306 : Nathan Hirsch – Hiring remote workers (VA’s) with the proper skills, attitude and communication skills are the keys to a successful team

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It is so cool to witness Nathans success. Well deserved. Again effort bring results. Knowing who you are, knowing what you love to do and even more important knowing what you do not love to do is what separates an intentional life from a life that happens to you. Great advice on how to impact what you are doing today.

Mentioned:

Nathans previous interview # 122

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Nathan’s contact is on this page

Sponsors

Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)

Stephen:                             [00:00]                     I’m excited to talk about my sponsors today, Gaye Lisby’s million dollar arbitrage group. Amazing, amazing group. This is a teacher. This is a Gaye, she was a teacher. She is a teacher. Still. You need to learn. This is the type of environment you want to be in because she’s going to help you understand why, and I think that’s the hardest part of this business is understanding why. Why is the red one popular when the green one isn’t? Well, there’s usually a reason and what gay does is probably parse that better than anybody and she’ll explain the reasons for those things. I think that’s really powerful. Yes, she puts out a list. You’re going to get a good use of that list if you get in the group. Now here’s the deal. The group isn’t always open, right? So you get on the waiting list and you can join the waiting list through my link.

Stephen:                             [00:46]                     I’m doesn’t cost anything to get on a waiting list and if you like her service, which I find that most people do that, that’s why there’s not so many openings. Um, you’ll be with her for a long time. And so it’s amazing freedom.com. She’s part of Andy Slam. It’s group amazing freedom.com. Forward slash momentum. And you’re going to get in the waiting list. That’s all I can get you on right now. You can use my name and see if that gets you anywhere. But what I like about in the uh, what I like about what they teach in that group or the things that are going on, you know, the current things. I’ve seen a lot of stuff going on about stores going out of business. Well here’s where an opportunity is, here’s why you want to do this. Hey, be cautious about this, you know, with toys r US coming out, you’ve got to think about this and that’s the learning that you need to do.

Stephen:                             [01:30]                     And Gay is better than anybody else I’ve seen. So amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash momentum will get you to the waiting list. Then hopefully we can get you in the group and then you’re going to see me in there and we can chat anytime you’re ready. Karen lockers, group solutions, the number for ecommerce solutions, four ecommerce.com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you 50 bucks. Karen’s our account manager. We recommend her to everyone because she’s done so well for us. I mean that’s quite frankly the reason we’ve been paying her for last few years, but she’s become an important part of our team. Her and her team are so involved in our account. I just see the emails coming back and forth, hey, we did this for you. I just saw two listings today. I’m like, wait a second. Why did they show up? I didn’t put any listings up.

Stephen:                             [02:11]                     They got a. They got a set off to the side by Amazon and they reactivate them for me. You know what I mean? That’s the stuff that just happens when you have a strong team and I can’t recommend Karen enough if you use my code. Momentum. Karen pays me. I don’t want to hide that. Of course we all know that, but you’re going to save $50 and it’s a great opportunity to really, really build out your team with somebody you can trust. It’s why I recommend them. So solutions four ecommerce solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50. Oh, and by the way, she’s going to do an inventory health report. Why is that important? Well, guess what fees are going up. Is your inventory health number declining like ours is? Well, here’s why and what they can do.

Stephen:                             [03:00]                     What I like is I get a spreadsheet from them and it says, Hey, here’s a bunch of inventory. Here’s what we recommend. And I’m like, Yup, refund. I mean delete a return to us, blah blah blah, whatever it is and it’s or destroy and it just happens. That’s what I like. The other thing that I have Karen helped me with a lot is creating new listings. You know, we do a lot of the research ourselves. We upload our images and then boom, magically the listing goes live and I don’t have to worry about it. Those are the services that Karen offers. CanNot recommend her enough solutions. Four ecommerce.com forward slash momentum. Save 50 bucks. Use My code. You save $50 a month every single month and it’s a great service. Plus you get that free inventory health report. I think it’s a really powerful way, so I can’t.

Stephen:                             [03:45]                     I’m so excited how many people have been joining her because I see it and I’m excited because the messages I get from people are saying, hey, this is great. I finally feel like I can focus on something else because Karen and her team are watching this for me and you know, I highly recommend her. Next up is scale and scope and we’ll set it wrong. It’s, it’s amazing. I mean, it really is amazing when you sit back and think about, hey, I want to get this product up and it’s similar to this product and that’s what that product does well. Well therefore, if that product does well, they have the right keywords, they’ve chosen things correctly, so guess what? You scope and you could see all that stuff and that’s what the most powerful thing in the world is to copy somebody who’s done it right.

Stephen:                             [04:28]                     That’s what you want to. You want to take advantage of that, right? I mean it’s, it’s fair to see and so therefore you can take and apply it to your listing and immediately get that same benefit. That’s what scope does for me. Sellerlabs.com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50 on the service. Oh, by the way, it’s free to try. So sign up, try it and say, oh, this is how it’s done. Boom. And then you’re going to. The light’s going to go on and you’re going to be like, man, I can get my products out there. I just can’t wait. Can’t wait. So are labs.com forward slash momentum? The other day I bought in another domain. Yes, I bought it other domain. It’s almost like A. I’m admitting guilt, but it’s because I had an idea and it was something that was a pretty good idea I think is going to go pretty far.

Stephen:                             [05:18]                     And so what do I do? I go to try Godaddy.com forward slash momentum and save 30 percent. So domains aren’t very expensive. You get a few services, it adds up a little bit and I usually buy three years. I usually by privacy, by the way, I recommend that to buy that, you know, it’s not that much money, but when you can save 30 percent it makes it that much sweeter and it makes it easier when you’re buying domains and especially if you buy a bunch of domains. I am a domain collector and so I do tend to do that, but that 30 percent makes it a lot easier and I use godaddy because what I like is I can pop in and address, I’m thinking and it’ll say, nope, nope, try this version or try this extension and then boom, there it is. Hey, you better hurry before it goes away and the right, you know.

Stephen:                             [06:01]                     And so try Godaddy.com, forward slash momentum save 30 percent. Also want to mention about grasshopper. Who was that? Just talking to somebody the other day and they were like, Oh yeah, use this company called grasshopper. I’m like, Dude, did you buy it through my link and save 30 percent? Hello? No, they missed that. So save 30 percent. It’s try grasshopper.com. Forward slash momentum. No surprise there, but you’re going to save 30 percent and what the real cool part about that is they’re using it for their private label business and it gives them virtually a second phone on their current phone without having to get another number. They can make up a vanity number. They don’t have to go and do all the grief and signed loan contracts. Pretty easy stuff, and so if you’re creating a brand that you want to identify, you want to look professional, you want to look like a real company. Grasshopper is a great tool. It’s an app you put on your existing phone and boom, you now have a customer service to. You now have a sales department. You’d have a manufacturing division. You could forward it to somebody else. You can have it go to different voicemails, different departments, and it’s all included. So try grasshopper.com, forward slash momentum. Save 30 percent.

