Yoni Kozminski 6:25
Yeah, for sure. Well, I would say that it started, you know, a decade before that, before I entered that business, and sort of where it began is I spent my career in agency land. So I worked in creative and digital agencies in Australia, and then the US. And so I got very acutely aware as to you know, what it looks like to have a great developer or designer, content creator or PPC specialist or Facebook marketer. You know, personally, I’ve probably invested over $20 million in Facebook media spend of my career with clients like Sony and MasterCard and Mercedes-Benz. So, you know, my whole career was built on growing up in agencies and building agencies. And so when I entered the Amazon space, as a seller, I’d already had the blueprint of what it takes to run a business like this from an agency standpoint, which you know, for those who aren’t familiar, agency versus client side, client side, typically, are going to be larger corporates that are sort of defining the roadmap, but leveraging agencies to do the delivery work. Whereas if you come from agency side, you’re not only really building the strategy, but you’re actually doing the delivery, too. So I came from sort of a hands on approach in the delivery mechanic, and stepping into that Amazon business. To give you some context here, there were three guys running around, they were doing $2 million a year to taking them to two and a half years to get to that point. And they were a little bit lost, which, you know, which is where sort of we sit today as well, in the consulting businesses that, you know, there are moments in time where it becomes a little bit too hard for just the owner, operator founder to run any complete operation, whether it’s Amazon or anything else, a commerce related and beyond. There’s only so much that us as human beings can handle in you know, in one sweat, you know, fell swoop. So I came into that business, and I effectively built out the operational infrastructure. So what it looks like from, you know, what is your marketing team look like? Who do you need rather than having the founder doing PPC management, and handling customer support and using a million fake aliases of names and going to inventory and logistics supply chain and QA from like, what I did, the first thing I did was I assess the business. And I looked to understand what was working and what wasn’t. And I started to build the infrastructure as to who do we need? And how are they going to operate? And what does that look like? And so I guess my access point was really building out the team and built it out of the Philippines and building out the processes, policies, and procedures to enable scale so could give value across all the products, not just the hero one or two products.
Jeremy Weisz 9:11
Yeah, I think Yang will keep the company anonymous. I know they’ve sold and everything but but how did you even find the company? And then what did you come to the table with as far as an offer goes as far as like, “Okay, I’m gonna put money I’m gonna put sweat, sweat equity in I’m going to take a percentage” because I don’t it’s a very, it seems like a very no brainer offer potentially is “Hey, I can come in.” So how’d you find them? And then what did you how’d you structure like an offer? You don’t have to share exact numbers.
Yoni Kozminski 9:42
No, no, this is great. This is a great. I’ve never been asked that question before. And it’s something that took a long time to figure out and it’s something that you know, I mulled over and Saturday for a long time and you know, it’s a it’s a negotiation game. So, so I’ll tell you-
Jeremy Weisz 10:01
They’re like, Yoni, listen, we already spent like a lot of sweat equity on this. We built this up to $2 million. You’re gonna come in here and swoop up and whatever.
Yoni Kozminski 10:11
Who the heck are you? We don’t know you. We’ve built this business. We work together, there were two co-founders. So yeah, totally.
Jeremy Weisz 10:16
So how did you find them start there for a second?
