#390 – SOPs and Processes for Amazon Sellers

What are SOPs and systems? Our guest Yoni defines it as the perfect harmony of people, process, and technology. In this episode, we speak with an expert in this area and discuss how you can apply this to your Amazon, Walmart, or E-commerce business to lessen your operating cost while scaling your business effectively. We also talked about Yoni’s story and how he got started in the Amazon selling space. As a bonus “peek behind the curtain,” Yoni also shared highlights of his presentation at the Sell and Scale Summit. Make sure to listen to the end and learn why it’s one of the event’s most appreciated and helpful topics!

In episode 390 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Yoni discuss:

• 01:30 – Yoni’s Background And How He Got Started On The E-commerce Space
• 04:30 – Talking About Yoni’s Career Path
• 07:25 – Becoming An Expert In Creating SOPs and Processes
• 09:50 – You Need To Start Building A Process From Day One
• 13:30 – The Highlights Of Yoni’s Presentation At S3
• 15:40 – The Top Mistakes E-commerce Sellers Make When Building Processes
• 20:20 – As An Amazon Seller, Where Do I Start?
• 28:15 – Yoni’s 30-Second Tips
• 31:15 – Delegate Accountability And Responsibility, Not Tasks
• 32:00 – How To Get In Touch With Yoni Kozminski

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we got somebody on the show who’s gonna talk about something we’ve never talked about before. How to get started with creating SOPs and systems for your e-commerce business? He’s helped over a hundred businesses crushed in this regard, and his presentation at the Sell and Scale Summit on this topic was one of the favorites of the whole event. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you wanna see how your listing or maybe competitors’ listing rates as to best practices for listing optimization? Or maybe you wanna compare a group of ASINs or Amazon products to see how they compare to each other. Maybe you wanna see within seconds the top keywords for a single listing or a group of listings. You can do that and more with the Helium 10 Tool Listing Analyzer. For more information, go to h10.me/listinganalyzer. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the serious seller’s podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We’ve got a serious seller here from another part of the world. Where exactly, are you right now?

Yoni:

So despite my accent being Australian, I’m sat in Israel, in Tel Aviv.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Excellent. Now, why don’t you just go ahead since this is the first time that you’ve ever been on the show, why don’t you just give us your 30-second elevator pitch or your introduction here so people can be introduced to you?

Yoni:

My name’s Yoni Kozminski, but I am Australian. I spent a good decade or so in creative advertising and digital marketing strategy, working with the likes of Sony MasterCard, and Mercedes-Benz Medtronic, back when there wasn’t even social media for brands. So I launched Mercedes-Benz Australian, New Zealand, Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube. I was the largest Facebook media buyer for a couple of years there actually for Mercedes-Benz. And it was pretty cool having Mercedes-Benz and Facebook fight over which tent you sat in for the grand preaches. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t, I definitely have aspects that I miss from you know, living that, that life. I moved to LA and there I was working with Sony and Snapchat and Medtronic and everything from web design to development, content production, TV commercials, live activations, I mean, the whole works. And before, you know, there was all the talk of off-Amazon traffic when it was just brand building and e-commerce before marketplaces really had that level of disruption.

Yoni:

That was sort of the time that I was growing up in the space. And about five years ago when I moved here, I met a couple of guys who had an Amazon store that had got stuck at about 2 million. I came in and in about 12 months was able to take that from 2 to 5 million. Thrasio ultimately acquired that business. And on the back of that, I realized we could help a lot of sellers go through the challenges that I’d personally face, but mostly from the agency side. So I got three companies, Bradley, that I’m the co-founder in. So MultiplyMii is executive search and HR in the Philippines for high-level talent. So never hear me talk about VAs, cuz that’s not what it is. I have a company called Escala, and when I was chatting at the Sell and Scale summit, which was incredible, might I add that was all through Escala.

Yoni:

So that’s our process improvement management consultancy, and that’s all about building high-level systems for serious e-commerce sellers. And the last business is called South Coal. And, we’ve just stood up a 50 million fund to invest in e-commerce businesses to grow them to exit over a two-year period with a couple of JV partners. So I got my hands in a few pies, but everything that I do is in servitude to helping e-commerce sellers really get the most out of their life. And, you know, I gotta say I locked in a little humble brag here, locked in that early bird or early days, H10 deal. So I’m still rolling that one up. Just to give you a bit of context into how valuable Helium 10 was in my personal journey, and you know, it’s kind of full circle for me sitting here on the podcast, being able to share a little bit, hopefully with people with the support that Helium 10 has given me from keyword research to listing creation and optimization. I mean, I could sit here and spend a whole episode talking about all the different functions and features and values that H 10 can add, but anyway, there’s my saving you with your feedback situation on the table. There,

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. What was your first main job? Did you immediately go into, you know, the marketing and advertising things, or what did you do after university?

