Episode 012 – Nathan Hirsch

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Richard Matthews

Hello and welcome back to The HERO Show. My name is Richard Matthews. I am here today with Nathan. Are you there, Nathan? Can you hear us?

 

Nathan Hirsch

I am here. Can you hear me?

 

Richard Matthews

I can I got you loud and clear. Awesome. Glad to have you here. Do a quick intro here for you. I got a Nathan Hirsch is a serial entrepreneur. Expert in remote hiring an e-commerce, who can sell online, for the last seven years and sold a little over $20 million worth of products through your e-commerce business, which is fascinating. Can’t wait to hear a little more about that. And you’re now the CEO and co-founder of free up calm hands on hiring marketplace connecting hundreds of online business owners with reliable pre-vetted remote workers–which, as someone who hires remote workers–pre-vetted is huge! So look forward to hearing a little more about that. And you’re just redefining how businesses are able to hire remote freelancers online. So let’s start off with basically what you’re known for today, Nathan. what is it that people–when they hear the name, “Nathan Hirsch”, what do they think about? What are you known for?

 

Nathan Hirsch

I think people know me as the remote hiring guy. The expert when it comes to hiring people remotely, whether it’s virtual assistants, freelancers, remote agencies. I think back in the day, people knew me as kind of a drop shipping expert. Back in the day, when it was the wild wild west of e-commerce, I got in at an early time. But times have changed. Now, I think I’m pretty well known in the space for the hiring side.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. So I noticed you have a little bobblehead there too on your side is that of you?

 

Nathan Hirsch

It is. When I took a trip to the Philippines, I’ve only been once, and when I went there that was the present they gave me. So I keep it close.

 

Richard Matthews

So you’re like an actual superhero. Once you’ve been made into a bobblehead, that’s when you know you’ve made it.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Oh my god, I do not consider myself a superhero, for the record. But I’ll go along with it for the sake of this show.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about your origin story then, right? We talked on the show every hero has an origin story where you started to realize that you were different–that maybe you had superpowers. Maybe you can use them to help other people. Right, you started to develop and discover the value that you can really bring to the world. Where did that start for you?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah. So when I was little, my parents are both teachers and my dad taught in the town next to me called Longmeadow. I lived in East Longmeadow. I went to school in Longmeadow. I was able to go to that school because he taught there. And the thing about that school is every kid–their parents were doctors, lawyers, dentists, big business owners, and I wasn’t poor by any means. But I was middle class. My parents are both teachers. And my parents were big fans of saving money, which was great now that they’re retired, I didn’t really understand that when I was a kid and all my friends had everything you could ever imagine. And I had the middle-class lifestyle. So it was never more evident than during the summers once I turned 15, 16, 17.

 

My parents made me get 40-hour week jobs. And I was inside working all day while all my friends were outside enjoying the summer. So while I was working these jobs, I learned a ton about customer service and marketing and problem-solving and managing people. But I also learned that I was different. I did not want to work for other people. I hated it. And I kind of looked at it as a glimpse into the real world after college of what it was going to be like. So when I got to college, I started hustling. I started trying to figure out how I can avoid going to the real world. And I started buying and selling people’s textbooks, which eventually led me to amazon.com and I started experimenting with products that I was familiar with: outdoor equipment, sporting material, video games, etc… And I just failed over and over and over. It wasn’t until I branched out of my comfort zone and found the baby product industry that my business really took off. So you can imagine me as a 20-year old single college guy selling millions of dollars of baby products on Amazon.

 

Richard Matthews

That’s awesome.

