Communicating With Your Staff In a Positive Way With Accountability And Autonomy
Last Updated on March 28, 2021 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
Much like the Guardians of the Galaxy protect the galaxy, and the Avengers protect Earth, Amazzia protects your business, your brand, and takes the heavy load so you can focus on your business growth.
In this episode, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Daniel LeBlanc, director of operations at Amazzia. They discuss ways they protect client brands on online platforms such as Amazon. They:
Promote the client’s online presence.
Keep counterfeit products and unauthorized sellers out of the way.
Improve work culture.
Find fun ways to appreciate and bond with work members.
0:26 – Dr. Jeremy Weisz introduces himself and shares the best solution that makes documenting standard operating procedures drop-dead easy, highlighting a 14-day free trial. No credit card required.
1:47 – Dr. Jeremy mentions today’s guest Daniel LeBlanc, talks about the company Amazzia and what they do.
2:04 – Daniel LeBlanc elaborates on what the company Amazzia does, which is helping companies by taking the heavy lifting off teams so they can focus on growth.
3:12 – Mr. LeBlanc talks about some issues his clients come to him with, and explains how the company protects their clients, and client’s brand.
4:12 – Mr. LeBlanc elaborates on what it’s like to work with his company and how he manages brands.
6:25 – The guest talks about Zanfel, one of his favorite brands to work with, and what it’s like to work with them.
8:22 – Mr. LeBlanc explains how rogue sellers are removed from Amazon to protect brands and trademarks he works with.
10:07 – Mr. LeBlanc talks about the main products the business is associated with, and how the business started from health and beauty and then started expanding.
12:26 – The guest speaker talks about the company’s work culture, and what it was like dealing with the staff during the COVID pandemic, highlighting the importance of staff engagement.
14:02 – Mr. LeBlanc talks about some ways to build culture in the company. Activities such as trivia nights, paint nights, monthly lunches, and playing the game Among Us online.
17:14 – Mr. LeBlanc talks about some other activities the company does internally.
20:47 – Mr. LeBlanc talks about ways he appreciates his staff.
23:39 – The guest speaker tells us about software the company uses to document their processes and KPIs, such as Asana.
25:44 – The guest also talks about other software he likes using, like Slack and Google Suite, for example.
26:55 – The host, Dr. Weisz, tells us where we can check out Amazzia.
27:40 – The guest shares his favorite story about one of his employees achieving their goals.
His skills vary from sales management and account management to sales strategic planning and project management.
Transcript of the interview
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Process Breakdown Podcast, where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your employees all the information they need to be successful at their jobs. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Jeremy Weisz here, host of the Process Breakdown Podcast, where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your staff everything they need to be successful at their job. Check out past episodes. Daniel, we had David Allen of Getting Things Done. We had Michael Gerber of the E-Myth and many more. So you can check out past episodes on the podcast.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And before I introduce today’s guest Daniel LeBlanc of Amazzia, this episode is brought to you by SweetProcess. If you’ve had team members ask you the same … Daniel, I’m sure this never happens to you, right? Team members ask you the same questions over and over again, and it’s the tenth time you spent explaining it. Well, guess what? There’s a better way. There’s a soLution. SweetProcess is software that makes it drop dead easy to train and onboard new staff and save time with existing staff.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Not only do universities, banks, and hospitals and software companies use them, but I was talking to Owen, one of the founders, and first responder government agencies use them in life or death situations to run their operations. So I was like, “That’s pretty cool, Owen.” You use SweetProcess to document all the repetitive tasks that eat up your time so you can focus on growing your team and empowering them. You could sign up for a free 14-day trial. No credit card is required. You can go to SweetProcess.com. Sweet like candy, S-W-E-E-T Process.com.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I am excited. Today, we have the director of operations at Amazzia, Daniel LeBlanc. And Amazzia helps you achieve your true Amazon potential. And when I was researching it, Daniel’s like, “Basically, they take the heavy lifting off of your team so you could focus on growth.” But I’ll let you give the most accurate representation. Tell us what Amazzia does and how you service people.
