Managing a Large Virtual Team with Ezra Firestone

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

A team of 40 virtual employees across multiple brands. Sounds like a dream team, but a lot goes into managing a large virtual team. Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer shows us how he currently manages his businesses and builds his teams virtually, including how he determines who he needs to hire and how he keeps his employees productive and organized. Ezra weighs in with the current tools and strategies he uses to keep his team efficient and highly-successful.   Subscribe:  iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer)  Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, Andrew here and welcome to eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And today, I have a returning guest on the show. He sort of hasn't been on for a while. I've been just relentlessly going after his PR man. I keep getting turned down over and over and over again. And finally got through, and have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Ezra Firestone back as a guest. Ezra, how you doing man? Ezra: I'm doing great man, happy to be here. I can be difficult to get a hold of. I'm kind of a hermit. But no, I'm super excited to be back on your show. I think you've got the best show in the game so, happy to be here. eCommerce All-Stars Andrew: Thanks, man. Your gate keepers are brutal, dude, you know. I'm just kidding. You've got an event coming up which I want to talk about off the bat, eCommerce All-Stars? Ezra: Right off the bat, all right. Thanks, man. Andrew: Yeah. Ezra: Yeah. So you know, obviously, we do eCommerce and we love to share what works for us. And so our community has been asking for a long time for us to put together an event where everyone could kind of get together, get to know each other, and we could go in-depth over the course of a couple of days. And my experience has been that there's really no better way to experience, sort of, a jolt, a boost. What's that stuff in when they put in cars, like in the movies, and you press the button and you go really fast? Andrew: Nitro. Ezra: Yeah. There's no better way to have that experience in your business, to nitro it, I don't know if that's what you call it, but then to kind of let... Andrew: Maybe that's probably not nitro. That's actually probably not the right term. Ezra: Okay, whatever it is. It's like... Andrew: But yeah, all right. Ezra: We're internet nerds. We're not, you know, pop-culturally literate. But to sort of let go of the rest of your world for a little bit, step out of your routine in life and step into a couple of days where you just really focus on your business and the connections that you make and the people that you meet. And it's just been really beneficial to me over the years. And so we've always kind of done events. This is our first one in a while. We're going to make it a yearly thing. We're really excited about it. Andrew: Yeah, and in eCommerce All Stars, you're doing it in San Diego, I think, and it's in August. I actually...kind of ironic we're talking about it because it is already sold out, but you're doing a live stream of it for people who are interested in just catching the information, right? Ezra: Yeah. You know, if you want to have that same experience but from home, you can join the live stream which I think is cool. You know, I always love when I can't make it out to an event or an event sells out, to be able to get the live stream and get access to the content. So we will be doing that. You can check that out at smartmarketer.com/allstars and we'll do it every year, in San Diego at this time. So hopefully, I'll catch you at next year's, live.