 

Nathan Hirsch

And I learned so much from my internships from my summer jobs that my customer service was spot on, I could problem solve, I can manage people. And I guess before I was managing people, I met with an accountant. And he said, When are you going to hire your first person? And I kind of looked at him like, “Why would I do that?” They’re going to steal my ideas, they’re going to not do a good job as me it’s money out of my pocket. Pretty endless excuses. And he just laughed in my face and said, “You’re going to learn this lesson on your own.” So sure enough, my first busy season comes around and I just got destroyed, I’m working 20 hours a day, my social life plummets, my grades go down. And I make it through to January because I wasn’t gonna let my business–my baby–die right then in there. I worked my butt off. And I thought man, I can never let that happen again. I need to start hiring people. So I post a job on Facebook. And this guy in my business law class reaches out and says, Hey, I don’t know what you do but I need a job. Hired him on the spot–barely talked to him. And he ended up being an incredible hire. He’s my business partner today. He was hard working and he learned fast. He was passionate. So there I am as a 21-year-old entrepreneur thinking, “Man, this hiring thing is easy. you post a job on Facebook, someone shows up, it makes your job easier. You make more money.” And I proceed to just make bad hire after bad hire after bad–

 

Richard Matthews

It wasn’t always that way. Right?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Exactly. And I quickly realized college kids–not very reliable–and I was only 21 it was really tough to hire older people that work for me. So I got thrown into the remote hiring world. The Upwork, Fiverr… I found some good people but it just took me forever to go through 50 applicants every time I had one job or one project or one position to fill. Finally, I said, “You know what, I can do this myself. I can build my own platform.” And that was really the beginning of FreeeUp, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later. But that’s how I went from a kid with parents who were teachers, to a broke college kid, to starting my Amazon business, to the idea of FreeeUp.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, that’s really cool. I started somewhere similar. I started in a middle-class family. And I remember I got my first job at 15, at a chocolate factory. I was learning how to you know peel and stick chocolates and whatnot, and all this stuff. And I knew really quickly that I was like, I am a terrible employee.

 

Terrible employee and I hated time and everything that my parents had to put into their work. And I’d already started my first business on the side, buying candy wholesale at the big box stores and selling them retail on campus. Yeah, so similar kind of thing where you like the middle-class lifestyle, you sort of you get a really good glimpse at what high performing employees do. And how much of their life It sucks away. And what the lack of freedom looks like.

 

Nathan Hirsch

There’s no creativity. I mean, I worked for two corporate internships. So there was no creativity there. And I’m sure that packaging chocolates is very similar. There’s very little room for you to bring outside information to change the status quo.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. So lucky for me, my dad was a scientist, so he got to do a lot of experimentation and things like that. So he passed a lot of that on to me. Which, not everyone in the middle-class employee lifestyle gets to do. So that was a benefit for me. Yeah.

 

Nathan Hirsch

My dad was a physics teacher.

 

Richard Matthews

Oh, yeah. So they do the same thing every year for, you know, the entire career.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Right. I mean, I yeah, it’s a whole other story, my parents or my dad’s all into science. And that could not be farther from what I wanted to do with my life.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. And I remember learning really early that I didn’t want to be defined by what I could or couldn’t afford. I didn’t want like, I don’t ever ask myself that question, “Can I afford this or not?” It’s always, “What do I need to do to make it so that I can have something like that in my life?” I mean, just build it. So it’s a very different outlook on life. But yeah. Love, I just love sort of how you transitioned from the middle class to starting your business, to realizing the big problem you’re having in your business. And you built a service that solves the problem for you. And that turns into what it is that you guys do today with FreeeUp! So let’s transition a little bit your superpowers. What does it you do, build, or offer this world that helps solve problems for other people? The things you do to slay this world’s villains. And I wanted to talk specifically about, what is it that Free Up does? What’s the superpower? What makes you different in the marketplace? And how are you really helping entrepreneurs with this hiring scenario?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, so we tried to take everything we liked about the other platforms and change everything that we didn’t like. So we get thousands of applicants every week: virtual assistants, freelancers, agencies from all over the world. We vet them for skill, attitude, communication, top 1% get in. And then we make them available quickly to our clients whenever they need them. There’s no browsing. You put in a request and we fill it within a business day. You can meet with them, make sure you like them; if you like them, you can hire them, negotiate, I agree to a fixed price. If you don’t like them, you click pass and provide us feedback and we get you someone else based on that feedback. So that whole process is very efficient. And then on the back end, we have 24/7 support in case you have even the smallest issue. I’m very available as well, my calendar is right on the website. And my team is A++ players that are there to help. And then lastly, we have a no turnover guarantee. People on our platform rarely quit. Of course, it’s real life, It can happen. If it does, we cover replacement costs and get you a new person right away. So that’s really what we’re all about–our superpower. The pre-vetting. The speed. The customer service and protection.

