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Episode: 211
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Vandana Rastogi – Norm Farrar’s Senior Project Manager
Subtitle: “Project Management & SOPs: Keys to Entrepreneur Success”
Final Show Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_doUSUTlis&list=PLVIz0IewRSqDUVXG_IAXsVx9ZWE8_Vanz&index=7
Back on Lunch with Norm…On today’s show we have Vandana Rastogi, Norm’s Project Manager. Vandana will be talking about training and communication of Virtual Assistants for you business, We will discuss what the structure looks like, the required tools, and how to build a performance based culture for your employees.
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!
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Norman Ferrar 0:02
Hey everybody’s Norman Farrar aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm the Amazon FBA and ecommerce podcast.
Norman Ferrar 0:22
Okay, we had a bit of a change today unfortunately John till he couldn’t make it today he was traveling. So instead of going into an airport lounge and trying to make this work without we’ll, we’ll reschedule and bring on another guest. This is gonna be fun. Anyways, we’ve got two things happening today. Shane is going to come on Shane Aglow, from PR reach is going to come on for five minutes. And then we’re going to be talking about SOP, SOP management. How do you build that team? Anyways, it’s gonna be great. My senior project manager who was on before, and just got a ton of engagement vendo, Vandana Risto, he’s going to be answering a bunch of questions and going through the process. So we’re going to be covering a lot of things that we didn’t get to the last time and looking forward to it. But before we get to this, I just wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor for this episode. Solarize, Solarize is your comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs. It’s everything you need to grow and scale your Amazon business in just one click. For more information, contact demon his team over at solarized calm and remember solarize is just within one hour. All right. Where is the man?
Kelsey 1:48
Hello,step up from boy in squire. But I’ll say
Norman Ferrar 1:52
It’s still good.I like to learn.
Kelsey 1:54
But yes, welcome, everyone. Welcome to the show. It’s gonna be a fun episode and I can’t wait for it. We just have a few housekeeping things before we get started. First off, of course, we have our seller poll. So please head over to sellerpoll.com and vote for the Lunch with Norm podcast, we’d really appreciate the support and get the beard nation in on it. So Aaron is here. I’ll leave the banner going. Also smash those buttons and share this out to your ecommerce and Amazon friends. Also, if you’re new to the show, we do have a great Facebook group community. And that’s lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and Ecommerce collective. And you can find that on Facebook.
Norman Ferrar 2:41
That’s also the main name.
Kelsey 2:44
Yes, yes, that is correct. I’m joking. But yeah. But um, yeah, it’s gonna be a great episode. Super excited for Vandana and Shane. And yeah, we can just jump into it.
Norman Ferrar 2:57
Okay, very good. So did the guy even show this here? He’s here. Okay. So just one sec, one sec. All right. So if you do have any questions, make sure you throw them over into the comment section. We’ll try to get to them today. There’s lots of really great and all I get to talk to Vandana directly, so she doesn’t know what she’s up for, but she took this out last minute. So anyway, this is gonna be a lot of fun. Whoo. Sit back, relax. She’s, I know she’s backstage just going oh, no, what is he going to do? But sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Where is Mr. aglow?
Shane Aglow 3:39
I’m here.
Norman Ferrar 3:41
And you don’t know what I’m going to do to you either. So
Shane Aglow 3:46
just come by blood, say my headphones just died. The mic will work. So you’ve got me raw in an echoey? Room? I’m sorry. I just, I’ve just just combined believe
Norman Ferrar 3:56
I’m prepared?
Shane Aglow 3:59
Well, I would say that our goes.
Norman Ferrar 4:04
So this is short notice to we have our staff meetings on Mondays. And you were telling me about something that Michelle came back with Michelle Harris, who heads up our public relations department. And I thought, wow, this is really cool. I had not heard about this. I don’t think anybody in the industry has heard about something like this. This first time I like when you brought it up. It was like, Michelle flew to New York and cut this deal. And I just want to let people know about it. We don’t pitch in that’s not the purpose of this podcast. But we want to tell you about an opportunity that’s out there. And if you’re interested, great. If you’re not interested, that’s fine too. But it is something that put it this way. We’re going out to our brands and our clients and making sure that they Take part in this. So Shane, why don’t you just explain, like for a couple of minutes, and then we’ll move on to Vandana. But I think it’s important enough to talk about
Shane Aglow 5:07
Sure, sure. So I mean, you know, appear each where we were a big part of what we do is media placements, right. So when you’ve got a brand or products or a service or whatever you got, we try and get you that brand exposure, build authority online and trust and get your product placements. And just general media PR attention, right? drives traffic builds authority, those search results, all those great things. So that’s wonderful. So here we are, we’re plugging along doing our thing. It’s really growing really getting great. And we’ve got so many great relationships with media.
