Show Me The Nuggets

Joe Troyer

How to Build a $10 Million Per Year Business Through the Power of Outsourcing with Nathan Hirsch

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Nathan Hirsch founded FreeUp, a marketplace for pre-vetted freelancers that provides online business owners with a faster and more reliable way to hire talent. Nathan sold FreeUp for over $10 Million and started Outsource School, an online training resource for scaling your business through outsourcing. 

In this episode, Nathan shares the story of his wildly successful entrepreneurial journey. From selling over $25 Million worth of baby products on Amazon (while still in college) to turning one of his major overheads into a massive profit center in FreeUp, Nathan shares insights that can help you achieve crazy results for your business.

Show Notes

  • Nathan’s entrepreneurial start {1:50}
  • Early days of Outsourcing {2:53}
  • The Vision for FreeUp {3:50}
  • Turning expenses into profits {4:45}
  • The 80/20 to FreeUp’s success {8:02}
  • How the sale of FreeUp materialized {9:49}
  • Best advice to someone selling their company {11:18}
  • Due diligence and organization {12:57}
  • Building a business that’s saleable {14:04}
  • The beginning of Outsource School {15:59}
  • How to avoid turnover {19:02}
  • The B.A.R.F Method {20:55}
  • The value of exit interviews {24:11}
  • What your first hires should be {25:13}
  • Nathan’s future plans {28:32}
  • Parting shots {29:31}
  • Nathan’s book recommendations {31:14}

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Joe Troyer 0:52
Hey everybody, it's Joe Troyer, and welcome to show me the nuggets. I am honored today to have Nathan Hirsch on today. And we're going to be talking about how Nathan has built a $10 million per year business through the power of outsourcing and his background with with FreeUp and now Outsource School. And if you guys don't know him, if you're looking at building a team, you're looking at outsourcing definitely somebody that we're following in the space and I believe you should be to aka why we're having him here on the podcast. So welcome, Nathan, officially to the show.

Nathan Hirsch 1:24
Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. love talking about businesses and scaling and hiring. So should be a lot of fun.

Joe Troyer 1:31
So just real quick, I guess just for some perception for the audience, some impressive accomplishments, man, sold Free Up for $10 million. Our team found out you built a $22 million company at 22 years old, and you sold over $30 million in the Amazon market. Man. That's that's super impressive.

Nathan Hirsch 1:50
Yeah, thanks. It's funny, I kind of got into being an entrepreneur. Just because I didn't want to get a real job after college, I had done some internships and work for other people. And I realized it wasn't for me. So I started hustling when I got to college, started selling textbooks, eventually got into Amazon, and through a lot of trial and error figured out that I was decently good at selling baby products on Amazon, so scaled that business. But I always ran into hiring issues. I mean, being a 20 year old, no one in the real world really took me seriously. And college kids, what I learned were pretty unreliable. So I got into the VA space out of necessity, I needed help to grow my business. And from there, it was years of trying to figure out the perfect system, perfect process. And when it all came together, that's when we were able to start Free Up and scale it and eventually become acquired.

Joe Troyer 2:42
That's fantastic, man. So, before getting into Free Up, what were the things that you were outsourcing mostly, or having VAs work on in the business? Like Where have you found success yourself?

Nathan Hirsch 2:52
Yeah, so we started off with customer service of my Amazon business. So we were drop shipping from other manufacturers, we weren't using Amazon's warehouse. So there was an extra level of customer service support that we essentially had to be on Amazon's level of customer service while not using all of their resources. So we had to train very high level VAs to handle all sorts of different returns going back to different manufacturers. From there, we had them do inventory. And there wasn't a lot of Amazon software back then that was this was 2009 to 2014. So there wasn't even the helium 10s of the world or a lot of the popular softwares now. So we really optimize all the different operations of this Amazon drop shipping business had a lot of trial and error things that lessons we learned along the way, a lot of stuff that we teach today. But but that was really the start of it was optimizing this Amazon business.

