EP 29 - Nathan Hirsch - Valuable Insights: Hiring Pre-Vetted Freelancers Specialized in E-commerce

Most entrepreneurs and business owners say their biggest human resources challenge is finding skilled talent.

On today’s Awesomers Authority episode, Steve introduces us to Nathan Hirsch, Co-Founder and CEO of Freeeup.com. Nathan provides valuable insights about hiring pre-vetted freelancers specialized in E-commerce, digital marketing, virtual assistance and so much more. Here are more awesome takeaways on today’s episode:

• Nathan’s origin story and what led him to create Freeeup.

• The three different levels of hiring freelancers.

• The advantages of strength-based leadership.

• And the future of corporations and the freelance industry.

So put on your headphones, listen to today’s episode and find out how you can scale your business by finding skilled and reliable talent online.

Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, "You can have everything in your life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson and I hope that you will join me on this Awesomer journey.

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1:13 (Steve introduces today’s guest, Nathan Hirsch, Founder of Freeeup.com.)

Steve: You're listening to the Awesomers podcast. This is the Awesomers.com podcast Episode No. 29. That's episode number 29 and to find all of the show notes just go to Awesomers.com/29. That’s Awesomers.com/29. Now, today my special guest is Nathan Hirsch and he's a great entrepreneur who's really helping solve one of the biggest problems that we find today when we're building any kind of company but E-commerce companies in particular and that is finding people, right? The old saying is “It's hard to find good people.” Well now, it's easy to find good people. Nate is in charge of a company called Freeeup.com with “three e's” by the way and we have special links in the show notes page and he's the co-founder and CEO of that particular company which is a marketplace that connects businesses with pre-vetted freelancers in E-commerce, digital marketing and so much more. Nate has sold over 30 million dollars online and regularly appears on leading business podcasts around the world. He's certainly an expert in this category and offers a wonderful and highly necessary service for E-commerce guys like me and we have personally used Nate for a couple of our different businesses and it's an experience that is unique and interesting and affordable and you get access to really high degrees of talent really fast so I'm super excited to kind of dive in here in this Awesomers authority episode. That's on Awesomers.comepisode number 29. Okay, Awesomers, welcome back here we are in the Awesomers.com podcast yet again, and today we have a special guest Nathan Hirsch. Nathan, how are you?

Nathan: I'm doing great. How are you?

Steve: I'm very well, thank you. Do you prefer Nate or Nathan?

Nathan: Either ones fine, It's funny I used to be called Nate but my girlfriend started calling me Nathan again. So now everyone calls me Nathan.

Steve: It's funny I've gone between Steve and Steven back and forth based on who's calling me what over time - usually it was my mother, “Steven get over here!” So, okay well I may just go between them then. So, Nate, I know a little bit about your background, a little bit about the company that you have, but maybe tell us a little bit about your company, Freeeup. And then I want to talk a little bit about your origin story just for a minute.

Nathan: Yes, so Freeeup is a marketplace where we get hundreds of freelancers applicants every week. We vet them for skill, attitude, communication. We take the top 1% we let them in and then we make them available to you guys to rapid fire whenever you need them on the backend. We offer 24/7 support in case you have even the smallest issue and a no turnover guarantee. If they quit for any reason, we cover all replacement cost so it's all about the pre-vetting, the speed, the customer service and that protection.

Steve: Yes, that is a very concise description of an extraordinary service. So I want to let others know out there you know often we talk about this idea of you know strategy systems or scale,  And scale is something that I believe in comes from the systems being deployed by people. It takes people to scale, you can't scale on your own. That's the opposite of scale actually. And I definitely think that Freeeup is a really intriguing tactic to take. In fact, a lot of people call it a hack, right? It's so cool and so easy that it feels like a hack but really it's a long-term sustainable business practice. Don't you agree?

Nathan: Yes, I mean I really built it based on my own needs. I got thrown into the entrepreneurial world at a very young age. I started an Amazon business out of my college dorm room. I started off buying and selling textbooks, eventually found the niche industry of baby products. I was running a multi-million dollar Amazon baby product business out of my college dorm room as a 20 year old single guy. If you can imagine that and with that craziness that came with being an entrepreneur I quickly realized I had to start hiring people. I had so much to do, I was running out of hours in the day, not to mention all the stuff I was balancing on the side from the girlfriend, the social life, the college schoolwork, everything that goes with it. So hiring people was a necessity. I couldn't go to the college kids around me I quickly realized they were unreliable and no 30 year-old marketing expert wanted to work for me anyway. So I really had to rely on this remote hiring world, the gig economy which is booming right now. And once I started hiring people and getting VA's and freelancer experts. All of a sudden my time went from expanding my business to interview after interview, after an interview and I always just wanted a faster way to get access to that talent that I so desperately needed. And when I couldn't find that I built it myself and that's what Freeeup is. It's based on my own needs. View my own problem that I had back in the day.

