Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hi Gorgeous. This is episode number 292. And the wonderful Nathan Hirsch is back on the show.

Nathan Hirsch [0:09]
Hi, this is Nathan Hirsch, you are listening to Heart Sells! Podcast. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:13]
I am so excited to have Nathan Hirsch back on the show today. And I hope you will be inspired. And I hope you have listened to the last episode 291 from “5K to 12 million with The Power of Affiliates”, Nathan shed so many value bombs. And today he is back. And we will be talking about “How To Maximize Every Single Day”. Nathan is a master and that he knows exactly how his energy plays out over the day. And he uses that to fuel his business. Nathan is an entrepreneur and expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. And he has co-founded Freeeup.com 2015 for an initial investment of $5,000. And then he scaled it to 12 million in revenue a year. And he sold it, the business in 2019. So today, he is a co-founder of Outsource School, which is a company working to educate entrepreneurs and how to effectively hire and scale with virtual assistants through in-depth courses. Nathan has appeared on over 300 podcasts, his social media personality, and loves sharing advice and scaling remote businesses. So I’m so pumped that he’s here today and sharing on Heart Sells! Podcast. Let’s dive right in. Well, I’m so super excited to have you back on the show. Nathan, welcome.

Nathan Hirsch [1:43]
Thanks for having me.

Christine Schlonski [1:45]
So, you know, creating companies, and it looks like you’ve always been entrepreneurial, and you really went for it. And you in the last episode, you shared that you just hate it to have a boss, you figured that out already while in college. So you did everything you could. So after college, you would need a boss. And then you had this amazing success story, this Freeeup and now you are building your new company, the Outsource School, what else is on the horizon?

Nathan Hirsch [2:17]
I tend to be an entrepreneur that focuses on one thing at a time. I mean, when I ran my Amazon business for seven years, all I thought about was Amazon when for the past four years, it’s been nothing but Freeeup. And right now I love Outsource School. I’m really excited about the reactions I got and I’m excited about the potential for it and how we can help a lot of people. I’m excited that we’re giving 3% of all sales to our favorite charity, Teach for the Philippines, which provides education to Filipino children. And so right now, that’s my 100% focus. And business has a weird way or entrepreneurship has a weird way of changing directions on you. I mean, if you would ask me 10 years ago, if I’d be selling books or baby products on Amazon, I would have believed you. If you asked me five years ago, if I’d be running a VA Freelancer marketplace, I want to believe you. And if you would ask me even a year ago, if I would have sold Freeeup and been working on a new company, I would have believed you. So who knows what I’ll be working on in 10 years.

Christine Schlonski [3:10]
So let’s talk about focus. Because I do feel it’s so important, especially for people coming to entrepreneurships. They are so creative, and they have so many ideas. And you know, they want to implement it all at once. What would be really good business advice that has helped you that might help them if they implement it right away?

Nathan Hirsch [3:30]
So what I like to do is figure out what times of the day I’m most productive and what times of the day, I’m good at doing certain things. For example, I found out and I didn’t know this upfront, but over time, that from 7 to 9am is my most productive time during the day. So from seven to 9am, I want to be working on whatever my biggest project is, whatever the most important thing is, right now a lot of times it’s filling courses, it could be building a process that can be training that next great virtual assistant, whatever that is. I also realized that me doing podcasts first thing in the morning or later on in the day, don’t go over as well. For whatever reason I’m tired, I just woke up. I’m tired because I’ve had a long day. So doing them in the middle of the day from 11am to two o’clock, we’re now around [1:30] my time, that works out very, very well for me.

Nathan Hirsch [4:17]
And then I also know that doing phone calls at the end of the day where I can walk the dog and walk around and be on my phone. And I don’t want to say I don’t have 100% focus, but it’s not the same as doing a podcast or working on my biggest project of the day. That works out well. And I like working out from 9am to 10am. So I can work really hard from seven to nine one hour break from the gym, come back I’m a little bit refreshed. I’m hyped up from the adrenaline, do a little bit more work, do the podcast and then the phone calls. So figuring out what times of the day you do stuff matters and it for those you listening, your tires might be totally different than me I have a good friend who’s an entrepreneur and his most productive time is between 12am and two o’clock in the morning and that’s what does it for him and that’s totally fine. So spend some time figuring out what works, do some tweaking and try to find that consistency. So you’re maximizing every single day.

Christine Schlonski [5:05]
So do you have a routine then for every single day?

