The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: it’s our job as the leaders of our business to ensure. Everyone we work with has a clarity of what we’re trying to achieve together and for any of those categories of partner.
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[00:01:14] Jason: If you want to scale up your e-commerce business, you’re going to need to create a team. And that means you need to create a shared view. And this episode, we’re going to break down and discuss the best team-building collaborative efforts we know of and going to bring a lot of enthusiasm and energy to this topic, I think together here today.
[00:01:33] So, Michael, are you ready to jump into. How to create a shared vision with your team as a conversation.
[00:01:38] Michael: Absolutely. And I love this phrase, which is your phrase. I literally just hired a new team member two days ago, so it’s right at the top of my mind. So great topic for me personally, and hopefully for lots of people listening as well.
[00:01:48] So let’s start with a really obvious question. How are you defining team member important points? I think.
[00:01:52] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s such a fluid space now, isn’t it compared to the olden days of nine to five careers, I think, oh, the way I look at it as a team member is anyone you need to accomplish business with.
[00:02:04] And that could mean they’re full-time workers. It could mean they’re part-time people. So those in the U S those would be, you know, W2 employees that are literally on your payroll, but it could also mean people who were, contractors that you pay through 10 99. It could be. International service providers that you don’t even have a 10 99, you know, in the U S a contract relationship with, it could also mean even more informal relationships like service providers that are doing things for you, like add in management, that kind of thing.
[00:02:36] And even people who are business partners, you know, Michael, as I was doing this, I was railing, you know, realizing, you know, we’re team numbers. We need to create a shared vision together. Don’t we, even for this podcast. So I brought. You know, think about this stuff with all of those contexts in mind. That’s just how I approach it.
[00:02:53] What are your thoughts on that part?
[00:02:55] Michael: I’m glad you mentioned that what broader set of people. Cause I’ve been thinking of it slightly narrower than that, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, you and I did literally sit down and create the shared vision, with, quite a lot of thought before we even created the first podcast.
[00:03:07] Yeah, I’ve said I’m really glad we did, because I think it does make a difference. I would say the word team member is really important. So with a dispersed team on international team, which is what I have, there is a real danger with the word virtual assistant. First of all, they’re not virtual, they’re actual real people with real physical lives and internet issues and children and love you.
[00:03:22] And the second thing is out of sight out of mind is the danger with that. It’s too easy to think of a VAs. Oh, just get it off your task list and give it to a VA kind of out of sight, out of mind off my plate. But I think team member reminds you. It’s a treat them as part of a shared mission. Exactly.
[00:03:36] Like the word shared vision says. So that’s why, I’m glad you also agree with that, that language as well.
[00:03:42] Jason: Yeah, totally agree. I mean, you have to look at this really broadly these days. It, very few of us have an old school structured company where we just have all of our employees that are right there together.
[00:03:52] Most of us work in collaboration with people in very dynamic, situations, and it really makes our job hard. As the, you know, the leader to figure out how do we best manage the vision and execute on a strategy together with a group. And so this is a, this is the critical nature of this topic. And, and so I’m excited about some tips and tricks.
[00:04:13] That we can share some ideas. We could also share horror stories and I, I wrote a little, email. I sent out to my, to our newsletter group this morning and, and I sat in and I was going to share a horror story and I’ll be, can I be really transparent? I was going to share a story of when something went bad recently.
[00:04:34] And then I was in, in listening to some preparatory stuff. I, I listened to John Mack’s. And a podcast on the fatal flaws of leaders. And one of the things he really, stressed was, trust. And so I S I said to myself, you know, if, if I tell that story, even without mentioning the person’s name, Cast me as someone who tells stories about other people and candidly, I don’t want to be, I don’t want to do that.
[00:05:01] So I’m going to retract my offers, sharing a horror story today. I don’t know if you have horror stories, generally want to share, but there are so many times when team work and collaboration can go back. Yeah, that it is fun and sometimes easy to share anonymous, you know, anonymized stories, but, oh, I like your
[00:05:21] Michael: integrity.
[00:05:22] I like your integrity about that. And yes, I think you’re absolutely right. There’s sometimes you tell a story about somebody and I’ve done that talks about a client even on this podcast. And I didn’t think what I was saying was disrespectful, but he did email back and say like, I know who you’re talking about.
