How Jacomo Hakim Systematized his entire Custom Menswear Business and Grew Annual Revenues to $1.4 Million last year.

OWEN: Hi, my name is Owen McGab Enaohwo and welcome to the Process Breakdown. And this a podcast where I bring on successful entrepreneurs who come on here and reveal how they’ve been able to create systems and processes for their businesses that enable them to literally run their business on autopilot without their constant involvement. And my guest today is Jacomo Hakim, the CEO of BookATailor, and is a custom men’s wear company. Jacomo, welcome to the show.JACOMO: Thank you so much Owen, thank you for having me.

OWEN: And I’m curious, did I pronounce the name correctly?

JACOMO: Yeah, Jacomo is correct.

OWEN: Okay. So what exactly does your company do, and what big pain do you solve for your customers?

JACOMO: So, basically, we are a custom clothing company, we’re a 100% bespoke. There are many other custom clothing companies out there in the world today. But I don’t believe that any other custom clothing company can do what I can do. One of those main reasons is because we’re vertically integrated, meaning that we actually manufacture the product ourselves.

OWEN: Oh, okay.

JACOMO: Every other company outsources the order to a factory somewhere, either it be in Thailand, and Hong Kong, or in China, or several other places as well. We don’t do that, we make the product ourselves, at our own production facility.

OWEN: Oh okay.

JACOMO: Which through it, we eliminate the middle man; all the middle men are gone. So we’re vertically integrated. We make the product and we sell it to the retail consumer ourselves. There’s no other custom clothing company today in the world that does that.

OWEN: And I like that because what that means is that if you are managing the entire spectrum of the whole production, it means that there’s a lot of processes and steps involved. And that’s what our interview is about, is to learn behind the scenes of your business. And so, my listeners always want to know that scale of every guest, the business, what they’re doing. So, how many full-time employees you currently have?

JACOMO: So, right now, to be honest with you, the exact number I don’t know because we hire every single day. But right now in the US side, so where our showrooms are. We currently have 10 showrooms. I have approximately a bit under 30 I believe. So 25 to 30 employees over here. On the manufacturing side we have 75 tailors that are working, and then we have approximately like 6-8 managers that manage them.

OWEN: And just so the listener know is that you said in the pre-interview, you said about 26 full-time employees in the US, and you have about 75 full-time in Thailand, because that’s where the production is, right?

JACOMO: Yes. That’s where production is exactly, in Bangkok, that’s where our facility is. I’m actually scheduled to go there on Wednesday because we’re expanding over there, I send them too many orders.

OWEN: Congratulations. And so, what was last year’s revenue like and what are you expecting for this year?

JACOMO: So, first year, we did like 1.4 in the first year and this year we’re estimated as of now to around 3.8, but that number can change. It changes every day. It all depends on how many more showrooms we’ll be able to open. That projection for the 3.8, I believe that my goal is to beat that, my goal is not to just to do that. My goal is to beat that and that’s what I’m currently working on. So, God-willing it would probably hit 4, God-willing.

OWEN: And that’s good to know. And so I’m curious, so far what will you say has been the lowest point of your business and describe how bad it got for the viewer.

JACOMO: So, far lowest point, I’ll tell you what it was. We had at one point a couple of months ago, 7 months ago actually, we ran a holiday special. And our cutter at the factory who cuts for the shirts, so the shirt tailor, he had too much work. He told randomly, by no one knows why, he had someone else cut a couple of people’s orders. When I mean a couple of people’s orders I’d say around like 50 customer’s orders. When that new cutter cut the 50 customers’ orders, these were all returning customers that came back. What we promised in our company is that when you come in you only need to me measured one-time. We store all your measurements on file. That’s how we’re automated and everything is stored in our database. This new cutter was cutting a bit differently which changed the shirt. The shirt did not come out the same. That was a recent major problem that we had to solve, and we found out where it’s coming from and what the problem was, so we stopped it.

OWEN: And during the pre-interview you also mentioned that one of the most difficult aspect back then was communication between the U.S. and the factory in Thailand. Can you talk about that and how that was an issue?

JACOMO: 100%, so, when I first started the business I teamed up with a local factory in Bangkok, which is what Joe Schmoe who wants to start a custom clothing company will do. Now, not only custom clothing company. I have friends who are in other fashion companies, major fashion houses. I actually I have one friend, Elie Tahari’s major fashion house’s nephew is my best friend Aaron, they own it. They use factories, whether it be in China or at the places like I said before. They don’t use one factory, it’s several factories. Now, if you look at it from the factory standpoint, the factory has several clients. So he gets an order from A, and order from B, and order from C, an order from D. So say I’m client D to him. If I have a rush order, or there is a problem or something, and I need to call in as soon as possible to change something. If he is busy dealing with customer A because customer A is paying him a little bit more, he doesn’t care about me at that point. He doesn’t answer me, he doesn’t communicate with me, and this is a problem that every single company has. I don’t care what you’re selling, where you’re selling it– fashion company, sorry, I take it back. Any fashion company. If you’re manufacturing clothes in another country you have this problem. So when we started we teamed up with someone over there, and I realize that this is insane. No quality control. The turnaround time, he promised me turnaround time of 4 weeks, so I promised customer 5 weeks. He wasn’t delivering to me in 5 weeks. And when I call him he doesn’t answer, he doesn’t care. So every single person I realize has this problem, and the only way– So there were 3 main problems, turnaround time, communication, and quality control. Because the people doing the quality control there, especially in the custom clothing business, which is so detailed, everything comes down to literally an half an inch of a detail. When quality control, the people over there, they don’t really care. The guys doing the quality control, what is he going to do? He say, “Yes, yes, no”,  he puts it in the box. He has to make sure it’s packed before FedEx comes to pick it up. He’s not going to see where it’s going to end up, no one’s going to end up yelling at him for making a mistake, they don’t care.