Cool voice guy:                  [07:13]                     Welcome to the ecommerce moment. Didn’t bond gas. Will we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson,

Stephen:                             [07:27]                     man. Oh Man, I’m excited. ECOMMERCE momentum podcast, episode three. Oh, six Nathan Hirsch. Yeah. I’m excited because he pumped me up. I mean, you can’t me pumped up. I just came back from the resonate conference sellerlabs conference down in Atlanta. One hundred 50 people packed high level speakers were incredible. I mean, just really phenomenal. I’m real strong stuff. A real high level building blocks that we’re all trying to get to that quite frankly all of us are within reach and I think that was one of the big lessons that I took away from it. Um, and uh, just we, we get into the discussion of the conference and what we both got from it, which is pretty phenomenal, but Nathan’s got me pumped up because, you know, he’s talking about a couple of opportunities I not thought about different ways in different approaches and I think it’s so powerful. We all, I see everybody posting, they need help, they need help, they need help.

Stephen:                             [08:17]                     I need to get administrative help. I want to hire va’s, I want to do this. But then they talk about the challenges they have of doing that work themselves through upwork or two for Heifer. And you know, free up is going to give you a more qualified yes, you’re going to pay more money because they’re more qualified and like Nathan says, he doesn’t mark them up, they charged with the rates that they have. But when you’ve got somebody like he has that’s been with them for three years, can you imagine the level of conversation you can have because they are now speaking about building on those three years, they’re not going back and starting over. Okay, here’s the way we communicate, but no, no, no. They’re at different levels and if you’re trying to accelerate your business, you got to stop going back and resetting, stop going back and resetting a retraining, retraining, retraining. You want to start training forward and having them be independent. So we get into all that. There is definitely the rest of the story here. All right. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s guest. A repeat guest, but man, it’s been a couple years since we last talked. Nathan Hirsch. Welcome back, Nathan.

Nathan:                                [09:21]                     Thanks for having me. Yeah, it has been awhile.

Stephen:                             [09:23]                     It has been awhile, but now we’ve seen each other. Let’s be fair. We’ve seen each other around the country at different events because you tend to. I guess we do tend to travel in the same circles.

Nathan:                                [09:34]                     Yeah, we do. We have the same kind of group of sellers, people who have been doing it for a while. Um, but yeah, it’s always good to attack with you.

Stephen:                             [09:40]                     So we just met up at the resonate conference, a similar labs resonate conference in Atlanta and in a precall we always, you know, have a little chit chat or what have you. And you made a statement about this conference. Go ahead and make the statement again.

Nathan:                                [09:53]                     I thought it was one of the best conferences I’ve gone to. Um, I, I usually, whenever I go to a conference for the first time, I usually feel it out a little bit, decide if I’m going to go back and decide if it’s the right audience, not only for me but for free up. And I mean this was awesome. First of all, it was small and I think that was a little bit different. It was a little bit refreshing from these big conferences I’ve been going to, but also all the people there were incredibly high level. They were people who had been selling for years. They were selling millions on Amazon, big influencers, big partners, you can tell the kind of support that seller labs has in the community. Um, so it was just really refreshing. I got to meet and get to know a lot of people, got to see a lot of clients there that had been working with us for awhile and meet them in person I got to talk to as a firestone a little bit, which is Kinda cool. Um, but yeah, it was great.

Stephen:                             [10:39]                     Yeah, I agree. I mean, somebody described it this way. I think it was Dan Wentworth who said this now, Daniel sell $5,000,000, he’ll make more than that this year. He, so 5 million last year and he says, you know, Steve, some of the, some of those topics were way above us. Then I said, you know, Dan, but you’re working on those things. Well, yeah. And I’m like, what’s cool to me is that they’re reachable. And now for him to get to that next level, he has to do some of those things. So it kind of forces you when you’re at that level to get to that next level. It kinda really, you really have to. And one of the things that Jeff does is they vet people to be able to attend. I mean, it’s true. They really do. Um, and it shows, I mean there was some, I used to describe it this way much younger because I’m older, definitely old and was definitely one of the old dudes, but much more technical group. I’m the 150 people I believe it was. And I’m very, very phenomenal. And, and as God is my witness, I never lie. I heard Amazon employees, big, big employees recommend their products right from stage. And I don’t know anybody else who can say it, but Steve heard it with his own ears. I never would make it up. I literally heard Amazon recommends seller labs products, two of them right from the stage that, that blew my mind. I’m like, that was very, very surprising for me.

Nathan:                                [11:57]                     Not only with that, it was that cool, but there was one night, I think it was Tuesday, I was about to go to bed and jeff found me right before I was heading the bad and said, hey, we’re going to this far with the Amazon executives, you want to come. So I of course jumped on that opportunity and I got to spend a few hours drinking and hanging out with those Amazon executives. They now know about free app, which is kind of cool. We got to talk about that, learn about their past, where they were working on and really just connect to it and we didn’t really talk business the whole time. Just to get to know them as people is pretty cool.

Stephen:                             [12:27]                     Yeah, it really, it really helps bring the full circle I think. I think that’s what it did for me was, you know, I’ve gotten to meet some other Amazon people at different things, but then usually they’re kind of standoffish and I’m not at boost. I don’t mean to say that, but I’ve met him at like trade shows and things like that. And, and I guess it depends on the division that they’re in or what have you, but they’re usually those little standoffish. They’re are tight with their words. They’re using scripts almost, right? This wasn’t the case this time. It was very refreshing in my mind.

Nathan:                                [12:58]                     Yeah. And Jack actually I thought did a great job when he introduced them and he essentially said, please don’t talk to them about your suspensions, your suppressed listings, things that, that’s not why they’re here. And he really set the tone in the boundaries of what was okay and not okay. And I thought that that lead to a better experience for everyone,

Stephen:                             [13:14]                     you know, I think, uh, and, and we’re going to get to free up, which is Nathan’s company free with the extra. He makes sure you remember that extra year. But I think you. And I think the other speakers really did a great job of, of identifying the potential that you. And I say this all the time when I go to trade shows where I go to conferences, the vendors are where the answers are because you have seen all of the problems that I have in my business from somebody else’s perspective and you either help them or didn’t. Maybe in some cases you couldn’t help them get through that. And then you can help me based on those additional experiences in addition to your own. Do you get what I mean?

Nathan:                                [13:53]                     Absolutely. One of the coolest parts about it was every vendor you could tell how to ventured interest in helping people. It wasn’t just how many sales can I get? How many clients did I picked up? They wanted to be there. They wanted to share advice. They wanted to, um, bring their solution to the table to help people. And it, it was really. That’s one of the coolest things. I think a lot. A lot of these bigger conferences, anyone can buy a booth, you’re kind of have agencies going after agencies. And um, I, I thought this was a much different experience. You could tell that jeff really vetted people before they, he let them in.