 

Richard Matthews

So one of the things I know that is really, really important is the pre-vetting. I’m not sure how our listeners are in this space, but I know when I first got started hiring people… you know, post a job and you get applicants back, you get 15, 20, 30 people back. You’d have to pick a few of them and assign them a test task that you’d pay them for. And then try and get stuff back to see who’s communicating well, and all this other stuff. For me and my business, I know one of the biggest struggles I always had was always… I could either do this thing myself, or I could hire someone else to do it. And the amount of work that went into doing it myself versus hiring someone else to do it. Doing it myself one more often than not. Because I could get it done cheaper and faster if I just did it myself. Instead of trying to figure out how to hire someone. And you have to go through all the finding, posting the job, hiring them, vetting them, all that stuff. Just to get someone to the point where you’re even ready to hand off an assignment. So I’m curious, tell me a little bit about how you’re pre-vetting works and what that means in terms of what you’re actually delivering as–I know, it’s workers–but like your end result to your customers.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah. So, I really took the hiring or the vetting process from my hiring process back from my Amazon business. And I learned a long time ago that if you just hire people for skill, a lot of times it doesn’t work out. You hire someone with that five-star review on some platform, or they’ve 10 years of experience and then two months later blows up in your face. You’re like, “How did that happen? That person was so talented.” So we’ve really found that the perfect trifecta is the skill, the attitude, and the communication. So when we’re dealing with skill, we don’t need someone to be at 10 out of 10. They can be at 8 out of 10 or 3 out of 10 as long as they’re honest about what they can and cannot do and they’re priced accordingly. So we have skill tests we put them through. If they are graphic designers, we look at their portfolio. If they are Amazon experts we have Amazon questions. So this skill is different depending on what they’re claiming their skill is. The attitude and communication, are the same regardless. We do one on one interviews for attitude. We look for people who are passionate in what they do. Not who are just in it for the payment. Those that don’t get aggressive the second that something doesn’t go their way. Those that can take feedback and actually collaborate with people, instead of taking it personally. On the communication side, we have 15 pages of communication best practices that they have to memorize and get tested on before they get on our platform. And that’s all stuff that I wrote myself based on my own bad communication experiences. And once someone gets on–and we only let in one out of every hundred applicants onto our platform, we hold them accountable. If they’re taking on projects that can’t do, we have to chase them because they’re not communicating it. Their attitude, if they’ve any attitude issues, we are very quick to remove them from our platform. Part of it kind of just self regulates itself because they want to stay on our platform. They want to get more clients. It’s not worth getting through that whole process just to get removed. So that’s really our vetting processes. Skill, the attitude and communication.

 