Yoni:

Yeah, so, my first real job, like while I was still at university was head hunting. So I was in recruitment head hunting specifically, like again, before LinkedIn was what it was today. And there were ways you could game even LinkedIn back then. But about six months in I realized it just wasn’t for me. And I sat in this incubator and I ended up leaving an opportunity to take a $40,000 commission if I just stayed in for three months and back in 2008 or whenever it was. I mean, it’s still a lot of money today, but it was a lot more money back then, especially when you’re in your early twenties. I went and took on a job at this creative agency or this digital marketing agency, unpaid, I just, I was passionate about the space of digital and e-commerce.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now I’m wearing a Sell and Scale Summit t-shirt you referenced here and then, unfortunately, I didn’t get to see your presentation, nor did I even see your slides, almost all the speakers, I was able to at least see the slides beforehand or after that I missed. But I couldn’t find yours anywhere. However, for many people, your presentation was one of the favorites of the conference for them. And so I was like, okay, you know what? I wanna find out a little bit about what you talked about. I believe it was kind of like setting up SOPs if I’m not mistaken and systems, and actually it’s something that is Amazon or e-commerce or Walmart seller sometimes it’s not the top of mind of people.

Bradley Sutton:

However, I found that the higher level you go as far as the seller, it’s one of the more common questions. It’s like my title is not just podcast host at Helium 10, it’s director of training, and because of that, I have to like decide like what, you know, some of our speakers that we have for our training systems and we have the Freedom Ticket course, and so I’m always constantly talking to sellers and saying like, What do you guys need? Where’s a pain point that I can, maybe I can’t help you personally, if it’s Helium 10, I can definitely help you with that. But maybe if I can’t help you with it I need to go find somebody, maybe to bring in somebody for training or for presentation.

Bradley Sutton:

And one of the common ones I’ve seen in the last couple of years is definitely like, man, our SOP suck and, and things like that. So how did you like to start that part? You know, I know you do, you know, a lot of things, but how did you become kind of an expert in that? Like, was there a need? Like were people asking you for this as well? Or was this just something that you’re like, “Hey, I just know that this is an issue out there that needs to be that people need help with?”

Yoni:

Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, I’d spent a long time working for and growing agencies, and I always had the vantage point where I was in a small business. So I was the 15th employee. We grew to about 30, I was the 20th employee. We grew to about 40 when I was living in Los Angeles. And what I realized was, while it was absolutely painstaking working with, let’s say Medtronic where when we would produce content for them, we’d have to have two months of approvals given because of how arduous it was to get through all these medical boards and regulations. And so I saw the need and I saw all the mistakes and the evolutions of growing up in agency land. And when you’d think about the DNA of an e-commerce business, I mean, it’s all the same functions. It’s creative, it’s content production, it’s listing optimization, it’s every aspect, every person that you’re gonna deal with from video, to copy, to image creation, you’re dealing with all the same people essentially.

Yoni:

So I had that experience and about six months into launching MultiplyMii, I actually interviewed this woman her name’s Josephine Ping, and she was a management consultant, had come from Ernst & Young, and just really wanted to work at a startup. And I was like, Listen, she applied to be a project manager inside of our marketing team. And I said, “It would be the biggest fallacy to have you just focused in on project management inside of a marketing team, let’s see what you can do.” So she delivered the first internal project of systemizing our business based on Ernst & Young’s EY methodology. And I quickly realized that this was revolutionary for us, even though both my co-founder and I are very systems orientated. We’d never been at the management consulting level, especially not the likes of EY. So what ended up happening is on the back of that, we pulled a ready-built team out of EY, and we really focused our attention on the areas we knew best, and that’s how to apply this to e-commerce. And so that was where Escala was born. And we’re a little over two years old right now, and we have close to 40 management consultants full time on staff.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know, obviously different size companies as different needs for this kind of thing. But at what point should I as an entrepreneur, as an Amazon seller, as a Walmart seller, start thinking like, “Hey, I better set some SOPs and some systems in place.” Like is this something from day one, even if I’m a one-man or one-woman show,, is there at least some level of organization that I should be thinking of from the day that I start my Amazon seller central account? Or is this something that you just become exponentially more important only when I make my first hire? Talk to me about, you know, we have listeners of all levels, so who should be listening right now?

