#304: Should Amazon Sellers Be Working With Freelancers or Agencies?

Episode: 304

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Saddam Hasan – COO of AMZ One Step

Subtitle: “Should Amazon Sellers Be Working With Freelancers or Agencies?”

Final Show Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLDhM_jl9xc&list=PLVIz0IewRSqDUVXG_IAXsVx9ZWE8_Vanz&index=9

Back on Lunch with Norm…In this episode, we are joined by Saddam Hassan, the COO and Founder of AMZ One Step! Today, learn the differences between freelancers and agencies. Learn the pros and cons of the two and why you might consider one over the other. Saddam has been working as a strategic partner with companies helping them scale on Amazon and grow their E-Commerce presence.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

• 0:00 Intro & Housekeeping
• 06:25 Welcome Saddam Hasan!
• 10:19 When is the right time to outsource?
• 16:20 Pros and Cons of a Freelancer 
• 22:17 Making a successful VA: Spend time or Spend Money
• 29:13 Bonus Plan: Team Culture 
• 38:47 Most Manufacturing comes from China 
• 37:03 Client’s studio preference
• 39:30 3D Rendering 
• 41:42 Product Photography
• 47:00 Timestudy

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Norman Farrar  0:00  

Hey, everyone, this is Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here, and welcome to another lunch with Norm the Amazon FBA and eCommerce podcast. Okay, today we’re going to be talking about freelancers. When should Amazon sellers be working with freelancers versus agencies? And when and where should you choose a freelancer versus an agency? What are the benefits of working with studios in China or in other countries? And when should you be using a 3d rendering? Welcome to another lunch with Norm the Amazon FBA and eCommerce podcast? 

Norman Farrar  0:48  

Okay, as I said, Today, we’ve got a really great episode we’re going to be talking about and this happens so often, when should I be dealing with a freelancer So expanding out from just being a solopreneur? Getting that freelancer, and then Freelancer versus agency, our guest today has managed a portfolio of over 200 million Puranam. In the past, with a background in financial planning and analysis. Our guest has also created a great company called AMC one step I know I use them myself. They are also a leading Amazon service provider in Canada with over 30 employees. He has been working as a strategic partner with companies helping them scale on Amazon and grow their eCommerce presence. I, I have the honor of talking with Saddam Hasan today. He’s a great guy, it’s his first time on the podcast. As I said, I’ve been dealing with him on and off with my own listings, and these guys know their stuff. So let’s have a quick word from our sponsor. If you’re selling on Amazon in 2022, you know how important it is to stand out from your competition. Let Hono worldwide lead by helping hand with your product innovation to out-compete your competition online. That’s right, sit back, relax, and enjoy the success of your new innovative product. While Hono handles all the work. Visit honoworldwide.com for more information. That’s how new H O N U worldwide.com. Or email savings at Honoworldwide.com. Alright. Where’s Beard boy? 

Kelsey

Hello. Hello.

Norman Farrar

Look at you know that took a while about a year to grow.

Kelsey  2:46  

Yeah, it’s a work in progress right now. But it’s coming in. Strong. It’s I don’t

Norman Farrar  2:51  

say the word strong. I don’t say. What would my dad use to call it? No, he didn’t call a peach was what was the word bomb fuzz? There we go.

Kelsey  3:04  

Oh, now we got to shave this. I don’t want to think 

Norman Farrar

no, no. Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, you look good. 

Kelsey

Alright.

Kelsey  3:11  

All right. Thanks. Anyways, let’s start off the show by smashing those like buttons giving us the thumbs up we’d really appreciate it. Welcome to lunch with Norm welcome beard owes our beard nation. We love you. It’s good to see everyone I can see cool hand 99 is joining us from the Pacific Northwest. Let us know where you’re watching from we’re over. We actually got an all-Canadian cast today. So that’s great. We’ve got Saddam from Alberta. And then we’re over in Ontario. So let us know where you’re watching from. And, yeah, and don’t forget, if you’re new to the podcast, go over and join our Facebook group. That’s lunch with Norm Amazon FBA eCommerce collective. That’s where all the fun happens. As for where you can ask your questions. Get insights. You even giveaways too. We’re doing some giveaways with carbon six in the group. So head over there to get all those goodies. And let me see who else is joining us. We have Christine Vanie. We met in Mexico. That’s good to see you from San Diego can’t grow a beard, but I don’t want to have any fuzzy either. I hear that

Norman Farrar  4:16  

you’re saying that. Or was that? Oh, no, no,

Kelsey  4:19  

that’s Christine. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed today’s episode. We have a great, we’ll have Kelsey today as well. So stick around to learn more about that. And questions. Yes,

Norman Farrar  4:32  

we should say and we’ll say this a couple of times, we’re throwing a curveball into the wheel of Kelsey. So if what we’ve noticed is all of a sudden, people come on and they start typing hashtag Wheeler Kelsey. Well, if you don’t know what the prize is, you might not be able to use the prize. So we’re gonna wait till about halfway through the show. And we’re gonna say hashtag will Kelsey and you have to add a mystery hashtag you And once you do that, you’ll be eligible to win the will of Kelsey, we just felt that, hey, we get a lot of entries every week. But if you can’t use it, and you don’t know what it is, then you know, there’s no use of doing that. So we threw a curveball in there. And we think it’s just going to help funnel in to those people that really want the price and not just put it in. Did I say that right? kills the old guy, right?

