Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:23 — 37.9MB)
Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Email | RSS
Building an Ecommerce Team to grow to 8 figures on Amazon
Intro: Fernando Campos of Marketplace Ops and Pixelfy – who supercharge Amazon sales for brands by managing their accounts. Fernando and Nick built a business by learning to build an ecommerce team. They currently have 40 team members in their 8 figure business
What’s the starting point with building an ecommerce team?
It is important in the early days to understand the process.
But frankly Fernando doesn’t really document things
He’s more people and team-oriented.
Focus on your strengths! If you’re not process-driven, you can hire someone who is!
In this case, you may start to build an ecommerce team earlier rather than automate processes with software
How did you start to build your ecommerce team?
About 7 months in. It was someone in the Philippines.
It was driven by the tasks that were taking up Nick’s time (Fernando’s business partner) Nick was handling customer support and Fernando was aware that wasn’t a great use of his time.
First principle of outsourcing for Amazon: Set a value on your time
There are things that only owners can do
- Financial planning
- Strategy
- Hiring
These are all high value tasks
For example, finding another product that would generate $500 profit a month is a very high value task.
Gradually Increase the value you set on your time as you build your ecommerce team
Fernando’s barrier was $50 an hour value
Because of valuing his time
Then pushed up to $100
Now it’s around $500 per hour
Specific tasks were possible to learn but would we do it as well and would it be fun. For example hiring a photographer!
What to outsource first for Amazon
There are a lot of repeatable tasks.
They have an assigned value and complexity.
Simple/lower value tasks:
- Customer support
- Admin tasks
More complex tasks would be:
- Product development
- Sourcing
How did you find the faith that you would produce than your ecommerce team cost?
They outsourced at $80K USD a month revenue, which was probably a bit late. The business was profitable at that point so could easily afford the cost.
It was clear Nick could use his time better by then.
How did you hire your 2nd team member?
They took a step back and asked themselves
“What are going to be the big levers for growth?”
The answers were:
- Product development
- Sourcing, logistics planning
So they were the next two hires in CA, USA
They helped standardise the process for product development.
Fernando enjoyed this but had to fit it into his time.
They would need operational support so they
Over the years, Fernando has got a bit lazier about figuring out processes!
Most tasks and responsibilities will recur. It’s better to bring someone on
Fernando is good at getting something off the ground not in a super structured way.
He then hands over to his team to structure and refine processes.
The hiring journey – how Fernando’s ecommerce team grew over time…
When to Hire specialists for your Amazon team
You start off by hiring for potential.
Now it’s much easier to bring someone in with the right background
Next phase
Brought in people below team in CA and they became managers.
This is where they really started to see improvement.
It elevated the roles of the people in CA to management and let them focus on strategy and process and how to scale to 10-20M
Early 2016 – hiring in the USA
Why hire in the USA for your outsrouced team?
The people in CA had some mutual friends and good backgrounds.
They didn’t really know if they could hire high level people in the PH.
Nowadays they are more confident in this.
They were more focussed on hiring admin tasks overseas.
More and more they started hiring more and more PH team members.
Financial struggle in 2017 – had to do layoffs
Mid 2017 Laid off part of team in USA (from 7 to 4 inc Fernando and business partner nick) and part PH.
There was a moment of epiphany (Agug 2017) maybe 8 peopleand they realised the people in PH with a lot of experience were way better than US. Then there was the decision to only hire overseas.
Moving from “Good enough” to “excellence”
They should think about them as if they were being paid $50K USD a year.
That really focussed on hiring A players
Headhunting top Filipino workers
They tried to grab people from big co’s in Ph
So someone who is commuting 4 hours a day in Manila
They place value on family so this is big
And also you offer them
- More resp
- Autonomy
- Startup culture
Team hyper-growth
Then they got up to 15 people
Then hired a part time recruiter and went up to 50-60 people within 12 months.
They put in managers and a proper org chart.
It was a lot of process.
There were people they didn’t need but financially it was sustainable.
They could have done a better job of automating.
Fernando Working 40 hours a week and doubling most years
What do you ascribe the business growth to?
A huge part of it was the team.
It’s just focussing on the right things. Fernando saw people focus on Shopify and they had a good product for Shopify eg consumable. And they can triple business in 12 months.
Others try to build Shopify with a low price point, non consumable product. They waste 8 months and come back to Amazon!
F knows some people who have scaled in supplements but they don’t really know their numbers. But their margins are so hire say 48-52% so they don’t focus on that. They just focus on finding super high margin products and ranking them on Amazon.
Planning your strategy is so important.
Advice around team to scale from 7 to 8 figures
Biggest tip in building a team for your business
Hire a right hand person as early as you can afford it.
As soon as you can afford someone, hire someone who was a manager or director or a VP in another company. Whether Amazon or not.
They can really speed up your development as a business.
Fernando has never run a company bigger than this. So he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. So this person has really helped them navigate as they’ve grown.
CEO coach – anything from 2-5K a year. Really helped.
Really good books on Scaling help too:
Traction by Gino Wickman (Amazon USA link). Amazon UK link here
Scaling up By Verne Harnish (Amazon USA link). Amazon UK link here
Get out of the day to day low value tasks
- Get an EA (Executive Assistant) as soon as possible
- Get meal plans delivered
- Minimise cooking or cleaning
- Automate using Zapier
How do people get in touch?
What marketplace ops do
Work with up and coming fast growing brands to grow on Amazon.
Turnkey solution
Strategy
Set up Manychat funnels
Optimize listings
For other interviews with Fernando by Michael:
Scaling to 8 figures in 5years on Amazon
Other interviews on eCommerce Team building with Michael:
Outsourcing Basics with Nathan Hirsch
How to outsource Amazon Tasks with Nathan Hirsch
Other internet resources on eCommerce Team Building
Building an eCommerce Team by IRP Commerce
What It Takes to Build an eCommerce Team From Scratch by ScaleFast
Watch my full interview with Fernando Campos
[video_page_section type=”youtube” position=”bottom” image=”” btn=”light” heading=”” subheading=”” cta=”” video_width=”1080″ hide_related=”false” hide_logo=”false” hide_controls=”false” hide_title=”false” hide_fullscreen=”false”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP7zN8SVw0U&feature=youtu.be[/video_page_section]