Yoni:

Yeah, so I’d say it applies, to everyone, but on the caveat that it’s at different levels and you are sort of spot on in your line of questioning here. So my advice always wouldn’t be to build the process from day one. Just start writing and documenting all your processes and build them. How do we do in your high-level process and your sub-processes and the subgroups and going through all the way to work instructions? Because in reality, we’re all trying to figure it out when we’re starting to formulate our business ideas, whatever, whatever it turns into, right? It might be just launching one product, maybe rethink your choices here. But ultimately, if you’re just launching your first product, and I would say maybe a better way of looking at it is what does it actually solve?

Yoni:

So what do SOP standard operating procedures solve for? So if you’re just starting out, you know, if you were to walk away from the business and there was no information that existed on how to operate it and you wanted to go on holiday, for example, having Standard Operating Procedures in place makes sense. Now, as you scale your business, You know, the question I would ask any listener to this podcast at any level, or especially once they have, you know, 3, 5, 15, 30 SKUs in market is what is stopping you from giving the same level of attention to your top hero or top three hero projects that you would be giving to the remaining 27. If you had a set of 30 what would that unlock for you? Or you as the visionary in the business, you as the one who came up with the brand, with the products and their selling, How valuable is your time in the business to be thinking about things like product development or getting a trade pat or something that’s really gonna add value or finding that next manufacturer that’s gonna reduce the time or the cost attached to it, or what’s stopping you from accelerating your product development?

Yoni:

Why can’t you bring 15 products to market a year and not three, you know, what are all the time constraints, resource constraints? You know, are you the founder or as the key person, are you making all the decisions? Are you the bottleneck really stopping you from sending yourself free? So I think like the logic or where you start to think when should I implement standard operating procedures really comes to have I figured out where my business is and what I need to deliver, and can I delegate? Can I have someone else do something that’s about 80% of what I can, and therefore I should delegate? And that’s when you should start to really think about bringing SOPs into the fold.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Let’s keep going. We don’t have time to just word for word go over your entire presentation, but what are some of the tips and tricks that you were giving people that wowed them so much that they all told me that they loved your presentation so much? So let’s dive into the highlights, sir, from it.

Yoni:

The way we at Escala look at systems or SOPs, it’s about building systems, not standard operating procedures, they’re a component. So systems are the perfect harmony between people, processes, and technology coming together to actually deliver on everything that needs to happen inside of the business. So a lot of Amazon sellers will focus on the technology, they’ll say, “Well click here to download helium ten’s keyword search term report.” And off they go, they think that’s the SOP and while Helium 10 is a great platform, that is not a full circle delivery, if I change just a couple of elements. So if I simply stated every Monday the data analyst downloads the search term report from Helium 10, then what I’ve done there is I’ve connected the time, so the process, the person, the analyst, and the piece of technology in Helium 10.

Yoni:

And so all of a sudden, and I’m giving you the most simplistic of ways, but I can’t really go any further without helping people understand that it’s when you start to build those levels of constraints into your system that enable it to be effectively foolproof. And that’s what you want to achieve. You know, when you’re, when you’re scaling your business, when you’re building it, when you’re, you’re bringing on new people, when you’re onboarding it, when you’re selling it, you want the dumbest guy in the room to be able to understand what they need to do, because that’s also how you’re gonna be able to reduce your operating costs and scale your business if you can really simplify what needs to be done, rather than paying six figures for every employee that is gonna absolutely burn through anything that you’re trying to do.

Yoni:

So I can’t go through my presentation and sort of share, it would be fast for me to try and explain our five layers of systemization and how we actually build our processes. But I’m gonna give you some of the common mistakes that people make. So we have a five-layer process. I’m actually happy to share it with you. And if there’s like show notes or anything like that, you can sort of giving it to people for the visual so they can understand a little bit. But in our five layers, the last two layers, so we go from core processes to process groups, to sub-processes to activities, and then working instructions. And that’s levels one through five. Now, where people typically make mistakes is they’ll jump in, and let’s continue with the Helium 10 example.