Kelsey  5:28  

We’re gonna, we’re gonna be randomly dropping that keyword. So you have to watch the episode as well to know what it is. And of course, if you haven’t already, YouTubers, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Do it, please, we’d really appreciate it. Thank you.

Norman Farrar  5:43  

Oh, and if you want to know the mystery keyword and advance, Kelsey does accept 20s and coffee.

Kelsey  5:50  

That’s k@lunchwithnorm.com.

Norman Farrar  5:55  

All right, so is that it kills? That’s it. All right. So if you do have any questions or comments, please throw them over into the comment section. We will try to get to them. I think we’re gonna have a lot of comments and questions today. This is a really great topic. You know, freelancers, agencies, when do you separate from being a solopreneur? These are all questions that we get on a regular basis. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee. Enjoy the show. Welcome Saddam.

Saddam Hasan  6:27  

Hey, thank you for having me. Norm. I love that intro, by the way, and funny enough, leading up to this podcast I I got COVID like two weeks ago, so Oh, no, I’m, yeah, I’m good now, but I thought it was a good opportunity. Since I was isolating myself. I grow beard as well, since you guys are called, you know, the fan base is called weirdos. But just say Kelsey, you know, I struggled. So I had to get rid of it after the two week point. So here we are without a beard. But hey, it’s your

Norman Farrar  6:59  

wife. It wasn’t you. Come on, be straight with me. Your wife made you shave it off.

Saddam Hasan  7:06  

You know, she wasn’t supportive. But she thought I could do it. But yeah, after two weeks, I think she thought differently. So we made a unanimous mutual decision for it. All right. They’re

Norman Farrar  7:17  

very good. No, I was saying at the beginning. I like I like what you guys are doing i i provide, like, I go to your AMZ step, one step for some of your services. I’ve used you in the past. It’s very good. And you’ve grown quite rapidly. So I thought it’d be a really good idea to come on. And let’s talk about freelancers and agencies. And maybe the first question is, when do you know from a going being that solar solo printer that Amazon seller? When do you first reach out? Forget the agency or freelancers? When do you first kind of reach out and try to get some help?

Saddam Hasan  8:06  

Yeah, that’s a good question. So, you know, one thing we have to realize is with the Amazon FBA model, there’s already some outsourcing happening since day one, right. When you’re sourcing your product, you’re not doing the manufacturing yourself that’s outsourced. When you ship your products to Amazon, if you’re doing FBA, you already outsourced the supply chain that goes to the customer. So the reason this home model is so attractive is because you can outsource quite a few things. And it can become a passive income stream for you. So unlike traditional businesses, you have this great opportunity where you don’t even have to touch your product, everything can be just manufactured in a sourcing country, and delivered straight to Amazon and they figure out the dispatching. So with that, obviously, there comes a constraint, there’s a budget constraint or a cash flow restriction. And as a solopreneur. At first, you have to wear a lot of hats. But you also have to realize that Amazon is becoming more and more competitive, and you have to take actions from day one that’s going to set you apart and help you establish your brand. And in order to do that, effectively, if you think about it, it’s no longer a game of you know, launching 300 to 500 units to test the market you have to go in with a bigger investment. You’re probably spending close to maybe 15 $20,000 Everything included, so might as well take that additional step and outsource things that you’re not necessarily skilled at. Now one of those things obviously that we deal with at AMC one step is the creative side. So your photography, the videos, any A plus content if you want to have a storefront main. All of those things you might not necessarily have any photography or design background to do so. So there’s really only two options that you have to go for either you approach a freelancer who can do it, or you go with a with a vetted agency. And, and that’s why going back to your question, when is the right time to outsource on or when should you start thinking about it? I think day one, if you know, if you want to be successful, and have a good chance at making it big on Amazon,

Norman Farrar  10:30  

you know, I, I agree. When you’re first learning, if you’ve gone out to, let’s say, you’re listening to Kevin King, and all of a sudden you sign up for his course, or ASM, you know, you go through you understand you, I believe you have to have an understanding before you do anything. And then the trick is, I when I when I first started to outsource, I would just kind of video, everything that I’m doing. So I have a I use loom, and I just kind of go through the process. Now, I don’t know if at the time if it’s the best way to do it. But at least I have something to show somebody that a this is what we’re doing, this is what we’re trying to achieve. Most of the time, if I’m okay at something, the Freelancer that I’m buying, or hiring is much better. And they can come back with better ways to do whatever I’m doing. It could be optimization, it could be PPC, it could be whatever it is, but at least the foundations there that I understand it. So I don’t know about you, but like right out of the gate. I just like recording what I’m doing, and maybe I’m messing it right up. But when I show that person, you know, at least they have an understanding of how bad I’m messing it up, or what I’m doing. That’s really great. And they know that I know my stuff. And that’s what I like, by the way, if if like if I’m working with social media, or they don’t know who I am, they don’t know if I been on Amazon. And they they start coming back with all these extra costs. And it’s kind of like, huh, I already know this. I leave that to Kelsey. Yeah,

