Nathan Hirsch - The 90-Day Rule For Making The Perfect Hire

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What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Float Shark podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. What up?

Yay. We're back.

We are back.

This is going to be a fun one and long awaited, too. We've been talking to Nate since Nate Hirsch is on the show today. And, yeah, we've been talking to him for almost a year.

Yeah, feels like I was going to say at least a year, but maybe it's. Maybe it hasn't been as long. But we've been going back and forth and we've had him on the schedule and then there was that. We had to reschedule for whatever reason. Then we got him back on the schedule and then he had to reschedule, and then we were at podcast movement and he was at podcast movement and texting back and forth, trying to find a time to meet up. And we never actually got to meet up in person. So this is a long time coming. Finally getting to talk to him.

We did it and then he told us, actually, he's like, hey, actually, by the way, I just sold my company, so going to talk about some other stuff, like, oh, all right, that's cool. Congrats.

No, but I love this conversation. This whole conversation was around finding the right team members, how to go about finding the right team members, what sort of criteria you should have for the right team members, what things that you should be hiring for, how to hire if you don't feel like you're ready financially to hire, pretty much everything about getting good team members in place and how to go about it. And you know, what, what sort of things to be prepared for in this process.

Well, that's the thing is Nate. So he'll give his old backstory. He started in E Commerce and doing a whole bunch of stuff there, but he developed this website called Freeup, and that's the company he just sold, like, literally like 30 days ago, it sounds like. And so he's the CEO, co founder of that. And that essentially is a unique model to find and hire folks without having to sort through, like hundreds of applicants and all that stuff. They do all that work for you. So Matt and I are definitely going to give that a shot to hire various people. And Shannon, our ops manager, will be the head of that still, even though it'll be easier, it'll save her time, free up some of her time. But it's kind of cool because he's. Now, you can tell his passions lie in that, in running great companies. But Also hiring great people and then having a great culture and relationship around everyone. I mean, he ran that fricking business. He sold it for who knows what, but he. They were doing about, you know, 10 on track to do 12 million, completely run by VAs in the Philippines. How cool is that?

That is pretty damn impressive.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I love this one.

He.

We even touched a little bit about how the acquisition came to be. You know, how the.

They were user. Yeah, the bag.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks for closing the loop. I was trying to open. So we do talk about how he found the buyer of the company and how that went down. He couldn't talk numbers with us, but we did talk about how it came to be. So we talk a little bit about acquisition and exiting businesses, but the majority of this conversation is about finding the right team, building the right culture, building relationships with your team, getting your team on the same page with you.

It's good stuff. It's stuff that we see where he has this 90 day rule too, for himself to essentially locate what things he should outsource or hire for. Not going to open that loop, Matt, but that's something everyone can take away. It doesn't matter what you got. He also gives us the two roles that are probably the best. First roles to hire for as a business owner. Doesn't mean if you're a solopreneur, definitely this applies to you as well. And one of those roles I definitely want to look at free up as well and find. Because that's the thing if you're hiring someone from the Philippines, obviously they have folks from the US and all other countries as well. But the beautiful thing is, like, there is a lot of talent that you can hire right now, even if your budget's pretty slim or if you don't think you have the budget and you. Matt even brought up an exercise when we were chatting with Mike Michalowicz of a way to train your mind and your habits to like.

I hope that was from the Mike Michalowicz episode. I might have given him undue credit.

Maybe let's give him the credit. Fine. He's a cool guy. So. But like, if you don't feel like you're actually ready to hire for someone, that's a little exercise you can run through that Matt talked about. Yeah, definitely. Like, everyone should be able to hire someone from this to free up some time.

Yeah. And one thing Joe and I are doing in our business right now, and I actually kind of wanted to shout this out a little bit in the intro of this podcast is that we're actually about to embark on the process of developing a software. We've been talking about developing a software for several years now. We've never actually gotten too deep into the process. We've interviewed a lot of developers and never actually taken the action of hiring a developer in house to start developing this software for us. So we are actually actively looking for someone who would be interested in helping us develop a software that when we launch it will go out to our entire platform, all of our podcast listeners, mailing lists, affiliates, all that kind of stuff. We are going to launch this and ideally will be very, very big, very, very quickly. So that's something we're looking for. If you are a developer that might want to work with us, or if you know a developer that might want to work with us, shoot us a message to our support infovergreenprofits.com we'd love to at least open some communication with some potential developers. And also on this episode with Nathan here, we talk quite a bit about the process of hiring developers and what kind of things to look for and how to properly vet developers. So we did kind of have this moment of selfishness where essentially getting some free consulting about how to find a proper developer on this episode. But I do want to shout out that we are looking for a developer and if you are that person or might know that person, reach out. Let's just talk. I mean, I'm not saying that we're definitely going to bring somebody in from the show to be our developer, but we want to start opening lines of communication.

Even if it's just chats and getting your perspective. We love to chat with folks that are listening to this show and we don't chat with enough of you guys and gals. So we definitely get folks that respect respond to our emails. But hey, even if you just have some thoughts about, like some perspectives, if you're into that world or other stuff, shoot us an email like you said, info@evergreenprofits.com we love to hear from you. Yes, we'll send you some swag too.

Maybe we'll send you some swag.

Throw a little carrot there.

Dangle that carrot.

Dangle that carrot. All right, so as we do with everything, we gonna take the notes on this episode for you.

Yes, sir.

So we make sure that. And these notes are pretty dang cool. They're like, I would say, what, four pages roughly each time? Yeah, I mean, bulleted out, organized really well so you don't have to do it Yep. That's kind of nice, because I don't like to take a bunch of notes. And that's why we have great. The best note takers that are way better than any of us combined.

Yeah. I actually love reading back the notes of the podcast because I'll. You know, by the time these episodes are released, we typically recorded them four, six, sometimes even upwards of eight weeks ago from the time you're hearing it. And by that time when the episode comes out, a lot of times we kind of forgot some of the nuances of the episode. So we actually like to go back and review the notes from the episode and kind of re get some of the aha moments that we had from those episodes. And they're really valuable. I mean, they've got all the tactics, all the processes, any sort of resources, books, anything that we talked about on the show. It is all in these notes. It's not teasers. It's the real shit.

Getting the full thing.

You're getting the full shit. And so the way to get them. Two ways to get them. Two, you can either text the word.

Comp to 38470 on your telephone.

Yes, that's 38470, comp. 38470, comp.

Yeah, that was good.

See the harmonized one. Yeah. I went high, you went low. We didn't even plan that.

That's right.

38470.

No, you're off tone now.

Well, yeah, I was also off time, too.

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Or we got to practice our music a little bit more. It's been a while.

We both play guitar. We should write a jingle on the guitar.

I've been starting to play again because my calluses, I've realized, were all gone. That's a sad thing. And now it hurts to play a guitar. But we should. Yes.

We can be like the nationwide is on your side jingle that everybody gets stuck in their head. But we're the 38470 comp guys.

We are the 38470 comp guys. Yeah. So go get them notes at 38470, texting comp. And be quick, because they're only available. Available for a couple of weeks. We gotta kind of put some urgency in there, obviously, but those get replaced with the newest episodes that go live. That's when they go live. Not by the time you're listening to this, because you might be listening to this, like weeks past. And if that's the case, I'm sorry you missed out on the free notes for this episode. That's okay.

Yeah. Just become an epic member because all of the notes are there.

Yeah. And it's like dirt cheap. Come on.

Yeah.

Come on, please.

Yeah.

I'm not begging you, but I'm begging you. Yeah.