Yoni Kozminski 10:19
Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what happened in the lead up to finding them. So I started building my own agency, and it was successful, pretty much from day one, it was generating a profit. I think by month two or three, I was doing about $20,000 in monthly reoccurring revenue, and delivering all the services that I knew how to deliver and, you know, helping a lot of brands. And I realized, probably six months in that as much as I could do this, I wasn’t happy doing it. I didn’t, I didn’t want to take that solopreneur route wasn’t how I was wired, I like to bounce ideas off people. And, you know, everyone likes to be a decision maker. But I like to have a collaborative decision, I want other people’s opinion. And I want to as a team, make a good decision. Because you know, you can be too close to a process and sort of lose sight of what you’re doing. So I made the decision to say, right, even though I’ve got a successful agency that I’m building, I want partners, I want to go down this journey with someone else. And so I started meaning pretty much everyone I could in Tel Aviv that was connected to, you know, I sort of realized, if I had a product that was my own, I could market it, I could sell it, I knew what to do, I knew how to build, I’ve been doing it my whole career. So I wanted to get to that point where I had partners who protect the boxes that I couldn’t, and that was, you know, production from China inventory, supply chain and logistics, I didn’t want to have to figure out a whole other thing, I got down to drop shipping route, I built a, you know, a successful drop shipping business, and that wasn’t really building a brand. So I met these guys, I got introduced to them, there was a dance for honestly, way too long. But, you know, maybe six, six or so months, we were going back and forth. And I said to them, candidly, I don’t, I don’t care if you offered me half a million dollars a year today, I’d still say no to the opportunity, I’m not interested in the money today, all I’m looking for is an opportunity to build something where I’m invested in it. And together, the sum is greater than the parts and we’re going to be able to have a serious impact. So the the period was I took a salary that was beyond below. You know, I was gonna say below the poverty line, but honestly, you couldn’t live on a wage like that inside of Tel Aviv. It’s the fourth most expensive city in the world. And I committed to it. And I said, right, I’ll prove myself out over a six month period, I’ll buy into the business, I go through this whole process, because I’m committed to showing the impact I could have. And, you know, after that period, you know, technically speaking, I pass their tests. But, you know, it didn’t work out the way I’d have liked. And it was honestly one of the most valuable experiences I’ve had in my life. But that was that was it was a real dance going back and forth like I wanted, you know, they wanted to offer me 1% of equity, you know, and some ridiculous amount for the decade of experience I’d had with some of the biggest brands in the world building it out. And, you know, eventually we got to a point where we both felt like this was a fair deal. In hindsight, I probably still would have been shortchanged. But the reality is, you know, it happened for a reason. And it was a great experience.
Jeremy Weisz 13:28
Yeah. And we’ll get to that, because we were talking a little before we hit record about a low point. And that kind of will lead into the conversation about MultiplyMii and Escala. But on that point, so did you count what was the combination? It was a combination of salary and equity? Is that what you came to? Yeah, I’m you’re comfortable enough to move forward?
Yoni Kozminski 13:54
Yeah, so it was the equity play in the business and knowing that I could have impact in, you know, the revenue and the growth around that. So that was a big driver for me in terms of also, and you know, I never really got there. But decision making to, it was really important for me that I could actually affect the decision and not be boxed into, you know, the things for me that haven’t worked in the past. And it’s not that I’m this absolute genius that has it all figured out, because I’m not. But you know, I was always sort of caged in my ability to give valuable insights into things that I would have believed to have had impact. And so that was a big draw card having sort of voting rights there. And yeah, you know what I was on. Again, I wasn’t on the salary I was on when I lived in the US and was working in agency land, but it was a decent salary to live. I didn’t have to start from zero like I’ve had to do since and go through that same journey, so it felt like a fair trade off.
Jeremy Weisz 14:54
So what did you have to put in any money at all?
Yoni Kozminski 14:59
Yes, I did.
Jeremy Weisz 15:01
It’s interesting. So you took a salary, but you had to invest money and you got equity at the same time. And you were that was fine with for you. And and then so you go on and you build, you know, go take it from two to $5 million in 12 months. And then there’s a low point in there. What happened?
Yoni Kozminski 15:24
Yeah, so I mean, and you know, this would be advice that I’d give that to anyone? You know, not, and you don’t have to take me at my word here. But I think one thing that I learned in this whole experience is that when things don’t feel right, they’re probably not right. And so I would say that, probably not from day one, but from pretty early on. It wasn’t it wasn’t the right vibe, I had two partners that didn’t see eye to eye. And I walked into a bit of a shitstorm, if I’m honest.
Jeremy Weisz 15:57
Did you realize that at the time, or was it more overtime that you saw that?
Yoni Kozminski 16:02
It took me it took me several months, to truly understand the impact, but it was probably, it was probably, you know, what I know that, you know, again, we’re all learning here, we’re all growing. But when I looked at it, you know, three to six months in, I truly understood the fact that this was not salvageable. Like their relationship as business partners, was not salvageable.
Jeremy Weisz 16:24
What was the problem that you saw?
Yoni Kozminski 16:27
I mean, if I’m super candid, I feel like one of the partners was, I don’t know how to put this nicely. But, you know, bordering on sociopathic behavior. Whereas-
Jeremy Weisz 16:42
They were saying was maybe not what other people were seeing as reality.