Yoni:

So let’s say that they would open up a Word doc and they’d simply write, you know, jump into Cerebro, dump a whole bunch of keywords in there, see what it turns out, and off we go. And that’s how most people start it. They do what we call a bottom-up approach. Whereas where you want to be is you wanna be taking a top-down approach. So you wanna be understanding operationally and organizationally what are the key drivers in the business at a high level, and then stepping down who’s involved because, and I’ll give you the example of listing creation, right? This might to the untrained ear seem like the most simple thing that you can do on Amazon, just create a listing, and off we go. But when you start to think about all the factors that are involved, right?

Yoni:

You have creative, and you have listing keyword research and optimization, which are gonna be two different people in most cases. You’ve got inventory and demand planning to make sure that things actually land inside Amazon at the right time. You’ve gotta have potentially a whole bunch of other team members that touch on it from, you know, like I said, copywriting from the design elements. So what you are doing effectively is you’re siloing the specific tool inside of Helium 10, were really what you need to be doing is connecting all the dots between all the individuals that need to get involved so they understand where they come into play. And so that’s why, and again, it’s a little harder just with an audio podcast, but our level three, which is what we call subprocesses, that’s where you actually have each of the individuals and what each of the steps that they’re taking that they do.

Yoni:

And so you actually start to see visually, right, I’m gonna need a designer, I’m gonna need a keyword researcher, depending on how big you are, whether you’re doing it all yourself, I’m gonna need someone to optimize my listing, I’m gonna need someone to buy my PPC as I start to get larger. And so it, it all comes down to taking that top-down approach and first understanding, well, what’s actually happening in the business and how does that actually come together? Another key area or key issue that people have is that there’s no defined storage method. So how we like to build things and how I would really recommend, I mean, we’re huge advocates of ClickUp as a project management software. It’s really affordable, and it lets you have–, we build a company wiki. So inside of it is all the, all the working instructions and activities on how to do everything.

Yoni:

But you can also build all of the workflows. But what’s most important, and if you see, if you guys see this presentation, I’m happy to give anyone who’s listening to the presentation as well if that, you know, if you guys are sharing it outside of sell and scale, but ultimately having the defined storage method. So we have a numbering and naming convention for every aspect. So, I’ll try and give you guys some tangible examples. So let’s say you have 50 skews of products, and you know, I’m working on one, and Bradley’s working on another, and there are five other people that are working on the different products because that’s how we’ve decided to throw our company together. Now it becomes very, very difficult to transition from my SKU, to Bradley’s SKU to anyone else’s SKU, unless every single one of the folders is structured in a way where it’s specs and creative and, you know, building that storage method from a filing perspective also transitions and is effective inside of a standard operating procedure and systems building component.

Yoni:

So a lot of people just sort of throw it all together and then come back and they can’t find the files. And it would be–, and I’m guilty of it too. I’m not sitting here being holier than now. Like if I was honest with myself, especially historically on the number of hours that I’ve wasted in trying to find files or redoing loom videos or whatever it looks like, I mean, it’s embarrassing. So, that’s just a couple of the key examples. I can keep rolling if you want.

Bradley Sutton:

Keep rolling. But, but real, real quick, before you keep rolling, give me step one, like, what’s the, “Hey, I’m a six-figure seller. I’m a seven-figure seller. I’ve never had systems in place, I’ve never even thought about this kind of thing. Where do I start?” Is it getting one of this software, I think at Helium 10, maybe the, I’m not familiar with the one that you mentioned, but the counterpart, we use something called Monday for our project management and things like that. So like, is it getting software like that, or is it the documentation like, “Hey, no, I just need to start documenting systems and SOPs.” What’s step one? And then continue on, please. With what you were talking about?

Yoni:

Yeah, So, so ClickUp is exactly like Monday. It’s just probably, probably a quarter of the price and has one feature that we really love. And that’s the internal Wiki. Step one would obviously be getting the Escala Academy course, cuz we’ll teach you how we build our process. But step two would really be, realistically, I’m having a laugh here. We do have a course that came out recently that helps you build all this stuff, but ultimately it’s understanding at a high level. And we have some resources on our website even that’ll help you. It’s at a high-level understanding what are the key drivers inside of your business at a high level. And I’ll give you an example. So for a typical Amazon business, your business will break out into four or five key core processes.