Come on. Don't be a T. Rex. All right, so 38470, comp. Or if you're at a desktop, it might be easier for you to go to hustleinflowchart.com comp. You can get them there as well. But either of those options will get you those notes inside your inbox, and you're going to be sitting pretty.

Yeah, man.

So go check them out.

All right, let's go to Nate, talk about some hiring. Hey, Nathan. Welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, guys. Excited to be here.

Yeah, It's a long time coming. We have a lot of mutual friends that know you have just said amazing things. And actually, prior to this call, we didn't even know this, but you just sold freeup. You're the company that you've had for, what has it been, about five years or so?

Yeah, four and a half. Five years. Yeah. It's kind of a crazy time in my life. We booked this before I think that even happened. But, yeah, definitely. Good to be here.

Yeah.

I think we've actually been trying to make this podcast happen for about a year now, roughly.

I know. I was telling Connor. I was like, I finally get on their podcast and we sell the company.

Well, let's make the most of it for how. Wherever this goes. Because it's. I mean, you're doing what similar stuff it sounds like, with outsourcing, training and all that.

Yeah. So we just launched outsource school course coming soon. People have been asking me for years to launch a course on actually how we. We hired and trained VAs. I mean, part of the reason we were able to sell free up is we had such an amazing rockstar internal team of virtual assistants in the Philippines that ran the entire business from customer service to billing to recruitment to social media, and the new owners are taking them on. We were fortunate enough that we made sure that everyone gets to keep their jobs. We took hundreds of thousand dollars from the sale and actually gave it to our internal team in the Philippines because they're. They're just amazing, and they did such a good job helping us grow Free up. And we want to teach other people how to build such an awesome team, and that's something we haven't really been able to do. Although we put out different content. But to really focus on this is how we did it. From hiring our first VA 20 hours a week to scaling a team and selling the company. We think people will really enjoy that.

Very cool. Well, let's get into that in a minute. Before we do, let's talk about sort of how you got into this. What was the catalyst that led you into creating free up and going down that path? What did you do before that? And kind of what made you decide to go down that route?

Yeah, so I'm 30 now and if we go back to when I was 20, I started an Amazon business. And if we go back even before that, my parents were both teachers growing up. So I kind of had the mentality that I would go to school, get a real job, work for 30 years, retire, and that was going to be that. And every summer, every winter vacation, my parents always made me have these full time jobs. So I was working 40, 50 hours a week. All my friends were outside playing, enjoying the nice weather. And I just learned a ton about marketing and sales and business. But I also kind of got a glimpse into the future, what life was like after college, after school. And I want to know part of it. I hated working for other people. I was watching the clock all the time. And when I got to college, I kind of looked at it as a ticking clock. I had four years to start my own business or I was going to go into the real world and have to get a job and have responsibilities and it'd be tough to get out then. So I started hustling, buying and selling people's textbooks, competing with my school bookstore. Took my summer money. Would buy people's books at the end of the semester, hold onto them, sell them at the beginning of the next semester. Created a little 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 got a cease and desist letter from my college telling me to knock it off because I was stealing too much of their business.

Where were you selling them out of?

Out of my dorm room. I mean, my car was just full of textbooks. My dorm was full of textbooks. It was funny. One year we had an extra dorm room. It was me and my four friends and it was a six person dorm. And I guess the other two people got kicked out of school or dropped out of school and we got access to that free room. So it became my book room.

That's your freaking.

Yeah, it's your database. You're just like, come into my Lair. Buy my cheap books. Dude, that's smart. That's really cool. So where'd you go after that? So I love the fact that you actually use that time in college too, as like a constraint, more or less. You're like, okay, gotta make some shit happen, gotta make some money, gotta learn some stuff. From that point, what'd you do after the cease and desist?

Yeah, I mentioned my parents were teachers, so I wasn't trying to get kicked outta college. That would not have gone over well. So I pivoted pretty hard. I started selling or I had an Amazon account that I was selling these books to. I was also selling to some other distributors. But this was 2008. No one really knew what Amazon was. It was kind of this big bookstore going into different categories. And I thought it was so cool I could have this 247 storefront. Money would get automatically deposited in my bank account. I could use my customer service skills and talk to customers. And I just had to figure out what to sell besides these books. So I started experimenting with stuff I was familiar with, like video games, computers, sporting equipment, outdoor supply, typical college guy stuff. And I just failed over and over and over. The only thing I could get to sell were these books. And it wasn't until I branched out of my comfort zone and found this deal on baby products that my business really took off. And I actually came up with the idea of dropshipping years before I even knew. It was called drop shipping. The concept that I could sell something I didn't have, that I could build a relationship with a vendor in the US that didn't know anything about Amazon or E commerce because it was 2008. I would tell them, hey, I'm good at pushing products on Amazon. You just ship the product where I tell you to. You can keep my credit card on file, charge me for it. I can mark it up however I want. And I ended up building relationships with over 200 manufacturers in the US selling baby products and toys. So you can imagine me as a 20 year old single college guy selling millions of dollars of baby products on Amazon. That was me.

A little bit of a pivot from college books. That's really cool, man. I love the fact that you just, it seemed like you were just plow. I mean, you stayed within the same vein, but you did pivot the markets and you, you still were very highly leveraged. It's way more leveraged than you were before.

Yeah, well, it sounds like that was pretty lucrative. How did, how did that, I mean, do you still do that or did. Did you eventually have to phase that out for some reason?

Yeah. So I got in and out of Amazon at a really good time. I got in before the gurus, before the courses, before Amazon started cracking down on drop shipping and before they. They changed their algorithm and all sorts of stuff. So I ended up selling over $25 million on Amazon, but I never did anything that was sustainable. I had no business to sell. I was always dependent on other people's products. I didn't have my own patents, my own trademarks. And to be honest, I wasn't really that passionate about baby products to begin with.

So it was a great way to make money. And I learned a ton about hiring people. And I actually used VAs and freelancers to scale that business. But I also kind of saw the writing on the wall. I mean, we got up to over five, six million dollars a year. And then once Amazon started being more competitive, we were kind of hovering somewhere. We would do 2, and then 3, and then 2.2. And we were kind of going up and down the past few years, and we weren't doing anything that we were passionate about. We were kind of just going in circles, trying to figure out Amazon's new algorithm and get ahead of competition. We weren't building a brand or a real business. And we kind of started Free up as a side project. I was talking to other Amazon sellers and they said, hiring sucks. Well, we had spent five years figuring out that hiring sucked and come up with a really good process for hiring VAs and freelancers. So we said, hey, we'll offer you these VAs, these freelancers. They already know Amazon. We've worked with them for years. We're not using them all full time. And you do the billing through our system. And that was the basic version of FreeUp. We spent $5,000 creating the crappiest software that you can possibly imagine, that clients could log in and see the freelancer in their account, and the freelancers could clock in and clock out. And that was really all that the software did. And people loved it. They were emailing me, they were calling me, they say, hey, I need a customer service rep, I need a graphic designer, whatever it is. And we eventually just ran out of EAs and freelancers. So we said, okay, we need to build a recruitment team and start advertising and create a vetting process to get on to Free Up. And that's really how Free up got off the ground and eventually surpassed our Amazon business, to the point where we said, we don't want to deal with Amazon anymore. Let's go out and grow our own brand.

Hmm, that's interesting. And something you said there, is it. It sounds like it started with your software as like a key component to that whole thing. Do you think that was crucial to launching that business and obviously ultimately selling it too?