Saddam Hasan  12:17  

and that’s a great point, right? We appreciate when sellers or brands know a bit about what we do before they come to us, because that just places a lot more value. When we give them something that’s going to set them apart from let’s say, maybe going to a freelancer. A very good example of that is you know, PPC management. If you don’t know how to set up campaigns, how to manage them just even a little bit, you know, intermediate skills, I would say you can’t really expect an agency or freelancer to turn things around, you won’t even know what they’re strategizing, you won’t be part of the strategy discussions and everything has to come from the brand. And in order for them to provide that strategic piece to any freelancer or any agency. They need to know exactly who they’re working with, what the scope is, and what is the objective they’re trying to achieve. So 100%, you know, you should learn a bit about the skill before you actually get it outsourced.

Norman Farrar  13:24  

The other thing about this is getting the right person, right, whether you said a vetted, agency, well, if you don’t know what to look for, then it’s going to be tough to vet something. And that’s the same with a freelancer, one of the things that I’ve learned is to prepare a good, very detailed job description, then even a hiring process, we’ve got a fairly crazy hiring process that limits like, instead of having 700 resumes, you get it down to 40. From 40, you get it down to four or five, and then you’ve got your selection, the process is a lot tougher, but it’s just something we’ve learned over the years. But one of the most important things whether you’re hiring an individual Freelancer agency, is that that job description is there. And finding that if you don’t know, you might have to go and do some research and find an already existing job description and just kind of copy it over. But you’ve got to I don’t know about you. So if I’m hiring you to do my video or some sort of creative as an agency or freelance, you’ve got to know what I’m looking for. Right? Exactly. And it’s probably a lot easier for you if you go Oh, man. Okay, I can do this. Let me question if you know if these are prerequisites or not.

Saddam Hasan  14:48  

I think one of the easiest way. I do a lot of hiring too. In fact, we’ve been doing a lot of hiring now. Obviously, we have our HR department that kind of looks after that. But initially, you know, I, even when I was hiring freelancers, the common thing that I would notice is, are they asking me questions. If before starting on a project, they’re not asking the right questions that just lowers my confidence in them. Because, yeah, they’re basically Yes, fan, right? So they’ll do with whatever knowledge they have. And they’re trying to execute the test, but not really understanding what the brand’s perspective or what their objectives are. So, first point is, or is someone who you’re hiring or the agency that you’re hiring, are they asking the right questions or not?

Norman Farrar  15:43  

Yeah, one of the one of the sites that I go to a lot of people go to the site, but it’s online jobs.ph. And when you log in there, they’ll have detailed descriptions, which you can edit. That’s one zip recruiter also has detailed job descriptions, you just have to type it into Google and you can find out and then you can edit it for yourself. If you’re not sure. You know, you always had dinner with people that are bucking and then just see if this is something that you’ll need or not need. Let’s get into the pros and cons of a freelancer. So let’s start off freelancer, what are the pros? What are the cons?

Saddam Hasan  16:26  

Yeah, so it’s a so definitely some pros to it. You know, you can get stuff done faster. There’s a lot of platforms that are vetted freelancers as well. Fiverr Upwork, you know, they’re the the usual go to ones. And honestly, you can find people with a good success rate, just like picking any product from Amazon, you look at reviews, same thing you can do on Fiverr and Upwork. Right, so, so for me, the question becomes more of an objective, I guess going back to that is, are you trying to launch a product? Or are you trying to establish a brand, if it’s just launching a product, again, just re prefacing it back to the creative side. You know, as a freelancer, you will either get a designer or a photographer, and they can do the job they can, if it’s a photographer, they can take a few images, they can give you a set of seven images, maybe a starter video with that. Same thing with a designer, right, they’re going to look at it from a designer’s lens. But if you’re establishing a product, you have to do more than just create images or video, you have to set the brand tone, right, you have to have the right font selection, the right color palette, everything from a branding perspective needs to be cohesive and coherent across all detail pages, whether it’s images, a plus content, video, your storefront, any of the other listings, including Amazon post, or you know, the list goes on. But in order to achieve that, it’s not a one man job. So you need creative leaves that come up with a vision for the images or the video, we call it the image plan. In our case, or screenplay, if you’re doing videos, then we need a production team, there needs to be models on set, if you need proper branding images or videos, they do the production shoot, then it goes to the designer editing team. So it’s a whole process divided into multiple mini tasks, that’s then achieved by a whole team versus a freelancer. So going back to the pros and cons, yes, you can get it done. Economically, you can get it done maybe faster even. And it’s it’s a good way to launch right, if you are budget constrained. Go with a freelancer, there are a lot of vetted platforms. But if you’re establishing a brand, that’s where the cons come in, because you’re expecting a person who is skilled at one task to do pretty much everything for you. And that’s never going to happen. At some point, you will realize that the competition is doing things that you’re not doing. And by that time, you might have probably spent more than 10 or $20,000 just on advertising inefficiently, which you could have done efficiently from day one, had you gone with an agency?

