How Edmund Lowman was able to Systematize His Business in China Despite Cultural Differences and Communication Challenges!

Owen: Hi. My name is Owen McGab Enaohwo and welcome to Process Breakdown where I bring on successful entrepreneurs to reveal how they’ve been able to create systems and processes for their businesses which enabled them to literally run the business on autopilot without a constant involvement. And today my guest is Edmund Lowman. He’s the managing partner of Kekai Express. Edmund, welcome to the show.

Edmund: Thanks for having me, Owen. How are you doing, buddy?

Owen: I think I probably butchered the pronunciation of the company name.

Edmund: Actually, you’re probably the first person to get it complete and correct. It’s Kekai Express.

Owen: Good. And so we want to know exactly what does your company do and what big pain do you saw for your customers?

Edmund: We do a few things. We call ourselves a Project Management Company in China. What that is that we basically do from start to finish for someone looking to import a product or develop a product in China. We all outsource the product. If they just want to buy a physical product, we help them source the product, we’d QC the product, we ship it to them. If they want to develop the products, we help them finalize their design or develop their design and then the same thing, we help them produce it and we help them ship it to America.

Owen: So you’re the ground there on China who helps them source the products and also export the products back to the US. Is that the case? Because I heard of your import, I was wondering.

Edmund: I was at export. I say import and export because I also do import there. So I get a little bit… Yes, export from China. I say project management because it’s really, that’s what it is. You said “This is what I need done in China.” You get what you want from China.

Owen: Okay. And so I’m glad you corrected that. And so how many full time employees you currently have?

Edmund: Right now we have 37. I think we’re actually 40 now.

Owen: And also we want to give the listener kind of like a context as to the kind of business and how well you’re doing. What was last year’s revenue and possibly what you expect for this year?

Edmund: The last year was about 1.65 million and this year we’re going to do around 2.75 million.

Owen: Awesome. Go ahead.

Edmund: I said hopefully more.

Owen: And this Podcast is all about looking at how entrepreneur like yourself has been able to create systems for their business that enable them to literally automate their business and know how to be constantly involved. So I want to go back. What would you say would have been the lowest points in your business and describe how bad it got.

Edmund: The lowest point and I guess if you want to put like one specific incident that was the low point would be, we had quite a big now but when we were small company which has run the $60,000 order and basically the factory had just decided to change a few things without telling us and is completely was a huge kind of like speaks in, spokes in our bite, basically. If you’re a young company and you have a decent amount of money, A, you’re thrilled to have order this day when you’re a young company. That’s one thing. But then B, when something goes wrong, you’re terrified because you’re like, “I don’t have $20 in my bank account.” $60,000 is like, “What do I do? Like game over.”

So this specifically was a huge thing for us and it was also a great learning experience because it taught me how to manage Chinese factories and Chinese employers a lot better. And specifically what happened was just basically, a factory we were working with had decided to change this piece of rubber on this product we were changing and it’s such a small change that I think the factory thought no one would notice but it ended up being a huge problem because this piece of rubber turned up to be a big bio-component for this customer and it was a huge huge mess. But in the end, I could say it was a great learning experience for us because it taught us like, you really need to be on top of it, you really need to know exactly to the tee what is happening with your product and make sure that is exactly right.

Owen: The one that you mentioned too is that managing Chinese staff was one of the most difficult problems that you had. Why is that?

Edmund: Yeah, exactly. I hate to generalize like this. Okay, Chinese are all, you know, like… They all like rice or whatever. It’s not the truth about everyone but in general, because culturally China, their thought or their mentality comes based of Confucianism which is like a harmonious society, a lot of group thing, do whatever you can to make everything harmonious. And that do make things really difficult because when everyone was trying to make everything happy and not really like we do in America, if there’s a problem, I’d say, “Look. You messed up. Fix the problem.” That’s how we do it in America. That’s easy. In China, they would say, “Hey, Owen. How are you doing today buddy?” like, “What do you think? Maybe we change this piece of rubber.” I think it’s not quite right and it’s very indirect so it becomes really hard to manage people when you’re not used to this indirect type of communication. It becomes really hard to manage people but once you figure out how to do it, it’s actually really easy because they’re also sort of like, once you told them how to do it, they’ll do it that way too, they’ll never change it.

Owen: I mean, that can be a kind of like a bonus because if you’re saying that, like here in the US where they’re more like a problem solver as you can say. “Go ahead and fix the problem. I want you to wait and think like a cop” thinking path and fix the problem. And then on the other end, they want you to literally guide them. Wouldn’t that be a plus because we’re trying to create a business that everybody knows what they want to do based on how layout for them to do it?

Edmund: You would think so. Okay, so yeah. In the long run, yeah it becomes easy but then there are lots of really simple easy tasks. I’ll just give you an example of something. For example, my trash can is on the left side of my desk but everyone throws trash on the right side of the desk. But if the admin told me to put the trash can on the left side of the desk, so we really know to put the trash can on our left side of desk. That’s it.

Owen: Okay.

Edmund: In America. They’ll go, “Well, I’ll put the trash can on the right of the desk, no problem,” right? Whereas the Chinese, they’ll leave it on the left side like this was the way he told me to do it. I’m leaving it on the left side even if logically the easiest thing to do would move the trash can at the right side of the desk.