Yeah. So for the first year, we didn't really look at us as a software company. We kind of had the software, it did a few things, we added a few features. We didn't even have a full time developer. But the customer service was always a key to Free Up. So people loved the support. They loved talking to me and my partner and our VAs. They loved the freelancers and the VAs on the platform and everyone hated the software. That was a constant feedback we got across the board is you guys need to have the software match the rest of your business. So around year probably 1.5, we said, all right, we got to start looking at ourselves as a software company. So we hired full time developers, we hired a quality assurance person. We got me as far away from development as possible because that's not my thing, and put Connor, my business partner, in charge of that team and he really helped scale that. So by the time we sold FreeOp, that software went from a really a big liability to a huge asset. It did all the billing was automatically in it. Clients could see that their freelancers and what they did, the affiliate program was in there. People could submit tickets and there's a whole ticketing process, a whole admin portal. So it really became a good asset for Freeup, where for the first year and a half we kind of had it by the wayside.

Now I'm kind of curious with the acquisition of your company. I know, I know there's certain elements about the acquisition that, you know, you can't talk about yet or maybe never at all. But how did, how did the person who acquired Free Up? How did, how did they find you or were you out there sort of shopping it around? How did that whole process look to actually get the product on the market and find a buyer?

Yeah, so it's actually funny. So he was actually a client of Free Up. He had used Free up for a year. He had loved the service. They wanted to get into the freelancer space. They did not want to build a marketplace from scratch. Their company name is the Haas, so they do a bunch of SEO services. And when they reached out to us, just like any business opportunity, we said, hey, we'll hear you out and get to know you and what you're all about. And I think we did as much due diligence on them in that first two months as they did on us. I mean, we wanted to know everything about their past businesses, success, failures. They had actually bought the HOTH for $100,000 and scaled it to over 22 million, which I thought was pretty cool. I mean, the end of the day, Connor and I have no experience growing a business past $10 million a year. The last year in free up, we're going to do around 12. So if we were going to sell free up, we had things that were important to us. We wanted to sell it to someone who wasn't going to destroy it and break it down. Someone who loved the idea, loved the concept, was going to keep it and grow it. Someone who had experience taking a company, and Hoth isn't their only company, but they've taken other companies to 20, 30, $40 million. We wanted people who are going to take really good care of the customers, of the clients, of the freelancers, of our partners in the same way that we did, which is very important to us. And that was going to take care of the internal team. If even one person in the internal team was going to lose their job, we didn't want to do the deal if anyone was going to lose any. We had certain agreements with team leaders and stuff over raises depending on how the company did. We wanted to make sure all those stayed in place. I mentioned that we wanted to give a large chunk of the sale money to them. So all that stuff was really important to us. And we also wanted someone that had the same values and beliefs and just about treating people well and fairly. And you can always find people that are good at making money and scaling businesses. But we wanted to align more than that. And as we were going forward, it became more and more obvious that they were the good people to sell it to. And then became obviously the decision of whether that was the right move for.

Connor and I. Yeah, no, I love everything you're saying here. All the way from the beginning. When you're talking about starting the company, it sounds like your values and, you know, just treating people right has always been like the core piece of everything from customer service starting there, even though the software wasn't that great, but customer service probably won you a bunch of fans and loyal people to come back and use your service. And then you have your team taking care of them. I mean, they're going to take care of the business for you. So do you think that's. Is that something that is probably the most important thing that you do in everything business and like what you're shaping up for the future as well.

Yeah, everything that we do, I mean, if we, if we launch outsource school and people hate it, we're just going to refund people. Like, we have no interest in taking people's money if they're not going to be happy with the end product. And I mean, free up is an imperfect business model. Right. It's a great business model, but what I mean by is using freelancers. There's always going to be issues. 99% of the time, the freelancers do a great job and keep clients coming back. There's always going to be that 1% where it could be no one's fault. It could be they disagreed on the style of an infographic or something, was miscommunicated. And from our side, we wanted to just quickly resolve stuff, just make it right. Don't make people go down this whole back and forth. Just quickly resolve things. Make sure the freelancer feels like they were heard and treated fairly, make sure the client feels like they were treated fairly, and just move on. And that's really how we built a lot of great relationships where people would come to us with an issue expecting to, oh my God, I'm going to have to fight for every last dollar back. And we just quickly made it right. Within seconds, got them a replacement, got them some credit, whatever it is. And because of that, they would tell their friends, refer people, and overall have a really good experience on the platform.

Very cool.

Well, let's talk about some. About hiring. I know hiring and putting the right people in place for your internal team is something that a lot of people struggle with. I know we struggle with it. In fact, right now we're in the process of trying to hire somebody for a specific role that we've never actually hired for that specific role before.

So, you know, we're actually kind of going through this struggle right now of finding the right person. We're very, very, very early in it, but we're kind of going through this now of trying to find the right people. And so let's, let's kind of get into the nitty gritty of it and talk about some of the common mistakes and pitfalls that people run into when trying to hire. And then maybe we'll shift the discussion in a little bit into more details about what we're looking for. And maybe you could give us some real world examples and real world advice on our current scenario.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest thing that People don't get. And I don't know if it's because it's remote or people are dealing with VAs in other countries. It's all about the relationship. I mean, you can make people sign any NDA you want, but are you really gonna chase someone across the Philippines over a piece of paper? And you can set them with LastPass and all these different things, but at the end of the day, there's no substitute for just building relationship with people. And I mean, Chickian, who had been my VA for 8 years and by far the worst part of selling Free up is not being able to work with her and other people anymore. Although we hope that we set them up very well for future success. But we built the relationship. It was not me versus them. We set the expectations on what we wanted to grow with the Amazon business. With Free up, we said, hey, this is your part in it. We made sure that she was happy with it. We checked in with her, we learned about her and her family. I'm actually the godfather of one of her kids. So just really building those relationships is so key because you guys know this turnover sucks, right? It's like the thing that just kills businesses and what people people focus on like the pay and the bonuses, when really a lot of people care about the relationship and building that family mentality and that fun culture to work with that no one really wants to leave. So getting that right mindset from the beginning that every single VA you hired, on some level you're going to build a relationship with is already you're doing better than 99% of the people hiring out there.

Yeah. And you mentioned. So the relationship is huge. And this is, you know, as a virtual company. We are a virtual company as well. We have team members all over the globe. Relationships are huge. And like the way that we instill culture in our, at least in our leadership team, like we just, it kind of almost seems like non productive work a little bit is we just talk about what's happening. You know, it might be football or just, you know, holidays or just stupid family stuff or house remodels and. Yeah, but it's almost like there's a relatability and it's our time to kind of just be us. How do you. So is like relationships essentially the culture that you kind of instill in everything you do?

Yeah, I mean, we do. We're going through this with the Hoth right now where we went through it. We're about three, four weeks into the transition. But we said, hey, we have a Lot of stuff to teach you, but. But before you do anything else, you guys need to get to know the internal team. They're the lifeblood of the business. If they don't like you or you don't like them, or you guys can't communicate, nothing else really matters. That has to happen first. So really focusing on just getting to know someone on a business level, what they like, what they don't like. Tell them everything that Connor and I did well. Tell them things that we could have done better and give them a chance to improve upon. So one of the things that I did with Chickian, way back when we first started, because I was struggling to hire Vas, I hired Cheeks, which was great, but other people were quitting on me. They weren't doing what I wanted. And I just. I asked her, hey, what am I doing wrong? What are your clients that you really like doing? Right? I like to ask Vas who their favorite clients are and why, and learn from them and try to mimic them or do the things that they like within reason. And she pretty much told me everything I was doing wrong from how I was firing off emails that were super direct and had no personal touch to them whatsoever, how my instructions weren't clear. She told me a lot, just about people in the Philippines in general that I had no idea about, about how they're all about family. A lot of them live with bigger families. The minimum wage is 12 bucks a day. They care about stability and security. They want to be updated before there's huge changes that go on without anyone knowing. So just kind of taking a step back and realizing I have a lot to learn. I need to learn from someone who's been a VA for a while, freelancer for a while was a big part of that as well.