OWEN: Yeah. So you see, the problem was communication, quality control, and what was the last one?

JACOMO: Turnaround time.

OWEN: Okay. The reason I’m looking down is I’m writing it as you say it. But go ahead.

JACOMO: So, we realize, the only way to solve all these 3 problems is to be in full control. And the only way to be in full control is to open up your own shop, which is what we did. And thank God, it was the best move I have ever made. And it’s the only move. And because I did that, I have an advantage right now over any other custom clothing company in the world.

OWEN: Okay. And so, besides that, was there any other low point that you want to address?

JACOMO: I mean, starting a business from nothing, you’re always in the low. Everyday there is another problem, another problem, another problem. “Oh, now we have to deal with this, but if we deal with this then what’s going to happen with that?” So, I’ve got so immune to it that I can’t tell you a problem because these are normal stuff. But what I do is that we build programs, and we have lines of codes, and the whole nine yards where everything is automated. Meaning that the tracking of what’s going on between the customer who schedules an appointment online ’till the fabric getting ordered, the fabric getting to the factory, the cutter looking at the measurements, the cutter cutting it, the cutter handing it down in line for next. And then to sower, then to sleeves, and then the button, and then the style, and the quality control, and what box it’s going in. And the FedEx label of where it gets, and to the showroom, and from the showroom to the presser to get pressed, to back in the showroom, to when their customer gets an email saying your product is ready, that’s all tracked.

OWEN: Good. And so, I think that’s the next question because in the question is basically to find out how you solve the problem that you mentioned, and your lowest point. And you mentioned communication was one of them, quality control, and turnaround time. And during the pre-interview you said that you actually built your own custom technology to automate order entry and tracking system. So let’s talk about that for a little bit.

JACOMO: Okay, so basically, I owe that entire part to my father, because my father is a computer programmer by heart. He has several businesses, and every business that he’s in, what he does is that he builds programs to basically automate the entire business. I’m a big believer that in today’s world if you want to start a business and if you want to grow it exponentially with no boundaries to grow, the only way to do that is if you automate the entire business on a computer. So you have the computer doing the majority of the work, and the computer is never wrong, as long as you continue feeding it the right information.

OWEN: So, I guess I’m going to find out, now that you realize that– I’m sure maybe your dad let’s you know that you might have to go the automation route. But what was the first thing you did at that point now because the listeners listening to this has gotten the idea, “Oh, I need to automate my business and make use of technology.” But how did Jacomo do it, what was the first thing you did?

JACOMO: I can’t even tell you where the first one was. I’ll give you an advise, is that make sure that whatever you build is dynamic. That’s very key. Dynamic meaning that, for example, sometimes you’ll start building a line of code, and you build like a table or a structure, and then you build many other ones. If these two cannot connect to each other from up here, you’re screwed.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: It has to be dynamic, where at any given point, if you go into the top table and change one thing, it will change everything else in there. This way, you track everything. I sit back right now on my iPhone and I swear to you, I can see everything. I could track everything, down to the amount that I have to pay–

OWEN: So we got disconnected and you were talking about how you build the technologies basically from your iPhone, you can track everything. Take off from there and then we can talk about specifically how you build technology in the first place. Take it from where you stopped.

JACOMO: Basically, it’s all automated, it’s all on a computer screen in front of you. Every single piece, every step of the way it’s tracked. This way it decreases the margin of error, decreases by so much. It’s basically zero at that point. Unless a computer crashes, which barely ever happens. Everything is bar coded. So, we could track– I can’t even explain to you how narrow down I have everything tracked. And based off that we could do anything.

OWEN: Because one of the things is later on during the interview, we’re actually going to talk about tracking, and how you have measures in place to track. But following the story now is we saw the problem and the issues, and the response you had was, “Okay, I’m going to build a solution for it.” But my listener and I was listening to this, trying to figure out, what was the first thing you did? Because the way the software is probably working and working perfectly now, obviously, you probably didn’t start like that. So, the listeners are trying to understand, where did you choose to attack first, and how did you– Did you understand the question I’m asking?