Owen: Go ahead.

Edmund: It’s a good thing but you have to realize that if there’s a problem, more than likely most staff from Asia, they’re not going to solve it on their own and you have to really make like a contingency plan. “Okay, if this happens, you must do this. If this happens, you must do this.”

Owen: Sorry. I’m just excited. I’m trying to figure out how now that you know that that’s a problem that on one hand, they’re willing to follow instructions but when it comes to points where they have to make decisions, that might be a problem. So how did you solve that?

Edmund: Actually you’re right. It’s a good thing because you don’t ever have to worry now because you know of the outcome of everything. So you asked me for, why is it a problem? But yeah, now it’s not a problem. In the beginning it was. Now it’s fantastic because I know how to manage it. But the way that we began to manage it was putting really systems in place so that it’s like flowcharts really. “Okay, this is A, if yes happens, do this, if yes happens again, do this, if yes happens again, do this. If no happens here, do this.” You know what I mean? It’s very clear and really anyone could go in more or less in my business and say, “Okay. Just follow this chart, follow exactly how he has it knocked out. And it’s pretty difficult to mess up unless you just decided to do something differently. So now actually, a Chinese staff and again I’m generalizing but a staff of Chinese is actually what I would over an American staff or a Western staff because you would probably go, “Why are we doing this when in fact we can do it this way” which I don’t want anymore. Now I just want someone to literally follow my chart, do exactly what I told you to do, that’s all you have to do, it’s very easy.

Owen: So you laid out the step by step on how did you do it and also when it comes to points where they have to make decisions, you also laid it out on what choices did you make based on the decisions that when they come to the decision points. I’m assuming.

Edmund: Yes, exactly.

Owen: Go ahead.

Edmund: Yeah, we even done it with customer problems like because there’s some things like customer service issues like you never know what the customer is going to say, you can’t plan for everything. But even with that, we’ve kind of systemize it when we said, “Okay. If it’s a problem under an X amount of dollars, we give each person, rep sales a budget for a quarter. If you can fix it with this amount of money, we don’t want to know about it. Do whatever you can to fix it. Send them a pizza, fix it on your own, buy his wife an airplane ticket, whatever you have to do. This is your budget fix it.”

Owen: And then if it’s above that budget, what do they do?

Edmund: Then they need to contact the manager or contact myself.

Owen: Okay. And one of the things that we try to do on this interview is tell the guest to imagine their business like a conveyor belt where on one end, it’s a satisfied customer getting what they came in for and then at the other end, at the very beginning, a customer who is starting out the journey. Basically they’ll just reach out to you guys. And the reason I say you should imagine your business like a conveyor belt is to walk us behind the scenes as to the different systems you have in place and how they’re working with one another so that at the end you have a customer whose project like you described it is successfully delivered?

Edmund: So we use a few different tools. One thing we use Basecamp. Basecamp were used for setting up projects and basically making sure everyone with each project would basically have a template because we have more or less at this point same customers. We picked up a few but actually we’re really happy with where we’re at, so we trying not to go too much too quickly. We basically have templates for all of our customers and as soon as a customer makes an order, the e-mail is forwarded directly to the factory first off, so then the factory knows right away to stop producing.

Next thing is the manager of that project will then open up a Basecamp for that specific project and then right away, “This is what I have to do. This, this, this and this” And then beyond that really, they just have to follow and check off their things on Basecamp and use their flowcharts that is made for them and there’s not really much they can mess up as a status. It’s really clear on trying to do what they need to do. The only other thing we sometimes use is Evernote for doing like a design project and we’re pulling in different pictures and things like this so that everyone can try and see and just pulls up off the web. We use Evernote for notes and some things, a lot of Basecamp and a lot of just Excel and flowcharts.

Owen: Can you give us like an example maybe over the past order or whatever. That way, we understand the concept that it makes it clear if you share with a real life example.

Edmund: Yeah. Okay. So one of the big products we do are touch screens, touch screen modernist. It’s prior based by bunch of clients that already use touch screens. So when someone orders a touch screen, now it’s a bit different because actually we’re buying the factory that produces them. But before when they wanted the touch screens. They will order it from me. The e-mail would be forwarded to the factory. This is step one. Then the e-mail also would be forwarded to the Client Relations Manager or the Project Manager of this project. As soon as this happened, this person would know, A) open up a Basecamp file. There also on B), contact the factory and make sure that they have received the e-mail, that they have received the money and that’s going to start being worked on.

The next step would be then, they know within X amount of days. So if it takes 30 days to produce, they’ll know within 15 days, they need to get down to the factory and make sure it’s being produced. Then they know within another week after that, that they need to go actually down the factory again and check and make sure it’s actually been finished and everything is okay. Then after that the next stop would be, they know that they need to contact our inspection, our QC Internal, our quality control would get down there. They would quality control the order. After it pass our quality control, then our quality control knows they need to contact a third party inspection company which comes in re-QC’s the whole order and make sure it’s okay. And after that happens, they know it’s [13:36]. I’m sorry this is very long.

Owen: No. It’s okay. We want to see how it’s working behind the scenes.

Edmund: No problem. And then after the QC has gotten a report back from the outside of the quality control company and they say everything is okay then they know how to contact our Logistics Department and our Logistics Department makes sure it ships and then the order is finished, that’s how it happens every time.