Norman Farrar  19:30  

Right? That’s an excellent point. And that, that brings me to a thought with hiring a VA. So, you go you you’re you’re working 25 hours a day, you’re getting up half hour before you go to bed. Eight, it’s you know, it’s the life of an entrepreneur. So you want to reach out and get a VA and you’ve done your interviewing and you’re very satisfied. But then you hire somebody and so many people when they’re doing this for the first Time think that that VA is a super VA that they are, because they’re a VA, they’re an expert in everything, those expectations are so high that they’re from the beginning already set up to fail. And one of the areas that I like to look at, I create a task board. And I create these tasks, I call them the $10 $100 $1,000 $10,000 tasks. And when I’m hiring a VA, those $10 tasks, those are the ones that get repeated, ongoing, that are very easy for me to train just to get some of this off of my back things that I don’t need to do, and that are very easily to be trained. Those are what I’m showing the person, if they’re not an expert in, in Facebook, if they’re not an expert in brand, or corporate identity, they’re not touching that stuff, we can look at it, we can ask them to go in research this or, you know, give us give us some examples of your social media. But we find out usually fairly quickly that these are their strengths, and we’re going to work on those, their weaknesses, we’re going to go and we’re gonna hire separately. So it’s not a single VA that we hire. It’s multiple people. Usually that main VA, that we’re bringing in, you know, we’re kind of going down different rabbit holes here, but that main VA that I’m bringing on board, if they’re 20 hours a week, I’m hiring them 40. If they’re good, I just want them to be with me, I overpay them a little bit. And I just want to make sure that they’re my go to person. They’re the person that can handle all those $10 and up tasks, but they’re reliable, they’re loyal, they have the same personality, but brand tone, brand story, corporate identity. That’s a whole different bird. And I just want to make that clear, because a lot of a lot of people getting into this business make that mistake, would you agree?

Saddam Hasan   22:06  

Totally agree. And it goes with any kind of view, you if, if you want a successful VA, as a business owner, you need to make a decision. Either you have to spend time, or you have to spend money. So just like you mentioned, a successful VA is not going to be an expert at everything, they’re probably going to maybe cross off two or three things from your list. And if you have the money to spend, create that team, you can get amazing top level talent from the market that have worked with established brands or have worked with brands and established them, and they can bring that experience over to your brand. But if again, if your budget constraint or if you don’t have the money necessarily, then you have to spend time with them. And by spending time, I think long videos is one of the best ways to do it. Create an SOP, as you know, any document or any sort of training and just create them on loom and share it with the VAs and it will take time. I’m talking about maybe six months, but they will have to understand and learn your business before they can actually start providing the value that you want them to provide.

Norman Farrar   23:27  

Yeah, I’ve got two comments. One is I get a lot of Facebook messages saying that people are vas. And I’m interested, if somebody says their VA great, like, Give me something to look at, give me a portfolio so I wouldn’t hire anybody without seeing some sort of resume or portfolio. The automatic red flags for me is when I get a message that looks like it’s just been copy pasted that this person is an expert from everything in Amazon, listing, optimize everything. And I just you know, I’ll just say okay, thank you or whatever, you know, and I’ll answer but it’ll just it’ll be red flagged and I won’t even go any further than that. Because I know a single person cannot be an expert in breathing. And if they back to me and they said you know, hey, I can do listing optimization. I’ve done this I’ve got these results. Perfect. You got my you’ve got my interest. Now that being said, being old, losing my hair, I forgot my second point. So let’s carry on.

Saddam Hasan  24:40  

No, but but but you’re right I you know, and that’s the one thing that’s happened in the Amazon space in the last two, three years. A sudden influx of so many VAs just promising the moon to you. They they they have a big laundry list of things they can do for you And sometimes I’m thinking, you know, as an agency, we’re not able to even cover 30% of that, how is this one person? You know, doing all these 20 things? So, yes, you know, it’s Jack of all trades Master of None, right? So you don’t get, you don’t get the value.

