Cardi over at our house with my son’s college friends to clean up my backyard and help build a fence. So for lunch we ordered McDonald’s. And I haven’t had McDonald’s for real, cause I have a [00:20:00] weird diet. I haven’t had McDonald’s for probably for real, probably six years. And, but no. So then I just got a big Mac and fries and we were all sitting around the table talking about how McDonald’s is insanely good at consistency.
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Yeah.
And then you, and you know their model, their model is a. They, uh, yeah, they hire high school kids. They’re pulling off top quality, fast food. Now. It’s debatable, but whatever. Um, but they’re popular for a reason. And, um, it’s the process quality. It’s not this, it’s not the all, they didn’t hire PhDs to cook that hamburger, you know?
So, I mean, I think that’s important to
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: The irony is that when we’re in the process, um, episode where we’re talking, a couple of episodes got about process and um, you were saying, well, you know, I like teams. You’ve got to get the who, not the how. And now we’re digging into the hiring. The reality is. Yeah. The [00:21:00] reality is that actually that, you know, as you’re flagging up, you’ve got to have both, of course, you’ve got to have adequate people and then has a handler.
But the process is important, but it’s a process, not just if mechanics do this, do that. It’s a process, I guess, that we’re going to have to dig into hiring, training, and onboarding, a management firing if you need to, you know, how to handle that whole situation. So there’s a heck of a lot going on. I mean,
Well, let me ask you, let me ask you the question then. Yeah. W w how do you decide in your business? Wow. When do you know, what do you delegate and when? What do you do yourself versus handing to a, a teammate, and how do you, how do you think through that stuff?
Teams INtro RAW 1 Michael_V: Well, I think one of the missing pieces of that is the cash flow side because, um, one of the limitations on growth of any business is, um, cash flow and capital. Yes. I mean, it could be cash. It could be going barring buying. I’m sorry, borrowing money I should say, or getting investor money. Um, and I do think that I’ve had the habit of going, the reality has been doing too much stuff [00:22:00] myself, delegating to the point where I was just spending money without getting a return on it.
And now I’m trying to sort of get it back in the middle. Um, so I think, um. One of the things when it’s too early to delegate, as you’re saying, as if it’s a mess.
Michael Veazey: bill Gates famously said, if you add technology or any kind of. Process to a message is, amplifies a mass to be added to order, amplifies order. So I think you’ve got to get things in order and, um, that’s the first thing. You’ve got to really dig quite a lot into how you do a process in a messy kind of way before you’ve got a cleaned up version of it.
Um, so that’s been my experience, that actually the cleaner, my understanding of it is, then the sooner I can get it. Off of my desk actually.
So it’s actually a little bit later than you might think when I’ve done a lot of podcasts editing, for example. But to get it off my desk too, instead of hiring a really clever guy to give it to a fairly average, but you know, conscientious VA, I’ve had to dig a lot more into the process of exactly how I do it and really think it through and break it down to a level that I.
Didn’t think it was possible, but that should be a more robust process and that should be more accessible to an average person as opposed to hiring an editor with great ears and a great feel [00:23:00] for it. So that’s an example of, I think you need to dig into processes quite a lot before you can really get them off your plate reliably.
Um, if you’re going to hire average people rather than experts, to your point, because it’s a lot cheaper. And that’s what I realized. I’d been hiring experts and they were wonderful, but they just weren’t affordable and sustainable.
Jason Miles: it’s a hard thing to figure out what to take off your plate and , what to leave on your plate. I, you know, I had a coaching client this last week who, um, said in effect, I keep hiring people and creating new work for them. New jobs, new tasks,
Michael Veazey: yeah,
Jason Miles: but it doesn’t take anything off my plate. Because I’m creating in the, in the process of hiring, you know, like, Oh, I’m hiring somebody to do this new thing that we haven’t done. And, and then that was a very interesting insight, which is a challenge. And, um, so I think that’s, that’s a real balancing act of what to leave on your plate, what to take off your plate.