Norman Ferrar 5:43
across across, we’re talking, we deal directly with the meat like writers and
Shane Aglow 5:50
yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, we I mean, you know, Michelle has been has been doing this for nearly 30 years. So she spent a lot of time relationships. And now we’ve got a team of about a dozen people. And they’re all kind of, we’re all pointing the same direction. And what happened was, that’s great. And so we’ve got this going on, and we’ve been having great success keeps getting better. But Michelle was in New York, a week or two weeks, I can’t remember. But just recently, and she has a lot, a lot of appointments with different media. Drew Barrymore show Rachael Ray Fox and Friends, New York Times. Some people from Forbes Chatelaine, Vogue, Baba by all these big media, that’s wonderful. And we were basically talking to them about our existing clients and getting them placed in their, their websites, or magazines or whatever, television, Kings product placements. But a big part of what Michelle was doing, there was, of course, just building more relationships, right? You know, people come and go from these places. So sometimes it’s important to refresh and renew those alliances, and, and these media outlets are always doing new things they’ve always been. So for example, the New York Times, well, they’ve got wirecutter, they’ve got the cut, the good, they’ve got all kinds of different affiliate things that they own. And they have, you can get exposure to. So it was just basically a relationship building trip for her as well as getting our clients placements. But we didn’t really expect to get it as good as what happened. And what happened was, Michelle has really formed these great strategic alliances with the actual writers, the actual journalists and writers and the people who are typically creating the content placement. So what happened was literally over the weekend, when she was following up, we basically got an offer from will about about a dozen of them, saying, hey, if we want to get our products, any of our clients products placed in any of these heavyweight media organizations before Black Friday, we can do that this week. In First Come First sir, we can put them at the number one spot, and a lot of the times these look like listicles or reviews. So you know, you know, New York Times or workout or whatever, we review the you know, the top 20 are top five gift gadgets or kitchen gadgets or children’s toys or women’s health product, you know, whatever, like they’ve got all these categories. And basically we can, we can guarantee we can guarantee you placement before Black Friday in one of these outlets. And I think I’ve got the list right here. So we’ve got today.com we’ve got Forbes, we’ve got a USA Today Cosmo, Vogue, bon appetit, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, the sun, the cut, wired, Wall Street Journal, and Fortune Magazine. And I’ll just let you know quickly the categories most of them are like men’s gifts, women’s gifts, foodie gifts, health and wellness. That’s a big one. tech gifts and fitness gifts, kids gift ideas. Kids gift only. I think that’s about it. So I mean, if that isn’t kick, but the most incredible thing ever. That I don’t know what you’re looking for.
Kelsey 9:27
Your unmute norm
Norman Ferrar 9:31
Why did you put me on mute squire.
Shane Aglow 9:33
Is this is this your first podcast?
Norman Ferrar 9:35
It is? It is? Well, it’s my son’s first podcast as producer. So it wasn’t me. I don’t know. Okay, so like I was saying before he got so rudely muted. That we try this as it was a borderline thing that you know, should I bring Shane on? Should I not bring Shane on? Because, you know, this is an option. tunity but anyways, it’s there. If you’re interested in it. I’ve never heard of anything like it. Michelle, I just heard about it today in our meeting, I wanted to pass it on, take it for what it’s worth, the cost of it is what? 1500 bucks, right.
Shane Aglow 10:14
1500 bucks a placement. I mean, typically, if you contact these magazines, if you want a product placement, they probably start around 10 grand I would imagine. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, this isn’t a crippling, but the thing is, it has to be done now because it’s, we basically have to have the information into the writer this week, in order to be published before Black Friday to be guaranteed posted for Black Friday. So it’s just one of those things serendipitous just kind of came up, it was over the weekend. Got these spots, I know that will get filled up. Obviously, we have limited spots, you know, typically four or five, maybe some of them, we can maybe push and get seven or eight. But for the most part, it’s just a handful with each publication. That’s
Norman Ferrarr 10:55
per publication. Yeah. So what we’ll try to do, because, again, this is all new. But we’ll see if we could do this afterwards, too, because this sounds like it would be great. Just ongoing for sales for sellers. Okay, Shane. So this was a last minute thing I just asked you to come on and talk about that. Thank you for coming on. And you weren’t even that annoying. So I really appreciate that. All right, buddy. See you later. See you later. Okay, so now we can get into it. Like I said, we were talking about that this morning and it was just seemed like it was timely. Um, you know, if you can get do that and get one of those magazines for that price. But like I said, Vandana Risto. He’s going to be coming on now to join me and Vandana or are you? You’re not gonna make me sit here and just talk to myself?
Vandana Rastogi 11:51
Oh, obviously not. Obviously, I am waiting for you to invite me back on this. Oh,
Norman Ferrar 11:56
okay. All right, very good. So Vandana is my senior project manager, she takes care of everything, she delegates everything to everybody. She is a expert when it comes to this sort of stuff. And that’s policies and procedures, getting them up, working together with different tools to make sure that nothing gets lost. And I wanted to talk about that today. So the last one we were on was kind of an impromptu, you know, appearance, just, hey, let’s let’s talk about SOPs. And that was one of our biggest downloaded episodes, people want to hear about this. And anyways, we can get started with this, but I want to do the hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, because it is a I think it’s one of our best gifts. Because I know what you can provide. And it’s pretty simple. It’s a console, after you hear everything today, it’s a console with Vandana about your SOPs, how to get them organized, what to do, if you want Vandana to help put together a policy and procedure for you, if you have never done it, she’ll organize it for you should get you started. And that’s an hour long consult with it. So I think it’s great hashtag we’ll have Kelsey. And also, if you want to enter twice, just take two people. So first of all, um, as a, as a VA, or contractor. If I were to hire you, should I expect you to be an expert in everything, Amazon.
Vandana Rastogi 13:39
That’s what not we focus on. So mostly, we provide a lot of training, a lot of SOPs that we have, so we have, you know, full course of things that a person can, you know, learn and grow with us. So that’s not what we completely expect.
Norman Ferrar 13:55
So you don’t have to be the the expert, the person that we hire, so part time contractors or VAs can come on and be the expert in what they do, but they can see how we do
Vandana Rastogi 14:08
Norman Ferrar 14:11
Okay, we’re talking about timing. When is it small? So you’ve and you were like, you’ve been in the Amazon game? When is it? The proper timing to say, Okay, I got to get somebody.
Vandana Rastogi 14:26
Oh, yes. So, um, you know, like, it is very important to follow each and everything that Amazon says because it is actually in a way designed to help the sellers themselves. So it’s not only that, you know, you think that you can do it and then you do it. So it’s about either you take time you learn everything or else you get and somebody who can do that for you so that you can focus more on, you know, the business side. So that’s very important to understand, but I’d say it is very helpful and a person who is willing to grow on Amazon should totally have
Norman Ferrar 15:01
We just brought on a client. And they, they had they made the decision. And it was a tough decision because you’re, they have sales, let’s say, and this client has over $100,000 a month in sales. They want to grow their business. But it is really hard saying, Okay, I want to have somebody else come in and help me run my business. Because there’s no time. You’re already running at 25 hours a day. And you know, how do I bring in somebody? How do I get them trained? And, you know, where do you even start with that? So if you had to start, they gave advice to somebody that does not have a VA right now, with your SOPs. When does that come into play?