Yeah, that's super valuable. And that's what's really cool, is when you have a great team member, they're comfortable in being open with you like that and can expose some of these things that are blind spots for you.

Oh, man. There's so much wisdom just in that one little tip tactic right there of when you do have a va. Ask them how you can make things better for them. How can you improve their processes? What are the things that you're like? I love that question. What are the things that your other clients do? The clients that you love the most? What. What are they doing to make you love them? Just asking your va. That seems super powerful. And that was kind of like a little aha for me, when you said that is like, you Know any, any VA that has multiple clients, they obviously are going to have favorites and least favorites. What are the ones that are their favorites? Doing that make them their favorites.

Yeah.

And everyone thinks it's pay. It's almost never pay. Like someone might have a client that pays them two bucks more an hour or five or whatever. It is not necessarily their favorite client. And I hate to put everyone from a country in one boat, but from my experience, sometimes it takes a little bit of prying. You'll say, hey, tell me what you don't like about my management style. Not every VA is like, you suck at xyz. It takes a little bit of pushing where you're like, listen, you can be open, you can be honest, you're not going to get fired, you're not going to lose your job. I'm actually going to make changes based on what you tell me. When you push a little bit and get them past everything's great, you're an awesome boss, get them to say, okay, we like xyz, we don't like this, or this is what my other client does better. Whatever it is, that's valuable information that can really help you grow your business because as you get bigger and bigger, you kind of get farther and farther removed from all the day to day little things that happen in your business. And that could be interacting with clients or suppliers or whatever it is. And you need to know how you can improve those things and it's only going to help you and help your business.

Yeah.

That'S really helpful now. So I guess going back into, I don't know to explain this hiring process, those are some of the mistakes are folks just not communicating like that. How would you go about. Obviously free up is a great database that is probably somewhere we'll check out because we've actually never used it quite yet. Let's talk about the actual process as well. So from before even hiring, are there some pre steps like planning and things that we should be doing prior to ever looking for someone?

Yeah. So I always recommend to look at how much money you're making month in and month out and figure out how aggressive you want to be. If you want to be super aggressive, maybe you're investing 40, 60% of your net profits back in your business, back into hiring. If you're more conservative, maybe you're at 10 to 30%. I tend to be somewhere in that 20 to 30%. And once you figure that out, then you can identify what kind of person you want to hire. There's three different types of People, you can hire the followers, the doers, and the experts. The followers are virtual assistants. Five to ten bucks an hour, non us. They're there to follow your systems, your processes. If you're stuck in the day to day operations of your business, if you have certain ways and directions that you do things, that's perfect. If you don't have systems, you really can't hire the followers and say, hey, go run my Facebook ads with no instructions whatsoever. That's what the followers are for with, for instructions, the doers, graphic designers, bookkeepers, writers. You're not teaching someone how to be a graphic designer, but they're not consulting with you either. They're there to do that one thing at a very high level. They do it eight hours a day. And then you got the experts, the high level freelancers, consultants, the agencies, and they're there to bring their own systems, their own process, their own expertise. They can project manage, they can consult, they can execute high level game plans. If you're an entrepreneur, yes, you could spend the next six months learning how to be a Facebook ad expert, but that's probably not a good use of your time. And you can't do that with every little thing in your business. At some point you got to hire someone with expertise to hit the ground running. So once you figure out what that budget is, then you have to figure out, hey, are you someone that's stuck in the day to day operations of your business? Are you someone that has projects building up that are outside of your core competency? Or are you someone that's taking on something that you really need someone else's opinion, someone else's advice on? And then you can figure out how to take that budget and apply it to hiring the followers, the doers or the experts to come up with a good plan.

I love that. So what would your advice be on who your first hire should be? Because I'm sure there's a lot of just kind of solopreneurs out there, people that are just kind of doing it all themselves and they just know they're overwhelmed and they're doing too much. But they may not necessarily know, okay, I need help. I just don't know what's the first step I take. Who, who do I go, you know, who's the first hire I should make to take some of this pressure off of me? You know, they may not necessarily know who the first hire should be. Do you have any sort of process or recommendations you give people to sort of figure that out?

So I try not to make A blanket statement that everyone's first hire should be xyz, because everyone's a different part of their business. And even if you're a sole entrepreneur, that doesn't necessarily mean whatever is your first hire. Now, me personally, I like to just take billing and bookkeeping off my plate right away. One of the best things we did with Free up and one of the worst things I did in my Amazon business is I did bookkeeping for way too long. At the end of every month I was going through credit card statements pulled me away from day to day operations. I probably wasn't even doing a good job doing it. That's not my thing. And with Free up right away, we said we cannot grow Free up unless we have someone handling the bookkeeping. We don't want to teach them the bookkeeping. We want to know what's going on. We want to have a high level view. But we need a good virtual assistant that can come in, that knows Xero or knows Quickbooks, that can get us organized and keep us organized going forward and that we can build trust with because bookkeeping is something that they're going to have access to our bank accounts or credit cards, whatever it is. So for me, in my situation, that makes a lot of sense. We're kind of going through this again with outsourced school. If we don't have someone to run our billing, we're going to keep getting pulled into that and that's not a good use of our time. So billing is probably the first thing or bookkeeping second is either customer service or that executive assistant with Freeup. We started off with Jane who was 20 hours a week. She was awesome. She crushed it. We hired a second person for 20 hours a week, then we increased both of them to 40. I'm always a big fan of diversifying and not making your entire business rely on one virtual assistant, but getting them to do the day to day operation. One of the first things that I had her do was clear out my email from 5am to 7am every morning. So when I get up at 7, she might say, hey Nate, I left these two emails from you. They're from your lawyer, they're from your accountant, whatever. She couldn't handle them. But the rest of the stuff was handled and responded to at a high level. And I'm getting a head start to every morning. And then I would slowly teach her more and more stuff and have her prove herself so that I can rely on her going forward. I can send her stuff. Hey, I got off the phone with the client, send them the setup, email, whatever it is. So for me, getting bookkeeping off your plate just because 99% of entrepreneurs are terrible at bookkeeping anyway and it's a big waste of their time. And then getting that executive assistant. So you're in the mindset that you don't have to do every little thing as you're growing your business from year zero to year one.

Yeah, I love that. So, yeah, definitely. The bookkeeping thing, I think is a prerequisite for almost like every single business owner out there. Unless for some reason you just love the number. I know. Like Matt, for a while you hung onto it kind of close.

Yeah.

But yeah, you've filled your time with other things that you like.

I don't do the bookkeeping anymore.

No, you don't. But I love the EA executive assistant, I think, well, what kind of rate would you suggest someone pay for an ea?