[00:05:34] So I think it is important to be careful of people’s feelings. So that, that speaks well to your trust-building and how respectful you are. I’ve got a couple of horror stories to share about people who aren’t on my team because their hiring interviews were horrible, nothing major, but I got a little bit of assess to share, but, one little point, before we plunged into how to do this, I just want to make a simple point.
[00:05:52] I think it’s really, really important to have a shared vision if you’re working remotely or disperse team, because you can probably get away a little bit more with not having a shared vision. If you just turn up in an office every day in a routine way, you physically see each other, you have some kind of basic interaction on a human level.
[00:06:07] But if you’re dispersed, you need to, I think I have to make much more conscious effort to have a shared vision. What are your thoughts on that? Just before we plunged into the how?
[00:06:16] Jason: Oh, for sure. I mean, I, you know, it’s, it’s our job as the leaders of our business to ensure. Everyone we work with has a clarity of what we’re trying to achieve together and for any of those categories of partner.
[00:06:30] And so it, it absolutely is required. Now, if you’re a coworker with somebody and your peers, then I guess it’s a shared vision that you’re rallying around in inside the business you work in, but most of us are solopreneurs or, you know, working in entrepreneurial ventures where it’s really on us as a leader to sort of create.
[00:06:48] Vision with other people and we have to do that gracefully and respectfully. Yeah.
[00:06:53] Michael: Great. So the obvious next question is how do you go about it then? What are the first steps to do that? Yeah,
[00:06:57] Jason: I think in today’s world, one of the first thing that’s super important is this the foundational questions of a shared vision of, of working together.
[00:07:09] And I think there are a few set of common questions that we all ask when we go into a deal with. Whether it’s a formal, you know, employment relationship, which, I mean, most entrepreneurs aren’t interested in being employees. So, but when, when someone’s working for you, I think there are set of questions that we’re all asking of each other, which is, am I an ethical person?
[00:07:29] And are you an ethical person? These are just foundational, you know? Am I going to do what I said I would do? And are you going to do. What you said you would do, you know, so, so performance and outcome, you know, am I a performer in the way that I’m saying I am? And are you a performing the way you’re saying you are?
[00:07:47] Another one is, you know, am I going to treat you with respect and professionalism? Are you gonna treat me with respect and professional? These are not really shared visions. They’re just shared agreements, almost at a, at a, in a sort of a business level where we’d say we want to work with people. People we can really click with and get along with.
[00:08:07] And sadly, you sometimes find people who were acting in a space and they haven’t learned the basics of professionalism. They haven’t learned the basics of saying, yes, I’m trustworthy. And I expect you to be trustworthy and let’s demonstrate that to each other. So, you know, those are sort of, to me, sort of just the foundations of working with people.
[00:08:26] And sadly, sometimes when you work with people, these things are the ones that you’re like. I found out you’re not an ethical person. I bye-bye, or, oh, I found out you, you don’t do what you say you were going to do. And, you know, that kind of thing, or, or you’re going to treat me not professionally. And maybe you, maybe you grew up working at, you know, a blue collar job where, or there was no expectation of migrated into e-commerce.
[00:08:55] Work and you built a business, but, and yet you don’t have an expectation of professionalism clearly rooted in your mind. So I think these are just foundational ideas that we all need to sort of work through and we all end up working through them in our own way.
[00:09:09] Michael: Yeah. I don’t disagree at all with, with these.
[00:09:12] I think it’s a great list of sort of checkpoints Mike, I guess my question, and this is the. Intriguing dynamic between humans. Like how do you actually find the real answers for these, I guess you could ask directly, or is it only from experience that you really know the answers to these sort of behavior, character
[00:09:28] Jason: type questions?
[00:09:29] Oh, it’s only from experience. I think, I mean, I think you can do your best to vet people. You can do your best to have filters and screens and you know, kind of the pre agreement level. Due diligence, you could call it or delay diligence that in a traditional role, that’s the, you know, recruiting and interview process and, and verifying people’s, you know, Experiences.
[00:09:52] I think those elements are traditional, but w many times now we bypass those things because we’re in the service provider kind of economy, gig economy. It was like, oh, you did this. Okay. I need that done. Okay, great. Let’s go. Let’s do it. Well, you know, when you don’t vet people and verify, and that kind of thing, I think you can end up making.
