RYB 900: The Story of Building The Brand “FreeUP” and Selling 4 Years Later with Nathan Hirsch

00:01 And a lot of times when you're running your own business, you're blind to different things that other people would see

00:08 Way. Hey, Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to the rock, your brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott Voelker a serial entrepreneur on a mission to help you. This show is designed to teach you to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future-proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand.

00:40 What's up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the rock, your brand podcast. This is episode wait for it. 900. Wow. I can't believe that we are at 900 episodes and, uh, well today we've got a featured guests that I'm going to be sharing with you, but before we do, we are also celebrating something else right now. And that is depending on when you are listening to this episode, we are celebrating our one year anniversary to opening and launching our online community of brand creators. And that is brand creators Academy. It has been an awesome ride so far, the first 12 months, and we are doing something to celebrate it. That is, we are now open for registration, depending on when you're listening to this. On October 26, we opened the doors to brand creators Academy. Now in the future, we are changing something. We used to open four times a year.

01:41 We are now going to be doing it differently after this has ended, which is going to be ending in five days from the 26. All right. Now, the reason why I'm saying this is because if you're on the fence or if you've been thinking about joining brand creators Academy and you don't want to go through an application process, you don't want a private inviter. You don't need a private invite. Then you're going to want to head over to brand creators, academy.com. Again, that's brand creators, academy.com go there, depending on when you're listening, you'll have the opportunity to join. If you are during this public open, or if you're going there later, you will have an application there that you can fill out. It's not that long, but it does allow us to see where you are. And if you are a good fit right now to join the Academy.

02:27 All right. So again, depending on when you're listening to this head on over to brand creators academy.com, or you can just go to brand creators.com forward slash join, it'll take you to the same place. All right, now today's episode is with Nathan Hirsch. I have had him on the podcast before you might know him from his last company free up now free up was a company. And it still is that helps people hire virtual assistants. And the reason why I said, well, his last business, because he was part of it, he has sold it and it was big news and he wasn't planning on it happening. And he goes through and shares with us how this happened, why it happened. And now what that has really propelled him into next, where he is building outsource school and what that looks like and what his goal is for that.

03:18 So really great interview, super excited to share it with you. And there's a lot more common. So, uh, again, if you want to really listen to a story of someone that has, has been in the trenches has built a business and then sold the business and then now rebuilding another business, what he is doing differently, what he looks for in a business before he even starts it, a lot of great information here and just a great conversation with my good friend, Nathan Hirsch, enjoy, Hey Nathan, welcome back to the pockets. Actually. I think this is the first time. Your back since the rock, your brand podcast

03:52 Is true. Yeah. First time on rock your brand. Thanks for having me.

03:56 No, man. I'm excited to catch up. You and I have, uh, you know, we've been, uh, you know, touching base here and there and stuff, and we've met each other in person at events and stuff, but, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's good to catch up in a lot's happened since I think we talked to you, sold a business, started a new business. You're moving now. Uh, so a lot's been going on, man. So just kind of get us caught up a little bit. Like what has happened to you in the past? I think it's like 12 or 18 months, like kind of bring us up to speed if you will.

04:24 Yeah. So last time we talked, I was growing free up. We started free up about four years ago, four and a half years ago now. And about halfway through last year, one of our clients actually reached out to us and they said, Hey, we want to get into the VA freelancer space. We bought a bunch of other companies before different agencies. They own an SEO company and we don't want to build it from scratch. And we like free up. We've been using free up. Would you be interested in being acquired? And we didn't really go into 2020 saying, Hey, we got to unload this thing by the end of the year or anything like that. Um, and, and we kind of built our business to be sellable from day one. And we can talk more about that, but yeah, they ended up asking us questions, making us an offer that we felt like was more than fair if not aggressive.

05:08 And then the due diligence began. I mean, they had a million questions for us. They wanted all of our standard operating procedures. They wanted to see all our books and had a million questions. And we had a lot of due diligence for them as well. We didn't want to sell our business with someone who's going to drive it into the ground or hurt our relationships or anything like that. And we got to visit their office. It turns out they're like an hour and a half from me in Tampa. I'm in Orlando and great guys. They treat people well. And from there the not so fun part, which was the lawyers getting involved, which wasn't really their fault or our fault. There was just two groups of lawyers doing their thing. And finally, we kind of wanted to turn it into a win-win for everyone. It was a win for them, a win for us. How do we make it a win for our team? So we negotiated it in $500,000 that would be given out to our internal team in the Philippines and made sure their jobs and their bonus and their race were secure there. And at the end of it, although it's kind of tough to sell your baby at its turn, it's tough to just turn something down. That's a win for everyone. And that's kind of how we looked at it.

06:06 Yeah, no, it was, it was kinda crazy to see on my side too. I was like, wait, why, wait a minute. Nathan's gonna, they're selling. And, and then, uh, you guys were like open and honest and shared everything with your community and kind of like with your affiliates and just everybody. And that's kind of how I've, I've noticed with you is you personally, like you you're always like that. I think you go over and beyond with connections and relationships and building all of that stuff or just someone coming on as a new customer. Like I think we were at, um, where were we? We were at, maybe it was Steve Chu's event. And, uh, and you were there and you and I were talking and you had a call come in or something and you answered it. And it was maybe from one of your team members saying like, I need you to, to help out with this one situation and you ran rate to it to help out because you knew that you wanted to satisfy the customer on the other end.

06:55 And, uh, that's really what resonated with me. It's like you do a lot of the stuff that isn't scalable, really. Like that's hard to scale, but you do do that and you're doing it right now with even building out your new thing, the outsource school, which I want to talk about here in a little while. But so when you guys started this company and you were on in the past and we'll link it up in the show notes, so people don't have to go back and listen to that entire story. But when you initially built that four years ago, wasn't with the intent that you were going to build it when you're going to sell it, build it and sell it in four years, or was it like you're building it, selling it one day? Not quite sure. Was where were you at when you started that?