Usually in that five to ten bucks an hour range. I like to kind of start a little bit lower. But one of the things that we didn't talk about in the mistakes is setting expectations. So I set the expectation with my first hires that, listen, I'm planning on growing a business here. The people that in the past that have been part of my core people, when I started the business, I took care of them, I had their back. I made sure that they were happy and paid well and given bonuses. And now with the free up, the buyout at the end, so you have the opportunity to be that person. I'm not going to give it to you. You're going to have to prove yourself. If I find myself repeating myself, or you're making mistakes, or we're just going in circles, it's not going to happen. I mean, you get someone else, but you're first up. You're getting this opportunity over everyone else. In return, I'm going to start you off at five bucks an hour, maybe six bucks an hour, whatever it is. And if the business grows, your pay is going to be the first person that goes up. And if the business goes huge, your pay is going to go up over time. And I usually set up a structure for their payment going up. So take Marius, for example. He started off at three bucks an hour. We said, hey, your pay will go up 50 cents for every 500 hours that are billed in a week. But when he started free up, I think we were billing 500 hours in a week. And when we sold free up, we were at 19,000 hours in a week and his pay was like 20 something bucks. So it's a pretty big jump from three to 20. But he also was an integral part in growing free up and, and we couldn't have done it without him. It doesn't have to be that drastic, but setting up something where they know their pay is going to go up over time, but they're also getting a good base pay. It's not just commission based and something that they're happy with. I always advise people to pay market rates just because some people aren't that great at hiring and if you're paying below market rate and you're not good at the other stuff and you're investing time into them, they might not stick around. I'm in position where I think I'm good at the other stuff, the communicating, the onboarding, the setting expectations, the building the family, the culture. So I might go a dollar or so below market rate if they're okay with it. With the much higher upside that they're going to grow with the business. If that makes sense.

Sure, totally makes sense. Now. Now what, what sort of tasks with. For an ea, specifically an executive assistant? What. What sort of tasks do you put on their plate at that, that, what do you say, five to $10 an hour range?

Yeah. Really anything that you have a system for. There's a, you do this, A, B, C, D. It could be customer service, it could be lead generation, it could be social media. And there's really two ways to go about it. You could have something where you've just done it for three months. I like to say I do everything. I have a 90 day rule where I won't do anything longer than 90 days without passing it off to someone else. So the first month I'm kind of figuring it out and figuring out what doesn't work. The second month I'm documenting everything and really fine tuning it. By the end of that month I have someone in place and by the end of the third month I've taught them how to do it and I'm no longer doing it anymore, which is great for a lot of things. But I also find myself doing more experimenting where I'll get that person on. In the first few weeks I'll go in with the mentality that this process might not work, but I still want to try it out. And then I'll actually work with the VA and fine tune the process with them and hope to come out the other side. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it does work, but it's a little bit more experimental, it's a little bit more high Level, I wouldn't recommend doing it if it's your first va. I recommend having good systems and good processes, but there's no right or wrong. And that's kind of the fun thing about hiring is you have access to all these different people in the world at different price points, at different skill sets and you get to experiment and see what works and what doesn't work for your business.

I love that 90 day rule concept. I think that's something with an EA and someone that's almost like a, kind of like a catch all, a little bit like they're there to help you with the repetitive stuff. Like it could be outreach, emails. That's something that we do a lot of as well. And follow ups. I mean there's so many uses for that. And I love the fact that you can get someone for a very affordable price who is very capable. And most business owners probably should start budgeting that into just their base line item. That is an investment into their time, into expanding their company.

And that's probably something we should get to now.

When it comes to the finances, this is kind of speaking more into what Joe was just saying. When it comes to the finances, what do you tell the people that feel overwhelmed and they have too much on their plate, but maybe don't feel like they've got the liquidity or the cash flow to actually hire? Do you have some resources or mechanisms or things, tactics to help them sort of get past that roadblock and make their first hire?

Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, if you're in a ton of debt and your business isn't making that much money, there's only so much you can do. At some point you have to turn that around. But you can also focus things that more project based instead of more ongoing. Now the beauty of the gig economy is you don't have to hire people full time. I started at 20 hours a week. You can find a great VA for five hours a week, three hours a week, whatever it is, you have flexibility there. Or you can focus more on project based, what projects might lead to ROI that you can then invest in your business. You don't have a website, hire someone to build your website. You don't ever have to talk to that person again. Get that website up there. Hopefully that website then gives you ability to go out and generate sales, make some more money, then hire the VA for five hours a week or whatever it is so you don't have to think of everything as full time long term. You can break it down a Little more. But it's important to remember that these VAs, these freelancers are not going to build the business for you. Whenever I used to get on the phone with someone from Freeup who I could tell on the phone that they were either just starting or their business wasn't doing so well, or they just didn't have any revenue even though they've been doing it for a few months, we want to help them. We have great VAs, we have great freelancers, we have agencies, we have experts. But at the end of the day, those people are not going to build the business for them. They're there to support you and give you resources that you have to use to implement and scale the business and get a revenue stream so you can afford those people and you have to pay those people regardless of whether your business takes off or it doesn't.

Yeah, no, that makes, that makes sense. One, one good piece of advice that I think it was Mike McCallowitz. I think when we were talking to him, I asked him a similar question around hiring. And the advice that he gave was, you know, think of what, what this VA that you're hiring is going to cost you. Let's say it's going to be $10 an hour and you want to hire them for 20 hours a week. Well, okay, so it's 200 bucks a week to hire this, this virtual assistant, create a savings account and start moving $200 a week into the savings account as if you were paying this virtual assistant. That way the money's still there in your business. If, you know, you, you can't pay this assistant yet, but you know, you start getting used to making these payments. And then after, you know, four weeks or so, then you go and you hire this assistant and you've already got a month's worth of pay for this assistant sort of saved aside. And you've already kind of gotten comfortable with this amount of money leaving your bank account.

Yeah, that's really smart. I think one of the things that people sometimes will do is they'll dive in and they'll say, hey, I need a 40 hour week VA. But they haven't crunched the numbers. They really can't afford that person. So not only do they have to end the person after a month, but they've also spent all that time put into that person that now that person's going to go work for someone else. So that whole budgeting part of making sure that you can actually afford it is key.

Yeah. And definitely doing your prep work as well. Like what Are the tasks identifying maybe these friction points in your company and the things that you want to do too that you might not just carve out time for yourself like outreach or something like that is probably super crucial because hiring onboard, well, not only finding someone takes time, I'm sure freeup shortcuts that quite a bit. But then the onboarding and the relationships like you were saying and getting them in the culture and the flow of things. There is so much time put into that that if you haven't ever hired anybody, it's like that is going to be a. But it's well worth time. But you better have a good plan going into it, it seems like.

Yeah, and I love free up. The new owners are going to take care of anyone listening. I keep saying we but they do a great job vetting virtual assistants, freelancers and agencies. You get access to them quickly. They have great customer support and no turnover protection. If someone quits, they cover replacement costs. But if you don't know what to do after you get a really good va, it only does so much good. So that's really why we're going to be focused on outsourced school and why all this stuff is so valuable. Because you need to know not only the planning before you hire, but also what to do after the hire to make sure that you're getting a return on your investment and getting what you want out of that virtual system.

Yeah, very cool.

Well, I'm going to, I'm going to get sort of selfish for a minute, but our audience loves it when we do that because I think it usually benefits them. But one of the things that we're trying to hire for in our business right now is we want to hire an in house developer to help us develop software of our own. We've got a software concept that we'd like to get out into the world and we've hired a lot of people over the years to sort of take off a lot of the like sort of monotonous tasks off our plates. You know, the things like the bookkeepers and the VAs and the customer support and things like that. We've always been fine for hiring for that. But a developer is a very skilled position and it's been something that we've actually been talking about for a year now. And we've talked to so many developers over the last year and we've just never felt comfortable, you know, taking the leap with anybody that we've talked about. And so this is a thing that's like a year in the making of, of trying to find this developer. And we still haven't brought anybody in house and we still haven't made the next step towards getting this software developed. And it's sort of something that's starting to weigh on us a little bit because we really want to get this software out now the world. So let's kind of maybe start from that angle. If somebody's looking for more of like a skilled position and they want to feel really comfortable that this person is the right person for the job and they have the skills necessary, how should we be approaching this?

Yeah.