Vandana Rastogi 15:47
More or less, I would say that it starts every like, you have to start everything from the start. So when you run late, it is more or less like you have to cover a long distance, then, and you have to cover the ones that you left behind. So I would again, say that it is very helpful to have a VA because most probably they are trained, they know how to do this, they have been through the procedures, and it is very easy and convenient to get their help and get your things going and have your other part covered. And having SOPs is the most most important thing.
Norman Ferrar 16:22
Right? Well, you know what, I don’t know, I think SOPs or policies and procedures is important. But probably communication is the most important part. You know, how do you communicate? When do you communicate? And do you have a regular Monday morning meeting? You know, what channels are you communicating with? One of the and I go through this all the time, like there’s how many channels of communication? You got Facebook coming in telegram coming in WhatsApp coming in WeChat coming in Skype coming in. You name it slack, and it could drive you crazy. So I mean, we we have a single line of communication. We don’t, I don’t think you email me at all. It’s it’s one channel, it’s no, no email, I don’t get email from you. And I do have somebody else. Kathy, that checks my inbox. So if there is something important, she’ll make sure I hear of it. So I don’t even have to worry about that, which is really great. But you go ahead. And you we talk specifically on Skype. That’s just a channel that we talk on. All the other communication channels are done on fronds, and that’s at meet fronds. I think it’s calm. But that channels everything into one channel, whether it’s LinkedIn, or all those others that I mentioned. But that’s the first thing, right? Communication.
Vandana Rastogi 17:57
Totally agreed. So if there is no proper communication, there’s, it’s like not possible at all to move forward. So that’s very important. And yes, we follow everything on Skype, particularly. But we do have the different teams we do have. So we follow slack, too, sometimes. And yes, I never say I’m just talking about
Norman Ferrar 18:16
you and me. But what you do with everybody else? I don’t know, I got up to you know,
Vandana Rastogi 18:24
twice, I guess that’s only when you’re traveling or you don’t check your Skype, and there’s something very urgent that you want to look at.
Norman Ferrar 18:31
Yeah, I always check my Skype. Yes. And the other part to this is in that communication is the training. So when you came on board, I think probably that first week was just us training at different parts of the day. And just okay, this is you know, how I do it, have you done it? And one way is not just the only way. So I might be doing it a certain way that I’m comfortable in. And you came back and said, Well, what happens if we do it this way? And completely wide open? Right. And I think if I shut you down, right at the beginning, like is, you know, that sucks, you know? Oh, no, that, you know, if I would have said that, then you wouldn’t have had this ability to do your thing. Yeah, you know, there are times that we don’t talk for a little while. You know, and you just do your thing. You you go out there and you do it. And if you do make a mistake. You make a mistake, it’s a mistake, right? We learn and we go back to the SOPs, so the SOPs are okay, it’s the same that you do with everybody else on the team. It’s okay, where did we make the mistake? Okay, let’s show me show me the step where it is step 19. What went wrong? It probably was me and my training to you. Let’s fix it. Let’s get it going. And you’re Coming to me, by the way with the solution, I am not going to you with a solution. You are saying, Okay, what happens if we do this? And if it’s if it’s if you maybe don’t have a grip on that, like maybe Oh, no, there’s a miscommunication. This is what it’s about. I’ll help you with the solution. But I don’t want to be the person giving all the answers. And one of the things that I think is really important, I forgot who brought this up the other day, but 80% is good. If you make like, if, if Kelsey is doing a post, or one of his team, that he’s got four or five people working with him, if they do an adequate job, and it’s good, why criticize? Why go in unless it’s blatant, you know, if I, if there’s a mixed font, or I don’t like, I’ll go in and make a suggestion. But you’ve got to be able to, you know, basically spread your wings and do your thing. Right? If I was micromanaging, that would suck you I don’t think he’s like that too much.
Vandana Rastogi 21:04
Yeah, no, no, no, and you micromanaging? No way? No way. That would have been so difficult. Yeah. And this is the best way. So we go back to policies and procedures, we check the status, we see what was missing, or we see what went the other way, or what was changed, like, either we are dependent on some software, or some, I don’t know, maybe Amazon and then they change this way. And it went on to, you know, an extra step. And that’s why we missed it. And we have to date it. So yes, that’s the very important part. So every time we have any task or anything, so SOPs, policies and procedures are getting updated all the time. And that’s very important. And that’s
Norman Ferrar 21:44
important. Yeah, absolutely important. Now, we have, we actually have more now, but we have a total of about 55. People, Tony, but it’s broken down into senior project managers, who go to project managers who go to whoever they have to go to, which kind of leads me to, you know, this, this next comment, which is, you know, training, training, new people. So we talked this morning, so Kathy was on, who is my assistant with you this morning, and we talked about training other people. And you know, and we’re going to get into this in a second. But making sure everybody on the team knows how to do and it’s really called the policy and procedure, but knows how to create the policy and procedures for the department, enter them, get the project manager to say it’s okay, like this looks good. And then pushing it up to you just to make sure that everything is correct. And then it gets implemented. So, and this is something really cool. So I don’t know if I want to admit this, but the training and these webinars I don’t listen to. So I’ll either give a lot of times I just said over and over emails in the middle of the night over to you and say, either you or somebody watched this summarize and how can we implement? And so you get you get nailed when you wake up in the morning and see all this stuff. But yeah, you know, why? If you have to spend 45 minutes or a day, or whatever, it is half a day, listening to a webinar. You have somebody on your team, do that, summarize it, and then create a policy and procedure or add it in? Maybe this is step 15 and 16, which wasn’t there before. And I’m telling you right now, I’ve got a great example. And we’ve talked about this, the four tools on Amazon, that the I call it the four hidden tools, right? We there’s four tools that can help you with your listing optimization on Amazon. And we want to make sure that those are into our policies and procedures, not only for my brands, but for the clients brands. Yes, right. Okay, so let’s talk about the and by the way, if you had any horror stories, or if something’s happened to stop you from hiring a VA, or contractor or creating your SOPs, if you’ve had a hurdle, throw a comment, tell us your nightmare. Okay, and we’ll see what we can do to fix it out. And of course, if you have any questions as well, and Dan is here, and she’s excellent at what she does. Let’s talk about the What’s that?