[00:10:13] Rash decisions that didn’t need to be made. But I think ultimately it comes down to the proof is when you work with somebody, you begin to learn these things. I think it was in the matrix when, the Neo has to fight that, Kung Fu master guy, the small guy, who’s like really awesome. And then they’re fighting before he goes to see the Oracle.
[00:10:32] And then he was like the, the Kung Fu guy says, I had to be sure that you were the one and then Neo said, you could’ve just asked. And he said, no, you don’t really know someone until you fight them. So, yeah. I liked that, I guess. Right. So
[00:10:49] Michael: yeah, I guess you don’t really know until you work with somebody.
[00:10:52] I think that’s true. I mean, I like this morning I was working as a musician, which I still do bits and pieces of, and you know, when you work as a musician, there was a choir conductor just waving and you can’t sort of shouting instructions to each other when you can be interrupting the music. So you look at each other’s eyes and the guy twitches his hand, and then you play any kind of stairs that you think, oh, that wasn’t what he meant.
[00:11:09] And in other words, you only really know how good they are when you’re actually doing the thing. And I agree with that. And that’s my experience. Yeah. Say that, essential keeping the word team very, very broad and definition in which makes sense to me that I guess you would have pride apply different levels of expectation and proof.
[00:11:26] Wouldn’t you. If you’re trying to hire somebody full-time as I did the other day in advance of committing to paying them and then committing to being with me for awhile that, and hopefully a long time that that’s a different other pre-fund. If I go on Fiverr and I want to find somebody who can, you know, clean up some photos for me or add some.
[00:11:42] Graphic elements or something. Then I would probably put a lower level of proof, although, I suppose I would basically treat that as an audition instead of interviewing them and say, great, do this thing. And if they don’t do the thing or they say you can do it for Tuesday and it turns out we lake, then I guess they’ve behaved themselves in.
[00:11:57] They need trees. Right. They showed me what they really like.
[00:11:59] Jason: That’s right. And there are a lot of ways to vet people kind of incrementally, you know, especially with team members, you know, from the Philippines, we’re going through a process right now where we’re adding a new team member, our team leader for our team in the Philippines, set up the job posting on online jobs pH.
[00:12:16] Then she, I think she’s gone through 182 resumes. Had it boiled down to a dozen and then her and our team are going to interview down to just, two finalists. And then I’m going to do the final chit-chat with the two finalists or video call, and then give the team my opinion, but I’ll be, an equal voice in their opinion.
[00:12:39] Hopefully we’ll all be on the same page about who our finalists would be. And even then that person will be on a 90 day test. Probationary period, before we go forward with them on a full-time way, which means in our system, they get benefits and a few different, you know, perks of being a full-time regular team member.
[00:12:58] And so that’s the process we use. And I think that makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, you’re right. You, you certainly can test, you know, over time and the 90 day, filter is a great way to do that. Just, you know, it’s a 90 day probationary period and after 90 days, you’re, you’re in essence, a full team.
[00:13:12] And then you you’re treated differently. And it’s really just a, I think an expectation on the front end to say to people, what can they expect from us if things aren’t going well and what, and how will we behave where we be passive aggressive and not say anything.
[00:13:31] Well, we address the issues professionally and give them time to course correct. You know, what kinds of things are really important? Well, anyway, so this is more about hiring, I guess, at this point than it is shared vision, but it’s very interesting stuff to work through. And I guess
[00:13:43] Michael: that the instant thing then is, and we’re going to talk about how things, how we deal with things when they go wrong in a sec, but also.
[00:13:50] Before you hire and during the hiring process, presumably you want to have some kind of vision and you want to communicate that. So how do you go about creating the vision internally? And then how do you go about communicating that to candidates for roles?
[00:14:01] Jason: I think what I’ve found over time is it’s, you know, th the rep you, you put people in at the beginning as one of those stay in for a long time.
[00:14:09] So if you orient them to your business properly, With a clear vision that you’ve explained to them. It’s so much better than if you’ve muddled your way through, who you are and what you do at which I’ve done. And then, then, then later they come back and they’re like, wait, this is what kind of company I thought you did this.
[00:14:29] I’m like, oh, I do that too. But I kind of also do this and you know what I realized over time, if I’m unclear, In terms of sharing the origin story and the focus of our company or business or the work, then it creates this permanent kind of confusion in their mind. And so I think being very clear upfront about the way in which you explain your business to people is, is really important.