Nathan Hirsch [5:09]
I have a routine so I have a VA that’s in charge of my calendar that’s in charge of my booking. And we’ve gone through and we’ve met about this. So from 7 to 9am, try not to book any podcasts from 9 to 10. I’m working out and it is there. Now, not every podcast only films between 11 to two. So sometimes there are exceptions, sometimes there’s a big show, whatever it is. So we do follow that probably 90% of the time, but there are always exceptions to some rule. Maybe someday, I’m working on this big project, and I need an extra hour and then I work out later in the day. So try to get that consistency. But the life of an entrepreneur is not like the nine to five job or you’re just doing the same thing every day. There are some adjustments that you need to make. But I have a VA that kind of keeps me on track. So if I get five people reaching out to have me on the podcast, instead of me doing it because I have a tough time saying no to people or scheduling my calendar, I give it to her and she schedules it out. So I don’t have more than one podcast today. And she tries to make them between 11 and 2 and all that.

Christine Schlonski [6:07]
Yeah, awesome. So basically know yourself, be really sure that you use that productive high energy time for your most important project, for your revenue generators. And then also take good care of yourself by, you know, working out or having a break, or something like this. So what do you do when you have a bad day?

Nathan Hirsch [6:27]
Have a bad day? Good question. Um, yeah, usually, if it wasn’t COVID, I watch sports or I do something that gets me away from the business. I mean, now I have two dogs that are amazing. I spend time with them. I spend time with my fiance. I mean, it’s all about getting away from the business for a little while. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs forget to do that. I’m a big proponent of physical activity, whether it’s walking, running sports, which I can’t do right now or working out, I can do even from home. So that’s kind of my distraction. But I think where people struggle is you have to have that one or two things that you like doing outside of work, your work can’t be your work and your hobby, you need work and something else.

Christine Schlonski [7:09]
Yeah, that’s I think that’s good advice to have that kind of harmony or balance that you’re not always doing the same thing over and over and over that you give yourself variety. So that life doesn’t become boring.

Nathan Hirsch [7:23]
Right, exactly.

Christine Schlonski [7:24]
What would be a business book that made a huge impact on your life?

Nathan Hirsch [7:30]
Yeah, good question. Um, what did I finish reading? It’s funny, I wouldn’t say it’s had a huge impact on my life, but I recently wrote it and I would recommend people read it. So I have a business partner, Connor. And we’ve worked really well together for years. But there’s another side to that there’s a lot of business partnerships that fail that struggle that leads to a lot of bad things. So I wrote a book recently called “Hatching Twitter”. It’s about Twitter. And I think everyone knows that Twitter has become this gigantic, publicly-traded company. But there was a lot of fighting on the way out, there’s a lot of backstabbing, there were business partners that were friends that became enemies. So I think it gives you a glimpse into the other side of it and a side of it that a lot of people don’t want to go down. I think that just adds a very valuable lesson. It also makes you really appreciate it. When you do have a really good business partner I’ve Connor I’ve been working with for 10 years, I would give him my social security number, my bank account, like we have that level of trust, and I think it made me personally just appreciate that a lot more. Hmm.

Christine Schlonski [8:31]
And somebody who is looking for a business partner, what would be good advice to find the right fit.

Nathan Hirsch [8:40]
So for me, I like to find someone who has the same values, the same beliefs, and wants the same thing. So we have to have the same goals, the same amount of money, we want to make the same amount of impact you want to make. We have to care about customer service and ideas and feedback and treating people well. Those are my values. I only want to work with people that have those values. But I don’t want to work with another Nathan Hirsch, I want someone that has different skills that compliment me. If I’m not good at something, ideally, they would be great at it. And I think that’s what Connor and I do very well. He’s good at what I’m bad at and vice versa. He likes doing things that I don’t like doing and vice versa. And on top of that, he’s much more long term and I’m much more short term thinker. So it kind of complements each other very well.

Christine Schlonski [9:23]
And looking at the big picture, is there anything that you are kind of afraid of at the moment that you might have a challenge with?

Nathan Hirsch [9:33]
Afraid of? Um, I mean, personally, like, I’m scared of heights and stuff like that if we’re talking business. I don’t know. I mean, I think as you get deeper and deeper into your entrepreneurial adventure, you kind of get numb to different things. Because at the beginning when something goes really well you’re at this high or like I’m on top of the world and then when something goes bad, you’re like, Oh my god, I’m gonna be homeless. And then as you go through it, you get more and more, not more, you’re more in that center. You never get too high or too low? So I think, for me, I mean, I don’t think fear is the right word. I think whenever you launch a new business, you want it to be successful you put your heart and your soul into it.

