Automate, Delegate, Eliminate

In this episode, I am interviewing Andy Humphrey about his business, and how he came to decide whether to automate, delegate, or eliminate. 

Andy is the owner and founder of SprinklerSupplyStore.com, as well as a sales consultant for Baseline Systems, Inc. 

Give us some background about yourself and what your business is (01:50)

• Andy says he would describe his business as a passion mashup. His professional background started in the wholesale lawn and landscape industry. 
• He was trained to be a landscape architect and got involved in sales, design, and estimating for a landscape contractor in the Mid Atlantic. 
• He spent time in distribution, where he worked directly for manufacturers in regional sales management positions.
• During the course of his career, he has tried to master two things; one being the irrigation and wholesale lawn and landscape industry, and the second is eCommerce. Combining these two business models, he created SprinklerSupplyStore.com. 
• Essentially, what he is doing is building a B2C with B2B integration into the wholesale distribution model. 

In terms of data automation, we ask three questions; where is the data now? Where does it need to go? And what happens to it in between? (09:08)

• Andy says they use Shopify to take orders, but they used Volusion in the beginning. 
• Once an order is received, it goes to a branch that is willing to ship it. They tapped into resources that generally don’t ship directly to the consumer, so they required services from their resources that weren’t necessarily typical for them. 
• He had to create an email containing details of the parts, as well as the shipping address. The receiver at the branch then entered the details into their ERP system, printed it, entered it as an order, and only then could he print the pick ticket in order to get the items and put it in the box before shipping it out. 
• This resulted in a lot of manual work and processes. 

You said you were using Volusion, what did the automation process entail? (11:50)

• Andy says a number of third party pieces of software were used for the automation process. The first part is inventory; they need to be able to indicate the availability of a product online, and if it is indicated as available, it has to be available.
• With that in mind, he would receive a CSV file with a list of parts and quantities, and they would get that on an interval, and have it imported into the Volusion store. They would then automate and send orders again. 
• Roughly 10 years ago, they would send the wholesaler the orders with two digital files; one was the header of the orders, and one was the line items. They noticed a flaw with part number discrepancies. If a number was changed and they didn’t pick it up immediately, the order would be thrown out. Today, they use skew ID, so no matter how many times they change a part number, the skew ID won’t change. 
• Once they’ve sent the order, the wholesaler would use their shipping software to ship it out in their DPR system. However, numerous failures occurred during every syncing process because of how many times the data had to be exchanged.
• Finally, they deployed ShipStation. By using the shipping software, orders didn’t have to be synced backward because the software was connected to their eCommerce store. Once shipped, all the needed information would sync back to their system. 

Did you try to delegate this process, or did you go straight to automation? (17:28)

• Andy says he did try to delegate; at the time, they were only two people doing this by hand. Delegation and automation can have the same outcome. 
• By this, he means that whether he has a computer doing all the work, or another person doing all the work, the point is that he won’t be doing it himself. 
• Having this free time means you can go sit on a beach, but more importantly, it means you can do something valuable with your time.
• If it costs him $25 to perform a task, but he can outsource that task for $25, it means that he can do something else worth $50 an hour, thus increasing performance and value.

 How do you go about deciding when it’s time to eliminate within the company? (25:58)

• Andy says he thinks the one thing that cannot be replaced or replicated is phone communication. Clients need to be able to call the company, which builds a good customer relationship. 
• The negative side of allowing customer call-ins was that their phones were ringing non-stop. Determined not to eliminate phone calls completely, they shortened the hours in which customers can phone, thus eliminating unnecessary hours. 
• Freeing up hours means there is more time for projects and customer care emails. 
• He says that’s a good piece of advice he can give business owners; don’t eliminate call-ins completely, but set boundaries. You will still have the advantage of building relationships via phone calls, but you won’t waste unnecessary time. 

Connect with Andy on LinkedIn

 

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In today’s episode, I have special guest Reese Hammerstrom talking to me about their new venture in distributing masks. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a shortage of masks on the market, and Nomad has decided to provide these masks to the public. 

However, these services are not available to the whole world, but rather professions and organizations where they are really needed. 

Reese is an eCommerce manager at Nomad goods and enjoys partaking in human and technological integration. He enjoys solving problems and creating new systems. 

Seeing that Nomad has contacts in China, did you hear about the pandemic a bit sooner than everyone else? And what shifts did you have to make? (02:26)

• Reese explains that there is a Chinese new year, which is similar to a Christmas holiday. All the factories shut down for about a week. Towards the end of their new year, COVID-19 became a real problem. 
• This obviously affected the product supply, and Reese says they weren’t too positive about the effects it was going to have on the world. 
• One of their suppliers approached them for help; they converted a production room into a clean room and purchased equipment to manufacture masks at a very high volume, and they needed help distributing these products to people that needed it the most. 
• Nomad has a Hong Kong-based warehouse, so they were able to bring products from China and offer affordable shipping into the US. Their main focus was on getting the product to medical facilities, hospitals, and people working directly with COVID patients. 
• They created a system whereby they could filter and vet people to determine whether they are eligible to receive these products. They weren’t going to open it up to the whole world. So the first challenge was creating a workflow to direct people to a place where they could fill out the information in order to be filtered. 