JACOMO: Yeah, I understand the question you’re asking 100%, it’s just that I don’t remember what was the first exact thing because it doesn’t work like that. You don’t say, “Okay, I want to do the first thing”, and you actually get that first thing done. I had an initial first idea and I tried doing it, and that spun-off into doing this, and then that, and then this, and then a little bit of that. And then altogether something moulded, and then it started. So initially, for example, my initial idea was to start with the order form that the client sees. But then I realize that’s the biggest mistake ever, because the order form that the client sees is the least of the most important things, you get it? A young entrepreneur like me who first started, we only look at, for example, like cosmetics, and last end which is so wrong. It’s so hard to be able to stand back and say, “Okay, this means nothing. I need to look at the big picture over here.” And when you look at the big picture over here, that’s the way to lead to that last order form. So I initially thought I have to start from the order form and I realize that, that is wrong. So then what I started doing is we took it one step back, and we started from the fabric supplier.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: So we started inventorying fabric supplier, teaming up with our fabric suppliers, and then we automated them into the system. Then the next step was all the tailors, you have to have all the tailors on-board. All of them need to know how much money they’re getting paid for assignment, for a job that they do. So, then we moved into there. Then from there we moved into appointment generation for the customer, because these 3 things can get you get the ball rolling.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: And then also in programming, there’s bugs left and right, you find them every single day. The whole point is that you have to constantly on top of it, all day, every day. Any bug that you find, right away you fix it. Once you fix it one time, it should never happen anymore. That’s the beauty of automating a business, when you come across a problem, all you have to do is solve it one time. If it’s solved one time it should never come back.

OWEN: And I’m curious, when you decided you want to create the technology for this, I’m curious, how long did it take to build the first version of it. And then give the listener the cost, and maybe the process when you were building it.

JACOMO: Okay, here’s the thing. I’m very fortunate because I have in-house technicians. So I have in-house that literally, they’re on payroll that work for us, for my father’s company. So he assigned 2 people to the project and I worked with them on that. So as far as price and cost, I don’t know.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: I don’t have an answer in regards to that. How much time it takes? It takes a long time, and we’re nowhere near done. Because programming never ends, you always add more, you always want to simplify more, more, more. Like for example, the ideas that I’m working on right now, I want to make it in a way where it’s like if I presented to someone they’ll laugh because they won’t believe how much power they have with a click of one button.

OWEN: Okay. And so, in terms of, you cannot put a gauge on how much price it’s costing you because your dad actually gave someone from his own company to help you. But maybe in terms of the actual management of the project, you don’t have–

JACOMO: 24/7, you never stop, it never stops. It’s the most time-consuming thing. And if you’re not constantly working on it the entire time, you’re just falling behind.

OWEN: I guess so. But I was looking in terms of– at the time when you decided you want to build a technology for this, you now got someone else who’s the developer or whatever to work with you on this. But I’m assuming at this time you probably didn’t have any prior programming skills. So I’m trying to understand how you manage the programmers to build what you want. Because the person listening to this might be in that same situation. I wanted them to take something from this. And if at the very least is how you manage that process.

JACOMO: It was sit-down with them, and by the way, the developers are not here, the [No audio 00:18:10] the communication there is very annoying as well. There was Skype over team viewer so I can look into the computer and say, no this, no that, no that, no that. That communication was very hard as well. I really don’t know how I did it, I said, “This is what needs to happen, that, that, that, that. Start working on it.” And then everytime he works on something he sends it to me, I said, “No, but it can do this, it has to be able to do that. It has to that, it has to do this, it has to do that.” It’s a never ending puzzle that you’re building, and you have to keep in mind that when you’re building the puzzle, you have to build it where you’ll be able to add pieces at any given time.

OWEN: The main thing I got from that was because the very beginning when you’re building this, you have to build in such a way that you can keep adding more pieces together. And when you find that something is not working then the program I should be able to go back in and ship out was now working. Not breaking out the entire thing altogether.

JACOMO: Of course. Just fixing the– they’re called bugs. You find the bug. Let me give you a little, small example. Customer receives his shirt, and his collar is too small, he doesn’t like the size of his collar, so he wants to reorder a collar. In our order entry, you could repair an order. When you repair an order, you order a new collar to the factory. So, one bug was that when he was ordering the collar to the factory, it was not updating the new measurements in there, and the factory is making the same-sized collars.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: So when you find that bug, “Hey, this is a bug, this table, go fix it.” He goes, you mess it around, 10 minutes later it’s fixed. The structure right now is it’s very developed. I like to say that in my eyes it’s like 95% operational for the current operation that I’m running today.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: Okay? But with the operation that I’m running in my mind, I’m still 100% away from it. Do you get it? Because what I want to continue building is nowhere– I’m nowhere where I want to be. But in order to run this operation, it’s 95% and has it down, just from what we currently have. It’s very powerful and very big. No one has what I have right now.

OWEN: Yeah, and that’s a good thing too, to make the listener understand. Because the whole thing about creating a system is an ongoing process of improvement. So, like you said, you’re not there yet but at least–

JACOMO: You’re never there.

OWEN: And so, let’s talk about specifics about the systems you have in place in the business now. One of the things I want you to do is imagine that your business is– you have a conveyor belt. On one end is somebody who just has this idea that they want to order some new bespoke suits or whatever. And on the other end is this customer who’s excited and raving, basically that person who was anonymous, who you didn’t know has been transformed by going to your system, to now being excited and telling the whole world about you guys. And I want to go behind the scenes and talk about the systems you have in place. How they’re working with one another to make this person transform into the other person?