Yoni Kozminski 16:48
Like, they were saying nothing that would be out, like the situation was this, I had two partners who had built a successful business together, that the two of them had decided that the other wasn’t cut out, to work together. And so not only am I trying to build this business infrastructure and grow the company, but I’m also playing therapist for, you know, the entire, virtually the entirety of working there. So, you know, it gets to a point, when you want to talk about a low point, like, you’ve got a personal life, you’re trying to build a business, you’ve got, you know, 10, 15, 20 employees on top of that, that you genuinely care about, you want to make sure they’re getting paid you, you’re you’re spending all of your waking hours working on the business, and then after hours, you’re sitting there and you having a discussion with one of them.
Jeremy Weisz 17:31
It’s hard enough as it is, and then it just adds these layers of complexity to it.
Yoni Kozminski 17:36
Yeah, so So for me, like that entire experience through, you know, I was probably, you know, there was a year that I was really dedicated with them, you know, the six months in the laid off, it was probably at those probably a six month courting period where I was involved in the business until I fully committed in that year that I was committed. So the exponential growth, but that was really, you know, that was the start of, you know, we started when you started doing at the low point, that was it is that it’s enough to try and manage your business. And the people that run it, let alone the emotional instability. And that constant fighting between two partners where you’ve come into the party late to-
Jeremy Weisz 18:13
I just want thought it was really important for you to express that. Because to highlight the fact how important no matter how great the business is doing, how much you can grow it, if there’s partners or people that are not getting along, that has a huge impact on the business, but also the happiness level, as well. And so then what ended up happening?
Yoni Kozminski 18:37
Yeah, and so your point is, well, you know, a business relationship of partnership, it’s as, if not more important than a marriage, right? Like this person, or these people. They are partners. And so if you can’t, if you can’t be totally transparent and honest with them, if you can’t work through all the shit that happens, and all the challenges and the ups and downs and celebrate their wins and console each other on the losses, because that’s the journey you’re going to be on then it’s probably not a relationship worth going on. So what actually ended up happening, and I’ve been super candid with you, I’ve never actually had this conversation on a podcast before. So let’s say how it turns out, but honestly, there was a moment in time where I just said, this is not enough. I rocked up to a meeting one of the partners that I don’t particularly speak with today. He actually got physical with me pushed me and yeah, and so I just said, You know what, you know, I walked in a week later to the office, I just said, I don’t care if you gave me 100% equity in this business. I won’t work with you. Because if I can’t trust you, if you’re not stable, as a human being, then nothing is stable. And I don’t care how much money is thrown at me and how much money we can make. And to be honest with you, it wasn’t even just that it was the fact that it wasn’t about. It wasn’t about how do we add value? How do we create products that support people that they’re going to know and love? It’s how do we sell shit. And I am not a transactional person, I will put in the time, I will look to build solutions. I’m looking to help people, I’m not looking to take money from people and hope that you know, people don’t figure out that we’ve swindled them. And so, for me, it was really a combination of all those things where I think from an ethos of an ethical alignment, I wasn’t there. And no amount of money would have had me change my decision to leave the company at that moment in time.
Jeremy Weisz 20:44
So you made the decision to leave? And does that affect your equity at all?
Yoni Kozminski 20:51
I saw nothing, I saw absolutely no, none of the return on the impact I had to business. And to be honest with you, Doc, and I’m gonna definitely go with Doc, because it just sounds awesome. That was a six month journey for me. And I think like one of the things that, you know, for anyone who might be going through a similar situation, the decision I was making is, I’m so invested in this, I’ve done so many hours, I’ve done so much work. I’ve, you know, I’ve actually, you know, it was a successful business before, but I built a company with my team. And there’s a fundamental difference when you build in systems and processes and msop fees and training, documentation and an infrastructure that enables true growth and scale versus just trying to figure it all out yourself. So for me, the biggest challenge was, you know, do I throw in the towel and give up on all of these sweat equity and investment and the ups and downs that I’ve gone through? Yeah, so that was that was it.
Jeremy Weisz 21:57
That was because they were I mean, a little of the backstory is they were, you know, looking to sell it as well. So it’s not like there was a five year horizon, it could have been within a year. And I think you end up selling, they end up selling the company, like not short, maybe not shortly after, but but soon enough after they weren’t like, oh, we’re gonna sell this in 10 years. So you’re also making a conscious decision to walk away from that exit. You could have waited it out, technically.
Yoni Kozminski 22:24
Yeah. So we were already having discussions about acquisition or about getting investment, a number of different things. We’ve had discussions with brokers. And it was never really solidified. Like there was no underlying intent to we’re going to sell in the next six months. But the day that I left was the day they made the decision to sell, because and it’s not that I’m this genius, special individual. It’s just the fact that I was driving sort of the growth of the business. And in terms of scale, and without me, you know, I think they realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t, it wasn’t the same reality with me there versus not. And so that was the decision I made, and about nine months later was sold.
