Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. This is a really special treat today. We attract some really, really amazing people. In today’s show what I love about it is, you know the whole concept of how do you do this? A lot of you join us because you know you’re here to have an impact on the world, you have amazing gifts and abilities and messages to share, but a lot of folks get stymied, a lot of entrepreneurs in particular get stymied in the actual how do you do it. How do you really make a scalable, sustainable business? How do you make sure that you can touch the lives of millions as one person?
Well of course the secret is you can’t as one person, but then how do you even go about that, right? You’re not a giant corporation but you need to start taking steps in that direction. I’m very excited to have with us today one of the co-founders and the CEO FreeeUP. Nathan Hirsch has become a dear, dear friend of ours. I adore him for that, but I really, really, really have a strong appreciation and respect for him just because of how his presence and their business has really catalysed growth for us as individuals, as well as for our businesses.
Today we’re going to be talking about growing the entrepreneur, and I think at this point in time it’s a given, your business will not grow if you’re not willing to grow. What does that look like when we talk about tactics when it comes to the business? We’re going to get kind of down and dirty about that today with Nate and hear just his amazing story of how he sees the world and how he kind of put all this together. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Nathan Hirsch to the show. Welcome Nate.
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Awesome, well we are excited to share your wisdom with our audience. Before we do that we really just have to jump in and say what are your superpowers?
I’m a great problem solver.
My business super power is I’m a great problem solver. If someone throws four different problems at me, which happens everyday, I can prioritize them and come up with a plan and gather all the information and execute them at lightning speed. My non-business super power is I have an incredibly high pain tolerance. I think I’m going on eight surgeries, maybe more than that, and four or five broken bones. Even when I’m working out I will push myself way past the point of pain.
Now if we could just harness that, can we bottle it, sell it? Come on, that’s an Amazon right there. We could do that.
I know, I haven’t found a way to completely utilize that skillset yet.
Well get on it Nate. You sound like you have other things going on, right? Goodness, well I appreciate the fact that you delineated between your business and your personal super powers. It’s fascinating as I find the pain tolerance conversation, I want to really focus on the problem solving because I do think that that is your secret sauce. I’ve watched you do this. I’ve watched you do it for us. I’ve watched you do it for other people. The way that you’ve put together FreeeUp and all of it’s brilliance and everything else has been … First of all let me explain, so for all of you listening FreeeUp is in the remote hiring freelancer space kind of when you need assistance. It’s an alternative to outsourcing maybe to a company completely or hiring a full-time worker. That’s kind of how I describe it to people.
I love the name of FreeeUp because it really does free you up, that’s kind of the point. For us it kind of had the opposite effect because we got so addicted to the scalability that it was like, “Oh and then we can systemize this, and then this.” The more successful you are at it I think the more addicted you become to it. Talk just a little bit about the inception point. How did you and Connor come up with this idea of kind of diving into this business?
Well way back in the day when I was in high school I had these summer internships and I hated every second of them. My parents forced me to do them every summer while all my friends were playing outside and enjoying the nice weather. I learned so much from customer service to sales to problem solving to management, and really every business that I’ve started it comes from those original skillsets. I’ve never had a real job besides those two internships. When I got to college I had already been working that 40 hours a week and I knew that that’s not what I wanted to do when I graduated. I almost felt like I had this clock that was ticking, that if I didn’t figure out how to start a business before my four years of college was up, I was going to have to join the real world and that’s not at all what I wanted to do.
When I got to college I started hustling. I started trying to figure out how can I make money on the side? It started off how do I make extra beer money on the side, but it quickly advanced beyond that. I started off buying and selling people’s textbooks. I noticed the school bookstore was ripping me off and I thought I could pay people more and still make a healthy profit margin. I created this referral program, and before I knew it I had lines out the door of people trying to sell me their books to the point where I actually got a cease and desist letter from the college because I was taking up so much of their business.
I love it.