Steve:  Yes, and Awesomer it's just for your reference we're going to have as always in the show notes some links and things for you to be able to follow up on this make sure you get to the right information at the right time and get linked over to Freeeup. But the interesting thing that I want to point out to people is that we undervalue our own time as entrepreneurs often, right?  Where we say, “I need somebody to do this job but I will spend all kinds of time delaying that hire or maybe going through the hiring process.” So, two things happen in my experience I love your input on this, either we hire the first person that has a poll because we just simply can't take it anymore. That's abdication, or we put ourselves through a long exhaustive process that is also a thankless and the results are you know hit miss at the event, do you see that same scenario?

Nathan: Definitely! I mean hiring is tough it's one of those things that they don't teach you in school. And on the flip side they're constantly teaching people how to do better at interviews.  How to be a better at answering interview questions. Which just makes it harder on the person hiring to weed through people who might not be the best fit. So, hiring it is one of those things when you make a great hire, you want to hold on to them. But it can take you a long time to find that person. And for us it's all about time, it's all about speed. We know that the average business owner doesn't have two weeks to find a graphic designer. They need that person today. And anything that we can do to reduce the time needed, we know will help that person grow their business.

Steve: Yes, I tell you again people undervalue time. It's the only thing you can't buy. So, let's spend it wisely. So, let's back up for a second Nate, and just talk about you know, you mentioned the college kid in the dorm and all of this. What made you decide to even try your hand at an entrepreneurial business to begin with?

Nathan: So, my parents were both teachers, and to put in perspective I went to school in a very rich town. The town next to me, the town that my dad taught at. The town that I lived in. We weren't poor, we weren't broke. But my parents were teachers, we had a very average childhood. But I went to school with kids that had everything. So, from a young age, I always wanted more.  And during the summer my parents had me work these 40 - 50 hour week jobs or internships. Well, all my friends were outside playing and having fun. And I hated it, I hated it more than anything. I was just watching the clock every day. But I learned so much from these internships, from sales to customer service to managing people and communication. That when I got to college, I kind of looked at it as “Hey! I have a ticking clock here.” I got four years to start a business. If I don't I'm going to have to get a real job and work for doing something I hate for the next 50 years. So, I took all the skills that I had learned from those internships and I really built the Amazon business, based on the customer service, based on the sales to get relationships with new manufacturers, based on the managing people. Once I started hiring people all those skills that I had picked up. But it all comes back to being forced to have a job that I hated back in the day, that turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened.

Steve: Well, I tell you it's a classic Awesomer story to have somebody, instead of you know kind of seeing the inevitable, which is you know finding yourself in a cubicle for the next 50 years. You decided to solve for X, and eliminate that potential. I think it's a good, terrific story. And I really enjoy the fact, that you know you were able to take the lessons learned in those internships, right? Which is you know, kind of like intellectual equity. And apply them into your new business. That was probably the largest part of your investment early on.

Nathan: Yes, I mean it all really comes down to customer service. The customer service training that I got at Firestone corporation was unbelievable. And we always hear that mentality, “that the customer is always right” that's not necessarily true. But it's in your best interest to keep people coming back and put people in position where they don't feel like they're screwed over. And just the way that you talk to people, the way you interact, the way that you fix issues, the speed in which you fix them, the way that you put people ahead not behind when something is your responsibility and your mistake. That's all stuff that really resonates with me because, I mean these are real people, we bill over 1300 hours every week. And my phone number is right on the top of the website. And I spend very little time dealing with freelancer issues, but they will happen here they're that even if I get the best freelancers in the world. They're not going to be the best fit for every single client in the world. So, when issues do come up, and they're usually very small, we fix them quickly, we make it right with both sides and we move on. So everyone can focus on bigger and better things. And I think that kind of mentality is really healthy.