And develop. Let's definitely talk about developers. It's by far the hardest thing to hire for, especially if you're not a developer. I've gone through this on my Amazon business with free app. The biggest thing that Connor and I did was we did research. We met with just entrepreneurs that actually understood development and we didn't learn how to code or anything like that, but we did learn what the standards are and what languages are common, what are the pros and cons of different languages. So we could at least have an intelligent conversation with any developer and understand the reason behind. Why do they like Python, Why do they like Node? What are the pros and cons? And. And really know if they're BSing us. Outside of that, you want to look at what their track record is. Are they jumping around? Are they actually completing projects? Obviously, rate's important. Developers are very expensive, especially if you're hiring them in house. But for us, we really wanted to break it down into test projects because developers are known for two things. One, missing due dates, because every project that you give them always takes longer. And a good developer that can actually hit due dates is key. And second is communication, because developers usually don't speak business and business people usually don't speak developers. And you want to have as little gap there as you possibly can. So getting someone that they're not going to understand the whole business or your books or anything like that, but they can actually understand the business logic behind different things. I'll give you a perfect example of this. We hired a new developer to redo our signup page and one of the things we wanted to add was, for tax reasons, was a dropdown of what country you are and what state you are. Well, we had them build that out and then we got to it and it said United States was not the first thing there. And you couldn't type in United States. You had to scroll all the way down to you to get to United States. And we didn't tell them that. We kind of just assumed that in our head, what person going to a sign up would want to scroll down to you? But that wasn't communicated, they didn't assume it. And then we had to spend another week fixing that. Stuff like that happens and you have to focus on what you can control, which is getting good at communicating with developers and laying stuff out there and getting it out of your head. But you also want to work with a developer that can take it a little bit farther than most developers can in terms of understanding a business. The only way that you're really going to understand that is by testing, by giving them small test projects. Set up a due date. Not just a due date, but a due time. It's not due next Tuesday, it's due next Tuesday at 2:00pm Eastern Time. And giving them an outline of what you want and seeing how close they come to that. And then also understanding their process. Are they just leaving you alone for two weeks and coming back with garbage? Are they asking you questions along the way to get more information, more clarity? Are they showing you stuff? And then we also like to bring in a third party, someone higher level to actually look at the code and give us a second opinion. You can hire a consultant or we might know an entrepreneur that actually understands the language. You're not going to have that person work 40 hours a week. But before you invest $100,000 a year into a full time dev to build out your software, you want to know that their code is sound, that they're documenting everything that they're doing, the industry standards, which is probably way more than me or Connor, who handles the dev, can handle. So getting those third parties in there early and not really committing to them until they prove themselves, we found to be very successful.

I love that. Yeah. I was actually talking to another software entrepreneur friend of mine just yesterday and one of the things he also said is you got to remember too that developers and designers are not the same people. So when you go to a developer and you say, I want this functionality in this tool, expect the functionality, but don't expect it to look beautiful.

No.

Right. There's also a tool called StoryBlock that I strongly recommend because we realized that too, because our software, we started making features better, but the UI UX still looked terrible. So even though we had other features, no one wanted to use it. So what we did. Connor knows WordPress very well and StoryBlock, which can be integrated by most developers, pretty much allows you to turn the front end into a WordPress type thing. So you can go in and say, hey, these functions are all done by my developer at top dollar. But either me or someone else at a much lower price can do storyblock and you can just edit it there. Or you can always hire a UI UX person, which is probably what you should do at some point anyway.

That's pretty sweet. Thanks for sharing. StoryBlock. Never heard of that. Yeah, that's up our alley too. Maybe that's a good version to get a V1. Something out there, you know, just a beta. That's cool. I think we kind of took you a little off your. The hiring process too, from earlier because we were kind of bouncing around. Oh yeah, which is. Which is totally cool.

I probably diverted the conversation.

No, it's all good.

My selfishness.

So selfish.

Matt.

Geez. But yeah, like, let's go back to the hiring process too. But it's good you had that perspective because it's, you know, you can hire all sorts of folks and there's prep work happens, you know, I'm sure there's a lot to be done on either side. Dev work. There's a lot more prep to happen than an ea if we're hiring someone like that. Nate. Like, what are. What are some other steps? So after, you know, we prep everything and I'm assuming source them on a site. Kind of like free up or there's obviously a bunch of other places as well. What are the following steps after?

But for the sake of this episode, we want them free up.

Yes, of course.

So you set up a budget. You identified whether you need a follower or doer or an expert. I always take it even a step further. You have to really know what you're looking for. Are they 20 hours a week? 40 hours a week? Are they working your time zone? Is it flexible schedule? What's the price point? What skill sets? What background? Really try to identify what your perfect person looks like or perfect hire looks like. It could be an agency. And once you identify that, go in to free up, put in a request, meet someone, and then it comes down to interviewing. So one of the things that we built Freeup about is interviews are all about skill, attitude, and communication. Those are the three things we care about. But you should not just take Free Up's word, although they do a good job, but also do the vetting for those yourself. Plus, add on, is this person a good fit for me? Is this person what I'm looking for? Because even the best virtual assistants in the world are not the best fits for every single client out there, you need to make sure that they're the perfect match for you. So when you're interviewing for skill, you don't need everyone to be a 10 out of 10. What you care about is are they honest about what they can and cannot do and are they priced accordingly? That's really what you care about. So we put them through skill tests before they go on free up. I keep saying we.

But you should have your own skill test, whatever it is. If they're a developer, there's dev tests out there. You can look at their portfolio. Whatever you have to do to gauge skill, that they're honest about what they can and cannot do. For attitude, do a one on one interview with them, challenge them. You're looking for red flags. What's this person saying that shows they care more about money than they do about community, about the actual business? Do they love being a bookkeeper? Are they just in it for the paycheck? Do they get aggressive when things don't go their way? Or are they the bigger man, the bigger woman? When problems come up to actually to de escalate things and resolve things quicker, you want to try to pull that out during an interview. Challenging them on their skills, on their past projects, on how they interact with clients, and then for communication, Are they responding quickly? Did they show up on time? Can you understand what they're saying and get on the same page? We have 15 or free up has 15 pages of communication best practices that they have to memorize and get tested on before they get on the platform. So you're going to do your own vetting to complement free ups for skill, attitude and communication. But then it comes down to are they the right fit for you and you want to prioritize your interview in a way that makes sense if you need someone for, let's say graveyard shift, because Filipino time zone is 12 hours in reverse. So let's say you need a customer service rep 9 to 5, that's the middle of their night. The first question you should ask is, hey, have you ever worked graveyard shift before? What distractions do you have in your personal life that might interfere with that? Are you 100% sure you can do it? I mean, we won't just ask one question and move on. We'll ask the same thing in different ways. Because if we're not 100% sure that this person can work the graveyard shift before we keep going, it's not worth our time spending the next 20 minutes interviewing them. So really focus on what are the important things you Care about? Do you need them to work every Sunday? Do they have to know a certain software program? For your side and the developers, what is the language that the software is going to be in? You need to really dive into how well they know that language before you find out if they have a great attitude. So structuring your interview so that you're valuing your time at the highest possible level is key.

Yeah, that's, that's really good. I love this.