JACOMO: Okay, so basically, it’s so simple it’s crazy. A customer goes online, he schedules an appointment. When he schedules an appointment he types in his name, his last name, his email address, his phone number, what showroom he wants to go to. So he currently has 10, the goal is to have 40. He chooses what showroom, he chooses the date, and he chooses the time that he wants to go. And the time slots is all subject to availability, you know what I mean? You have to catch the right timeslot. When you go in, automatically an order form is already printed out for you, waiting at the showroom.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: Okay, with your info already on there. After that you with the person working at the showroom, we call them styling geniuses, they go to the order process. It’s not automated yet, that’s the next part that I’m working on automating. But you look at the fabrics, you go through a series of questions, and that’s all filled-out by hand by the person that’s working there.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: Once the consumer leaves, then this person enters the order into the system. Once it’s entered into the system, based off what is entered, it shoots into many different directions. For example, I’m giving you a suit. If we have the suit fabric in stock, automatic, the thing gets printed out in the stockroom. Cut this many yards of this fabric ready for tomorrow morning. If we don’t have the fabric an automatic email gets sent to that fabric supplier saying, “Hey, based off these measurements I need 4 yards of this [No audio 00:23:16] to me. That will come 2 days later, as opposed to one day. When the fabric comes in, when the order gets placed in the factory, a barcode gets printed out. And that barcode goes along the way with the whole process. So, the cutter cuts it in half, because to make a suit you make [No audio 00:23:34]. These people are separate. There’s jacket tailors, and there’s pants tailors.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: 2 yards get sent to the jacket, 2 yards get sent to the pants. When the pants tailor  receives it, he scans the barcode saying, “Okay, I received this fabric for this order, I’m going to start working on it right now, okay? Automatically [No audio 00:23:56] measurements come up that he needs to see. So if he sees the client’s measurements and the client’s body posture, and if we had uploaded any picture of the customer, okay? Based off that, we’re 100% bespoke. So he starts drawing on it and he starts cutting. When he scans it saying, “I’m done cutting this, now I’m sending it down the line.” And boom, imagine him as a worker, he scans something, I’m starting to work on this piece. He finished scanning, I’m getting paid for this piece.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: Done. Then it matches next in line, next in line for the jacket. For example, the person that sows the body does not sow the sleeves. There’s 8 people, there’s 8 people that make a jacket. It goes through 8 people ’till it’s made. So it gets handed down in line. So now the sleeve guy scans it saying, “Okay, I received the sleeves.” The body guy scans it, says, “I receive the body, I’m going to start working on the body.” It goes down the line to 8 people. They all scan it, they hit it, then it’s done, it gets sent down to quality control. Now, quality control is very key. And we built a reverse quality control, meaning that before or anywhere else that there’s quality control, they look at the garment, they look at the order. They say, yeah, yeah, yeah, boom, boom, boom, done. How we reverse quality control is the quality control receives it. They scan saying that they received it, all of a sudden a series of questions pop up on the computer screen for them. They have to answer the questions based off the garment that they’re looking at. For example, what lapel does this garment have? They choose 8 lapel. How wide is the lapel? They have to enter how wide is the lapel by looking at it and measuring it. What’s the measurement of the point to point on this? They have to enter it. They enter all these questions. If they get a green light, it says okay, it’s ready to be sent to Miami showroom. Then it gets sent to wherever our Miami stack is, or wherever it has to go. If it gets a red light, nuh-uh, not sent, I’m not letting that package leave, because I will not deliver something to my customer that’s wrong. And let’s just say it passes, it gets sent into a cubby that’s ready to go to Miami showroom. We ship in 25-kilo boxes, so we wait ’till the box stacks up to 25 kilo. And every order that’s going in that box gets scanned, this is ready to be sent out, ready for shipping. As soon as the box is full, they close it, a label gets printed out, stamped on there. That gets stamped, and automatically in the portal, the showrooms see. Because the Miami showroom only sees what’s going on in Miami, Beverly Hills only sees what’s going on in Beverly Hills. I see everything.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: Beverly Hills gets notified, “Hi, you have a box on your way. This is the FedEx tracking number. These are all the orders that are in this box.” Once they receive it they acknowledge the box, “I have received the box.” When they receive the box in the portal, it then shows them every customer that’s in there. Now, for example. A customer that ordered shirts, that’s ready packaged for him. So she clicks this shirt, done. He automatically gets an email saying, “Hey, your product is ready. Schedule another appointment to come in for a fitting, or to put it on, or to pick it up.” If it’s a suit, the suit needs to get pressed. So then that takes an extra day ’till the suits gets pressed. Then they get the email notification saying, “Your product is ready.” So, since the customer books an appointment online ’till the customer comes in to put on the clothes, I have the whole thing tracked.

OWEN: Wow, what I like about that is on one hand, it’s taking it from different steps, to the other steps. And when it gets to one step, it basically gives the person who’s responsible for that step what they need to do, that’s one thing. And then if moving from one step to the other step, it’s kind of like a hand off. Like you’re saying, someone has to literally scan–

JACOMO: Has a barcode.