Richard Matthews

So how does that translate into workers? Do you have workers that are hired out like, hourly employee or is it more project based? How does that work?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, so I mean, we have an hourly and fixed prices. The freelancers, they set their own rates on the platform just like any other marketplace. So when we introduce you to someone. we will give you a default hourly rate and you can negotiate it. You can agree to fixed price all that is between you and the freelancer once we introduce you. So it’s kind of a mixture of both. We have basic, mid and expert people on our platform. So the basic level of… you think more like a virtual assistant, $5 to $10 an hour, non-U.S. They have years of experience but they’re followers. They follow your system, your process, then we have the freelancers, mid-level that are $10 to $30 range…the doers, the graphic designers, the bookkeepers, the writers. You’re not teaching a graphic designer how to be a graphic designer. But they’re not consultants, they’re doers. And then we got the experts at $20 and up. The high-level freelancers, consultants, agencies that bring their own strategy, their own system, their own process, they can project manage and handle a high budget. So it just depends what you’re looking for. The basic level, mid-level, expert level. And depending on what it is, it could be hourly or fixed price.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome. That makes a lot of sense. So what I want to do is transition just a little bit. That’s the superpower for FreeeUp. What did you bring to the table that really made FreeeUp what it is? Like if you had a superpower yourself, Nathan?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, so my two things are our customer service and problem-solving. I think that is the core of anybody–business or any entrepreneur. I think we live in a day and age where the companies in the world have gotten so big that you can’t compete with your competitors on marketing or development but you can always compete with them on customer service. I think people miss the boat there. So for us, I had a ton of customer service training. It’s something I valued even before that…on my Amazon business…on FreeeUp. And we kind of take the mentality that 99% of the time, these freelancers do a great job. My calendar or my cell phone is right on the website along with my calendar. And I spend very little time dealing with issues. But these are real people–real businesses, stuff happens and when it does, we jump in quickly. And we make sure that both sides are taken care of and are happy at the end of the day. So I would say customer service is that one superpower. And then. I mean, whenever you run a startup or a business or even in life, stuff just comes up and my mentality on problem-solving is before you do anything, you gather all the information, and then you think of different options. And then you pick which option you could do, and you execute it using whatever resources you have. And then that step that everyone forgets, you put steps in place to make sure that same problem doesn’t happen again. And I feel like that’s a competitive advantage that I’ve had over the years that I can problem solve at a very high level quickly and efficiently using all the resources that I have. And that’s been able to have us overcome a lot of different obstacles that every entrepreneur has.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, and I love the problem solving one in particular because problem-solving is one of those things that people don’t realize how high level of a skill that is. It’s an innovative skill, right? It’s a skill that–you’re not following existing systems. You have to develop something. You have to look at a situation and actually bring creativity to it to solve problems. And so I think it’s an undervalued skill, people don’t quite realize how powerful it is when you can bring someone on your team that can look at a problem and develop solutions to solve that.

 

Nathan Hirsch

100%. And I think…just like I think hiring is one of those things that if you can’t hire well, eventually you’re not gonna be able to scale your business. I think problem-solving is right there. There’s no business that just goes like this straight up. I mean, there’s all…

 

Richard Matthews

It’s all over the place.

 

Nathan Hirsch

And you gotta be able to adjust and problem solve every single day.

 

Richard Matthews

Absolutely. So the flip side of a superpower is the fatal flaw. Superman has his kryptonite. I tell people I suffer from a couple of fatal flaws. But my favorite one I talk about is I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. Which was really hard for me and hiring people because I’m like, “I want it to be done my specific way.” And you know, I’d spend four hours getting one thing to go where I wanted it and realize it has nothing to do with my bottom line. So actually found that hiring people helps me overcome my own fatal flaw because then I’m not worried about little perfection things. I’m just worried about the end result getting done. So question is, what would you say your fatal flaw is? And what have you done in your business help overcome that?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah. I think you can tell just by talking to me for the 20 minutes we have. I talk pretty fast. I move pretty fast. And speed is everything to me. In my opinion, we live in a day where things are changing every single day. If you are that perfectionist and you can’t get stuff to the market quickly and understand that things can be 85% of what you want to get it out there. You’re going to struggle. And I think sometimes that can also be a kryptonite because I want to move in a million miles an hour at all times. And I can’t work with people that can’t move at my speed. And sometimes things get rushed; things get out there maybe before they should. So what I’ve done is I surround myself with people that are the exact opposite of me, my business partner is slow, he’s meticulous, he’s definitely more on the content–in the writing side. Where I’m much more of the face of sales, the customer service side and because of that we pull each other in more to that center; more to that medium. Where before I’m about to send something out, he’ll be like, “Whoa, wait, let’s double check this.”

 

Richard Matthews

…and actually, look at it.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, exactly. And when he’s saying, “Hey, this is going to take two months.” I’m like, “No, we need this in the next two weeks.” And because of that, it pushes him to get stuff out there faster, which I think is good for business.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I found it interesting and doing interviews like this and talking to entrepreneurs, how common having a running partner or people on your team that shore up your flaws; how important that is. Because the reality is, we can’t always just change the way we are. So you just have to bring people onto your team or bring people into your circle that can help lift up those areas, and you can get dramatically better results. By just bringing in someone who’s good at that thing, than trying to fix it yourself.