Joe Troyer 3:42
So you mentioned Free Up, can you give a little explanation of like, what was what was the goal with Free Up? What was the vision?

Nathan Hirsch 3:50
Yeah, so once we had come up with a really good hiring process, it worked. We knew it worked, but it just took too long to post a job on Upwork or Fiverr. We get 50 people to apply, we'd have to go through and do 10, 20, 30 interviews, and we kept looking for a marketplace that that would just provide us one to three people that were already vetted. That would save us a little bit of the work, we still wanted to put them through our interviewing and onboarding process. We wanted to save time and we wanted protection. We wanted a marketplace that was held accountable if something went wrong, that would have good customer service that if someone quit, they cover replacement costs and and lower the risk on our end because turnover is an absolute killer when you're a small business.

So we kept looking and looking and when we couldn't find it. We said you know what, we'll build this ourselves. And we created a marketplace that pre vetted people match them up quickly, had great support had a no turnover guarantee. And we really started leasing out our virtual assistants. We had this very seasonal ecommerce business so we didn't need people all them full time. We started offering them to other Amazon sellers. They really liked the concept of being able to come to us and get talent quickly and from there. We ran out of people, we had to start recruiting and we built the marketplace from there.

Joe Troyer 5:04
I love it man like you, you build it out of necessity. But not only that, like you pulled a Roland and one of the things he talks about all the time, like turning your expenses into profits, right? You figured out how to take your seasonal business and take the cost that you had associated with your team and your VA is that we're not really doing much because it was seasonal, and figured out how to turn that actually into a profit instead of an an expense and build a whole brand new business and opportunity. In the meanwhile.

Nathan Hirsch 5:32
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we so we built this business FreeUp to eight figures. But we did it only hiring people from Free Up. So the same way that people would go in and get VAs and freelancers, we were doing the same thing. So we almost got like the 1% of the 1%. We use that and we grew it all our teams from marketing to lead generation to customer service with virtual assistants from her own platform.

At the end of the day, what do you think was there like 80/20 in getting Free Up to really become successful in what I would say is like a really competitive space? Right, like there's no shortage of hiring services or hiring platforms out there?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, we really tried to focus on pain points. And the same pain points that I had other people had to they didn't like the other platforms, because they took too long they didn't match people quickly, the support was bad, or they had a bad customer service experience, or they didn't have any protection. So we really played off that and double down on that. And once people started having that incredible experience, we set up a referral program early on where people would get 50 cents for every hour that they billed to someone they refer that we build to someone they referred forever so that kind of hit the ground running and gained momentum on the spot we had people going to conferences and telling other people about Free Up and then from there we added podcasts and obviously I go on podcasts

Even now I think they're a great way to grow your business and network with other people and and it leads to is a snowballing effect and all that. And then affiliates we went after influencers we said hey, we're going to target the e commerce space we're going to target the marketing space let's let's work with as many different influencers as possible in those spaces. And by the end of year two or three we're paying out hundreds of thousand dollars in referral money we've got influencers that are a B and C in the e commerce in the marketing industry promoting us and then we also have our going on podcast getting backlinks and getting in front of thousands of people at once. So you combine those together and by the way we use VAs to do all those things. That that was really how we hit the ground running especially without spending much money on ad

That's awesome. So fast forward then how did the sale of FreeUp materialize? Were you guys looking to exit that it just kind of stumble? You know, do you guys stumble into it or just kind of walk into it one day, how that actually ended up happening?

Nathan Hirsch 9:49
Yeah, so Mark and David, the owners of the Hoth they were actually Free Up clients so they used Free Up for a year so I've had a few conversations with Mark and and he reached out to me one day, telling me that. They want to get into the VA Freelancer space, they actually own a bunch of other companies besides the Hoth but they thought VA s and Freelancer marketplace could really compliment all those companies. And they didn't want to start from scratch. They didn't want to build it themselves.