Steve: Boy, no doubt about that. You know a common thing that I've seen, now this is my 30th year as an entrepreneur. Is that often people will procrastinate what they don't want to deal with,  right? They put it off, put it off. I'll get to it later today or tomorrow or whenever and they hope kind of is that it never comes. Whereas, if they would just take that proactive approach you go. You know what I don't like this, I don't want anything to do with it, let's solve it as quick as I can, and have it behind me that makes everybody's life better. Including any potential person who's not exactly a fit, right? In my view is that if you have somebody in the organization is not a fit for whatever reason, your fault, their fault doesn't matter. Help them move on, don't keep them stuck in a place that nobody's happy with, right?

Nathan: Exactly! And it's very similar I have a team of VA's. I have about thirty of them and it's very similar to that mindset that I get in there right from the beginning. And it's all about, “Hey! let's take initiative, let's get stuff done, let's move quickly when you see a problem, let's just start with the basic problem-solving skills. Gather all the information, look at the options, come up with a solution, execute it, put steps in place, so it doesn't happen again and getting a mentality of taking ownership, taking control and getting stuff done quickly and valuing the time of everyone else around you.” That's what good customer service is about.

Steve: Quite right, I definitely agree with your philosophy. So, let's take a, what I would consider a common problem that entrepreneurs have, and particularly we'll focus on like an E-commerce guy you saw on Amazon. What's the number one hire that you think that they should make based on your own experience of recommendations? Whatever you have.

Nathan: Yes, that's an impossible question. Every business is different, the way that I like to look at it is - there are three different levels of hiring, (1) there's the basic level which is non- US, five to ten bucks an hour. These are people that are there to follow your systems, your processes. If you don't have them in place you really can't use those $5 to $10 an hour freelancers. (2) Then you got the mid-level the $10 to $30, they could be graphic designers, Amazon listers, bookkeepers. You're not teaching them how to be a graphic designer, but they're not consulting with you either. They're specialists, they're there to do a specific job. And then (3) there's expert level at $25 and up. They can come in audit your whole business or parts your Amazon account.  Come up with a game plan, can still execute it, create those systems in the process. So, what you need to figure out as a business owner is do you need a follower? Someone to plug into that date of the day? Do you need a doer? Are you just loaded with projects that you need to get taken off your plate? Or do you need an expert? Are you trying something new that maybe you've never done before? or something that you need guidance? And you need that expert to come in and take a look at what you're doing.” And I think that's where most people go wrong. They're hiring the wrong level and they're thinking “Hey! I can hire this basic level person to consult me.” Or “Hey! Let's hire this mid-level person and plug them into a day-to-day job.” And that's when you see a lot of wasted time and energy over bad hires, that could just be good if they use the people correctly.

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14:33 (Steve and Nathan discuss more about the different hiring levels in the freelance industry.)

Steve: Well I think that's probably pretty good insight. One of the things that we see that I don't know it's almost a pet peeve of mine, is this idea that they've heard that I can you know I'll hire somebody from the Philippines or from India from Costa Rica. Whatever it is and now my problems are solved, right? Because I've hired somebody. And whether or not that person has the appropriate experience or expertise it deploys a whole another coat of paint, right? There though too often, we have it in our mind, that you know if I hire somebody who says they're finance expert for five bucks an hour I should expect the world-class CFO. That's a mistake and a common mistake I suspect.

Nathan: Yes, don't get me wrong. Those people are out there, and these are real people.  They don't always put go into perfect levels. I mean I have a Filipino bookkeeper who is incredible. I found him three years ago, I would put him against any U.S. bookkeeper. But once I realized he was good, I did everything possible to keep him around. He's not going anywhere, I put incentives in place so his pay goes up as the business goes up. I'm constantly checking in with them. Could he quit? Of course, but I'm doing everything possible to keep him around. And I think when you do find those high-value deals when you do find those people you really need to keep them. And too many entrepreneurs, they fall into that trap where they make a bad hire, bad hire, bad hire. They finally find someone they like, so what do they do, they just load them up with everything and your entire business becomes dependent on that one person. Which is incredibly risky. So yes, you should take care of that person and make sure that you do everything possible, so that person doesn't quit. But you also need to take steps to protect your business and departmentalized as much as possible.

Steve: Well the functional attributes of a business are they're classic, they're really not going to change that much even between businesses, right? You're going to have sales and marketing, and finance and operations and tech and whatever. And then finding those skills to deploy across those resources is something that can be done. That's the fundamental point of this conversation in this podcast. Is that there are solutions to all these problems that out there and one of the things that I like about Freeeup, is that you have kind of a skill breakdown. And can you tell us about some of the top skills that you guys offer? Because I thought that was a very interesting. You're very precise about kind of the positions and the skills that you offer.

