The ONE thing nobody in DTC-land talks enough about

Hey everyone,

We hope you've all had a blessed weekend, despite all the chaos that Facebook has caused today.

We know it's tough for a lot of you (us included), but remember that it is in these times that we need to reconsider some of the strategies and tactics we have or have not used thus far.

One of the things we've learned today is that we need to have an automatic stop-loss in place for days like this. Unfortunately, we had to pay +$25k to learn this lesson.

… but hey

There's not much we can do about it now, so why focus on something we can't control? The only thing we can do is take our safety precautions (i.e. pause our campaigns), document everything, submit everything to our rep, and then pray that Zuckerberg gives us a refund.

So with that being said, let's talk about something we can control to grow our businesses instead…

In this newsletter, we'll talk about a topic that you'll rarely hear anyone talk about in the DTC space. That is, Hiring, culture, and people management.

… because at the end of the day, you can probably get to 6 and 7-figures in revenue with only yourself and a couple of contractors/agencies, but if you ever want to get your brand to 8, 9, or 10-figures, then you need to know how to find/make A-Players and how to manage them.

Right now, we're a small, lean, and mean time of 10 people working at Obvi - and transparently, we won't say that we are experts in this aspect of business. But, that being said, we have gotten some success with the approach we've taken, and therefore we want to share that with you.

Make everyone a CEO of their own department/function

This has been our modus operandi since day one. We don't want to micro-manage people, nor do we want them to rely on us to get a good job done.

We believe that people work best when they are given the autonomy, freedom, and responsibility to get the work done when it suits them and from wherever it suits them.

A lot of founders became founders because they were sick and tired of being micromanaged by a boss. Yet, way too often, these very same people go out and become micro-managers, too, because they are too afraid to give up control. How does that make sense?

If you allow your employees to be "Founders/CEOs" within your company and give them the resources, tools, and knowledge needed to excel - then you'll find that they'll do a much better job than if you were to micromanage them in everything they do (because, just like you: Everybody hates that).

… that being said, there are two main prerequisites you need to have in place before you can make anyone a CEO of their own department.

1) Have set KPIs that can easily be tracked and use that as your northern star as to whether the job is getting done properly or not. For example, our Customer Experience Manager has to answer all tickets within 24 hours. This is super easy to track and measure - and if for some reason, she can't answer all tickets within 24 hours, then we can go to her and say, "Hey CEO, why didn't we hit KPI"

2) You need to have the right incentives structure in place. We've said it before, and we'll say it again… Incentives are EVERYTHING. You can't reasonably expect someone to become a CEO of their own department if they don't have some form of "skin in the game". On the flip side, if you give employees a piece of the upside, they'll typically run faster because it makes way better sense to do so than if they were just paid a fixed salary.

Past performance doesn't always correlate with future performance.

We already know that many people will disagree with us here, and that's completely fair. But one of the things that we've noticed over time is that past performance doesn't always correlate with future performance.

What we mean by this is; Even though a person might have gone to the best school and worked at top-tier companies - it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll perform well within our specific culture and our industry.

Surely - past performance is an indication of the results they are capable of producing, but what matters more to us is:

- How hungry are they?

- Are they independent thinkers, who learn from all places but can still form a world-view of their own too?

- Are they moldable and teachable?

The last point is especially important in our industry because we're operating in such a fast-moving environment where things change all the time. This means that we need people who can unlearn and relearn fast!

… and it also brings us to our next point

Hire for attitude, train for skills.

In the age of free content on Youtube, AI, and paid mentors that are accessible with two clicks, you can train almost anybody for any skill (In the DTC/eComm Industry, at least)

So, whether or not someone has the specific skill set that we are looking for is more or less irrelevant if they have the right attitude and hunger to learn.

At the end of the day, it's not really hard to learn media buying, copywriting, finances, influencer management, etc.

… at least not if you are willing to put in the required work and go through the internet to learn everything you can about the skill. It takes time, discipline, and grit to learn it - but it's not necessarily rocket science.

However, the caveat is that if you choose to hire for attitude and not skills - then you also need to be willing to invest the time, money, and effort needed to help them gain the skills. To do this, you, as a founder/business owner/manager/etc, have to put in some work to make sure that they can easily identify which topics to learn, where to seek learning, and then how they can put it to practice.

Ten small and practical tips that have served us well

We've made the following section to give you some useful tips that have served us well but which couldn't necessarily fit an entire section on its own. Some of the tips may sound trivial in nature, but they've served us well - so we're sharing them with you and hoping they'll serve you well too.

1) Provide lunch for your employees so they never have to think about packing their lunch or what they should get for lunch. Make it easy for them to just put their head down and focus on having fun in their work.

2) Give people the time to actually do deep and meaningful work. If your employees are always in meetings, then something is wrong. Ideally, carve out specific hours where everybody is in "Deep Work."

3) Keep meetings short and sweet. Nobody likes long meetings anyway - and it can create a culture that is more focused on talking than actually executing

4) It's your job as a founder/manager/etc. to make sure that people are also letting loose sometimes and not only hyper-focused on work work work. This will ultimately give you more creative and happier employees

5) Get an HR System early on to signal trust and credibility to your employees. Make sure they can easily find information such as PTO, Sick-leave, company rules, etc.

6) Set up an ESOP (Employee stock program) early on, and incentivize loyal employees with a piece of the pie. It'll make the pie bigger for everyone else too.

7) As a founder, you work for your employees and not the other way around. Make sure that they have everything they need to overcome roadblocks and excel at their job

8) Expect nothing short of excellence. If you tolerate B-player behaviour, you'll fire your A-players. Everybody on the team needs to either be an A-player or be willing to put in the work required to go from a B-player to an A-player

9) Moldable hires > experienced hires in cases where you are able to train employees in the given function with your skillset. If it's something you don't know how to solve yourself too (for example, this is Retail for us), then you should absolutely hire experienced people who can teach you the job too.

10) Double down on team bonding activities. Most of you already do this to some degree, but sometimes we can all forget to do this "non-income-generating" activity often enough. Team bonding activities like bowling, hatchet throwing, dinners, etc., are quite crucial for creating a cooperative and fun working environment for your employees. Remember again: You work for them and not the other way around. You need to keep them happy and not the other way around.

Thanks for reading along

Just remember: We appreciate each and every one of you.

… and we will always do our very best to give you the absolute best content in the DTC space.

If you have any recommendations for how we can make this newsletter better, then please reply to this email and let us know. Likewise, if there is anything in particular you’d like us to do more of, then please tell us too.

We hope to see you again on Wednesday.

All the best from,

Yours truly,
Ron & Ash