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So what we do, we work with brands on Amazon. Specifically, right now, we are growing and expanding to other boroughs like Walmart and eBay. But right now, we do definitely focus on Amazon brands. And what we do is we want to make sure that the end consumer is getting the right product. That’s the most important thing, I know for Amazon is one of their policies. We take great pride in making sure that, if the seller is not selling the right product, we’re doing everything we can to protect their brands. We do marketing. We do distribution. We transfer brands into seller central because Amazon does have some loopholes that are hard to get through. So we’ve learned that just growing brands and being on top of it so that you don’t have to and allow you to focus the other portions of your retail business.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Daniel, what I want to ask about, too, is you mentioned protect. People want to protect their brand. What are some of the client … the issues that clients come to you with?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So we have fraudulent or counterfeit products that consumers are getting. We want to make sure we go away from that. We trademark expired products, and then just protecting MAP as well. So MAP is the price on Amazon that the brand wants to sell it at. So it matches either their retail markets or their brick and mortar. We want to make sure that we’re aligned with that price so that it does keep the integrity of that brand. If you have a luxury item, such as a Lafco candle or a high-end hair product, you want to make sure that it keeps that value of that product. So those are the certain things that we protect for our brands.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Walk me through a little bit how it works to work with you. So let’s take Mane Choice. Mane Choice comes to you. They say, “We need your help. We don’t want to do all this heavy lifting. We want you to help us.” How does it work from there?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So we talk to them about what their needs are, what are they really truly looking for. And most of our brands are really looking for the growth, right? They’re looking for brand protection. They want to distribute. They want marketing. But all of that wraps up into really growing a brand, right?
Daniel LeBlanc: So for Mane Choice, for example, a couple of years ago when I started, almost three years ago, actually, when I started, this brand was roughly revenuing with us about $800,000 a year. And we’re now over the $2 million mark. And just by doing the marketing and brand protecting and keeping MAP where it needs to be and removing sellers that aren’t supposed to be selling that product on Amazon, we’ve been able to really grow that brand.
Daniel LeBlanc: So when we really go after a brand, we hear all the little things, but what we sell them on really is we want to grow your brand.
Daniel LeBlanc: So whether … Obviously, they grow it by purchase orders, right? Because we buy other product from them and then we sell it on Amazon so that we can keep, again, like I said earlier, keep in line with MAP, keeping in line their brand integrity.
Daniel LeBlanc: So really, the brand comes to us, the sales team talks to them, and then we have a whole onboarding process. So there’s a lot of steps. You would think that you can just be like, “I want to sell on Amazon and I put a product on it and it goes,” but that’s really not the case. We have a whole team of experts here that know every step of the product. So that’s one of my jobs as the director of operations is to manage all those. So I have account managers, I have the eCommerce team, I have my warehouse, and then I have my marketing team.
Daniel LeBlanc: So those are all the key things that we need to get in the line and tell our brand, “These are the expectations.” And then they just have to give us the trust and give us the autonomy to do what they don’t really want to do. Nobody wants to deal with Amazon. No one wants to talk to Amazon, because you really can’t talk to anybody. So …
Daniel LeBlanc: But we figured out that secret, if you will. And that’s how we manage our brands.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Daniel, I was looking at your website and what stuck out to me and a product that stuck out to me, a unique product was Zanfel. What’s Zanfel and what do you do with them?
Daniel LeBlanc: So Zanfel is a unique product that is for … Technically, it sells as a Poison Ivy/Poison Oak relief cream, but you can use it for spider bites, you can use it for mosquito bites. But really anything that itches on your skin, it’s a very unique product. And yes, we have our seasonal period, which is coming up around the bend here, where Poison Oak and Poison Ivy are growing fluently in the forest and camping areas, if you will.