Nathan: Yes and keep in mind, there are two ways to hire - (1) the first way is to take things off your plate that you're already doing and get your hours back. And (2) the second is to figure out what your weaknesses are, or what you're not doing well or maybe what you're not even doing? And hire people to turn those weaknesses into strengths, so we have everything from data entry, customer service, bookkeeping, listing, calling Amazon sellers support, up to graphic  design and product photography and PPC campaigns and Facebook ads and digital marketing experts. People who can do product sourcing, whether it's going through a wholesale list or negotiating in China. We have all those people ready to go, over a hundred skill sets across E-commerce, marketing, web development. But if we even if we introduce the top 1%

freelancer to you, if you don't know what to do after the fact and if you don't know what's best for your business it's only going to do so much good. So, we want to educate people, so they hire better and smarter going forward.

Steve: Yes that definitely resonates with me. I'm sure it does with the Awesomer community out there. As you look at you know kind of the broad set of skills or do you guys add on to those skills regularly? Do you stay within this finite set of skills? How do you look at that?

Nathan: Yes, we're always adding, I mean we started off as a marketplace just for Amazon.  When I started I was an Amazon seller. I had a rolodex, today Amazon freelancers easy place to start. And the Amazon people started telling their E-commerce communities. So, we're getting Shopify and eBay and Walmart requests. So we start recruiting, and they tell their agency and marketing community. So we expand agencies and then we get real estate agents. So we're constantly growing, we're constantly keeping pace of what's going on. I mean the most recent example, I guess a year and a half ago, two years ago Facebook Ads became huge. So we started adding that and more recently on cryptocurrency people. There's been a demand for that, so we've been adding that skill set. So we're always adding, we're always trying to figure out what clients want. I'm trying to balance that supply and demand and making sure that it's there. And if we don't have what you're looking for, it may be what you're looking for is incredibly specific. We'll recruit for you free of charge, you're under no obligation to hire people that we get. If you want them, great you get first dibs, if not we'll add in the marketplace and continue to expand the skill set that we have.

Steve: Well and let me just say, as a guy who's used you know kind of formal recruiting firms over the years that's an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs out there. I've recruited for some top-end executive positions. Where we pay just a recruiter over $125,000 for a single hire, for one single hire. Now, I'll grant you is the process is a little bit different and probably a little bit more intense but the idea that you can have Freeeup, and the team there working for you proactively. Without an obligation, without any big-ticket attached to it is really an extraordinary thing.

Nathan: For sure, I mean we're all there for the client experience. We want to create an environment where the clients like the freelancers. It's in our best interest to get them freelancers they like. There's no signup fee, no monthly fee, no minimums, no obligation. You can stop using us at any time and vice versa. If you think of it, from the freelancer side, they can go anywhere. There's tons of VA agencies, there's tons of marketplaces. We have to create an environment where they want to be here. Where the clients treat them well, where they know that they're protected and we help them grow their freelance business. So that's on us and, that's what we've been able to do over the past three years and it's one of the reasons why we love feedback. We love ideas from both sides on how we can make Freeeup even better.

Steve: Yes, definitely very smart. So as we look at you know, the kind of the standard problem and entrepreneur has is they either don't have enough time to get what they need done or they're probably not that good at certain things. All of us have our strengths of weaknesses. I'm a guy who likes to focus on my strengths, therefore I hired the stuff that I hate to do. Which is almost always my weakness anyway. Do you see other people make taking that same tactic?

Nathan: Yes, I do the same thing. I hire for pretty much anything that's outside my core competency. So years ago, my business partner Connor and I, we were stepping on each other's toes. Our business, our first business wasn't growing as fast as it was before. And so we sat on the balcony and we did this activity, where we just said you're bad at this. And we just told the other person to their face exactly what they weren't good at and it hurt a little bit. We went right to the core and we tried to keep it business and not personal. But I mean he told me I was a terrible writer. I told him that he was terrible focusing on short term, he was all long-term and we just went back and forth. And at the end, we realized we complemented each other very well.  Which was great, we were great business partners and we could divide and conquer. But we also realized we had this list of all these things that we were both bad at. And we were doing them every single week, so we had to start hiring to turn those weaknesses into strengths. And I think even if you're a sole entrepreneur doing that activity and really identifying what you're not good at, is going to lead to a lot more productivity down the line when you can stop doing.