So they were interested in acquiring us at that time, we weren't necessarily looking to be acquired. I mean, we're pretty logical business owners, like there's only so many ways you grow a company, right? You either run into the ground, you run it forever, you get investor, an outside investor, which we didn't want to do, or you sell it. So that one of four options in there. And we heard them out, we gave them information, they ended up coming back to us with an offer that we felt like was more than fair, if not aggressive. And then the due diligence began, then they had a million questions for us. We had just as many questions for them. I mean, we wanted to make sure that we were selling it to someone who was going to take really good care of our team, our clients or our reputation, that wasn't going to drive free up into the ground, because it's a company that we continue to love to this day. And so from there, I mean, that's really how I got off the ground.

Joe Troyer 11:03
That's awesome, man, what do you what do you think is the most valuable advice that you could give to yourself or to another entrepreneur, after going through that, and going through the sale of Free Up, as you actually got to experience that firsthand?

Nathan Hirsch 11:18
This was actually the advice that someone gave me. And I think we did a pretty good job of it on it is trying to stay focused and act like the business is not going to sell act like the other party is going to back out at any given time. And I mean, it's tough to do, I mean, the negotiation and it wasn't their fault, or our fault. There's lawyers, there's processes, there's a lot of stuff that goes in there. So we're talking four to six months, somewhere in there. And we had my business partner, Connor and I, we had to keep each other focus where we're like, Hey, what are the projects we're working on? What are our goals?

Let's make sure that we're hitting them, how are we expanding it and making sure that we're not just losing sight of the business and what's working and not growing, and then they back out, and then we don't have a great business to go back to so we kept each other accountable. And it wasn't easy. We ended up having our best month at the time that we were there the last month but torn between before we sold it, but I mean, imagine if the opposite had happened, that could have been an absolute disaster. So I thought that was very good advice. And I definitely pass that advice out to anyone looking to sell their company.

Joe Troyer 12:19
Yeah, I think it's so hard. I mean, due diligence is a train wreck, mentally, it's so hard. There's so much documents to pull together. Unless you're like, I don't know, a CFO and really understand all of that. I mean, it could be a full time job just doing that. And if you don't have somebody that can handle it, it just takes over your world like I've been there, it takes over all of your mindset as well. And and it's really hard not to let the revenue and the profitability kind of trail off while you're working on the exit. So so great advice. And it's really cool to hear that good. best month ever literally right before you exited. That's awesome.

Nathan Hirsch 12:57
Yeah, I mean, one thing I'll add is us just being organized with everything was a huge help during due diligence. I mean, they would ask a question in the morning, and by the afternoon, we had everything put together because our books were intact. We had SOPs and systems for everything. They said, hey, how does customer service work? And we send them over 50 Pages document of exactly who knows what, when and every single situation and something that we didn't have, we had a team that that could pull it. I mean, we didn't want the team to know we could selling the business. But we would ask for different reports. And we had a billing team that was able to put all that together for us. So my business partner, and I didn't have to spend hours and hours there. So if you set up good systems with good people early on, it's going to save you a lot of time if you ever do get to that due diligence process.

Joe Troyer 13:39
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I'm curious like with with everything that you do now, you start with with the end in mind, do you think that one day it could be for sale? So it's like, the time investment up front when you're starting Outsource School is like yeah, I mean, we have to have the right team members, the systems, the processes, does that just kind of make that even more real for you, so to speak.

Nathan Hirsch 14:01
Yeah. And I think even before we sold, that we always had the mentality to build a business that was scalable. So it just gave us that option. And then you if you make a business that runs without you from an operation standpoint, at least then you always kind of have the option. Do you put it into a lifestyle business? Do you sell it, but you don't have those choices if you're doing everything yourself?

