Mastering People Management for Cross Border E-commerce Growth with Mads Singers

In this episode, Mike Michelini chats with people management expert Mads Singers about the strategies that help e-commerce entrepreneurs build stronger teams, delegate effectively, and scale their businesses across borders. With experience spanning Fortune 500 companies to Amazon million-dollar sellers, Mads shares practical lessons that business owners can apply right away.

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Thank you Mads for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode number 469 of Global from Asia, looking to take your e-commerce business to the next level. It all comes down to management, and today we have none other than the management guru, mad singers joining us. Let’s dive in.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

Speaker: Welcome everyone to a new episode of Global from Asia. We are in for a treat with today’s guest mad singers. He’s been building and scaling online businesses for decades. And is sharing some incredible insights today.

Speaker 3: Absolutely, Lisa. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing MAD since around 2013, and I’ve learned so much from him.

I’m honored to have him on the podcast, and he’s also a speaker at this year’s Cross-border Summit, which he’ll touch on during the episode.

Speaker: Yes, let’s not waste any more time in the intro. [00:01:00] This is an epic interview after the show in our outro session. I’m excited to hear more about your experience with Mads and Management in your business.

For show notes and links, check out Global from asia.com/mads. Let’s hop into the episode.

Speaker 3: Cross-Border Summit 2025 is coming up and tickets are selling out fast. Now that summer’s behind us, we’re working harder than ever to make this event even more valuable with a special bundle box. Expect two full days of top speakers, no fluff presentations, and a bundle pack you’ll drool over.

Lock in your spot for November 3rd to fifth, 2025 at cross-border summit.com. Today it’s my pleasure to have a goal from Asia Podcast with a friend, an acquaintance, an expert in the community, mad singers, the people manager. I’ve had the pleasure of attending his workshops, hearing him speak over the years at different conferences and, and actually really excited he’ll be sharing with us at our [00:02:00] summit this year.

So thanks for coming on the show today, Mads. How are you doing today?

Speaker 4: Yeah, you’re welcome.

Speaker 3: I’m

Speaker 4: doing fantastic. Doing fantastic. Struggling a bit with a tennis elbow, but life happens. Well, we are busy making all the plans. I understand.

Speaker 3: What El tennis elbow? Sorry, I didn’t. Tennis elbow.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 3: That hurt? I guess.

I don’t,

Speaker 4: basically, yeah. I wish it was too much sport, but I think it’s more too, too much keyboard warrior. Oh,

Speaker 3: okay. I, I’m gonna go to acupuncture maybe shortly after this recording. I’ve been putting needles in my legs and shooting electricity through my legs. I think I’m sitting too much too, so I guess we’re all too

Speaker 4: much, actually same, same I’m doing with my elbow,

Speaker 3: so to figure Oh yeah.

I, I love it. I, I mean, I don’t like it actually, but I think it helps. So for those who don’t know you, I’ll just go through your quick bio. You’re the founder, CEO of Matt Singer’s management consulting. Extensive experience to what I always tell people is you’ve worked [00:03:00] in Fortune 500 companies in your previous lifetime and I don’t know how long now you’ve been kind of working with.

SMEs like me to help them also like take those best, best practices that you’ve learned and implemented in large corporations to to startups and entrepreneurs around the world. And you have your flagship course Effective Management Mastery, which is helping people like me. I’ve gone through your workshops learning how to use, because I never really had corporate, I mean, I don’t wanna take too much time off myself, but I worked on Wall Street, but I didn’t, there was no, it was totally flat.

It was like insanity, like it was basically. Animals like throwing stuff at each other, and I was the recipient of the coffee fetching and the paper ticket entry, but there was no manager. I had no manager. Like my manager that was on the books is my manager didn’t even work on my floor. He was upstairs in corporate and I would meet him like two times a year for my check-in, and I don’t even know how I calculated my bonus.

But I never saw my [00:04:00] manager, so it was just maniacs, like those movies in 2004, 2005. So I I, I’ve learned from you and I think others, other entrepreneurs might be like me that maybe just kind of jump in head first trying to manage, but don’t know how I, I know you’ve helped a lot of us do that. And you’re also gonna be a speaker at our Summit Cross-Border Summit, November 4th and fifth.