OWEN: Yeah, scan the barcode. That means you’re literally handing it off because if they don’t scan it, it doesn’t tell the system that it’s been handed to the left, to the next person. And then now, you add this other level where I will say it’s like a manager but you call it quality control, where their job is to make sure that even after everything has come through, they got to make sure that it meets the quality before he hands them. And all the way, all this stuff you just mentioned is all happening and all the customer sees who came, who was looking to buy a suit, they don’t see all these stuff.

JACOMO: They see nothing. But also, I’m in the process of working on it. I want to show them, I want them to see.

OWEN: That’ll be awesome.

JACOMO: It’ll be very awesome, because it’s very exciting. For example, we’re thinking about something, saying put a ticker. A ticker on your order, meaning that any step of the way you could know what’s going on. Because I already have it, it’s already being done like that for me to show the customer that is not a problem. You can get an email notified from when your suit is being cut. Or he could login online and track everything, it’s all tracked, everything is tracked.

OWEN: That’ll be awesome.

JACOMO: It would be, and we’re working on it. We’re working to show the consumer. But what we’re really working on right now is building a 3D bespoke visualizer.

OWEN: What does that mean?

JACOMO: Meaning that the customer doesn’t need to come back into the showroom anymore. He can design the entire order on the computer and view it 3D, he could rotate, he could see everything he wants. And his measurements are already stored on file. He has to come it at least one time so that we measure him.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: One step, he can order himself. He could just order it himself and then it goes through the same process.

OWEN: This sounds really fabulous, but the thing I also know is that this whole thing, there has to have been challenges that you experience initially when you try to create a system. So, let’s talk–

JACOMO: All day every day. I don’t sleep at night time. I’m serious, I don’t, and it’s because I’m a type A personality, I need to be on top of everything. If I don’t know everything that’s going on, that’s a problem. I need to make sure that I know every single thing that’s going and make sure everyone’s doing the right job. Because it’s very hard to point people that are working for you in the right direction and make them have your vision, make them think like you. It’s very hard to do that. So if I’m not on top of everything, it’s very bad. And that’s not the way I am. And with these systems and programs, it makes my job way easier, but the scale that we’re at right now, and how we’re growing so quickly, it’s just constant, like, “Okay, next problem. How are we going to solve this problem so that then we can move on to the next step.” When we’re at the next step, I can guarantee you we’re going to find problems. It’s impossible not to have problems.

OWEN: And I’m curious too because I know one of the things that you mentioned during the pre-interview is that you guys encounter bugs, because you’re building the system you encounter bugs and then you guys work on fixing it. But I’m wondering especially if you are all the way in the U.S.A. and then the person all the way in Thailand doing the work, and there’s a bug involved in the system. How does that relay back to you so that your team know that there needs to be a bug fixed? Because there has to be that feedback loop that you all know, what do you have in place for that?

JACOMO: How do I communicate with them?

OWEN: No, not just communication but like when there’s something wrong with the system and the person who is handling that specific part of the system is all the way in another country. So there has to be a way in which the communication is coming back so that you guys know that, A, the developers know that and they need to fix this. So I’m wondering what’s that feedback loop that you guys have?

JACOMO: Okay, so, when we first started developing the factory side which is obviously the way more important side, we took the developers there.

OWEN: Oh, okay.

JACOMO: Yeah, because that’s the only way. We housed them there for 2 months. So for 2 months the developers lived at the factory so that they could see eye-to-eye what they’re doing. Because when a developer builds and programs, yeah, it’s all computer, yada yada. But he’ll understand you way easier if he actually sees what he’s doing.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: So, we did that, and thank God, the bugs on the production side are very minor. There were barely any bugs, very minor. It was more of, “Hey, can we add this step to make this step easier?”

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: Do you understand what I’m saying? It was more of like that, which is done very easily.

OWEN: So, by carrying the developers onsite so they can really see and feel, and have a day in the life of whoever they’re making the program for. It made it more easier to reduce the bugs on the production side. So now, when you guys are doing stuff the bugs don’t necessarily come from the production side as oppose to other sides that you’re now adding into the system.

JACOMO: Exactly. Everything new. Anytime you do something new, it’s expected to find bugs.

OWEN: Okay. This is challenging to have the whole mindset of systematizing your business and stuff like that, but how do you stay committed to this direction and–

JACOMO: It’s the only way. I’m going to be completely honest with you. Any person who does not know that, that is the only way, I don’t look at them as a smart person. I just don’t think they’re smart at all, I don’t think they know what’s going on in today’s world.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: And their potential to grow is this big. You cannot grow unless you have robots or computers doing all the work for you. I’ll give you an example, my father has a business in Africa. Our main competitor who does exactly what we do, they have 40 people on ground in Africa running the operation that we run. Guess how many we have.

OWEN: How many?

JACOMO: Two.

OWEN: Wow.

JACOMO: Two as oppose to 40, and those 2 people, all they do is make sure the computer is doing the right job, that’s all.