Steve: Boy, I tell you it is one of the most freeing things to realize that we can give ourselves the freedom, to not put ourselves in that kind of almost like a jail cell of tasks. You know, there's a number of things that I used to do in when I was first starting out. Then I thought I just had to keep doing right, I got to carry the rock up the hill. So to speak, and once I realized, “Oh! I hate doing this and it's okay for me to hate doing it. And by the way, somebody else loves to do this job.” I have examples of people on my team that they are delighted, their eyes light up, while my eyes glaze over. That's the perfect mix for me, is finding the people who love to do some of these other jobs and are really great at it. And then that's very satisfying and fulfilling for them.  And then I don't have to do this stuff I hate. Which is is pretty nice, do you find that kind of chemistry on teams your own?

Nathan: Definitely! I mean when you focus hiring, not just on skill but on attitude and communication and you create a culture where ideas are welcome and people feel like they want to be there. They're not forced to be there, and you put people in a position where they're doing things they like and you're actually listening to them and if they guess the point where they're doing things you don't like, you adjust and you tweak. That creates an environment,  where you can grow or people want to be there and where people are attracted to you because the last thing you want to do it and I did this back in the day, I was like pleased to work for me please work for me, please work for me. And if you go around with that mentality it becomes very hard to get people to stay and to get people into your business. When you create that internal environment where people want to be there or where you have what everyone wants, then you get to the point like us where we're getting a thousand applicants a week trying to get into our platform. So that change of mentality, that change of focus starting with the core, that's how you lead to long term success when hiring and building really incredible teams.

Steve: Yes I definitely agree with that. The first part of the problem is we need to hire and we need to augment our teams to be able to do more. That's something that can be addressed very quickly. And again there are good ways to do it, there are poor ways to do it. But beyond that, I think the idea of retention and how you treat the team and how you build the culture as a team is very often overlooked. How do you guys recommend that people manage or try to develop that culture with a team that is far-flung and not necessarily in the same office?

Nathan: Yes, I mean first you have to identify what your culture is. I mean my culture might be different than your culture and there are people that run really successful businesses with a cut-throat culture. That's a sales culture, every man for themselves, people are warm and friendly. But if they hire someone that isn't okay for that culture it's going to be a disaster and vice versa. If I hire someone that's completely serious and wants nothing to do with interacting is only focus on the job, and I put them into my culture. It's very easy to crack your culture. It only takes one person, so you really have to define what your culture is. Define how you talk to people and what establishes my culture. And then work to get similar reminded people. People who want to be in that culture, who want to be in that situation and grow from there. And there's going to be trial and error. You're going to fail, that I mean hiring is tough there's no one out there that has a 100% hiring record, especially when you're focused on culture but down the line, it's a much more long-term investment to get where you need to be. You're going to have to develop a team, and to get a team or turnover isn't crazy you have to get a culture that everyone's on the same page with and everyone buys into it.

Steve: Boy again, I think that's a really, really good point. The short-term mentality of I don't like to do whatever, let's just say customer service. I need to hire a customer service person that leads to that kind of a typical abdication. It's like the first person to respond who says that you have customer experience, you know customer service experience. They get the job don't call me, I'll call you. That's the opposite of a positive culture, right? That is you descent yourself up to fail in my opinion. So I think you know it really wise words there about the idea that the long-term and the cultural, again it's kind of like a cultural equity if you will that builds up to a positive thing and it generates its own little gravitational pull towards good people. And it kind of keeps out people who are not compatible. Do you find that over the long term that these cultures can kind of pay dividends?

Nathan: Definitely! I mean turnover is the most expensive part of business having that revolving door and I had it back in the day. I mean we had something like 50% turnover with halfway through my first business. And I sat down and I said we have to change something. We're doing something wrong, let's find out what we did. So I had the third consecutive person quit for the same job this wasn't a freelancer, this was an internal position and I sat down for them and I did an exit interview. There was only one type of agent interview and that's an incredibly uncomfortable one. I mean he didn't like me, I was mad at him for wasting my time, my money but I just asked him for feedback and I should have written him a check right there because the kind of feedback that he gave me saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line. He hit me to the core of what I was like as a leader, as a person, as a manager. What the culture was like, what our hiring process was like. So the point of that, is if you don't know what your culture is or whether you have a good culture or whether people like working with you or people are going to be around long term or what you're doing wrong, go right to the people and just ask them for feedback and create an atmosphere where their share with you. I mean I have people that have worked been working with me for seven years that they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong and I want to know that. And that doesn't mean that I can make everyone happy at all times. It just gives me information to improve myself and my business going forward. When people see that you're making those changes and you continue to make the business better and better and better they stick her out.