Owen: At certain points when it’s going from each part of the system that you just described, I mean, how do you avoid situations where something is being delayed or results are not being delivered and somebody is holding up a step, had been handed to the next person?

Edmund: Yeah. Like I said, we use Basecamp a lot for this because for something like Basecamp, you can set up. It doesn’t put the process in place but it puts like good triggers and good reminders in place. So we set up this template and I know with this template every time, it should be triggered within 30 days from start to finish. So as soon as they open this up then 2 weeks, I mean there are a lot of reminders. Then in 2 weeks, they’re going to get a reminder, go down to the factory. Once this reminder has been triggered, I’ll get another reminder in a few days that says “Hey. Did you get this report from this person from visiting the factory?” And if I haven’t gotten it, I would write back, “Hey. What’s going on?” At this point, I don’t actually do this basically but we have someone that does it. But this is what would happen.

And then after that for example is, two weeks later, they supposed to have a quality control report, Basecamp remind them. “Where is the QC report?” And if they haven’t gotten it, then the manager will say, “Hey. Where’s the QC report?” So it’s a really good reminder system and things aren’t followed up in there, then we know right away something is going wrong. So if we haven’t received documentation of the step being completed or hasn’t been checked up from Basecamp then we know something is wrong.

Owen: And then also, I mean you decided that you wanted to now create system. I can hear from what you’re saying is you use Basecamp, you created like templates for all the different recurring tasks and on the top of the templates, you also have built-in reminders so that people who are responsible for setting tasks, they get to know if it’s their turn and when they complete it, it moves on to the next. If not, someone above them is reminded, “Hey, you need to check in so I could see how it’s working.” But I’m sure there had been challenges that you had to deal with initially when you are trying to build this system. If so, what were they and how do you solve them?

Edmund: Teaching them to follow a system. It’s easy but it’s like training anyone to do something new for the first time that they don’t know how to do. Everyone again, especially in China and I hate to generalize. I hate to say China and Chinese but it is such a different culture. Especially there because if they feel like something is wrong or something is not quite right, they don’t have this independence to speak up and tells you, “Hey, Owen. I think this is wrong.” And so, you have to really be the eyes and the ears and the brain every time every step of your business in the beginning because no one there is going to be it for you. They’re going to do exactly what you say and then I can’t think outside of these constraints.

So you always have to make sure that you really know exactly what’s going on each step and that you really know how each job in your company works. That actually makes you a really good business owner because a lot of people own businesses or I can’t say a lot but a lot of people manage businesses, this could be better. They’re like these middle management type and they don’t really know how every job on a company works and then they go down to the Programming Department and say, “Hey, why is this program not finished? You’ve been working on it for 2 days.” And the program takes 6 months to make a program like this whereas in China, you’re really forced to be very clear and very aware of ever single step of your business because if you’re not clear and you’re not aware of it and you don’t know how to do it, no one is going to do it. So it’s been actually for me, great. It has taught me to be much more effective business owner.

Owen: I think especially now there are a lot of people are now open to this idea of running virtual companies where they had people all around the world responsible for different tasks in their business and so I can see how this issue of culture will be a problem. And in your case, the situation you were in, I’m trying to see how and if you can dive in on how you got them to really be able to communicate back to you when something is a problem where it’s not explicitly outlined in the system already.

Edmund: Okay. Again, in the beginning there were a lot but it was really micromanaging in the beginning of being involved on every step of it and making sure like I said before, I was like, I didn’t clearly say how I did it. It was micromanaging at the beginning. It was really micromanagement, being involved in every single step of everything that was going on and really spending insane amount of hours setting it up. I mean, more than you normally needs you to set up a business because we were involved in every single step of every little process that happened and we were being involved to that and then we learned like, what really kind of triggers, of where things to go wrong and then once you to learn these triggers then you can set up roadmaps to avoid these triggers. So like I said in Basecamp, if I haven’t gotten this reminder in a few days and the documentation attached, then I know something is wrong. And they know that they cannot check this off unless it’s fully complete.

So if I don’t have the documentation for example with touch screens, within 2 weeks, I’ve been going down if they need to send the status report. It tells me, how many have been produced, what’s currently on the production line, are there any problems that are happening on the production line, is there anything they could see that might happen, have there been any repairs that need to be made? I mean, really quite an expensive report and then the manager needs to look at this report. And if they look at this and everything is good then everything is moving forward. So if I didn’t receive this report in my e-mail box but then, 2 days I would know something is wrong right away. So there are lots of little triggers like this that help you know what’s going on.

Owen: So basically you’ve mapped out the triggers as to the decision points and all that. I’m also thinking about what are the exceptions? Something that is out of the box that you, yourself have not even thought about yet and knowing fully-well that based on the culture that if they are not taught explicitly what to do, they won’t do it. And like you said, you micromanaged and you were able to map out all the different decision points or expectations or what did you expect but as the business is growing and getting bigger, you’re going to go something new that you, yourself have not put into the system yet? How do you solve that problem knowing the culture of people that you’re dealing with?