Nathan Hirsch [10:10]
I think the one thing that’s challenging now is with the COVID thing, and I’m very fortunate. So this isn’t a complaint. It’s very tough to know, like, the reason why things don’t work. Because the way that Conor and I run businesses, we try lots of different things and things that work we put more time and money into and things that don’t work, we pull back and we say, okay, maybe that doesn’t work for this business or reevaluate later. And so I think we’re finding the things that are working, which is great, but the things that aren’t working, we don’t really know if it’s just because it’s not a good fit for this business, or if it’s COVID has an impact on that. It’s just not a good fit until COVID passes. So I think that’s kind of the current struggle that we’re dealing with. And I think people in business right now have a lot worse problems than that, but I can only speak for what we’re dealing with on a week to week basis.

Christine Schlonski [10:57]
Yeah. So how long do you give yourself to try something out? To really know if you should, like, ditch it or tweak it or leave it?

Nathan Hirsch [11:08]
Yeah, great question. I don’t think there’s a hard rule for that. I mean, everything’s different. I would say we move pretty fast. We tend to be on the shorter side, usually days or weeks, usually not months. I don’t see us just trying something that’s failing for five months before we change it. It’s probably quicker than that. But everything’s a little bit different. And I think I think there’s certain things that, we just know our long term like getting backlinks, we’re pretty good at getting backlinks for our websites, we know that we’re not going to see a result on that for maybe years, but we’re just going to consistently do it. So it’s kind of a balance of, of what things we expect to quickly generate revenue, and what things are a little bit more long term.

Christine Schlonski [11:46]
Yeah. So what would be three things for people they could do to generate revenue pretty quickly now.

Nathan Hirsch [11:54]
And we kind of talked about this in the last episode, but going on podcast is a big one. It’s a free way to get in front of thousands of your core audience. backlinks are great. So finding other companies that have blogs that are relevant to you and figure out how you can have backlinks to your site, whether it’s you give a quote or review. You write a blog article, backlinks over time to help you. And I think, what’s the last thing for revenue-generating I mean, I’m a big proponent of organic revenue. And I’m trying to give something that I didn’t give away in the last podcast, like networking and partnerships and stuff like that. I mean, for me, it’s about finding communities of your core audience, whether it’s a Facebook group, whether it’s a meetup, down the street, whatever it is, wherever your ideal audience, whatever your ideal audience hangs out, that’s where you want to be. That’s where you want to contribute, whether you find a Reddit and you’re posting there, or core or whatever it is, you want to get whatever your content, whatever your expertise is to the group of people and you want to get it out in the masses, you want to be focused on hundreds and thousands and 10s of thousands of people, not just one off leads, if that makes sense.

Christine Schlonski [12:58]
Yeah, totally. Does that also mean that I should only look for bigger Facebook groups or bigger meetups?

Nathan Hirsch [13:05]
Not necessarily. It’s funny. So let’s talk about podcasts for a second. I’ve been on podcasts that have millions of downloads, and for whatever reason, they just didn’t resonate to conversions with Freeeup and I’ve been on other ones that are more niche. I remember this one podcast, their brokerage, and their very niche. They’re people that want to sell businesses, right. And for whatever reason, that was perfect for Freeeup. It’s a small podcast, we got a lot of clients. So it sizes and everything. I think the quality is everything. Now, obviously, if there’s a big Facebook group that has a lot of engaging people, and they’re your type of business like yes, obviously those are the best ones, but bigger is not always better.

Christine Schlonski [13:43]
Yeah. So when you look back on your business career, I’m quite sure you made a lot of deals, you won a lot of deals, but they’re probably were some that you also lost. Do you remember, like the biggest deal that’s still in your mind that you’ve lost?

Nathan Hirsch [14:02]
Yeah, so we have this manufacturer where my Amazon business that we were crushing it with, and we were making so much off of them. And we actually didn’t diversify, because we were doing so much business with them. And then one day, they just decided to drop us out of nowhere. I was actually on vacation. And that was devastating at the time, although I learned a very valuable lesson about diversifying and not working with just one manufacturer. And I never found out to this day, why that is why they dropped us so yeah, I mean, the thing about Freeeup it is there, there wasn’t a lot of deal-making, right people would sign up and use the platform and request their VAs and their freelancers. I didn’t like signing contracts. So a little bit different. I think most of my deals were manufacturers that I was going to work with on the Amazon business.

Christine Schlonski [14:43]
Yeah. So how did you recover from that experience, especially like being on vacation, chilling, and then all of a sudden this news?

Nathan Hirsch [14:52]
I mean, I treated it as a learning experience. I said hey, what did I learn? How can I do this better? How can I make my business more diverse, more protected and I’ve been, I think for the first 24 48 hours, I was devastated. And I did the whole, the whole woes my thing. And then after that, it was, let’s get back to work. Let’s figure this out. It’s a problem that needs a solution.

