CFD 480 – It’s Easy To Find Good Help These Days With Freelancers

October 8th, 2018

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 and regularly appears on leading business podcasts around the world.

Podcast Highlights

  • Who is Nate Hirsch?

Nate’s parents were both teachers and he grew up with the mentality that he would go to college, get a job, work for 40 years and retire, but he always wanted more.

During his summer vacations, his parents made him work at least 40 hours every week. This gave him a ton of experience in sales and customer service, but it was also where he realized that he hated working for other people. For Nate, college was a ticking clock where he had to figure out a way to start a business before he got into a regular job and could never escape.

Nate’s parents definitely had reservations about him becoming a business owner. By the time he graduated, Nate had been running an Amazon business where he was making more money than the job he had lined up after school. When he made his decision, they saw the success he was having and supported him in his pursuit.

  • The Amazon Side Hustle

Nate is the kind of guy that when something is bugging him, he tries to take action and fix it. When he went to college, he realized that the school bookstore was ripping him off so he started his own textbook business. It got to the point where he had so many customers lining up to sell their books, the school sent a cease and desist letter because he was stealing too much of their business.

Nate knew books weren’t going to be a long-term solution so he started experimenting with other products. He failed several times before stumbling on baby products, which is where his business really started to take off. He got really skilled at finding good deals and tracking down manufacturers.

  • What kept you going?

There are two things that Nate learned from his experience with Amazon: he had to stop being afraid of failure and caring what other people thought. He had to block the negativity of other people out in order to succeed.

  • Amazon to Freelancers

Nate’s accountant was the first person to ask when he was going to hire his first employee. He initially thought that was a terrible idea until he went through his first busy Christmas season, where he almost went crazy. He made it through and posted his first job offer. This is when he hired a bunch of people who didn’t end up working out and realized there must be a better way.

Nate came to the realization that no 30-year-old expert wants to work for a 20-year-old entrepreneur. This is how he ended up looking to marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork, but even then Nate found the experience frustrating and time-consuming. He thought there had to be a better way, which is where the idea of Freeeup.com came from.

You can have five different people hire the same person, and each one is going to have a different experience.

No matter how much you prepare for a busy season, it’s always crazy.

  • Freeeup.com?

The whole concept behind Freeeup.com is free up your time, the third ‘e’ in the domain name stands for eCommerce.

With Freeeup, you create a free account and it essentially works like a Tinder for hiring. You tell them what you are looking for and they will introduce you to someone within one business day.

Freeeup.com covers all replacement costs in the scenario where a hire walks away halfway through the project.

There are over a hundred skill sets on the marketplace that you can tap into, all the way from data entry to the top marketing experts.

Any freelancers on the system are contractors so paying taxes is up to them.

  • When should you hire a freelancer?

There are two ways to go about hiring. Figure out everything you do on a day to day basis and then figuring how to get your time back. You create systems and processes and hire people to take them over. Alternatively, you can try to turn weaknesses into strengths by identifying what you’re bad at and hiring specialists who have that covered.

You need to hire when you are focused on the day to day operations and can’t focus on growth or when you find yourself spending a lot of your time doing things you’re bad at.

Customer service is one of the hardest areas to create SOPs for but they are one of the most critical. Your processes are always changing, so having a central document that everyone can access is how you make your business scalable.

You could work a hundred hours a week as an entrepreneur and still find things that you should have done sooner.

  • Nate’s Takeaway

Step 1: figure out what you are trying to hire for. Step 2: identify what your perfect hire looks like. Step 3: don’t just look for skill in the interview, look for passion, communication, and attitude. Step 4: set expectations up front. Step 5: make sure people know what you like and don’t like. When feedback is encouraged on both ends, you’re going to set yourself up for success long term.

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