 

Nathan Hirsch

100%. I mean, I could spend the next six months learning how to be a Facebook ad expert, and I could probably figure it out. I’m a decently smart person. But that’s not the best use of my time, it’s way better for me to hire an expert to come in and handle at a high level right from the beginning. And I also think that some people are just too similar to their business partners. For me and Connor, we could not be more different people, we have the same core values and beliefs. And we believe in customer service and treating people well. And that money isn’t everything and give back and all that stuff. But in terms of skill set and personality, we could not be more different. I think that’s what makes a great partnership. It’s not two people that are exactly the same working together.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, I tell people all the time, my business partner is the genius I keep in my back pocket and I run everything I do before him–before we go anywhere with it. Just because I know after he looks at it, it will be better.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Right.

 

Richard Matthews

So that’s really cool. So another common thread with superheroes is having a common enemy. If you could go into your clients’ life today, and remove one thing from their life that would just make their life better. And you could just, you know, wave your magic wand and remove that completely all the way for all of your clients all the time. What would that be?

 

Nathan Hirsch

I think people get frustrated over hiring no matter what it is. Hiring is tough. No one has a 100% hiring record. I hear this all the time. I think I actually made a Facebook post about this today. I had a client who said, “I’m never hiring another virtual assistant again, I have this bad experience six months ago.” And my follow up was like, “I don’t know why you’re on the phone with me like that. That’s what I do.” But I heard him through and he explained what happened. His wife made him get on the phone with me. And I said, “Give me a chance.” And we turned that experience around. Not that we can do that every time but we’re pretty good at it. And I think a lot of people–because they’ve had a bad experience or two, they just give up and they say what you said before like, “I’ll just do it myself. It’s faster, it’ll get done better.” And, that mentality works in the short term. It might save you a little bit of money in the short term. But long term, it doesn’t make your business scalable. I feel like a lot of people don’t get that. It’s almost like, if you’re working with a manufacturer and that manufacture messes up a bunch of orders, are you just going to say, “Hey, I’m never going to work with another manufacturer again.”

 

You learn from those lessons, and you adjust it and try to do everything possible to improve that percentage going forward. And you have to do that in all aspects of your business and hiring is no different.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, I mean, it’s so true that you have to really get over that. And I’m not sure why hiring particularly has that thought, but I’ve run into that with a lot of people where they’re like, “I tried to hire someone that didn’t work. So I’m never going to do it again.” It’s like, could you imagine if you did that with all the other things in your business. It’s like, “I tried that Facebook post once and I didn’t get a million orders so I’m never going to post on Facebook again.” Like if you just take that same logic and apply it to other things it doesn’t fill out really well. But for whatever reason, hiring does have that mentality.

 

And so if you could just go out and make it so everyone you know, all of your clients just immediately thought to themselves, I’ve got a problem I need to hire out to solve it. That would be the way you would remove that mental block for hiring. Cool. So next you have your driving force. Spider-Man fights to save New York, Batman fights to save Gotham, Google fights to categorize all the world’s information. What do Nathan Hirsch and freeeup.com–what do you guys fight for? What’s your mission?

 

