IAM553- CEO Connects Businesses With Pre-Vetted Freelancers

Nathan Hirsch is an entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. He is the co-founder and CEO of FreeeUp.com, a marketplace that connects businesses with pre-vetted freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, and much more. He has sold over $30 million online regularly appears on leading business podcasts, such as Entrepreneur on Fire, and speaks at live events about online hiring tactics. Nathan Hirsch also founded Ecombalance.com a monthly bookkeeping service for E-commerce Sellers/agencies and OutsourceSchool.com where he teaches his hiring processes

• CEO Hack: Reaching out to three entrepreneurs every morning
• CEO Nugget: If you're not failing or being rejected you're pushing hard enough
• CEO Defined: Growing a business and building a company culture

Website: https://freeeup.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freeeupmarketplace
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/realnatehirsch
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhirsch/
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/outsourcingmasters/
My calendar: https://calendly.com/freeeup-nathan

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today Nathan Hirsch of Freee Up Nathan, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Nathan Hirsch 0:38

Great to be here man. excited, excited. Happy holidays.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Yeah, happy holidays to you too, and super excited to drill down a little bit deeper and hear about all the awesome things you're doing. He has definitely been on our show before. And what I wanted to do was just reintroduce you to Nathan so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Nathan Hirsch is an entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. He's the co-founder and CEO of Freeeup.com and founder of Outsource School.

Freeeup is a marketplace that connects businesses with pre-vetted freelancers, and in commerce, digital marketing, and much more. And also our school is a school that actually teaches people how to leverage and use VAs and virtual assistants in order to be your business. He has sold over $30 million $30 million online and regularly appears on leading business podcasts such as Entrepreneur on Fire and speaks at live events about online hiring tactics. Nathan, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Nathan Hirsch 1:30

I am ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:31

Awesome. Let's do it. So I want to drill in a little bit deeper here a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to get started with the business.

Nathan Hirsch 1:38

Yeah, so I was a broke college kid before my parents were teachers. And I always kind of grew up with a mentality that I would go to school, get a real job work for 33 years and retire. And my parents always made me get the summer jobs, which I hated. But I was working 40 hours a week, I learned a lot about sales and marketing and business and customer service.

And I kind of got a glimpse into what life was like after college. So when I got to college, I was like, I want no part of that I don't want to get a real job. Let's start hustling and see if I can start my own business. So through a lot of trial and error, I sold people's textbooks and eventually got a cease and desist letter from my college telling me to knock it off because I was stealing too much of their business. Even from textbooks, too. I had sold some books on Amazon. So I tried to sell different products on Amazon.

And I really just failed over and over and over at selling sporting equipment and outdoor products and all this different stuff. But the only thing I got to sell were these books. And it wasn't until I branched out of my comfort zone and found the baby product industry that my business took off. So I got an Amazon at a great time. This was 2008 No one else was doing it. There were no courses or gurus, I found a great niche and baby products.

And this business took off. I eventually had to start hiring people I hired college kids who were not very reliable and wasted a lot of my time and money and no one older wanted to work for me. So I eventually got into the virtual assistants, space hiring BAs in the Philippines and all over to handle different operations, they were more affordable and more reliable, and I could keep them long term, really learn that entire process of hiring from the ground up. I mean, I was 20-21-22 I knew nothing about hiring, I probably didn't even know where the Philippines was on a map.

And I really learned through a lot of trial and error, a lot of mistakes, a lot of turnover. And I used all the other platforms out there the works and the fibers and I always wanted a better faster way. Finally, I built my own platform four years ago FreeeUp. The idea of free up is we get 1000s of applicants every week that then the top 1% Get in make them available to people quickly whenever they need them on the back end 24/7 support in case people have even the smallest issue and a no turnover guarantee if people quit for any reason.

We cover replacement costs and get them a new person right away. And people love that concept. We partnered with lots of great people and influencers in the commerce and marketing community. We actually grew the business using virtual assistants we hired VAs, from our own platform, we had no office entirely remote, we had no US employees, and all the customer service, the billing, the recruitment, and the social media, were all done by VAs and freelancers.

And we scaled that business from a $5,000 investment to doing over $12 million a year. And we actually just sold that business a month ago to a great group over at the Hoth who is actually one of FreeeUp's clients. They're an SEO backlink company. The owners are awesome. We did a lot of due diligence on them. One of the coolest parts of the deal was was we were able to give hundreds of 1000s of dollars of the deal to our internal team in the Philippines.

So thank them for helping us grow such an awesome business. So I'm gonna miss the internal team. That's by far the worst part of selling free up but they're in good hands. The Hoth is going to take great care of all the clients and partners, the internal team, they're gonna grow free up and expand and make it better in ways that Conor and my business partner and I couldn't and now I'm here today, launching outsource school if you go to outsource school.com You can get on our waitlist.

They're really a course on how we use virtual assistants, how we interview them, how we onboard them, how we train them, how we schedule them and manage them and motivate them. Because that was a big part of why we're able to sell freeeup is having such an awesome internal team. And it didn't happen by accident.