Norman Farrar  25:18  

And now, since I gave you that time, I remember my second point. Okay, one of the, one of the other things that I found, and this is just 30 years of experience, is if you’re hiring a few people, so now you’ve hired a variety of people, and you’ve given them a set number of hours, and those hours, you’re saying, Okay, so I’ve got this really great VA, maybe you didn’t hire them full time, maybe it did. But now they’re stretching out. Three people are like, you’ve got your, your Facebook person, you’ve got your social media, you’ve got your, your other VA, your general VA, but it’s so loose, and there’s so much extra time, but nothing gets done well, or it’s always dragged out. So one of the tips that I have, is I like stress, I like putting a little bit of stress, not too much. But if, if I know that there are dated events, there’s one rule in our company, you can’t get fired in our company, except for one thing, if there’s a day to day event, an event that is so critical, that you can’t miss as an automatic termination. And usually, if you have, like if we, if we send this out to anybody, they can’t do it, they come back a few days in advance and say, Hey, I just want to can’t meet this, we can jump on it. But if that date comes and goes without communication, we’ll never use the person again, they’re gone. It’s too critical for us, is too critical for clients, it’s too critical for everybody. But what we like to do is say, Alright, we’ve got this, this person, they’re working eight hours a day, let’s give them seven hours and a half worth of work, let’s give them eight hours and one minute worth of work. Like let’s get them to the point where they need to work, they need to be on the ball. And if they need help, we’re here to help. That way, a little bit of stress, I think goes a long way, not to the point where the person’s pulling out their hair, not where they’re not sleeping at night, but that they have to get the jobs done based on timeframes. And like Amazon posts, okay, well, you have to do five Amazon posts in an hour. And based on a time study, and that should be good. Well, if you’re doing three, something’s wrong, and then we’ll look at it and try to figure out what’s happening. But if we haven’t loosed and we don’t have time associated with it, or somebody’s just doing it at their own time, usually I find the work quality will go down. And the timing is just you’re getting is very lacks, and you just don’t get the same results. So I don’t usually hear that. But I like putting pressure on people.

Saddam Hasan  28:11  

Yeah, and, you know, it goes back to, we have about 125 I think around that team members, right. And at the beginning, we were, you know, scaling, and there were a lot of people, we had to do a lot of hiring in the beginning stages. And what I’ve found out was the exact opposite of what I had thought initially, which was, I thought if I hire people, you know, I’m slowly taking things off of my calendar. So So my time required is going to slowly reduce. But the opposite happened. So every time you introduce a new department, a new team member, or a VA, you’re basically adding things to your plate as well, because you have to figure out onboarding, you have to figure out training, you have to figure out that they’re meeting the deliverables. And you know, you have to get creative thinking about a bonus plan, thinking about team culture, that’s extremely important. The same person can be missing deadlines in your team, but they might be an excellent team player and a different team. So the culture that you set is really important. And it all goes back to whether you have time to set up their day to day scope of work. If you can do that, if you’re only going to start with let’s say three hours a day, and you think okay, slowly, I’m going to work them up to eight hours. No day one they have been introduced in in a bad culture, where they’re relaxed, where they’re just wasting time. So how do you expect them to to put on more stress as they go along? Doing something to consider

Norman Farrar  29:54  

that Yeah, that’s very good information. So let me see we’re getting close to the bottom of the actual we’re at the bottom of the hour. Just a couple of things like we said, we’re going to do something a little bit different this episode. So we’ll have Kelsey hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, we have a mystery word. And for those who entered too early, if you’re on the podcast still, that mystery word is hashtag. One step, hashtag one step. If you mentioned that, then you’ll be asked, What did you do? Did you do something?

Kelsey  30:28  

I already got the second hashtag in there. And the big the big text that goes across the screen that you can see right there. Hashtag video. Hashtag video is today.

Norman Farrar  30:40  

You don’t you’re not on board with me kills. You’re not on board with me. We should have moms in the room right now. Kelsey. She messaged she’s a cup of coffee for me right now. But

Kelsey  30:55  

so I do see comments coming in hashtag video, hashtag one step. Either one of those are fine. For now. We just want to make sure that people that entered today’s giveaway that they are actually interested in

Norman Farrar  31:09  

Telcel. Today, they enter one step or video, I think in this show, because it’s the first time they get entered. That’s that’s what I just said. And I’m waiting for Yanni to make some funny comment here. But that’s what the rules are now. Okay, so this is our first time. So if it sounds a little bit confusing it because it is. But we will do hashtag we’ll have Kelsey, and then the mystery word is video or one step. So Dan, why don’t you tell us about the giveaway? It’s awesome.

Saddam Hasan  31:41  

Yeah, for sure. So anyone who gets a chance to win this will get a free starter video. And it can be any type of video that they want. Just nothing with models. Nothing too crazy. But a really good one that works well on Amazon is a demonstration style, where, you know, we show a few features as infographics. And yeah, just in different studio environments. So that’s going to be the free giveaway for today. All right, and rad

Norman Farrar  32:09  

if you win this one, oh, my gosh, you’re going to be taken off the wheel. But we’ll let you enter. Anyways. Yeah, he’s won a ton lately. All right. So this is fantastic. That’s what we’re going to be doing. But let’s go to one of our sponsors now. And then we’ll come right back. Legion is your go to community where you can learn, grow and build your Amazon and E commerce business. As you know, being an entrepreneur can be lonely. Now you can share struggles, build a network and celebrate your successes. And guess what our community is free. All you have to do is head over to our Facebook group to join. You can also watch us on our YouTube channel at private label Legion. So you can stay up to date with tips, strategies and advice from other experts in the industry. Okay, remember one thing to get all this great information, follow us subscribe and ring that bell so you can get automatic notifications. Okay, let’s talk a little bit different. Now. Let’s talk about the images and the videos that you’re talking about. We’ve talked about going to other countries for this and the one that you talked about was China. Why, when? And how can you go to China to get photography done or videos?

