#439 - From Solo Hustle to Team Powerhouse: The Systemization Secrets of an 8-Figure Seller

#439 - From Solo Hustle to Team Powerhouse: The Systemization Secrets of an 8-Figure Seller Kevin King: Welcome to episode 439 of the AM-PM Podcast. My guest this week is going to be talking about systemization. That's right. We all start out as entrepreneurs, usually working by ourselves, building our business, but at some point it comes to time to actually hire people, put systems in place and really explode the business. And typically that happens around the million to million point three mark. And my guest today, Michal Specian, is going to actually talk about that. It's going to be a great episode. I think you're going to get a lot of good information from this and a lot of food for thought. Enjoy this episode. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King: All right, let me see if I can get this right. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, Michal Specian. Did I come close at least? Michal Specian: Did I come close at least? Yes. That's pretty close. I'm happy to be here. Kevin King: These Czech names, you know, sometimes it's a Czech name, right? Michal Specian: Yes. Yes, it's a Czech name. Not very common, but yeah, it is a Czech name. Kevin King: You said you're in Prague, Czech Republic, right? Michal Specian: Yes. I'm originally from Czech Republic and I've been living in Prague for the last 10 years. Kevin King: I love Prague. I've been there several times. I spoke at an Amazon event there a few years ago that Augustas Kliglis does. I did a big production in Prague about 20 years ago. I remember Prague has lots of beautiful women, lots of good cheap beer and lots of really cool architecture and castles everywhere. I remember we did a Do a big big fashion photoshoot production there and then what's that town burnt bernie burn. Michal Specian: Burno. Kevin King: Burno that's it yeah burno that's not not too far away. Great area, great area. I'm jealous. Michal Specian: Yeah, I personally love it here. I like to travel, but I always like to come back because I feel that Prague has something special about it. Kevin King: You've been in the e-commerce game for a day or two, right? I think you started an Amazon brand around nine, ten years ago, something like that? Michal Specian: Yeah, so I've been in the Amazon space over eight years now. Yeah, that's when I launched my first product. Kevin King: And did you launch that in the US or did you launch that in Europe? Michal Specian: I launched that in the U.S. at the time I was at the university. I was 22 years old, so I managed to save up $5,000 and that's how I launched my first product in the U.S. marketplace. Kevin King: Awesome. So you were in university in the U.S. or university in Europe? Michal Specian: I was in university in Prague, so I had no idea. I've never been to U.S. at that time, so launching a product there was a little bit of a leap, but it worked out pretty well. Kevin King: What category was that in? Michal Specian: It was in sports category, so gym equipment. Kevin King: And that was back when it was easy to launch in 2016, easy compared to today. Much easier to get reviews, much easier to launch. Did you use one of those launch services back in the day, like Zonblast or Vyralaunch or one of those types? Michal Specian: No, because at the time I kind of struggled with English. So that was my biggest obstacle to even understand what I need to do, find some tutorials. But I somehow managed to do that and just put my product up, turn on the PPC auto campaign and that's how it all started. Kevin King: How did that evolve? So you started with $5,000 and then How did that evolve? Did you hit half a million dollars or a million dollars the first year? How did it evolve and add several more SKUs or what was the process like? Michal Specian: Actually, I launched two more SKUs, but basically within the year of my launch, I met my ex-business partner at this time and we started working together on another brand. So I left my first product just sticking along. They were making Decent income for me. So I was at the university. It was profiting around $1,500 to $2,000 per month, which was great. But that's when I met Miles and we started working on a new brand together. And that's when it really took off. And we eventually scaled that brand to eight figures over four years. Kevin King: All in the US or did you end up expanding into other markets as well? Michal Specian: We expanded into the European marketplaces as well. The US was the main marketplace, what we were selling in Canada, Mexico. UK was doing pretty well and then eventually the rest of Europe utilizing the Pan-EU program. Kevin King: And was that sports as well or a different category? Michal Specian: That was a different category. It was kitchen and dining. And specifically, since we already sold the brand, so I'm happy to share, we were selling glasses, champagne flutes, wine glasses. Kevin King: Okay. Like disposable ones or glass ones? Michal Specian: Glass ones. Kevin King: Czech Republic is known for some of its glassware stuff. Were these like with a Czech flair to them or they just standard Made in China, glassware. Michal Specian: Well, when I was developing the products, I got inspired of some of the designs we have here, but they were sourced in China. But then when we did the photo shoot, we actually did that in Prague, because I think a lot of people actually associate Prague and Czech Republic with glass. So we did that, but the products were sourced in China. Kevin King: So it's just you and your partner? Or did you build out a whole team to scale this to eight figures? Michal Specian: Yeah, we built out a team, but a pretty small one. We had two full-time employees and basically two part-time employees. So we were focused a lot on efficiency, right? So we were really focused on systemizing the business, making it as efficient as possible so we can just focus on launching more products and playing the Amazon game, very straightforward business. Kevin King: And you exited, when did you exit? Was it to an aggregator or to a private equity? Michal Specian: Yes, to an aggregator. It was the end of 2021, so the timing was very good. At that time, we