Vandana Rastogi 24:44
I’ll try my best to answer.
Norman Ferrar 24:46
You try your best you’ll answer it. Let’s talk about the anatomy of a policy and procedure. So as you know, I have I’m very specific with filestore Right. Yes. And that’s very important. Right. So within our Google Google Drive, we work with a workspace, we have a very specific structure for not only policies and procedures, but for everything, everything. Within that policy and procedure, we will create the policy and procedure, we’ll create a template and we’ll create a training video ad, right. So the person can look at that video, if they still don’t get it, then they can go back to the project manager within the policy and procedure. Let’s go through the anatomy of that. So step one, we have to have buy in, we have to have everybody understand why it’s important. And we mean, we joke about this right? But the the policy of coffee, making perfect coffee, right? And why was it so But why was it buy in it? Like nobody, everybody would think is really stupid. But once they hear the buy in, and the reasons why it’s important that we know how to make a good cup of coffee, then people kind of go, wow, I get it. And you know, and every time we tell that story to anybody new, we just did we just did last night, you got like, What are you talking about? Paula, five page policy on how to make a cup of coffee. And then at the end of it, everyone almost every time says, I get it, I understand why. So the anatomy starts with that buy in? And you know, why do we why do we need? Why do we need this policy in place? You know, the second part to this would be the acronyms or the definition. So you want to explain a little bit about why we do that?
Vandana Rastogi 26:46
Oh, yes, totally. So first of all, we start with the reason like why are we writing this SOP? So this is the first step to figure out why is this important? And it’s not that you know, somebody just is this step one to 10. And somebody goes follows us and does does and it’s end of the story? No, we want everybody looking at it, even not even doing it, even if they are looking at it to understand its importance. Why is it done? Why it is required? Like is it something that could be in a scene offer something? No, that’s why we have an SOP. So they should understand this importance. And that’s the reason why we have why we are writing this SOP SOP, the definition of it, how and then like it has a lot of steps. But that is why the main reason we started, we want everybody in the team to learn to know each and everything and have to you know, go through the steps later on.
Norman Ferrar 27:42
And a lot of the times, you know, people, let’s say we’re having a meeting, they don’t want to be singled out that they don’t know what an asin is or what it stands for. So it’s there, they can look at it, they can understand it, the next part to this would be their prerequisites. And like an idea for that would be, let’s say if it’s maybe it’s user permissions, that’s the easiest one. So, okay, you have to be able to sign in to Amazon Seller Central. But if you don’t know how to do it, then here’s a link to that SOP, which will show you how to log in to user permission or sorry, into Seller Central. The next one might be okay, set up user permissions for PPC. So while you’re in there, you have to go to User Permissions. Here’s the link, in case you don’t know how to do it. Oh, you have to sign into helium 10. So there’s three prerequisites for for this one particular policy and procedure. If you don’t understand it, it’s right there. So the next step is the SOP. So we talked about the policy and procedure and SOP a standard operating procedure is, is in that policy and procedure. It’s the step by step process about moving forward. And something that I think is extremely important is the amount of steps. The mistake that I made at the beginning was I would go you know, here’s one to 10 steps. Okay, that one to 10 steps is now one to 20. And that would be because we would get people making mistakes, saying Oh, like we would show sign into Seller Central, go click manage, manage permissions, user permissions. And we wouldn’t show the step of the mouse going up, clicking Settings, drop down clicking user, you know, we do that now. And that way it cuts out a lot of the steps. The thing that I tell everybody is that if you’re if you don’t know what this is, if you gave this to your sister, brother, whoever, who knows nothing about Amazon, could they do the process? And if it’s a yes, great, you know if it’s not, and by the way, I will talk about tools later on, we do this manually, like we’ll do, we’ll go in and we’ll take a screenshot, will you snag it it will, you know, highlight will blur out sensitive information. But you can also use and that actually, this is Vinay was on last week from process street. So, he started talking about, you know, standard operating procedures, how he does it. Anyway, that’s something that you can use, that can automatically help you out, rather than doing this manually. So, the next, the next step to this, so you go down and you methodically go through each click, and screenshot and write a little bit of text. And at the end, now you have to figure out who is who’s the person that’s doing it, and who you’re reporting to? Yes. So, you know, let’s say that Kelsey, so he’s got some somebody in social media, that’s Pope posting something in LinkedIn. And they have to do that, well, who are they responsible to? For? And then they’re responsible to reporting to Kelsey.