Yoni:

So you’re gonna have your product research and development function. You’re gonna have your customer support, you’ll likely have a supply chain, and then you’ll have product launch and brand management. We actually like to split those two functions, and then that’s about it really. So you’d start to get a handle of what are the core drivers, and then inside of those core drivers, and I’m just gonna read off a few here, but for us inside of product research and development, it’s product research and validation. So getting clarity on what products you’re bringing to market product development and sourcing. So taking to that next step, package design, and then product sign up. So those would be sort of the four steps inside of it. So I’d say taking that top-down approach, what you really need to do, and what we would do in Escala is we interview shadow and review everything that’s happening operationally.

Yoni:

So if you wanted to get clarity on your business, and again, like, you know, Helium tends a massive company today. I’m sure if I went and I asked you, Bradley, you know, even about just how you produce your podcast, right? If I asked you and I asked five other people on the team, I guarantee you I’m gonna get probably very close, but five different vantage points of what it actually looks like to produce it. So I’d say if I’m gonna self-implement this and I didn’t have all the background, I would be understanding and interviewing and starting to get clarity on what’s everyone actually doing in the business operationally. And you don’t need to go, like if you’re a large company, if you’re an eight-figure seller, nine-figure seller, at that point, you’re not gonna interview every single person in the business. You’re gonna interview sort of the key stakeholders at sort of middle management level probably will be the lowest. But if you’re a small business, interview them, understand what’s happening in your business, and then you’re gonna start to document out what are the key drivers, and then what are the actual sub-processes. So what is each individual actually doing, and what’s the relationship between each of those in order to deliver the desired outcome?

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, interesting. Very interesting. Now I think the structure of how you start setting up your team is important to get in the beginning. Now, I don’t wanna say that, hey, if you’ve already got 20 employees, you’re screwed, You know, But let’s say in a perfect world I’m just around at that level where I need to start hiring. Now, you touched on this a little bit, but I’m assuming that there’s like maybe some characteristics of successful companies with the way they set up their team that, or maybe some common characteristics that you’ve seen where you look at this company’s structure and organization, you’re like, wow, this is a well-oiled machine, the operations that they have. What are some char common characteristics that companies have that are really working well with their organization? What are some characteristics that you can maybe mention?

Yoni:

Yeah, great. Fantastic question. I wish more people would ask me that. So I would say when I’m looking–,

Bradley Sutton:

That’s what a podcast host likes to hear. There you go.

Yoni:

You’re slinging straight fire here, and I am eating it up and I hope the audience is too, but I think when I look at the characteristics that work best for most businesses operationally, there are a few fundamentals that they get. I’d say at any level, you know, obviously once you’re bigger than just you as an individual, even when you’re at two people, and that might even be just having one 10-hour-a-week assistant, whatever it looks like, I think the most important thing is to have a business operating system. So there are loads of books on all of this. I’m a huge believer in traction. EOS, The Entrepreneurial Operating System, if you guys haven’t read that, cannot recommend it enough. There are books like Scale Up, and Two Y, Tree X. There’s Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited.

Yoni:

There are loads of books that cover these topics. And I think you guys are also figuring out, I’m a bit of a bookworm for this stuff, but having an effective business operating system that helps build internal communication, I would say is the number one fundamental, because nothing happens more quickly than when you and your co-founder have your heads down and you’re building and one’s on the product, one’s on the marketplace, one’s focused on selling, one’s, producing whatever the DNA of your business looks like, and you lose touch and you lose focus and you lose clarity. So having regular cadences of meetings that cover critical business topics is one. And I’d say as you start to scale, and when you think about the org strategy and structure that you’re building is, it’s not just about, and again, everything I’m saying, guys, by the way, I’ve been guilty of making these mistakes.

Yoni:

I’m the furthest thing from perfect. And it’s all about progress, not perfection. But specifically, even to the interviewing component, we leverage a methodology called the A method for hiring. And one of the big things that we like to do is define the role that’s needed by the business as it’s attached to the alignment of the success of the company or the function, and not just finding, your mates, wives, daughters, dogs, best friends, mom, right? You really have to go in there with clear intent on how is this gonna serve the company. And so building a clear job description, building a mission, what does success look like? The outcomes. So what does this individual need to deliver? And then what are the attributes this person needs to have? And building a scorecard and interviewing them against a series of questions that fit with your business alignment.