Stephen:                             [14:23]                     Yeah. And, and I also want to mention caroline who put that event together because I go to a lot of events and I put together events and man every little detail including because it was pouring the next day, they had umbrellas for us at the, uh, at the hotel to walk down to the event, a seller labs umbrellas to walk down. And I thought, my God, that is beyond extra touches. I mean, somebody who thought that through with a, that’s like a c plan thing. Oh, in case it, what happens if we get torrential downpours for hours on end? Ah, the likelihood of that happening, we don’t have to plan for it. Well, she did. And so I want to applaud them. All right, let’s do this. Um, let’s talk about Nathan Hirsch. Now, if you go back and listen to episode number one, 22, I’m at year end.

Stephen:                             [15:09]                     You’re going to be at 300 and change [1:22]. That’s how long. That’s how old you are in a Amazon. Yours, um, you’re gonna hear Nathan. Nathan was a seller, now I asked you about that this week and we can talk about a little bit, but you were a seller selling quite a volume on Amazon and so you understand our world and I think that that’s so powerful. Um, and that was quite a while ago and so you’ve been able to see how it’s evolved. So let’s talk about where you’ve come from since that episode. One, two, one, two.

Nathan:                                [15:41]                     Yeah. First of all, I appreciate you having me on episode one. Twenty two. I don’t know where free up was at that point, but I can’t imagine that we were that big, so I appreciate you giving us the opportunity when we were a lot smaller. So, um, yeah, I mean in terms of where we’ve come, I mean we’ve been doing pre op, this is year three. We just hit a milestone of $12,000 billed hours in one week or marketplaces.

Stephen:                             [16:04]                     Whoa, Whoa, whoa. 12,000 billed hours in a week.

Nathan:                                [16:09]                     Oh my God. I mean it’s, it’s pretty cool people.

Stephen:                             [16:12]                     I’m doing the math. I’m thinking, oh my God, that’s a lot of people.

Nathan:                                [16:16]                     Yeah. I mean, we have a thousand freelancers in the market place, thousands of sellers that have used us. We’ve really branched out into a lot of different industries. I know in year one we were mostly Amazon sellers in your two people told their ecommerce communities about us and so we’re doing shopify, Ebay and Walmart and now we’re getting real estate agents, marketing agency, software companies. And Amazon’s always going to be our core because that’s my background. But it’s been really cool to expand and, and I mean we offer over 100 skillsets now. Stuff that we never even originally planned on offering. And it’s been pretty cool to just grow with these clients because we have clients that when, when they started they were doing $100,000 a year and now they’re in the millions and we have so many partners like that is really cool to grow with other people and not just by yourself.

Stephen:                             [17:02]                     Well, you’ve got to feel good because I see free up with threes. So I just want to say that. So F, R, e, e up. Um, and what, what I’ve seen is the recommendations from people all along consistently add event after event because most people say, oh, go to upwork or go and then you see everybody like, yeah, but then I get, you know, I don’t care what I say I’m looking for. Everybody seems to say they’re qualified for it, all these different things. And so it’s become that hassle factor, right? It’s just their full time job becomes vetting those people and then vetting them to see if they’re vetting works because it, it generally it doesn’t, right? Because they say they can do it and they almost looked like they can and then they don’t. And so the value of free up is that you vet those people, you make a match for me. So the people that I’m getting have the skillset that I need because they’ve been proven

Nathan:                                [17:54]                     yes. And one of the most rewarding parts of the conference and I was just talking to my team about this morning, every client that I knew used free up and even some that I didn’t know, I didn’t recognize the faces, but I talked to them and they were using the service I would ask them how do you like it, how are the freelancer’s going, tell me their names and I’m not one person had a complaint and I mean that’s not going to happen forever. And obviously these are real people and issues come, come up here and there. But I thought it was so cool to just leave a conference with high level sellers where everyone was really enjoying the service and wanted to use it more. Um, and I gave my team a lot of props for that this morning. It means that they’re doing a great job.

Stephen:                             [18:29]                     I was watching one of the conversations, Dr Ben gave in his presentation and it was very interesting because he showed up on a chart his sales for the last, I don’t know how many years. And he showed the pain points and the growth points. And what happened in each one of them and what was very common when he had real growth, it was when he added a team member of remote, he didn’t call them vas. He would not use the term va. He, uh, what was the term that you used? Do you remember?

Nathan:                                [19:00]                     I don’t remember. But you’re rigHt, it was a team member.

Stephen:                             [19:02]                     It was relative to relevant to team members, but these are remote workers, remote people that are in other countries in that. And he spoke of the value of valuing them and what it’s brought to his team. Can you speak a little bit about that, what that does when you do value the input that that person gives you?

Nathan:                                [19:21]                     Yeah. I was also talking to someone about this at the conference. So I mean, first of all, turnover is incredibly expensive. You want to treat people well so they stay and especially with people that are valuable to your business. And what I actually did was the first three people that started free up with me, my first three team members, va’s, whatever you want to call it. Um, one of them was my assistant handling my skype and emails, the other one did client billing and created our whole payment system and the other one did freelance or recruitment and they are still with us today and they’re on a program where their pay actually goes up every time we hit a new milestone. So yeah, that’s what I do to retain them along with treating them well and giving them the ability to hire their own team members and be really in charge of their team. But you can find creative ways as you grow to keep the people around that really helped you get to that next level.

Stephen:                             [20:10]                     Well, I like what you’re saying. So, so is that a recommendation that you would make like, okay steve, if you’re looking for somebody and your sales are half a million dollars and you want to get to a million dollars, okay, so let’s knock that out. How long is it going to take or whatever. Every time you hit that next milestone you share a piece of that with that team member. So therefore they have that when they. They are also rowing the same way, right?

Nathan:                                [20:34]                     Yeah, anD you obviously want to be careful about it and you can’t necessarily do that with every single person if you have a 50 person team, but the people that are really driving your business or your parts of your business, make them invested in the business them care about the goals and milestones. Make them looking forward to making the company bigger and that’s going to get them to motivate their teams even born when you have everyone on your team moving in that same direction with passion that with people are caring about your business and the same way that’s when you achieve success.

Stephen:                             [21:04]                     Give me an example where you think that somebody you know, you know our businesses where you’ve seen people come in and have an impact that would meet that requirement, that are, that are really helping me in my business now, and I don’t want to say this, I don’t want me to downgrade anyone. The person who who sweeps our facility adds value. I don’t mean it that way, but the ones that I’ve kind of advanced me from a half a million to a million. Right. Those people. What roles have you seen people in that you’ve seen come in to free up and then have had really helped clients?

Nathan:                                [21:36]                     Yeah, I mean I would say the most common ones are probably the graphic designers or the people who optimize the amazon listings or the people that run the ppc campaigns because those get a lot of times can have direct impact on sales and when you find people that you like and you can go through a lot of graphic designers that you don’t like before you find someone you like and same thing with pbc. When you get someone that gets your ad spend and what it should be more people that are optimizing your listings and getting ahead of the competition. It’s a huge hassle to replace those people and you want them to prioritize you as a client and want to stick around and you don’t always have to give them a raise. MayBe you just use them here and there or maybe they’re managing on an ongoing basis and that wouldn’t make sense, but even giving them a bonus, giving them some kind of reward, making them feel invested as important and if you do have someone that you are using that you put a lot of work into that you’ve spent time onboarding and they know your business better than anyone else or they’re in charge of specific team on your business.

