Operations Manager - Ecommerce

Hi, I'm Wiets, the founder of TechToast Academy. We're 6 months old and sell an Arduino-compatible electronics kit for kids. It's a $199 hardware kit plus a 25-week build-along curriculum on our own learning portal, with lifetime free tech support from real engineering grads. We're doing around $200K/month, almost all fro ---------- ta ads, and we're on track to 10x in the next 6 months.

Here's what and why I'm hiring: I'm a technical, creative founder. I'm great at setting direction and I love the creative and product development side, but I'm not great at the people side, making sure that everyone's productive, setting deadlines, holding people to KPI's, and always knowing who is working on what. I don't like checking in on people constantly, and I don't always know how to get the best out of someone or how to motivate them properly. That gap is the single biggest thing slowing us down, and it's the job I'm hiring for.

What the team looks like at the ---------- nt:

1. 2 virtual assistants who run tech support and customer support over email (one day shift, one night shift. They're genuinely great, almost no backlog ever). They also do some Arduino circuit drawings for our instruction manuals.
2. 1 product developer working on our next kit (a line-following robot). I suspect he could move faster but I don't have the energy or the know-how to manage him on it. I tried making a timeline for him but I'm honestly a bit lost on how to check in with him and make sure he is as productive and motivated as he can be. I also want to give him the right structure so that he does not get lost and always knows what to do.
3. 1 editor for our meta ads.
4. A creative strategist coming on board. I'll stay close to this person myself, that's the part I enjoy and currently do myself. I'll still want him under your wing, to make sure he stays motivated and has good structure. This is the biggest lever in our 10x.

Our systems: At the ---------- nt everyone reports to me through ---------- . We use Shopify for the store backend. We have no project management tool and I track nothing, I just do video meetings every now and then and discuss what they're busy with now over chat during the week. I feel like this can be improved a lot.

What I want you to take ownership of:

1. Building the machine. Setting up a proper system (project management tool, SOPs, KPIs) so that anytime I log in I can see who's doing what, what's been done, what's next for each person, and what they achieved last week or last month or whatever. I want to know I'm getting my money's worth from everyone and we're moving in the right direction.
2. Keeping everyone productive and accountable without me chasing anyone. The team comes to you for deadlines, priorities and decisions. I'll tell you what I want; you turn it into something that lands well with the team. (I'm too much of a nice guy to create or enforce a KPI, I need you to be the structure.)
3. Managing the product development timeline so we can launch products better and faster. I give the general direction ("here's the product, here's what it should do"); you figure out how to make it happen with the people we have, or tell me who we need to hire.
4. Helping me hire and scale through the 10x. Soon I'll need a curriculum writer for the new product, someone to handle photography for the circuits, an SEO person to get us organic traffic on Google (right now we're 100% Meta and I want to diversify), and probably someone to run a more junior creative-ops role under you. You'd help find and onboard these people.
5. Taking the creative-shoot logistics off my plate. We have a small content team in South Africa shooting professional family/kids footage for our ads, and setting up each shoot (venue, cast, coordination) has been a huge headache for me. I want someone to manage that end to end.

You're probably a fit if:

1. You've run operations for a team through fast growth, not just kept a small team tidy or a large team compliant.
2. You've built SOPs, KPI tracking and accountability systems from scratch.
3. You can hold people accountable in a way that motivates them rather than annoys them. This is the part I care about most.
4. Ecommerce experience is a big plus.
5. You're comfortable hiring and managing other people as we scale.

How to apply:
I kinda want to hear what you can do for me before hearing what you have done for others. Instead of telling me about your past jobs, tell me about MY business. Based on everything I explained above (and feel free to look at techtoast.academy):

1. What's the first system you'd build in your first 30 days, and what would it actually look like? Be specific.
2. I think my product developer could be faster but I don't know how to manage or measure that. How would you handle it?
3. We're all on ---------- with zero tracking. What would you set up so I can log in and instantly see who's doing what, what's done, and what each person achieved last week?

One more thing: just write it out in normal text, no need for obviously-AI generated highly formatted responses.