The First Overseas Hire To Make in an eCommerce Business

First role I would hire for if I had an e-commerce business that I was running by myself. Fortunately for you, I already have an e-commerce business that I don't run alone. I have a team all based in the Philippines. We do a million dollars a year in revenue and I've done $4.5 million since 2022 on Amazon. I'm going to take the frame as if I didn't have my team and I was hiring for the first role.

Now, I see a lot of people start with the wrong roles for their e-commerce business. They look for an executive assistant, but that's not going to make you more money. They look for someone that does product sourcing. That's too high value. PPC, too high value. Or customer service, but that doesn't take enough time off your plate. I would start with what buys me back the most time in my day. I see hiring, especially in the beginning, as a way to buy back my time from the low value work.

And I would figure that out by taking a task audit of my week. So you could do it on like a daily basis like for a day but I find if you really want to nail down because like responsibilities change dayto day look at what your week looks like. Write down what is this block? What did you spend that on? This hour block what did you spend that on? And then at the end of the week put it together in a Google sheet and categorize it by okay group them together.

How much time did I spend on product sourcing? How much time did I spend on admin? Google Sheets. Then you rank them by how easily can I teach this on a scale of one to five. How would it would it take me a while to transfer this skill to someone else? Then how valuable is this to the business? Is this something that it can't live without or is it kind of, you know, needs to get done but not always by me?

The things I would delegate are the ones that are easiest to teach, take the most time of my week, and are at like a three to four on the value. Like worth it for me to delegate, but not super valuable that it's risky for me to be offloading that to someone right away. And then that means I now have more time to spend on only the work that is a five on the value and is the hardest to teach.

I want to reallocate my day towards that work only. So, for example, task audit might look like this. Transferring supplier invoices into Google Sheets, shell listings, FBA shipments, prep center, all that stuff takes up my week. pretty easy to teach and mediocre value to the business which means I now have more time to source new products takes a lot of time can always be allocated more time to and it has a high value to the business evaluate new wholesale cataloges do new supplier outreach to get more products in the business and that's how I would create the title I would not hire a virtual assistant I'm not making a post for a virtual assistant because that's going to attract fact some pretty lowquality talent.

Instead, I would work backwards, use those core responsibilities that are going to be most important for the role that I actually want to hold someone accountable to and create the title to match that. So, for invoices, FBA shipments, show listings, that might be an operations admin or an operations manager, operations assistant, admin assistant, whatever that the title is semantics, but it's not a virtual assistant. It's very specific roles within the company.

And so before if my day was spent 50% on admin, 30% on sourcing, 20% on strategy, I can now reallocate that time on admin. Sure, there's still going to be some admin that I'm doing. So let's say 5% on admin, but now it's 75% sourcing. And the strategy stays the same usually cuz that's like stuff you do at the the end of the week. But all that time is now going towards the stuff that makes me more money.

That's how this produces an ROI. Sourcing in an e-commerce business is directly attributable to profit. The more time I can allocate my day to that, the more money I can make. Now, it might be hard to conceptualize this if you haven't hired before, but the business as an entity is paying you for your time. And let's say the business is paying you $100 an hour. When I spend that hour on admin work on spreadsheets, on Google Sheets, I'm making zero dollars from that.

It has to be done, but it's not making any money. But if I'm spending that hour that the business is paying me $100 to do, if I spend that on sourcing, I can make $1,000 an hour from that. And when you hire from countries like Argentina and the Philippines, that admin that still has to be done, you can pay $10 an hour to get done. It cost varies, but for rounding numbers here, $10 an hour.

So, if we take that $1,000 profit we make from sourcing in that hour, the business is paying us $100 for the time, we're paying the overseas hire $10 for the admin. We end up with a net profit of $890 where if we spent that on admin instead, it was losing us $100. So, I would fill this role writing a job posting very similar to this. Once we've identified what the responsibilities are to get off my plate, I would make a job posting with the title, very specific logistics assistant, operations manager for an e-commerce business.

The mission, the vision that uh this role is set to accomplish two to three core responsibilities, the stuff that I want to hold them accountable to completing. Must haves. This would be like experience in a remote VA admin logistics role. Someone very proficient with spreadsheets. I'm not here to teach spreadsheets. Exceptional English. English is not a barrier I want to put up with. And a good remote work setup. Webcam, headset, internet power.

Nice to haves. First one would be never worked in an e-commerce business, especially for that first hire. I find having a blank slate, someone I can teach my way of doing things and not have to retrain things I might have learned from the last guy is a huge advantage. Also, you get a great value for that first hire. You're not paying a premium for someone's experience in the field. Experience in Zapriier or similar automation tool would be huge too.

Some AI stuff and experience working with a solo founder directly. not a requirement, but definitely useful because the environment is going to be a bit more um solo, a bit more more isolated. So, I would start with week one teaching them the foundational context of the business, what is important, how we make money, all the moving pieces, so they can see where they slot into that puzzle. Screen sharing on calls, showing them the workflows that I want them to take over.

I could do looms as well, but screen share makes it really like like low friction. I don't have to like, oh, I got to record this loom. I just hop on a call with them, screen share, and then I have them create the SOPs based on what they see in the screen share. Week two, I'm taking another step back, a layer deeper, and guiding them, having them screen share with me, and them explaining to me why they're clicking what they're clicking, why they're doing these different steps in the process.

Because for a hire like this to actually perform well, I don't want a button pusher. I don't want a step-by-step SOP. The SOP is a good guidance for for what needs to be done, but I want someone to understand the why behind it. So, that's what I would focus on in week two. By week three, I've delegated those core responsibilities off my plate. Should be pretty quick, assuming you hire someone competent for a role like this.

And then week four is when I would want to start opening the loop of iteration areas they see our process could be better and then layering in those side tasks the stuff that is not the like once they have the core stuff down the other parts of the business now that I have them on payroll. That's another thing I would not hire part-time for this role. I would hire someone full-time 40 hours a week dedicated emotionally and mentally to the problems of my business. there's always more work to be done that I could teach them.

And I would keep them on my team for years like I have through constant Slack communications, weekly one-on-one meetings, and monthly team meetings once I start growing the the team and giving them insight onto the different parts of the business, the pulse on everything. always providing recognition and feedback and then also of course giving them opportunities for financial incentives as they do things that make the business more money. And then once I have that first hire out of the way, I would start back up from the top, run that task audit again, see where my week is going, and reallocate that time that I buy back towards the higher value work until I'm only like I think the highest value thing you can do in business is be a leader.

And so the more you learn to iterate on that and the the people that are with you for like a year or two understand so much they can move up into product sourcing or into these higher value roles of the business. I think you can create a very high lever position for yourself as an entrepreneur. If you want help figuring out what the specific role your business needs, that's what we do on our overseas hiring calls.

There's going to be a link down below if you want to book that. We can talk through what this might look like for your business.