07:31 Yeah, so I mean, as a logical person, there's only so many ways you grow a business, right? You either run it forever. You run into the ground, which hopefully you don't do you sell it or you get some kind of investment, which I personally don't want to do. I don't want to feel like I'm working for someone else or have to report to someone else. So for me getting any kind of funding is kind of off the table. It's just not how I like to do business. Um, so those are kind of the three options. And I mean, I learned a lot through free up. You have to remember it was my first time really growing a brand or doing marketing. But before that I was an Amazon seller like you and a lot of people that were in your community, but before, and that was kind of, my frustration is I didn't own a brand.

08:10 I didn't really own anything. Amazon was kind of doing that. It was B to C, they could change their algorithm. And I kind of set out on a mission to start free up as a marketplace and have my own brand, my own website, and be able to interact and help other entrepreneurs help other freelancers and VA. So I think it would be a little, I think it'd be incorrect to say, Hey, I started free up with the goal of just selling it in four years. That's just not the case. But like I said, I wanted to build a business that that was sellable. And then when the time came, you, you kind of have that option. Do you turn into more of a lifestyle business or do you, do you make that move to sell it? And it kind of takes two to tango, right? Just because you want to sell a business and build a business to be sellable, there still has to be someone on the other end that wants to buy it

08:51 Where you initially, it kind of seemed to me on the outside, looking in that

08:56 You were really targeting the Amazon seller at first. Was that, is that correct? And then you start and did you, did you see a moment that you're like, well, we got to start diversifying that part of it. Cause we don't want to be dependent on just Amazon sellers. Was that, was that something that I was just, uh, you know, seeing that was correct? Or is it something that you were doing other things behind the scenes?

09:13 Yeah, it's funny. So we did go after Amazon sellers first, mostly because I was in the Amazon space. I knew the Amazon space, a lot of the vocabulary there, like listings and PPC, like I could relate to people and, and we started there and then we started to expand it because we had learned kind of a diversification lesson on Amazon, where we had put all our eggs in one basket with one manufacturer. And I think we talked about this on a past podcast episode and didn't work out. We lost that manufacturer. So we wanted to diversify and we also see the Amazon space got a lot more crowded. I know a friend of yours, Greg Mercer came out with jungle market and there were a few others as well. So we kind of saw the writing on the wall that, Hey, it's probably not the safest bet to go on Amazon.

09:52 But at the same time we were organically getting other clients as well. Even though we were targeting Amazon sellers, we started to get Amazon marketing agencies and then marketing agencies and then random real estate agents were find us. So we kind of drifted into it, but, but it was on our mind. And I think we saw, or we see with Amazon that Amazon sellers can just lose their business in any day. Amazon could just suspend them. And what's the first thing that people do when they get suspended, they cut their virtual assistants, they stop hiring freelancers. So we wanted to go after businesses that we felt like had a little bit more of a, a longterm durability, if that makes sense.

10:25 Yeah. No, that makes total sense. And I think it's always, you start with what, you know, and for you, it was, you were kind of scratching your own itch because you're like, well, I am running an Amazon business. I would like to have these things outsourced first. So you build that. I think that makes a lot of sense, but then also seeing the writing on the wall that, Oh, well, there's these, you know, there's these other, you know, marketplaces coming in. Not that they were all going to directly compete, but they could, and then you were starting to diversify outside of that. I think that was smart. But I, again, I know that you're a smart guy, so you would see that. Um, but also saying like, you know, we're, we're, we've seen a lot of Amazon only businesses that's when anyone tells me, they're like, I want to build an Amazon business. I'm like, no, you don't, you want to build a brand and a business. That's not dependent on a channel. You want to use the channel, but you don't want to only use that channel, you know? Um, so let me, let me ask you this. So you're, you're going through that process. Where, where did you make that? Where was your next, I guess, target, was there another target of, of entrepreneurs that you were going after? Or was it just random or was it content creators? Like who was that next target?

11:31 Yeah, so the marketing space was the NASCAR next target. And we actually did a pretty good job of getting influencers to promote us. I mean, I consider you an influencer. There's other influencers in the Amazon and e-commerce space. And I like to kind of break down influencers in like tier a, B and C. And it's a lot easier to get in with tier a influencers in the e-commerce space than let's say the marketing space, like Russell would be tier a, like getting Russell Brunson to pro free up. We actually did talk to them at some point over something else. Um, but it it's much harder to do so w and I was decently known in the Amazon space. I, I wasn't Amazon seller, so it was just easier. So we went after the marketing space, we probably got a lot of tier a influencers on the e-commerce side. We probably got some B influencers on the marketing side before we sold it. So we slowly chipped our way up, which isn't bad for someone like me who didn't come from the marketing space, but by the time we left, we were really targeting just e-commerce and market.

12:25 So, uh, so what was, what would you say that your one and two traffic sources were for getting people to be aware of free up at the time? Yes,

12:37 So we were very diversified and that's something that I think helped us, uh, going to sell it because they knew if they lost one channel, they were still gonna have the others. And it's tough for me to break it down into two. If I had to say two would be podcasts, which, um, if you're not going on podcasts once a week, you're, you're really missing out. It's the easiest way to network with people in your space, get in front of thousands of people. It's good for SEO. It's good for backlinks. It leads to more and more events. And another one is our affiliate program, which you are a part of, which w people would get 50 cents for every hour that we would build the people that came from us for forever. And when I remember the first year that we implemented it, it was probably one of the better business decisions I've ever made because I had people calling me saying, Hey, I was at this conference in China, and I heard about free up, like, how do I get a VA? And I had never been to China. People just started talking about free up and spreading the word and kind of offer. Those were probably the big two. But off of that, I mean, content swaps are big. We had over 500 or content partners, and we were there getting influencers to promote us was a huge one. Um, we talked a little bit about social media and just networking in general, but podcasts and, um, podcasts and, um, affiliate programs are definitely the top two.