Nathan:                                [22:32]                     Those are the kinds of people that you really have to make sure that they’re happy and I’ll even go through and I know a lot of people are happy, but I’ll go in and be like, hey, are you still happy here? And you still like it here. what do you not like about your job right now? Because it just shows that I care and I do listen to them and if there’s something that they don’t like or they’re concerned about or they don’t like a direction, something’s going, I want to get ahead of it. because before it becomes something that they’re going to leave.

Stephen:                             [22:56]                     It’s setting up those expectations and then making sure that you both stay clear on what they are. Well, let’s talk about onboarding because I think that’s a great place to start. So let’s say I need a. I’m looking for some administrative help. Um, what’s the best practice that you’ve seen that seems to have worked the best and maybe has given the consistent longevity that we’re speaking of? What? What’s the best practice for onboarding someone?

Nathan:                                [23:18]                     Sure. So we do a lot of the vetting when it comes to skill, attitude, communication, and we take the top one percent and let them in. but when you’re interviewing them, you need to be focused on, is this person the right fit for me? because even the best freelancer in the world isn’t the best fit for every single client in the world. So that’s what,

Stephen:                             [23:36]                     why? What would be, what would be an example like that?

Nathan:                                [23:40]                     It could be availability, it could be maybe their culture, their skillset was with a completely kind of company and you want someone that’s more relevant. It could be that your business has a certain way. Maybe you’re more cut throat and you’re more direct and you need someone that doesn’t take things personally, but that person might be a little bit more on the emotional side of it could be a lot of different things, but, but you really want to figure out, hey, is this person the perfect fit for me? And once you’ve identified that they are, you think they are the next step that a lot of people skip is setting those expectations. I have incredibly high expectations for people that I work with. They have to have strong communication and they have to be able to problem solve. They have to be able to work long hours.

Nathan:                                [24:20]                     Sometimes if we get into busy season or having a crazy week, I can’t have someone that just logs out at [4:00] because the clock at four. So I set those expectAtions. I tell them about it, I tell them what’s expected and I actually give them a chance to back out because I would much rather have someone that sees my expectations. It’s like, wow, I don’t think I can hit those. Then to take the job and waste my time to the point where we can’t work together and I have to start that process all over again. So setting that expectations is so important.

Stephen:                             [24:49]                     So that is kind of a myth or maybe it’s an upward to upwork experience. Everybody says they can do everything, but you’re saying if you do a good job of vetting those people, now those vetted people because they also know what you’re going to bring them. They know you’re going to bring them real customers and real, um, real work. Therefore they do get a chance to deselect themselves. and that’s not a bad thing. It’s interesting because again, if I go to upwork and put something in every single person that’s under work magically can do html programming even though they can’t. But they’ll tell me they can write. Right? And so that’s interesting

Nathan:                                [25:25]                     and I’ll even add off that. I mean, one of the cool thing that’s happened with the free up community that wasn’t necessarily originally planned is people love being in the free up community. They loved that. We bring in clients without having to compete with a lot of people. They love getting to interact with all these other freelancers. They love my team and the support we bring to help them grow their freelance business. They don’t want to do anything to get kicked out of that community and lose their clients or their standing with us so they know to only take tickets to only take requests that they know they can do at a high level because if they drop a client, if they, um, if they don’t do something at a level that they say they can do or they say something and they can’t do it, they get removed from the network or and slash or they don’t get more clients from us. So they care a lot more about making sure they’re only taking stuff on they want to do and they can do and then anything else. And you really don’t see that on the other upworks and fibers beCause if they don’t do it with you and it doesn’t work out, they’ll just grab another client and be totally fine.

Stephen:                             [26:18]                     Right? Nobody who’s going to know, right? They just do it. Nobody knows, right? There’s no real a rating system that, that matters. people are, most of the time people are looking for price only. So let’s talk about price. So you, your rate of pay that you’ve experienced because we’re talking about these are some in country, out of country, low skill level, high skill level, right? What’s, what’s the highest skill level person that you have working for you?

Nathan:                                [26:44]                     I mean, we have really advanced ppc agencies. We have people that they can do web development, whether it’s ruby on rails or python. We have lots of high level marketers. I use them myself for my facebook ads, email marketing. um, so we do have very high level and us people with us, we are a marketplace, so the freelancers do set their own rates. It’s not like I take someone that’s five bucks an hour and charge you 20. We make art 15 percent on whatever the freelancer charges. But the best way that I would kind of break it down for people listening, especially if they haven’t hired a lot before, is there’s really three different levels of freelancers. You’ve got the basic level, the five to 10 bucks an hour, non us. These people have years of experience because we’re not a marketplace for newbies, but they’re there to follow your systems, your processes.

Nathan:                                [27:32]                     If you don’t have those, you’re gonna really struggle hiring those basic level of freelancers. then you’ve got the mid level there in that 10 to 30 range. They are specialists. They do the same thing, eight to 10 hours every day. Maybe it’s bookkeeping, graphic design, amazon listings. You’re not teaching them and they’re not consulting with you. They’re doers, and then you’ve got the experts at 25 and up. These are people who can come in who can audit your business, who can execute high level game plans, they can project manage, they can help create systems and processes for basic level workers. So a lot of times where people fail is they’re hiring the wrong level. You have to decide, hey, am I trying to get out of day to day operations where I can hire the low or do I had all these projects I need to take off my plate? So you hire the mid or is there an area of my business that’s a weakness that I want to turn into a strength. So you would really need to hire that expert.

Stephen:                             [28:22]                     I’m thinking about, as I’m listening to you talk about this, I’m thinking, you know, and I have experienced with this, I can say this, um, the fire, not fiverr, upwork, whatever it was before upwork, the $2 an hour in va o desk, that’s what it was. Thank you for the $2 an hour va. They still exist, but it seems to me this is my experience that the turnover at that level seemed pretty high. So the just by the time I get them trained and get them all into my system and I’m thinking to myself, oh, it’s only costing me, you know, 80 bucks a week, you know, or $400 a month or whatever it was. And I’m thinking, huh, what a great deal. And then it turned over and then it would take, I’d lose and then I have to retrain somebody. That’s not a good model if I’m building out a business fair.