It happened because we learned so much from our Amazon business that when we started freeing up, we could hit the ground running and we knew what we were doing. So that's the short long version of how I went from a broke college kid interning at Firestone to selling textbooks to selling baby products to starting freeeup to selling freeeup to starting outsource school.

Gresham Harkless 5:31

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that. And then the biggest part I love about is I think a lot of times we forget, or we miss, we see the finish line, but never we never see the progression of everything and how you kind of learn from each step that you've taken each business that you've run and how it's progressively helped you to be a better entrepreneur and business owner.

So I know you've touched on a little bit but I want to drill down Can I hear a little bit more about the outdoor schools tell us what we can expect and and just all the things that kind of make it I guess what the what's the secret sauce for that? And what makes it unique?

Nathan Hirsch 5:57

Yeah, so I've kind of always had the mentality that you can go to FreeeUp and get great VAs and great freelancers, I highly recommend them even though I'm not part of it anymore. They're awesome. They take good care of you. But if you don't know what to do with the VA, after the fact that only going to do so much good. And I mean, I've wasted hundreds of $1,000 on turnover, I've been frustrated I've made these mistakes. I'm not training people the wrong way not motivating people not giving people the right bonuses, whatever it is.

So I wanted to break it down into structures. How what do I how do I actually interview virtual assistants? So part of the course you're gonna watch me and my business partner Connor interview different VAs, from FreeeUp people for different jobs? And what are the questions we ask, but also, what are we looking for? What red flags do we see?

What are some of the potential superstars that we see in someone from that interview stuff that we only know because we've been doing it for so long and interviewed who knows how many virtual assistants, the average person probably doesn't know that.

So from interviewing to onboarding, and I like to separate onboarding and training where onboarding is giving them background on your company, what's acceptable, it's not acceptable to culture, the team, how you communicate, really giving them the basics of what to do and what not to do, which for me is I they need to know that before I start investing my time into training them on the actual processes, because if I get them good at the processes, but everyone on the team hates them, and they can't follow the other stuff.

That doesn't do me much good. So onboarding, how to train how to Grimmy great SOPs, how to make those better over time, and then also how to manage them. Because once you've invested all this time, your money your energy into someone, you don't want them to go work for another company, you want them to stick around, you want them to be motivated, you want them, to care about your business, I mean, with free up our 14 leaders, Maurice cheeks Jane laid in, they were all about free up, they love free up they put their heart and their soul into free up and they're not going anywhere they want to see free up grow and reach its full potential.

So that's what we want to do is help people create that Rockstar team who's not just in it for the paycheck, they actually believe in your company Believe in your business, that's going to be there for the long term, you can continue to make better and better investments. Eventually, when you grow a team, you don't want to just be one person up here managing 25 Different VAs, you want team leaders and assistant team leaders and structures and communication channels.

So we want to walk you through whether you don't even know what a VA is, which will be the first module if you're building a large team, and you need to make it more scalable, which will be towards the end. And we want to cover that from start to finish.

Gresham Harkless 8:26

Yeah, that's definitely awesome. And I think I always say, you know, begin with the end in mind. And I think if you're able to tap into I mean, obviously you can go through the trial by fire into every try to do everything yourself and lose lots of years, there's lots of experience when you have that kind of somewhat of an easy button or cheat code, I usually like to say where you can take a course and learn and take in so much information from all the experience and things that you guys have done well, and things that you wish you would have done better. And you're able to kind of learn from that.

Nathan Hirsch 8:51

Exactly. And I mean, listen, people might disagree with me, there might be different VA ways to hire VAs that I don't know about. I can only speak for what's worked for me and my Amazon business and freeeUp. And that's what I'm going to teach it in school.

Gresham Harkless 9:04

Yeah, that'll definitely be awesome. So I definitely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be something that's what you were mentioning, in the school. What's something that you feel is an app book or habit that you have that makes you more effective and efficient?

Nathan Hirsch 9:20

Yeah, so let's kind of move away from VA, we talked about that. One of the things that I like to do that I actually took a break from in the past week, but I'll be picking it up in the new year is every morning, I like to reach out to three new entrepreneurs. I'm not trying to sell them, I'm not trying to pitch them. I just want to get on a networking call and see if I can help them in any way.

If I can. Great if there's a way for us to work together, and collaborate, I'm all about it. If not, it's always good. Just meeting other people in the space and going in with that mentality knowing that you're gonna get rejected. It's not that big of a deal. But you'll build such an amazing network. I mean, with the Amazon business. I got in at a weird time like there were no courses or gurus no one really knew what Amazon was.

So for me and obviously a young Entrepreneur too, I wanted to keep it very secret, right? I didn't want to connect with other entrepreneurs, I didn't want them to know what I was doing. I didn't want them to steal my business group. Now I know that was really silly. And I could have made a lot of great connections back then and probably had more potential on Amazon. But what I do with FreeeUp is from day one, I would reach out to three new entrepreneurs every day.