13:48 So, uh, paid ads. Was there any paid ads in that growth?

13:53 The interesting thing, we actually scaled it without doing any paid ads. So we got it to eight figures and I almost feel like you, you kind of take something, you learn from one business and apply it to the nother. So with our Amazon business, we had no idea how to hire, right. We made a lot of hiring mistakes. We finally learned how to hire. And when we started free up, we hit the ground running. We hired a players. The same people that were with us in week one were with us in year four and we sold it. Um, and they're still with free up today. And we didn't know anything about marketing. Like we really knew nothing. We paid Amazon or their 15%. They got us to the customers. And so we did a lot of trial and error and we learned podcasts and back links and partnerships, content swaps conferences.

14:33 And we experimented with all sorts of different things. And we finally came up with an organic marketing blueprint that again, we use today at outdoor school, we teach it to our members at outdoor school, but we never mastered paid ads because free up is a very tough business model to run paid ads to because it's to sign up, there's no monthly fee. There's a, the people can start and stop all the time. It's just very tough to track ROI, to paid ads. And I think the new, I know the new owners will do a much better job than we will, and there's ways to go about it, but it is challenging. But now without sort of school, we know how to hire. We have organic marketing blueprint and that's proven to work. And now we're going into paid ads. We're running ads. Now we've gotten sales off ads. So that's kind of the next thing on my list

15:16 To master. Yeah, no, that's a, that's a big one and it is a, is a tough nut to crack, but when you crack it, you know, it's, it's pretty good, right? It's like, if, as long as you can, you can, uh, you know, take that, you know, acquisition costs that you're, you're acquiring that customer and actually turn that into long-term, you know, value as far as like how much you're going to get on that return. And like you said, with someone I free up, it might be like, they sign up for a free account. They don't ever actually pay for three months. And then you're like, well, did I, you know, I, I spent $30 to get that one person. How do I know that? And it's a long track record, but without sort of school, I know that that model's going to be better for you because you're charging something upfront a little bit more substantial, not huge, but it's still more than nothing.

15:58 Right. It's like, you know, you'll, you'll be able to see if it's going to work a lot quicker. Um, let me ask you this. Let's I always like to dig into like, okay, everything went, went pretty well, but what, what didn't go so well in the growth of that, that you are going to take those lessons and apply them to the next business. Like you just said, because, you know, we don't want to sit here and say, Oh, Nathan did this and everything was perfect. And he never had a bad day and he never had frustrations. Like what happened in that, that would make some people maybe go, you know, I don't think this was for me, but you're, you were able to turn it around. And, and because you've got, you know, the mindset to do that, what, what is something there that maybe we could highlight?

16:35 Yeah. I mean, you kind of mentioned it before being at a conference and having someone call me and I was taking the calls. And I think at first we kind of used that as a, uh, like a good way to get people in the door. Hey, you get to chat with Nathan, you get to chat with the founder and overall it didn't take up too much of my time. I'd do a few phone calls every day, but the business couldn't scale that way. Right? At some point something was going to have to change. And in the beginning of year, four, end of year three, we started hiring VA's to take phone calls. And I mean, now without sort of school, we're actually doing that a lot quicker. So I started off doing phone calls without sort of school, because we didn't really have a message.

17:09 Like we were trying to figure out what is the clearest message. And now that I feel like we've figured it out, we're hiring a VA team and month six or seven instead of waiting until year three. So that was something we definitely learned there. I think the working with developers is a, is a whole thing. I mean, anyone that used pre-op software in year one and two probably wasn't very happy with it. It was buggy. It was very basic. It took us a while to learn how to work with developers. And now we actually have simply SOP, which is its own company, but we give it for free and outdoor school. And it's a tool for creating SOP is, and we're working with developers a lot better. Um, you kind of mentioned paid ads, uh, in general, that that was a big thing. So I think those were of the three things that the first two just took us a little while to figure out. And the third one, we just kind of ignored it until now. Hmm.

17:56 Now during the, during the sale of the business, cause we, we actually, we just sold one of our e-commerce brands recently. Yeah. Thanks. And I mean, it wasn't a eight figure, uh, sale, but it was still, it was nice. And it was a part-time thing for the most part. And, uh, you know, it was just something that we were doing more or less also to kind of, you know, keep doing what we're teaching. You know what I mean? You don't want to teach something that you're not doing. And, um, and we did that, but man, well, man, I'll tell you what that process for that sale was a little frustrating at times we, we literally sold it. Oh gosh. I think we had over like eight offers the day that it listed. And then we had, we took a buyer, we started getting into LOI and all of that stuff.

18:39 And then, um, COVID happened and then all of a sudden backed out. And so we've got maybe 30 days in, they backed out, okay, that's not what we're good with that. Then we got, found another buyer pretty quickly. And then we went through the SBA process, which is a whole nother animal. Then the lawyers get involved and all that stuff. And there was days that were like, is this thing ever going to really happen? Like, or are we going to get to the closing table? And it's just going to fold. And then, so were there any days in that process that you're like, Oh my gosh, like what the heck is going on here? Yeah,

19:08 Absolutely. I think that was the most stressful part is because the last thing that we wanted to happen was for us to ignore the business, ignore free out, be so focused on the sale and getting it done. And then they back out, which they could do at any minute up until the documents are signed. And then we don't really have much of a business to go back to because we've been neglecting it for four months. And that's tough to be focusing on the, what you want to be doing, growing the business. And we had projects and goals and stuff that we wanted to complete and trying to get this sale done. And I think Connor, my business partner and I kind of kept each other accountable and there's good days and there's bad days and you kind of have to remind each other to stay focused. And I think that one of the things that was a Testament to how we kind of fought through it is the year that, or the month that we sold free up, or we finally signed the deal, ended up being the best month in the four years that, that I was there. So we really did stay focused, but it was not easy to do.