Daniel LeBlanc: But the great thing about is Zanfel is it’s a mom and pop product that’s really just exploded out in the world. And we increased their sales in their first year 159%. We’ve removed 95% of their sellers, and we were able to keep compliance with them at 100%.
Daniel LeBlanc: So it’s one of those brands that we love working with. They’ve been a brand with us for our long time. But they are this mom and pop. So what we’ve been able to do is they don’t have to worry about it. They just let us do our thing. And they love … They’re one of my favorite brands to talk to, and they are just really dedicated to their product, because they worked hard to get it out there into the world.
Daniel LeBlanc: So yeah, the packaging is interesting when you went on Amazon. It has a picture of this kid who got Poison Oak, and then in two days later, and he’s fine because of this cream. So it’s a lifesaver for a lot of people who are into the outdoors and even not really, because Poison Oak sometimes lives in suburbia areas. So …
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. Talk about a product filling a pain point. It’s like you get that and you’re like, “I need something. I need something to put on it. I itch like crazy.”
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: You mentioned removing sellers. Explain that to people for a second. Are there rogue sellers? How are they getting it? And then how are they infiltrating Amazon?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So we want to make sure that our brands have a reseller policy or distribution agreement, if you will. And then what happens is distributors just distribute to distributors who distribute to distributors. So what happens is these sellers that are down the road that are not connected directly to the brand are taking this product and selling it on Amazon at a lower price or they’re not maintaining the trademark or they’re using pictures that maybe is an expired box or an expired model of that product. So [crosstalk 00:09:01].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: How are they getting it? How are they getting the product typically?
Daniel LeBlanc: You can get it from stores. Sometimes stuff gets liquidated from, like I said, a distributor who distributed to a distributor [crosstalk 00:09:11].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Got it. Yeah.
Daniel LeBlanc: .. down that road. So it’s one of those things where sometimes people get it that they don’t know they’re not supposed to sell it on Amazon. So what we do is we just … We graciously say, “Hey, you’re violating a reseller policy. We just are asking you if you can remove yourself.” And then we go on our process.
Daniel LeBlanc: We’re not out to do any harm to any businesses or anything, but our goal is to protect the brand. So we’re doing it in a calm and professional and methodical way to make sure that just people understand you just can’t sell anything on Amazon, especially if you’re violating trademark or if it’s counterfeit or if it’s expired product or it’s not meeting the requirements of Amazon.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for explaining that. It’s really interesting, some of the products. It seems like you’re the keeper of hair products when I look at your website. You have Curl Keeper, you have the Mane Choice. Do you attract a lot of skin and hair products?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. We have outdoor products. We have hair, skin, nail health products.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Right.
Daniel LeBlanc: And then we have some automotive accessories. Our business started with the health and beauty, and we’ve been able to expand out. So that’s why we typically, on our roster, we do have some hair and beauty. And that’s just from trade shows. There’s a lot more health and beauty trade shows than there are other things.
Daniel LeBlanc: And we go to trade shows and we’re well-known, because you notice behind me this purple. It’s a strong purple. And our team, when we’re at trade shows, we’re wearing the purple. We’re wearing the purple Converse. We’re wearing [crosstalk 00:10:51] purple jackets. We’re wearing the purple shirts. So we really stand out and people remember who we are. And we’re a fun group of people to work with and work around. So …
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Do you have favorite trade shows? What are your favorite health and beauty ones?
Daniel LeBlanc: CosmoProf is incredible. CES is electronics. It’s crazy how large it is. And then I’ve been to SHOT Show, which it’s a gun and [crosstalk 00:11:17].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And where is that?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. That was in Vegas.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Oh, got it.
Daniel LeBlanc: Vegas. Yeah. It was interesting.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Does your purple jacket really stick out [crosstalk 00:11:25]?