Norman Ferrar 31:35
And so if anything else happens, maybe Kelsey is responsible to talking to you about something, but it’s telling you exactly who is responsible. Yeah, then it’s compliance. You know, if somebody makes a mistake, okay, let’s, let’s talk about compliance. What happens? Where do they find, like, when, what is the structure, we have a three strike system, three strike system doesn’t mean you’re fired three strike system could mean just getting you away from a task if you don’t like it. First, the first strike is basically education. Okay. Like I said, it’s probably on us that we didn’t put something into the SOP, the second strike is, okay, same thing, maybe the SOP isn’t refined enough. Third Strike, we’ve got to really think about whether the person is in the right position for that job, or that task, and we move them either out. I don’t really remember when the last person was actually fired for that. But usually, it’s just a look, if you’re not an accountant, why are you doing accounting? You know, move over to another job. So having and this is one other thing about SOPs is you have somebody that if you’ve done this, right, and there’s the proper buy in, they have no fear of making suggestions, and building out themselves, giving them the tools to succeed, right? Well, if you give them those tools, then you’re going to see the whole team, you’re going to see this, what I call a performance based culture, and you can see it like I can, I can listen to people, I can go to a franchise, and you know, I could see if they have a performance based culture, or if they just really hate what they’re doing. And I I believe that if you don’t do it, right, you’ll just you’ll go through so many employees, so many are contractors so quickly, that you’re going to lose so much money, you’ll only get frustrated? And that this is this is what’s gonna happen. Yeah. What about multiple people? So now you’re, you’re you’ve grown, you’ve got your, your Oh, there’s one other thing in the anatomy of SOP, and that is who’s gonna update it
Vandana Rastogi 34:08
updated? Right. That’s what I was thinking. Right. And we discussed it very recently that it’s very important to update the SOPs from time to time because things change procedures change software’s change. So it’s very important to have them updated. And that’s what we have to look at. So we have a different type of tasks already created, which are recurring. So it’s a recurring task. And we think that a person, like project manager or particular team or the person who’s written the SOP should go in and check this up from time to time and see if it’s completely updated, or add or delete something if you know there has been changes. And it’s very important to have that followed up and not miss on that because if we miss advance, we have to you know, go through a long way to get it updated again. Yeah,
Norman Ferrar 34:59
right. So just before we go to the next question or comment, just want to remind people that Vandana will spend an hour with the winner of will have Kelsey today working on either your SOP or the structure, putting it all together. And if you remember I was just thinking about this with Vinay he was on from process Street. If you don’t want to do this manually, and you win the the the time with the console with Vandana don’t forget he had given us I think it was double the or even more than that, with process street tour 60 days I think with with this, I, Kelsey, you can, you could just help me out here, I forget the exact bonus. But he did give any lunch with Norm, listeners a bonus to tune in and try it out. So you don’t have to do it manually, you can go through process street process.st STS and try that out. So you’ve got that option. And the other thing I just wanted to do is just give a quick shout out to z z CO. So if you’re a private label seller looking to expand into a larger international market, check out z.com Z makes selling your Amazon products abroad easy and excellent. They import knowledge door to door solutions, customer service and scalability. That’s right, you can sit back, relax, enjoy a cup of coffee with Norm and have the peace of mind knowing that z will handle the rest. Ready to expand your EECOM empire and take your Amazon FBA business globally. Visit Z Zed or z e.co. Now, the Zed is for you know, Canadians or you guys in the UK. So that’s Zed. e.co. Okay, let’s get back to more questions about this. I want to talk about sale, setting you up to succeed and fail. So you’ve you’ve dealt with a lot of Amazon sellers before or people in general, what were some of your thoughts on, you know, the people that you could succeed with? And people that you didn’t feel comfortable with? Were there any? Were there any common denominators?
Vandana Rastogi 37:32
Oh, yes. And
Norman Ferrar 37:37
you know, 100% Perfect.
Vandana Rastogi 37:41
Okay, so yeah. No, no, it’s true. It’s true. So first of all, the whole thing happens when people you know, start micromanaging. And it’s very difficult for them to, you know, for us to make them understand something that, you know, we are doing this because it’s a way it’s a procedure, or, you know, these are the steps we have to go through. Now, why do you have to do it this way? Just go directly into it? Why do you have to upload a flat file, just go and, you know, manually edit, or create a listing, it’s a waste of time, if we ping it for two more hours, don’t do that. But yeah, it makes sense. At the end of the day, it makes sense, everything that we do is because we have learned, we have been through this, and it’s very important to follow the procedures are there on the page. And, like, it was just an example. But people do micromanage or people, you know, try to skip the steps, because they just want to save I don’t know, a penny on that or time on that which, which is pathetic, which, you know, ends up having a problem or issue at a later stage wherein people end up saying that, okay, yeah, the keywords were not, you know, listed or this was not done at this is not getting updated now, what should we do now? And then, okay, go back, deleted, and update update a new flat file. So that is more time consuming. I have had bad experience with people who are, you know, a bit rude on the other hand, and just want it to go their way like, I have a great human. So I know it. And if you have made you want me to, you know, just follow what you’re doing, then why do I hire even a VA just hire somebody?
Norman Ferrar 39:19
Right? Yeah. So you’re 100% like bang on, right? The the people that scream and yell are not the people that are going to get that performance based culture. So okay, we are talking. We’re also talking about tools. I wanted to touch on that. Yeah, project management tool. We use teamwork. And within teamwork, we set up templates. So these templates help us automate and scale our business. The template the very first so if you can imagine there’s a file structure for a task list and This happens within any project management tool. But there’s a task list, the task, and then sub tasks. And subtasks could be sub sub tasks, sub sub sub tasks, but it goes down, you create your, your structure. That way, the task when you when you’re starting a task, the main task, let’s say it’s finding influencers or launch and rank within that first task. And then as you drill down, there’s something that says, that we put in, which I really like, is the, if you’re not familiar with this task, please click this link to find the SOP. And so that’s linked, integrates into our Google Drive, they click on it, they can see it. And that will show the SOP, it’ll show the template. And so any templates, any spreadsheets, any emails that have to go out to our clients, like, you know, let’s say there’s 24 hour, 72 hour and one week, you know, touch points, they’re there, and then there’s training. So, if we want, we could have anybody do that and make sure that it’s done. And with one click of the button, we can copy that into, like a client file. Or if it’s a repetitive task, we can just hit one button, and it just repeats, once it’s done, it goes back and it starts all over again. So this is when you can really, a lot of people will ask well, how do you do, you know, four or five things at a time? It’s because I got four or five people doing things for me at a time. And I can move on to something else. Yeah, like this podcast, you know, as much as I give Kelsey a little grief. He does. He and his team does this too. So trying to train him how to do this. He’s got a team that’ll email clients that are research clients that will do research for topics, get back to him. And then he produces the show, he has, you know, puts all the talking points down, gives you the link. So these are the things that are, you know, part of an SOP, I don’t have to think about and I can just grow whatever I want to grow, grow my business. So Kelsey, I’m not sure Yeah, go ahead, Vandana.