You’re on day one where you’re gonna speak about effectively. Scaling to seven, eight figures in your Amazon business or e-commerce business lessons from working with multiple Amazon million dollar sellers. So I’m excited for your speech and this session today. So also, you’re from Copenhagen, right?

Denmark? Actually, I have a few, uh, Denmark,

Speaker 4: not, not, not Copenhagen, but Denmark.

Speaker 3: Oh, not Copenhagen. I’ve been to Copenhagen and I went up to the, I went up to the top two, I think I went through to a farm in the north, a friend’s friend. I stayed there for a couple days. Yeah, it was very cool, like very like modern yet farm [00:05:00] I is my impression of it.

Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 4: Totally know what you mean, but that’s, yeah, that might, it’s an interesting place. I definitely much p prefer it in the summer months, so June, June to August when the weather is not too horrific and so on. But it gets very cold in the winter.

Speaker 3: Great. And then we will also see each other in China, or we’re both gonna be sharing at the Sheen SEO conference with our friend.

Yes, jp. So I’m excited. Excited definitely to see you there. Great. So. So that’s, that’s my intro. I mean, there’s of course, a lot, a lot more, but how did you get, like I said in the intro a little bit, I, I kind of like freestyle, but my impression of you is you worked in like Fortune 500 and now you’re working with kind of entrepreneurs.

How did, what’s your like story, A few minute background of that. Yeah,

Speaker 4: I, I, I, I left at market at 18. I got a job in, in a big company, Xerox and I, in my early years, I wanted to [00:06:00] do it, so it was kind of the direction I was going. That was what I was passionate about and all this. And then in my first job, after a few months, I got an absolutely amazing manager, and she just totally changed my trajectory of what I wanted to do.

And it became, instead of, I want to do it, I want to. Became, I wanna do what she does. And it took me, it took me a few years of learning and development and so on to sort of start growing in that direction. But that have basically been my passion since I was 18. So for the last 20, 20 some years, I’ve, I’ve been very passionate about that.

So first corporate with, with X and IBM, and then the last 13, 14 years on my own. So built multiple companies own five businesses right now. And yeah, just really love helping people. Like that’s my, my, my big calling, right? So love training. Unfortunately, what I see in most companies is that when people hire salespeople, they give them training.

When they hire [00:07:00] customer service people, they give them training. When they hire managers or when they promote people into management. They do nothing. So my, my big passion is helping companies who haven’t necessarily got some structured leadership and management training really come in and train them, get everyone up to speed, get everyone on the same page, and have a solid operation framework to operate from, from a management point of view.

And that’s definitely. That’s, that’s a big thing. Even big corporations needed, there’s many, funny enough, the probably worldwide, one of the most well recognized companies for leadership training and development and growth is McDonald’s. So.

Speaker 3: Interesting.

Speaker 4: Interestingly, if you, if you’re looking to hire good managers, McDonald’s might not be the worst place to look.

More than burgers then. More than burgers. More than burgers. But, but reality is many companies don’t have a solid system for training their managers, for growing their leaders and and so on. Right? And, [00:08:00] and the thing is, it’s one of those differentiators that just, it makes a big difference, right? Because the, your leadership is the most important people.

They have the biggest impact on. If you spend no time and resources and training them, like that’s, that’s you letting yourself down. Right? And that happens in many, many companies, many smaller businesses. And yeah, that is life. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I’m a, I’m a believer. I, I, I think a lot of us need this, right? Like, I, I guess I’ll speak for myself, but I believe others in my network and probably listening.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t wanna be a manager. I think be a bit. I I But you have to, there’s not really much. I mean, I, well there’s actually a lot of Amazon sellers, they won’t do everything about themself. Actually. We had a, we have these masterminds now who actually have one too at the summit and after summit.

But we have these kind of smaller ones in Thailand have been doing, and it’s a topic they don’t want to, they don’t, they don’t wanna hire people. They do everything themselves. [00:09:00] ’cause. The, it is classic, like there’re seven figures and they’re doing everything themselves still. I, I, I have, I don’t wanna call ’em out on, on here, but they’ll be at the summit.