Jeremy Weisz 23:10
Mm hmm. So yeah, it is funny because one of my friends, Jim Holtzman, who has been the CFO for some really large companies, help startup companies, his I’m gonna butcher his saying, but his saying goes something like, you know, with business partners, you have all the bad stuff without the sex. So he’ll probably totally echo your sentiments with that whole partnership situation, Jim, you can correct me if you’re listening to this on what your actual saying is, but what were some of the levers you pulled? I want to talk after we finished the discussion is, what is interesting about Escala is I want to get your take on the equity piece, okay, because I was having a conversation with another agency owner a couple weeks ago, and he’s like, you know, what, the thinking about carving out not just doing the service, but like carving out equity, like literally, like you said, You’re coming with a strategy, you’re coming with implementation, and you’re growing this company? Is that appropriate? At what point do you think is appropriate? Do you think you’ll ever get to that point where like, okay, like, we’re going to be your consulting arm? Because if you take MultiplyMii and you take Escala, you’re doing the high level consulting process, you’re, you’re creating an infrastructure. You know, it may make sense at some point, I know, you charge a fee for those for both of those things. So I’m curious, I want to hear your thoughts on the equity piece, if that ever will come into the conversation or you’ve thought about it. But hold that thought for a second, but I want to hear I have to ask about this. So you take a company helped take a company from two to 5 million what were some of the levers you pulled during that time? In a short amount of time?
Yoni Kozminski 24:56
Yeah. So I would say the first thing that the festival goal was understanding what the hell is going on in this business, you know, like, for a lot of Amazon sellers at that point, you know, one, two, even up to about $3 million. There’s a lot of, you know, fast paced moving aspects of it, and you’ve got people sort of, you know, playing an absolute multitude of all these different roles and try it. So what we did was we actually define what’s the actual structure? What’s happening inside of the business? So from a marketing perspective, who do we need, right? Who’s actually how do we find professionals that can write the listing copy and the image creation and optimizing these things? How can we have someone who is analytically wired to be you know, to buy the PPC to take on our methodology and start to, you know, to actually have impact? How do we start to create tracking and insights so that we can actually build for better outcomes? Right, so there was none of that. So my first thing was like, what we do inside of a skull is we look to assess how systemized is a business and we looked at understand what’s happening until I understood what was happening, which took a bit of time. Because there was a lack of documentation and a lack of insights, it was all sitting in, you know, for a lot of companies that size, it’s sitting in the founders head. And so they sit there and they understand everything, but they can’t go on holiday for even 30 seconds, because, you know, if anything that’s you know, being built on, you know, a house of cards here should fall, they need to jump back in. So the first lever pulled was building out the old strategy and structure, the deployment of specific elements, setting up tracking mechanics and understanding what’s happening in the business. And from there, I think the first thing that we built out was our customer support team. So my co-founder, who I brought in at an early stage in that business, effectively went on to build a 24 hour customer support team where we could answer all queries through Seller Central, within, you know, a max of a six hour window. So we built out training, documentation insights, and you know, just from that little tweak, we stopped saying, you know, a lot of the negative outcomes happen with things just get left. And you know, that was that was probably that the first inroad was that we built a system, we built a team, it was functional, no longer did the founders have to get involved in customer support, which is highly important and valuable. But that’s not where you as a founder, typically are going to add the most value in a business.
Jeremy Weisz 27:40
So I’m going to overlay this story with Escala, a little bit. So the first thing you did to the lovers you pull is use you came in assesses is kind of overlay with Escala too, because probably, you know, the methodology used. You come in, you assess, and you go cool, what’s the what’s the organizational strategy? Who’s the team? What’s the 80/20? What’s the 20% we need to do right now. And you’re like customer support is lacking, and you implement it. So now you assess up and now the next piece is kind of the implementation, choosing the top 20% of the things that you need to do first and build out which would be in this situation, the customer short, so another company may be a different, different thing. So after you assess, and you choose some of these things to implement, what do you do? What do you do next?