Daniel LeBlanc: … not my cup of tea, but there are brands and I respect that they … We’re not selling guns, so we’re helping that industry. And it is a big industry, so I support the businesses that they do out there. But there’s just so many different types of things there. It’s crazy to see.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: A lot of cool shows just to get ideas. And it’s interesting, because you can grab ideas from other industries and use them for the industry that you serve.
Daniel LeBlanc: Sure.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So I find that innovation comes from outside industry. So people are like, “Oh, why would you go to the SHOT show if you don’t deal with those?” Well, you may get an idea and use that into one of these brands that you serve.
Daniel LeBlanc: Exactly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And I love to talk about culture, right? And one of the things I have written down is to talk about accountability, autonomy, and how to communicate in positive ways. Talk about the culture and around … I don’t know if there’s any specific stories around COVID and how you had to deal with the whole staff and the team around COVID.
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. It’s been a very interesting year. I’m sure it is for a lot of people. But for us, our culture was cultivated from everybody working around each other and being around each other for every day, if you will. So we are doing a scaling up. So we have a scaling up coach that’s helping us grow to a larger size organization than we were a couple of years ago. And that’s really helping.
Daniel LeBlanc: But I feel like I’ve adopted some of the culture things that I’ve learned in from my other past jobs. And it’s important to have staff engagement. It’s important to have the company relate to your staff that they’re important. It’s not just about sitting at a desk and doing the work. It’s also … Sometimes, you are around each other more than you are your own family. So you got to … It’s a good mix to have.
Daniel LeBlanc: And during this COVID situation, we’ve really pushed to … we keep our monthly lunches with management, where it’s a forum where you ask questions. We are keeping our monthly culture activity, whether it be virtual paints. We’d done that a couple of times.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. Walk me through a few of the things, Daniel. So what are some of the things in your process, like you said, to build culture? Because obviously, you have this built into your whole … the way you operate, right? So one thing is you do monthly lunches. And then how does that work? And then what else do you have planned out? You mentioned the virtual paint. I don’t know if it’s monthly you do a different activity, or walk me through some of the things.
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So the lunches, we schedule a time with one of the executives. You can either prep your questions before, or you ask directly when you’re sitting at lunch. Normally, when we were here in the office, we would go out to lunch and sit and chat. And it’s less work-related, but it’s still work-focused topics. It’s not like, “Oh, are you working on this job? Are you working on this project?” It’s more like, “Hey, what can we do as a company to do better for our employees?” sort of thing. It’s [crosstalk 00:14:29].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Is it a group or is it one-on-one?
Daniel LeBlanc: No, it’s a group.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: A group.
Daniel LeBlanc: It’s a group of select three to five, whoever volunteers. And then we obviously choose who the three to five are, because we don’t want all the same people from the same department or whatever. So we try to get a good mix of staff that are mixing with the executive team.
Daniel LeBlanc: And then we have our paint nights. We have pumpkin carving. We have crazy sweaters or whatever we’ve done. And then we’ve done trivia nights. This new thing … I’m dating myself, but among us is this big game that’s really popular right now. And we’ve done that a couple of times. And people are just … they’re kind of … they formed …
Daniel LeBlanc: There’s been a good amount of hiring since COVID that we’ve had. So there’s been a lot of new people. And that sometimes is hard when you’re working remotely, but I’ve learned that there’s these new friend groups that are involved with all these different departments. And that just brings joy to me [crosstalk 00:15:31].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: That’s cool. Yeah.
Daniel LeBlanc: … people are bonding over certain things that Amazzia has presented for them. So it’s great.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So is that on a certain frequency as far as game nights and trivia and paint?
Daniel LeBlanc: Minimally, once a month.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Once a month? Okay.
Daniel LeBlanc: Lately, we’ve been doing it like twice a month. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So Among Us, that’s an actual game? I don’t know what that is.
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. It’s these little creatures with these goggles, and you have to go through a map and do these tasks before the … What’s it called? The imposter. The imposter can kill all the little other creatures. But if you complete the task, then the imposter loses. But if the imposter doesn’t get found, then the imposter wins. So it’s all virtual and you’re all working together.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: You’re all working together. It’s like an escape room online or something.