Steve: Boy again, having a dialogue, having a conversation and just the idea that we use a system called strengths based leadership. And most of the companies I deal with. And this allows us it identifies our strengths using a scientific background. I will have another episode kind of that dives into that the science behind strengths based leadership in the future. But you know each of us come up with these kind of five strengths, but every strength has a dark side to it,  right? And so ideation happens to be one of my strengths. But any of the people who work for me or my partners know that sometimes if ideation runs amuck they gotta they got to pull me back into check and by having this vocabulary they can say “Hey Steve! Yes, we get it, you got a lot of ideas. Let's just kind of focus on the two or three that we've already agreed to.” That kind of vocabulary and dialogue can be very constructive inside of an organization at every level in my opinion.

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29:07 (Steve and Nathan talk more about strengths based leadership.)

Nathan: Yes, I, a hundred percent agree. I mean hey there gets to the point where, I mean I beg clients who are saying “Hey! I've never worked with someone in the Philippines before” or “Hey! I've never hired a freelancer before.”  And well what should I do? And my advice is to talk to them tell them that be transparent, be honest ask for feedback, ask how they work with other clients, that those are the conversations that lead to productivity and long term relationship.

Steve: And the funny part is you know this idea that we can just talk it through and just be open, sounds like it's foreign. Like we have to do some kind of dance but really the simplest things are just getting everything out on the table. Talking about the challenges, talking about our perceptions, whether the right or wrong they're still perceived and they got to be dealt with. I think that's really good advice. And particularly as you're trying to define if you already have a team you need to define how the culture is already set up and the only way to do is to ask the people. And I've gone through this process with you know fairly large companies that I've had with hundreds of employees. Where we didn't really understand the cultural piece of the puzzle at that time. And we found the positive parts of the culture that we wanted to hang our hat on. And we found some negative parts of the culture that we're kind of side-effects unintended consequences of some of the things we were trying to achieve. And we had to figure out how to focus on those positives and either nullify, eliminate or at least reduce the negatives. There are some aspects of running a business that can't go away and could sometimes be perceived as negative. Some people don't want to be accountable, maybe that's not a cultural fit but we have to measure stuff in a business. We have to get performance, we have to get results. So we do have to measure things at the end of the day and ultimately. If people don't want to be measured they should go work in academia or some other environment though not to talk about teachers.

Nathan: Yes, I mean that's one of the things that I try to avoid. I try to avoid people that bring drama in or people that take things personally because I'm going to be brutally honest with people. If I think you're doing a terrible job I'm going to tell you and I might not sugarcoat it and I need someone where that motivates them. They like, okay that's great feedback let's improve. I can't work with people that think “oh my god he hates me” you know those are the kind of people that I don't work with. So I mean knowing yourself and knowing the kind of people that you want to surround yourself with is incredibly important.

Steve: Boy again, that's something that people should pay particular attention to when you know yourself when you kind of know your own. Even I don't want to say mood, but it's just your own demeanor, right? If you happen to be a very matter-of-fact straight-to-the-point kind of person, that doesn't always work with everybody, right? And there are some people who literally will have their feelings hurt the first day. And then just stew in the corner thinking about ways they can get back at you. That's not a great fit, for a long organizations mind included so I just can't stress the idea that understanding culture, understanding yourself is a big prerequisite to getting it all this to go right.

Nathan: Absolutely.

Steve: I would assume that everybody in your organization is an external kind of gig type of hire not a formalized employee in house. Is that correct?

Nathan: Correct. So I mean the non-U.S. freelancers you can hire for more long term stuff. I mean we have clients that hire 6 Filipino customer service reps and you have the same people for three years now. The U.S. people, they're more on the gigs. I mean you can hire a marketing expert and use them every month or hire rough designer and use them for project or two. But you can also buy them out and make them an employee. If that's something that you want to do.  If you want the inexclusive, if you want them full-time. So that's really how it works but I mean we have clients, they use people for one-time projects, your different projects or ongoing work. It's really up to you how you want to use them. But everything's remote.

Steve: Well in that flexibility, really, again deserves to be emphasized. So this concept that you know, I need a really great marketing person but my budget doesn't allow me to put that marketing person 40 hours a week. But I can go to Freeeup and say “hey! How about 10 hours a week? 20 hours a week?” Whatever it is and then by the way, that leaves me enough money to go and say “hey! What about this other type of expert that I need I know?” The Benoa - a cryptocurrency expert you have now?

Nathan: Yes.  

