RG 191 – Systemize Your Product & Your Business Will SCALE w/ Nathan Hirsch
Nathan is an entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and e-commerce. 
He is also the co-founder and CEO of freeup.com which is a market place to connect businesses with pre-vetted freelancers in commerce, digital marketing and more. In 2006 Nathan founded his first online story in college selling textbooks to other students and over 6 years he was able to rapidly increase the marketplace online to sell over $25 million worth of sales to over 10,000 customers. Nathan made his first dollar doing summer jobs at Arnolds meet shop.
During college he saw how expire the book shops were so he started toby and sell old books himself; taking the old ones from students and reselling. Eventually he got a cease and desist letter from the university so he pivoted and started selling products through Amazon in 2008. He was selling all sorts of things from sporting goods to video games and totally failed; the only thing that would sell was books. At this point he pushed himself out of his comfort zone and started selling baby products and they were a success. He made a million dollars in the first year. With the increased success he realised he needed to hire someone to support the business, he put an advert on Facebook and hired someone from one of his classes on the spot without an interview. This was the best decision he ever made and this person is now a business partner but it gave him a false sense of security with the success of hiring people online. He then went on to make a series of bad hired and eventually looked at the freelance hiring sites like Upwork etc.
While he was browsing these sites he realised that he could build a better one and that’s how Free Up was born. He wasn’t making his own products to sell on Amazon so there was no Trademarks to deal with, he was selling on behalf of US manufacturers. When he was talking to other Amazon sellers he realised they were all experiencing the same issues with it taking too long to fire and vet people to hire to work short term during busy periods like Christmas. He started to offer other people his rolodex of freelancers and people loved it so much that he ran out of freelancers. Within a year his Free Up business has out green his Amazon sales.
Top tips
- Habit – Maximise the more productive part of the day for him – 6-9am
- Person – His Aunt
- Tool – Canned Responses