Daniel LeBlanc: Exactly. No, that’s exactly what it is. Yeah. That’s a good way of saying it. Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: All right. That’s cool. Yeah, I love that. Here’s the thing. Anyone listening, they’re always looking for great ideas of what they can instill in their company to communicate better, to have better culture. So I love even getting that granular with, “Try Among Us or try an escape room or try trivia night or try paint night.” It’s all things that will just spark someone to do something cool, because what this is about is you sharing your knowledge and people taking action. Even if it’s one thing they get from this, it’ll be worth listening to this.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: So what are some other things? I love the monthly lunches. And what else that you do internally that other people would learn from?
Daniel LeBlanc: So the biggest thing that we do that I myself am responsible for creating the entire meeting, along with my senior account manager Ari, Ari and I work hand in hand and we create our quarterly meetings. So what our quarterly meetings are, they’re called T3s, Together Towards Tomorrow, so three Ts.
Daniel LeBlanc: And so what we do is we review the last quarter, and then we start the new quarter with our new rocks, our new KPIs, our new initiatives. So that is in itself a project. But that’s one of the things that I love to do, because what we do is we integrate our slides. So we have our agenda, the normal things, agenda, what we’re going to do, “Here are our goals,” and whatnot.
Daniel LeBlanc: But in that, we play Kahoot. And it’s a game that actually was adopted from teachers. And what we do is we integrate trivia questions or surveys or polls in between somebody presenting, or if there’s a long presentation, we take a break and we do that.
Daniel LeBlanc: And then the other two things we do, well, one thing, on our breaks, we do virtual scavenger hunts. And it’s the funniest thing on the planet because they’re so competitive to run and find five or six items. And it’s their break time. So they would rather find these items than go get a water or take a break.
Daniel LeBlanc: So it’s been really fun to see. And we give gift cards for who collects … who sends a picture. We make it interesting, because it’s like, “You’ve got to take a picture. You have to take a selfie with all the items in your hand,” or, “You have to take a picture with a plant or your partner or your pet.” So it makes it a little bit just silly and interactive.
Daniel LeBlanc: And it’s really … The last three or four since we’ve been in COVID obviously have to been on zoom. Normally, we rent a space and we do it and we play games and stuff. But it’s been really interesting. And we feel like we were going to adopt it and keep it on Zoom because we have the ability to [crosstalk 00:19:22].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: It’s so much easier. Yeah.
Daniel LeBlanc: … be a lot more interactive. Yeah. It’s been great.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I got so excited. My pen flew out of my hand and hit the computer, if you heard that bump. But no, it’s interesting because my wife with her company, she just did a Kahoot and she had people send in baby pictures and people had to guess which one the baby picture was. And you get to know your colleagues in a much deeper way. And it was funny. She had people submit baby pictures, and then she had people submit just who’s the most famous person you ever met. And then you had to guess who was who, right?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: And then they tell the story. I’m like, “Oh my God. I didn’t know you met Bruce Springsteen” or whatever. So it’s really interesting. So I love those things and tools. What about [crosstalk 00:20:07].
Daniel LeBlanc: … good idea. I’m writing those down.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. Kahoot is pretty cool, from what she said.
Daniel LeBlanc: It is very cool. It’s a really cool application for sure.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. And so what else … Getting to know each other, culture is really key. From the appreciation stand, it seems like you are always and your team’s always appreciate each other. What are some ways that you appreciate staff outside of money, right? Because we all …
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: I think I was talking to another guest and they were saying, “That’s like fifth on the list of how people like to be appreciated, is money. And there’s other things.” What are some ways you infuse that appreciation into the culture and the staff?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. And I’m not creating this. I did not invent this, because I obviously didn’t invent the English language. But there’s only the two words, and it’s thank you. But it’s also how you use those two words, right?