Tell us about the form software you ended up using to vet and filter people? (07:16)

• Reese says they are using Airtable, and the first option was to keep it simple with a form that requires just the necessary information like a name, email address and a text to describe your scenario. 
• They decided on Airtable from the beginning because of its ability to process different types of data, so that people can upload documents like a hospital badge for verification.
• People can select the quantity they need from 50 to 500, and Airtable allowed them to add new options into the form as they were receiving information. So if they saw that 80% of people ordered the maximum quantity, they could increase the maximum to 1000+.
• The Airtable form allows them to be very flexible in the required content for the application, and it feeds all the information to Airtable’s back end system, which is a magnificent piece of software. 
• Airtable also makes it relatively easy to connect to other systems and becoming the central database for the project. 

When you first created it, did it take long to decide what fields should go in this form? (08:39)

• The form was developed in conjunction with the website. In the process, the form became too big, and they scaled it down to only the basic information they needed from people. 
• They needed a name and contact details, and a section people could fill out about their unique situation. And then they need to wait for people to communicate; can they afford it, do they see the price in the form, and do they understand the shipping costs? 
• They added a section where people could indicate that they couldn’t afford it, and they needed a donation. Reese says they were surprised to find that not many people asked for donations. Those who needed a donation got fed into the donation workflow.
• They collect donations from the community to ship the masks to people who need it. 

In terms of volume, how have things ramped up from the very first shipment to where you are now? (10:35)

• When they decided to do this, they went live to the public six days later, and they launched the first shipment of 50 000 masks inbound to their Hong Kong warehouse. 
• Reese says they took a very manual approach the first time and created all the shipments in FedEx.com because they needed tight control over the customs documentation for the shipment. 
• The next shipment that came in was 60 000 units, and there is currently a shipment of 300 000 units inbound to Hong Kong. 
• They have already collected orders for more than 170 000 units, and there is a shipment coming into the US to fulfill large orders for local hospitals. They currently ordered around 4 million units. 

 How did you decide when it was time to automate, and when it was time to delegate? (20:49)

• Reese says they knew there was going to be manual work involved, so they were prepared for it. 
• In this case, the required automation was very technical and challenging, and it was beyond his scope. 
• He explains that they had a Shopify flow leading into a Google sheet, then Zapier takes the sheet and feeds all the information like orders and donations into Airtable. These are all things he has done before, so duplicating the automation for this project was easy. 
• However, interacting with the draft order API endpoint within Shopify was new to him, and it’s a lot more technical in terms of creating the order. 

Connect with Reese on LinkedIn

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In today’s episode, I am interviewing Nathan Hirsch about remote work; the challenges faced when working remotely, managing a remote team, and the tools used to do so. 

Nathan is the co-founder of FreeeUp - a marketplace that connects business owners with the very best virtual assistants. 

Nathan is also an entrepreneur, currently working on Outsourceschool.com, which is a course that will help business owners and entrepreneurs interview, hire, and train virtual assistants. 

What would you say is the biggest challenge most companies are facing because they’ve had to go remote? 04:29

• Nathan says he looks at it in two parts; boundaries and communication. 
• It’s important to realize that there are boundaries when working from home. It’s not acceptable to contact an employee or employer late at night or over weekends about something that could have waited until morning or Monday. 
• The second point is communication; you need to sit down with your team and establish what channels of communication will be used, and how you will use them. 
• He explains their way of communication; they use emails during business hours, and he expects a response within those hours. But if something is urgent, emails won't be effective. They use Slack as the day to day communication channel. 
• They use slack for updates during the day, meetings, and basic communication. They use Whatsapp and Viber for emergencies; when you really need help and there is no other way of reaching the other person. 

What expectations have you set for employees, for them to be completely present? (11:25)

• Nathan says for him, a quiet working environment is important. 
• It comes down to being productive; he doesn’t care whether you’re sitting at a desk or on your couch, he just doesn’t want his employees to be distracted, especially during meetings and phone calls. 
• There are companies that will come and check on your workspace at home, and it is their right to do so. Some companies are more serious than others, probably depending on where they are on the spectrum; whether they’re a corporate or a startup company. 
• One thing they’ve noticed from virtual assistants, especially in the Philippines, is that you can’t take care of 4 children and still be productive. 
• If you are working from home, you need someone to handle distractions, whether it be children or any other responsibilities, and you need to make that clear from the beginning. 

As an extrovert, how do you handle being alone all day? 16:11

• Nathan says he actually considers himself an introvert, only because he doesn’t necessarily gain energy from big crowds. He usually needs to rest and recoup after interacting with a lot of people. 
• His dogs made the transition very easy for him. Also, he has a business partner he enjoys working with, even though they both work remotely. He says his fiance is also home with him. 
• However, when he was home alone, he was very strict on structure and routine; he worked from 7 AM to 9 AM, then went to the gym for an hour, came back and worked on podcasts or webinars. By the time that’s done he can wrap up his day, maybe finish off a project or have a meeting with his team. 
• Working from home is not for everyone, but if you are up for the challenge you need to set a routine to keep your sanity. 