didn't know that it was the peak, but yeah, we sold at probably the best time possible, I would say. Kevin King: I would say so, yeah. The end of 2021 is when they were flush with cash and paying crazy multiples, sometimes 4, 5, 6, 7x. So when you went to sell, was it competitive? Did you have a lot of people bidding on you or did you just have someone approach you and you just went with them? Michal Specian: Yeah. So initially they approached us and that's when we got the idea early 2021 that it's even possible to sell the brand for more than we expected. So we started reaching out and at the end there was like a little bidding war over the brand. So we managed to increase the multiple and get a very, very good deal out of it. Kevin King: Is that brand still going today or did the aggregator crash and burn it? Michal Specian: It's still going, but I wouldn't say well. I haven't really looked into too much detail, but I think it's pretty common that the brands that were acquired are not doing as well as they were with the original owner. Kevin King: What was that process like going through that sale? I'm assuming if you're 8 figures, that means your sale was into the 7, maybe even 8 figures. What was that process like? That can be life-changing money for a lot of people. The process of just pulling all the documents together and doing all the due diligence and everything, were you guys set very well because you had everything systemized? Was that a stressful time? Michal Specian: It definitely made things easier, but I want to stress out that at that point when we were hitting those eight figures, the team was not sufficient. If we would decide to grow further, we would have to hire. So at that point, we were stretched quite thin. So during the due diligence process, during a rapid expansion, just making sure that the brand doesn't crash before the sale, getting ready for Q4, which was always huge for the brand, and going through the process was very exhausting. Over two months and I was basically working around the clock to make sure that we have all documents, testing the products, all of that stuff. But in the end, we managed to do that pretty well. With Miles, we basically were going to the Canary Islands for three weeks to finalize the deal where we were basically sitting in one room together and making sure that everything goes through. And then when the money got wired, it was quite unreal, to be honest. But at the end, it worked out really, really well. Kevin King: So what did you do to celebrate? Did you stay in the Canary Islands and do something to celebrate? Or did you do something crazy or ridiculous? Do you buy something special or anything to celebrate or are you like, oh, that's nice, there's a bunch of money in my account now, just another day? Michal Specian: Yeah, so I remember the high five with my business partner and then we went to grab a dinner. We had Spanish paella and that's pretty much it. I didn't have a specific goal of something to buy. He felt the same way. So we just then spend their week just Basically, making sure that everything is finalized. I was then helping the aggregator with the onboarding process, educating them, teaching them about the brand for the next few months. So I wasn't completely out of it until the end of 2021. But yeah, that was pretty much it. Kevin King: What did you do after that? Did you start another brand or did you segue into what you're doing now? Or was there a little gap where you just took some time off and traveled or enjoyed yourself? What happened next? Michal Specian: We had this discussion with my ex-business partner and he decided to retire. He wasn't interested in starting another business. But I got bored pretty quickly. After like two months, I already started thinking like, what could be next? And I was a bit, I would say, burned out of the Amazon physical product business model. I realized that I needed to change something. So I started doing a few one-on-one sessions with other sellers from my network, just helping them optimize their brand. And then that's how I eventually started what I'm doing right now, focusing on the internal operations of businesses. Because without knowing that at that time, We were really doing very well in terms of the systems processes and managing a remote team. And it was quite eye-opening having this conversation with the aggregator who told us that basically our way, how we manage our supply chain, our inventory, that it was very seamless for them to see how we actually manage that. But at the time, I thought that everyone does it this way, which. Kevin King: When you went to university, were you studying engineering or were you studying systems or marketing or where did you get the background to develop? Or was it just natural for you and Miles? Michal Specian: I learned a lot from Miles. He is an engineer, so I learned a lot from him. I was studying economics, so I didn't really study systems and processes, but it comes very naturally to me. I realized I was doing this since I was a teenager. I started playing guitar and having a little workflow, how to prepare or what I was playing for. For an audience, what needs to be done and I realized I was already creating my own little SOPs when I was 14 years old, so it came quite naturally to me. Kevin King: In the process of selling the company, what do you think the biggest lesson you learned with someone listening to this, if they're getting ready to sell their company or getting ready to go through that process, what's something that Maybe you learned that you could share with them. What advice would you give them? Michal Specian: I would say that the best advice is that the best time to sell is when you don't need to. When you feel the pressure, you need to get it out of your hands. It's not a good time to sell. You are not in a good place to negotiate. We truly were in a position where we were looking at this brand and we had a real plan, step by step, how to double the brand, how to get from 10 million to 20 million. And we just decided like, hey, Selling is one of the options. But when you feel like selling is the only option, you're probably not going to get what you would otherwise get. So I think that was an important lesson. And the other