Nathan Hirsch

It’s funny, because if you’d asked me–I don’t know eight years ago–I would have told you making money. I kind of told you my story how I grew up in that middle class–always looking up and wanting more. That got old after a while when I was running my Amazon business and I was having success. Yeah, I was making a lot of money. But who was I really helping at the end of the day, my bank account my manufacturers? And when I started FreeeUp, it kind of opened up this whole other passion for business because I get to help business owners pursue their dreams on both sides, freelancers or business owners and I get to help them. We paid out $7 million for freelancers last year, provided for their family, their business and clients on their side, they have products or services that they’re passionate about; that they want the lifestyle. And I get to be a small part of helping them achieve that. So for me, that’s my “Why”. I want to grow FreeeUp. So it’s a win for everyone across the board. And people get to scale and pursue whatever they want to do with their business. And, for me, that’s what it’s all about.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, I love that. It’s really, it’s a win–win–win where everyone in the transaction is getting something of value from it. And that’s one of my favorite things that I’ve–over the last 10 years–that I’ve been hiring people. I had a couple of people that I’ve worked with for years now. And I know one of them. We’ve been chatting for a while and he talked to me the other day and he was like, “I just wanted to thank you for having me on. It’s just part-time work but on your team all the time. It’s like you’ve enabled me to keep my mom at home and help raise my sister and all these other things.” And it’s like that’s like a real legitimate impact I’m having in his life. And he’s been helping me build my business on the same token and like every person you hire has different stories like that. But there’s some real-life, some like real grit that goes into hiring and working with people.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Hundred percent, I agree, I mean, it’s super rewarding. I mentioned the client before that was like, I’ve never hired your VA again. And I check in and he’s got for VA is that are crushing it. And his business is going well. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. And yeah, it’s cool running into someone at a conference. I was just at a conference and I had a freelancer that was on my platform come up to me and I had a client that was like, “Hey, I know you. I see your picture. I use your service.” Like that’s cool to me.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. And I know. I just brought on my first full-time staff. Most of my staff for the last number of years have always been part-time or project-based. And I brought my first full-time person. And since doing that, I’ve liked doubled my business. So if you’re out there and you’re thinking I need to hire someone, absolutely do it. Especially if you’re you’ve got systems to follow. It’s really helpful. So, next question. This is more practical. It’s your Heroes’ tool belt. Maybe you have a big magical hammer like Thor or a bulletproof vest like your neighborhood police officer? Maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you put all your notes together, thoughts, and whatnot. Do you have any tools that you use on a daily basis that really help you accomplish what you accomplish with your business?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, I use Skype, I use Trello. I keep it super simple. I managed 50 people just using Skype and Skype group chats. I use Trello for projects, dividing up short term and long term. I use JIRA for developers, for whatever reason they like organizing stuff in that software. I use Google Docs and I use Gmail. And I’m a big fan of just practicing what I preach that you don’t need all these huge, expensive, clunky software to manage a lot of people if you do it right. I mean, you can. I’ve clients that do. But for me, I keep it simple. And we’re very efficient. I would put our organization against anyone.

 

Richard Matthews

That’s awesome. Yeah, I love Trello. In particular, I’ve been using Trello for my team for a number of years. And like, we have so many things that you can automate between Trello and Google Drive with Zapier. I’ve got stuff nowadays that we’ll go record a process document, it’ll drop into a Google Drive folder, and Zapier will pick that up and make a Trello card for it and assign it to someone and then you can follow it through its whole progress. And it’s like all hands off. And you can really keep track of projects and whatnot. And the damn thing is free. Like you don’t spend any money on Trello. And we can manage really complex processes with it. And I can imagine, you know, I’ve only got one or two people and you manage 50 people with Trello?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews

That’s amazing! How many Trello boards do you have?

 

Nathan Hirsch

So I have mine which is like my projects, but my systems are involved in them. And then my assistants have their own board.

 

Richard Matthews

Okay, so you got just a couple of boards you manage everything in?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews

Cool. Yeah. So I really like that. It’s really great to keep your business organized with Trello. Next question is your personal heroes. So, Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi-Wan, Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad. Who are some of your heroes? Were they real-life mentors, were they speakers or authors or were they peers who were just a few years ahead of you? And how import are they in what you’ve accomplished so far in your business?