19:58 Um, how did it feel the day that it was all done signed, delivered, and you were like taking a nice deep breath? How did that feel? So part of it felt good

20:07 Right after that we had to inform our internal team. I mean, we, we essentially told the new buyers that we didn't want, um, our internal team to know unless it happened because we didn't want to tell them we were selling the business and then I have to go back to them and say, Oh, deal fell through we're back. Um, and so from there we had to inform the team and we had someone there, Chicky ad who then my virtual assistant for eight years. Um, I'm the godfather of one of her kids. We have a great relationship and I had to inform her that we were selling the business. Now at the same time, she got a really nice bonus check and she's showing me your house and stuff that she's able to do with that money. So that part of it's rewarding, but it was tough.

20:41 There was emotion, there was crying, involved and from both sides. So I think once we finally got through that and we told and reassured everyone, their jobs are secure and kind of went through that process a little bit. And it was a huge sign of relief. I mean, my business partner, Connor flew to Orlando and then we took the drive to, to Tampa, um, to, to get it signed, to meet with them. We did it all in their office and then we had to announce it to the world. And we went on social media and did a video and inform our team and kind of do all of that. So it wasn't until a few days after we've actually signed the agreement that we were actually able to relax and celebrate.

21:15 Yeah. Yeah, no, no, that's awesome. And congrats on that. That's a, that's, that's a great, that's a great feeling. And, uh, it's also, I think it's really admirable that you, you know, you care so much about the people that, you know, you had on your team. And, um, I think that says a lot, you know, about your character and everything. I mean, I know that, but I just think for people to also kind of highlight that, I mean, you are about the people first for sure. And customers or employees or VAs, whatever. Right. You, you, you care about people and that's, that's always first and foremost for us. Um, let's, let's transition now. So how soon after that, do you, and your it's the same business partner too, right? Conard same, same business partner. And you guys sit down, you're like, and you're like, Hey, let's, uh, let's start out, start school. You know, like, how does that develop? Like, is it over, is it over a beer? Is it over like a, you know, dinner? Like when does that happen? Like, you know, and where does that conversation come from?

22:08 So we sold it around like mid November of last year. So it was right before the holidays. So we actually got to take some time off, go be with our family. I threw a flew up North. This was before COVID and, and kind of hung out with everyone and did get a good little break. And then the conversation turns to, Hey, do we still want to work together? Are we sick of each other? Do we want to go out and do our own thing? And luckily he wasn't sick of me and I wasn't sick of him. So then it became, all right, what do we want to do together? Do we want to invest in real estate? Do we want to buy a business? Do we want to start something? Um, do we want to just take time off and travel, which we were planning to do?

22:41 Although we didn't know all our travel plans, what would be canceled? And so we started reading books, we started listening to podcasts. I learned a lot about investing in real estate and buying businesses. And then we actually had people start reaching out to us, asking us if we could teach them our systems and our processes. And we kind of thought back to when we first started outsourcing for the first time and hired our first VA, we always wish that there was someone that just said, Hey, here are the interview questions you ask. Here's how you use a VA to get on podcasts. Here are the mistakes to avoid. And so we kind of came together and created this one course called cracking the VA code that taught people, our interview, onboarding training, and managing process. We spent about a month or two creating that. And then we launched.

23:24 And not only did we launch, we launched the first week that COVID hit. So we didn't know if people were going to like it or hate it. We were kind of under the mentality that if people didn't like it, we were just going to refund everyone and go move on to something else. Um, but luckily people liked it and they started asking for more and they wanted to know how we use VA's to get their time back, but also to grow their business. And so we started this library of standard operating procedures. I know you've gotten our podcast outreach formula. We have all these different things, and then it became all right, what is the business model? Because we don't want to just be selling like 50 different products, different playbooks, like that didn't seem like that much fun. So how do we turn this into a membership, a community?

24:03 And that's kind of what we built without sort of school. And then somewhere along the line, our developer who doesn't get talked about enough, his name's Russell, he was minority owner and free op. He was part of the buyout. He built the FreeeUp marketplace. He had been working on this SOP building software that we kind of, um, added to our mix called it simply SOP started to add it to our clients. So it wasn't something we were planning before the free up sale. It really didn't come about right after the sale. It kind of evolved over time

24:28 Where we are now. Yeah. And so originally was that you were going to create a course, just sell it and see what happened. And men talk about membership or was membership always kind of like a thought

24:43 Connor. And I kind of have a rule that we're not really interested in businesses that don't have reoccurring revenue, which is very hard to scale. Um, and we didn't really know what was going to happen with the course. I mean, we had never sold a digital product before. There's some people that say it's the best. Some people that don't have success and we didn't know what the market was. And I, I tend to be Connors a little bit more longer term thinker than I am. I'm a little bit more shorter term where I'm like, Hey, let's see what happens and then make decisions. So we kind of just took it to market. And from there, based on the feedback started to,

25:11 To build it up. Yeah. No, and I I've been, you know, obviously watching and kind of seeing what you're doing. I think it's great. Um, and I think it's definitely evolved since the day that you guys kind of did your M MVP product. You know what I mean? It's kind of like, you know, let's see if anybody buys us and if they don't we'll refund the few that did or whatever. And, and then, uh, so was there, was there a marker that you were like, if we get, you know, 30 sales, then we're good, or do you say like, we need to get 150? Or was there like a, kind of like a benchmark that you guys were shooting for that you're like this validates, at least that we're on the right track.

25:46 So we did have that. We wanted to get a hundred people to sign up, but then COVID hit like right as we launched. So it was really tough to measure if like the first week like, was going to go well because of COVID or not, well, because of COVID or, or what was going on. So we ended up getting around a hundred people that first week, um, which was great. But again, every we're kind of a new territory here. It's weird. It's a weird time to start a business because everything that happens well, you're like, all right, that's great. And everything that doesn't happen, you're like, all right, is it not happening well, because you did something wrong. Should we tweak it as the pandemic part of it? And I think we're, we're a little bit kind of past that now, but there was a time in like March, April, may, where every entrepreneur, like didn't really know what was going to happen with their business and, and us being out there in a new digital space. We're really no different.