So one question I have too, that's kind of a follow up on the same sort of concept in. So in the Philippines we have a handful of people that work with us now that are in the Philippines. There are some, let's, let's say infrastructural issues that pop up from time to time, right? Like they'll have power outages and there's, there's been times where there's been maybe three or four days that go by and we actually don't have communication with one of those VAs. So would, would you recommend, you know, with some of the VAs in places like the Philippines not giving them tasks that are integral to your business? If they don't happen, business doesn't move forward on that day and just kind of give them the sort of tasks that if they don't happen, the business survives. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

No, I mean Free up is run completely by VAs in the Philippines that handle all day to day operations and a few keys there. 1. An important thing to know in the Philippines is if you hire someone from the city, they usually don't have as much power and Internet issues as if you hire someone rural or really far out there. Philippines is a pretty big place. So not every place is affected by the same Internet and power. A part of it is setting expectations up front. I want to know, do you have a backup power source? Do you have backup Internet? What do you do when you lose power? When you lose Internet, do you have a place that you can go or is there just absolutely nothing you can do? Because if someone. And how often does that happen? If someone says, hey, yeah, we have a blackout once a month and the closest person to me is 100 miles, then I'm probably not going to hire that person. For essential parts of my business with our team leaders, Jane and Layden, they don't lose power that much. It happens from time to time. When it does happen, I don't get furious about it. It's part of just hiring people in the Philippines. The benefit is the Price I'm able to pay compared to the US who probably will never have an Internet outage. But they know like, hey, they're going to drop what they're doing. They have a backup plan already. They go to a hotel, they go to a family's house, whatever it is, and they communicate at the highest level. I would never work with a VA that just disappears for three days and then comes back and says, hey, I had a power outage. They all have each other's phone number. We have email, we have Viber, we have WhatsApp. Whatever you have to do to stop what you're doing and communicate with us, you have to do it. You have to be able to get a hold of someone, inform us what's going on. If you just disappear, you're not going to work with our company, with Free Upper, or any future company of mine. For me, it's about setting that expectation and I let them know about that. It's required that you go somewhere to work or you have a backup Internet. You have a backup power that you're able to communicate and you don't just disappear. I'll make sure that they're okay with that because if they're like, you know what, there's really no place for me to go. That's fine. I either not going to hire them for important parts of my business or I'm just going to find someone else who does have those backups in place.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So it really is just about setting those expectations. Because, you know, in the past when we've run into those sort of issues, and I know I was sort of making a generalization, but you know, my generalization is based on our own experiences. And I think the issue was that we never really set those expectations and made sure that the people we're talking to had contingency plans in place in those scenarios, those expectations. And I guess the key to it is just talking about it with them before it's a problem.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I'll even, I'll say, hey, how often do you lose Internet? And if someone says, hey, I lose it once a month, one day, every month. And in the first two weeks they've lost Internet five times, I'm going to go back to them and say, all right, that's not what we talked about. Let's reset expectations. How often do you lose it? And let's get a real actual answer so that I can make informed decisions going forward.

That's smart. And then I could see redundancy as being huge, not only in the communication, like you said, they all have their phone numbers, emails, WhatsApp, all that stuff. But maybe you want redundancy in an ea, you know, if that's the case, if you're up for that. Because that's. We do that same thing. Not VAS over there in the Philippines, but just here alone in the U.S. you know, like note takers. We have like three of them. We don't want. That's a crucial part of our podcast process and lead gen and sales. So we're like, okay, well let's make sure that we have a pool to kind of pick from and they communicate with each other. So yeah, I could see that even be more, even more crucial in the Philippines.

I have such a good. Sorry.

Yeah, go for it.

I have such a good example. So in the first week that we were transitioning to free up to the Hoth, we have two rockstar assistants. Jane, who's been my assistant forever, I'm going to miss her. Azell as well. Azell is pregnant and she had to go to the emergency room so she couldn't work. And then Jane was covering for her and Jane lost Internet so she was like, okay, I'm going to go for go. I have to go to a hotel. It was like a 30 minute drive and the Hoth is here. It's their first week with pre op and they're like, oh my God, like, what's going on? I was like, all right, give it a second. It's all going to work out. Well, Estelle communicated instantly to Jane, who communicated instantly to the next person. Someone else logged on to Skype and said, hey, I'm covering for Azella. Jane hit the ground running, got all the work done. Jane showed up in 30 minutes, helped her get caught up and it just ran seamlessly. And that's because we prepared for every possible situation. They all have each other's contact information. They know what's expected. They know that they're not that I'm going to fire Jane if she makes a mistake, but they know that if you just disappear or don't work without communicating, you can't work with this company anymore. And they know that I don't want to get pulled involved. I don't want a zell to text me and then I have to go chase someone else to get coverage. They need to find someone to cover. And all the other people are open to coverage. Just like if something happens with them, they expect other people to help them as well.

Yeah, love it, man.

That Makes a lot of sense now. So we've talked a lot about Free up and I know you've sold it, you're not the owner anymore. But I'm kind of curious because it's been a big part of this discussion. What does Free up do differently from the other sort of services that are out there that you can find outsourced employees from?

Yeah. So free up some marketplace for not just virtual assistants in the Philippines, but VAs freelancers and agencies from 5 to 100 plus per hour US non US over 100 skillset. We get about 2000 applicants a week to get on the platform. We vet them for skill, attitude and communication. Like I mentioned before, top 1% get on the platform and as a client it's free to sign up. There's no monthly fee, there's no minimums. It's in our best interest to get you people you actually like that help you grow your business. You submit a request, we introduce you to one person by default. If you want to meet one or if you want to meet five or ten or whatever that number is, just let us know. Most people come to us because they don't want to meet 20 people. But whatever your interview process is, that's fine. You can meet with them, interview them. It's a very quick process. If you like them, you can hire them, negotiate rate, agree to fixed price. The freelancers set their own rates. If you don't like them, you click pass. Provide us feedback, we get you someone else quickly based on that feedback. So it's pretty quick and efficient on the back end. 24. 7 support in case you have even the smallest issue with your va, your freelancer and a no turnover guarantee. Freelancers on our platform rarely quit. It is real life. It could happen if someone quits for any reason. We cover replacement costs, get you a new person right away and make sure you're taken care of. So that's really what Free Up's about, the pre vetting, the speed, the customer service and the protection.

Yeah, I love that because I know one of the big hurdles we have that we've had in the past with hiring, let's say on like, like upwork or something like that. Right. You'd go there and you post a job application and maybe you go to bed for the night and then you come, you look the next day and there's 37 applications.

Oh, that's fun to sift through.

And there's, there's literally been times that we've, we've decided we're going to Go hire somebody. We've posted a job posting. We've had 50 applicants and we were so overwhelmed that we just, we didn't end up hiring any of them.

I'm sure it happens all the time. That's why we have Shannon hire our ops manager, does the hiring, but even her, like, that's if you have someone else. Yeah. It's daunting, man. It's a lot of energy and time.

Yeah. And we always tell people, because a lot of people are used to that, they want to get a lot of applicants. We're like, all right, let us introduce one. Try out our system first. If you don't love that person, we can always send you three or five. Tell us how many you want, we'll send you that many people. But we're pretty good at getting it right on the first fit, on the first person. And I mean, most clients get started within hours or minutes of putting in their requests. It's very quick. We fill all requests within a business day, usually much faster. Obviously there's holidays and stuff like that, but for the most part, it's a pretty quick and efficient process.

Yeah, I love that I'm the opposite. I would much rather have somebody say, look, I vetted candidates for you. Here's the one. That. Here's the right one.

Oh, yeah, that's the way we roll.

Because that's the hardest part for me about hiring. And Shannon, our operational manager, she does all the hiring now for our company. But a big part of why we needed someone like Shannon in our business was to do that role. It is a very time consuming process, the way we've done it in the past, to find the right people.

Yeah. Two thoughts on that. I mean, one, I'm the same way. That's why I built Free Up. It was the platform that I wish I had back in the day when I was going through tons of applicants on upwork. I was like, I wish I could just have a place there. I submitted a button and they send me a perfect fit and I could just get started and get to work rather than spend the next two weeks going through people. And second, I negotiated a lifetime discount for Free Up. I'm going to be a client of Free Up. I'm going to use Free up on all my future businesses. Although I'm not affiliated with them anymore, I just strongly believe in the concept entrepreneurs. They need a fast way to hire top people and with protection in case anything that goes wrong. And to me, it's like one thing that just makes your life easier. As you grow your business.