one was that Understanding that the sale might fall through. When you start the due diligence process, there's a lot of milestones when the deal can just get canceled. And if you don't focus on your business, making sure that the business keeps running, keep growing, keep launching products, even though you are getting ready to sell the business, still run the business as if you were to keep it. I think that was a big lesson because basically once we signed the letter of intent, I was like, okay, my job is done here. That was a mistake. I really had to focus more on even just running and growing the brand. Kevin King: What would you say is the hardest thing or what's the most different thing about launching an Amazon or e-commerce brand today in 2025 versus when you started in 2016? I would say before mastering the Amazon game, it was. Michal Specian: If you understood how to launch product on Amazon, how all of this ins and outs, reviews, the algorithm, all of that is still, of course, incredibly important. But nowadays, I would say Amazon is just one of the sales channels. So it's no longer launching an Amazon business. It's launching your brand and using Amazon as a sales channel. And I think even this mindset shift It really changes how you then approach the business itself. Suddenly, I'm not an Amazon seller. I'm a brand builder. I'm looking for the best channels. And I'm seeing that with many sellers that they are actually still Amazon is the biggest sales channel. 80% of their sales is coming through there, but they're slowly diversifying. They're building the email list. They're building the social media presence and really thinking in terms of a brand and the niche rather than just a product. Kevin King: Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest changes. Like you said, it used to be more about finding a product and now it's more about building that brand and building that total company. Do you think you could do what you did with $5,000 in today's competitive environment on Amazon? Do you think it would take more money? You could still do it and just be able to slow or grow. Michal Specian: It will take more money, especially like I entered a bigger niche at that time. So I would prepare more money or be ready to enter a smaller niche. And again, if you think in terms of the customer and the brand and you map out all of the potential products that the brand could sell to the target customer, maybe you can find a product that is like a really small niche that You can have a smaller amount to launch your first product before you go after the big ones. But still, I think $5,000 will not be sufficient, especially when you need software to help you. You need all these probably legal fees to start your company. So I don't think that $5,000 would get you far nowadays. Kevin King: Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, $5,000, I mean, it depends on what you're doing. Like you said, if you pick a very narrow niche that doesn't have a lot of demand or a lot of volume, Not trying to actually make a living out of doing this. If you're just a little side hustle, you might be able to start with that, but you're gonna pretty quickly need some more money, especially if you're successful. Michal Specian: A lot of the time for me, it was like unimaginable amount of money because I was making $4 per hour. So it took me basically two years of work to save up that amount, but yeah. Kevin King: Yeah, no, it was your life savings and you had everything on the line and that was a smart investment. It paid off big time. So when you started it, was your family like, Thinking like you're crazy, you're wasting your money and now have they changed their tune like, oh, all proud of how successful you were? Michal Specian: Yeah, I couldn't tell them at first. I basically told them once I wired the down payment for my first PO and they were like, so you did what? You wired $2,000 to China? What's happening? But yeah, nowadays it's better. Kevin King: I can imagine. When you exit for a large sum of money, a seven-figure or higher sum of money, like you said, your partner, he just decided to retire and kick back and you got bored. But how does it change your mindset when it comes to working? Do you find something that you're passionate about and then it just makes it feel like it's not work? Or is there sometimes you're like, why am I doing this? I don't need to do this. I've got some money in the bank. I've got some investments. I've got this. I don't have to do this. How does that mindset work? Michal Specian: Yeah. So I would say that my list of priorities changed. Before, when we had the Amazon business, it was very... Making money was the number one priority and I was willing to sacrifice basically everything else on the list. So I was making sure that we will get there. But nowadays, I want to have a little bit more balance. So first of all, I want to enjoy what I do. That's why I kind of transitioned to working with people one-on-one. Because even though with physical products, we have hundreds of thousands of customers, I've never talked to a single one of them. And now I'm talking to people, I'm meeting people, I'm going to conferences. So I think it's just a different phase. But for me, also, the important part is that I can Basically, stop whenever I want, take a break, travel, and actually choose the people I work with. If I see that someone is not a good fit, they are willing, I want to work with you, but I don't feel the good vibe, the connection there, I just say no. And I think that's incredibly powerful when I can do that because it just makes the work more enjoyable. Kevin King: And so the work you're doing now, it's a scale port, right? Michal Specian: Yes, I call the company Scaleport and we help sellers to systemize their businesses and build the teams. And when we do that, we basically replicate the structure we had in our business into their business, because in its core, the internal operations I learned that most businesses are very similar, right? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what product it is because all of the key functions of the business are the same. Kevin King: So when you come in, when someone comes to you and maybe it's not hard, especially selling on Amazon, to hit a million dollars with just one person. Maybe one person by themselves could actually do that. In some cases, you might have a VA or two. But one thing, where is that magic point where You can get by probably, but where's that magic point where systems really need to kick in? Is it at a million bucks typically? Is it at 5 million bucks? Is it at 20 SKUs, 5 SKUs? Is there some magic point where people that have just kind of done this by the seat of their pants and just kind of winged it, need to actually start getting serious? I mean, obviously it'd be best if they started from day one, but that's not realistic for most people. Where is that magic point where if you don't wake up and start systemizing this and putting some of what's a scale port and what you teach into place, you're just eliminating yourself tremendously. Michal Specian: Yeah. So what I've seen so far, the average is around 1.3 million in revenue when people realize like, Hey, The growth is slowing down because now I'm spending more and more time maintaining the business. Because when you have zero products, launching your first products, you are focused 100% on growth. The more products you launch, the more time you spend maintaining the business. Customer service, supply, operations, BPC, suddenly starts eating more and more of your time. And as you launch more products, You have limited amount of time to keep launching, to keep growing. And around the 1.3 million is what I've been seeing that people basically max out all of their capacity on just maintaining the business. Of course, I've heard, I've talked to sellers that reach 2-3 million with two SKUs. So they got very far on their own. And that's the beauty of the business model. You can get very, very far on your own. But eventually people who are serious and really want to get to multiple seven figures, potentially eight figures and exit, They need to kind of change their mindset and treat it as a real business, as a business with a team and processes and understanding that there should be the owner, the CEO, and not just the operator who runs the show. Kevin King: How hard is that for a lot of entrepreneurs to do that, to let go of that control, to let go of that To let go and sometimes they have to work harder to work less because that transition can be actually more work in the beginning and then you get to back off it a little bit. And it may be you actually are making less money as an owner for a period of time there because you're starting to have to hire and pay people that money would have been going into your pocket as things transition and start to roll. So how hard is that transition for a lot of people that you work with? Michal Specian: So I think it really comes down that the fear of hiring to not having the systems and processes in place because people kind of run their show and they're in the middle of everything, doing everything on their own. And when they are, they know they need help. They may be even trying to hire a VA, but the VA then relies on them heavily. They tell them what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and they review their work. And more often than not, they realize, like, hey, I better do it myself because it's just like so much time to even explain it. So the fear of hiring is this, that they are afraid that they have to micromanage. Otherwise, the person will mess things up. When they actually have the process in place, they define what needs to be done. It's then easier to find someone and plug them into the process and manage them and make sure that they are doing what they're supposed to do. And I also noticed that people are often very surprised. I buy the quality of candidates for a very low price, especially people from the West, from the US, when they're hiring. I tell them, hey, you can hire a really good brand manager for $14 per hour, $15 per hour. It's possible to hire remotely, so it doesn't have to be a six-figure salary for your team members, even though they have five years of experience. Once we tackle the limiting beliefs, it comes easier. But as you said, it's very often the fear of letting go. I have this baby, you know, I spent three, four years, my blood, sweat and tears building this. And now I'm going to hand it over to this person I've never met. That's a tough one. Kevin King: So what are the first steps when someone hits that 1.3 and they wake, they have that, or whatever number they're at, they have that wake up call like, all right, I got to get myself out of this and quit working in my business and start working on my business. What are the first steps that you do when you analyze? Do you do some sort of like audit of what they're doing and then or do you have a set system like say, all right, step number one is Let's take off the easiest thing, whatever. You're doing customer service. Let's get that hired out. What's the process like? Michal Specian: So the first thing we tackle is the mindset to make sure that there are no limiting beliefs that would prevent us from going through this transformation successfully. As I said, people have these limiting beliefs. They are really conditioned to be the doers, to be the operators of the business. So we need to solve that first. And we do that through a bunch of thought experiments. Help them understand the value of their time. Help them understand Where they're just wasting time maintaining the business, how cheap it is to hand it over to someone else, right? And really understanding, getting into what I call the owner's mindset, right? To understand that as the owner of business, you can buy back your time. And not only can, you should do that very proactively. Once we do that, we focus on the systems, right? To make sure that the business is now built as a machine with different parts and different functions. So from product development, supply, operations, marketing, we go one by one. And make sure that everything is streamlined, everything runs well as a well-oiled machine. And once we are done, we can start bringing people in. And just having the systems makes it so much easier to even define what we need, like what role. Because otherwise, if we don't, we end up hiring generalists. And that is someone who we need to tell