Steve: What does that position even do? They just farm money? Fine, I don't even get it.

Nathan: Yes, a lot of it. Is the article writing and weighing in on different expertise. When it comes to that or some form of marketing off of that. Yes, I mean we live it in a pretty amazing time, the gig economy has made it. So you don't have to hire an expert for full time. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year plus benefits and add them into your office. I mean you can hire someone for a one-hour consultation, you can hire a graphic designer to make three (3) images for you or a Content writer to write a blog post a week. It's a pretty incredible time, it's 800 billion dollar industry and it's only getting bigger and bigger. I mean over the next ten years, over 50% of the workforce is going to be remote. Fifty percent, so if you're not taking advantage of the gig economy and the freelancers out there you're really missing out.

Steve: Well, again in my 30 years of business there are times where we look back and go, “Oh! Gosh, do you remember the salad days of the late 80s or early 90s or this or that.” Everybody kind of looks back in the rearview mirror goes aw, wasn't it great then. But I'll tell you the salad days are right now in front of us. When it comes to gig economy the flexibility, the consistency that you can kind of scale with, this is something that we could not do 5, 10, 20 years ago. Maybe five, but 20 years ago forget about it. It was just not possible. Even as I tried to set up at one point. I had a Philippine call center or BPO Center for Business Process Outsourcing, where we ran a 24 operation over a hundred people and it was extraordinarily difficult just to get an internet connection to them. Just to do the VoIP phones to them. Today it's everybody's got Skype or Whatsapp or this or that. I mean it's built into our phone world-class technology. So it really today are the salad days for the gig economy for sure. I totally agree with you, but where do you see things going? Let's talk about the future a little bit. You mentioned it's going to grow, but is it going to become more complex? Is going to become more regulated? Or what do you see in the future?

Nathan: Yes, I don't know it's tough for me to predict the future. I see corporations becoming more and more into this remote climate, not just on freelancers but employees too. I mean, what is the point of going to work any more? It makes people miserable that costs more, it's more overhead. I would even argue that it's less productive and I think that corporations are going to start figuring this out. Why are we spending all this money on office space? Why are we having to pay people extra to essentially pay for gas money? And different expenses that come with having to go to work, when I can maybe pay them slightly less but they get the perks of the freedom and the flexibility and working from home. If I'm a corporation I'm signing up for that every single time. So that's really where I see it going in terms of regulation everything else. It's tough to predict, it's always something that we monitor. But I mean the gig economy is it going anywhere? It's here to stay, that even the Ubers are the world. I mean they're not going anywhere, we're not going back to taxis, it's only going to progress forward.

Steve: Well, that's a really update analogy. These Uber rideshares so to speak, or the Airbnb. Whatever it is homeshare, this idea that we're just taking existing assets and leveraging them across multiple users, that's the same thing as the gig economy, right? Maybe, I can't afford to have the front-end developer, who's amazing forty hours a week or maybe I need ten of them. I can only afford you know half time for half of them or whatever. It's just a very interesting way to be able to expand a business without putting undue overhead and undue burdens on an entrepreneur, and on a small business that's trying to do something important. So when you think about this idea that you know people have this problem, they need help you have a unique solution where you've kind of eliminated a lot of the barriers, right?  Some of the barriers include things you've talked about, like the cost of training? Nobody, well let me say this differently, almost nobody really does the math on how much hiring somebody and then losing that somebody you know six months, twelve months in, how much that cost a company? I know big companies have done this math and it's extraordinarily expensive, right? tens of thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands over the course of a year if you have a lot of employees that you're going through the churn. So you guys help that by having people that are on demand available and then on demand replaceable. Is that fair to say?

Nathan: Yes, and I mean keep in mind that the training is only for those basic level freelancers that we talked you up for. The mid and the expert level people there might be a little bit of onboarding but for the most part, they're coming to you with an expertise. So yes, I mean we're there to cover replacement cost if someone quits halfway through a Dev project we're going to get someone else and cover whatever it cost to get them up to speed. So that you're made whole again, if you do hire a customer service rep in the Philippines and you train them for two weeks and they quit on you in six months, we're going to cover the first two weeks of the next person so you're always covered if you use Freeeup.

Steve:  That's amazing, really is good. So I did that struck me as a question as you were talking there, let me just see if I buy my train of thought has left the station. So I'll try to come back to but you know is it's so striking that this idea that you're able to kind of cooperate with the entrepreneur and help them. I just, I like this idea that we can just pick up the phone you guys go and handle the recruiting if you don't have somebody in the bag for you and you are able to deploy them.  Oh! This is the question a lot of the guys that I deal with we all are talking about documentation assistants and things like that but not everybody has those together, so maybe those entry-level resources aren't there, can they hire one of your higher tier resources to help put that documentation and put those types of things into play?