Um, and, and I think there’s some principles around that whole. Issue that you know, that are worth exploring, you know, at some point, um, there’s a lot of debate there. Hire for your strengths, sorry for your [00:24:00] weaknesses. What do you end up doing? I always think of our business and for the last 10 years, I’ve had this mental picture of it, like being a balloon that’s inflating and, and the thing about the balloon inflating is when you, when it’s real small, you’re in charge of everything.
Of course. But as soon as it starts to grow, you have to become in charge of a portion of it, and the bigger it gets, the smaller the portion. And that, that visual metaphor for me has always been interesting to like, well, you know, how do you, how do you do that so that your role becomes more and more and more specialized?
It’s over time because you’ve added a team effectively. And at the end of the day, for I think most most owners of. Larger operations. They’re almost entirely consumed with hiring, firing, and managing their top level people. It’s almost all about just, you know, [00:25:00] people management. Cause you’re not, you don’t have your fingers in the soup.
Whatever, you know, you don’t, you don’t have your, your hands in the process. Now, you know, maybe Elon Musk is an exception. Maybe he clearly likes to only do that 20% of the time, and 80% of the time he wants to work on math. Um, so, um, but there’s a, there’s an interesting dynamic we all have to sort through there, you know,
Michael Veazey: Absolutely. There’s a lot to sort through. Yeah, completely. So, what are your thoughts about minimizing that mess? Or another question would be, Can you think of an example of where you amplified a mess rather than
clean things up.
Jason Miles: Oh, man. so many. Where do you start? Well, I’m just thinking which ones can I reveal publicly? Um, I think I just would start by saying management is the hardest. Task of all of the business tasks. I believe that anyway. I mean, I think it is one of the hardest things to try to pull off, right?
And I would, I would be the first one to say I’m a ma, an average manager. And I [00:26:00] don’t presume to be a good manager, even though I’ve, I’ve, I’ve counseled managers for a long time. In my olden days job and, you know, being in HR, I would, I would sit with managers and toil over doing layoffs or restructuring or firing or what, I mean, these are very hard decisions and you know, some people are better at it than others, but I would just say, give yourself a lot of grace.
Just realize you’re not going to be amazing if this, you’re going to make a lot of stupid mistakes. And, uh, at least I, we have, I have. And, um, so I mean, that’s a starting point in terms of specific stories. I mean, it’s just, there’s so many ways in which you can do things wrong. One thing I just, I’ve told you just before the show started, one thing that I, I tend to do, it’s just a chronic mistake, is I put myself in the middle of the action.
So I become a bottleneck for any project or process. And that’s a classic, stupid thing to do. And so for, I just, I was saying, so for example, I have a, an assistant, [00:27:00] a writer who helps me with all my book projects, and she helped me with a project. She gave it to me last, I think it was last Sunday, so that was eight days ago, something like that.
Well, uh, if I’m getting my timeline right here, well, the next step in the process is to send it to the interior book format or who she knows. Nice guy. They’ve emailed back and forth. She’s worked with them directly, but I, what would I tell her to do? I told her to send it to me, not to him directly. So rather than creating a nice process where marker one.
Sends along the, you know, thing to work or to processes flows. I just put myself right in the middle of it unnecessarily. And I, I knew that all the time. And so, you know, I wasted six, seven days on a project. And so, you know, there’s just, there’s stuff like that that you just realize over time. It’s your own behavior that is frequent though.
Problem.
Michael Veazey: yeah, definitely. Definitely hear that.
Jason Miles: What about you? you had any [00:28:00] recent horror stories.
Michael Veazey: Well, I’ve made lots of exciting mistakes. I was just reflecting on what’s the biggest one? You know, it’s important to make exciting mistakes. Well, a lot of boring ones as well. , I actually owned a lot of mundane mistakes. I just think the biggest mistake so far in businesses worked together with a really intelligent.
Conscientious, very bright business manager, like literally a rocket scientist. He actually had a degree in rocket science or postgraduate. Um, so you know, some of his heroes, like, you know, Jeff Bezos funding also has a physics degree. Elon Musk, quite a lot of the guys out there anyway, so super bright and somehow we managed to just.