what to do, how to do it, when to do it. So it's way better to then have this step outside of the business, see it as a machine and see where I can put this one person that would give me a lot of my time back. Really the easiest way to solve the labor bottleneck in the business. So once we do that, we start the hiring process and that's where the magic really happens. Kevin King: So are you creating SOPs from scratch or do you have some templates and you come in with the owner and say, Today, we're going to talk about how to break down what are you doing every day, what are your steps, how are you contacting your suppliers, how are you doing the marketing, what are your rules that you go by and have them kind of think that through and write that out into SOPs or do you have a template and they just kind of modify it a little bit and tweak it to their customization. Michal Specian: So we have a template, as I mentioned, that's essentially the structure we had in our own business that basically they can see under the hood of an 8-figure business. And I show literally everything, every tool, every spreadsheet, everything. And we kind of use that as a model. But when it comes to systemizing the business, we begin by building process maps, really to just understand the workflows in the business. From there, we will create a proper task management, right? So that will then help us with the delegation and where necessary, we create instructions. But I'm not a big fan of creating detailed SOPs for every single step, right? Because a lot of the time, these SOPs become outdated. No one really uses them, right? If you have dozens of different SOPs. So I highly recommend people to just We don't use SOPs only for training purposes. When we onboard someone and we see they need a little bit of help in that area or this area, we create an SOP. And at this day and age, you can do that easily, you know, with AI, recording a quick loom video, using the transcript to create the SOP. So you basically hit two birds with one stone, right? You do the thing while creating the SOP. Kevin King: Yeah, I know a lot of companies that create SOPs or operating manuals or Operating procedures and they go into a binder and they go up on the shelf and they never leave the shelf. They just stay there. So once you've figured out, okay, this is the jobs we need to hire. Is there some sort of like order that you typically like get the lowest lying fruit off the table first or the biggest pain point of the owner off? Like maybe it's, you know, a lot of people always say, well, you should, your first hire should be customer service. You shouldn't be as the owner, you shouldn't be doing customer service. Does it depend? I mean, maybe it's getting a marketing person or it's a supply chain person or whatever. How do you just make those decisions of what steps or what order to actually start implementing people into the system? Michal Specian: So we focus on first removing the owner from the maintenance of the business and then removing them from the growth, right? From the growth areas of the business. So the first step removing from the maintenance, which as you said, would be customer service, But in most cases, it's going to be supply, right? In like 60-70% of the cases, the first hire we make is a supply manager. Again, it depends on the business. I've worked with businesses that are customer service. Kevin King: What is a supply manager? What's your definition of what a supply manager typically does? Just to give people that are listening an idea. Michal Specian: So that would be inventory forecasting, understanding when you need to reorder, if you use 3PL, how many units to send from your 3PL warehouse to Amazon. It's also calculating seasonality curves. If your product is seasonal, understanding the spikes in the seasonality, whether it's Q4 or summer products, so you can forecast accurately. And then from the forecasting, of course, managing a relationship with suppliers. That means placing purchase orders. Working with freight forwarders, booking shipments, managing those shipments and overall taking care of your whole supply chain. That's a lot of the times where people sink most of their time. Kevin King: Is that person also dealing with issues if the listing is suspended or anything or is that a different job? Michal Specian: That I would consider a different job. So we then consider hiring an Amazon operations manager who would be someone who It basically takes care of the Amazon side of the business, split testing, monitoring competition, monitoring keyword ranking, and really understanding the Amazon marketplace. So one of the things would be listing suspensions, right? That person would solve that, but it's not something that the supply chain manager would do because when we hire a supply chain manager, they don't necessarily need experience with Amazon. They need experience with managing supply chains. Kevin King: So a supply chain manager is oftentimes maybe one of the first ones you recommend. What comes after that typically? Michal Specian: Then it also really depends on the business, but the Amazon operations manager is often the second big role to hire because that's basically the next area where I see sellers spending a lot of time. Then we have either PPC or the Amazon operations, which I like to keep these separately because I think Amazon PPC is like a whole different beast that should be tackled separately. So often we either we analyze whether the people could use, you know, some tools, some automation or whether they are better off to work with an agency or in some cases where they have very specific needs. I recommend to keep PPC in-house and in that case, hiring some PPC specialists would be a way to go. So either Amazon operations manager or some PPC specialist. Kevin King: Once this is all worked out, if I'm projected to hit eight figures, so let's say in the next one or two years, roughly how many people would I, as the owner, what would I be going to from me running the show when I'm at about a million bucks to where I'm at 10 million bucks? Am I now a company of 10 people, 12 people, 8 people? Is there some just I know it can vary a little bit depending on the business, but what's a good rule of thumb that I