Edmund: You take it as a common sense really. Yeah, I mean, there’s not a good answer for that actually. I don’t know. What happens is, it happens and then you run around like a chicken with their head cut off for 2 days and figure out how to fix it and then you go back and you’re like, “Why did this happened?” You have to dissect the problem and say, “Okay. Step by step, what went wrong here?” And then you create a system for it and you’re right. I don’t know what’s going to happen. In general, I don’t have to be so hands on right now but yeah, we’re growing. Some things, 100%, something is going to happen. I mean, I did a call at 3:30 in the morning and be like, “The building is burning down. How do we solve it?” It will happen and you just have to take it step-by-step and problem-by-problem and then sort it out and hope it doesn’t happen again once you have systems in place.

Owen: Yeah. So what I get from that is look at every issue that comes up as an opportunity to dive back in your system and figure out why that issue happened and how do I build maybe an extension in my system so that next time of course, my team knows exactly what they should do.

Edmund: Yeah. I mean, it’s the same as life. It’s like something goes wrong in life, I mean for me, I’m very analytical. If something goes wrong, I get back and like, “What happened? How did I get to this point? Okay, let’s step back 5 steps. Okay, at step 3, we made a mistake.”

Owen: Okay. I get that. So I guess the listener had been listening to you say, you have make use of tools like Basecamp so that it basically manages the workflow and you also make use of tools to draw like flowcharts so that they see how things are going. But I’m also curious when it comes to documenting step-by-step, how do you carry out a task? What are you currently using right now?

Edmund: We actually just used like a shared server, file server. So actually before we were using a server, now we’re switching everything over to Google Drive because it gets easy and I feel more confident with Google servers than I do at China servers. So we’re putting everything in Drive right now and each department has their folder, each person in that department has their folder and if they go in and they can grab whatever they need out there and they know step-by-step again like how to grab these documents.

Owen: Okay. I get that. When it comes to now, quite of tracking the results that being delivered by your employees, how do you go about doing that?

Edmund: Again, I’m sorry by the way that’s for everyone watching. If I’m babbling of it, it’s 4:30 in the morning here and I’m like 2 hours asleep like this. If I’m making no sense at all, I completely apologize. Yeah. So how do we track results? I hate to keep going back to the same thing but it’s kind of the fact the matter is again based off of triggers. So we know that if this task getting completed at this time, this person is not doing their job. And we also have a really simple Excel Sheet. Actually it’s really stupid.

Owen: We like it simple. If you get the job done, we want to know.

Edmund: Like in first grade where you have the chart on the wall whereas like, “Oh. I’m doing a good job today, gold star. Bad job today, red star.” You know what I mean? We have like something very similar to that that we set up for each project that the person is done. So if they get the project done on time, we’ll give them like 1 point. If the project is late like one day, it’s -1. So like, two days, it’s -2 and we do that like that. If it’s positive a day, we’ll give them an extra point and we map out this point system for every project and at the end of the month with a total amount of points and we make like a raffle, like they can use these points at the end of the quarter to like 5 days off. Like we had a guy who had like 10 points, we sent him on vacation in like the Southern part of China to go to uslands. We’ll make it to end of each of quarter like, okay you can buy vacation days, you can buy a party for you and your friends, you can buy whatever and they have their points so they can buy whatever they want with it. It’s a great incentive too. Because then, a lot of people are like, “I want to get points. I want to get points. I want to get points.” And the way to get their points is by doing a good job.

Owen: And the reason I asked that is because as we know, if you don’t measure something, you cannot improve. So I was trying to figure out how you’re measuring, how your teammates are getting their work done. So those who gets high points based on how fast they deliver on the task that are assigned to them and guess the task is based on system that you’ve created already, right? Now you’re measuring how effectively you are fast of getting it done. But those who don’t get stuff done on time and maybe they have low ratings or whatever. How do you use that data? What do you use? What do you do after that if you get information that someone is not getting high scores on what they were supposed to be doing?

Edmund: At that point it becomes a management issue. It’s not a systemized thing. If you have a bad employee, you can’t get their job done. It’s a management thing. So it’s either we hired the wrong person or they’re not being managed effectively. It’s not at that point a system thing, it’s a management thing and a person thing and that’s a human problem. I think it’s a human problem, not a system problem. If you can see that someone is falling behind, especially again, I go back to China, you know in China, it comes back to a lot of times, they weren’t changed properly. They can quite understand how to do it. So they’re not doing it and they don’t want to come and ask you how to do it because they’re embarrassed.

In China if I say, “Owen. Come meet at my hotel. It’s near the lake.” Again, I go like, “What’s [27:20] near the lake. Okay, where near the lake?” And he said, “At the Holiday Inn. It’s on 3rd and 5th.” A Chinese person would say, “Hotel near the lake.” And because they want to respect you because they wouldn’t want to make you feel bad that you haven’t told the address, they would spend all day searching around that lake for you and they would literally spend hours doing it. So last time, when if someone is failing or falling behind, it’s not necessarily the person can’t do it, it’s that they weren’t shown exactly how to do it.

Luckily, I can say we don’t really have that problem. We have a really good staff. We’ve got really good managers and with the systems that we have in place and the point system, we really motivate our employees. We’re a very human company. I always feel like, give to your employees what you want to get back. So we all start to go above and beyond and keep them happy and they do the same for us.

