Creating The Best Place To Find Freelancers | Nathan Hirsch

Hello Everyone! In today’s Facebook Live, I share the screen with Nathan Hirsch. He is the CEO of Freeeup a marketplace to connect business owners to top 1% of the best freelancers.

He started a company from his home in 2006, and he was able to start a business from $20 and scale it up to $30 million in just a couple of years. So Pull your volume up because there is a lot in the interview to listen and implement in your business.

Time-Stamped Keypoints-

[02.00]-Nathan started a dropshipping business on Amazon from his college dorm room in 2008

[03.00]– When dropshipping business was on the peak, he realized that he needs a team to work for him as he had to work 20 hours a day in the season

[03.40]– He was frustrated with the long process of hiring freelancers and virtual assistants, so built his platform for making this process faster

-They get 1000s of Freelancers and VA applicants

-They avail top 1% of the VAs and freelancers to the agencies and companies who need them

-They provide 24*7 support

[04.20]– They have over 15000 virtual assistants, freelancers and they cater 1000s of clients from around the world

[5.01]– He talks about how fast has his revenue grown- their revenue was $9 million in 2018 and tells how his own experiences with hiring led him to start Freeeup

[06.35]– Gerard describes his own experience with hiring on Upwork and Fiverr

[06.53]– Nathan describes how hiring good talent can help the business grow faster and explains why hiring should be a skill that an entrepreneur should take seriously

[07.51]- Nathan tells how is Freeup different from any other hiring agencies

[08.25]– He shares how he got his first ten customers using cold emails, cold outreach and leveraging relationships he had formed in Amazon.

[09.25]– He will share his lead generation process after this facebook live, and he tells in brief how he does his process

[10.25]– Talking about mutual benefits and staying humble in any interaction is the key to lead generation

[11.25]– He shares his lead generation process down in the comments

[11.40]-He describes how Freeeup services are different from any other services out there and how do they do the same things differently than other competitor services

[12.40]-He talks about the future of “gig culture” and how important “taking advantage of Virtual Assistants and Freelancers” is for companies these days

[13.35]- Freeeup has been mentioned in one of Tim Ferris’s podcasts

[14.10]- They have clients and freelancers from all over the world-

-They have clients from all over the world

-They have 40% freelancers from the US, 40% from the Philippines, and rest of the 20% are from across the globe

[16.10]- Gerard shares his own experience with virtual assistants and how have VAs  helped him to keep a balance between his work and life

[16.36]- Nathan gives a glimpse of all the Freelancer services available on the Freeeup- running PPC campaigns, Amazon ads, Facebook ads, handling blogs, E-commerce services and a lot of other services

[17.35]- Gerard tells how using Virtual Assistants have helped grow FTL even fast

[18.01]- Nathan talks about the three different levels of Freelancers expertise, how are they different and shares tips on hiring the best talent for your business

[19.35]- Nathan and Gerard talk about the importance of an expert freelancer and compare their ability and efficiency with basic and mid-level freelancers

[22.00]- Nathan talks about the Clients-Freelancers interaction and company’s role in the interaction 

[22.38]-Nathan shares how to avoid bad hiring

-It is done by setting your expectations upfront

-Give them a chunk of big task you want them to do to check how well they do it

-Give feedback on their performance consistently and suggest improvements

[24.20]-Nathan’s three growth hacks to grow any business

-Set up a referral program and spread it everywhere-talk about it wherever and whenever possible

-Focus on low risk and high reward situation- spend a little amount of money and experiment with different resources and talents for achieving particular aims

-Have an excellent customer service because if you know how to handle difficult clients, you can convert them into long term clients and have them refer you in future

[26.45]-Nathan has been doing different things in marketing-Podcasts, Facebook ads, Google Ads and he is incorporating many different methods for marketing

[27.45]- Nathan’s recommends reading “Start With Why”  by Simon Sinek. This book has helped him grow and enjoy his business.

[29.00]- Gerard and Nathan talk about the importance of user experiences and having a value based foundation for running a business

[29.25]- Nathan explains the reasons to use Freeeup

Webinar concludes.

Nathan also shared his Lead generation tactic-

 In the past 8 years, I’ve built two successful teams of virtual assistants specialized in new customer lead generation.

Both teams were outsourced to the Philippines and it allowed me to grow two multi-million dollar companies without spending a ton on sales and marketing.

Below, I’ve broken it down into the steps anyone can take to do the same.

• Create a set of sales pitches or hire someone that is a really good writer to create them for you. 
• Hire a 2-3 outsourced VA’s in the $5 to $7 per hour range.
• Have a meeting with them to go over your goals. For my first Amazon business, I was focused on manufacturers who a) drop ship b) allow products to be sold on Amazon c) had products that were high ranking on Amazon (I was more specific than just saying high).
• Create an easy-to-use Google doc or sheet for the VA’s to work in. (I even hired a separate VA to set up easy formulas in the sheet to track conversions and people that requested to not be contacted again.
• Write out a sop doc on exactly what to do step by step keeping it simple. For example a) search the site to see if they fit what we are looking for b) grab all email addresses c) enter it into the Google sheet
• Download the app “Yet Another Mail Merge” to help quickly send emails every day to the new customer leads that the team found.
• Give the VA’s a few days to do the work then set up a follow-up meeting. The meeting can focus on a) feedback they have b) ideas they have to make the process better c) errors they made so they could learn from them d) Tweaks or new ideas you come up with.
• Once a day, mail merge 50 new customer leads. With my Amazon business, I contacted 50 new manufacturers each day. For my other company, we contact influencers, business owners and agencies. For the ones that responded, I would schedule a phone call with them and a percentage of those phone calls would become my suppliers/clients.

Key suggestions and Takeaways-

-Nathan’s Website

-Read “Start With Why” and other Books by Simon Sinek

-Freeeup’s Referral program