OWEN: Yeah. So basically by automating and finding out where the system– basically created a system around what you do and then applying technology where after all these years, needs to be applied. But also it’s set in places where technology cannot be applied, because a human had been asked to do it, but making sure there’s a means for that human being’s work to be verified and checked so that errors are reduced. That’s the whole–

JACOMO: That’s the whole thing. And also, like I just said this was an example. Automation allows you to basically grow a business with the least amount of man-power. And in any business, overhead is what screws you, overhead is my Kryptonite. I’m expanding left and right, opening up showrooms, that’s expense, expense, expense. So people is a huge expense, to pay people to work for you.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: Okay, that can add up. With these systems though we need the bare amount of people to work in order to get the most amount of work done, which is very important.

OWEN: Yeah, so I get how you guys have the system that everybody’s working on. But I’m also curious, what other ways do you have in place to make sure that your employees know exactly what they need to do? I think during the interview you talked about how you guys have training videos and stuff like that?

JACOMO: Oh, yeah. So, obviously there’s different positions in the company that we hire for. The most common position that you’re hired for is to work in the showroom. When you work in the showroom, there are training videos that we created and it explains to the person that we’re training how everything is so simpler and it’s on the computer for you. The only work you need to do is learn what the books are with the fabrics, learn what the fabrics are, and learn how to measure a customer. After that, the only system that the person uses there’s entering the order, that’s it. The rest is easy. When they receive an order it’s one click, email one click. Anyone would know how to do that, it’s very easy.

OWEN: And I’m curious, what tools are you guys using for creating the videos, and training videos, and documenting the system.

JACOMO: You mean like– what do you mean by tools?

OWEN: Like how are you guys– You guys are creating like a knowledge base of instruction, manual instruction videos of stuff that people have to do around your system. I’m wondering how guys store in that storage knowledge base stuff.

JACOMO: Video. We shot it in the office, most of it is me talking actually, most of it is guiding them in the right direction. And then for them to learn how to use the order entry, you film the screen and on the screen someone’s talking and just showing them how to do it.

OWEN: And so that’s for, on the side of the showroom. I’m curious, what kind of training do you guys have on the side of the production, people back in the ground in Thailand?

JACOMO: So the production, we got very fortunate because our managers there are very smart people. We got very blessed. By the way, also, I have to throw this out there. In any business or anything that you want to do, you have to work very hard, you have you never give up. And all this stuff people are going to tell you, another major thing is luck. You need to have luck. And we got very lucky in this situation. Our managers there speak fluent English, and they’re very smart people, and they were hired at the beginning when no program was built. So they were there since day 1. So they were a part of building the program. For example, one structure that we were coming up with receiving the fabric. We said, “Okay, we want to do it like this.” The manager working there said, “It will make my life easier if we could do it this way.” And we looked it up, “Oh right, that makes sense, let’s build it like that.”

OWEN: So what I get from that is when you’re also building the system you always want to get feedback from people on the ground who are there without the system because you want to get input.

JACOMO: It’s for them, that’s all it is, 100%. It’s for them, it’s not for me, I’m not sitting there doing it, it’s for them. They’re the ones that are using it, it has to work for them. And I tell them always, for example, right now I’m going back on Wednesday to the factory. I sat down with everyone and I said, “Tell me what you don’t like. Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me what problems you have. Tell me what you don’t like. Tell me what you think would be easier.” Because I’m very for simplicity. I like to make everyone’s job as simple as possible. Yeah, one button, two button, three button, your job is done. That’s my goal.

OWEN: And so, now I remember how earlier you’re talking about how you’re tracking the results and verifying the employees to get their work done. So now let’s dive into that a little bit because at this stage we get that the system is working. And so, how you track and then verify the results? What do set in place to make sure?

JACOMO: Sorry, I lost your connection a little bit.

OWEN: Can you hear me now?

JACOMO: Yeah, I can hear you now.

OWEN: Yeah. So how do you track and verify the results that being delivered by the employees?

JACOMO: What do you mean by track what results?

OWEN: If it’s based on the departments [Unintelligible 00:39:36]. I’m trying to figure out what metrics do you have in place to kind of track the results that are being delivered, based on the employees inputs. How are you tracking it?

JACOMO: It’s like– I’m sorry, I’m not really understanding the questions. It’s all there on the computer screen, there’s nothing to like really track. It’s like, the order gets sent from the factory. I know in what FedEx box it’s in. I know once they accepted they got the box because FedEx told me that they have the box. Then I know that they send an appointment reminder because his name’s not there yet and I know that it’s sitting in the showroom. Once the customer comes and picks up, I know that he picked up also.

OWEN: Okay. If I really think about my question, it’s kind of stupid.

JACOMO: I don’t know. To me I see it all there every day, and I’m–

OWEN: Yeah. So I guess what you basically did is you created it so that regardless of whatever step is going on in the entire conveyor belt so to speak, as each step is as– maybe the suit is moving from one step to the other, you have it inside of the system to track based on the hand-off. So, literally, it’s being tracked all through the entire–

JACOMO: When I build it I always tell the people that I hire, I say, “I’m building a job that I could really, if I wanted to, I could train a monkey to do it.” It’s that simple, it’s so easy, everything is right on the computer for you. You hit one button, two button, three button, you’re done, literally. And I’m constantly trying to make it even easier, and easier, and easier. Literally, I built it for anyone to be able to use.