And I think the one thing that people were telling me throughout the entire four years because I was kind of like the face of Free Up, I would go on the podcast, people I would know people in the different space and there was like Nate, you shouldn't do that. Because it can be very, very tough to sell. But what we ended up realizing and even just talking to the new buyers is all of that's replaceable. Like they can go in with a new lead generation process, a new marketing process, a new whatever, on that side of it. But if the actual operations the business ran without us, then you're in trouble. No one's really buying that business. If we don't know how customer service works or we're responding. you're filling every request or whatever. So

We we had a marketing team and but we were a little bit more of the face, but the entire operations ran without us. And that's the kind of business that we want to run. And even now, so with Outsource School of school, we never really mastered the the paid ads component of Free Up, it's just a tough business model to do it not impossible. I'm sure that the new buyers will do a better job than us. But it's free to sign up. There's no minimums, there's no maximum if people start and stop just makes measuring ROI very hard. But now we know how to hire we know how to grow organically. Without Outsource School, we can add that ad element in which we're learning and we're hiring for right now. And that's when you really bring it all together, where Hey, the marketing doesn't depend on you, the operations doesn't depend on you. And that allows you hopefully, to be able to have your company worth even more down the line.

Joe Troyer 15:48
That's why that's awesome, man. So you brought up Outsource School? Can you talk about transitioning and exsiting from Free Up and deciding on like what you are going to do with the rest of your life?

Nathan Hirsch 15:59
Yeah, so once we sold Free Up at the the first conversation was between my partner and I, hey, are we sick of each other? Do we still want to work together? What's that look like? And luckily, he wasn't sick of me and vice versa. And from there, it became what do we want to do? And we started listening to podcasts and reading books on real estate and buying businesses. And we started having people reach out to us, asking us if we could teach them our systems, our processes. And this is stuff that we spent years figuring out, we did the same thing with our Amazon business, as we did with with three up to now.

Okay, do we want to share these processes with the world, all the things that saved us time saved us energy allowed us to become scalable, and that's when we started working on the Outsource School prototype, and building out this membership where people get access to our trainings on how to not only hire, but build team leaders create customer service teams, bookkeeping teams, all these different things that we kind of launched not really knowing if people were gonna like it or hate it. And in our mind, it was kind of a low risk, high reward, right? Like we spent a few months working on something, if it doesn't work, we refund everyone give them their money back and move on to something else. But people really liked it, they kept asking for more. And we've kind of gone down this path now where we see a lot of opportunities for this to kind of fuel different ideas and different ventures that we want to do.

Joe Troyer 17:21
So obviously, the name Outsource School kind of implies what you guys do. But could you talk a little bit more about what you guys actually do it outsource school?

Nathan Hirsch 17:30
Yeah, so you get systems that are going to help you be able to hire rockstars whenever you need to be able to avoid turnover and costly issues, and be able to save time by creating by using our systems for creating teams and save you time on standard operating procedures. We provide you with our SOPs a software for creating SOPs support community to help you grow and scale with live coaching calls and, and support from my team and our exact processes for setting up teams. So you're getting access to step by step stuff to help you grow your business with virtual assistants and support along the way.

Joe Troyer 18:04
That's great, really good, really interesting stuff. I'm a member I've went through, I've looked at your staff really good. One of the things that you said twice now is you've talked about turnover and the cost of turnover and the time of turnover. And you're able to, with Free Up, right actually build into the guarantee something with turnover as well. Can you talk about what you found has worked in terms of turnover, because obviously, you have found some things that have worked and turnover is huge. I mean, not even just from the cost perspective. But I think even more importantly the time perspective, right? Getting 60, 90 days into a project and then having to gut the contractor or the employee and fire them and let them go. I mean, that sucks for them. They probably just left the job for you. And then you got to start back over from zero again. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how do you avoid turnover? How do you make that as small as possible?