[00:14:53] And it shouldn’t be glossed over, you know, kind of just quickly, you know, breezed past it. We can do a disservice to our team members that are joining us. By being flippant about the, who we are and what we do. And we do that sometimes because we think, oh, they’re just a part-time person, or they’re just a short-term contractor, or they’re just a whatever that’s minimizing their importance to you in your mind.
[00:15:19] And that’s a really big mistake. If you need somebody to execute effectively to create a good outcome, you owe it to them to orient them well, to your, you know, to your operation.
[00:15:32] Michael: Yeah, some great thoughts there. I really like that. I think that, it’s a little bit, when people introduce themselves in a group, they can, can mumble their name really quickly.
[00:15:40] And actually, that’s the thing that I don’t know you just, because you’ve heard it a hundred thousand million times of your life. I don’t know it yet. And it’s kind of a similar thing, isn’t it? You know, sometimes we think, well, this is just standard to me, but it isn’t them. And as you say, yeah, I think one of the things I’ve noticed with really good freelancers, even if they’re coming in, for example, somebody came in to do some packaging work for a physical product.
[00:15:58] I was creating years ago, private labeling. And, she asked a ton of questions about the brand. Some of which I didn’t know the answers to, but it forced me to go away and think, and that was an example of somebody managing upwards. If you like doing that same thing the other way round and saying, I want to know about you and what you stand for now, when you’re doing branding work, you kind of that’s core of the work.
[00:16:17] But if for any type of work, I thought that was a very intelligent and. You know, optimistic. I was pleased to hear them asking that kind of question. And I think the other thing I’ve got a couple of kinds of horror stories. I remember the first ever interview I did a couple of years ago. My first full-time hire of the VA and or a team member I should say, in the Philippines.
[00:16:33] And I was all over the shop with how a. I explained the company and I was such a mess and that was really useful for me cause they turned out to be a pretty disastrous candidate anyway, and it was just a good use use to get it out of my system. And I thought, wow, I really do need to sit down and really mindfully write down, articulate, what do we do?
[00:16:53] Who do we serve? And to be very, very clear and it’s surprisingly easy to fall into that trap in my experience. Yeah. Totally. So we talked about then obviously finding the right people, doing your best to articulate your vision. You’ve talked about quite a rigorous hiring process that your team going through.
[00:17:08] And then we’ve got to deal with the reality. Sometimes things don’t work out. So you’ve, you’ve got those characteristics, ethical people doing what they said. They’re going to do mutual respect, professional behavior. So how do we handle it when it doesn’t quite go to plan them?
[00:17:22] Jason: Yeah, I think you’ve got a big decision in baseball terms.
[00:17:25] We’d call it the field. There’s. You’ve got to decide whether you’re going to address the issue directly, or you’re going to just graciously retract yourself and your business from the collaboration with that person. And those are hard decisions to make. And I would say it really depends on the situation and the, you know, whether you feel like there’s, maybe some valid.
[00:17:49] In, being forthright and direct about what the specific issue is. And again, my heart and mind would always be to say, if you haven’t actually addressed the issue, maybe they don’t know, maybe, maybe, you know, you’ve got a scenario in which you can, you can salvage the deal if you’re forthright about it, but if you’re not forthright and direct about it in a professional.
[00:18:12] For whatever reason, maybe you just realize, Hey, this is how somebody works. This is their deal. I didn’t realize it. Then, you know, you’ve got the choice of just saying, you know, thanks a lot, really appreciate your time. We’re going to end up going to end it at the end of the month or, you know, whatever it is.
[00:18:25] Whatever they appropriate deal duration is. And I, and I think there’s fairness there. And I would just caution people. You never want to, you never want to end things bad. And you, you want to think through how you’re doing it, especially if you have assumptions that you make or, you know, you just never know what somebody’s circumstances, especially if you make assumptions about something that you thought they were going to be doing, but they didn’t do it.
[00:18:48] But then. You know, then you find out, oh, they, they didn’t ever know that was the expectation, or I didn’t communicate clearly. Or, you know, all these, these scenarios can happen where it’s actually, you, you know, you’re the one, you’re the problem, not them. And in humility, you have to be willing to say to yourself, maybe I’m the problem here.