Yoni Kozminski 28:31
Yeah, well, in that company, specifically, it was a, you know, it was selling at least a quarter of a million products a year. So you can imagine the influx, especially some of the products weren’t the most well built. So the influx customer support was high touch a lot of time a lot, not a lot of value. So we removed that from it. So in terms of Escala, so also just about our methodology to Escala company, we’ve got now 20 management consultants who x A y and Accenture out of the Philippines. And so what we effectively did was we took a lot of the high level methodology from a why, and we’re also big, practically we run an EOS internally. So we’ve taken a lot of the insights of a lot of smarter people before us and we’ve built something unique for the e commerce and Amazon community, where we look at our own maturity framework and methodology. So it’s evolved a lot since I spent time in that business but you know, to look at how we look at the world today we look at past systemized as a business based on your people process and technology. How systemized is it? They are the people in the right seats, you know, in their unique abilities really driving. Other processes really well defined, are using the right pieces of technology, you might have the best piece of technology on planet Earth. But unless you understand the processes and have the people to drive that piece of technology, you don’t have a true solution. So, you know, in terms of the methodologies, we are looking to identify what happens in the business as a baseline, we build out process maps of the current state of the business. And then we start to garner insights into, you know, based on people process and technology, what are the levers that can be pulled to optimize them? How do we build the future state process maps to optimize the business removing the most critical people from the least valuable tasks and putting them into spots where they’re gonna, you know, thrive in their unique ability? So I don’t know if that answered your question.
Jeremy Weisz 30:33
Yeah. No, I mean, I, you know, one thing I want to give a shout out to Gino Wickman, who has been on the podcast, so check out his episode, and his book, Traction is phenomenal. So yeah, he’s the EOS methodology is, is really helped a lot, many, many businesses as far as that goes. And, you know, I want to talk about from Escala point, what you worked with a company, there was a lot of what were some of the issues you did identify that were big, big levers. Um, first, and talk about that?
Yoni Kozminski 31:07
Yeah. I mean, I can talk about my experience, it’s, it’s, it’s funny, you know, it’s not a whole lot of time that’s passed, you know, we’re talking 2018/19, you know, I left that business, you know, in in, you know, classical terms. That’s not that long ago. But in the span of eCommerce and what’s happened, given the pandemic, and the push to, you know, the advancements in where we’ve gotten to, I feel like it’s worlds apart today in terms of what we deliver, and where we’re at. So I can talk to you about some of the levers that I pulled there, I can talk to you about some of the things that we do today.
Jeremy Weisz 31:46
Yeah, well, you were mentioning, when before we hit record, you worked with the company. And there were a number of issues that you identified for that company that really made a huge difference in their business. And you could talk generally, because I’m sure it’s, you know, privy to that particular business. But as an example, what were you probably see some common issues, I imagine.
Yoni Kozminski 32:08
Yeah. So I’ll say that inside of Escala, you know, they’ve really taken this to a whole nother level. And, you know, it’s, it’s not even true reflective of where we sit today as as delivery. But what I can tell you from my personal experience is that, and this is common, these are some of the things that we see with the businesses we support today. But you know, one of the common, you know, what, I’ll call it a mistake, because I think it is a mistake here is that a lot of founders of Amazon and eCommerce brands, they’ll invest all of their time into the hero product, or their top three, right. And for us, as a business, we did the same. Initially, it was the same issue, we had one product, it was doing, honestly, close to $2 million at at its peak. And what we failed to do is give all of our products, the same level of attention and love that that one product. And so it’s the classic hero product issues. So the first thing that we did is we identified and defined the processes that went into investing in that hero product and why it was as good as it was. And then we found a way to hire the right people to sit in the seats based on their roles and responsibilities and their accountability shot. And I didn’t even also pay homage to Gino. But you know, the guy has had a hugely impactful, but a huge impact on my life professionally and personally in our business success and, and for a lot of other companies that we work with too. So yeah, just to say I can’t wait to listen to that episode. And who knows, maybe one day I can get Gino on my podcast. But the point I was making about it was that we built a system that enabled us for our we had about 35/40 skus to pull the same levers on the top 1/2/3 products across the board. And so as a result, instead of just growing our revenue, and our profitability across 1/2/3 skus, we could do it across 35 and 40. So that was a fundamental is the level of attention that we could give to the entire product suite.
Jeremy Weisz 34:19
That’s one mistake you see people making is really just paying attention in the back, you know, just keeping that going. But not really outlining and mapping out what they did to get to that point in doing with the other products.