Daniel LeBlanc: And the way that I use them is consistently doing one-on-ones with my direct reports. And then I make sure my direct reports have one-on-ones monthly with their staff. And it’s just to review what they want out of their career. What do they want to Amazzia? What do they want to do with their life?
Daniel LeBlanc: And I’ve learned, too, everybody is different. We know that. Again, it’s not rocket science. Everybody’s different. Everybody’s motivated by different things. And those motivations change. So if I talk to my eCommerce manager and she wants to buy a house, well, now she already has a house. So now I got to find out what’s her next step. I can’t continue to motivate her on her getting her house.
Daniel LeBlanc: So it’s one of those things where you have to be alert to your people. You have to be aware of what they’re doing. And then with the clear expectations as a manager that I set out, when they’ve hit it, you just say, “Thank you. Great job. Way to go. Hey, I really appreciate you taking the lead on that.” But it has to be sincere. It can’t just be words that you’re saying, or it shouldn’t really be in a Slack message or an Asana task that you’re noting. When you’re having these one-on-ones with them, really express to them, “I can’t do my job without you.”
Daniel LeBlanc: Everybody’s replaceable. That’s a given. But sometimes, I can’t do my job without my team. And I tell them that all the time, because I’m busy on the bigger things. I’m trying to work on growing the business and being aligned with my executive team, and they’re doing the work. So I have to make sure that they know that I’m a hundred percent appreciative of everything that they do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. I love that. And it sounds like you sit down and you talk to each person and you say, “What kind of goals you want to achieve in the company? And not only that, but what are the goals you want to achieve in your life?” Because that all integrates into what they’re doing for the business.
Daniel LeBlanc: A hundred percent.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah. You mentioned Asana. I would love … And you’re an operations person. So I don’t know. I love to hear about this stuff, so hopefully you geek out on it, too, Daniel. But software, I’d love to hear the software you like that you use internally or in general, because I know when you do these quarterlies, my mind goes to wondering the granular, finite details of where are they writing this stuff down, where are they recording it, so they log for the next rocks and the KPIs so it doesn’t get lost. So what other software you do you like to use as a company and internally?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So Asana is great. You build a project. Every year, for our 2021, we have a project. Starts with key initiatives. Those key initiatives are the year goals. And then those roll down to quarter rocks. Those are rocks mostly designed for the executive team to focus on.
Daniel LeBlanc: And then each individual department will have KPIs. So KPIs need to roll up to rocks, which need to roll up into key initiatives. And having that focus and having the wherewithal every other week, we do a followup on, “Hey, are you on track? Are you not on track?”
Daniel LeBlanc: But even when we’re not in the meeting, people update their tasks. So you can see, “Oh, they completed it. Awesome. That’s great.” I’m not in partner development or partner development doesn’t report to me, but I can still look at their tasks and say, “Oh wow, they’re really killing their rocks this quarter. That’s exciting. That’s going to roll into operations. So I got to prepare my team, because there’s going to be more sales coming down the road.”
Daniel LeBlanc: So Asana is great. I didn’t have Asana before coming here. There was other task tools that I used. But I am a time management organized total nerd when it comes to that kind of stuff.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Talk to me. Tell me. Yeah. What do you use?
Daniel LeBlanc: When I saw Asana and I was learning, I was like, “Where has this been all my life?” It gives you deadlines. It gives you the ability to follow up on a task that you’ve assigned. All these things that are just integrated into Asana.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.
Daniel LeBlanc: And we’re still learning it. There’s probably things that we don’t use that we could use. And it’s a great tool to have because there’s so many things that can go into it. You have the projects, you have the calendars, you have the boards, you have just all these things that just, if you’re wanting to be organized, it’s helpful.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Yeah.
Daniel LeBlanc: Somebody who maybe isn’t organized, it probably will take them [crosstalk 00:25:39].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: It will keep them organized.
Daniel LeBlanc: Right. Yeah [crosstalk 00:25:41].