Now, someday, no one would respond someday, one or two or three or other people would respond from previous days. And I would set up networking calls. And over the years, years and months went by, I built great relationships, great partnerships, and I've just friendships, and you never know how people are going to not only help you but just impact you going forward.

So for me, if you're not networking with other entrepreneurs, if you don't have a schedule, and a daily reminder, do that, start doing it, it's been one of the biggest trips and tricks of just scaling a business in general. And the more entrepreneurs you know, the bigger the network, the less you have to spend on ads, and marketing and all that other stuff as well.

Gresham Harkless 10:55

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And you never know, you know, who people know. And that starts to create that community, the community, sometimes we can't even see because you've just connected on just a genuine basis just to connect to see if you can help see if there's some type of synergy. And when you're doing that on a regular basis, it starts to create that snowball effect it sounds like.

Nathan Hirsch 11:12

Exactly, completely agree.

Gresham Harkless 11:14
Awesome. I definitely appreciate that. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to that time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Nathan Hirsch 11:25

You just got to get over rejection, gotta get over failure. We talked about networking, but at some point, you're gonna have to do sales, you're gonna have to pitch partnerships and joint ventures are going to try to go after your dream client list, and you're gonna get rejected, it's going to happen. But for me, it's important to be in that right mentality where people are busy people were doing other things. How many times do you get pitched that you don't know part of it?

So stay respectful, just because someone doesn't respond to you, or someone says no, doesn't mean you get aggressive or angry. I had an influencer, who four years later, said that I reached out to him like 48 times. And he said he wasn't mad at me. Because every time I reached out, I wasn't angry. I wasn't aggressive. I wasn't pushy, it was just me being like, Hey, man, like I know, we tried to connect in the past would love to love an opportunity here.

So I think we can work together very genuine, very nice and calm and not pushy. And I've had podcasts that took me two years of pitching before they let me on. So don't give up, and get into a mindset that if you're not failing, you're probably not pushing yourself far enough, you're probably not trying to go after those higher price clients or partnerships, or whatever it is. And when you do get rejected, learn from it, change your approach, don't be as aggressive change your wording, change your structure, send a video, whatever it is to tweak it and make it better over time.

Gresham Harkless 12:40

Yeah, that makes so much sense. A lot of times when we get that rejection or that kind of like that wall against us, a lot of times, it doesn't mean that you quit and you you know, you get into a ball and don't do anything, a lot of times, it just means you have to change up your approach and figure out how to get around that wall, how to go through that wall or over that wall.

But you have to do it in a different way. So I definitely appreciate that. And that is something that we all should learn as entrepreneurs and business owners. So now I wanted to ask you what I call my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So Nathan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Nathan Hirsch 13:13

To me, it's all about leading, I mean, you have to get your motivation, your ideas, your vision for the business into other people's heads, so that they drive the train, and they build it and they use their skills that you probably don't have to build that business. And to me, that's what a CEO is. Now, there are business owners out there, and there are pretty good business owners out there.

But they're, if they don't drive the business, the business doesn't grow. And that's not what you want. That's not sustainable, in the long term, you'll get burnt out, and who knows what will happen in your interest and your personal life. So you need to get in the mentality that you have to be able to motivate and systemize and get other people to grow your business. And if you're doing that, then that's when you're in that CEO range.

Gresham Harkless 13:53

Yeah, absolutely. And especially like your you talked about at the beginning of having that team and that vision of all these people that are able to work and be leaders within themselves as well too, as in addition to the quote-unquote CEO, it creates that company culture, which is kind of talked about that you've been able to build a FreeeUp.

Nathan Hirsch 14:08

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 14:08

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Nathan, truly appreciate all the awesome things you're doing and appreciate your time even more. And what I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get ahold of view. Sign up for the school and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Nathan Hirsch 14:24

Yeah, so I'm answering all your virtual assistant questions. If you go to my Facebook, you'll find videos if you have questions, I want to answer them. I want to make sure they're included in Outdoor School. You can follow me on social media Nate Hirsch, Twitter, and Instagram, finding Nathan Hirsch on Facebook or LinkedIn definitely reach out definitely connect with me. If you go to OutsourceSchool.com You can join our newsletter and join our waitlist, we'll keep you posted on on when that goes live early in 2020.

And you'll also get a lot of great just VA tips. I mean, hiring is one thing all entrepreneurs have in common unless you want to be a sole entrepreneur for the rest of your life. You're gonna have to hire people and it's one of those things they don't teach you in school, you're gonna either have to learn it from Outsource School or from someone else's teaching it or you have to figure it out through a lot of trial and error, and it's not something I recommend using. So definitely check out Outsource School if I can help you in any way just reach out.

Gresham Harkless 15:13

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely appreciate that a lot of times we have things that we want to work on. And we reason that we started our business and a lot of times it's not the hiring and all those aspects of why not get that cheat code that easy, that easy button so to speak so that you can learn how best to do that in a more efficient way. So truly appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you But Nathan truly appreciates you and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 15:37

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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