Vandana Rastogi 42:17
I just wanted to say like with teamwork, it’s more like, you know, we create a workflow and keep so there is a task, you’ve been told to this. And then there is a template with the workflow already there. And then there are things like, I like the one that we can create sub tasks, but it is sometimes dependent tasks, right, until you don’t finish this, you cannot do. Yes, right. So that’s the best part. The second part of managing the whole work or managing the whole team with the team work is you don’t have to set reminders all the time, you just have to put advance in the system. And it’s always going to recur, like for me, especially if this is a task, it has to be done on the first of every month, it will recur automatically on every first of the month, right. And that’s the easiest way to not, you know, overlook things, not miss anything and have things done on time and place, right.
Norman Ferrar 43:07
And then when you do meet, they you can print out a list that you like, if you’re talking to one person or two or three different people, it could be printed out to that person. So you can go through it. As you can drill down that list as as much as you want. Rather than putting it into this spreadsheet, that spreadsheet makes it super, incredibly easy. Easy, right? All right, before we get into some questions, are there any other things? Mistakes That VAs might do? Maybe?
Vandana Rastogi 43:42
Oh, yes, like not getting updated. I think that’s the very important part. Like once we start working, it’s very difficult to you know, update yourself from time to time with all things that getting updated in the market, or an Amazon if you’re working directly with Amazon thing. So it is very important to update yourself like sometimes, you know, the procedures is the same, but there might be a new step added to it. Or you know, something in the system might have changed. So you it’s very important to update yourself from time to time getting trained, or you know, having different articles or newsletters assigned so that you know, what’s an update what’s going on? What is the news on Amazon or what’s happening out there? Which most of the people miss, obviously not to blame because of the work.
Norman Ferrar 44:32
So that’s interesting, because you’re talking about workload. This morning. When last night when I went to bed, I work kinda late. And when when you wake up, or Cathy wakes up like I know I left 13 do this last night, right? 13 And what happens if you get overwhelmed?
Vandana Rastogi 44:54
Oh, no, actually, we have a way so we prioritize things. There are certain things but not all. thing has to be done today right now, right? So you have to prioritize things you have to like, this is how this has a deadline of Friday. Let’s you know, put it at a fifth point. And let’s do something that has to be done right now right now. So that’s how we work. But yes, 13 messages. I’m like, Oh, my God, what happened? What did I do?
Norman Ferrar 45:19
You had those. And then Kathy had a ton. I was working late. I was on a roll last night.
Vandana Rastogi 45:25
Just a normal day for you.
Norman Ferrar 45:26
Yeah, yeah. Right. But I mean, it is important because people get overwhelmed, especially in the beginning. So all of a sudden, you’ve got all this that you have to do. How do you like, what advice would you give anybody that’s listening, like to talk to their VA that I know, and I’ll, I’ll chime in in a second. But any advice that you can give to people that are hiring VA, what happens when they’re overwhelmed?
Vandana Rastogi 45:54
I think communication is the point here. I again, I’ll have to focus on communication, if you don’t communicate, if I don’t tell you that, you know, I’m unable to do this, because I’m doing this, then how would you know, it’s important to have the communication like we generally have a weekly meeting or you know, a daily meeting or every second day? And I’ll tell you that I did not do this, because I’m going to do this on Thursday, I did not get time. Or you know, I’ll have Katie do this. I’m going to teach Katie this. And she might do this only for me like we had Mary fulfill all our most of our orders. Yeah. So that’s how we, you know, divide the work. But I think the main important part of this is I prioritize things. So I create tasks every day in my, you know, calendar for myself. And, yes, this time is the meeting, I have to do this, I have to finish this this time. And that’s how I do it. So the easiest way is this.
Norman Ferrar 46:50
And so prioritizing tasks is one thing and blocking the time off. Because if you think oh, I can do this task in a half hour, most of the time, it takes an hour, an hour, right. Yeah. So make sure that you give you know proper time. If you are overwhelmed, one of the things that I like I would ask for from a VA is, let me know. Yeah. So it’s better to say I am losing it. There’s so many things, what do you want me to do? And at least I can come back and say, Okay, what can come back? What can I take off your plate? Or what can I delegate to somebody else? And the other thing, this is my comment on this is that I’ve seen this happen, where there’s a lot of BC tasks that overwhelm anybody, not anybody, right? And my suggestion, and I’ve done this used to be good when it was the office, you would just go in. And it was like the office. I remember the it’s happened twice that I had somebody working with me. And she was she ate she was awesome at what she did. But she just got overwhelmed. And there was a stack of paper. Remember paper? Or do you not? You’re too young to remember paper? Paper? Yeah, exactly. Right. So this is this, you know, old style stuff we used to communicate with. But there was a pile of paper on this. Belinda was your name. And you know, she was stressed out. And I just went, Okay. I went over to it as guys through it all the ground. And I said Tao, we’re going to do one by one. And we’re going to prioritize what has to happen. And it was this kind of was it was funny, she stressed out even a bit more, I think, but we just got into it. We just Alright, let’s let’s figure this out. And it’s that easy. You know, prioritize your B tasks, HT tasks, get them out of the way Do your a task first thing. So you some people might check their email at the beginning of the day. You might want to check it after your priority task. But you know, for me, I’ll block out my a task I got to get this done. Nobody’s talking to me until I talk or get this done. Next, you know, any communication email. Next is B test see tasks. Next is next task like a task. Right? And for you and for the team. Shortcuts is important. Like learning shortcuts learning, you know how Gmail, okay, I want you guys learn Gmail. Okay. How do you rename a file? Press n, right. Okay, I don’t want you going and doing this. It’s going to take too many years. We’re going to spend a week out of a year doing moving your mouse from here to here, just press N or you’re copying or resending learn shortcuts. That’s important. You know, I think that’s super important when we’re talking about doing anything is that we learn shortcuts as a team.