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: What else? So you like Asana. What other tools, software do you like?
Daniel LeBlanc: So we use Slack for our instant message. We didn’t use it as much when we were not in COVID, but now it’s the communication tool. We tried to not adapt into the drive-bys, but it’s just a tool that you can use, like, “Hey, I have a question for you. Let me know when you get a chance,” versus having to get up and go stand by somebody’s cubicle and tap your finger and be like, “Hey, I have a question for you.” So we use that.
Daniel LeBlanc: But other than that, those are our two main. We use Google Suite for a lot of things, forums and … It’s a better integration than Office Suite. Office is great, but Google has surpassed them, I think.
Daniel LeBlanc: Other than that, those are really … We try and keep it simple. And we have Outlook for emails, but we focus everything on Slack and Asana. So even if it’s in Outlook, you still got to use Asana, because that’s the main tool. And we use HubSpot for sales and the account management. But we try to keep it simple, so [crosstalk 00:26:48] hundred different types of software.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Daniel, I have one last question for you. Before I ask it, I want to point people check out more episodes of the podcast Process Breakdown. Check out SweetProcess and check out Amazzia. It’s A-M-A-Z-Z-I-A. You can’t miss it. Purple banner. Check it out. They have some amazing case studies. You can go to their page there, Amazzia.com/clients.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Daniel, my question is we talk about culture and accountability and communicating with the staff. And I love some of the things that you shared. One thing I’m wondering about is your favorite story from a staff able to achieve one of their goals. And it could be a personal goal, it could be professional goal. You don’t have to name the person or anything. But what’s one of your favorite stories from someone setting out and achieving one of the goals that they have?
Daniel LeBlanc: Yeah. So I was new to eCommerce when I started here. I have an operational background and the owners wanted somebody like that. But I’m a quick learner, so I was able to really learn eCommerce quickly.
Daniel LeBlanc: But it’s still a beast. Amazon is a beast. eCommerce is a nightmare. It’s a lot of work. And I love hard work, but sometimes you need to find the right people to help you along your way, right? And even if they’re lower … they’re either entry-level staff or whoever, I find the right people in my position.
Daniel LeBlanc: So I have this eCommerce manager. Her name is Cindy. She’s the one I was referring to earlier who just purchased her home, her first home. So it’s really awesome. But she’s been here a long time. And I came in and disrupted the process, if you will. And it was bumpy for the two of us for a little bit, but I stuck to my guns because I was like, “She knows this world. She knows everything. Everybody relies on Cindy. She’s a rock star.”
Daniel LeBlanc: And then a few months down the road, I end up taking on the eCommerce team and her and I have to work almost actually everyday together. And the relationship that her and I have built professionally has not only grown me on my knowledge on eCommerce, but it’s really, I think, allowed her to step into her own light. And she’s now a manager. She was just a lead before, and now she’s a manager and highly respected in our business.
Daniel LeBlanc: And I just love working with her. I love how accountable she can be. I love how she treats her staff. We’re very aligned on how staff needs to be treated and expectations and accountability needs to be done. And again, like I was telling you earlier, I cannot do my job without her. She’s just incredible. I love working with her. I know most of the staff loves working with her.
Daniel LeBlanc: And the fact that I didn’t notice she was buying a house … I knew that she wanted one and that was one of her goals. And then, surprise, surprise, she says, “I have to leave early today, because I got to go sign my escrow papers.”
Daniel LeBlanc: She’s a private person, but she asked me if she could leave early. And I was like, “Of course.” I’m like, “That’s awesome. You’re getting a house.” And now, she has a house. And like I said, she’s just a joy to work with. She means business. And I’m just happy that I get to work with somebody like that, a caliber every day.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: Daniel, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thank you so much. Everyone, check out Amazzia.com. Check out more episodes of the podcast. And we’ll see on the flip side.
Daniel LeBlanc: Thank you. Have a great day.
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