Saddam Hasan  33:33  

Okay, so Yeah, good question. So let’s start with the why first. And it’s a very simple, straightforward answer. Most of the manufacturing that people do is from China. So it’s, it makes sense to do it from China. Because when you’re manufacturing, by the time you get your batch, and it’s already on the way to Amazon, you have to send out one sample to the production facility. And it’s a hassle. Whereas within China, if you ask the supplier to send out a sample to any location that sometimes they’ll even do it for free. So there’s no cost to it, things get done much faster. And that’s where the wind comes in. You can literally do it when you’re maybe doing sample inspection or before when you’re just your inventory is almost ready. And it’s being ready to be shipped out to the the Amazon warehouse. You have a good one to two months lead time there. So it’s much easier to do all the branding stuff within that window. And that’s where you can descend it to a studio in China. And yeah, where I guess so one of our studios is in China as well. And the primary reason we introduced that studio was just to give that additional convenience to our brands that we partner with you Giving them a facility just out of China, where their manufacturing happens. Now, one thing worthy of mentioning here is, we have access to different types of models. There’s to fit different demographics, right, because if you’re selling in the US market, you might not necessarily want to work with, you know, models out of China native to China. So just having that extra flexibility in the portfolio for models is an added benefit.

Norman Farrar  35:32  

I know that Apple lobby and I were working with some studios over in China, and it was great, because we could get all the videos that we wanted set up. If it was a demo, or if it was the benefits or how to, we’d have to pay or even photography, it was fine. It was less expensive. And we just were able to get this month or two, three, before, you know it was selling on Amazon. So we could we could at least have that information. Now the other thing, I don’t know, how great it was for infographics, we just brought the product photography back. And we would do the infographics ourself, but like you said, a lot of these photography studios have access to all sorts of different models. It doesn’t have to be Chinese. But you can use all different people whatsoever, just depending on the studio. So we found it to be very effective, very cost effective. And the quality was there too. So there were a few really good examples. Or sorry, just reasons for going to China. Now with your with your studio, like let’s say that we’re working with AMC one step, would we have to tell you that in advance? Or would you just automatically know that the the products are being produced, you’re going to work with a photographer over there?

Saddam Hasan  37:05  

Yeah, so that’s a preference we provide to the brand’s any rep that’s in touch will usually ask them what studio they want. They prefer. So we have studios in in four different countries. And depending on on client preference, that’s where we go it. Usually if it does end up being China, sometimes we do suggest it as well, as an example if it’s an oversized product, you don’t want to pay a lot for shipping. Or you know, we’re Canadians, right norm so haven’t heard you say a yet. They I have the Tim Hortons cup too. But yeah, the weather’s harsh in winter, and a lot of the outdoor shoots we have to either postpone to the summer months, or that’s when we usually suggest that they should be shipped to the Chinese studio. That studio location is on an island. So it’s beautiful. The weather’s always great. It’s just like California. So yeah, for any restricted shoots, we prefer to go to the China suit. All right, very

Norman Farrar  38:13  

good. What about and I’ve heard different things about this, but 3d renderings? Do you do a lot of 3d renderings? Is it ju  st packaging? What are your suggestions?

Saddam Hasan  38:24  

Yeah, we, I would say almost 80% of the projects that come in now do involve 3d rendering. Ain’t no 80%. So every year, just more and more people gravitate towards it. And for a good reason. I’ll tell you a story. So I was, you know, I got married like six, seven months ago. And as a wedding gift, my wife decided, you know, I should get a luxury watch. So this was the first time I was in the market for a luxury watch. Usually, I spent about 200 300 I think I can get a decent sized watch. If you are a luxury watch, fan, you know, just don’t hate on me. But I just never got that market, right. And I remember having this tutor, watch catalog and I was flipping through it and just picked a few watches. They were so spectacular the images. But when I went to the store, I was a bit disappointed the reality the wash actually didn’t look like the pictures. So I did a bit of digging around, you know, looked at how to do product photography for watches. And usually to get one of those images created. You need to spend about 15 to 20 hours of production and post production time to achieve that perfect image. But then I got even more curious and I went to this product photography, Facebook group, and I found out people are just 3d rendering the product and they’re also 3d rendering the environment And it was spectacular like, looking at that watch, I was convinced. So, the reason I brought up luxury watches is because it is a luxury product. And every time there’s a luxury product, it is so much more advantageous if you go the 3d rendering route, because there’s two big steps to it right, it started just creating a mock up of a product, you also then have to think about the texture and lighting. That’s what makes the magic happen when you get the texture, right, and the lighting, so any product, let’s say I have an iPhone, it’s going to appear differently in this lighting. But if I’ve set it up in a moody more dramatic lighting, it’s going to have a different effect on you visually. And that’s where the lighting creates an illusion of premiumness. And when we’re doing the 3d rendering, once we create that markup, then we have to figure out okay, how do we want to bounce off the lights from this product in order to make it appeal to the luxury demographic? And so the question becomes, when do you really get an advantage or benefit out of 3d rendering. So there’s, there’s a few best practices, if again, your packaging is amazing, it’s luxurious, go for 3d rendering, because that will set apart your product from the others. If your product, let’s say, has very advanced engineering, and you need to show a blog shot, let’s say we have a water filtration bottle, and you need to show the inner mechanism, 3d rendering can achieve that you can’t really dismantle and do a product photography have done anything with extra glare anything with extra shininess. Usually, it’s hard to capture that without the glare in product photography. So 3d rendering, again, becomes a really good example. And then lastly, this oversized products. So we had this cover for an RV, and we had to literally get an RV for that shoot. And it still had wrinkles, right? Because you can’t really iron out the wrinkles from the entire cover that covers the entire RV. So we instead did a 3d render of that. And, again, the images were much better than the competitors. And we were just able to stand out more. So yeah, there are a lot of times where 3d rendering just creates that extra premiumness or enhances the image so much that normal product photography just can’t compete with it.

