We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nathan Hirsch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nathan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
In 2015, two college buddies invested $5000 in a business idea. By 2019, they scaled to $12M/year and sold it to change their lives
This is Connor and my story
We had a growing Amazon business and were struggling to hire. College kids were too unreliable and no adults wanted to work for us
A buddy of mine introduced me to my first virtual assistant in the philippines. It opened up a whole new world to me.
Connor and I started building what we would call our virtual assistant army. We had VAs do everything from changing prices, to manufacturer relationships to customer service.
We needed even more vas
I tried hiring through Upwork/Fiverr, but the time it took to find someone and the turnover on these platforms was TOO MUCH. We were wasting 100s of hours and $1000s of dollars trying to hire.
And that’s how I came up with the idea for FreeUp – a vetted freelancer marketplace.
We had all these virtual assistants for our Amazon business. Amazon selling was becoming popular. As Amazon became harder we started offering our vas and freelancers to other Amazon sellers.
FreeeUp was born and it soon surpassed our Amazon profit
Our USP was — only onboarding vetted top 1% of freelancers and Having the best customer service with a no turnover guarantee.. Within 24 hours of putting in a request, a client would get a prevetted va freelancer for their ecom business.
Walking the talk, FreeUp’s whole internal team was made up of great VAs from the Philippines.
It was our first b2b business and it was a lot of fun. We got to learn marketing and SEO. We even came up with our organic marketing blueprint you can grab here (outsourceschool.com/organicmarketing).
I started going on podcasts (And today have been on 800+) and freeeup grew fast
In 4 years, we were able to scale it to $12 ARR. A very profitabl cash flow positive business and sold it to the Hoth (Fun fact: Hoth was a client for FreeUp before they made the offer!)
The sale changed our lives and we started to brainstorm what is next
Nathan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Nathan Hirsch a long time entrepreneur. I have never had a “Real Job”. I started selling textbooks in college on Amazon (2009)
Then I started experimenting with other products. Through a lot of trial and error I came across baby products (lol I know). This business blew up and I needed help. I hired Connor Gillivan from my business law class. Later he became my long time business partner.
We struggled to hire. Outside of Connor and most of the college kids we hired were unreliable. One day a buddy of mine introduced us to virtual assistants which was a game changer. We built an army of Vas to run this Amazon business. We ran this business for 7 years selling over 25 mill with a phenomenal team.
Ecom sellers started asking us to use our VAs/ Freelancers and we had the idea to start out our freelance/va marketplace. FreeeUp was born and It quickly surpassed our Amazon sales.
We scaled FreeeUp for 4 years building our internal team to 30 full time VAs in the Philippines (And thousands of freelancers/ vas on the platform). FreeeUp grew fast going from 1m, 5m, 9m, 12m revenue in each of the 4 years we ran it.
In Nov 2019 we were acquired by one of our clients named the Hoth. We couldn’t have sold it to more high value human beings. I could write a whole post on this, but the sale changed our life.
It allowed me to buy a 2nd house. Become a foster parent. Spend more time with friends and family and so much more.
The original plan after selling FreeeUp was to take a year off a travel. I didn’t think I would see Connor for a year lol. Then came the pandemic and we were stuck inside. A friend of ours Nate McCallister had an idea about an outsourcing course which we jumped on. Outsource School was born along with us sharing our hiring process with the world for the first time.
We now sell our exact hiring process at OutsourceSchool.com.
We also started consulting with Ecom sellers and quickly realized we hated being consultants lol. However the common theme was we had to help people revamp their monthly bookkeeping processes. This gave us an idea.
After interviewing 100+ ecommerce sellers that we knew, hiring a team and launching a beta round of clients EcomBalance was born late 2021.
In 2022 we launched a sister company AccountsBalance.com that offers monthly bookkeeping For agencies, SAAS, & Online businesses.
We scale all our businesses with our blog as our backbone. In 2023 we launched TrioSEO a blog writing service.
We continue to scale TrioSEO, EcomBalance, AccountsBalance and Outsource School!
We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.
We sold FreeeUp in 2019.
https://freeeup.com/blog/freeeup-updates/freeeup-acquired-by-hoth/
You can’t sell your business if you are the face of it right?
We have all heard that
It is not true!!!!! (I was the face of FreeeUp before it was acquired)……..but
here is the key
If you are doing the promotion and the marketing, that can be replaced.
People can come in with a different and better marketing/sales strategy.
If you are doing the day-to-day operations no one will buy your business
You need to build a team, have strong SOPS, and most importantly Team leaders!
The key to even having the opportunity to sell FreeeUp, outside of the (great customer service, talented freelancers, etc) was that the day-to-day operations and the fulfillment could run without me.
Yes I would talk to clients and check in from time to time…..but
If I disappeared for 3 weeks the business might not grow as fast, but it could 100% run without me.
It came down to good processes and a hardworking reliable team that cared about the company.
You can always be replaced as the salesperson/ marketer………very tough to replace you if the day-to-day operations or the fulfillment depends on you
Other things that were important
1) Great hiring and SOPS
2) Monthly Bookkeeping – One of the best decisions we ever made was hiring a bookkeeper from day one. We were able to make great decisions each month based on what the numbers were telling us and when we went to sell we had 4 years of imaculate books that helped us pass due dilegence.
3) SEO – SEO was the backbone marketing. We invested in it early and it paid off
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Originally we were in the same business law class together at Quinnipiac University.
We were in a few groups together nothing crazy. I was a year older.
A year later when my ecommerce business was growing I was looking to hire someone for really boring work.
Manually changing prices each day and entering every transaction into quickbooks at the end of each month. (This was before I learned to hire a great bookkeeping service like AccountsBalance)
I posted on Facebook that I was looking for someone and in the middle of one of my classes I get a message from Connor Gillivan the kid in my business law class.
He didn’t know what my business did (no one understood Amazon at the time) but he needed a job.
I talked to him briefly and said your hired.
I didn’t have a very strategic interview process back then (Like Outsource School) lol. We set a start date for his first shift.
The day of his start day I get a call from Connor telling me he didn’t have a car. He lived on campus and I lived in a house off campus.
He needed a ride and I reluctantly picked him up.
Connor Gillivan gave his all to the most mind numbing tasks. Everyday I had to pick him up and drop him back off but during those car rides we just talked business.
I had never met someone as excited about business as I was.
A year later I made him a partner on my Amazon business and when I started FreeeUp he was the first person I asked to join me.
Contact Info:
- Website: nathanhirsch.com, https://connorgillivan.com/, https://trioseo.com/, https://ecombalance.com/, and https://accountsbalance.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanhirsch99/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nathan.hirsch/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhirsch/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NathanHirsch99
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSFkqsHfbq-y1Y56NP50XgA
- Other: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gtyDTPiqVbt7_utePmLZuAcuGr3wZsiLo9AiKp6_Xzk/edit