Owen: So you said that problem is more of a management problem. Before you got to this point where things are working quite correctly, I’m kind of curious as to, if the listener listening to this now was in that position where there’s a management issue like you’d just described using that tracking system. What do you suggest they should do to fix it?

Edmund: I mean the typical answer. I think a lot of people when somebody starts doing a bad job, they go and they’re like, “Why are you doing a bad job? You’re doing it wrong.” But actually lots of times, you need to reflect on yourself and say, “What did I do that this person doesn’t understand this?” Because a lot of times with everything whether it’d be Western staff or Chinese staff maybe “Oh, I didn’t really asked this person the right questions in the interview. Maybe they didn’t really understand exactly what they needed to do on this job. Maybe I think this person is more qualified than they really are.”

You know, go back to the beginning, step-by-step and see what happened along the way. It’s just like producing an order. “Did I not viewed this person and if you’re enough, pre-qualified them enough. Okay, maybe I did. Okay, next step, did they not hit the right training or what’s going on? Like go through day-by-day, they get all the training our systems. Okay, that was okay. And then go on a human level. Hey. Is something going at home? Like are you having money problems? Are you fighting with your girlfriend?” You have to back and dissect the problem step by step and somewhere just like in software programming, somebody find that bug and that’s the little thorn in your side, that’s the problem. And you’re going to go, “Okay, cool.” And it’s either going to be, “I hired the wrong person, that’s’ my fault. The person is not trained properly, that’s my fault. The person is having problems at home.” Okay, I can’t control that but I can do everything in my power to try to sort it out or maybe they’re just not happy with the job because nothing is a challenge. You’ve got to go back and see like, what is it that glitch in the system? Go on fix it.
Owen: I like that answer. With that kind of answer because you know that you are the one who is on control. When you see that kind of situation where you’re now tracking the employee and the employee is not doing what they should do. With the answer you just gave, it seems the person, the listener is in control and they can use that to go back into their system and be the have you system or whatever or even the system they have that outlines how the work should be done and figure out what the issue is. It’s an opportunity to figure out what the issues and fix the system.

Edmund: I mean it’s an opportunity to learn more about yourself or about your company because in general, if you’re the owner, if something goes wrong, it’s your fault. I don’t care what you say. It’s not their fault, it’s your fault, you messed up and something in your system is messed up and every time that happens, it’s a good way to learn and that’s the most valuable thing in your business is learning.

Owen: And one of the things you mentioned doing the pre-interview is that now you actually empower your employees to fix problems on their own. You had a system that you built just to do that. Can we talk about that system too?

Edmund: Yeah. With that, it goes a little bit more, so we have a Western staff as well as we have a few people from Russia, from America, from the Middle East. So with them, we have a bit more of a free system. It sounds so terrible to say.

Owen: I’ll understand what that is and the listeners are going to understand what you say. Don’t worry about that. Go ahead.

Edmund: I want to make sure none of my staff is watching.

Owen: Go ahead.

Edmund: With them, it’s pretty broad strokes. In our business, we basically have 2 types of people. We have people who are making sure the orders get done or there are people that are dealing with clients. So people getting orders done like merchandisers, quality control, factory workers, all of these people are staff A.

Owen: Construction level.

Edmund: Staff B is with client relations. There are new orders, there’s customer retentions and making sure that the customers are happy. These people that we have are mostly Western. And with them just like I said, we give them a budget each quarter and we say, “You can use this budget however you want. This is your budget. Keep the client happy with this budget.” I’m not saying go out and be like, “Hey. You bought a thousand dollars. I’m sending you to the strip club tonight or whatever.” Not like that. It’s more like, “Hey. You bought an order. We send a few weeks ago. We do a lot. We send pizzas to our clients. It’s really funny and it’s really stupid but we do it. Most of our clients are American and European. So like, if they’ve been ordering a lot or were just happy, everything is going good, we’ll send them like 20 pizzas and be like, “Thanks. We’re so happy to be working with you.” And this is something they will take out of the budget. There’s not really a system for that. This is a human feature that you just have to tell people. You have to embody what you want your staff to embody.

Owen: I think you also have to explain what you said during the pre-interview maybe because you still just awake and you’re mad not at sleep yet because of the time difference. But I think you explained it very clearly in the e-mail and the first thing you said was, “Anything that cost underneath $500.” The managers can go ahead and use that budget anything underneath $500 to go ahead and solve the problem. Anything above $2,000 a manager can fix. And then anything above that, then they must e-mail you first. Did that explain the system in terms of the demarcations for the price?

Edmund: Yeah. To be very specific, it’s like $500 and then above $500, then they need to contact a manager like it goes up to $2,000. So with $2,000 the manager needs to contact me or my partner directly. Yeah. So that would be the system but again, that’s such broad strokes because really the reality of it as we say, “Look. Do what’s right. That’s what you need to do.” So if there’s a problem and needs to be solved. Yeah okay, if it’s more than this amount of money, contact me but I’m also very understanding human and I was like, “Okay. Man, there’s a problem. Let’s fix it. If I have to lose $5,000 today but it’s going to make me $30,000 next year, let’s do this $5,000 absolutely.”

Owen: Tell us the story of how the sales manager in America used your framework to solve that problem. When above and beyond, they solve their problem on their own that you have with the customer. Can you tell that story?