[00:19:06] Maybe I didn’t. Find the right person set the stage properly communicate effectively. And so I think humility a little bit is important there. And yeah,
[00:19:17] Michael: I agree with you. I it’s it’s w we both expressed before that we don’t particularly necessarily think of ourselves as amazing managers. I certainly.
[00:19:25] Started off with sort of managing people remotely. The, the feeling that I was quite good. And I, I certainly, I think got to the point where I recognized I was like a D minus or plus level manager, and I’m not working my way to being a C plus and better over time. And I think humility is the only way you can grow that.
[00:19:41] The other thing I’d like to say is in a certain kind of way, and I hope this isn’t too shocking a concept, but. If we’re entrepreneurs and therefore probably very responsible and very much in charge, two sides of the same coin. If we’ve got a bad hire, we were kind of responsible for that because we didn’t find that or otherwise manage things such that we got the right person.
[00:19:59] Right. And that, I think it’s good to take responsibility because my default setting is just. But quick, bright people like yourself, and it’s easy to say, and you’re much more patient and kind to me, I have to remind myself like Mike, very likely you said something once, or you didn’t say a tall clearly, and you expected them to mind read because that’s very probable or they acted in that way.
[00:20:20] And therefore I need to look at my communications and think, okay. So I probably. Knowing me. I probably told them that 10% of things they really, really needed to know that was very important to me. And now that’s not the 90 other things, which weren’t important, but I didn’t tell them which was important.
[00:20:35] So, you know, it’s, it’s one of those things, isn’t it. As you say, humility is a great word. You learn over time. Yeah. It’s, it’s a sad business. Sometimes when you realize how, how much work there is to do on yourself.
[00:20:47] Jason: Well, yes, and you, you also realize your own deficiencies and inabilities, but then you, you see them in other people too.
[00:20:54] And th this is reality and you just have to figure out, okay. You know, is there an ability to work with this person, even though they may be doing. You know, execute in the way I expected them to that kind of thing. Those are the hardest choices. In the olden days, when I used to be in human resources, I would always say to managers who wanted to fire somebody, the, the hardest person to fire was the wonderful, wonderful person socially.
[00:21:21] And in the team dynamic who was not executing on the duties of their job, those are the hardest pieces. To, to fire. Sometimes it’s easy to fire people who you feel like are a jerk. But you know, so that’s the tricky part is, you know, where did, where’s the relationship going? Are they a great person that’s not executing or are they a great person and they’re executing.
[00:21:42] Okay. But you know, I have to decide, what then do you do? And these are hard choices, so.
[00:21:48] Michael: Yeah, unless you said, you’ll not wrong to say you should always do graciously. You know, I mean, the world’s go quite small that we’re in. If you’re working in partnerships, particularly like in the e-commerce world, there’s only so many people to go around, so you definitely don’t want to get a reputation.
[00:22:01] But apart from that, it’s just a human thing to remember that it sucks to get fired or let go from a contract. And you just kind of remember that. Right. Okay.
[00:22:08] Wrapup: Thanks so much for listening to the e-commerce leader, hopefully enjoyed our discussion about shared visions in business. Really, really important stuff. It may sound a bit abstract, but I can promise you. And I think Jason and I both hopefully get enough flavor of reality that this actually really matters in real life and particularly the awkward piece of how do you decide when to let somebody go?
[00:22:28] So hopefully you found this helpful stuff. If you have, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice. If you can give us a rating at a five star. On apple podcasts, that’s really, really helpful. And don’t forget to join us on the calling app CA L L I N a, which is only for iPhones at the moment on Tuesdays live at 8:00 AM.
[00:22:48] Pacific 11:00 AM Eastern or 4:00 PM. GMT 5:00 PM central European time where we co have a discussion. Co-created if you like with our panel of Chris green, Kyle Haimer Jason Miles at myself, Michael VZ just remains for me to say thank you so much for listening to the econ.
[00:23:05] That was the e-commerce leader podcast with Michael VZ in London, England, and Jason Miles in Seattle, Washington. If you liked this content, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your podcast. App. Feel free resources, including PDFs, videos on topics like traffic products and sales channel. Just go to www dot the e-commerce leader.com.
[00:23:30] No hyphens, just as it sound. Thanks so much for listening.