Yoni Kozminski 34:33
Yeah, that would be one I can give you probably I can give you problems and insights for days if you want. I mean, another one. Another one that comes to mind as well is very much about management of people. I mean, I have a podcast called Successful Scales where I interview people on what it takes to build successful businesses. And you know, one of the things that keeps coming up and one of the things that I saw as a fundamental challenge inside of that business was That, you know, you have founders of senior management simply telling people what to do, and having them stick with inside of their lanes rather than really giving them true accountability and responsibility around the business objective or their responsibility inside of the business that ladders up to the high business objective and sending them freight. So you know, one of the things we change is that we gave people autonomy and authority and an ability to make suggestions and make changes. And, you know, these are the people these are your, I mean, I wouldn’t even call them your foot soldiers, these are the people that are driving your business, you know, the person that thinks it, you know, I stick in my mind, like, I used to be told all the time, like, we are the business like us as the, you know, two or three owners of the business where the business and I could not disagree more, you know, I am, I am my responsibility in the business, how do I work for everyone else? How do I support them to have the most impact inside of the business, and anything I can do to help enable them to achieve more is that’s my objective, it doesn’t matter about me, I’m just, I’m just one other person playing my part in our collective growth goal. And for us now, it’s about creating jobs. And that, for me is the driving is the driving force, how many? How many lives have we touched to have positive impact and put food on people’s table?
Jeremy Weisz 36:25
So the leadership piece, you know, making sure people have the autonomy and authority to make decisions so that the owner, whoever is not a bottleneck in things? What’s another one that you see?
Yoni Kozminski 36:38
Yeah, so you know, it kind of ladders into what I was talking about before, but the building out the processes, so you know, the one biggest risk that you have, as a business owner, is to have a dependency or reliance on a single linchpin. So, you know, if I look at it, I want to keep everyone I want to grow over on but I also don’t want to, at the same time, be totally beholden to if someone leaves or they don’t. So building out the processes and the step by step guide as to how things are done. And building also a backup as well. So that two people know how to do each of the functions that enables to scale and, you know, stops you from being totally dependent on any one individual in a business.
Jeremy Weisz 37:24
Yeah, I want to point out a friend Owen, who’s founder of SweetProcess, actually, is a software, just a shout out to Owen and what they do, they’re a software people use to actually document the systems. So it makes it super job that easy to train staff, on board staff, and all that. So if anyone out there is looking for a solution, I mean, there’s Google, I mean, you’ll use Google Docs, but this is actually a more sophisticated better solution than just a Google document fired up. So everyone could check out SweetProcess. But, um, I wanted to talk, you know, so now we have the, you know, Escala which you have these, you know, can lay out the strategy, the processes, all these things, and then you have MultiplyMii, okay, and MultiplyMii is, you know, actually staffing solutions at affordable prices that people can can use, right. So, um, talk a little about what are the functions of use cases that you’ve seen for MultiplyMii?
Yoni Kozminski 38:28
Yeah, so for MultiplyMii, and this was sort of the lightbulb moment that I had working and building that Amazon business was that, you know, I am someone who has worked in this space for my entire career. I know what a good designer looks like, with developer copywriter, you know, content creator, whatever it is, and I used to invest 20/30 hours a week searching things I like to call online jobs.ph like the gateway drug to the Philippines, you know, I used to scour all these different platforms. Upwork, free freelancer.com speed, like, you name it. And what I realized was an even though I even did a year of recruitment or headhunting, that wasn’t my unique ability, I didn’t have the patience for it. Now. It’s been 20 to 30 hours on maybe hire one person, hired a recruiter and understood that I would have two to three hours a week of interviews, and I’d hire two out of three people, you know, he understood it he had 10/15 years experience in recruitment, and it totally shifted my perception. So MultiplyMii as a business handles the intake and executive search and the critical HR function the most businesses you know, never even get to the size have to have a deep appreciation as to what it means to have regular performance management understanding sort of like what those cadences are to build the KPIs and expectations and going in so they everyone’s aligned so one of the, I would say our first client ever still to this day and it’s funny like as we are in market for longer and longer the earlier clients are the ones typically see the greatest success because it’s just time it’s time in market time working together. But our first client ever was a freelancer, PPC specialist on he was doing Google AdWords. And today, he has a team of I believe about eight, through MultiplyMii were between Escala and MultiplyMii we help build out his onboarding, performance management and everything in between. He’s training videos, documentation, we’ve built him an infrastructure and a system to train people. He has a great ability to win clients, he just couldn’t stop them. And he felt he couldn’t. He couldn’t articulate well enough how to actually have anyone else do the work. So we built that in for him. And today, like I said, He’s got eight or nine people in his team, from senior PPC specialists, PPC media buys these built in SEO. And so I guess the success is that giving people that understanding that there are infrastructure, there is an infrastructure and ability to grow a team, if you’re guided through the right way, and you have the proper onboarding documentation, and people understand who they should be reporting to and who their line manager is. And if they’ve got issues. And if there’s a performance improvement requirement that an HR function can serve that and help guide you through sort of that the murky waters, because there’s like, the the manager and the employee and having an HR function services, that person that can have those sort of conversations that might not feel as comfortable, and that can almost be the middleman to solve for x.