Edmund: Yeah. We had a sales manager in America and she drove from New Mexico to California to deliver goods to customer. And basically what happened was there goes a screen that was malfunctioning with our touch screens which they never failed by the way. And so we didn’t have a way to get to him by the way. And so what he did was he went and contacted another client and was like, “Look. We’re going to take care of you guys. I know you’ve got X amount of stock in your warehouse right now. Is it okay if we take that stock and we’re going to replenish you guys in a week?”

And the company says, “Sure no problem. You need screens? Take the screens.” So he went to the warehouse and he rented a U-Haul. It’s so funny that he did this. And he drove. He went there like in his suit and tie driving a U-Haul with the screens that he needed and he drove to California and deliver the screens to the client and of course the client is thrilled. I mean, this is way above and beyond. And then he ended up staying and helped them out to this trade fair and it was like a huge thing. These guys are now clients for life and these guys like these old kind of a banker/HDM’s like guys who are pretty hard to impress. And they were just like, “Man. You guys, no matter what, have a client for life because there’s not many people that would do what you guys just did for us. It completely saved the day.” At it cost like $500 fixed.

Owen: And the reason why I wanted you to share that story because when people hear about systems and you’re laying out how you should get stuff done. You needed to think that, you’re trying to turn people into robots and people don’t have any creative leeway to allow their personality showing how they do their work. In this case now you created a framework of how you managers solve problem. But now the interpretation of how they did it yet still based on the framework was up to them. So the sales manager was able to be creative and deliver more value to your customer.

Edmund: Exactly. And by the way, I’m sorry I keep itching. There’s a mosquito in my room that is terrorizing for like 8 hours. I can’t find them.

Owen: Okay. Since now that you have systems in your business that allows you to run without you. What would you say has been the longest time that you’ve been away from the business?

Edmund: I’m making a point to go back every few months but I mean I don’t really need to per say because I really just go back and like shake hands and say hello and visit all factories. But I would say there were periods where I didn’t go back for like 3 or 4 months and didn’t set foot in the office at all and just did everything via Skype and e-mail. I mean, I have a partner on the ground who is there. But even again, he has another business as well and we’re really systemized now. Even he doesn’t really need to be there every day but he can check in more frequently than I do. But yeah, there’s been 3 or 4 months at a time where I’ll just kind of check my e-mail and deal with some clients when they needed something big or just to say hello. But then I just really was not that involved on the ground and everything was just kind of running smoothly.

Owen: And if you contrast that against when you initially started when systems were not in place, what kind of level of involvement was that?

Edmund: I was sleeping 2 hours at night or at my office under my desk. That’s not a joke. That’s real. I really was sleeping at the office all the time literally on the floor on in the big bag chairs that we had in the office and just constantly there.

Owen: You didn’t have a life. I just wanted to let the listener know that there’s power in systems, there’s a value and the benefit of doing that that’s why I mentioned them.

Edmund: There’s a light at the end of the tunnel if you can systemize it for sure.

Owen: And so now that you have so much free time, where do you currently spend the most of your time now in your business? What do you focus on in your business now?

Edmund: Starting more businesses.

Owen: You’re actually working on another business on the side?

Edmund: I have quite a few actually. I have in Thailand, I have a hotel and on actually in Kuala Lumpur right now. I’m putting together an online education system that teaches people how to import from China. It’s called… am I allowed to promote?

Owen: Yeah. Go ahead. You already had been teaching a lot. So go ahead.

Edmund: It’s called “Easy China Import”. It’s email I think in alibaba@crashcourse.com and we’re going to teach people how to import from China. And then I have another project called SmartestPeopleIKnow.com which is I’m interviewing really successful entrepreneurs. Not just entrepreneurs, it’s really successful people is the better one. One is we had a few weeks to go to Jay Gudina who is the CEO of this huge company called No Hole. It’s going to do like $150,000,000 in sales next year. We had this girl, Allison Hagendorf who is the host of New Years Eve in Time Square. It’s just like a lot of really successful entrepreneurs on and the point of it is just to kind of get back to the people who helped me in the beginning. I really want to inspire people and teach people because it’s not really that hard to start a business. The hardest part is to go and do it. It’s the hardest part. It’s like you have to get it, all right give up everything, take the risk and you just got to do it and that’s kind of like what both of these things. It’s about teaching people so they can go to their own business.

Owen: So what I get from that is, after you now built this successful business at Kekai Express and you have built systems around it, you now had this free time. You can now go into other things that you’re even more passionate about. And one of them is taking what you’ve learned as someone who helps people to source products in China. You’re now teaching them in a course now.

Edmund: That’s exactly right. So putting these systems in place with Kekai Express and having dealt with everything I dealt with taught me so much about not only starting a business but how to manage a business and how to systemize a business and how to get myself more free time. And once you do all that, you’re like, “Oh wait, I’ve got nothing to do now. What should I do?” So then, you do something else and then what happens once you find out starts happening is, you start systemizing everything. So it’s like, Kekai is systemized and now the hotel is systemized and now it’s like, “Well, these things are systemized. What am I going to do now?” Now I’m giving this course but the course will be systemized. Let me do this and this can be systemized. It’s like, you just keep starting things and it’s great because you have free time then to do like what you really want. So I really want people start their own business. I really want people to learn what I did. I really want people to systemize it so they can keep doing things. And you know, it starts like this and it becomes this.