Norman Farrar  42:45  

We’ve, we’ve seen this. And you can you can go to any if you just go into pillows, or if you go into sheets, or you can go to dog blankets. And you’ll see the people who don’t do the 3d rendering. It makes it a night and day difference. Like if pillows for example, you can tell the ones that are rendered, and then the ones that are just a straight product shot with a little bit of photo touch up. It’s it’s night and day. And you know you the wrinkles and natural wrinkles that happened in sheets. If you unfold them. Like apparel, it will make a huge difference. Just a quality like you’re saying, and we’re a big fan of 3d rendering as well. You know, it’s funny, I’ve never thought about it for watches, but watches or anything with Alec is really hard to photograph properly. You know, to get the that quality to come out. You have to be a heck of a photo of product photographer to to bring out that. That’s it. That’s really a specialty. Now, I noticed that we’ve got three questions. I am short on time today. So I got I, Kelsey, I have until about 1255. So to about seven minutes. Can we go to the questions?

Kelsey  44:10  

Yeah, for sure. So let’s see, we had a couple about managing VAs and best practices. So from go hand in hand, what is the best way to manage a VA and know the time being charged is actually the time being worked?

Saddam Hasan  44:26  

Yeah, so it’s hard, right? Because it’s a remote position. You need tracking. There are software like Hubstaff, where you can implement it takes screenshots. I don’t recommend it. It just conveys the point that you don’t trust the person. Absolutely. Yeah, it for me it’s more KPIs based, right. And that’s where my formal education maybe helping a bit. You know, I was doing a lot of performance management but any key performance indicator, let’s say, a va norm just give me a task. Maybe I can explain it In that constant Amazon posts, Amazon posts, right? So a very clear KPI would be how many you need in a month. So let’s say you guys decide that you need 10 posts in a month, you need to figure out how much time it takes to create one Amazon post. So how much time does the research take? How much time does it take to actually design that? How much time does it take to photograph it, there’s three tasks you figured out, you now broken it down, create, like a spreadsheet where you can track, ask that person to track each and every post, how much time did it take to do all these three things and come up with one post, and then over a month, you can analyze the data, okay, it took 30 hours, that’s fine, you can pay whatever their rate is, in fact, just ignore them, I like to pay a bit extra in the form of bonuses, just so it incentivizes them. And after the month, if you’re not happy with the progress, if you think it should take 25 hours instead, figure it out with them, see, see the little tweaks that he can make, or he or she can make to achieve 25 hours. And that’s how you keep on going. It’s a constant optimization that you have to do.

Norman Farrar  46:17  

Yeah, it’s a great way to start a relationship to is, if all of a sudden you’re slapping Time Doctor or something on there, it just brings down that trust level or that confidence. So for us anyways, we don’t we don’t do any of that we track very similar to you. And what we’ll do is at the end of the day, let’s say if they do nine instead of 10, we do we just do a sit down, you know, let’s figure this one out, and see if we can improve it or maybe our time was out. Now one other thing we do let people know right during the interview process is, don’t be offended. If we do a time study. We want to know what it’s going to take. So if we asked you to monitor every 15 minutes what you’re doing over this one week period, it’s not because we’re trying to overlook or micromanage you, we just want to understand the process, come back and work. So properly, give you timelines.

Saddam Hasan  47:22  

Yeah. And I would like to add something to it. When it comes to improvements, this is a big thing that I’ve realized across the last three, four years, is you might have 10 ideas that you can give to the VA to improve on a particular task or skill. But ask them instead, how do we improve? How do we go from 30 to 25 hours? Do you have any ideas? Usually what I find is, when they’re the ones pitching the ideas, they kind of It’s a trap because they commit to doing those improvements. And and basically, you’re you’re just holding them accountable to that whatever they said, instead of you just dropping down every idea and maybe it’s pursued maybe son, so

Norman Farrar  48:06  

Good point. All right, kills. Next question.