Nathan:                                [29:12]                     Absolutely. I mean, that’s really why we make our minimum $5 an hour, even though we do let people go below if they want to and sing with us freelancers, we don’t or we try not to offer us freelancers below $20 an hour, not because those people don’t exist and not really because we’re inflating the prices because they set their own rates just because we know that it doesn’t necessarily lead to a good experience with the client. The second that that us freelancer that you’re hiring for 12 bucks an hour gets a $25 offer. They’re out the door. You can’t live on $12 an and same thing with people for a dollar or two an hour and those people exist. If you can find them and you can plug them into a role where you don’t have to invest a lot of onboarding, where you can replace it easily. If they quit, go for it. That can be a great investment, but the average person can’t do that and they won’t experience success doing that

Stephen:                             [29:57]                     well and and more importantly, you’re training somebody who then has access. If you let them in your life, they have access to your friend list. My friend list is thousands long. Guess what? EverY one of them would love to get somebody trained on my dime that would do it for more money. Not that they would steal them, they wouldn’t even know. They just get contacted by somebody, hey, are you lookIng for somebody? I can do this. And you’re like, sure for three bucks an hour. Sure. And they just kind of raised and so be mindful of that stuff. Plus it is actually a small community. People talk and so, uh, hey, you know, if you want to do better, he go to free up. Um, and it sounds like I’m pitching your stuff. It’s just I’ve used the services before. Um, so, so I can speak to it. So, uh, it’s very, it’s very interesting what you said about longevity, that you’ve had those people still with you for three years that says something important. How, how your conversations are building up now, right? You’re not rebuilding. You can build from where you’re at.

Nathan:                                [30:55]                     Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’re, we’re constantly experimenting with new things, different ways that we can bring services to clients. I mean, right now crypto is getting big, so we’re kind of finding a freelance group in there that can handle the demand. We’re constantly listening to feedback. One of the coolest things I loved about jeff at sellerlabs is throughout the event he kept asking for feedback, how’s it going? Are you having a good time? Afterwards? I just got an email survey and we did the same thing with our clients. We want to know how can we improve? I mean, we’re still a startup. We’re going to make mistakes. There’s going to be things that don’t go the way we want them to, but if we don’t know about it, we’re, we’re not gonna be able to improve it. So we really want to hear that not only from the clients but from the freelancers as well. How can we make this platform the best it can be over the next five to 10 years,

Stephen:                             [31:38]                     12,000 billable hours. My god, you guys are cranking. Alright, so let’s talk about. And it juSt blows my mInd to think about how, how material that is. I mean, it’s really interesting to me. So let’s talk about companies coming in. So newer sellers that that might be listening to my show or like they want to get in, they don’t know where to take the help because they’re used to doing things by themselves. They’re entrepreneurs, they’re managing, their costs are, they’re pouring every dime they can back into their business. They’re afraid to let go of some things. What’s the advice you give for those smaller, newer companies coming in? Where should they start?

Nathan:                                [32:14]                     So I would either identify projects that take off your plate. Maybe it’s optimized this listing or hey, I need a product photo made. Things that you can’t really do at a high level and you really don’t have the time for and stuff that isn’t going to break the bank. It’s not going to. You’re not going to get destroyed by hiring someone to optimize the listing, but then also think a little bit more big picture. What would it be like to have an amazon expert in your back pocket to have someone audit your and give you direct advice instead of someone just giving a generic lesson that might apply to everyone? What could, what could, what potential can you reach if you have someone do that when you’re listing gets repressed or you run into an issue that you can’t fix, it’s incredible to be able to have an expert in your back pocket.

Nathan:                                [32:56]                     I do the same thing now with stuff like mailchimp. I have an email marketing expert in my back pocket. If something comes up, I don’t spend the next week trYing to fix it. I called them up and as soon as they’re available, they fix it for me and we can move on and and you can do the same thing with your amazon business. Even if you’re hiring someone for an hour a week, an hour a day, once a month of whatever it is. So I would start focusing on how can I get an expert on my team ready to go, but also what projects can I take off my plate? And as you get bigger, you can start adding more and more hours. How do I get two hours of my day back, four hours of my day back? How can I hire someone to just take this completely off my plate? But in that original mindset, it’s all about projects and getting that expert.

Stephen:                             [33:35]                     So you used an example of a few hours. So can I hire somebody for an hour or two a week?

Nathan:                                [33:42]                     yeah, we have no minimum. There’s no maximum dose. I mean the freelancer are first come, first serve. If you hire someone for two hours a day, they’re yours two hours a day. We never take them away from you. If you hire someone for a one time project and you don’t talk to them for three months, they may or may not be available when you come back, but most likely they’ll just say, yeah, I’m just wrapping up this other project. I can get to you in 48 hours or whatever it is.

Stephen:                             [34:02]                     Is there a downside to only hiring, um, one or two hours a day or a week?

Speaker 5:                           [34:07]                     Okay.

Nathan:                                [34:08]                     I mean, the only downside is if your business is rapidly growing and you hire someone for five hours a week and then you come back to them in three months and saying, hey, can we increase it to 25? Who knows what clients they have? They might have class outside for you.

Stephen:                             [34:21]                     Okay, so likely these are honest people because this is one of the things that you hear is that I hired a full time va and then I find out they’re doing full time work for somebody else, so neither one of us are winning because they’re just can’t give me focus and they can’t give them focused. In this scenArio, if I’m hiring them for five hours, they absolutely are working for somebody else for 35 hours if they can. Fair.

Nathan:                                [34:43]                     Yeah. Unless they. Maybe they only want 20 hours a week of freelancing and they have somethIng else that holds up their other time. Every. Every situation is different, but I kind of revert back to that, hey, it’s so hard to get into the freelance marketplace or the free app marketplace. We reject 99 out of every 100 applicants. Once they’re in, they love the community, they loved that. We bring them clients, they don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. It’s just not worth it for them. We would cut off their entire source of revenue. they care a lot more about making you happy and making sure that you have a good experience so they can get more clients from us and they do about stealing a few hours from you here and there.

Stephen:                             [35:15]                     I preach a lot about lifestyle business because I think everybody should create a lifestyle business that’s but it’s their lifestyle, right. To me, if you want to, if you want 100 million dollar company and you want to give that life to that, go for it. Right? Or if you want to go visit your grandkids like I do, I want that life. Are are a lot of your freelancers lifestyle freelancers?

Nathan:                                [35:37]                     I wouldn’t say a

Stephen:                             [35:37]                     lot. I would say a lot of them had been built up to that, so they. They’ve started freelancing and maybe they eventually built a mini agency and then they hired an assistant themselves. I mean, we have freelancers that are clients as well, but it really just depends. I mean, like you said, everyone’s lifestyle, everyone’s idea of lifestyle is different. Someone instead of going out and spending every day on the beach and they might be trying to learn new skills and bringing out a new skill of services that they can offer new packages. So it really depends on the person we want to help support that however they can, as long as we know that they’re going to take care of our clients along the way. When you think about the real successes in your world, right? The people that have been with you buying services from you for the last two or three years, what, what are some of the characteristics that they have? Um, maybe the way they manage the, uh, the, the remote worker, a team member, what have you, what are some of the characteristics that you’ve seen best practice that have really paid off?

