My Overseas Team Runs My eCommerce Business and We Do $1M/yr in Revenue
Zack AllenJanuary 28, 20266:29
Not a pitch for the business model. Here's what worked to get the day-to-day off my plate.
My e-commerce business does a million dollars a year in revenue, and the day-to-day is run entirely by my team in the Philippines. This isn't a pitch for the business model. It's what worked for me, in case you can apply some of it to your business.
The business has done $4.2 million in revenue since 2022. We don't have a warehouse. Our inventory goes out on pallets from our 3PL. I've visited my team in the Philippines twice so far and I'll go again this year.
The business model
It isn't drop shipping and it isn't private label. We don't have a brand. It's called online arbitrage, and the whole business comes down to logistics: getting the right inventory to the right places.
Buying: we source inventory from suppliers daily, place purchase orders and send them to our third-party logistics warehouse, which labels them and either stores them or sends them on to Amazon FBA or wherever they need to go.
Selling: there's no marketing or sales. These are household-name products, so we focus on repricing to get the most for each item.
My two team members split these responsibilities, and on a day-to-day basis I'm not involved in any of it. That's not where my highest leverage is.
Build a business first, then a team
I didn't bring on team members until I had a business with revenue. I don't see hiring as a way to start. I see it as a way to scale.
A shared brain
The first mechanism was a shared brain. I don't have Neuralink yet, so I had to get the processes in my head to someone on the other side of the world.
Documentation teaches the how: step-by-step processes. That only goes so far.
Looms and 1-on-1 calls transfer the decision-making. I explain why I'm clicking what I'm clicking and how doing it that way gets us closer to the outcome. That way I'm not the bottleneck telling them exactly what to do every time.
A growth loop
We all respond to reinforcement. So I reinforce the behavior that moves us toward the outcome and discourage the behavior that moves us away.
Money is part of it, but I see it as a baseline. The big one is recognition. International team members in particular value it. I give it privately in 1-on-1s and Slack, and publicly in monthly meetings and our team Slack channels.
Meetings matter a lot here. They're where I pass on my vision and my thinking.
Accountability through metrics
If I want someone to be autonomous and not need me micromanaging every day, they need to be accountable to something. That's where KPIs come in.
- Daily: each person enters their numbers in a Google Sheet.
- Weekly: we report on them in Slack.
- Monthly: we do a deeper report in a meeting.
E-commerce swings a lot month to month because of seasonality. Comparing December to January tells you very little. But since my team has been with me for years, we can ask: what did we do last February, and how do we beat it this February?
My role: strategy and culture
My job became strategy and leadership. I didn't do this to stop working or to travel. I did it to move my attention out of operations and into where it has the most leverage.
"Culture" sounds like a corporate word to people in online business, but it matters a lot to me. My team is financially incentivized on their KPIs. Beyond that, I want them to enjoy showing up because they're part of a bigger mission, somewhere we're going together. My role is to steer the ship, set the strategy and set the culture.
Transcript
Show the full transcript
My e-commerce business does a million dollars a year in revenue and the day-to-day operations are run entirely by my team based in the Philippines. I don't make this video as a way to sell you on the business model, but to show you what has worked well for me to get to this point. Maybe you can take some learnings from this and apply it to your own business so you can scale by using international talent.
I run an overseas recruitment firm. That's what we do. Hopefully, one day you work with us to do the same thing in your business. Now, some proof to show you that I'm not capping. $4.2 million in inventory lab since 2022 in revenue. This is not the best photo, but this is the best I got because we don't have our own warehouse, which we'll get into in a second. But this is some of our inventory going out on pallets from our 3PL.
This is my team based in the Philippines. I've visited them twice so far in the Philippines. I'll go again this year. Now, the business model, it is not drop shipping and it is not private label. We do not have our own brand and so it's commonly referred to as online arbitrage. It gives us a very unique opportunity where the entire business is focused on the logistics essentially just getting the right inventory in the right places.
So the core of that is buying and selling. On the buying side, we source inventory from various suppliers on a daily basis and we make purchase orders of that inventory. who buy them in cash, send them to our 3PL warehouse, third party logistics. They either store they label them and they either store them there or they send them to the appropriate fulfillment centers, Amazon, FBA, wherever it needs to be. And then we sell the inventory.
There's no marketing or sales involved. It's already pre-branded products like common household names. And we just focus on the repricing, which is getting the most money for that item. Again, my two team members, their responsibilities are split up between all these different things. They play a hand in each of these. And on like a day-to-day basis, I'm not involved in any of this. Like, that is not where my highest leverage opportunity is.
And so, there's a couple of mechanisms that have helped me get to that point. Now, I do want to cover one thing. I did not start bringing on team members until I had a real business, until I had actual revenue, because I don't see it as a way to start. I see it as a way to scale. And so the first part of that was creating a shared brain where I don't have neural link yet, but I have all these processes how to do the business up here.
And so I need to transfer that to someone else that's on the other side of the world. And so the best ways I found to do that is through documentation and videos. Now, documentation is good because it teaches the the like the how, you know, the the step-by-step processes, but that can only get me so far. If I want someone to really like know how to do the thing, I have to transfer my decision-m process.
And I found that to work best with Looms and one-on-one calls. So, breaking down why I'm clicking what I'm clicking, how doing it this way gets us closer to the outcome. So I'm not the bottleneck of like just having to always tell them exactly what to do. The next phase of that is creating a growth loop. At the end of the day, we're all Pavlovian. And so reinforcing the positive behavior and not um punishing, but discouraging the negative and the bad behaviors that get us further from our outcome.
Financial is a part of that, but I found that it's more of a baseline. The the the big one there is recognition. people really, especially international team members, really value recognition. So, we do that through private one-on- ones, Slack communication, and then publicly on monthly meetings and our public Slack channels. Now, meetings are a really big part of this. It's where I'm able to transfer my vision and transfer my thought process and my uh leadership to them.
From there, it's accountability. If I really want someone to be a autonomous in the business and not require my day-to-day micromanagement telling them exactly what to do, I have to have them accountable to something. And that is where metrics come in. The numbers, the data, KPIs is what we call them, key performance indicators. So on a daily basis, those are being input into just a a Google sheet by the person who's responsible for them.
So they see what the numbers what what numbers they're putting up. weekly basis we report on those in Slack and then on a monthly basis we do a deep report on a meeting. Now, in an e-commerce business, monthto-month fluctuates a lot just because of seasonality of buying, like customer behavior. And so, because they've been with me for years, it starts to compound when we look at the year-over-year data cuz we can say, you know, if I look at December to January, going to be totally different ballgame.
But if I'm like, okay, what do we do last February? How can we beat that this February? That's what we're really focused on. And so my role becomes strategy and leadership. That's where my time is the highest leverage. Now I didn't do this as a way to not work or to vacation and travel. I did it as a way to like scale my attention and my focus and my time out of the day-to-day operations into leadership and strategy.
Now leadership people will the word culture is a very corporate term and like to to people like us in online business but it's a very very important thing for me to do. I want them to feel empowered to complete the task or or to to excel in the business not just because it's their job. financial is definitely a part of that and they are incentivized financially on uh optimizing and increasing these these KPIs but creating a culture where the team enjoys showing up on a day-to-day basis and providing because they're part of a bigger vision of a bigger mission we have somewhere we're going and so my role is to steer the ship in the right direction setting the strategy and setting the culture being the leader that is required in order to accomplish this so I hope there's something you to take away from this.
Uh again, we run overseas recruitment firm, international teams. So if you want to work with us, there's going to be a link below. But hopefully this is uh helpful. Thanks. Thanks for watching.