If someone was concerned about having important conversations, like having to fire a person, while not being in the same room as the other person, what would you tell them? (21:28)

• Nathan says one of the things they teach in their course, is the correct way of letting an employee go. keep in mind that he is only referring to VA’s; if he were to break up a personal relationship he would take a whole different approach. 
• When there is a situation like this with VA’s in the Philippines, he simply sends them a message. Before doing so, he gets into the right mentality; being upfront and professional, but still nice. 
• He tells himself that regardless of the direction the conversation will go in, he sticks to his point. He handles the situation professionally but does so over Viber or Whatsapp as he removes this employee from the other channels. 
• His recommendation would be to stick to the facts; be clear and direct, and let them know that the decision is final. Be a professional person and move on.

What tools have you used? What systems and boundaries do you have in place for working with a remote team? (26:14)

• Nathan says they keep it very basic with Google docs and DropBox, and they are currently using Vimeo to film a course. 
• You can give certain people access to view files while giving another person access to edit it. 
• He is big on building trust and relationships, so he has given people access to credit cards and banking details. According to him, there is not much you can do with those details anyway; if you steal his credit card, he can file a charge, get the card, and the money-back and fire that person. 
• The average virtual assistant is much more interested in building a relationship with you than they are with stealing or jeopardizing your information. 
• He adds that you should definitely make use of something like LastPass, but in time you will have to build trust and grant access within reason. 

Connect with Nathan on LinkedIn

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In today’s episode, I have Rolando Rosas as my guest, discussing the process of automation and outsourcing, and how Global Teck Worldwide has implemented the processes to improve efficiency. 

Rolando is the co-founder of Global Teck Worldwide, a company that is now among the top 1% of sellers on Amazon. They also specialize in assisting entrepreneurs in becoming more successful in their sales. 

What we’re discussing today, is a process that has taken you a lot of time and effort. Why don’t you introduce us to that process? (01:09)

• Rolando explains that the process involved in getting orders from customers online, and then deliver the order to the customer.
• The next step is to move the products from one location to another. 
• The products are meant to go to Amazon’s FBA warehouse. This process requires a lot of human intervention; people are involved in every step of the process. 
• He says it’s been quite a difficult journey of getting these processes to take place on autopilot; finding the right systems and software for the job. 

Let's use a headset as an example; if I want to get one headset to FBA, what would that process be, and what would the advantages be of having that headset on FBA as a seller? (02:50)

• Rolando starts by explaining that the biggest advantage of having a prime badge on Amazon, is that it gives you access to 150 million users.
• Those users include consumers, businesses, and government users, which wasn’t the case a few years ago. 
• Additionally, if you have a prime badge, Amazon has implemented programs directed at FBA items, where they can put that headset into your customer's car or garage, for example. There are a lot more advantages to being a prime user than there used to be a few years back. 
• Amazon offers a prime user numerous abilities today that won’t be possible to accomplish on your own if you have your website. 
• Your sales can increase by anything from 3 to 8 times, just by having the prime badge. 

Where is the data or information of the product you’re trying to sell, and where does it need to go? (05:34)

• Rolando says the information is based on Amazon’s side, and they use a software platform to extract information from Amazon. 
• As far as the extraction goes, once the data has been received, it has to be directed; whether it be to orders, inventory, or several other categories. 
• This is where the software comes in; it needs to be able to communicate with Amazon and orchestrate the data. Using the software to analyze data is how you act on that data. 
• The process of getting information to Amazon, whether about the customer or products directed to Amazon, is an important part of getting started. If you don’t have a system in place, and a team to properly manage that system, you are setting yourself up for failure. 
• The inability to manage the flow of data will lead to bad reviews and accounts being suspended. 

After realizing that the number of people was becoming unmanageable, how did you know it was time to delegate, and where did you find the individuals to delegate? (12:32)

• Rolando explains that Global Teck values efficiency; people get tired, and to keep up efficiency, they needed a computer or a system that could do the work around the clock. 
• This enabled them to rearrange their staff to provide more efficiency.
• They started by outsourcing their employees; they approached a company that has several freelancers working for them, and the company took care of screening and placing individuals in suited roles. 
• He says this organization was instrumental in ensuring that the correct people are placed with the company. 
• For any sized business, having outsourced members focused only on their task at hand will be a huge advantage to the company and the growth thereof. 

Regardless of the size of your venture as an entrepreneur, how do you decide how much your time is worth? (16:59)

• Rolando says the first thing to consider, is how much you would be able to generate if you were able to clone yourself. 
• If you had another one of you, what impact would that have on your business, and how would it save time or money?
• The impact could be on any part of the business; sales, orders, accounting, and so forth. When they first started outsourcing, the first person they took on board was for accounting, because the finances and paperwork were overflowing as the business was growing. 
• Having another individual working in the part of the business you usually handle, will provide you with more free time. You can use this time to rest or grow your business. 

Connect with Rolando on LinkedIn

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