OWEN: So will you say now, with all these automation and everything that you have in place that the business can literally run without you?

JACOMO: 100%. Right now I’m in Miami, I hopped on a flight in the morning to come to Miami. I haven’t been in the office, I haven’t even gone Miami shore right now because I’m busy with meetings with other people. Company’s running.

OWEN: Yeah. Go ahead.

JACOMO: Yeah, I could be gone. I get back to New York Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning I go to the factory to Thailand for another 10 days. The business runs itself. As long as my people that are in place know how to run it obviously, everything else is tracked. I see every day. Right now I could hit one button and see how much money I have made today.

OWEN: That’s awesome. And so, what would you say has been the longest time you’ve been away from the business given the way you set it up?

JACOMO: Here’s the thing though, you see how you say like you’re away, in my head I’m never away because my physical body doesn’t need to be anywhere. I see what’s going on. If I see a problem I’d pick up the phone and I’d call, “Hey, this does not look right, what are you doing?” So I’m never away. Right now I’m here on this computer, I could hit 3 buttons, I could track what went on in every single showroom. Right now, for example, like last night I know 8 boxes were sent up from the factory. I already know that so I know that they’re in transit right now.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: I know that 15 suits in Beverly Hills were just picked from the tailor for being pressed.

OWEN: Are you looking at that from the computer dashboard because–

JACOMO: Yeah.

OWEN: Okay, that’s awesome, I like that.

JACOMO: Everything is tracked, I see everything. So, I’m basically never away. I don’t need to be there. But don’t get me wrong, we’re still a baby, I’m still crawling and I can’t wait to fly.

OWEN: And what do you think flying will be like?

JACOMO: Flying would be like I want to build a, God-willing, I want to build a billion dollar industry.

OWEN: That’s awesome.

JACOMO: I want to be a billion dollar company and I’m not the type of person to say something just to say it. Because of the tools that I have it’s possible, I could really do it because it’s all automated, it’s so simple. All I need to do is expand. When I expand more customers, the more customers the more orders, that’s it, it’s as simple as that. Just got to make sure that everything grows together though. That’s all, and we got to make sure that your rotation, money, the funding, everything works out correctly. And you build, build, build. The circle becomes huge, and then, boom, money pours in.

OWEN: And so, how would you say your company as being transformed as a result of systematizing the business the way you did?

JACOMO: How is it been transformed?

OWEN: How would you say your business has been transformed as a result of you systematizing it the way you’ve done so far?

JACOMO: Okay, we are automated, we’re vertically integrated and automated. I promise you, this does not exist. It was never transformed because the business didn’t exist till it. So it never really transformed anything. I’m transforming the industry though, I’ll tell you that much. My programming right now, I could go sell my program to other companies for millions of dollars, I promise you. It’s worth millions of dollars. Because they could fire 30 employees. I’m serious.

OWEN: Yeah, definitely. And one of the things you said during the pre-interview is that you guys started with one showroom, and now because of the way you guys have systematized, you guys have 10 showrooms nationwide. I just want to make sure that you think about that too.

JACOMO: I have 2 more in the process of opening up, so it’s almost 12.

OWEN: And you said that the showrooms also run themselves.

JACOMO: They run themselves. That’s the beauty, the computer runs the showroom, it’s so simple. The person working at showroom, they come into the showroom, they click a button, they see how many appointments they have today. They hit print all, out of nowhere, out of the printer, all customers that they schedule the appointment on, their order form already gets printed out. The customer comes in, “Hi”. They fill out a couple of forms, they swiped a guy’s credit card, he leaves, they enter that into the computer, done. Their job is done at that point.

OWEN: Yeah. And so, I get how the business has been transformed, but how will you say your personal life has been transformed as a result of systematized business?

JACOMO: I’ve learned it’s opened my mind. I see stuff so differently, so differently.

OWEN: How?

JACOMO: Because I am able to– I don’t know how everyone is, the way I am though, as I open up the business I want to make a million dollars. I don’t want to open the business to make ten thousand, a hundred thousand, you want to make millions of dollars.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: The way the system opened my mind was that I was able to realize that impossible is nothing. Everything is possible, if you have the right systems doing it. And in order to grow, when you’re automated, to grow you grow up like that. [Snaps] You could double like that, [Snaps] because it’s nothing to double. It’s nothing. In my computer for example, last month we did 1,800 shirts, we manufactured, okay? For me, to manufacture, god-willing 3,600 shirts, what am I adding, what am I changing? Nothing. Just the manpower, the tailors that were cutting, they’ll just need a little more, that’s it. And I just doubled that.

OWEN: Wow. And now that you have all these free time and the business is running the way you want it. So what areas of your business do you find that you focus more on and why?