They’re just, they’re like, oh, I’ve tried and they don’t do it, and I haven’t spent all this time teaching them. And then they leave and I just stuff like this, like, which I understand. And I, I, I, I, I think that’s the co, I mean, that’s my guess of the common one I’ve spoken to. And then, ’cause they like to do it, they do it themself.

They’ve done it, they’ve done it, they’re making money. And then management’s like a different brain, right? Like a diff left brain, right brain or, or what do you say like to that? My,

Speaker 4: my experience is people like doing it until you have tried not doing it. Mm-hmm. So when you first have good people. That do things so you don’t have to, the willpower to wanting to do it again, definitely diminishes, right.

What I would say is most people have done it themself and, and I would say the benefit with, particularly if you’re predominantly doing Amazon, is you can, you can build a reasonable size business on your own, [00:10:00] right? Like there’s actually very few business models out there where you can build a seven figure business.

Chucking away on your own, right? Like most companies, you have to hire people earlier. Amazon, FBA particularly is, is one of them because Amazon have such a big part of doing so many aspects of the business, right? That, that you, you in some instances can Reality is though, right? Like what I always tell people is what if something happens to you, right?

Like if you end up in hospital, if you. I don’t know what happens, but bad things can happen. And if that happens, then what happens? Right? Like for, for me, a business is not a business until it can run without you in it, right? If it, if a business is depending on you, it is a sometimes exceptionally well paid job.

But that’s what it is. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a job per se, but this is like. The company owners that I talk with, [00:11:00] the question I have to them is, do you want to build a business?

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: If your goal is to build a business, if your goal is to make a ton of money, then you have to have a different approach.

Right. Yeah. And that’s, that’s the mindset. Like I, I operate so a lot with e-commerce businesses, a lot with SaaS companies, a lot with SEOs, and so often it’s, you can be the expert. I mean, here’s the thing, you can go and hire a CEO. You can, the, the challenge is if, if you want to, if you wanna win a business, it’s about learning management.

Now, the thing is, management is a different skill than e-commerce, than SEO, than than development, right? It’s a different skill, but it’s a skill. Everybody can learn it. Right. There’s no born leaders. There’s no people who just get it. Like e everyone have things to learn. Depending on your personality, there’s different things you need to learn to succeed in management, but.

You [00:12:00] gotta learn, right? And reality is like simple aspects of, well, maybe not so simple, but learning to hire great people like that is literally in business. That is literally the, the simplest life hack, right? Like investing the time. And the, the problem is most people, they go out, they randomly hire two people.

They don’t really have a process, they don’t really have anything. They randomly hire two people and then they come to the conclusion, oh, those two people weren’t great. I didn’t get much out of them. So. I suck at hiring and I suck at managing, and I never wanna do that again. And you’re like, that’s, that’s a bit like going in on Amazon and buying your first product and yeah, somehow the first product doesn’t work.

So you just assume you can never make an income. Right? Like that’s not how it works. Right. When you start out, like you’re, you are likely to pick a product or two that probably doesn’t do exceptionally well. That makes sense, right? And, and it’s management is exactly the same. It’s just a skill. It’s, it’s stuff to learn.

And [00:13:00] reality is if you want to build a business, you want to invest in becoming a better leader, right? Like you wanna, you wanna learn, like I’ve, I’ve read. Four, 500 books or something like that. But you, I mean, there, there’s many ways to do it. There’s many ways to start again, finding yourself mentor, finding yourself a coach, something like that is, is very helpful.

But, but you wanna learn, right? It is a skill. And the benefit with the skill. I mean, today I run multiple businesses. I’m, I, I travel a ton. I, I love going around to events. I love networking a lot and so on. And I can do that because I have a great team. Or great teams in the companies running them. Right.

And if I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be able to do that. Right. So,

Speaker 3: agreed. Yeah. I think I’ll just read some of my notes from that. It was, there was a lot of, there’s a lot of nuggets there, like the training system to grow leaders. A business is not a business until it can run without you. And then do you really wanna build a business [00:14:00] or you wanna have like a high paying job and then management’s a skill to become a better leader?

Maybe finding a mentor coach and then developing a skill just like you developed a skill to do Amazon or a CO or SaaS or development, which I, yeah, I fully, fully agree with. And I’d like just to like, my last part is from what you said is just like launching a product on Amazon. I try to tell people the same thing.

You’re probably gonna fail on your first product, but that doesn’t mean you failed in your business. I mean, you almost, I don’t wanna say like. You prepare to fail, but you shouldn’t base your success on your first product. And it’s probably the same like you would say about your first hire. It’s part of the process of, I

Speaker 4: guess learning SAS tool.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Speaker 4: all SaaS tool. I mean, the amount of people I know who have built, like the people I know who are successful at SAS is very rarely the first tool they built. That is a success.

Speaker 3: That’s a good point. Yeah. So there you go. So it’s, it’s a skill and, uh, let’s maybe kind of talk about some of these strategies.

Like you’ve, [00:15:00] you know, the numbers I have on my notes is like, reducing workload 50% and boosting results 150%. I mean, do you have some, maybe even what you’re, your kind of leading towards and then maybe the components of your, of your program, the effective MAs management mastery.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I, I was saying general, the, the whole mindset as a leader is spending time with your people instead of spending time doing stuff, right?

So a lot of the time when leaders start hiring, they, they focus so much of their time and effort on still doing things. And while you need to do that for a while, and I’m not saying you should stop doing everything but. The core aspect is the second you have people working for you, your goal is to invest time in them to get more output from them, right?

That’s how you grow people and, and my focus is generally spending more time with my people. So that they grow and become more valuable and can do more stuff so that I don’t have to do it. Right. [00:16:00] That’s, that’s sort of a critical mindset because the, the amount of leaders I see that hire people and they’re like, yeah, yeah, I’m too busy to talk to them.

I’m too busy to train them. I’m too busy to help them out. I’m like, you’re doing it wrong. Your priorities is the wrong way around. If you have a staff, if you have people in your team, you need to invest time and effort in them. Because else they won’t grow and you won’t grow and you won’t get a good output from them.

And that’s, I mean, occasionally you’re very lucky to hire someone who just either knows stuff or figure stuff out, but, but most people. It takes effort. Like most, most people who are in eCom today have had a job. At some point, if their boss have just said, oh, I don’t have time to talk to you. I don’t have time to hear what you’re saying.

I don’t have time for anything. You would not have done a good job. Right. And that’s, yeah, that’s, that’s the way it is, right? Growth takes effort and it’s not necessarily a ton of [00:17:00] effort all the time, but it takes consistent effort and that’s. So when you look at my Effective Management Mastery program, the, the core aspect of that is really going through what, what I’ve distilled down over the years to be the most effective management processes, mindsets, and workflows that really helps you to succeed, right?

So typically in a one two day workshop, I go through this and. If you get these things right, so I have eight modules, and if you get these things right, obviously going through it is one thing. Actually implementing it takes longer, but, but a two day training, if you go and, and implement that and get those things right, you’re better.

90% of the managers out there. And what I’m trying to say with that is it is not that difficult to get exponentially better as a leader and as a manager. Right. It doesn’t take that long because a lot of [00:18:00] it is mindset. A lot of it is attitude. A lot of it is having some basic processes that just helps you do the right things.

And if you can really nail that down. Right, and I have adjusted my system a little bit over the years, but basically the last 15 years or so, there’s been a system that I’ve used. Both for myself, but also training leaders and managers within my businesses. And like, like most things, like with e-commerce, it’s often not, there’s a million things you can learn, right?

Like I could spend a month just talking management, but it’s really the 80 20 of what are the things that you really need to get right to succeed, right? So similarly with e-comm, right? Like you can spend. Weeks designing packaging on a product. Right? But it’s, it’s what is the 80 20? How do you find the right product?

How do you like, if you understand the process for doing that well, you are significantly more likely to succeed, and that’s where you wanna [00:19:00] spend the time. Right, it’s in the 80%, and it’s the same with management, right? So yes, management is a different skill. It does take a bit of time to learn, but I would say for most people, it goes through my training.

If they’ve already managed a few people, if they’ve already done a few things in two days, they will. They will get significant output and they will have a much better mindset to go and approach the world with in that regard.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I did. I did your one day and it was, it was good. I mean, it was here in Chiang Mai when, yeah, I don’t wanna spill the beans too much.

I let those people participate in it. But like, there was, there was a good structure and I think the first part was about me, right. About the, about you, the, the, the leader, the manager yourself. Right. Like you said, the mindset and understanding. And then, and then, ’cause everybody wants, especially in Amazon, I don’t know, maybe every industry, they want the hacks.

We always try to do that at the summit. We have people talk about hacks. Everybody wants that. Like the [00:20:00] tool or the magic. The magic thing I do to like boost my sales or improve my business, but. Yeah, I think what you go through is, like you said, timeless, evergreen. I think it’s, although I do wanna wonder what you think about this AI world.

I mean, do we need as many humans and managers now is, I don’t know if I wanna go off that rabbit hole, but I, well, I, I’ve been telling my team, I still have, I’m still keeping my core team, but I do think that is changing. I mean, like, maybe it’ll just be less people, but it might be even more important to have them ready.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I would, I would say the, the way I look at it is. People just become way more productive. Mm-hmm. So like we, we haven’t fired anyone because of ai. And I mean, we have about 350 staff across the businesses. Right. But our focus is not firing people. Our focus is getting more out of the people we have.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: So if our lead generators can get five extra amount of leads. Great. That means a business growing, right? Yeah. If our different [00:21:00] people can deliver way more and, and that’s how I look at ai. Like AI is a. Capacity to scale, to do things faster, to do things better, to do things more consistent, right? So we do a ton of automations and stuff, but my, my goal is not to eradicate people.

It’s basically just to get more output from them. So for me, fundamentally, what’s happened now, business, I mean, I don’t want to go into too much detail, but one of our companies we have, we’ve doubled our profit margin. Awesome, right? So. We’re basically delivering way more, like the impact for the customers is still the same or better, but we are delivering significantly more work at the same, with the same capacity.

And that just means that there’s a lot more money in the bottom line.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It’s similar messaging. I, I had a call my, I have a smaller team about, about 10 core people, and I, I told them similar. I said we could. I could take the easy way out and make the excuse that [00:22:00] we’re downsizing or, but I, I just think you have to just output more and we have to just use these tools now, hide from these tools, right?

If you, if you don’t embrace it and you don’t increase your productivity output, then there’s gonna be a problem. But as long as you’re like improving and using these tools. It makes me think there’s gonna be even more, I guess you can say, opportunity for those that do it, but also a huge issue for those that don’t do it, the companies and the people.

Right. So like it’s, it’s more important than ever, I’d say, to uh, learn these tools like and implement these systems. A hundred percent. So let’s go to the challenges that, there’s some classic questions. I have a, like basic outline. I don’t stick to so strict, but leadership and management. So that’s. Is there an easy way to differentiate those or are they the same?

Are they different? I,

Speaker 4: I, I combine them because for me, you need, you need it all in, in a good leader, right. Or a good manager. Generally, I would say you can be a leader without being a manager. So you can pick up the torch, you can lead [00:23:00] people, you can, you can, yeah, you, you can, you can be an inspiration to people around you without necessarily having the title of a manager.

At the same time, you can also be a manager without being inspiring at all. So I would say yes, you can separate them in that sense. But when I talk about leadership and management, honestly, I’m talking about the same thing. How do you become a person who positively. Effectively influence people to be better.

How do you help them deliver better? How do you help them be better people? How do you help them? Ge generally, because for, for me, I meet training leaders like in my own company for example. It’s not just that I train a manager or a leader in my organization, but it’s when they become better leaders, they’re better leaders of their family.

They’re better leaders. It’s their community at home. They’re better leaders as human beings. And I, I always [00:24:00] firmly believe in developing leaders and I, I, I invest significant amount of time every single month in. Helping and growing people that are outside of my realm of, of influence necessarily, or by nature, right?

So I spent quite a bit of time wherever I am in the world, going out, coaching people, going out. Like I, I love meeting young people and, and really. Trying to help them become better at that aspect, right? Because we, it, it’s easy to look at the world around us and say, oh, everything is up. Right? But the, the best thing to do is say, what can I do about it?

Right? And, and my contribution, if you will, is, is, is that I, I invest time in growing and developing leaders around me because the more better leaders should develop. The better the world will be and and isn’t everything, it’s how do you become a better partner? Like, it’s so easy. Like all [00:25:00] people, right?

It’s so easy to look around and say, oh, my partner sucks.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: Like, here’s the secret. If your partner sucks, that’s your fault. Exactly. What are you doing to fix it? Right? Like, if you have a problem in your relationship, don’t start by looking at everyone else. Start looking about you. Start looking at you.

Agree your problem in your business. Don’t start blaming everyone else. Look at what can you do different, what can you do better? If you have a problem with your friends, don’t look at them. Don’t blame them. Look at yourself. Right? So use the mirror first and, and developing, developing great people around you to just have such a positive influence on the world around you.

Right. So for like my, my, my leadership training and my management training, like I, I, I literally don’t do any advertisement. I literally, like, I have so many referrals sometime from people I’ve met, but they’ve been through it. They’ve, they’ve had experiences with it. Right. And this is the thing, like when you’re, when you’re [00:26:00] providing good, it really replicates.

And this is exactly the same with your stock. Right. Like when you’re really, when you’re providing your staff a great place to work, when you’re providing your staff with challenges, when you’re giving them ownership and responsibility, then, then they grow. They’re, they’re, they become happier, they become more fulfilled.

They appreciate their life more.

Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, I agree. I, so, yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m shaking my head, I’m nodding my head up and down, but I. I agree. I mean, I’ll admit, I, I always like that. I think maybe in human nature almost, and when maybe like I even, I have a couple kids and I try to teach, they complain about, they complain too.

I think it’s the easy way, right, is to blame or, or, or, or think it’s somebody else or something else. It’s not you and I, I hope my kids learn this too sooner. I try to teach ’em. But yeah, I mean, it’s. It’s really about your mindset and, and like you said, like thinking about what you did wrong to get to this [00:27:00] situation, right?

Like what this, this relationship’s not working. What, why, what, what did I do? Right? That, that, that that’s the core mindset shift that, that I think Yeah, you’ve, you’ve helped me think about too. Um, and that’s, that’s

Speaker 4: for, for me, that’s, I, I spent a lot of time when I was younger, so probably 15 years ago, learning to, let’s say, control my emotions.

Mm-hmm. Right. So I think again, exactly from this point, right? A lot of times it’s used to say, Mike makes me angry, Mike makes me unhappy. And I had a very good mentor at one point who said, stop. No one makes you anything. People around you do things and you choose how to respond to that. If you get angry, that is 100% your choice.

If someone punches you in the face and you get angry, that is 100% your choice. Now, [00:28:00] most people won’t be happy if someone punches them in the face, but understanding that it’s your choice. So what, what he used to say was that if you very often. If you take whatever happened in a totally different situation, your response would be different.

So if you’re in a bar and someone punches you in the face, versus if you’re in a church and someone punches you in the face, the reaction you will have is very likely gonna be slightly different. And because that reaction is different, that basically prove the simple concept that you are in control.

Right? Mm. And, and learning to take full responsibility for what happens around you, and literally say, okay, someone did something that had an impact to me. How am I responding? And that took me down a, a different rabbit hole learning to really look at people’s intent instead [00:29:00] of impact to me. So for example.

I was late for this thing today. My intent was not to disrespect you. My intent was not to harm you in any way, shape, or form. Now, I had lots of good excuses, but it’s not about the excuses. The whole point was that my intent was to be here on time. Uh, I didn’t manage to make it on time. However, someone like you could react and say, oh, this guy hates me, or He doesn’t like me, or he disrespect me.

Or you can, you can choose to take whatever. Someone else does in whatever light you want. And what I learned is it is very, very rare that people purposefully want to hurt others. Like I have never once in my life woken up in the morning and said, I wanna be a horrible human today. Right? So very often if we do end up hurting others, it is very rarely our actual [00:30:00] intent.

So from that point of view, I’ve learned to focus a lot on what is it people do? What’s the intent to hurt me? No, someone did something. That ended up having an impact on me, but the intent was not actually to negatively impact me. They didn’t do it for that. Now, because it had that impact. I could become angry.

I could become sad, but I could also make the choice to say, well, hey, Mike did something. It had an impact on me, but I know he didn’t try to harm me, so there’s no point in me getting angry or getting upset or getting unhappy about it. Right. And this is what I see. The biggest thing it comes down to is expectations.

When you look at in business, most leaders don’t communicate much with their staff, and therefore there’s likely a mismatching expectations. Maybe your staff expects [00:31:00] certain things from you that they’re not getting and that makes them unhappy. Maybe you, as a leader expect certain things from your staff, but guess what you haven’t told.

Yeah. You expect certain things from them, and when it doesn’t happen, you’re like, ah, they suck. Well, maybe they’re not doing it because you haven’t communicated your desires. And this is the same in relationships. When someone says, Hey, do you wanna be my girlfriend? Here’s the thing. My perception of what that is versus another human’s perception of what that is, is two very different things.

Right? That’s true. Yeah. If I say, Mike, we are good friends. Now, here’s the thing, our perception of what friendship is. Yeah. Sometimes you might ask me something that I, I’m like, no thanks, or I don’t wanna do that, or whatever. Or the, or reverse, right? You might ask me something and I’m like, no, no thanks.

And to you that might be friendship. Well, we are friends, so you should do this. You should be saying yes, you should be [00:32:00] whatever. And I could be the other way around. It’s like, ah, as a friend, why would you do that? Why? That makes no sense, right. But reality is most of relationships, most of anything that involves two or more people is so much about expectation setting, right?

If you don’t set expectations, the difference between what you think and what the other person think is going to be different, the more and the better you communicate about expectations for whatever type of relationship. Right? Like even friendship, you hear very rarely someone sit down and say, Hey, we are really good friends.

When when I have friends, here’s what I expect. Here’s what I give. Right? Yeah. That conversation

Speaker 3: now what happens? I was thinking like job description for friends or girlfriend? Boyfriend or husband, wife. Yeah. I mean my, my wife. Yeah. Like I’m more of the structured person. Maybe she doesn’t like it. She’s like, it’s too robotic, but I [00:33:00] should try to like, I wanna make it clear, you know?

Yeah. But it’s funny, there should be like a job, like a, maybe there’s like some app we can make, like. Confirm friendship. This is the terms of our friendship. Confirm me,

Speaker 4: but, but, but this is the thing. The thing is, we all have cultural norms from our life, right? Mm-hmm. Again, as I said, for you a friend means something different and it means for me.

Yeah. Just because, and, and we have different, like when I say someone is a friend, like my expectation to that person is different than your expectation to someone you call a friend, right? Just because we’ve lived, we’ve grown, we have had different experiences, and therefore, naturally that is the case.

Right, and, and the, the ability to communicate to your staff and I, I, I, I keep bringing up relationships because for me, this is what I see the most, right? Most relationships failed due to poor communication, [00:34:00] and a lot of the time it is due to poor communication around expectations to what is this thing we have?

What does it mean to be a girlfriend? What does it mean to be a boyfriend? What does it mean to be a wife, a husband, a fiance, like most people have this idea in their head, oh, when we get married, all of this stuff is gonna happen. The other person have an expectation, wait, we get married, this stuff will happen, and they don’t communicate it.

And suddenly this wall.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. I mean, I’m. Maybe I’m too robotic, but I feel like that could, like you make me think of a Facebook ad friend, right? Like they did try to standardize that stuff. Like the poking people said Zuckerberg originally had to poke. I think they removed poke. But it’s like, but it’s very complex.

Like you said, you can’t really standardize with cultures, but even just personalities and people expectations.

Speaker 4: But what you can do though is have

Speaker 3: communication.

Speaker 4: Mm. Through communication. So when you, when you start going out [00:35:00] with someone, you can say, Hey, what’s a relationship to you? Mm. If we one day become boyfriend girlfriend, what does that mean?

Mm. What what would that mean to you? Like having a partner? For some people it’s like, oh, well the second I have a partner, we spend 90% of our time together. We mostly sit at home and we, whatever. Right. For some other people it means, oh, we are always faithful to other people. It means, oh, we do X, Y, Z. And to some people it’s like, oh, my wife always cooked for me and she always do this, and she always do this, and I’m supposed to do this and this and this.

And we all have so different expectation and, and this is so much the case with your staff. The clearer, the more consistent you communicate expectations, the better results you will get from your staff.

Speaker 3: Hmm. Makes sense. Okay. Well this has been, this has been a fun as always, [00:36:00] and I tempted, I’m just gonna say it, but online teams is harder I feel, than in person.

I think you’ve, you have a pretty. It last I’ve talked to you, I know you had a pretty big operations about Philippines and I know you have online teams, multiple businesses. I just still complain. I still complain to myself, like kind of out loud when I’m here in my home office, I’m like so much extra work in communication.

I feel like online than in person. ’cause in person you just walk by the water cooler you, you kind of get that check-in, right? But with online it’s like you have to specifically. Do that, like in my opinion, but maybe I’m wrong, but.

Speaker 4: Honestly, it’s very much the same for me. Really. Uh, I would say with online team.

So my company has been mostly remote for the last 12 years, right? So I, I did remote before remote was, was cool, but fundamentally it managers, I don’t see a huge difference between remote and in person. Right? It is [00:37:00] significantly easier because you get those water cooler movement and, and you get those natural communication points.

If, if you’re not as experienced a leader, it definitely makes it a lot easier. Mm. Because what, what I always say with, with poor leaders, what happens is when it goes on offline, they stop communicating. Right. Yeah. So basically the communication level just drops, whereas that’s just natural communication that you have when you’re in an office.

The, the benefit of feel from remote is that it forces you to put your communication into a framework. Yeah. Whereas sometimes when you’re in an office, you naturally end up talking way more with some people than with others, whereas it’s way easier remotely to actually have a similar balance between the time you invest in different people.

Right. Mm-hmm. Uh, obviously there’s people you do closer work with and stuff, but, but I, I feel personally that there’s, that, that the structure and the framework [00:38:00] of, of having good communication is, is more consistent online because you have to be.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: If you are not, you get screwed over. Right. Or you, you, you lose.

But, but if you have good frameworks, if you have one-to-ones, if you have team meetings, if you have that sort of stuff like you’re. You are in a better spot.

Speaker 3: I understand. Okay. No, that, that helps. And let, let’s, I, I think we could talk all day. I’m excited. I’m excited to have you at the summit see in China next week.

Let’s start to wrap up, like where are places people can find you online and by your programs and your, your socials and other things you’d like to share.

Speaker 4: Yeah, Matts singers.com. So M-A-D-S-S-I-N-G-E-R-S. That is also my name on all social media. And so far I am the only human on the planet with that name.

So easy to find me.

Speaker 3: Oh, that’s lucky. I used to be, or I think I was, there was, I [00:39:00] have a priest in Chicago and I think there’s a couple others of me, same name. That’s awesome. And then of course, we’ll see you at the summit in November. People, we still got a few spots left for those interested to join us. It was, yeah, we had you last year too, coming in and this time it’ll be a keynote speech, which is speaking about working with Amazon or e-commerce sellers to help them what, what they’ve used to grow seven, eight figures and beyond.

So I’m really excited for your sharing and, and to get to know you more and to have you connect with the community here. So thanks for your time today, Mads, and I’ll see you soon.

Speaker 4: Yeah, you’re welcome, man. I’m super excited to see you all. Awesome.

Speaker: That’s a wrap, Mike Mads is definitely next level when it comes to management.

His blend of corporate experience and entrepreneurial insight is truly unique.

Speaker 3: Absolutely. Lisa. I attended one of MAD’s paid workshops in Chiang Mai back in 2023, an intense full day session that realigned my thinking on management. I’m so grateful for his [00:40:00] passion to help us entrepreneurs. Can

Speaker: you share a couple of key takeaways from that experience?

Speaker 3: Sure. One classic is right person, right seat. It’s standard, but powerful. Mads emphasizes doing personality tests to understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Then balancing your team around that as a leader. That’s your job, my favorite part. Investing in your team, their skills, tools, and growth.

It’s a game changer.

Speaker: Love that. Thanks Mike. And thanks to our listeners. See you next time.

Speaker 2: To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com. That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.