 

Nathan Hirsch

So the one person I’ve always looked up to is my Aunt Christy. When I was this college kid, I went to school, I got a degree, my parents are both teachers. So education is important. And when I got to the end of college, I had a big decision to make it was do I keep doing this Amazon entrepreneur thing, the wild wild west? Or do I take the safe route? I had some job offers. And do I take them? I remember sitting down with her multiple times, just hearing her out–her life as an entrepreneur, the ups and downs. And she didn’t pressure me one way or the other. And my parents didn’t really either. But I could tell that they were leaning way more on the security and then taking that. For me, I was always just look up there, I learned so much just about being an entrepreneur and in pursuing your passion. And without that conversation and that support, I don’t think I’d be where I am today.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, that’s awesome that you had an entrepreneur to really look up to and bounce your ideas off of. I didn’t really have that. When I actually dropped out of college, about three and a half years, and I only have six months left to get a bachelor’s degree, I was like, “I’m actually done. I got what I wanted out of my college career, I’m going to go and do business now.” Which I remember, my dad and my mom at the time were like, “Are you crazy?! First, you went to this college that we don’t understand why you went to and you get 95% of the way through and then you quit.” Well, I got what I wanted out of school. And then I left when I was done and started the consulting practice that I run now. That was a long time ago. 2007 timeframe. And it’s been a really amazing journey. And I just, I love that you had someone to bounce that off of because when I did that I was just like, “Oh, god, what I’m going to do? Jump off the deep end and see how it goes.” So that’s really cool. The last question we have for the show is your guiding principles. So what are the top one or two principles or actions that you use regularly today that contribute to this access and influence that you enjoy, and maybe more specifically ones that you wish you had when you started?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, my core principles are somewhat straightforward. I don’t screw people over. It’s principle one. If I do something, it’s to benefit the people around me. To be fair, and to make sure people are taken care of. If something does go wrong, I take responsibility for it and I figure out whatever I need to do to fix it because we’re all human and we all make mistakes. Even things that are inside your control or outside your control. If it’s part of your business, it’s your responsibility to your community. So my mentality is to take responsibility and to fix it. I mentioned customer support and making sure that you’re there for people and that you never get too big to talk to your customers or your client base or, or even people that just follow you that watch your YouTube videos. You’re not above them, you’re not below them, you’re just people just like them. And to always find time for other people and to continue to give back and just treating people well across the board, whether your team, your clients, your partners. And lastly, just if you say you’re going to do something, you just do it no excuses. No, if’s, and’s, or but’s. Don’t commit to something unless you can 100% do it. And I preach that across my team and everything else.

 

Richard Matthews

So I want to comment on the second one you mentioned because I think a lot of people who are in your position where you’ve got to 10, 20, or 30 million. Many people on your team, they think that they are bigger than their customers or don’t have time for their customers, things like that. And I’m just curious, how does that actually play out in your business? You know, as you scale and you get more customers and you get those things? You know, I know, Tim Cook is famous for responding to customer letters and stuff like that. How does it actually work? In reality, when you get to have the size business that you have? That you know, can you actually take the time to be personally involved with customers and followers?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah, so great question. And I actually have a Facebook post–I don’t think I posted it up yet. But I had a client that called me out on that. They’re like “I don’t believe that you’re running a big business. How can you put your phone number on the website?” People have been telling me I’m crazy for that forever. But here’s the real truth behind it. First of all, I have a rockstar team that I spent a lot of time invested onboarding, training, getting them up to where they can handle 95% of the situations and the average client is respectful. They’re not calling me every day just bothering me for small stuff, they know when to go to me they know when to go to my team. And I also really believe in the FreeeUp concept. If we’re giving out bad freelancers, then yeah, my phone’s gonna blow up. But that kind of goes against everything that we believe in. And if my phone is blowing up and I send someone, a freelancer and they’re coming to me–over and over–that freelancer is not getting more clients from us. We’re cutting them off. So part of it really is to regulate yourself. If I ever had a client that was just calling me every Saturday night and just overdoing it, I would take a step back and reset those expectations. But that’s never really happened. And I almost related to my girlfriend, she got her teeth pulled out and the dentist gave out his card with the cell phone number. And I thought it was genius. It’s keeping you personally involved, “Hey, if you ever have an emergency, this is my number, feel free to call me at any time.” But the thing is, people don’t have those emergencies. He’s really good at what he does. And yes, if something does come up, he wants to be able to handle it. But 99.9% of the time they call the office, they talk to his assistants and that resolves almost everything. So that’s the mentality that I have. And if we go to a certain level, maybe I have to take my phone number off, maybe I should remove my calendar. But I’m kind of excited to see how far we can push this thing without having to do that.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, I really like that. And I like that you’ve built the systems in place that you can be available. You have your team handling so much of your stuff that you know, if you want to take time for one of your clients, you can. So you’ve built your business with that in mind, which I think is important. And I know a lot of businesses they try to have this level of separation between them and their clients or whatever. I’ve spoken to a few clients. They’re like, “I feel like I need to be farther away. So the bill appreciates my rates and more.” And I’m like, I don’t know if I agree with that.

