101: So You Wanna Sell On eBay - Nathan Hirsch

Nathan Hirsch is a serial entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. He is the founder and CEO of FreeeUp.com and the co-founder and COO of Portlight. Nathan started his eCommerce career on the Amazon Marketplace and successfully built a $7 million business within 4 years. After seeing the potential of using remote workers within his first business, he founded FreeeUp to make the remote hiring experience simpler for all eCommerce business owners. FreeeUp now provides reliable eCommerce workers to hundreds of clients around the world. Nathan is an expert at building efficient systems and processes, sales strategies, and business management. He currently lives in Orlando, Florida. Interesting Notes Nathan's Dad is a Teacher. He had always wanted Nathan to take the conventional route and get a full-time corporate job. His Mom is both a Teacher and an Entrepreneur. He saw her mother's business grow from its small beginnings to reaping the benefits. He saw his mother's drive and the hours she put into her business. He was impressed and made him decide that Entrepreneurship is what he wanted to do for life. Back in college, Nathan used to buy books for $100 and sell it to the bookstores. In return, he received a penny for a dollar. He did this to earn extra money. But, later, he got pissed off to the bookstore ripping him of his money. So, he started buying other people textbooks and make money himself. He offered better prices than the bookstore. Before he knew it, people are lining up at his door wanting to sell him their books. He made a decent money on that. Books led him to Amazon and eBay. He found it nice to sell it to the third marketplaces. He made some experiment first. Then, he became addicted and obsessed with Amazon. He came up with the idea of dropshipping, even before the word dropshipping is coined. His business had blown up. He found himself running a multi-million dollar business from his college dorm room. He hired anyone that would want to work for him. One of his good hiring decisions is having his business partner Connor. Until today, Connor still works with Nathan. Nathan hires people that were the exact opposite of him. He hires people who could do things he could not do. Hiring has always help Nathan expands and grows his business and led him to build FreeeUp. Nathan started FreeeUp small. There were only his self and his part-time assistant. Then, he made her to full-time as the workload gets bigger and he got more budget. His growth is a gradual thing. FreeeUp is a one-stop-shop for the top 1% eCommerce workers whether it is listing, customer service, PPC campaigns, and whatever it is. Nathan's team gets hundreds of applicants every week. They have a great interview process based on 9 years of hiring. They pre-vet workers and get only the 1% of the network. They have 15 pages of communication guidelines. Their workers have to memorize the guidelines and will get tested on. Today, FreeeUp has 300+ network of workers. Their workers are available to their clients on a first come first serve basis. With FreeeUp, Nathan helps clients achieve their dreams and grow their business. He is also helping the network of 300+ workers provide for their family. He provides the workers an opportunity where they could focus on what they like doing and good at. At some point, though, Nathan fired a person quickly after he hired him. The person did nothing wrong. Nathan totally misread his skill sets. Nathan felt terrible after. He never got to sleep for over a week. When Nathan started FreeeUp a year ago, their software broke and they lost about a week's worth of hours. It took a team of 10 different people to fix and get the hours back and imported to the system. The team contacted all the clients and the workers. Within 24 hours, everything is back on smoothly. Nathan is a baseball guy. He works 50 hours plus a week. A lot of his time is spent on building processes and talking to clients which he really enjoys. For him, work is fun. He likes doing it. He has a team of assistants that monitors his emails and Skype when he is not available. He has 15 people working for his Amazon store. He has 20 people as the internal team of his FreeeUp business. FreeeUp have worked with eBay clients and they offer 3 levels of workers: 1. Lower Level People - are workers who have experience, but still, needs training on how things are done. 2. Mid Level People are more specialized in their skills. They don't need training. They can do optimized listings and answer emails. They can do a lot of specific things. 3. eBay Experts are people who can audit your business from top to bottom. They can come up with a game plan and do it with due diligence. They can take your business to the next level because they have 5 to 10 years of eBay experience. Advice, Tips, and Tricks The time to hire is when you have the budget. There are two reasons why you need to hire: 1. To expand your business. It is so hard to expand your business because you are too caught up in the repetitive tasks. Instead of answering customers emails and doing the bookkeeping yourself, you can hire lower level people. Doing so will give you more time to focus on sales, marketing, and expansion of your business. 2. To grow your business to the next level. You are stuck in your business. You could go to a lot of directions. But, you don't know what lies on the other end. So, hire an expert to come in and tell you what to do. Have the expert take your business to the next level. To start a business, you need to have: 1. Work Ethic and Right Attitude There are so many ups and downs in a business. You have to have the mentality that you have to work through the ups and downs. That there is nothing that could stop you because anything is possible. 2. You are capable of making business decisions at a very high level and solve problems. To do that, follow these steps: a. Gather the information before jumping into the problem. Make sure you do your research. b. Lay out the different options - the pros and cons of each option. And see who would be affected, besides you and the company. c. Build a game plan to follow. d. Execute the game plan at a high level using the team and the talent around you to help you in different things. If you want to be an Entrepreneur and want to grow your business, you have to be working hard in the first 6 months. Because there is a competitor out there that is working harder than you. You have to put in more time unless you have other people to do it for you. Hire different people for different skills on a part-time basis. So that if anyone leaves, they are very replaceable. Quotes "Focus on what you are good at." "The time to hire is when you are making a little bit of money." "If you are going to hire, make sure you can commit to it." "Hiring is an investment." "Put money and training into hiring to get what you want from it." "The only solution I could think of is to build the solution." "You'll never know what is going to come next." "I can't stress how important having a good team around you is." "Time management is a huge skill." "In any business, make sure the clients are happy!" "The client may not always be right, but it is in your best interest to make them happy at all times." "The people who listen to their client and find out what their clients want are the people who can be successful in the long run." "At the end of the day, without the workers and the clients, I am nothing!" "Do everything you can to give a good experience to everyone." "The mentality of freeing up your time is to focus on areas of your businesses to expand." Tools Skype JIRA Trello Asana Slack Contact Information Website: FreeeUp.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/freeeup Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freeeupcom/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/OnlineHiringMastermind Sponsors Premium DIY eBay Template