Sure. Yeah, it makes sense. Now.

After the interview, I was just thinking, do you have any best practices? I know with documentation you have that 90 day rule. So after you say, hey, you're signed up and all that stuff, are there specific onboarding things that we should just touch on really quick? I know we're getting a little long on time here too.

Yeah. Setting expectations is huge. We kind of talked about the small stuff like the Internet and all that, but I'll set expectations for the role, for the communication, how they're sending reports, what to do, what not to do. I like to structure SOPs in a way that's broken down into three parts. So the first part is as much information as I can possibly give them about the business, about the role, about past people for the role that have worked out and that haven't worked out. I remember Marius, who's our rock star bookkeeper with Freeup. I had fired three bookkeepers before him. And I started off by listing all three bookkeepers and exactly what they did that I didn't like. And then I laid the expectation of exactly what I wanted. So it was very cut and dry. He knew exactly what I was expecting and exactly what not to do. Before we even got into anything else. The second part is the actual abcd. Laying out, this is how we do things and letting them know, hey, this part is set in stone. This part I want you to help make better. I'm open to ideas or feedback or whatever it is. And then lastly. And the part that everyone forgets is the do not do for any reason list. If I have someone covering my email, hey, if my lawyer emails me, don't respond to that. Leave it for me. If my accountant does. Here are my top three clients. If, if they email, make sure you say, hey, Nate will get right back to you, whatever it is that you want to set up in place. Because don't assume that they're just going to come across something and just do it exactly how you want. You need that protection of a little cheat sheet for them that, hey, these are situations where at least for now, maybe down the line you'll get more responsibility. They have to be let for me. And I find that when people create those SOPs with information up at the top instructions, what not to do list, it makes it a lot more clear for virtual assistants.

Yeah, you don't want like your mom. I'm giggling over here. Because you don't want your mom asking like, hey, what are you going to bring for Christmas dinner? Or Something and like your, your EA or whoever. And there's like, hey, he'll get back to you as soon as he can. She doesn't know, like, or maybe EA doesn't know who your mom is.

Oh, I literally had that happen to me the other day. My father in law was trying to connect me with somebody and he accidentally emailed our support desk instead of me. And, and I think, I think the reply to that message was very, very confusing because our support person replied and Alan was like, who are you? I thought I was emailing Matt, but yeah, it happens.

I like the do not do list though. I haven't heard that before.

There's a joke in my family because one year my mom texted me, she goes, hey, do you know if your sister's dating anyone? Like don't tell Talia. And she sent it in a group chat with me and Talia.

Whoops.

So as we kind of wrap up here, tell us your next evolution. You've got your outsourced school coming out. What's that gonna. I mean, I think it's kind of self explanatory, but let's get some details about when that's coming out and what people are gonna learn from that and how that's gonna benefit our listeners.

Yeah. So I'm on with free up for 60 days. We're about halfway through with that. So my number one focus is helping with the transition to Free Up. I wanna make sure that they're set up to be successful. I wanna see Freeup grow. I'm rooting for them, helping the internal team. All of that Outsource school is something we're kind of working on on the side, where we create an outline. We have a pretty good idea of what it is. I mean, the whole concept is, it's how we interview, how Connor and I actually conduct interviews, how we onboard people and set expectations, how we train them and put them through processing, create SOPs and how we manage them afterwards, how we actually build a relationship and run meetings and motivate them and pay them and give them bonuses and set up structure that has very, very low turnover. So that's what outsource school is going to be about. You can go to outsourceschool.com, join our wait list and then. Yeah, I don't know, I've got. I'm kind of still pretty fresh off the sale. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next, but I'm excited. All I've done for the past four years is free up 24 7. So getting all the creative juices back is refreshing.

What's something now that you can do now that you don't have Free Up? I mean, I guess you have like 30 more days, but is there something you're excited to do that you haven't done in like the last four and a half years?

So it's not that I haven't read a book in the past four and a half years, but I definitely have not read as much as I would have liked to. So ever since I told Free up, books have just been arriving at my door. I'm just ordering every business book, every real estate book that I wish that I had read and I've just been cranking through them. I probably read more books in the past two weeks than I read in the past three months. So that's something. It's just good to sit down and read a book and it's a lot less stressful sometimes than running a business.

I love that because it's the most perfect transition into. Our next question that we ask everybody is, are there any books that you find yourself recommending often or referring back to often? What have been some game changing books for you? I guess so.

I'll give you one that I just read. I feel like I've had a very good life. I have nothing to be complained about. One area that I feel like I messed up is when I first started making money. It was about 2008, 2009 and I did not invest in real estate and I really wish I had invested in real estate. And I feel like every entrepreneur should have some of their portfolio in real estate no matter what that percentage is. So I'm kind of getting into real estate as a newbie as a 30 year old when I feel like I should have done it before. I started off with the Bigger Pockets book. I think it's called the book on Rental properties. Strongly recommend it. Someone like me who opened it knowing nothing about real estate, I left that book with a really good foundation and the people in Figure Pockets do a great job.

I didn't even know they had a book. I love their podcast, but I didn't know that they had a book.

Yeah, they have a solid podcast. Nice. Thanks man. Oh, a little thing I don't know if you've heard of. I've been preaching this to Matt. But for books, if you're on a book track right now or train, check out Scribed a little app and you get pretty much it's any book you can think of is on There Audiobooks, too.

We should talk them into sponsoring us.

I know, right? I should email them. But check it out. You might dig it.

Nice. Just wrote that down. I'll check it out.

Subscribed. Yeah, man. Well, sweet. So outsourceschool.com, obviously, free up. And there's a three E's in free up too. Just anybody writing that out. So I'll link it all in the show notes and. Yeah, Nate, anything else before we.

Is there anywhere else that you'd want people to go right now? Outsourced school is not ready quite yet. They can obviously go get on the list. Is there any social medias or personal blogs or anything like that? Maybe people can kind of follow along to your journey? Or do you just want them to kind of go to one of those sites? Free up or outsource school?

Yeah, you can check me out on any social media. Therealnate Hirsch on Instagram, on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, on Facebook. Definitely check out the free up stuff. I mean, the YouTube channel, the podcast, the blog. I strongly recommend them, especially if you want more information. But yeah, we'll be putting out more content soon. I'm kind of still in that transition mode. And plus, my parents are here for two months, so taking a little bit of a break and hanging out with them for the holidays.

Awesome, man. Well, sweet. Well, have a good holiday season. By the time this comes out, it'll be like, well past the holidays, but that's okay. Awesome, dude. Well, thank you for your time. We'll link everything in the show notes and looking forward to seeing what outsource school looks like when you launch it, too.

Thanks, guys. Have a good one.

You too. Bye. Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew that, and Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did. Because, you know, he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much. And I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time, and Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of Easy Webinars. So if you look up Casey Zman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn A lot about webinars as well. And right now, Easy Webinar, these guys are actually hooking you up with a great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, Soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to to easywebinar.com hustle that's H U S T L E. If you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to easywebinar.com hustle you can go grab a free trial. And Easy Webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy. And it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing with webinars. I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times, and all these crazy features in between, can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics. What's working, what's not during your webinar. Based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they clicked the offer or if they didn't. Basically, you're going to make more money and you're going to work less with this thing and you're going to create better relationships with the folks that are listening because it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle that's easywebinar.com hustole Alrighty. Righty. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did, if you lasted this long. And go check out Easy Webinar when you get the chance and we will talk to you next time. Bye bye.

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