might be at? Michal Specian: It really depends on the complexity of the business. I work with some businesses that are at 10 people when they're doing 5 million because they have multiple sales channels, multiple marketplaces, they create content, so they have a slightly different strategy. But if we are just talking about very straightforward business where the main Growth driver is product development. I believe that around five, six million, we are still fine with four or five people, but getting to eight figures, I believe you then need to expand the team as well, right? Because then your supply manager needs help as well. Because if you're managing dozens of POs, dozens of shipments, they cannot handle them themselves, right? They will need some assistance to help them. So then the team kind of grows, I don't want to say exponentially, but quite rapidly. Kevin King: What's the hardest in the Amazon e-commerce space? What's the hardest position to hire for? What's the one where there's just not that many qualified people? It's hard to find someone that can do a really good job. And on the flip side of that, what's the easiest to hire for? Michal Specian: I would say the hardest one is product development. People often think that they can easily hire someone, do product research, develop new products. The idea is very tempting. But at the end of the day, the entrepreneur is the one who knows the brand the best. Ideally, they know the customer avatar very well. So it's harder to delegate, not impossible. I didn't like to think in specific tasks. That involves the product development, but not the actual development of the product. That seems to be the hardest one right now, what I've been seeing with our clients to actually hire someone who can really take the product development from end to end, making the products better and optimizing that. When it comes to the easiest one, of course, that would be customer service. But then again, that doesn't move the needle that much. That saves people maybe two hours a week, three hours a week, depends on the brand. So it's easy, but it doesn't really move the needle. Overall, I would say what I'm seeing nowadays is that hiring became easier since a lot of aggregators failed. Suddenly, there are people that were very well-trained looking for a job. So in the past year, We've been seeing great candidates that were trained by the aggregators. So they have really good experience, very well trained. They understand everything and they're just looking for jobs. So even finding Amazon operations, supply chain, it seems to be a very straightforward process. Kevin King: So you help the people you work with actually find the talent. So are you doing that? Do you have a little agency set up or do you go through Other people that already do that or do you have your own process and websites that you go to? How do you handle that? Michal Specian: So we have pre-built hiring funnels for each of these roles we mentioned, which means that the hiring funnel really consists of the job ad, the questionnaire, the skill test, the interview question. So everything is already defined for the role. So essentially what people do is just take that, make slight adjustments in the job posting and start hiring on the websites we recommend. Currently, I recommend Upwork and online jobs. That's a good place to start. And usually that's enough to get a few dozen candidates that we then filter out through this funnel to get the best candidates in front of us for the interview. So I help them, you know, I guide them through the process. So everything I do is basically done one-on-one with me. I guide them through the process. To make it easier and answer all their questions and give them the templates they need. Kevin King: So how is AI going to affect all this? I mean, like you said a minute ago, you might be able to get to five million with four or five people. But with AI and AI agents, that's the hot thing in 2025, where you can actually develop some of these AI agents to actually do what a customer service person does, or to do what a procurement or shipping logistics assistant would do. You don't need the assistant anymore. The AI agent is the assistant. As this technology develops and is developing at a rapid pace, it's not quite there right this second. I mean you can do certain things, but I believe it's coming in the next six months to three years where it's going to be fully autonomous on a lot of this and AI is going to be able to do a lot of it And so that group of five people might turn out to be two or three and two or three of them are no longer humans but they're agents that can do this 24-7 without complaining or without taking breaks and without running away to another higher paying job. Michal Specian: Yeah, I think that for now what it looks like is that rather than replacing a specific person in the business, it just makes the people who are already there More capable, more powerful, more productive. So as you said, the person may no longer need an assistant because he leverages AI. So rather than, I'm going to replace my supply manager with AI, I can imagine that my supply manager with AI can handle five times the volume of his work. So that's how I'm thinking about, at least for now, utilizing the current version of AI. But as you said, God knows where this will end up. Kevin King: So is that a priority at Scaleport is like helping people? Systemize with AI? Are you just kind of dabbling in it right now or it just depends on the client whether they want to go that route or not? Michal Specian: In some areas, I strongly urge people to use AI, especially when it comes to hiring. Basically, it really streamlines the process, whether it's clarifying the role of the person or even filtering out the candidates, recording the interviews, letting AI help us make decisions. So that's where we use it heavily, of course, product development. That's also for ideation, an amazing tool. But in areas where I see so far not great results in terms of implementation of AI is managing the supply chain, the inventory forecast. I find like good old spreadsheets so far to be to be the best. Kevin King: I think you're right. I think right now, but I think it's going to get to where you have