Vandana Rastogi 49:53
Exactly. So that’s right. So we know that we have SOPs on working on folders folders for Google Drive files, renaming them, you know, managing all those client files to at the same time shortcuts first sheets managing documents. Yes.
Norman Ferrar 50:13
Yeah. So I don’t know if you have anything that you want want to talk about any other advice on SOPs or developing the policies and procedures? If not, we can move into some questions.
Vandana Rastogi 50:27
Oh, no, I think we covered most part of it. I had this SOP open in front of me while we were talking. And yes, I think we covered most part of it.
Norman Ferrar 50:38
And sop on this talk.
Vandana Rastogi 50:41
No, no, no, like in front of me in my vent through all the steps. And like we discussed last time, we can talk about how we have a checklist before you
Norman Ferrar 50:52
about that. So there’s two things we forgot about. So you people who like wait until the end, there’s two things. One of the things is checklists. So just, hey, if you do everything, if you do a list of things on a regular basis, you’re bound to forget or oversee something at some point, it’ll just be forgotten, right, you’ll you’ll start to do these three things, you’ll forget the fourth and do the fifth six. And this checklist will always keep you on point. And I use and I, I I showed you in Kathy, just recently, my travel checklist like it’s a mile long. But I know when this is done, I’ve got everything that I need. When I travel, I don’t even have to think the like, and just makes things a lot easier. The other thing is a workflow. So the one I couldn’t find this morning. So anyway, they spent all this time doing this workflow on Sunday, and I deleted it by accident. Oh, yes, Kelsey, I deleted it. But I did this, this workflow on, on content. And that’s another thing so people can visualize it. And you we don’t use people’s names. We use positions, but won’t create this workflow that Oh, yeah. If it this is, this is how it looks. And then you you have the checklist, the workflow, the policy and procedure, everything’s in place for you to succeed.
Vandana Rastogi 52:21
Yeah, and that’s very important. So we would start having like we have it, it is a requirement section in a in an SOP as well. But we’ll have a separate checklist. And we have to go through that before working on like, I knew I have to do this task. And I thought I’d do it at 10 o’clock, and finish it at 11. But I forgot to look at the checklist. And now I know that I don’t have access to this file. And what do I do now? So yes, it’s very important to check the checklist and see if we have gone through all the steps within there and we have access or you know, everything that’s written.
Norman Ferrar 52:54
Right. And just on a last note, I think it’s so important that if you get to the point where you are overwhelmed and there is too much work, hire another person. And you know, there is a hiring policy. So we have a hiring SOP, but we like you hire somebody, and then you train them on how to do exactly that. So it’s not on Vandana to do it all it’s Vandana, and then she trains the person to do social media, or to do whatever. And she’s not training them how to do what they’re an expert in there. She’s training them on how to put all the information into our folders on working with LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever it is, and they do it. So on that note, Kelsey, first of all, remember if you want to consult with Vandana that’s the will of Kelsey price today. Hashtag Willa, Kelsey tag two people you get a second entry. Do we have any questions?
Kelsey 53:54
Yeah, we do have a question. Just one for today. But I have something super important that we need to talk about right now. We have a very special birthday. It’s Marsha Reese’s birthday today. So everyone just Marsha Reese is an incredible person. She’s been part of our podcast before she’s been on our beard nation appreciation episodes. She’s amazing human being and we just want to wish her the biggest Happy Birthday. So in the comment section just wish Marsha Risa happy birthday from the beard nation. And yeah, that would be awesome.
Norman Ferrar 54:32
And you know what? He’s gonna sing you a birthday song.
Vandana Rastogi 54:36
They battle that but yes, many many happy
Norman Ferrar 54:42
Yeah, happy birthday, Marcia.
Kelsey 54:44
I also just want to give a quick shout out to Peter who’s joining us from China. I believe that’s the first time I’ve seen you pop up Peter, but it’s a nice to see you. If you have any questions. This is a live podcast so you can just throw them to the comment sections. But we have a question from Jessica. What factors when you are interviewed? Other than your offered pay? Do you consider when deciding whether to accept the job or even continue the interview process with the person or the company?
Vandana Rastogi 55:13
What factors, okay, so it completely depends on the work that you have to cover. So, you know, a person can come to me and asked me to do a journal does that a person has three brands or three accounts in Amazon? And it’s not possible for a single person to manage each and everything right? So it’s very important to see what is the task understand and you know, clearly have this discussion with the person that what exactly the work? Are they willing you to finish for them or work for them? And what are the number of hours they’re willing? Like, I cannot tell somebody to, you know, do a task in five minutes. Okay, this takes five minutes. This also takes five minutes know that, you know, there is a procedure, there is a task and it takes time. So, you need to clear that out very, on the very first place before even talking about the peak. Yes.
Norman Ferrar 56:07
But what about, like, during the interview that you have? So you’re being interviewed? When do your spidey senses come up? Like when do you know, it’s going good? What do you know? What’s going bad? What do you what makes you feel comfortable and uncomfortable during that interview?
Vandana Rastogi 56:24
Um, I think we understand what when the when we start talking, and, you know, we start sharing thoughts, for example, we pick up a topic and we start talking talking about that topics, obviously, there will be two different thoughts. But we would understand that, you know, we can work together or not, because if a person is being very rigid, no, you, you know, if you come on board, you have to do it like this, like, no, that’s not how it has done or, you know, I can improve this particular thing, I can do it better in a better way for you. And then they, you know, say no for that or not very well get along with you, then I think it’s a big moment, it’s very important to accept the change, or, you know, update yours.