That was my first glimpse into being a real entrepreneur. Books led me to Amazon because this was 2008, 2009. Amazon was becoming more than a bookstore, and I started experimenting with sporting equipment, computers, video games, stuff that I was familiar with. I failed over and over and over. I couldn’t get anything to sell besides these books. I knew that I was graduating, I knew that books was not the answer long-term. I thought we’d be on tablets by now anyway. It wasn’t until I ventured out of my comfort zone and found these deals on baby products that I found an industry that I could actually sell very well.
I’m working 20 hours a day, my social life goes down the tube, my grades start to go down…
If you can imagine me as a 21 year old single college guy drop shipping baby products on Amazon that was me. I’m spending eight hours a day listening to these baby products on Amazon, getting weird looks, no one knows what I’m doing, people think I’m running a scam. There were no gurus, there were no courses. I was really figuring out Amazon by myself. This business really took off, it exceeded my wildest expectations. It got to the point where I had to start paying taxes. I was making a lot of money. I meet with an accountant and he goes, “Hey, so when are you going to hire your first person?” I kind of shrugged him off. I’m like, “Why would I do that? All the money’s going into my pocket. No one can do it as well as I can. I don’t want to spend the time to teach someone else to do it, blah, blah, blah.” Lots of excuses, and he kind of just laughed in my face. He said, “You’re going to figure this lesson out on your own kid.”
My first busy season comes around, the fourth quarter, and I just get destroyed by emails, orders, angry customers. I’m working 20 hours a day, my social life goes down the tube, my grades start to go down. Somehow I make it out of that six week busy season period and I become determined to never let that happen again. I start hiring people, and one of my first hires was fantastic. It was my business partner Connor. We got along, he was productive, and I think hiring is easy all of a sudden. I proceed to make bad hire after bad hire after bad hiring. Hiring college kids that weren’t motivated, that didn’t care, that wasted my time, my money, and I didn’t really have access to 30 year old marketing experts that wanted to work for me as a 20 year old entrepreneur.
I was really thrown into the remote hiring world by necessity. It’s the only way that I could get access to talent. When I started using the Upworks and the Fiverrs I quickly realized that all my time went from expansion, marketing, getting new manufacturers to interview, after interview, after interview, and I just wanted there to be a faster way. I remember one day where I did eight hours of interviews and I didn’t find one person that I liked. I threw a chair against the wall and I just said, “There has to be a better way.” When I couldn’t find it I built it myself and that’s really how the idea of FreeeUp started.
Oh my goodness I love it, great stories. What I really, really appreciate about you is the motivation, right? A lot of people would be like, “Okay, where’s the I wanted to have an impact on the world. Where’s the altruism?” It’s like no, you didn’t want to get a job. Obviously that’s oversimplifying it, but I don’t think that we talk about that enough. Sometimes it’s enough just to say that, “I don’t want to live that life.” Of course the flip side is, and we’ll get into it a little bit after the break, you are changing lives, you are having an impact. I love the fact that in it’s purest form you’re like, “No, this just wasn’t going to be my trajectory.” That was enough for you to take action. I think a lot of times we guilt ourselves into not taking action because we haven’t really attached it to that big overarching thing.
When Neva first started in to say she wanted to make a million dollars I’m like, “What, what, what? Don’t you want to help people?” She’s like, “Yes, and I really want to buy a pig and you told me I can’t have a pig unless I make a million dollars.” I thought we were safe with that one. I don’t think we’re going to be safe with that one. I had to really check myself and be like, “Wait, that is a totally legitimate motivator, that’s okay for it to be that way.” I love that it was kind of this necessity thing that happened, but mostly came from the fact that you’re like, “No, I don’t want that. Don’t tell me I have to do that.” That kind of rebellion, which is so perfect.
Anyway we do need to take a break, but before we do why don’t you tell people where they can go to find out more about you.
Yes, so 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. I’d love to talk to you about your business and how I can help. If you create a free account right in the site and mention this podcast you get a $50 credit just added to your account right away to try us out. Or go to facebook.com/FreeeUpMarketplace/.
Oh perfect, perfect. We’re going to come back right after the break and we’re really going to talk about how you can utilize what Nate’s talking about and the FreeeUp community to grow yourself and your business as we talk about growing the entrepreneur. Stay with us we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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