agents that actually can do that far better than than what any human can do. It's not there now. I agree. The spreadsheets and the human looking at it. But I think it's going to rapidly Make a switch to where you can have. Let's say eight different AI agents working for your company. One of them is a specialist in product development. It's going out there scouring all the trending sites, all the what's hot, all the past patterns and future patterns and forecasting. Then there's another one that's an agent that's specialized in sourcing. It's tied into Alibaba and global sources and all the supply chain stuff. It can automatically take what the first agent does and actually submit for bids and find the right supplier. The human at the end signs off on it or overlooks it. And then that agent also works with an agent that builds the listing and works with another agent that does the customer service and so on. You have an intertwined group of 8 to 10 that are completely talking to each other. It's almost like self-driving cars. And they don't have to have the human involved. And they can talk to each other and feed off of each other. That doesn't exist right now. But I think that's where we're going. And I think that's going to be a big change And I think there's going to be. I'm your host, Michal Specian, and today we're going to be talking about how you can create a potential for people like your company, like Scaleport, that could be on the cutting edge of that where you can actually help people make that change by helping them develop those agents and stuff. I would think that that could be a major, a major, major opportunity that people would probably be willing to pay good money for and would help make this transition from one person, million dollar company into one person or two people, maybe three people, a one person billion dollar company in the next five to ten years. That's doing a billion dollars and it's just one person. But before that, you're going to have one person, 10 million, 20 million dollar companies that are fully utilizing where AI is going. And I think that's part of the issue now with a lot of e-commerce sellers. They don't understand The full picture of AI, they understand how to use it to help them write a better job listing or how to help them analyze their PPC or how to help them write a better listing or bounce some ideas off in a brainstorming session. Those are all great things, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. That's where this is going. And this is an area where I study. And I'm actually even at the point now for me personally, I have to change what I'm doing. And not business-wise, but my time-wise, I need to spend, I was just telling everybody yesterday, I said, I need to start taking Sundays or whatever day of the week it is. But just for in my case, say a Sunday, because I work seven days a week. I take Sundays and Sundays are dedicated to nothing but playing with AI. That doesn't mean I'm trying to make it do something cool in my business or automate my business, but just playing with the latest and coolest stuff to see what I can then go tell somebody like, you need to do this and this and this. I think that's going to become more and more important when it comes to systemizations. I think the power we're about to have in what you do now to helping humans is about to explode and I think you may be in the right place at the right time to where Scaleport, if you did this right, Scaleport could be a much bigger exit for you. Michal Specian: It's exciting and scary future at the same time and I'm definitely open to it and I'm helping people to embrace the current version of the AI. I think it's important to stay ahead of the curve and it's evolving very quickly as you said. I think it's important to proactively learn and I personally find it quite enjoyable to just test different tools and watch videos about the new AI tools that were just launched. As you said, I really think it will be essential just to stay ahead of the curve. Kevin King: Yeah, all you got to do is stay a couple hours ahead of everybody else and you'll be fine. Because it's changing that fast, just be a couple hours ahead of everybody else and you'll be fine. Are most of your clients in Europe or are they in the US or is it a good mix all over the world? Michal Specian: I would say it's a pretty good mix all over the world. Around 40-50% of my clients are from the US, 35-40% from Europe. Exploring Australia. So now I have a few clients from Australia and it's a really smaller community, but it seems to be a very tight community. So it's also working pretty well. But yeah, overall, I would say all around the world in general. Kevin King: What's like the biggest success story you've had with one of the people that come through Skillport, like someone that was just a total mess and you just like straighten them out and they just like, you're really proud of where they went and how successful they've become. Maybe they even exited for a big sum. Michal Specian: We have quite a few stories like this where we unlock the potential of their brand by really allowing them to expand the brand. I had sellers that were stuck around 7 figures for the longest time, 2-3 years, and just putting those systems in place and hiring 2-3 people made all the difference and allowed them to double the business within a year. So for example, actually today I was just talking to one of the sellers who finished the program a year ago and he managed to scale from Around $2 million to $5 million a year after we implemented all of this. Basically, all he did was just implement the system, hire two people, and launch a bunch of products because suddenly he had the time to do that. I don't think it's at the end of the day, it's not a rocket science, right? It's just common sense. People often come to me and it's like, I haven't been growing for two years. Well, you haven't launched a single product. Like all you do is, you know, play manager shipments and, you know, tweak a little PPC. That's not going to move the needle. You just need to go back to, you know, making the big moves. And the only way to do it is to have time to do it. Kevin King: How does your system work? When I come in, is it like you work with