Yoni:

I mean, that’s how, I’d say, that’s when you’re starting to get really serious with your business. And when you’re really starting to put mechanisms in effect to see real success. Because as you’re growing, you know, you wanna attract players, you wanna have the best people, and the best people understand what a real process looks like. So I’d say having a business operating process in place, and then also making sure that you are feeding the business on its needs, not just people that you would like to have around. It’s great when those things align. And I’m very fortunate I get to work with my co-founder who’s incredible and lippy and I have an amazing team around me, and I’m very lucky, to be in that environment. But I’d say as you start to think that way, it becomes a real paradigm shift in what you’re able to achieve.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent, excellent info. Now in the last couple minutes, actually towards the end of each podcast episode, I do something called the TST 30-second tip where we just go over some like hard-hitting strategies that you can say within 30 seconds or one minute. But I usually just let the guests just pick whatever the topic is, but I just wanna, you know, kind of stick to this topic. When we have you back in a year or so we’ll just shift the focus completely and not talk about SOPs or systems at all. But can we get like maybe two quick-hitting strategies for somebody out there like obviously maybe in a perfect world? And I’ll definitely allow people to reach out to you. We’ll give them your contact info. You know, in a perfect world, it’s like, Hey, let’s go ahead and reach out to Escala and have you guys do everything for us. But maybe I’m not ready for that yet. What are a couple of highly, highly actionable easy wins to at least get on the right path to having better systems in place? If I’m an e-commerce entrepreneur out there,

Yoni:

The very first starting point I would suggest is clarity. Getting clarity on where your business sits right now. So understanding what’s actually happening operationally and just starting to document it. So I know I was talking a lot about the bottom-up versus top-down and all these aspects where people get things wrong, but having some level of documentation and some understanding and some level of video is better than nothing. And so I’d also sort of piggyback onto the fact that it’s about progress, not perfection, right? When we go and we do a project inside of Escala, a lot of people will say, “Don’t worry about our current state, just build the future state. Just build how we should be operating.” And our response is always the same, is that we need to understand the current state so that we can build you incrementally to the next level.

Yoni:

Because going from level one to level five will absolutely break the business. And so that really translates to anyone is that don’t worry about having Escala level SOPs, if you want to self-implement, I was serious, we do actually have a course that we released at Sell and Scale that’s still heavily discounted, but, but that’s still you applying it yourself. And so I’d say ultimately making sure that you understand what’s happening in your business and just starting to document it is gonna set you up for success when you get to that point where you’re starting to take things more seriously, or the business is growing to a level where you really need to start onboarding a whole lot more people.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Excellent. Love it. Well, maybe one more quick hitter for us.

Yoni:

One more quick hitter, I would say one of the things that I sort of would leave you guys on is your goal is always to delegate accountability and responsibility, not tasks. And so, if anyone’s ever heard me talk before, I have a staffing company called MultiplyMii, which is out of the field base.

Bradley Sutton:

You know what I love that’s like a perfect quote there. Can you repeat that? I don’t know if that’s your catchphrase, but if not, it should be your catchphrase. Repeat that for the masses out there again.

Yoni:

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s delegate accountability, not tasks. So you’re always gonna be the bottleneck when you’re picking up a VA and you have to tell them verbatim, step by step what they’re delivering on you don’t really free yourself up. And that’s sort of the biggest misconception is when you delegate accountability when you give someone ownership and you say, “Your point is to succeed in this role, and a really simple example might look like, bring one new product to market this quarter.” Really, really simple. Don’t say, “Follow these 47 steps.” And at the end of it, come and I’ll check it off. And once they’ve done that, well, you have to be the origin story or the origination piece of what they need to do next. You’re never really gonna scale your business that way. So delegate accountabilities and responsibilities, not tasks.

Bradley Sutton:

Love that. Love that. Now, if people want to get more information from you or perhaps get some help on this topic how can they find you on the interwebs out there?

Yoni:

So, I’m most active on LinkedIn Yoni Kozminski, you can find me there. I’m @yonkoz on Instagram. It goes in and out. But yeah, I mean, if you’ve come all the way here, feel free to email me at yoni@weareescla or any of the other websites and businesses in that I’m involved. It’s just Yoni@.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Alright, well, I hope that I don’t have to wait until the next Sell and Scale Summit to see you. But if I’m at a conference where you’re speaking, I promise next time not to miss yours, so I can get all this good stuff in person.

Yoni:

Locked in, mate.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, we’ll see you.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
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• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.