Both get very analytical about the same thing. So we just sort of moved around in a pod and and looked at the same things. And what we didn’t do is create an org chart at the beginning and say, you know, this is the CEO, the CFO, COO, whatever, and really divided up and then divide the work up between us. I think we were also a bit optimistic as well.
I mean, I think getting a business partner with, um, a lot of cleverness, if you’re also clever, yourself or analytical, what does clever mean? Analytical maybe [00:29:00] and creative. Um, you know, maybe you just need somebody with a lot of money. I mean, I know that some business partnerships that I’ve observed have done a lot better.
They simply have somebody who doesn’t know much about Amazon, but has a lot of money and somebody who’s amazing at Amazon, it doesn’t have a lot of money. And so I think that is not exactly a delegation mistake, but it’s to your point about the internal culture. It was more profound than that. It was a lack of structure at the highest level of the company.
I, the two business partners. my, as you get to conscientious, hardworking people didn’t really make the most of what they had somehow because of that. So that would be my lesson from that would be really split the tasks up as early as possible would be my, my learning from that one.
Jason Miles: I think we need to do a whole episode on partners. You know, equity partners and, and how to navigate those waters, that’d be a fantastic episode
because there’s so much there to think through.
Michael Veazey: Yes. No, it totally is. I mean, you know, there’s not exactly a delegation mistake, but I think it sort of, it was even worse than that, really. Um, so look, I know we were gonna have to draw things to close today. Some interesting points have come up. I love the fact that you’ll put your finger [00:30:00] on internal culture and standards as a prelude to delegation.
No, that doesn’t sound obvious when you think it through. It makes a lot of sense. So I know you’ve got this wonderful 10 part framework. You’re a man for frameworks. You’ve got this framework, which may have morphed into 12 by the time we speak, but I think it’s about 10 to give us an examples of what, what’s coming up with that.
Jason Miles: Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s do a whole episode where we walk through those for sure. Um, it’s a list, I guess you could say. Principles. Uh, it’s loosely sorted. I mean, I think it’s. It’s fairly baked, but it’s, it’s 10 principles, uh, for team and I, and I’d be happy to walk through those.
We’ve touched on several of the ideas in this conversation, um, the first principle for example, is you are the first employee and the one that needs to be managed and most closely, and that’s the first principle because I, you know, I coach people every day. I have coaching call that’s going to start in a few minutes here. Every day.
You know, when I coach people. A lot of what we do is we work on there. Mindset, process, productivity. I mean, w you know, frequently [00:31:00] we are the problem. And so that’s the first principle to sort out, and there’s tactics and strategies to, uh, to help refine aspects of our own style and behavior. And so, um, yeah, that list of 10, 10 will be, I think, a really, really solid team to go through.
Um, and, uh, we can, we can absolutely do that. But yeah, uh, let’s, if it’s okay wrap, this man’s get interesting conversation.
Any final thoughts before we, before we close it
Michael Veazey: Not really, except that what this shows is that it’s worth really thinking through a lot of things before you delegate, and that’s not as a way of shying away from doing it. It’s a preparation to really doing it well. So that’s what’s really struck me more than ever with today’s episode. How about yourself?
Jason Miles: Yeah, absolutely. No, this is a great topic. It’s a fun one. I think it’s really, as I, as I mentioned, it’s the hardest thing any business owner can do is figure out how to do the team thing effectively. So with that said, um, thank you for collaboration on this great team member on the podcast. I have to say that it’s true and, uh, really [00:32:00] appreciate everybody listening and let me just say that we would absolutely love.
This podcast is just a little tiny fledgling project. What are we, I don’t even know, a dozen episodes in or something like that. And we need your support. And the way that happens is you, uh, download episodes and you, um, subscribe to the podcast on the player of your choice and then leave your highest and best review.
That would be a huge, huge, huge gift to us. And then of course, if you wanted to share it along to your friends, if one of these episodes is something that you’ve been struggling with. Or maybe you know, people who have struggled with one of the things that we’ve talked about that you’ve enjoyed. Do us a favor and forward it to them and let them know that there’s a new podcast that they might enjoy.
They’d appreciate you doing that, I would assume and would find value in it. So we’d really appreciate your help with that . Let’s wrap it here and we’ll see you in the next episode.