26:31 Yeah, no, it's, it, it definitely was a time. We actually were doing a, a reopen for our brand creators Academy and it was scheduled already for that week that it all kinda happened. And we're like, what, what do we do? Or is it going to look bad if we even still go, go forward with the launch? You know what I mean? You have that thought and you're like, but people need this, so why would I hold it? You know? So we made the decision to do it. It was actually one of our best opens. Um, and, uh, you know, I don't regret it. We didn't have any, any negative effects from it or anything, but you, you do question it, you know what I mean? You're like, you know, is this the right time? You know, how can we judge this because of the, you know, the, uh, you know, the whole COVID thing. Um, it's just crazy. It's just you and I were talking a little before we got on, it's just a crazy year, all around, you know? Um, so let me ask you something about partnerships real quick. So I get this a lot because you know, you guys have been partners for a while. You know, how do you develop a good partnership with someone? How did you meet Connor? Anyway, by the way, I forgot.

27:32 So Connor was my first employee hire in college. I was in a, I needed to hire someone and I posted on Facebook. He was in my business law class. He responded, he said, I don't know what you do. I need a job. I hired him without interviewing him. And then on his first day, he called me and said, Oh, by the way, I don't have a car. Can you come pick me up? I lived in a frat house off campus. So I went and picked him up. Uh, for some reason, even though I wasn't too happy that he didn't have a car. And those Carter rides ended up being the best because we just talked business and what our long-term goals were every single day back and forth. And then I eventually made him from an employee to a business partner. And that's kind of my first recommendation is don't a lot of people just jump into bed with someone they're just like, Hey, you're my partner now. And you really want to work with someone first, especially if it's your business, if it's your idea like with the Amazon business, I was already selling on Amazon before Connor Ben got there. So kind of learning how you actually work together and not just the good times because everyone could work together with things are going well, what actually happens when things don't go well, when you have a bad two months in a row, how does, how do you guys handle it and work?

28:37 Yeah, no, that's a, that's a big one. What makes you, what makes you convinced or even want to make the offer for him to be, uh, to be like a business partner? That's a big one, right? You've got someone working for you. There's something that you're like, man, this person's got a lot to offer. And I think to really incentivize them is not just to pay them, but to actually make them an equity share. Like, how do you, how do you come to that conclusion?

28:58 Yeah. So first we have the same values. We have the same beliefs. So you talked about like caring about customers, caring about people. He's the exact same way where neither of us are earned it to make every possible dollar that we can. We care about the bigger picture. We care about our reputation and treating people well and owning up to mistakes. Like I could go on and on, but we have the same values, but at the same time, we have completely opposite skill sets. And I know that I couldn't do what he does with our business. He's all behind the scenes. He does the marketing, he works with the developers, a lot of the technical stuff. And I'm much more of the face. He doesn't want to go on podcasts all the time. He doesn't want to talk to people on the phone. So we have the same values, the same beliefs, the same goals, the same vision. Uh, but we're just completely different. Not even just skill-wise but different people. And I think that's what, what makes us work together so well.

29:45 Yeah, no, that's, it's huge. I hear that a lot. That's a common thread is like, you know, you need to have a business partner that shares the same vision, like the same beliefs and all of that stuff, but also not having the same skillset. Right. That, that makes it, that makes it hard. Right.

30:02 Funny when we sold free up. So Mark Hargrove and David Martin are the two people that bought free up. And as we were talking to them, we were like, wow, they're kind of like us in like 20 years. So it was kind of cool.

30:12 Yeah, no, that is, that's a great point. I think people listening should highlight that if you're ever thinking about a partner, um, make sure you be careful with it. Number one, I've had partners and I've had, you know, I've seen partnerships and all of that stuff fall apart and I've seen it being like a bad marriage. Um, so just make sure that you choose wisely, but also, like you said, don't rush into it, you know, like work together, but you know, you don't have to make that decision right away. So where, where do we see, uh, outsource school, you know, in the next two years? Like, where are you guys focused? Where's your target? Like, what are you guys looking to do?

30:44 So we want to get to a thousand members. We're about 400 right now. Um, we're, we've still been just tweaking with the messaging team, tweaking with the pricing. I think we're at a good place now where we're now people can join for 97 bucks a month, month, a month or nine 97 for the year. Um, we have our cracking, the VA code. We have our SOP library that we add one new, uh, playbook or formula every single month to a community library where people can donate their own SOP is our partners are our members. Uh, we have our Facebook group. That's incredibly active. We do live coaching calls in there, and people have been giving us positive feedback about that. And our software simply SOP, which we think is a big part of our business over the next few years. So our next goal is getting to a thousand

31:24 That actually do that. I'm sorry to interrupt, but what the, what does the simply SOP software actually do? Walk me through that.

31:29 Yeah, so it it's, uh, we want to design the easiest tool out there to create and share both video and text SOP is, and there's a few different parts of it. Most people's SOP is scattered around in Google docs or in loom, they're kind of all over the place. So it brings them together in one place. Makes it secure, allows you to share with your team there's other programs out there there's trend UIL and stuff like that. But they try to get into project management too, where we just want our software focused on SOP is, but allow it to connect to your other tools, a sauna, Trello, stuff like that. And then the last part of it, which was a pain point for us is videos are better for SOP. They just are from our experience, but videos are absolute pain, especially if you're a startup, they get outdated very, very quickly. So we wanted to create a tool where you can Mark steps as you go. And then if you need to update the SOP, your VA can go in and sub out that step. You can go in and do it. So it just makes it very easy to keep the SOP updated over time.