Norman Ferrar 57:05
What about, I don’t want to put you on the spot here, but part of our process is that you get free training. How important was that to you with taking this job?
Vandana Rastogi 57:18
Um, personally, I had this as a very important part. So you know, I am working with you for for more than two years now. But whatever job aspect of whatever work I was doing, it’s very important for me to learn if I’m not upgrading myself, if I’m not growing personally, you know, not, my skills are not growing, I’m not becoming, you know, well known. What do you say person, not a villain person, but well known about the steps about the procedures, then I think I’m totally not making it. It’s not only about what you’re getting paid or what the work is about. But if that training thing is not there, then you have to have training you, you need to grow personally. All
Norman Ferrar 58:00
right. And one of the other things, we’ve talked about this on podcast before, but the tools to succeed, we usually when we’re hiring a VA, we’ll take a screenshot of their internet, we’ll take a screenshot of their computer. And those are the two most important things like if you have a slow internet, you’re just paying the person three or four or five times more. So one of the things that we’ll do is we’ll upgrade that the difference between what you’re paying for your you know, dial up, and then you know, whatever high speed cost, but we’ll we usually will take care of that. I think it’s important. The other thing is, if they if the computer is old, slow memories.
Vandana Rastogi 58:49
Yeah, remember something? Yeah. i That’s why I went like this. Okay, yeah, it’s coming. Yeah. Yeah.
Norman Ferrar 58:58
But no, it came down to why if you have an older computer, how are you going to benefit we hit it off, you knew what you’re talking about. And I’m going to invest in you as a person. I’m gonna buy you a computer. Yeah, and it just didn’t come that simple. It was okay. We’ll take on the payments, but you’ve got to be with us over a year before it becomes yours. And you know, if not, you take on the payments is it was that simple. But again, that made you speed up your processes and get everything done. So it was it was worth it for me and in the Philippines, sometimes because of blackouts, and tsunamis and whatever they have over there. They have horrible weather anyways, generators, you know, if they’re going to go black, once a month or twice a month or during the season. Make sure that you can provide a generator, but these are things that just help people out and you know, 1000 bucks or 1500 bucks for a generator, how much time you can Gonna get back because a person’s online. Okay, so Kelsey, is there any other questions?
Kelsey 1:00:06
And that’s it.
Norman Ferrar 1:00:08
Okay, so let’s head over to the wheel of Kelsey
Kelsey 1:00:12
All right we’re heading over to the wheel here we go costly thank you so much for everyone who entered today’s contest this is for the 60 Minute console with Vandana okay here we go I’m going to shuffle these up if you are the winner please email me at K at lunch with Nora calm and I’ll connect you rate the winner is all right near
Norman Ferrar 1:01:01
Oh very good near
Kelsey 1:01:05
gratulations near I believe I have all your contact information so that should be nice and easy but yeah thank you guys so much and tune in next time for here see
Norman Ferrar 1:01:15
I’m just warning you do not recruit Vandana do not recruit her
Vandana Rastogi 1:01:23
or him you need to tell her to me
NormaN Ferrar 1:01:24
oh okay Vandana beware of near he’s gonna try to recruit you anyway anyways that’s a great prize near just get a hold of Kelsey and Vandana thank you for coming on it was short notice John couldn’t make it and you just, you know were able to come up and I backed into the car. I wasn’t bad. You were worried?
Vandana Rastogi 1:01:47
Yes. No, no, I was not it was my pleasure. No, I was not worried. I was just worried about oh my gosh, I’m gonna pull it off but yeah,
Norman Ferrar 1:01:57
you pulled it off with brilliant colors. There you go. Alright, so thank you so much, Vandana now get back to work, please. Yes. Alright. So Wednesday we are going to be
Kelsey 1:02:27
sure if that’s just normal, but it looks like he’s frozen. So just a second Vanda and I’m gonna pull you up. bandana. He’s frozen. Yeah. Yes, he was. It was a double giant. Yeah, it was. Alright. Okay. Okay. All right. So we’ll just wait and see if norm gets back. But I do want to just do a little housekeeping here. Also smash those Like buttons. If you think if you like the way norm looks right now. Yeah, we can be mean to him. Okay, he’s going. Alright. So thank you, guys, for joining our podcast today. It’s much appreciated. If you guys have any comments about topics you want to see anything that interests you, that maybe we’ve missed, or that you’re looking forward to, or maybe a guest that you just absolutely loved. And you’re like, where are they I want them back. Leave it over in the comment sections. And we’d love to know, it’s, it’s always hard to kind of follow what you guys want. We try our best. But obviously, there’s probably things that we can miss. And of course, if you have any questions or comments about the show, you can always email us at K at lunch with Lauren calm, and he’ll be there handling everything and talking to you guys. I love meeting you guys. But yeah, when we go nor when we go norm when we go live, if you want those updates immediately if you want to know how when we go live exactly right when we press that button when we were five minutes late, you can press the three little dots in the top corner of of Facebook and YouTube. And just ring that bell. That bell helps you get those alerts. Because there’s so many people that go live, it’s hard to know when we go live exactly. So Facebook and YouTube kind of hold back on that. But if you’re interested, hit those three, three buttons or three dots and click that bell and that will Yeah, get you all those updates. And yes, we need a suggestion box. Try to figure that out. But but we’ll see. Anyways, we I think that’s about it. Of course join our Facebook group lunch with Norm, Amazon FBA and E commerce collective. And I’m not sure let me see Is there anything else that norm usually does here? I think that’s it. One last thing seller pole, south pole.com Vote for the lunch with Norm podcast. We’d really appreciate it. We’re looking for that. number one spot, of course. But yeah, just the support would be great for our beard nation. And yeah, that’s it. You can find us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 2pm Eastern time. And that’s it. We’ll talk to you guys later. Have a fantastic day and see you around.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