Nathan Hirsch 19:02
Yeah, and this is something that we spent years trying to figure out with our Amazon business, we had very high turnover. I mean, we were young entrepreneurs, we didn't really know what we were doing in terms of managing or hiring virtual assistants. But with Free Up, the same people we hired in week 1, 2, 3 and four were with Free Up four years later when we sold it. We had very little turnover throughout the four years and they're still with free up a year later. So we're a big proponent that that turnover just crushes businesses and as an entrepreneur, your job as a leader is to be able to reduce it not only hire great people, but keep them around especially when you've invested time and energy into them. So for us it turnover is a bunch of different parts. Part of it is setting expectations up front you and I were chatting about that before the podcast, making sure that that what they want is also what you want because there's some really talented people out there that just don't want to work for Outsource School or maybe they think they want to work for Outsource School.

But they don't actually want to once they understand what it's about what's expected of them, how we run, how we manage things. So getting on the same page with expectations is key. From there, it's about the meetings and the feedback. So many people mess that up whenever people are having issues with VAs is my first two questions are, how did you onboard them setting expectations? But also, how often are you meeting with them? What kind of meetings are you having with them, and we get out, we give out our templates for a weekly all hands on deck meeting with all the VA's getting them on the same page, and weekly meetings, I just got back from vacation. And we're hiring a new sales VA to do sales calls with people that are interested in joining our school.

And there were some confusion between our onboarding people in our sales people and our team leader, and the ability to be able to jump in quickly and have a meeting and get everyone on the same page where everyone leaves a meeting and knows what the plan is. That's the kind of stuff that that's motivating. And then the last factor is what we call our BARF method, which is a funny acronym, but we couldn't get it to spell anything else.

And that's getting them to buy in show appreciation, build a relationship and create a family. And when you do those four things, and this isn't rocket science, it's not something you have to do 10 hours a day, it's small actions you can take throughout the day or at meetings or once a day or signing off before the weekend, to get them to buy into what your company is doing. Show them that you appreciate their work and not just talk to them, whenever they make a mistake, get to know them on a personal level, and then get to know have them know each other on a personal level. Because if they like each other, if they think of the team as a family, they're not going to want to leave. So a combination of the expectations, the meetings, and that that BARF method is really how we're able to eliminate turnover.

Joe Troyer 21:47
Yeah, I think that's so smart. I've seen so many people that we've worked with agencies or agencies that we've mentored, definitely having major challenges when it comes to building and managing and team. And a lot of them would say it's a VA problem, but it's really just a building and managing a team. Because if you hired other people, it would still be the same issue. Right? The often case that we find is people are just hiring VA is because it's cheaper, and then expecting them to overnight, right? Like just make their workload disappear, right? And they go from zero to hero. And that's not really I don't think the right expectation, right? Like you got to have that fieldbook feedback loop. You got to work with them. You got to bring them up to speed, you got to make sure that you build a relationship that they feel like they're part of the team. What are your thoughts on that side of things?

Nathan Hirsch 22:37
Yeah, so to kind of give a background, I never had a real job after college. So I had some internships. And during the internships, I had some managers that were not the best managers in the world. But as a young person, I didn't know that that's not how you manage people. So I took a lot of those tactics and applied them to my Amazon business. Well, the result was I stressed everyone out, they didn't like working for me, they quit. And we had lots of turnover. And like you said, it was very easy to blame other people Oh, no one's reliable. Like it's impossible to hire whatever the excuses are. But what ended up changing my mentality is, I did an exit interview. And I don't know if you've ever done an exit interview before, they're incredibly uncomfortable. But they're worth doing. And so we we sat down with someone who had quit on us, it was like the third consecutive person to quit for a position.

And we just asked for feedback. And this guy hit me to the core, he told me everything that was wrong with my management style, with how we run meetings with how we communicate with how we set expectations, all the stuff that we were doing wrong that that now we've mastered. And the last part of it always kind of stood out to me said, this is the first time in X amount of time he had done with the company that we had actually asked him for his feedback and asked him for his his idea. So I mean, I should have written that guy a check right there, because that information saved me thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousand dollars over the next few years hiring and actually retaining talent, but you really do have to look in the mirror as an entrepreneur and take responsibility and figure out what parts can I change to to reduce or eliminate turnover, because there's a lot of people with with not unique business ideas. We live in the world of agencies and Amazon sellers and all this stuff. But they're able to grow because they hire good people, and they keep them around. And that's really what the key is where other people will stutter because they just keep hiring for the same positions over and over and over again without making any changes.

