The Exchanges

Q So how to literally walk me through a process you documented and how you document it. Are you using Google docs and then copying that out into a VA system? Like get us into the weeds a little bit here.

A Sure. So in the beginning it was very simple. Uh, we use, we started with Google docs. Uh, I would simply take my 27 inch monitor and I would take a browser on the left and a browser on the right. And in the left hand browser, I would do the thing that I didn't ever want to do again, the process. And then I would just screenshot the hell out of everything that I was doing and I'd write detail instructions. So instead of if that thing was going to take me 10 minutes, creating the process might take me three hours, but then I don't ever have to do it again. And in our case, one of the things that we started with was, well, how do we identify competitors on Amazon? How do we research products on Amazon? And it's a, there's a very sequential process to doing that, to finding these profit products that made economic sense for us to carry. It's very laborious, and so that was the first thing that I delegated.

AI assessment note: “we started with Google docs. Uh, I would simply take my 27 inch monitor”

Q How did, how long was the document that, that one process?

A Well, I, what I just described was actually multiple processes. So the first step is finding competitors. And that was really only like a six or seven step process. And then, We have a process for called product extractions and I'm going from memory. I don't have it on the screen in front of me right now, but that was probably a 35 or 40 step process. And then there's another process after that, which is finding the contact. Well, actually we'd put, then we put all the data into a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet had these macros or premade formulas in it. So it would automatically do all the math. And then for the products, which were one row for each product, everyone that passed muster, then there was another process given to an yet another VA. To go and find the company, find the executive on LinkedIn, find their email address, validate the email address. And then we would have another, then they would all be imported into our HubSpot CRM. And then we used yet another application to send the email messages out in bulk to those people. And that was repeated week after week.

AI assessment note: “what I just described was actually multiple processes. So the first step... six or seven step”

Q Interesting. Okay. So, so I think we have an idea, but what does flow stir our app do for e-commerce Amazon seller today?

A So it is twofold. One, you have the application itself, which is a process management application. So in theory, anybody in, in any industry could go into the app and they could document their processes for all the things that are known in advance and highly repeatable. And then they can assign them to people on their team and give them due dates and all the things that you would expect. The second layer is the content. And this is the layer that's really critical to our success in e-commerce and to our desire to, to build, uh, to get more traction in the e-commerce industry. As you might imagine, creating processes from scratch, it's a lot of work. So we had the benefit of already having, having created, I think at the time there was about seven or so of them because we, we were in that business. We needed them for ourselves. That took a year to create that first bit of content before it was ever even publicly available. So the big benefit of Flowster for e-commerce now is that you can go and sign up and you can immediately tap into Our Amazon seller playbook and you can get all of these proven processes and you can add other users from your team and you can literally just say, okay, so this process here is going to be assigned to Dave and it's going to be due on Thursday and Dave will get a notification from the software. He'll look at the process. It's so incredibly detailed…

AI assessment note: “you can immediately tap into Our Amazon seller playbook and you can get all of these”

Q were building your supplement reseller business. Those steps say things like number one, find prime sellers. Number two, analyze the sellers. And then step three says check if seller has not been previously extracted. If your system works so well and everyone signs up for it, doesn't it get to a point where the systems don't work because everyone's running the same process? In other words, everyone's already been extracted.

A In theory, you could make a case for that, but the numbers are so, so huge that there's not enough everyone's to do it. So if you think about the Amazon marketplace, there's a half billion products and there's always new products and there's always new brands every single year. And there are last count that I've heard six million odd Amazon resellers, but only four percent of those Amazon resellers, Nathan ever exceed a 100,000 dollars a year in revenue. So we're talking about, yeah, there's lots of competition, but, and, and I only have, you know, and I only have so much reach because we're not, we're not running crazy amounts of ads for this. Most of the promotion of the product that we're talking about is done via one affiliate. So there's literally only a couple of thousand people a year who even know that it exists. Now that happens to generate millions in sales for us, uh, which is great from cash flow and funding the growth of flowster and so on. But historically speaking, it hasn't, it hasn't made our business any harder. Uh, there are other factors to do with the Amazon marketplace, just competition in general, which on their own, make our business harder. But I did not see any negative impact to our business at all. Once the, uh, that collection, we call it webs. It stands for wholesale e-commerce business systems. It's just a collection of content that a reseller wou…

AI assessment note: “the numbers are so, so huge that there's not enough everyone's to do it.”

Q Let's break that down for a second. So raising prices are something founders always go, oh, but if I raise price, everyone's going to cancel, but then you do it and you're surprised, like no one cancels and you just doubled your revenue. So how did you think about increasing your price?

A Um, really we, there was a, somebody wrote a 185 page long pricing experiment. I wish I could remember who it was so I could give them attribution, but we, as a management team looked at that very, very closely and decided To make some changes as a result of that, because our unit economics just weren't going to allow us to, um, to grow while continuing to bootstrap if we had, you know, the lower prices that we had in the past. And so we really just decided to, we picked numbers out of the air. Well, not really out of the air, but we picked new numbers and, um, we, we didn't force all the, the older accounts onto the new pricing plan. This was really just for newer accounts. Um, so it, it hasn't been detrimental so far. It's been positive.

AI assessment note: “we, as a management team looked at that very, very closely and decided”

Q It's one reason they're growing so quickly. Check out FlatFile today at NathanLacca.com forward slash FlatFile. That's NathanLacca.com forward slash FlatFile. Talk to me though about this. I imagine a lot of folks use you to onboard contractors to run repeatable tasks, right? So what are some best practices you've seen for creating system to take off, you know, a founder's plate, for example, and give it to a contractor?

A So there's, I mean, that's kind of a long answer, but I'll do my best to answer it quickly. When, with the first part of the question is you've got to create systems. So where should you create systems? Well, it's going to be one of two areas depending upon where the, where in the life cycle your business is. If you're earlier on and your bigger problem is pipeline and lead gen, then create systems in the area of prospecting funnels, all of that kind of stuff. But if you're a little bit later stage and you're like, nah, we got lead gen and pipeline all figured out, but fulfillment is our issue or something else that's after the acquisition of the customer, then I would say, well, look where the biggest fires are and try and reverse engineer and see what's causing those fires. And instead of being a firefighter, be a fire preventer. So create processes for one of those two areas, or maybe it's both in your organization. And then, um, We have a, and we actually have a free template for this that you can link to in your show notes, but we've, we've had tremendous.

AI assessment note: “create processes for one of those two areas, or maybe it's both”