E148: How Nathan Hirsch built a successful team of 35 in the Philippines

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Nathan Hirsch is an entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. Most recently, Nathan co-founded FreeeUp.com in 2015 with an initial $5,000 investment, scaled it to $12M per year in revenue, and was then acquired in 2019. Today, Nathan is a co-founder of OutsourceSchool, a company working to educate entrepreneurs on how to effectively hire and scale with virtual assistants through in-depth courses. Nathan has appeared on 300+ podcasts, is a social media personality, and loves sharing advice on scaling remote businesses.

Nathan Hirsch also founded Ecombalance.com a monthly bookkeeping service for Ecommerce Sellers and Agencies.

Episode highlights:

• What got Nathan into entrepreneurship early in life, and why he treated college like a deadline.
• What Nathan learned working on his first major venture (HINT: don’t become overly reliant on any one thing!)
• What happened on Nathan’s first day of his first vacation. It wasn’t just one, but THREE major blows.
• How you can make a remote team happier and more engaged.
• How Nathan built a team of 35 in the Philippines.
• Why he picked to focus his team in the Philippines in particular.
• How to get started with your first VA.
• How to make sure your remote worker will work out using Nathan’s SICC method.
• Stand-alone VA’s vs remote workers that are part of your company culture.
• What Nathan starts paying remote workers and what he ends up paying them over time.
• Best advice received: Work hard, play hard.
• Habit that contributes to success: Splitting stuff up, breaking things down.
• Recommended tools: Wordboard app
• Recommended book: Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton
• Run time: 39:51

Links:

• Outsourceschool.com/vacalculator – be sure to join the newsletter!
• Nathan Hirsch on Twitter
• Nathan Hirsch on Insta
• Nathan Hirsch on LinkedIn
• Nathan Hirsch on Facebook

Quotes:

• “Everyone hates creating SOP’s.”
• “I always felt like I wanted more.”
• “No one really knew what Amazon was.”
• “I just failed, over and over and over.”
• “We were really dependant on Amazon – they could shut us down at any moment.”
• “It really comes down to communication and clarity.”
• “You’re not going to go out and get drinks with them after work.”
• “On-call should never be urgent.”

Takeaways:

• Don’t become overly reliant on any one thing, like Facebook for all of your ads.
• Diversify and make yourself less vulnerable.
• Take time to make sure a new hire is the right fit.