32:24 Oh, okay. Okay. And I did interrupt you to where you were going. So you, your, your, your, your plans moving in for the, like the next two years. And, um, you, you said you were at a 400, you want to get to a thousand, um, community and you're doing live calls and all of that stuff. Um,

32:40 I didn't want to cut you off, but yeah,

32:42 Th th that's really it. I mean, we've got a lot of different just messaging goals and clarity goals. And like, we, we just launched, uh, we just hired a VA to do sales calls. We just hired a VA to do partnerships. I mean, everything that we teach our members how to do what we're, we've either done in free up, or we're doing an outdoor school a lot of times both so that we really want to be the go-to place, whether you've never hired your first VA or you have struggled to hire BAS before, or we've got someone in there like Carlos Alvarez, or I think, you know, who has more VA's than I do. And he just likes our SOP library. So, um, kind of a place for people to go to get their most out of it.

33:13 Yes. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Uh, okay. So I did wanna, I did want to dig into this. And again, I, I was, I said to you, before we got on, I, I just kinda want to jam with you and just kind of see what, what you're up to, what your plans are, your strategy. Cause I see you on social media and there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff out there you can do on social media. Right. And there's, there's different ways that you can connect them. We're I'm talking Facebook right now, not so much Instagram, um, which I would like your thoughts on Instagram. I've almost just said, you know what? I'm not going to jump around in different, you know, hamster wheels of different places. I'm going to try to focus on one. Um, I've done Instagram for a little while.

33:49 I didn't see the ROI. Um, I know it's a long play, but it's just like you dumped something in and it's gone, you dumped something in and it's gone. It's frustrating. I want evergreen stuff. Or at least it's going to be there a little bit longer or I can run ads towards it or whatever Facebook. So I see you're posting on your profile a lot and there's been, you know, people saying don't post on your profile because that's where your friends and family are. Um, don't use that as your business tool, um, use a Facebook fan page, use a group, something like that. And I've been seeing you, and I've seen other people doing this lately. And I'm just wondering, is that a, a conscious decision or is it just something that has been easier for you and that's where you've kind of, you didn't really use it as like a friends and family.

34:29 You've always used it as like, Hey, this is, this is Nathan the, you know, the business side of me. And I'm just curious cause I, and I do notice and, and let me know if this is a part of your strategy, which I think it is, but there's a lot of like questions, a lot of questions like, Hey, you know, you know, uh, I don't know. Uh, do you currently hire VAs? You know, yes or no, you know, like all of these things. And I think that will also get the engagement going, which also helps the algorithm and all that stuff. Give me a little bit of background on that. I'm curious.

34:57 Yeah. I always joke with Connor that if I stopped being a business owner, I'm just going to delete all my social media channels. I feel like I, I do use them for, for mostly for work. And I mean, I, yeah, I tend to, I think even before free app, so the Amazon business, I wasn't on Facebook much. Like I'm really on social media, more for business than anything else. Although I am connected with different friends and a lot of entrepreneurs I'm friends with, so they kind of go together. Um, I, I remember about year two of free up. I was at a conference and someone came up to me and they said, Hey, like, how are you such a good marketer? Like, can you, can you give me some tips? And in my mind I'm thinking like, I'm not a good marketer. What do I know about marketing?

35:33 I've been an Amazon seller for six years. Like I I'm starting free up from the ground. And about a year before that, I said, you know what? I'm just going to post on social media every single day, seven days a week, every Sunday, I'm going to write up my posts for the week. I'm going to write 10 different posts so that I have extras in case one week I get too busy and I'm just going to throw it out there with consistency and literally anything that got engagement, I would learn from it and try to make more posts like that. And anything that didn't work that got zero engagement, I would just delete it. And a few hours later throw something else up there and no one even knows. So it was really just a lot of trial and error and just throwing stuff up there. And to me and I had a post about this yesterday, like the consistency is everything. It's doing it over and over and over. It's not, you don't need the best post in the world. That just gets a hundred thousand likes. I mean, obviously that would be great, but I've never had that. It's all about the consistency over time.

36:24 Yeah, no, I, I agree. I mean, I just, I just did a coffee talk on this the other day. It's like commitment and consistency, right? It's like commit to that. You're going to do this and then actually show up and do it consistently is like the secret sauce, but people don't want to hear that because they want to hear something easier or there's a certain algorithm hack or whatever. And I just noticed you're really consistent on that stuff. And so you're posting on your profile. Um, now on your profile, you really can't run ads to your profile. At least not that I'm aware of. Are you reposting and sharing on a outsource school page or what are you doing there? So that way there, it does allow you to use some of the data from the engagement, because if we get engagement on a video, we can start creating a custom audience and all of that fun stuff.

37:11 Yeah. And it takes a step back. I have rules for different platforms. Like I post on LinkedIn once a day, Monday through Friday, I post on Instagram once a day, seven days a week on Facebook. It's a few times every single day. So I have different rules and you kind of tweak them over time. And again, all this stuff is written up front, um, and kind of thrown in there unless one day I had some crazy idea that I want to just get out there. So it's all scheduled. It really doesn't take up that much of your time when you have doing it. But yeah, I do have a Nathan Hirsch fan page on Facebook. I have an outdoor school fan page. Um, I on Facebook and we run our ads from the outdoor school page. But a lot of people that engage with me, I'll ask them to like the page or you can invite them to like the page and they kind of circle back to that.

37:52 Um, and there's retargeting play too. Cause when you're running Facebook ads and a lot of this I've learned more so in the, in the past year, but like, let's say someone goes to my profile, they go to the Astro school website. Well, they're going to start seeing outdoor school ads. If they join. They liked my Instagram, which is a business Instagram, even though it's Nathan Hirsch, same thing, it gets thrown into the ad assets and same thing with the algebra page, the Nathan Herff page. So it all does funnel there, even though, uh, that people that like all my posts don't necessarily get at.

38:19 Yeah. So, so two questions on that. So you're scheduling, so you're, you're batching those off, which I'm a fan of doing this too. Like batching, even if you're going to do, you know, like you, you're probably doing some podcast episodes today, you know, that you've scheduled, right? It's like we should do that because we're going to get better use of our time. We get in a rhythm, all that fun stuff.