Joe Troyer 24:32
100% Yeah, that feedback loop doesn't exist and they keep running into a brick wall. repeatedly, right. What's the Albert Einstein quote? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Yeah, that's great job was working with Free Up and also with Outsource School. When when you're working with agencies or marketers or businesses, what do you what are the first couple of hires that you recommend or what's the first hire that you would recommend when somebody comes to you? And they're like, hey, Nate, I saw you on a podcast. It was great. I'm definitely feeling overworked. I have some budget, right? I could hire a VA or two. I feel like I get that question a lot when talking about bringing on people like, what do you advise them to start?

Nathan Hirsch 25:19
Yeah, and one of the cool things we added recently to Outsource School is anyone that signs up. And I think you probably signed up before we implemented this, but they get an onboarding call with the VA's from my team that helped them map out a roadmap roadmap, because everyone's a little bit different, right? Like we get people that have never hired a VA before. We just got to get them to hire one person get five hours a week back, see what that changes in their life in their business. And then they can expand out from there. Other people, they might have US employees, and they know how to hire but they've never hired VA's before. So then it kind of comes down to are you trying to get your time back and get operations stuff like billing and bookkeeping and, and stuff like that? Or are you going more growth, you already have the operations in place, and you want to hire VAs to do lead generation to get you on podcast to find influencers to build your partnership program. So part of it and some people need both, and other people just need to start with one and then move to the other.

So everyone's a different place, it's tough to kind of answer that overall question. I will say that that personally, my two hires, for every business that I start is someone who do my bookkeeping, my billing and my reports so that I don't have to do that. And if I did, it would just get done incorrectly anyway, so I want good control my numbers from day one, and VA two to be my VA to work out of my inbox and clear my emails before I mess up so that I can focus on what I should be focusing on and not have the distractions of making bad decisions with numbers or being my inbox 10 hours a day.

Joe Troyer 26:46
I love, I love your feedback, I think it is down to everybody, you know, has to make a decision for themselves. But what you just said I think is is speaks to me a lot. I feel like when I first started outsourcing, I was really obsessed with, they got to be able to get an end result. And they got to be able to pay for themselves. And I was more obsessed with that then figuring out how to take things away from me. Right and to free up my time and my energy and my mental space. And one of the shifts I've made lately is is an EA an executive assistant, right where it's just my personal VA, like you said, right? she handles the calendar, she handles my emails, she starts our meetings and kind of runs the meetings. And that has made all of the difference in the world to like my lifestyle and my quality of life. So really interesting that you said that. And then yeah, billing is is super important as well. I don't have a VA for that. But I like that recommendation.

Nathan Hirsch 27:47
Yeah, it's fun, like once you start hiring VAs is your brain just starts running with all the things that you can hire VA for. And there's a certain trial and error component to like with lead generation, you might not hire a VA and get leads on day one. But if you have them running behind the scenes for 10 bucks a day, two hours a day, or whatever it is trying different things. Eventually you're going to come across something that works. And we like doing a little bit of experimentation along with the stuff that we know we need to hire for.

Joe Troyer 28:15
Yeah, I love that. experimentation is a cool idea, too. Awesome. We've talked a lot about free app, we've talked about outsourced school, I'd love to ask you like what's in the future, right? Where's your heads? Where's your head at? Where's your mindset at? Where are you guys trying to go as a company and you as an individual as well, Nate?

Nathan Hirsch 28:32
Yeah. So I think we could go a lot of different directions here. I mean, right now we're focused on Outsource School and growing that. We have our software Simply SOP, which is a tool for creating and sharing SOPs. And we actually include that with Outsource School. I think there's potential for us to get involved in different businesses and actually help them set up VA teams. I know Roland, I've been with Roland Frazier's epic group, and he talked about buying businesses getting equity in business. So I think once we I think we have a little bit of work to do on Outsource School, and just perfecting the whole funnel and the message and everything, like any year one of any business.