JACOMO: Okay, first of all, there’s no free time ever. Because since I’m the CEO I’m the janitor as well. Every problem gets presented to me. And there are problems that could take you days to solve. So there’s never a free time. What I am doing right now, me personally is that thank God, we’re at a point right now where everyone has moulded into their role, and everyone knows what they’re doing. So the operation is basically running itself. So what I work on is marketing, I want to market more, how we can market to many more people, how to expand quicker. Because in the first year we opened up– in like 16 months we opened up 10 showrooms, so I consider the first year, whatever.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: Next year I want to open up 25 more. So I need to find, I’m looking into ways to how can I actually execute that plan. How can I get people to listen to me and understand what my plan is to open up more showrooms. And then also, I still want to make the whole process easier. So I’m constantly thinking of ideas of how to make it even easier. So the main goal is that the customer doesn’t need to come to the showroom anymore. He just goes online, he has an account with us. All his measurements are stored on file. He clicks 3 buttons, hits enter, I send it to his 2 to 3 weeks later.

OWEN: That’s awesome. And so, the person listening to this interview now, possibly sold on the idea of building a system around your entire business so it works and it’s monitored all through. But what will you say to that person listening, what would you say the very next step that they should take in order to achieve what you have achieved? Where do they get started towards building something like what you’ve built?

JACOMO: Everything needs to be tracked. And I don’t know if I’m explaining it correctly by everything. An example, like what I said, my fabric inventory. Not only is my fabric inventory tracked. So for example, you place that suit fabric, I know how many suits I can make out of that fabric that I have sitting in my factory on the other side of the world. I know that number. Not only do I know that number, if I don’t have in stock, an automatic email gets sent up to the fabrics [Unintelligible 00:49:38] that has it, and I know how much I have to pay him for it.

OWEN: Okay.

JACOMO: And not only that. All the finances are tracked as well.

OWEN: So what I’m getting from that is the very first step to really creating a system like what you mentioned is you need to be very informed about the details in terms of being able to track everything, make sure you track everything. That’s the very first thing.

JACOMO: If you could track it all, you built a complete solution.

OWEN: Yeah.

JACOMO: When you have a complete solution, the value of that is extremely high. The value of it is extremely high, and I promise you I have something no one has.

OWEN: Definitely.

JACOMO: No one has this. It’s so simple.

OWEN: So what books will you say have influenced this way of thinking and why?

JACOMO: You want to know something really funny? I only read one book in my entire life.

OWEN: What book is it?

JACOMO: The Wolf of Wall Street. Have you seen the movie?

OWEN: I love the movie. The guy is something else.

JACOMO: It’s the only book I ever read in my life. I think that Jordan Belfort. I love the way he thinks. And I could guarantee you he never spoke about his automation, but the fact that he was able to expand so quickly, and grow so quickly as far as– what did he have, he had agents on the phone calling people all day. He expanded that, that’s what brought in all the business. Forget about all the other stuff that he did. But I can guarantee you that to track, to expand so quickly, and be on top of all those people, he definitely had some system in place that monitored all of it. Because at the end of the day you want to go see the reports. You hit one button, you look at the report, this looks good, this looks good, this looks good, on to the next day.

OWEN: I totally understand. And so, what is the best way for the listener who’s listening to you so far to connect with you and thank you for doing the interview?

JACOMO: They can connect with me through Instagram, I’m on Instagram a lot, jacominooo. It’s jacominooo. On LinkedIn, it’s just my name Jacomo Hakim. And that’s how people will get to me if they want to speak to me.

OWEN: And I’m curious, is there a question that you wish that I ask you during this entire interview that I didn’t ask, and if so, post that question and answer, you know.

JACOMO: No, I think you did a great job and I appreciate it. You’ve covered every aspect of it. One thing that I’d like to tell people is that nothing is easy. Don’t think that if because I’m automated I’m sitting back here with my feet on the table doing nothing. That’s not what it means. All it means is that you can manage a bigger operation than you thought you could. That’s all it means. It’s just that I’m doing a lot and I have the computers doing a lot of work, and I just look at it. That doesn’t mean that you’re not working anymore, so don’t think it’s like that. You still have to be on top of the computer. You have to be on top of the people that are entering this stuff into the computer. Do you get it? Because there’s a lot more to it. But definitely, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, and if you want to build a company that can grow exponentially, quickly, the only way to do it is if you have computers doing the major of the work for you. Because, like I said before, to expand with the computer, you expand like that. You hit one button and you say double it, it’s very simple. To expand from 40 workers to 80 workers, which is double, takes a long time.

OWEN: Yeah. And so, I’m now speaking to the listener who’s been listening so far. So, if you enjoy this interview so far, what I want you to do is go on to iTunes and leave us a positive review, and to do that you go to sweetProcess.com/iTunes. And the reason to give a positive review is so that other entrepreneurs just like you were interested in this kind of a topic can find out about the Process Breakdown Podcast. And the more entrepreneurs listening to this interview, the more we inspire to go get guests like Jacomo to come on the air and talk to you about how their business functions. And one more thing. If you’re at a point in your business where you’re tired of being the bottleneck, and you want people in your business to know exactly [Unintelligible 00:54:07] how to get tasks done the way you want to be able to document procedures for them, signup for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess. And Jacomo, thanks for doing the interview.

JACOMO: Thank you so much, it was a pleasure. I had a great time.

OWEN: And we’re done.