Nathan:                                [36:34]                     that is a great question. I don’t think I’ve been asked that before. Um, but it’s such a good one. And the consistent thing is, and I talked to freelancers all the time, I’m pretty open at, I want to build relationships and when I ask people how it’s going with these clients, these clients I know are crushing it. They always say I love it, I love working with that. And their communication is great. They treat me well, they gave me the flexibility when I need it. They, they appreciate my work. And it’s so funny because some of the clients that maybe don’t have great experiences hiring. When I talked to the freelancers, it’s the exact opposite. Hey, I can’t get ahold of the client. I don’t know what they want me to do. I’m doing my best. But the expectations were never set. I don’t know.

Nathan:                                [37:10]                     I’m not getting any feedback whether they like or don’t like my work. I don’t feel appreciated. I feel like they’re just kind of using me and not giving me any feedback. So I can definitely say that the clients that have had success, I figured out exactly what ben’s talking about when he says to treat people well and show that appreciation and make people want to stick around and want to work for you. Because when you’re dealing with a freelancer, you’re not really dealing with a business to employee relationship. It’s really a bUsiness to business relationship and just like if I’m doing business with you, I’m going to. The second that I started talking down to you, you’re not going to do business with me anymore. And it’s very similar.

Stephen:                             [37:47]                     Yeah, that’s true. I hadn’t thought about it that way. You’re right. These are independent businesses and they can vote with their feet just as you can. Right? I mean, and that sometimes that I’m assuming some of your freelances of freelancers have had to fire their, their customers write their bosses in essence.

Nathan:                                [38:04]                     So we don’t let freelancer drop clients that are on marketplace. I mean, of course they can. There’s nothing I’m physically doing the stopping them, but they just won’t get more clients from us. Um, but it also depends on the situation. I mean, we’ve had clients who have at a worker or done something that I would consider sexual discrimination, um, and that’s obviously way different than, of course they can, they can drop that client, but I mean for the most part will get involved to try to figure it out or um, I mean if that project wraps up and that, that freelancer can take on another client and that client comes back or we’ll try to get them someone else if it wasn’t the right fit. So I mean it could be a lot of different things and, and most of the times, I mean, clients might not even know what they’re doing isn’t the best practice. I know back in the day when I hired my first employee and then eventually my first freelancer, I always kind of a rough boss because it was, I had worked under rough boston. It was exactly. I would talk down to people, I would bark orders at people because I thought that was effective. And it wasn’t until people told me feedback that I completely changed my philosophy. So sometimes I’ll even talk to clients and tell them that

Stephen:                             [39:07]                     thinking about this and I’m thinking about the group that we were at, right? We were just at this conference, high level sellers trying to get to that next level and those blocks, while they might seem a little further away, they’re not right. And so I’m thinking process and I’m thinking, man, this is bringing in higher level, higher skilled, uh, team members to work on process because at this point it’s, it’s, it’s really small changes to your business. Those of us who have been selling for a long time, that will still have an impact. There’s no bird easy, big home runs, right? The small incremental changes. So process type of people where we’re, where do you see those, um, those opportunities in our world knowing our world as well as you do?

Nathan:                                [39:55]                     Yeah, I mean, processes are everything. If you ever want to get out of your business, if you ever want to sell your business, you have to create those processes. and there’s a few different ways you can go about it. I mean, we have experts that that’s what they do. They come in and they’d go the process, they help you onboard someone to go into that process and then you can step away and focus on the next thing you have to build. But one thing that I’ve liked doing and that me and my business partner conner, really believe it. I apologize. The landscape people that just came right outside my office. I love it. That’s real. This is real. This is real. Um, so one thing that we do is we experiment new processes. We’re constantly trying new things. Um, and so we’ll do something, we’ll tweak it, we’ll work on it and we have a three month rule. We never do anything longer than three months without taking it off our plate. And then we’ll hire someone will put them into the process, but the process never stops improving. We don’t want to hire a robot. We hire someone that can come in and help document, help come up with new ideas, new feedback, try to almost break the process to make it better. And so that process continues improving even though I’m not the one actually building and creating,

Stephen:                             [41:00]                     listening to you say, that makes me think about that. When you’re bringing in somebody who comes with other experiences, I think it’s very powerful that a of these freelancers have worked for other people because they have identified best practices. So when they come in and look at mine, they’re going to say, hey, yeah, you could do it this way, steve. Or maybe you might want to do it this way because I’ve seen it. Three other people have moved to this and they’ve had results. That is very, very powerful.

Nathan:                                [41:26]                     Yeah. I used to be in the mindset that, hey, I made a lot of money early on. What I say goes, I’m the one that has all these ideas. Everyone else just needs to listen to me. and it wasn’t until I kind of changed that philosophy that I really started scaling even faster because I created an environment where people wanted to bring ideas to the table. Some of the best ideas, the ones that have made me the most money or even cut the most costs have come from other people and if I create an environment where, hey, it’s what nathan says goes, he’s the only one that can come up with the idea, we need to wait until he tells me to do something you’re not. You’re going to miss out on so many good ideas, so many good building process structures that you’re just not going to get because the people around you, they’ve worked in other businesses. They have a different, they have different experience, different background than you do, and that diversification can really help your business.

Stephen:                             [42:15]                     As I sit here and think about all the different pieces to or segments. Maybe that’s the right way to use it of this business. There are, you know, there are different values assigned to each and man, if somebody could evaluate the real critical pain points in your business and then come in and help find a way to deal with them and smooth them out, how much better? How much faster can you grow? Really?

Nathan:                                [42:43]                     Yeah. That’s what I do and I think sometimes it can annoy people. So when I got back from vacation I was just at a conference with you, but I had a vacation before that and I came back and the first thing that I start looking at is what went wrong, what processes broke while I was gone. And a lot of people focus on the positive. They’re like, hey, we build x amount of hours and all that, but I feel like as a business owner you have that responsibility to figure out what’s not working. So we are constantly evaluating, constantly looking for flaws, areas that I would consider weaknesses and trying to turn those weaknesses into strengths. And I think that’s how you really build a strong business over time going forward.

Stephen:                             [43:18]                     Hmm. So as you think about this conversation, and I’m thinking about people who are listening right now saying, well, you know, steve, for me to spend $100 to $400 more a week, you know, on my business, you know, I don’t know if that’s going to be a good return of investment. I hear that all the time. What’S the roi, what’s the roi? And I agree, I mean the easy, the easy thing to say, well what’s your time worth? Well, to somebody starting out who has no money, their time is worth, uh, you know, they have more time than money. I may say it that way. I don’t want to, I don’t want to degrade somebody, but for somebody who’s, you know, at a place where every mInute is accounted for, it’s. And it’s a different place and I guess it does apply individually, but when you need to invest, it is a lot cheaper to bring in somebody in this role because from a tax point of view, and I’m not giving tax advice, talk to your accountant, but uh, this, this kind of role to bring in talent that only come in and do the work you need.

Stephen:                             [44:17]                     Because I used to tell the story, if you hire a 40 hour employee to come and work in your company, they’re not working 40 hours. They talked to people on the way in. they talked about the weather. They get up for lunch, they go to the bathroom, they do all these different things, all these, that 40 hours, they might be giving you 20 hours of real work. When you bring on somebody who you’re paying for 20 hours of real work, you’re going to get 20 hours of real work. Fair.