someone for three months or is it a monthly retainer until they don't need you anymore? Or what's the system? How does it work? Michal Specian: So we work together for around three or four months where we go through these stages, as I mentioned. First, we look at the mindset, then we build the systems, then we go through the hiring and we basically end up with defining a proper strategy for the business and the planning system, right? Because then when the seller have the time, I think, It's very common for entrepreneurs that they suddenly find more people to put on their plate. We help them remove some to have more time and suddenly they put a bunch of stuff back in. So we help them to have more direction in the business and so they don't get spread too thin again. It takes three to four months. Kevin King: Is this just you or do you have a team yourself at Scaleport? Michal Specian: I have a team helping me with content because I have a YouTube channel where I talk about these topics, systems, processes, team, hiring, managing. So I have a team helping me with that. But when it comes to work with clients, I do that. Not necessarily because it's the most efficient, scalable way to do this, but because I enjoy it. Kevin King: And what does something like this typically cost? Michal Specian: Yeah, so it depends on the size of the business, but I try to fit within 10,000 US dollars for the whole corporation. Kevin King: That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Do you get some people that start it and like, ah, to heck with this. This is just not for me. I don't like this. This is not for me. They just get frustrated with the process and you have to kind of babysit them through it. Or is everybody always gung-ho? Michal Specian: I feel like it's my job to keep them motivated. So it's common that, you know, people start with a lot of excitement and then see like, hey, it's actually work. But I managed to get them through it by, you know, just reminding them why they started. And there's basically no alternative, I would say. That's also important when people want to grow, but they kind of feel like, I don't want to do this. There is no other option than just to go through this painful period for a bit so you can then grow again. Kevin King: You're going to be coming to Iceland next month for the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. Are you looking forward to that? Michal Specian: Yeah, I'm super excited. I'm definitely excited to see Iceland, but more importantly to experience the conference. I've heard so many good things about it. I've spoken at quite a few conferences already, but this one, I think, We'll have the highest level sellers, so I'm really making sure that I'm going to bring the best stuff possible. Kevin King: What are you going to be speaking about? Michal Specian: I'm going to speak about how to build a business that runs without the owner, how to basically successfully remove from the operations of the business. So that will systematically remove itself from the business so they can have more freedom. Kevin King: I think it's going to be good. Like you said, the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, the speaker, it's a very, very elite group of speakers and it's very competitive. The median seller at the last one, last BDSS in Hawaii, was 7.5 million. So half the people were doing over 7.5 million, half the people under. The average was like 25 million, but one big aggregator or something can skew that average, so that's why I give the median. It's about 120 of some of the top most successful people around the world in the Amazon space. So I think you're going to have a good time and it's going to be good connections. And also, you know, it's Iceland. We got volcanoes and glaciers and cold and cool, cool events. And it's going to be a really cool time. I think you're going to really, really enjoy it. Michal Specian: Yeah. Looking forward to it. Kevin King: Awesome. Well, this has been great speaking today. If people want to learn more, maybe even work with you or something or inquire about your services, they're at that point where they're needing to systemize and needing a little bit of help and guidance, how would they reach out or what's the best way to do that? Michal Specian: So they can find me on our website, scaleport.io, or they can find me on YouTube searching for my name, or they can connect with me on LinkedIn, for example. I'm happy to connect there as well if they want to just have a chat and ask some questions. But the best way would be definitely our website, scaleport.io. Kevin King: Well, Michal, I really appreciate you coming on. I'm looking forward to seeing you in person in Iceland next month. Michal Specian: Thank you so much for having me. Kevin King: Systemizing your business is one of the most important but also one of the most difficult things for a lot of entrepreneurs because it comes at a point where you've got to let go of your little baby. It's a little bit of extra work when you actually go through the process, but the end result is usually Much greater and the reward is is very very well both in your time and in your money So if you want to know more make sure you go check out skillport.io I check out McHale's company or Hopefully you're coming to the billion-dollar seller summit in Iceland if you want information on that and you're listening to this before April 4th you can go to billion-dollar seller summit comm billion-dollar seller summit comm and If you can't make it to this year's event, there'll be another one next year in 2026. So you can always get information there about that as well. Or the Iceland events, you can also get a live stream of the events or you can actually watch a replay too. So if you're listening to this after the fact or you're not able to make it, go to BillionDollarSellerSummit.com and Click on the BDSS Iceland event tab and check out the replay or streaming options depending on when you're listening to this episode. We'll be back again next week with another awesome edition of the AM-PM Podcast. And remember, you've got to get to the point where you're working on your business, not working in your business. That's the definition of a true business owner. See you again next week.