Nathan: Definitely, 100%. We've got lots of clients that do that and once you get really good at hiring like I would consider myself up there. I have my VA, you actually create the documents in real time so right now I'm training three new assistants there in the Philippines. And as they're reading the old documents and learning they're updating the documents. So they're keeping them up to speed by writing it's going to help them to learn it better and then once they're added their job is to keep those things updated at all times. I mean we're both running startup so when you when you have a start-up things are changing they're constantly moving your systems and processes get better and better and better and you don't want to put yourself in the situation where someone quit and your documents are six months old.

Steve: Boy again, this is not a static situation we live in. In the business world an entrepreneurial world, you cannot expect to make documents one time and have it done it is a live breathing document. And if you don't have a team that has access to make those changes as they go, I think you're definitely missing opportunity the way that Nate just described, you know kind of ongoing day-to-day contributions as they're needed from the team. And it is really, really important. So not only can we find somebody to maintain those on an ongoing basis but through Freeeup we can find people who will give us the opportunity to actually architect and develop those systems for us.

Nathan: Yes and we're excited to bring it to your community. I mean we've helped a lot of business communities out there. We love doing that I mean that's what I'm passionate about. I always say when the clients happy and the freelancer is happy then we're happy and we try to put everyone in position make that possible.

Steve: I love it, well listen, Nate and this has been very informative to me I'm extra excited in fact, I think I'm going to task a couple of my people to go see if we can shop for a couple more team members that we need through Freeeup. And hopefully, you can help us you, have any podcast experts?

Nathan: We work with a lot of podcasters that use our freelancers to produce.

Steve: Good. We'll leave that a couple of those guys and then we'll probably need a couple financial guys too. So we'll be looking at your stuff. And again for the Awesomers out there let's not forget we'll put some show notes and things on how to get in touch with Nate and kind of investigate his services but it's been really informative any final words of wisdom for the audience out there?

Nathan: Just diversify, protect yourself, departmentalized. I mean my calendar is right at the top of Freeeup.com with three e's. If you're unsure about what to do book a pre-meeting with me I'd love to talk to you about your business and how I can help.

Steve: Yes, what a great opportunity to speak with Nate himself and as I recall your CMO also has that offer, so he could they can speak it was one or the other of you guys is that, right?

Nathan: Yes, And if you mention this podcast and sign up you get a free $25 credit to try us out. Very little risk we're trying to put you in position and have a great experience.

Steve: Just like free money right there everybody. Okay, we'll be right back after this. Thanks again Nate for joining us and we really appreciate what you're doing to help entrepreneurs and Awesomers around the world.

Nathan: Thank you.

Steve: And we'll be right back.

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Steve: Gosh, well just think about this idea that we talked about Nate and I. This concept that you know if you're looking for somebody and they need to have a certain set of skills they will help go out and recruit them for you. Help find them and help do all the legwork which is such a pain. Anybody who has ever tried to hire people, especially if you're scaling an organization very quickly hiring is one of the biggest bottlenecks, a business owner can face and to be able to have somebody on your team that really you don't have to pay him unless you use their resource. What a great deal, right? And you always know what you're going to pay the transparency of this type of service is really helpful and in many ways unprecedented. Because you can get a variety of the talent so I'm super excited, don't forget to go to Awesomers.com/29 to find the show notes and the links to get you some special deals as always I don't participate any sort of affiliate or other kinds of promotional deals at least for the first six months. I'm not doing any of that all of my time, every episode is 100% dedicated to helping expand the E-commerce cooperative. Which is known as Empowery, the Empowery E-commerce cooperative and all proceeds, any little deals are special for empowering members, who get even more than a typical customer and any little scooby snax at a result of that promotion go to that member owned nonprofit cooperative.

Well, we've done it again everybody we have another episode of the Awesomers podcast ready for the world. Thank you for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed our program today. Now is a good time to take a moment to subscribe, like and share this podcast. Heck, you can even leave a review if you wanted. Awesomers around you will appreciate your help. It's only with your participation and sharing that we'll be able to achieve our goals, our success is literally in your hands. Thank you again for joining us we are at your service. Find out more about me Steve Simonson, our guest team and all the other Awesomers involved at Awesomers.com. Thank you again.