Nathan:                                [44:42]                     Yeah. I opened up an office and I learned that exact same thing in real life. I thought that taking these remote workers and bringing them in would make them more productive and after six months I realized that was the exact opposite effect where where I was getting what I felt was value every minute that they were working remotely. I wasn’t getting that when I was in the office and it obviously depends on the person and there’s a lot of very hardworking people that go into the office and. But for me, I think the gig economy has really taken over where you have all these specialists, you have all these people who get to focus on what they really liked doing, and they also get to diversify their client base so they’re protected. If a client drops off, did they get to really focus and give you a 100 percent when they’re working for you and I think that’s one of the people, one of the things that people don’t realize when you’re dealing with that gig economy,

Stephen:                             [45:25]                     how cold it again, what was the phrase? Economy,

Nathan:                                [45:29]                     gig economy. Like gigs, like a project.

Stephen:                             [45:31]                     Oh, I have a gig and I thought I was thinking of one gigabyte. I went to computers. Well, no, I think that’s powerful. I think it’s very, very smart and again, I’m sitting back and thinking about I’m reading this book, rework a friend, send it to me, which you’re welcome to send me books by the way, because I love to read. I’m reading. I’m reading a whole bunch of good books right now. This rework. It’s written by base camp. The founders based campus. I think if their second book and the basic conversation in there is they have very few employees and none of them are near each other and yet they can be a, I don’t know how many millions of dollars. Company successful growing and they’re nowhere near each other. So one of the other big fears and nathan is that I need control too. I don’t. I have to have them sitting at a desk across from me to be effective. Can I manage them from a far

Nathan:                                [46:18]                     so I practice what I preach. It’s in free outfits. Connor and I, and the rest is all freelancers and they’re only freelancers that we hire on the freeeup marketplace, the same freelancers that are availaBle to clients and last week freelancers build me over 800 hours. They’re all working in different locations, most of them from home and we have no employees. It’s just connor and I and all these freelancers and we’ve been able to scale from a million to 5 million to right now our run rates over 9 million and it’s all from freelancers. So if we can do it, I know it’s possible and of course does it take some getting used to. Does it take some changing your approach? Would you handle someone that’s sitting right next to you different than you would handle remote and building that culture in that team? Definitely, but with, with the way that I’ll use the word yet, gig economy is going where over the next 10 years, over 50 percent of the workforce is going to be remote. If you’re not taking advantage of this, your competitors are so it’s in your best interest to at least figure out can I or how do I build that remote team because there are so many benefits.

Stephen:                             [47:18]                     Yeah, and doing it now as opposed to when you’re forced to, well, you’ll make better decisions and you’ll develop it over time. So when the opportunity comes, you’re fully in the opinion. You got me pumped. I’m pumped. It’s, it’s very exciting because you’re right, you know, you don’t think about how many people do you know personally outside of this ecommerce world that worked from home now? It used to be hardly any. Now I’m shocked at how many people are companies are sending home saying, you know what? We don’t have to have another bathroom. We could save on parking. We can save on all these different things by sending you home. We’re getting the we need this work done and you’re able to do it at that timeframe. I’m seeing it across all different industries and that’s a very valid point that that’s going to happen more and more and that then makes those jobs even more competitive because that opens up more opportunities for those free up people to go work for these other companies now. So getting them, training them now and treating them well and retaining them is a really good, powerful point.

Nathan:                                [48:17]                     Yeah. It was funny. I went to, I went grocery shopping when I got off the plane yesterday and I ran into this guy from my high school, um, which is kind of funny because I’m in orlando now and I went to high school in Massachusetts, but I just happened to run into him and we got to talking what he was up to and he’s working for a few different businesses going back and forth all part time jobs. And I told him about free up and freelancing and working from home and you could just see the light bulb go off in his head thinking, oh my god, you can do that. That’s actually a career that’s actually I could be self employed and not have to leave. And he was wearing a suit at the time and it was kind of cool just letting people, showing people that does exist. It is possible now if you want to put your mind to it.

Stephen:                             [48:55]                     So there are two opportunities with free up. And I think that that brings up a good point. I didn’t even, I wasn’t even going to go there, but I think this is a good point because, um, my assistant ashley works for a whole bunch of people and I am so thankful for her. I hopefully I tell her enough, ashley, I do care for you. I hope you knoW that. But it’s important to understand that, that there are people in our selling world that are looking for other opportunities in addition to just selling. So because there’s parts of the business on people like and they, they’re as bIg as they want to be or what have you. So that opportunity you do hire people are you allow them into the network to be hired, I guess is the right way to say it. Um, and so how would they find out about that opportunity?

Nathan:                                [49:35]                     Yeah, if you go to a free up.com, there’s a freelancer faq, you can send them an application right on the website, click apply to be a freelancer. And yeah, we’re always looking for talented people and a lot of the freelancers out there, the higher level amazon consultants, they are amazon or they were amazon sellers themselves or they work for an agency or they’ve been a part of the community for awhile. Um, So those opportunities are out there. I mean, who doesn’t want another form of income? And a lot of times that leads to opportunities. We’ve had people that have worked for clients and ended up getting hired or bought out from them or it’s lead to other business opportunities. You never know what’s out there. And if you’re just an amazon seller, I mean, we know what can happen with amazon and especially with the competition going up and amazon’s policies and all that, so it might make sense for you to have a side gig or two in your back pocket and who knows, you might like it. You might enjoy being a freelancer and that lifestyle.

Stephen:                             [50:27]                     I just, uh, I

Nathan:                                [50:28]                     have a gentleman coming on, um, who just moved from Utah to san diego. He was recruited by a company, by another amazon company even though he was a seller and all the rest of that, because his skillset is so strong, this world, there’s so many opportunities. And I just, I didn’t even go there in my thought process until you said it before, but this is a great way for somebody who has, for example, you’re, you like birch and you’re maxed out on what you can do with merge with yourself. Well, guess what? There are lots of people looking to hire designers. and so by coming into free up, all right, I’m aSsuming you have merchant opportunities, right? I’m sure. And so therefore you go in there and present it for other people who do. very, very powerful. Alright, so, and it’s free up with three e’s. And then finally, I’m hoping you still, my offer is still good for my listeners. You had offered a 10 percent forever. I want to go on forever. I want that same deal. If they sign up with my link, is that still valid? It is. And if you mentioned this podcast will even add on a $25 credit to get started.

Stephen:                             [51:30]                     Oh dude, that’s very kind to you. So now hold on, let me, I’m going to do this. So it’s, um, it’s free up and it’s three e’s and it’s f r, e e.up.com. Forward slash ecommerce momentum. That’s a lot of letters, ecommerce, momentum. The freeeup is easy. It’s a ecommerce. You gotta work for that 10 percent. But what’s cool is you get 10 percent forever. And I think it’s a pretty significant, um, as you’re, as you’re looking, this should be something, you know, you’re building a business, you’re building a brand, especially the brand builders that’s new, like everybody’s talking about a brand. Did you catch that at that? That meetup?