38:36 But are you using a scheduling software or are you just going into Facebook and scheduling those and then ahead of time and then just setting the dates, are you having a VA do that? And you're just filling in the blanks. Give me a little bit on that. So I handle my personal LinkedIn, personal Instagram and personal Facebook. And you got to remember a lot of those go together. Like if you see a Facebook post, I've probably taken the same post and thrown it on LinkedIn, maybe not the same day, but the day before, the day after someone of the same line, but the Nathan Hirsch fan page, the Astro school fan page, that's at VA. They schedule it out. I think that they use like Sentra or something like that. Okay. Um, Connor actually handles that. Um, but yeah, that's me. So one thing that we did that we've done since we started writing content, it was, it was not only, Hey, I'm going to write content every single day, but it's, Hey, I'm going to throw this into a Google doc. And now I have all the content that I've written for the past five years. Plus every podcast episode that I've been on and clips from all those podcasts. Plus every time on a podcast, people send me over images, which has even more content. And so every week when I go to schedule it out, it doesn't really take me that long because I can just scroll through a document, take it, change it.

39:38 Wow.

39:54 I lost you there for a minute. Hey, I'm back. What's the, what's the last thing you heard me say, uh, you were basically saying that you're taking stuff and um, you are, uh, you're having it automated or, um, repurposed on your, but you're posting on your personal profile and, and those things. So if you just want to pick up yeah. Just pick up from there and we'll just piece it in. Yeah. So my personal LinkedIn, personal Instagram, personal Facebook, that's me. Um, everything's scheduled in advance, whereas my Facebook page, our LinkedIn page, anything business-related we have a VA who schedules them out in advance. So I'm not really handling those. Um, but one thing that we did for when, when I started writing content five years ago, we kept all that content. So I've every single post I've made on all these channels. I also have podcast clips from the 300 podcasts I've been on.

40:42 I get images and clips from a lot of podcasts I go on. So what I'm going through on a Sunday to schedule it out, it really doesn't take me longer than 10 minutes because I just have all this different content to use from, and no one's going to see a post that I made today and be like, Oh, you posted that three years ago. Like that doesn't really happen. Right. Well, yeah. And so the other question is, is like instead of just randomly putting out there, is there a, is there a, um, a theme to it because maybe you're leading up to something or maybe you're wanting to bring attention around, you know, hiring VA's for digital marketing or whatever. Is there a theme around, depending on what we're doing, like we launched a promo last week, um, for the first time we offered outdoor school month to month.

41:23 So we had lots of different content about hiring your first VA and getting started slow because a lot of people that are going month to month probably have a tight budget are probably nervous about dropping a thousand dollars. So we try to find content there. And like when we dropped our inbox management playbook, a lot of my content is how my VA's run my inbox. So there is some relevant there, but there's, I feel like when people try to structure it out too much, a lot of times that there's a certain element of randomness and you can spend all this time planning on the post, doesn't get any engagement and all of a sudden your, your plan changes. And that happens to me, parents.

41:54 Yeah. No. And so the last thing I want to ask you on that is, uh, what have you learned from, from all of those posts that you're doing? Like, cause you said like you post a lot of stuff, see what works, what doesn't work. What's like something that someone could take away from this episode and go, Hey Nathan, thanks for sharing that. Like what is something that you've done because you've posted a lot and pretty frequently, what's some, what's some things that you go back to and go, we're going to do more of that.

42:18 Yeah. So I try to alternate between some kind of story of either my Amazon business free Apple or outsource school, because people don't just want to hear your advice all the time. They want to actually hear what you've done before on. Then I then just information about VA's hiring some kind of podcast or webinar or something that I've been on. And then something that kind of brings in other people, whether it's someone on my team and highlighting them, whether it's Connor, uh, whether it's one of our partners and, and I kind of cycled through the four of those, making sure that it's not just like outdoor school, outdoor school, outdoor school, and making sure that there's this different, uh, variation there.

42:53 Yeah. No. And, and I do notice that you, you do ask a lot of like open-ended questions and are you doing that specifically? Number one, you want information? Like, I think you just did one recently. Like you're, you're, you're like, ah, we want to create better messaging, help us with this. And then you're like, you give these things and then you're getting feedback, which is brilliant. Right? It's like, why not ask the people that you're going to be serving the messaging too. Right. And so is that something that you do on a regular basis because a, you want the feedback, but you also know that the algorithm likes it in Facebook because they love the engagement.

43:24 Yeah. I mean, you want to, you want to ask questions, you want to have some kind of call to action and the whole like, Hey, share my post or please leave a comment. Used to work. Doesn't really work anymore. So that doesn't leave you with too many options. Usually a question is one of the best ways and people like giving feedback, they like talking about themselves. And I've kind of, I like to say that I know that other people are a lot smarter than I am and other people have a lot different ideas than I do. And a lot of times when you're running your own business, you're blind to different things that other people would see. One of the best posts I made about free up. I said, Hey, if you were the CEO of free up, like, what would you change today? And I got some of the best feedback that helped me make a lot of great changes. So I love that. I think it also on the other side of it, I think it makes people want to do business with you. No one wants to do business with someone that's like my way or the highway. And there's an engagement part of it as well. Like more, more responses, the more it helps your other posts. So it all kind of goes together.

44:19 Yeah. And how frequently are you going in there? And like if someone comments, you kind of try to comment back. Cause I know that's another part of it.

44:27 Yeah. I've gotten better at this where I'll try to just go through like once a day, the morning I like waking up from like seven and nine is my time with no distractions, no meetings, no podcasts. And I'm pretty quick on a computer so I can usually get through that kind of stuff pretty quick.

44:41 Yeah. No, that's cool. All right, cool. So we're going to wrap this up, but uh, give us like something that you would tell someone that's literally building their business right now with the hopes of maybe selling one day, you've sold a business. You've, you know, you've built a business, you sold a business. Now you're building another business. What is something that you would tell them like day one? Here's my recommendation for you to build a brand?