But I think at some point, we kind of get to that point where okay, what can we do in addition to help our community help the Outsource School members that want that? And yeah, I'm not sure where the world would take me. I mean, if, if you asked me 10 years ago, if I'd be selling baby products on Amazon, I probably wouldn't have believed you. And if you asked me five years before that, if I'd be running a freelance marketplace, wouldn't believe you or even a year ago, if I would have sold Free Up and be moving to something else. So life has a funny way of taking you in different directions. But I kind of like the trajectory that we're on it and the space that we're in.

Joe Troyer 29:35
Awesome. And so in terms of parting shots, on anything that you think we need to share with the audience in terms of outsourcing best practices, or don't do's or anything that maybe I didn't cover, I didn't ask or we didn't get to cover.

Nathan Hirsch 29:49
Yeah, I mean, I could talk about this for an hour, right. But we I mean, we talked about expectations. We talked about meeting we talked about reducing turnover. We didn't talk about interviewing that much. We have what we call our carrierinterview process. And I guess my biggest tip there is, don't just focus on someone's experience, make sure that you're focusing on their culture and culture fit and attitude and communication while you're interviewing them as well. I mean, we really look for that trifecta. Before we hire anyone, then we set the expectations, then we run the meetings and all that. And if people want to learn more about that, they can go to Outsource School and check it out. And we have a coupon for you. If anyone uses Invisible PPC, you save 20% on the outside school membership.

Joe Troyer 30:28
Awesome, man. So one last question, then, instead of asking you to recommend three books, which I feel like every podcast does, I like to ask a little bit of a different question. I'm an avid reader. But I'll either pick up a book and read it like cover, like from front to the end, like in one sitting or pick it up. I read a chapter and I'm like, right. And I've I've made it okay with myself to do that. I wasn't always that way. I used to think you've had to read a book, you know, from start to finish. So I like to ask my podcast guests a little bit of a different question. So I want to ask you, what's the one book that you feel like has made the biggest impact on the way that you do business, the way that you ran Free Up the way that you ran Outsource School? And why?

Nathan Hirsch 31:14
Yeah, so Start With Why Simon Sinek. And I'll give you the reason. So with the Amazon business, it was fun. It was exciting. It was my first entrepreneurial endeavor. But there's no why behind that business, right, we were pushing products, babu products on Amazon, because they were profitable, and moved to Free Up. I mean, we're helping other entrepreneurs, which is a lot more fun, but we're alsoe helping freelancers, and people are showing me their houses and their cars and stuff they were able to pay to buy with that millions of dollars that we paid out to them every single year. And even with Outsource School, we didn't want to just sell free up and be like, oh by VAs like See you later, we donate 3% of all our sales to our favorite charity. I teach for the Philippines and we have a strong why in there plus helping other entrepreneurs as well. So I think that kind of shifted my mindset. I think a lot of entrepreneurs there, they're all about the money and the opportunity no matter what it is where I'm kind of at the point in my life where I only want to do something if I feel like there's a real why and a real purpose behind it.

Joe Troyer 32:07
That's awesome. And somebody from the audience wanted to connect with you where's the best place to connect on social media Instagram, maybe Facebook?

Nathan Hirsch 32:15
Yeah, Facebook, LinkedIn Instagram, I'm pretty active you can follow me there. I post a lot of content about hiring and you can go to Outsource School you can join either monthly for 97 bucks a month, or yearly it's normally 997 but if used coupon invisible PPC you save 20%

Joe Troyer 32:30
awesome brother. Thank you for coming on. I know people are gonna love this episode. definitely been valuable. Lots of little nuggets that takeaway for everybody and want to have you back on in the future to catch up again.

Nathan Hirsch 32:39
Thanks for having me.

Joe Troyer 32:40
Alright, guys, Joe Troyer signing out.

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