Nathan Hirsch is the CEO of FreeeUp.com and the COO of Portlight. Nate has been an entrepreneur in the eCommerce industry since 2009 and has grown into a leading expert in the field with experience managing multi-million dollar businesses. He has extensive knowledge in creating business systems and processes, personnel management, hiring remote workers, the Amazon Marketplace, and advanced sales tactics. He is passionate about sharing his knowledge with others and has been featured on leading industry podcasts, webinars, and blogs.
Nate is determined to build FreeeUp into the top hands-on platform for hiring remote workers where thousands of businesses and remote workers are connected. If you're interested in connecting with Nate, shoot him an email at Nathan@FreeeUp.com.
The Transcript
NPC Interview with Nathan Hirsch – 6/13/17
Hugh Ballou: Greetings, everyone. This is the Nonprofit Chat. Tonight’s guest is Nathan Hirsch. I just met Nathan a month ago. I was smart enough to recognize this guy had talent, so I am giving myself credit for that. I posted a little information about you, and I’d prefer for guests to give us a synopsis of what brings you to this discipline that you do so well. I’d like to say your company is called Freeeup.com, and it’s an outsourcing company. The reason I wanted you on this series is because I see so many people who are working at the leadership level that are overfunctioning and doing way too much. We are going to talk about how to leverage time by putting in part-time employees. Nathan, speak a little bit about your journey and why you are so good at what you offer.
Nathan Hirsch: It’s funny. When I first talked to you, I was like, “My mom owns a nonprofit.” I’d seen her journey from being a one-woman show to finally retiring and upgrading the location she was at, having a huge staff, taking more and more off her plate. I got that business, entrepreneurial, delegating mentality from a very young age.
When I was in college, I started a textbook business trying to cut off the school bookstore because I was mad at them for ripping me off and giving me pennies on the dollar when I thought I could get more. Before I knew it, I had lined my college dorm room buying people’s books. That led me to Amazon.com because you don’t sell books for very long without learning about Amazon. Before I knew it, I was running this multi-million-dollar drop-shipping business on Amazon, working with all these different vendors and suppliers, selling stuff out of my college dorm room. It was just me doing everything, from filling orders to answering customer emails. I was driving myself crazy. I was going to college at the same time, trying to have good grades, trying to balance a girlfriend and a million other things that happen while you are at school. I remember going to my accountant one day, and he was like, “So, when are you hiring your first employee?” I was like, “Why would I do that? I don’t want to give my money to someone else. I really enjoy what I’m doing. This is fun. I am going to work seven days a week.” He just laughed in my face.
After that meeting, I quickly got to hiring. I opened up an office and moved stuff around. I ended up getting rid of that and making my company remote. I always ran into hiring dilemmas because I would make really good hires, things like Connor, who was my business partner for a long time. But then I would make bad hires, who cost me time and money and set me back. Although I got better at hiring, the amount of applicants got greater and greater because I was hiring for all these different things. Yes, I perfected this hiring process, but then I found myself in the interview room six hours a day interviewing people, going through multiple rounds and resumes, only to find that some of them, even though I’d vetted them properly, still didn’t work out and cost me money. So I got really frustrated at that and thought there had to be a better way. There had to be a company where I