 

Nathan Hirsch

So I don’t agree with that. But there’s a lot of people way smarter than me that have way bigger businesses that probably disagree with different things than I do.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah. Yeah, that’s where that goes. So last part of the show, we do this with every everyone who comes on I call it the hero challenge. And the real challenge is simple. And do you have someone in your network that you think has a great story that should be told? Who is it and why do you think they should come on the show?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Someone who has a great story that I think should be told. There’s this guy I really look up to in the space Seth Kniep, which I’m definitely butchering his last name. I’ve talked to him a few times. But he has an incredible story about how he went from homeless and have one dime to his name. His community is called Just One Dime and he has now built a large e-commerce business. He has a community where he gives back and helps other people build businesses. For me, I always think that’s really cool. I mean, I’ve never been in a position where I was down to my last dollar. My last dime. For someone to get to that point and then to work the way back up. That’s way cooler than anything I’ve ever done.

 

Richard Matthews

Yeah, that’s super awesome. I never always relate to the people who’ve had the rags to riches stories because I was never in rags. Middle-class family. But it’s super cool to see that people have that ability, especially today. We just have such a cool, like so much freedom available to us that if you really put your mind to it, you can do whatever you want. So what was his name again?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Seth Kniep.

 

Richard Matthews

Okay, cool. Awesome. So we’ll look him up and see if we can get him on the show later. The last thing is thanks for being on the show, Nathan. Where can people find you if they want to hire people and maybe learn a little bit of hiring people? And better question when should they start looking to hire someone in their business if you could give some feedback on if someone’s thinking, “Do I need to hire someone?” What would you tell him?

 

Nathan Hirsch

Yeah. So for years, I’ve dodged that question because I tried to not take the approach of like, “You need to hire someone right now!” That’s not really how I do things. But what I did was I took a step back and I thought how do I decide when it’s time to hire. I looked at how much money we made last month and I figured out how aggressive do I want to be. Do I want to invest 40 to 60% of our profits back in my business? Very aggressive. Or 10 to 30% and there’s no right or wrong answer. Everyone’s at a different point in their life and their business but figuring out what that number is and then figuring out how you’re going to invest that money…is it the basic level followers, mid-level doers, or the high-level experts? That’s the best answer I can give. “When that right time is.” If you can come up with that percentage and figure out what you can invest, and actually afford someone. To me, that’s the right time. In terms of how people can find me, the FreeeUp blog, the FreeeUp Youtube channel. We’re launching a podcast called Outsourcing and Scaling. I’m really excited about it and if you go to freeeup.com with three E’s. My calendar is right at the top. You can book a free meeting with me and you can mention this podcast for $25 credit to try us out.

 

Richard Matthews

Awesome! thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it, Nathan, and if you haven’t hired someone in your business yet, I can tell just from personal experience that hiring someone particularly when you get out of some of the project based stuff into like really having staff on your business it really helps you take everything you’re doing to the next level. So definitely check out Nathan and freeeup.com. I can’t stress enough how important the pre-vetting that his company does for VAs will make your life so much easier. If you get into hiring freelancers. Again, thank you, Nathan, for coming on. And we’ll let you know when we get it all published for everyone.

 

Nathan Hirsch

Sounds great. Have a good rest of the day.

 

Richard Matthews

You too.