45:05 Yeah. So everything that you figure out, you, you need standard operating procedures for it. You need systems. You need process. When we went to cell-free up and they said, Hey, how does customer service work? And we said, Oh, don't worry. Jane and customer service knows how to do it. Like they're not buying that business. They want to know who does what, when and every single situation. And so the way that we like to structure our SOP is what we teach at outdoor school is to break it down into the why, why are you doing this task? How does it impact the big picture, the actual steps of doing it, but also the important reminders. What are the things that if someone else messes up that are going to be detrimental to the task, to the business or the goals. And so when you start breaking down all your systems into the why, the steps and the important reminders, that's how you build systems that you can easily transfer to other people, instead of just saying, Hey, here's the task, go do it.

45:52 Mm, no, I think that's huge. And that was something that we started to, uh, probably about 18 months before we sold. We really started to make sure that things were fine tuned. And, and when we handed the keys over, it's, it's going to be pretty seamless. Although you're going to have to still do a little guiding a little this and that, but for the most part it's done and you can ask questions and then we'll point you where you need to go or we can refine it. But yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's a big one for any businesses, as soon as you're ready to, or even if you're not ready start documenting your process. Right. Just makes it so much easier. Yeah.

46:26 Yeah, definitely. And I guess the only other thing I'll add off that is make sure the operations, the fulfillment of your business run without you. I mean, the only thing that, that I heard for four years is like, why are you the face of free app? Like you're never be able to sell a business if you're the face, but the truth is like the marketing aspect, the lead aspect, like someone can always come in with a better different marketing plan, different lead plan. But if the operations of your business don't run, unless you're there, that's a very tough business to sell. Yeah.

46:52 Yeah. It really, really tough. And, uh, again, I always tell people, if you want to be the face of your brand, it's going to be hard to sell. There are advantages to that. But like you said, if you're just the marketing face, I mean, look at all of the cell phone companies, they, or the insurance companies, they get a face, they can always bring in a new face and start bringing them, you know, awareness and all of that stuff. But like you said, if it doesn't run without you, that's a problem. Right. Right. All right, man. Well, Hey, let people know how they can hear more about you. And, uh, and you know what, you're up to outdoor school, all of that stuff. We'll drop everything up in the show notes too, but just let everyone know how they can get a get ahold of you and kind of see what you're doing.

47:27 Yeah. So feel free to follow me on any media channel on Nathan Hirsch, go to outdoor school.com. You can grab a free trial. You can join for 97 bucks a month. If you want to check it out. Um, we're all about systems, processes, making it easier so that you can hire rockstars quickly so that you can eliminate turnover, avoid costly issues. And most importantly, save time creating standard operating procedures with both our software and our SOP library. Yeah,

47:51 No, it's again, I would recommend it. Um, I still recommend free up. It's a great company you built. Um, and it's, to me, it's, it's one of the best because you guys really vetted that process to where, when you don't just hand us anyone, you've actually you pre-select, and then you, you know what I mean? I don't say you anymore, but the company which you built, right. You built it that way, which I think is, is really cool. And then now you're taking those lessons and you're, you're turning that into some training where people can, uh, can really go out there and, and kind of just plug and play, which I think is really important. And the one other thing I want to add that I think that's really cool with what you're doing is you're adding that, uh, that component to outsource school anyway. Um, it's there, there's a, um, you have a, uh, what am I looking for here? It's kind of like a charity part of it, right? You're where you're donating a portion of the proceeds. Can you talk about that real quick?

48:43 Yeah. So one of our favorite charities teach for the Philippines, which provides education to, uh, Filipino children that might not have access to it. I mean, we, we had the, the, we were fortunate enough with free app to just meet so many amazing VA's and just people in the Philippines. We got to go out there. Um, and, and it's really important to us. So when we sold free up, we didn't want to just say up, see you later. Uh, we wanted to continue to, to give back and in any way we could, so 3% of all sales from outdoor school go to teach for the Philippines.

49:09 Yeah, no, it was awesome. I seen that on the site and I was like, that's cool. I like that. Anytime we can, we can do something like that. And it makes people feel good to do business with you as well. So that's awesome. So thumbs up to that. Well, Nathan, man, I appreciate you taking some time out of your day. This has been fun catching up and we'll definitely get you back on in the future. See how things are going. Um, but uh, just again, want to say, thank you, man. I appreciate you. And, uh, yeah, we'll be in touch, man.

49:32 Sounds great. Have a good rest of the week.

49:34 All right. So there you have it again, another great story from someone that has built multiple brands, the last brand that he built free up is now owned by someone else. He sold it for a really good, a good payout. And, uh, it, it was definitely worth his four years of building that, but then also what he has learned from that. And now what he's doing, I think is always good to hear. And, uh, and you heard the one thing. He always tries to focus on something where it's either recurring or the customer would need or want to buy more of one thing. And you've heard me say that time and time and time again, that, uh, well that, uh, you want to have something or a variety of products that people can buy or buy more of. And that's physical products, digital products doesn't really matter.

50:22 So again, think about that in your business. If you want more information about outsource school, that again, head on over to the show notes to this episode that can be found@brandcreators.com forward slash 900. You can get all the details there. And then one last thing, if you're interested in building your brand or you want help building your current brand, and you want the support of a community that is there dedicated to taking action, to helping you, to sharing, to being transparent and really just supporting one another, then you're going to want to head over to brand creators, academy.com. Again, that's brand creators, academy.com. Currently, depending on when you're listening to this, we are open for registration publicly. This will be the last open registration. The ones in the future will be by application only, or by private invite. So again, depending on when you're listening to this, and if you're interested head on over to brand creators, academy.com, all right, guys. So that's it. That's going to wrap it up as always remember, I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to, you have to come up, say it with me, say it loud, say it. Proud. Take action. Have an awesome, amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now let's rack your.