Jeremy Weisz 41:35
So you only get a little granular with me, what type of positions Can someone go to MultiplyMii and just to let people know, it’s multiplymii.com and you can check out their website, what they’re doing? What positions like some of the Okay, I’m looking for this position or that position? What are the common positions people use in hire, you know, use your company to hire for?
Yoni Kozminski 42:01
Yeah, so so I’ll make the statement that if you’re looking for a VA, you know, like, if you’re looking for someone who does a little bit of data entry, sure, we could find that for you. But that’s not who we are in our DNA. What we are, is where the access point to real professional talent. So we do a lot of headhunting, we find people who are in jobs in, you know, professional roles in the Philippines, corporate Philippines. And some of the roles include inventory and logistics, supply chain, operations managers.
Jeremy Weisz 42:38
Like real specific stuff.
Yoni Kozminski 42:40
Yeah, designers and developers, customer support. You know, really the gamut of anything that’s going to touch on the eCommerce and agency space is our sweet spot. But I guess the underlying thing is that it’s real professionals. Because the only way we see a true growth is where you have someone who is a dedicated resource and an employee of the company, living and breathing your culture that’s going to enable growth, you know, there’s definitely a place for freelancers, but not want us to call like we tried to freelance a project manager. And it’s very hard when you have, you know, them working on multiple companies or multiple projects if they’re not really living and breathing in every day.
Jeremy Weisz 43:19
So I encourage people to check out MultiplyMii.com You can go to their page and you can search Okay, I’m looking for a county I’m looking for Amazon looking for eCommerce, I’m looking for content, you know, I’m looking for customer support, voice or not. So you have all these categories that people can check out developer, Human Resources, marketing, so check it out. If you’re looking for someone, we’re all you know, a lot of people are looking for someone check it out, and, and, you know, just poke around, but I guess, you know, for that, is this someone then? Okay, um, is this only? Okay, I need a full time person. Um, so when they’re going to use a cool, this is a full time person? Or is it? Okay, if I need 20 hours, it’s still a full time, you just get 20 hours? How does that work as far as what people, you know, how, what their hours are looking for match?
Yoni Kozminski 44:08
Yeah, so I’d say most of our clients, like the 90 percentile, potentially even plus would be full time. Team members, we do go as low as 20 hours a week for for people in special cases, but I think you know, just as a, as a philosophy, giving someone full time, a full time opportunity, living and breathing your business and your culture has lasting impact and has them really, you know, live breathe, die bleed for your, for your vision and your business.
Jeremy Weisz 44:41
I want to be the first one to thank you. Um, I think, you know, it’s really thank you for sharing some of the hard times because oftentimes and that, you know, it’s a learning opportunity. We didn’t get your thoughts on the equity. I know there’s another call going on. So you know, you’ll just have to ask them. But I want to encourage people to go to MultiplyMii.com You can check out We Are Escala WeAreEscala.com. Is there any other places we should point people online? You don’t need to check you out.
Yoni Kozminski 45:16
You know what if you guys are looking to learn as well, I’d say check out successfulscales.com and that’s me interviewing people on what it takes to grow big businesses. So that’s something for me that, you know, the logic for me was, I’m trying to learn as quickly as I can. So I may as well hit record. And while I’m asking questions, you know, have everyone else learn along with me as to what it takes to build some of the biggest businesses and you know, I’ve spoken to a lot of the aggregators and the roll ups and I feel like Doc, you’d be a great guest, so we’ll have to get you on there to cool.
Jeremy Weisz 45:49
Check out that check out the websites, check out Rise25 check out more episodes of the inspiredinsider.com. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Yoni.
Yoni Kozminski 45:57
Thank you.