Owen: Yeah. And what would be the very next step that someone who is listening to this entire interview should do in order to get started with getting their business more systematized and eventually going to autopilot level?

Edmund: Yeah. I would say that the best thing and the easiest thing to do is imagine you have to teach a child how to do your business. So imagine you have a 5-year-old or a 2-year-old. You have to teach your 2-year-old step-by-step how to do it. A lot of people try to over complicate it and if you really break it down to what it is, lots of times even though you think your business, “This big thing and I can’t.” There’s no way anyone else could do it ever besides me and I have to be involved every day. That’s nonsense. I don’t care what it is. There’s a way to break down everything and you need to really go back and say, “Okay, if I was teaching an alien, if I was teaching a child how to do this, what is the simplest way that I could explain this step-by-step? And not even explain it. What is the simplest way that I can make a roadmap and show them exactly how to get from point A to point B.” That’s what it is. Because it’s not as complicated as you think. And a lot of times because you’re involved in your business every day, you tend to over complicate everything and you think you need to be there for everything.

And a lot of time, take a step back and really look at it. You’re like, “Okay. It isn’t really that complicated.” So I would say, if you’re really caught up in the chaos of your business, try to take a step back from your business or even get someone else, a friend or someone to come in and watch and see what it is you’re doing and have them explain to you and see from an outside perspective, what is it that you do, how does it get done? Because that, breaking down of things to a really simple level will help you start to systemize because you realize how simple it is, then you can be like, “Okay. Well then, if this happens, do this. If this happens, do this. If this happens, do this.” That’s really my idea, is just break it down like a Math problem.

Owen: Yeah. I’m sure you’re not always been like this and had this mindset all the time. So what books or resources have influenced you the most and why?

Edmund: Yeah, some great ones. Of course, that everyone’s read the 4-Hour Workweek is a great one. There’s another book called Habit which is by Charles Dewitt.

Owen: Dewitt. That’s on my list 3 too.

Edmund: That’s a great book. It teaches a lot about like people’s habits and why they do what they do and how to get people to operate in a different way. That was a great book. Another one called Strategy Maps. That’s a great book. And the other one that was really good was called Malcolm Gladwell, he wrote a book called Outlines which is really interesting and basically talks about why successful people are successful. Everyone says it’s talent, this and that and he and his book says no. It’s because they put it to work and they have the right opportunity to put in the right amount of work and because they have a right opportunity and right amount of work that’s why they got over there. Those are the books. Man, I read a lot. So if you want me to send you a list or something. Literally, I’m always reading. Now I’ve been reading for the last month, a lot of books about Buddhism. Before that, I was reading a lot of books about Hinduism. I just read not because for many reasons, I’m just interested.

Owen: You’re always learning.

Edmund: Yeah, strategies, systems. I just read for the first time Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I don’t know why. I always thought it was a stupid book. So I was like, “I didn’t like the title.” And that was a good book. Man, I’m always reading.

Owen: So what would you say is the best way for listener who has been listening so far to connect with you and thank you for doing this interview?

Edmund: Yeah. You can go to and just e-mail me at Edmund@KekaiExpress.com. That’s the e-mail I usually check more than anything else. Obviously, I’m not some famous rockstar but I’m extremely accessible and I’m more than happy to get questions about systems, about how to start a business, how to systemize your business, anything. I love love helping people. I love educating people. So literally, I run a multi-million dollar company from a laptop with some systems and some Excel sheets and Basecamp. And I’m retarded, just joking. I’m not a smart person. If I can do it, you absolutely can do it.

Owen: Is there a question right now that you are wishing that I ask you doing this interview that maybe I missed, I didn’t asked you. Yeah, it’s your chance to pose the question as well as the answer because sometimes I get carried away and don’t dive deep. What is something that you wish I asked you?

Edmund: Something that I wish you asked me? This is an interesting one. A lot of people ask me, I can’t say that I wish that you’d ask me this stuff. A lot of people ask me, “How did you get your money to start your business?” A lot of people always asked this because I know we’re delving in now more into entrepreneurship and not systems but whatever. A lot of people asked me this, “Where did you get money to start your first business?” And the truth is, I had no money. I didn’t get money. I went and figured out a problem and I solved the problem and if you do that the right way, a lot of people get caught up and the version of their business that what they want their business to be one day and not the reality of it is right now.

There is this guy Derek Sivers. He used to run CD Baby. He’s awesome. He talks about this a lot. But a lot of people get caught up in. For example, Kekai Express. This would be a great example. If I had the idea of Kekai Express and said, “Okay. It’s going to be this.” Logistics, shipping, product development and sourcing company in China and I’m going to work for my laptop in a hotel room in Malaysia and it’s going to be this million dollar thing. Everything is going to be systemized and it’s going to be the coolest thing ever. That is the most unfeasible way to go into a business saying, “This is what it’s going to be.”

Now this is your idea of what it’s going to be one day times a billion and it’s not realistic of what it is right now. What it is right now is nothing and the only way it’s going to be something is make it happen. So you go and say, “Okay. I want to do this business. Okay. So how can I start today? What can I do right now to start my import business?” Okay. Well, what I did was I went started e-mailing friends and contacts I had and said, “Look, what products are you buying and sourcing from America that you wish you could get cheaper that maybe you could get from China? What kind of things do you have?” And I’m sending it out basically to everyone I know and ask them to send it to their friends and their friends to send it to their friends. And all of a sudden, I started getting people say, “I’m importing like this,” one of the first things we did right, T-Shirts for fraternity parties.