Kelsey  48:10  

Okay, next one. Let’s do this one from Red Beard. Can you 3d render prepackaged food products?

Saddam Hasan  48:17  

A good one? Yeah. So that’s when I missed out any prepackaged items, whether it’s supplements, foods, protein powder, there’s there’s a lot of different ones. No scuff marks, no imperfections. No nothing. It’s just spectacular, beautiful. You guys can see it even like spices. So anything that’s prepackaged, whether it’s a food item or not, can should definitely be 3d rendered.

Kelsey  48:47  

Okay, great. And just a reminder, for everyone entering today’s will have Kelsey, you need to have both hashtags in your entry. So that’s hashtag will have Kelsey or hashtag video, or hashtag, one step. So any of those three hashtags, just we need at least two, just to know that you watch this episode, and you’re entering for this giveaway, specifically. And then our last question, read just was asking about Amazon service providers, listing as VA. I don’t know if you need more context for this.

Saddam Hasan  49:25  

Yeah, not sure. How about Amazon service? Yeah, I might need a bit more on this.

Kelsey  49:32  

Okay. So rad, if you could just, if there’s any other things you want to add to that question, just let us know. But anyways, I think that’s it. I know. Norm you have got a cut off time today. So we could probably move on to the wheel. If that sounds good. Okay, let’s do it. Alright, so first, a quick word from our sponsor. And here we go. A big

Norman Farrar  49:55  

thank you to our sponsor startup club, the largest club on clubhouse. With over 790,000 members and growing, they’re one of the world’s largest communities supporting the startup ecosystem, from founders to those wishing to work for a startup and everything in between. You can find them at www dot startup dot club for blogs, recordings, and a calendar of upcoming shows. And on the clubhouse app, just search startup club for daily shows 24/7 You can also now listen to their show the serial entrepreneur club podcast on Apple and Spotify to stop by to 

Kelsey  50:44  

Alright, okay, so it is the will of Kelsey. Here we go. Enjoy all right, so thank you everyone, for the wheel of Coulson. Let me just pull up the wheel. And we’ll give this a spin. All right. So here we go. shuffle these all up. And let’s see who Today’s winner is for a free starter video. Looks like Marsha. Marsha, Marsha. Right? So Marsha, I have your information. So this will be an easy one to connect with you. Thank you everyone, for joining. And we might be doing these little keyword hashtags in the future as well. So just keep an eye on that. Make sure you’re watching. And, yeah. So what’s the best way people can get a hold of you if they have questions or want to get in touch?

Saddam Hasan  51:53  

For sure. Yeah, so our websites, www dot AMZ wants to have.com You guys can also reach out directly through email info at MZ wants to have.com or, you know, any of our socials, our Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn is pretty much including YouTube is just AMZ one step. So.

Norman Farrar  52:14  

All right, very good. So unfortunately, I’ve got to take off, I have a podcast I gotta be on. So I am going to be reaching out to you. I’ve got a bunch of things that I need to talk about, but I’ll contact you later on. Thank you for being on. It’s been a really great podcast. Hopefully we can get you back on talking about a few other topics. And other than that, I think that’s it for me kills.

Kelsey  52:41  

Alright, so thanks again, Saddam, and we’ll be talking to you later.

Saddam Hasan  52:45  

Thank you so much for having me guys. Always a pleasure to talk to fellow Canadian. So.

Norman Farrar  52:50  

All right, we’ll see you later. Okay, everybody, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Sorry, I but I do have to leave. Kelsey, why don’t you close it out?

Kelsey  53:01  

All right. See you later. All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining today’s episode. I hope you guys enjoy it. As usual. If you haven’t yet, please smash those like buttons, give us those thumbs up, we really do appreciate it. And also, if you’re not part of the Facebook group, that is the lunch with Norm, Amazon, FBA and E commerce collective. That’s where you can get all the updates, we’re also going to be we’re thinking about starting up an email campaign for you guys letting you know, when we’re going live. The guests that are coming out the topics what we’ve learned from them, it’s going to be great, even some giveaways too. So more information about that we’re kind of looking for a bigger, kind of rebrand, kind of have some fun. So thanks again, everyone for joining. So make sure you join the group. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe. And I think that’s it. So if you have any questions at all, if you want to know, maybe the guest, if you have guest suggestions, topics, you can always reach out to me either on Facebook, or my email is k at lunch with noren.com. We’ve got some really exciting things happening over the next couple weeks and months. So we’re excited to let you know what’s in store for you guys. And yeah, hope you guys enjoyed. And have a great day everyone. Thank you so much for being a part of the community. We really do appreciate you guys tuning in. I know we do. We go live three times a week, and it’s a lot but we really do enjoy seeing you guys pop in and watch with us. So have a great day everyone and we’ll talk to you later.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai