Beyond Titles with Kendra Johnson

Kendra Johnson (00:02.411)
Okay Ruben, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. Really excited to learn more about your journey and some of the things that make your organization click and hum. So with that, could you start us off by just giving a little overview of your journey from employee to entrepreneur and everything in between?

Ruben A. (00:22.222)
Absolutely, and Kenner, first of all, thank you for the invite and it's great to be here. I think we have a lot of exciting things to kind of cover and go. So again, I'm glad to have this opportunity to share for anybody that will be listening. yeah, who's never got a chance to see me on YouTube or anywhere else. So I'm Ruben, I'm the founder currently and the CEO for a PAS, that's Professional Amazon Services. What we do, we are a full.

service, a remote e-commerce department. And that came in kind of as a backend of COVID after COVID. get Amazon, I just said it was not something that did not exist at that time. But obviously what COVID did, what pandemic did escalated that process of teams and large organizations relying for remote services and remote teams.

Having my background, which I'll get to into the deeper, of helped me to build that type of business model, which is a remote e-commerce department. So yeah, in general, I'm an immigrant. There's probably many of know, a couple come and show or half came from somewhere. initial journey back in 2008, I think when I came was not really

showing any signs that I will take the journey of an e-commerce at all, but I do believe somewhere around 2011, 2012 is where I find out myself eBay and I know it sounds strange because eBay had been around for so long on generally like an e-commerce but it's that time when I'm like hey you can actually sell things online people buy.

Kendra Johnson (01:53.151)
Yeah.

Ruben A. (02:15.202)
That's something that you can make money on. And aside from all my daily job that I was doing back then, I was continuously looking into an idea of how it operates, how it works, and what you can do to make an extra money. And started developing without exaggeration, selling technically garbage. Things that people did not need, but apparently eBay was a place that other people needed. So someone's trash, someone else's treasure.

Kendra Johnson (02:15.36)
See ya.

Kendra Johnson (02:41.472)
Yeah.

Ruben A. (02:44.43)
kind of the idea. And I started honing my skills even further when I joined a role, a position that is not directly e-commerce, but that gave me the stepping stone into what e-commerce could be, which was I started working at the local pawn shop, you know, as a family on multiple pawn shops.

And one of their main type of business along what the traditional pawn shop idea of people know and is, was selling products online. Because a lot of products that they buy or people pawn and never pick up, it ends up on platforms like eBay and later Craigslist was a big place and now it's an FF Facebook marketplace. So then I was dealt hand to basically do e-commerce with no expense to me and have that learning round.

which even further spiked my interest into, how you create images, how you list eBay product, and started doing more and more things on a side because I know already I had more confidence into what it was and how it sells. So with the time that developed into a complete side business, which I started understanding and self-learning with the dropship business.

what was a drop ship and finding suppliers and saying and doing right now what it called a retail arbitrage with eBay finding supplier reselling, which in its hand turned into a more professional business model. At that time, I had a friend who started his Amazon business, Amazon wholesale business, and he knowing me that I'm on selling eBay, it was a kind of a natural extension of, hey, this is Amazon what I do.

And although I did sell my first product pretty much alongside eBay back in 2012, I opened up my first account, I listed product and I sold it, Amazon back then was not something that intrigued me that much. And one of the biggest reasons was because my mind was solely focused on selling products that people are already looking for. That was the big difference. Because if you're looking, for example, specific

Ruben A. (05:04.642)
Brand product you go on eBay you type and that branded product will pop up when in contrast when you do that in Amazon You'll see random products first of all because not every brand was available on Amazon second Amazon was a category-based shopping place meaning if you're looking for Nike socks And I'm selling socks sports socks I can use that keyword to boost my product up and you may not even see Nike socks and see my product

Kendra Johnson (05:09.227)
Mm-hmm.

Ruben A. (05:32.802)
And that was kind of a thing, okay, I don't really understand how that's possible. And I didn't really, you know, went to dig in deeper, at least back in 2012, but 2016 and up, that's where learning and understanding deeper how the Amazon operates, you know, what the listing back ends are and more and more being drawn to it because it felt more professional. Hey, this can be, you know, a business model in a different ways. So.

That gave me another stepping stone. you can, as you can imagine, like as I'm going through, can see the kind of an evolution of putting one learning on the top and another key is just wanting to learn more, obviously, right? Because you could stop in anywhere of the things that I described and be very good at it. You can have a dropship business, an arbitrage business on Amazon. And I kind of was going through that and kind of the evolution from understanding how

Kendra Johnson (06:13.675)
Definitely.

Ruben A. (06:30.286)
products being sold on Amazon and how we develop connections with different distributors, buying products, reselling, understanding profit margins, understanding business got me into, hey, like if people are shopping in generally categories, not in the brands, why not we start, you know, selling our own brands? Around that time when various Amazon tools came around, Helium 10, then, gosh, I forgot what was the name.

Jungle Scout one of those up and there was one even before any of those so give an understanding of How Amazon works your search volumes your products? Yeah, so that was a catalyst that was like hey if I can find out this much and I know this much we can put these two into together and start working so Yeah That gave me a chance to launch products fail miserably, know finding new ones working simultaneously

Kendra Johnson (07:25.491)
You

Ruben A. (07:28.512)
And kind of creating a career out of that. So fast forward 2018, that's when I started the first role as a manager of e-marketplaces. Then I went through being in director of e-commerce or e-marketplaces in various organizations, including a startup that got sold out and owning my own brands and being able to sell one of my brands. So yeah, it was an exciting journey and then got to 2021.

end of 2021 when I started the PAS as a professional, I'm as a services business and providing that service to brands and organizations.

Kendra Johnson (08:00.811)
Yes.

Kendra Johnson (08:04.733)
Amazing. What a journey. And as you said, you know, you can see where all of your skills, all of your lessons stack on top of themselves, on top of each other to be here today.

You said something really interesting because obviously e-commerce has taken off in the last, we'll call it five to 10 years. And there are certain things that you can do obviously to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. when you and I had spoken previously, there were a couple of things that stood out to me about how you might differentiate yourself just through the sheer culture of your organization. So one would be the team that you hire and the way you train and the way you

provide feedback. But before we get there I want to dive into something you just said which was develop create and develop relationships with your suppliers. And so talk to me a little bit about that in terms of your industry, the importance of that, and kind what that looks like for you.

Ruben A. (09:02.446)
Yes. So, and for listeners who are more modern to Amazon, let's put it that way, right now they will recognize that business model as an Amazon Accelerators. And even today that, you know, the lower spectrum of that model still exists, which is if there are supermarkets that sell many of different brands products,

why they can be in online supermarkets and that's what exactly they did. So my business partner today, friend, and he still owns that type of business and his concept was simple. He was operating strictly within one category. It was doing extremely well. Me coming in and being able to kind of, I started but never finished the communication, having a communication skills and understanding lot.

Like, hey, why don't we expand this to other categories? And that's where I started to work, which is identifying distributors at different categories, whether that will be beauty, food, food industry, and reaching out to them, hey, we're looking into, we're in this type of business, we own an Amazon supermarket, we sell various products, and we have a very strong.

cash capabilities to buy in large quantities. And a lot of people didn't realize, and still many don't realize, that some of the products can sell on Amazon in thousands and thousands of units. And when we develop that relationship and would give some approximate numbers of single units that we would buy, some of these distributors and wholesalers would not even comprehend, like, how is that possible? Because we have stores that are buying maybe, you

hundreds or two hundreds, you're coming in and placing order of 1,500. That was intriguing to them. It had literally its own complications. I don't want to make it sound that rosy. we would establish business and pretty much anyone else would introduce what we do. We do our due diligence on the back and understanding the demand, supply and demand and competition and all that stuff. And start working and being able to negotiate deals and new deals.

Kendra Johnson (11:01.003)
Yeah.

Ruben A. (11:22.098)
based on the volume we buy. And this is an important subject because later on what we realized technically the guy with the deepest pockets would win a lot of these cases being able to negotiate better deal, which makes sense. Obviously any brand owner or distributor would prefer to work with someone who places 10 times larger order than the next one and give them better discounts. But that would be the major relationship with the suppliers.

Kendra Johnson (11:44.885)
Yeah.

Ruben A. (11:51.624)
aside from any logistical challenges or inventory challenges may have been, you would go, would reach out, you would talk, you'll establish paper documentation terms and start operating as with any other store would do.

Kendra Johnson (12:04.201)
Yeah, amazing. And then you deliver on that, of course. You say you're going to sell through that volume. You deliver, which means that you're cultivating and building that trust. that's very impressive.

Ruben A. (12:07.116)
Yes, absolutely.

Ruben A. (12:12.296)
Yes, yes. And with that you could get access to certain other SKUs that was not available to you prior to that. Discounts, as I mentioned, is not a good, because that business is a very cutthroat and has very thin margins because of other competition. So at any advantage you could get, for example, even things as a cash backs, when

using a credit card to purchase things. Kind of that all comes back into your bottom line. So you had to understand not only Amazon, but business in general where you can save to operate. But in terms of the Amazon, I think one of my biggest learnings from that was again, putting two and two together, the brand awareness and a category based shopping. If I'm buying, let's say, an

famous brand shampoo, and Amazon only selling one type. On Amazon it's available only one type and it's very popular. You know, I started coming out, hey, there are chances are if you bring the other type of SKUs that they are not yet any new sellers by just the factor of a brand awareness, we can grow and be successful before anyone else starts selling the same product. So, you know, that brought in into more and more SKUs, sometimes ordering SKUs that they were not even expecting.

just growing the sales that way.

Kendra Johnson (13:42.155)
Okay, interesting. So a lot of foresight and creativity to see what can we do and how can we get ahead of the market, which I like. I love a good innovation strategy. So that's fantastic. And naturally to be able to deliver on such volume, you need to expand your team because while I would imagine that you have a lot of systems and tech stacks and automations, you still need people to make things work. So talk to me a little bit about the makeup of your team.

Ruben A. (13:48.12)
Yes.

Kendra Johnson (14:12.249)
what that looks like and how you scaled, how you hired and how you found the right people to be able to deliver on those promises to your suppliers, your distributors.

Ruben A. (14:22.478)
Yes, to answer that question, I'd to pivot a bit towards the current business and what we do, because that speaks up more into kind of what we're trying to discuss as, you know, that business that I was just talking about, it was more of a logistical, which is less challenging in terms of a... So, yes, with the current business, what we do is mention we manage people businesses, we manage other people businesses, and it's a huge responsibility. So you have to have an understanding

overall general business and also the spectrum of an Amazon, which can be account management, marketing, graphic design. And each one on its own approach very much, it's challenging. And from day one, my approach to that was, well, first it was me, then was others to bring people who are more or less close to

what you know, because that's the way you're going to go. Like first people you go in a heart, no matter who says what, are going to be people who you feel that are closer to your knowledge and will be able to help you to grow the first one. It's later you start hiring people that know way more than you do, which is the stage I am. Like, you know, the people that I hire right now in advertising or other spectrum know way more than I am and I'm very proud of that. But

At the beginning, that's what it was. Hey, let me understand how much you know. This is what you do. This is what we do. It fits. Let's give it a go. Hey, do you know someone else similar to you? Yes, let's bring them in. And that is good. That can help you to kind of move fast, but it also will hit you at one point because you will understand, you will see that.

as you grow, as you sharpen your skills overall, organization grows, the demand of doing things grows with that as well, the quality changes. So what worked yesterday and will not work today, and also if you have members who are not adaptable to those changes, we'll just start hunting you. So yeah, you need to be able to...

Kendra Johnson (16:27.819)
Mm-hmm.

Ruben A. (16:46.87)
seen recognize that and address that. At least that's my experience. We've been in the business, in this business for actively two and a half years. And you can go along with just hiring and just doing things on a fly for maybe a year, year and a half. And especially depending on your growth, but it will not take you too long. So that was our initial approach. just wait. You're close to my skills. I understand what you're doing. You do. This is what we do. Let's do it together.

Yeah.

Kendra Johnson (17:19.915)
Okay, beautiful. And then as the team grew and naturally, you know, there'll be some, some learnings, as you said, some ups, some downs, some getting things right and some needing to pivot. So how internally did you, when you're building alongside these people, how did you, as a team, figure out, okay, this is what's working. We need to keep doing more of this. How did you course correct? And then I suppose just to put the icing on the cake there, how did you use any client feedback?

to integrate into your processes when it came to building out your team.

Ruben A. (17:52.066)
Exactly. That's what I was going to say. The biggest thing that's going to happen to, least to me, in terms of, you know, the things we do and the trainings, it's your clients will sort of dictate that. Because in my line of business, it changes and the need for service types and the quality of that changes. So as sooner you understand it is better, of course. And based on that, you will start building new

new methods of first hiring, then when you get to a certain point training to make that same expectations across the board. It's like, you know, in other words, thinking about the McDonald's thing, right? Like you can go to McDonald's any anywhere in the world and you can know what to expect because they have systems, they have trainings to replicate the exact system. you have to, I, at least I thought it that way. So

Because of that, you have to have trainings that will teach them all the basics that you know for sure works for you and you know your partners expect because people may get fired, people may leave, so someone has to step in and you want to expect the same level of service or same level of knowledge coming in. And then hiring itself right from being in...

Random conversation as an hire and there's no schools to teach you that. I'm sorry, but you have to go through. You'll become start understanding the what are you looking for, the questions you're going to ask to be more specific into. So from an hiring processes to training processes, things will change. And what we did, we started developing those things and also start relying heavily on things as a performance reviews, which

again went from being in five or six question right now to 15. And I really hate bureaucracy and I hate to over complicate but these things keep giving us, it came again from a very strict understanding what we need to do, how we need to do it and based on that this is what we need. whatever we felt actually we started cutting off but the performance reviews will include skills as hard skills as soft skills.

Ruben A. (20:09.71)
and values things of that nature too for us to understand the people that we work with are a good fit in doing what we do because we cannot especially in this type of competitive niche and competitive world, you know, have people that are not adding a value and you know, fortunately it's going to happen. So don't really, you know, be hard on yourself and if you're not there or if you feel it's not that, so it's going to happen but...

Other than that, they at least have to have those standards, those level of trainings, those procedures to be able to kind of maintain.

Kendra Johnson (20:49.415)
Absolutely. Yes. Music. That's music to my ears. I'm hearing the consistency, right? The consistency across the board. So your customers, your clients are getting a consistent experience, which means that you're continuing to build that trust with them, that trust with new people, and great analogy to tie in McDonald's. Yeah, you know exactly what you're going to get. You're going to get the same consistent experience, the same food quality across the board. And if you don't have that, it's really difficult.

for people to come back again because they never know truly what they're going to get with you. So yeah, you want to make sure from person to person.

Ruben A. (21:25.102)
And then in this business type we are, you think about the referrals, right? We operate heavily on war to model as well. So if one experience one thing and is recommended, then you get different. It's a hit. So we're trying to maintain that. And for that, I mentioned, you need all those practices in place.

Kendra Johnson (21:49.067)
Talk to me a little bit about your performance review. I think it's excellent that you have that, that you flushed it out and you continue to add to it. 15 questions or 15 metrics, I should say, I don't think is anything wild. I think because you've broken it down into technical skills, soft skills, and also your values, I'd really love to dive into the values piece and how you see those metrics show up in the behaviors

of your team because naturally you know you're not just slapping them on the wall and saying here are our values but you're actually measuring them and assigning action to them. So what does that look like from a performance review to implementation for your team?

Ruben A. (22:36.046)
Yes, you're absolutely right. So this is not just something for us to write down and I always spoke about very, you know, very loud about this. This is... Well, it's gonna do two things and no matter how harsh it sounds, it's gonna do that. First, it will point out imperfections and the good areas and it will tell you, and including me, I'm not an exclusion of that,

same performance review, we'll get to that. But for the team members, it will point out the areas that we want you to improve. And it will basically tell us with the time you improve, so whether, and again, I don't want to sound harsh, but either you're a liability or a company or not. So if you're not really pulling up the areas that we know we need from you to support the business, then you're actually liability. So.

That's the way we see it we're being very open and honest about that because it's for you to see where you can be better and for us to see as an organization. And of course, that's just a request. We have incentives tied to that. So if we see changes, we reward that. We want that people feel good about that we're working on ourselves. We want to be better. This is not just awards. We're not just

forcing them to and pointing out any mistakes if there are. And we just don't want them to be better for the sake of a company and that's it. We want them to grow both everyone is working and everyone has a professional and financial goals as in someone in my role, I wanna make sure that we try to get there. we do those, we understand clearly where their areas we want them to improve. point that out and we track it another.

months depending on the severity from three months. Our usual reviews are six months. It used to be three months, every quarter now it's six months because team grew and it's just becoming challenging. But if they're depending on the severity of a certain areas we want to improve, we may give it a three months and about performance. And as you can imagine as a founder, if anybody out there listening, the joy when you see that being improved and the opposite when it's not.

Ruben A. (24:57.48)
Let's focus on a positive. So that's how we use it. And again, the company dictate us to which areas we want that performance review to be, as mentioned, soft skills, hard skills, and company values.

Kendra Johnson (25:15.573)
Yes. Amazing. And I think people, you're showing them the clear direction of where they can go, how they can achieve that growth. And then from the sounds of it, you're coaching them towards that success. And then it's up to them whether they choose to apply those skills, to apply those changes in order to meet that criteria. And if not, sometimes to your point,

It might not be, there might not be alignment and that's okay as well, but those who want to grow, who feel fulfilled and are grateful for the opportunity to be coached, yeah, they're also going to celebrate that growth for themselves, right? Yeah.

Ruben A. (25:49.762)
Yes, yes. what we realized, people who work, may not even need much recognition, being able to grow professionally and financially. What I mentioned is one of the key components, keeping teams intact and being able to grow. So if we maintain that, like you said, aside from being able to personally coach them, because on many occasions I can, or whatever the direct management will be,

been able to personally coach them into areas, we are open source, meaning we will provide any type of education, tools, if it's not already in our basic trainings, which is growing with every quarter. There are new things that have been added to the basic training. If it's not there, then we'll provide resources. We'll provide financing to be able for them to go. If there are any certain courses outside of what we provide from other experts, because again,

There are people who know things better than we do. We know that. So if there are any areas that others have courses that teach, it's different, we'll fulfill that. We'll pay whatever it needed for them to learn more and hone their skills better. So yeah, we do our own training, but we're also open to give them any training that they think is going to help them to be better at what they are.

Kendra Johnson (27:12.459)
Amazing. That's two very smart principles, right?

Know that there are people that you're good at things and there are people who are good at other things and outsource those other things. So you can focus on developing the skills internally by coaching on what you're good at and also keep people engaged, keep them interested, keep them learning. think, you know, self-improvement and from the sounds of your journey, self-improvement is something that you value and that has really helped you to get to where you are today. And

you when we stop learning, kind of, we just kind of stop moving. So constantly learning is key. One more question for you. And, you know, this one, you alluded to it a little bit at the beginning when you were talking about your journey, but we all have, you know, kind of

opportunities and people who have coached us and mentored us and influenced us throughout our careers. So for you, whether that's personal or professionally, personally or professionally or both, do you have specific people who have impacted you and how have they impacted you on your journey?

Ruben A. (28:20.302)
It's an interesting question because, again, not having any deep background of understanding entrepreneurism, if there's such word, and how to get better at it. If you have that passion doing it, you just kind of spearhead go and start to learn whatever the books you read and kind of try to find yourself in. One of the interesting things I found, and I had almost a journey.

specifically looking for that mentor, especially when you get to certain areas of life, business, you know, and well, I started realizing later on that there were mentors, but I didn't really realize that they were at the time. And it just came later on to me like, hey, you know what? The experience with this person actually taught me to be this way and the other way. Of course, there are key kind of people who I can recall.

Kendra Johnson (29:04.789)
testing.

Ruben A. (29:17.216)
that implemented certain, let's say, features or values to me that were pivotal to, you know, for my journey. But I think that's what it's all, again, speak to for people who did not really have those experiences like I did. If you do not really have that mentor or felt, you don't really have to worry because, like in my case, it was something I realized, this person did apparently mentor and coach me.

without even telling me that he's my mentor or a coach or me finding him as a mentor or a coach. So that's actually was my experience with that.

Kendra Johnson (29:57.087)
Yeah, fantastic. they do kind of pop up. when you can find organic mentorship in that way, it's almost even more impactful. I find that, I mean, years ago, I worked in an organization and they tried to create a mentorship program. Great intention, but they stuck people together that didn't quite have the...

I don't know what they paired us based on. And so there wasn't totally the connection, the resonance, the understanding of what we were doing together in these mentorship conversations. And well, I ended up having a mentor that.

was great and he was wonderful. It didn't help me with the specific things that I needed and he didn't understand what he was supposed to do for me either. So when you can find those people and recognize them and yeah you don't have to call it out specifically that you you're my mentor how cool is that but just recognizing the impact and the influence they have on you that can be quite powerful as as you evolve and grow right.

Ruben A. (30:59.564)
Yes, absolutely. And I did have experiences just like you described where I tried to, well, there was a specific program that I was part of and they were assigned people and there was not much of a connection. There was not much of a learning. And again, great people, amazing to talk to, but it was not something that added much of a value, at least from the perspective that I was expecting. So, Ronnie, don't worry. I think you have probably more mentors.

and your teachings that you think you are. And there are a lot of great programs right now that give you that kind of an opportunity. Again, how true or how fulfilling there will be for your journey, it's a question for you to find out. But there's certainly way easier to find the mentors in specific type of business than before.

Kendra Johnson (31:50.633)
Yes, yes, definitely. People are searching for that, right? We have so much collective knowledge, so why not share that? with knowledge comes obviously communication and making sure we're communicating that effectively. So when you're communicating with your team,

First of all, how important is communication for your team? We've talked about performance reviews, we've talked about obviously quality and ensuring that we have consistency across the board. But talk to me a little bit about the communication within your team, what are the methods that you use, how do you ensure you keep that communication flowing, and really what does that look like for an organization in your industry?

Ruben A. (32:31.694)
Yeah, great question. what, some of the technology become so essential and part of it that it's kind of an unbelievable now. But for example, one of them, the Slack has become our main go to office communication. And first of all, communication is the key.

You know, we all always had an air-coat open door policy because we don't really have a main office. you know, being able to, regardless the ranking, being able to speak up, being able to communicate openly, freely share ideas, good, doesn't matter. It's been an important subject for us. we've had times when I felt that some of them may have not necessarily feeling that way.

We worked on that because that's one of our values. So the communication is very important part. So that's kind of a high-level communication. In any day-to-day type of communication, the software, as I mentioned, Slack or other management tools, we went through multiple of them. Right now we use, believe, ClickUp has become our virtual office of maintaining things and being able to do things in a much more way than it was before.

So yeah, we have a very open communication policies and the current technologies just allow us to be very good at that.

Kendra Johnson (34:02.411)
And it sounds like you've got a good mix of synchronous communication and also asynchronous. So if you're in different time zones, folks still know where to access resources, where to find procedures, right? Yeah.

Ruben A. (34:13.312)
Absolutely, yes, yes, yes. The ClickUp has been instrumental for that because it became kind of our go-to source for, again, the easiest description I'll have is the virtual office because everything is right there, including our SOP systems, whatever you can kind of desire in terms of an organization, including the organization. One of the onboarding processes will be, one of our onboarding package that anyone receives here, it's this.

list of things for them to check it out, including our company values, we stand for, what we do, our organization chart, know, SOPs or trainings, all of that. It's kind of there and that's been one. And yeah, having the slack around has been that place where teams can work collaboratively to the level that it was unimaginable. And, you know, it's been very essential to our success and to what we do.

And including not only our internal communication, but also Slack has been used very well with external communication with our partners. Bring them in, assign them to people that they work with. It's a boost of confidence with anyone we work with because they feel that very right away connection, on demand connection, let's put it that way, that we have, which is super cool. yeah, that's been part of our...

management procedures for a while now.

Kendra Johnson (35:44.135)
And the level of transparency too is I think is really helpful not just for new hires but for for everybody across the board. They know where they stand. If you have your org chart that's visible there they can access your SOPs. Everything is is out in the open so to speak right. But available to them so they don't have to come ask you for it but they know exactly where they stand what that looks like and also who to go to for what I would imagine. Right.

Ruben A. (36:00.994)
Yeah, exactly.

Ruben A. (36:12.237)
Yeah.

Kendra Johnson (36:13.835)
Okay, amazing. Ruben, my last question for you, and this is one that I love to ask, but for yourself as a leader and in your advice to other leaders, what do you think is the most important soft skill that you believe every leader should possess and why?

Ruben A. (36:33.198)
Most important soft skill for me, it has always been the strategic vision. You can get into the challenges of everything, of technical aspects, but having that strategic vision is what will keep you going because for every other technical

challenge, you can find the right person. Even if you are right now doing that, it's okay. If you just get stuck on that, it's going to limit your capabilities of what you can do. So have that strategic vision and change them. you know, they are, I don't want to go too deep into the causes of books teaching you how to do it. But to me, it was that I know where I want to be and, you know,

and just going through that and then switching up and then building around it and then going up. That what's worked for me, that what still works for me is one of the most important soft skill. And I would suggest as a founders, I think it's extremely important to have that, not to lose it. And regardless what happens, because a lot of things will happen that you'll feel just keep the mind open and being able to push it through.

Kendra Johnson (37:55.179)
Amazing, amazing. That's perfect advice. I think that our listeners will take a lot out, a lot from our conversation today. You know, you've mentioned a ton of other soft skills that you've developed that are important to the success of your organization. And then when you pair that with strategic vision, holding it all together and pushing through some of the ebbs and flows, I think that's a perfect cherry on top. So Ruben, I want to thank you so much for taking the time, for sharing your experience and your expertise.

really excited to share this information with everybody. And I guess, sorry, I do have one more question for you, which is, where can people find you and where can they get in touch with you?

Ruben A. (38:35.406)
Yes, so I'm very active on LinkedIn, Ruben, Ellie Kenyon, you've searched it up, you've shoot me a message there DM or on a website, it's PAS Agency. If you can forget, it's professional Amazon services and abbreviation, pasagency.com and fill out the contact form.

Kendra Johnson (38:54.923)
Beautiful, fantastic. Well, Ruben, thank you again. And I know this won't be the last time we chat. My pleasure.

Ruben A. (39:01.046)
Absolutely, thank you for having me.