Owen: Yeah.

Edmund: I’ve got these shirts and I am importing this [50:20]. It’s like buying them off at E-Bay but probably I can get them cheaper in China. I went look and I can get them for you. It’s going to cost this amount of money, send it to me, I’ll get it for you. That was it. That’s how I started. I never had a penny. I just started doing it and it was really for lack of a better word, “ghetto”. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t really have any money and I just started doing it. But the point is like, a lot of people get caught up and it needs to be so professional and it’s so nice and perfect in the beginning and it doesn’t. It needs to get you going and it gets you going and get moving forward and you start working.

And then you’ll start making professional and then you’ll start making a nice and then you build a website and then you’ll get employees. But don’t worry about other stuff in the beginning. Worry about how to get your first customer and get a first dollar because once you get the dollar one, then you can get to dollar two, once you get to dollar two, you can get your hundred dollars and then you get your thousand and the next thing you know you’ve got a two thousand dollar business or a million dollar business and just like, “Oh. This just happened.” And if you’re like from the beginning like, “I need to make a million dollar.” Well, that’s too big of a goal. Make one dollar, make ten dollars, make a hundred dollars then it will get you on.

Owen: So that’s a process of ongoing improvement. That’s what I’m getting from that.

Edmund: Yeah. It’s like, you set small goals and if you set small goals that are easy and attainable, like if you listen to people, you hear survival stories, people who were caught in some really terrible situation out in the middle of the jungle or the forest, their plane crashed and they’re out there and once you hear 9 times out of 10, they go “How did you survive?” And they’ll say, “I knew that if I could get 10 feet further then after that, I’ll go 10 more feet.” I’ll just set little goals because each time I accomplish a goal, I felt like I done something. And each time I got that goal, I set a new goal. And if you focus on just setting immediate, very easy and accomplishable goals that are attainable, they build momentum and when you build your momentum, then you’re all set then from the wrecked plane out in the middle of the jungle. The next thing, you’re on the side of the road being rescued. And if you think about that from the beginning, you’re not going to get there. You’re going to set small goals that are attainable and build momentum and get there.

Owen: So basically, find the problem to solve so that you know by solving the problem you get paid but then also have the end goal where you’re trying to goal with the company but realized that in order to get that, you have to take small steps and take those small steps so that you feel rewarded to take the next step and gradually get to where you’re trying to go with the big idea for the company eventually.

Edmund: Yeah. But I would even say like I don’t have an end goal.

Owen: Oh, you don’t have an end goal. Okay.

Edmund: I’m being honest. For example, I don’t really have when I started Kekai, I didn’t have an end goal. I had immediate goal and then I make another goal and another goal because if I set from the beginning I want to do what I’m doing now, it would be unrealistic and every time something went wrong I’m like, “How am I getting… change it to this.” You know if you want to be a rock star, that’s cool. You know in your head you want to be a rockstar but don’t dwell on that goal, “I need to be a rockstar.” Dwell on, “I want to get a show. I want to play next week” and after you get that show, play new show, “Okay. I want to get a hundred people on my show” then make you go a thousand people and it will happen naturally. Don’t focus on the end, focus on the immediate action you can do right now and then eventually once you keep accomplishing these actions, there will be way further down the road and your stupid goal of being a rockstar, you’re like, “I’m not a rockstar. I’m a movie star and a rockstar and a CEO.” If you do it that way, you always be getting bigger, bigger and bigger. Once you get to your goal then you just keep going. It’s not a goal, you just keep going and going and going.

Owen: I like that. Basically, be willing to allow the business adopt and as you go, allow it to shape itself. That’s kind of what I’m hearing from that.

Edmund: Yeah.

Owen: And so let me talk to the listener for a few seconds before we end the show. So I guess you’ve been listening to this interview so far because you’re interested in systematizing your business so that your employees can know how to handle stuff without you having to be there. And if you’ve enjoyed this interview so far, I want you to leave a positive review on iTunes and to get to our iTunes link so they can leave a positive review. Just go to SweetProcess.com/iTunes and leave a positive review. And also subscribe to the podcast.

The reason why I’m saying you should do leave a positive review is that by you leaving reviews, other entrepreneurs who are looking for good resources to listen to, they will check out your review and find this valuable and come here and be part of this community. And in addition to leaving a review on iTunes, there is a link on that very page, SweetProcess.com/iTunes, you can be able to download a free gift from us basically a checklist that will enable you to determine which task in your business you should systematize, task in your business that are recurring and you should create procedures for. So we’re giving you a free gift that will allow you to determine those tasks.

And if you know any other entrepreneur who might find this interview useful, feel free to share the interview with them. And finally, if you are at the stage in your business where you feel like you’re tired of being the bottleneck and you want to systematize your business, sign-up for a free 14-day trial of Sweet Process. And thanks for doing the interview. I really appreciate it.

Edmund: Thank you and it’s really nice talking to you Owen and yeah, good luck with everything.

Owen: We’re done.