Nathan:                                [52:03]                     I did. It was perfect timing because that’s what I’m trying to do myself. Um, one thing that I was encouraging to do, I was talking to scott and I was talking to a jaffa and all these people about the brand is, hey, what I’ve been doing is I hired one freelancer agency, many agency to run my instagram. I hired another one to run my twitter, just completely taking it off my plate and it’s really affordable. I think it costs me a few hundred bucks every month. And I also have two accounts, my account and the free up account and they’ve been growing followers. They’re posting, they’re engaging and that my followers are going up. And now if my followers are going up, scott’s and, and yours, I’m sure it can go up a lot faster with all the stuff that you guys do. And there’s really no reason not to. I mean, what’s the worst case that can happen? You hire someone for three months, you spend $600, or you delete some tweets. Like that’s very low risk in the grand scheme of running a business. I’m the reward is huge. You’re growing these followers. I probably get a client or two a week on instagram and it’s going up and it’s such a great way to grow your business, to grow your brand. And if you have any kind of budget at all, why not take those low risk, low risk, high reward situations?

Stephen:                             [53:08]                     Yeah. If you’re growing a brand, you, it’s all about engagement. It’s what we just went through this whole training, right? It was one of these high level blocks that they were talking about. And if you can cheat by getting somebody else to do it for you now as you’re doing it, because that’s going to happen simultaneously. You’re building a product, you’re building in all those different things. You move this off your plate. Very powerful. Got me excited again. Alright, so nathan, you know the goal of this podcast is to help people move forward. Um oh, before I do that can get your final question. I want to make sure people can contact you. You don’t have to go through my link if you don’t want to. Yes, I do benefit if you do, but don’t if you don’t want to, I’m, I’m perfectly cool witH that. If you want to reach nathan directly, what’s the best way, nathan?

Nathan:                                [53:50]                     Yeah, so if you go to free up, my calendar is right on the website. You can book a phone call at me, you can sign up even if you don’t use steven blank, you can write as steven’s name right there, um, and still get the same credit. I’m pretty easy to contact whether it’s social media, my calendar, my email, and nathan at [inaudible] dot com, whatever way you like communicating allergist.

Stephen:                             [54:09]                     So it’s a $25 sign up link. If you take that link and you get 10 percent off, if you don’t, if you don’t feel just mentioned it to nathan and he’ll give it to you, but you don’t have to credit me. I’m fine with that, but important. Here’s the thing, because as soon as I get done with this, I’m going to be talking to nathan about an opportunity I have and it’s like, I need this. That’s how the conversation has to go, right? I have to explain to you what I’m really looking for for you to start the process of matching and it’s not that easy. I mEan, you obviously parse it and you look a little, you vet it a little bit more, but that’s really where it starts, right?

Nathan:                                [54:44]                     Yeah. I mean, on the phone calls, I want to learn about your business. I want to know what your pain points are. I want to tell you about free up the answer any questions you have on the process and how it works because we are different. We’re not the same as the upworks and the fiber and um, yeah, we can obviously listen to it to what you need. We also make it very easy. We have a worker request form right inside of your account. Anytime you need someone, you just fill that out with client feedback. Again, that whole feedback thing, we actually added a, what we call our client success assistant, who’s their nine to five every day. And whenever you need something, if you don’t want to fill out a request or you’re not sure, you can actually skype him or email him or call him and he’ll fill out the request for you and help walk you through it. So we’re really there to make it as easy as possible for you to get the resources.

Stephen:                             [55:27]                     Dude, I’m pumped. I’m pumped. I can’t wait. All right. So the goal of the podcast is to help people move forward, get past stuck because lots of people get stuck. Um, although I’ll be honest with you, at that hundred and 50 people, I didn’t see many people stuck and I really didn’t. And I think you would agree. And the other thing that I saw different this time because I was there last year, was there were teams there, there weren’t. There were people that brought whole teams to this event because they realized this is how they’re gonna all advanced. Imagine going back with your team members and discussing what nathan set up on stage and and been parsing it in one. I got from it. What I got from it. What can you imagine how it gets me excited? All right, so the goal is to help people move past stuck. Give us the best advice you can.

Nathan:                                [56:11]                     So I would really focus on trial and error. new things. I mean a lot of time learning from gurus or courses, it’s great you can get advanced, you can advance really far in ways that you wouldn’t be able, but there also is a certain amount of trial and error that you have to do into your business. I know a lot of people, they heard about instagram and building your brand and stuff like that. But what works for one person might not work for another works for one business, doesn’t work for another. So it’s up to you to figure out, hey, what kind of small risk do I have to take? Do I started focusing on videos? I’m like, brett talked about it and really start playing around with that. Do I hire someone to run my instagram? Do I get someone to optimize this listing?

Nathan:                                [56:49]                     Start playing around, you’re going to have to invest money into your business in one way and when something’s not working, you can pull back and when something starts working, you put more money in it. And I’m constantly doing that and I’m doing it with freelancers. And it’s really how I felt in a lot of success because you never really know what’s gonna work and what’s not gonna work until you try it. And a lot of times, um, some, some bad investments might be because you never invested it in it at all. You never really gave it a chance. So my advice is to have kind of that budget every month that have stuff for you to play around with, for you to try. And that’s how you’ll find some really awesome channels to grow your revenue and improve your business.

Stephen:                             [57:26]                     Freeeup.com with three e’s dot com. Alright. Hey nathan. Man, I appreciate it So much. I’m so glad we got a chance to catch up. I can’t wait to hear what’s next. Take care. Take care. Great guy. Great conversation. I’m telling you, pumped. I hope. Here’s pump design him. Man. I’m telling you, I can’t wait to get some help because I could use it myself. And uh, in the after cole I get a little lucky. I get a little inside tips and stuff like that. So I think it’d be an, uh, about where you could use some help I think is that process stuff is just so critical. We all know the standard operating procedures are critical in your business. If you don’t have them, you know you should hire somebody to help document them. That’s their role. Get them ready and then you have them and now all of a sudden you have a well run business.

Stephen:                             [58:11]                     Remember richard gella, chandra of one-on-one hyphen commerce, looking to buy a 101 amazon businesses, but they want well run. Amazon businesses will guess whaT standard operating procedures are critical to that. So if that’s where you need help, get that help. If you need administrative help, get some help. How about the merge health? You need design help. Get some design help. So it’s free [inaudible] dot com. Again, if you use my link, I do benefit. So I don’t know. I’m okay if you don’t. If it is, it’s [inaudible] dot com, forward slash ecommerce momentum. You do get a $25 a usage and 10 percent for life. Um, but if you don’t, I understand. I’m not, I don’t stress about it. I’d rather see you move your business forward. That’s all I care. Take care.

Cool voice guy:                  [58:53]                     Thanks for listening to the incomers momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found@incomersmomentum.com. Under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and the lake us on itunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

About the author, Stephen

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