Christine Schlonski [15:11]
But that is a very strong mindset. And I feel not everybody is at that level where they have such a strong mindset. What advice would you give people who get hung up by not winning a client? Or maybe by losing a client? And you know, might drag that along for days?

Nathan Hirsch [15:29]
Yeah, I mean, it comes down to how bad you want it. I mean, at that time, I was in college, I did not want to go out and get a real job. And I kind of looked at it as something I had to overcome. And it was, it was kind of like two options I give up now. Or I keep going. And I mean, for me, it’s like, I most look at like, what’s the worst-case scenario? And like, yeah, I could have gone and gotten a real job, but I had, I was going to get a college degree, like, that wouldn’t be the end of the world, there are people a lot worse off than I am. And, and I kind of look at the same thing with entrepreneurship, like, if my business fails, like, I’m going to be okay, I’m going to survive, I still have a lot of opportunities. I was given life and all that. So I don’t know, I don’t know if there’s any, like anything I can say, to make people change their minds. But I try to look at the big picture and things as obstacles and problems that you need to overcome, rather than things that just end the journey.

Christine Schlonski [16:18]
Yeah, well, I just think it’s a learning process. And oftentimes, we are not taught in school, or in college, or by our parents how to really have that strong mindset where you overcome these challenges faster than instead of dragging them along and allowing them for you to, to eat up your energy. So I just love to hear. Have you always had that outlook on life? Or was there something that helped you shift the mentality or the mindset?

Nathan Hirsch [16:54]
I don’t know. I feel like me along with other entrepreneurs, we’ve always been like, a little bit weird, right? Like, you don’t fit in 100%. And that doesn’t mean like, Oh, I didn’t have friends or whatever. But you’re just not like, you’re not like the status quo. You think differently than other people. So I mean, when I was selling baby products on Amazon, people thought I was crazy. They thought I was running a Ponzi scheme. They didn’t understand what it was. They wonder if they thought I was weird for selling baby products. And I mean, you have two options. At that point. You care what people think and don’t pursue your dreams or, or you don’t. And once you get the mentality that you just don’t care what people think then it ‘s just how you live life going forward, and it becomes a lot easier. So that’s kind of my own personal experience.

Christine Schlonski [17:32]
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing that I had the same experience, the moment where I decided not to care what people think my life became so much easier.

Nathan Hirsch [17:42]
Yeah, and I’ve had it actually benefit me where there’s a difference between not caring what people think and, and kind of clarifying things and being nice and more professional. So there’s someone who bashed me in a Facebook group over Freeeup and a lot of the stuff they said just wasn’t correct information. So it wasn’t how we ran it. And you can attack me personally. But the second that you like, start saying things that just weren’t true about our business, then I tried to correct them. And I reached out and I was nice. I was like, hey, like, some of the stuff just isn’t right. I’d love the opportunity to clarify. And she didn’t like that I reached out and she continued to bash me well, then someone heard about her bashing me. And they reached out to me on Twitter, and they said, hey, I was going to join Freeeup. Now I’m not sure if I want to because of this. And I said, listen, I can’t control what she says. I’m happy to give you the correct information. And I talked to her. I hopped on the phone, and she ended up joining Freerup and becoming one of the top billing freelancers on the entire platform. So sometimes not caring what people think about you and sticking to the truth and being professional and being the bigger man, the bigger woman ends up benefiting you down the line.

Christine Schlonski [18:44]
And so how do you deal with this rejection then?

Nathan Hirsch [18:48]
Like, get rejected every single day, every single week? If you’re not getting rejected, you’re not putting yourself out there. And we talked about networking calls in the last episode, people say no, I don’t want to set up an evergreen call. I tried to go on the podcast, people say no, we’re not accepting guests or sorry, you’re not a fit. Same thing with clients. I mean, right now I’m doing Outsource School like, like, that’s what happened to you if you’re not getting rejected. Now, if you’re only getting rejected, and you’re not having any positive success, then you need to change and you need to make tweaks. If you’re getting rejected here and there, but you’re still moving your business forward, then you’re probably doing it right. You’re probably putting yourself out there. And that’s my overall mentality.

Christine Schlonski [19:26]
So basically this rejection, like move forward.

Nathan Hirsch [19:30]
Yeah, stay professional, stay the bigger man, stay the bigger woman. Don’t be afraid to follow up. I’ve had lots of people that have rejected me five times, and then they work with me on the sixth time, all that stuff happens.

Christine Schlonski [19:40]
So do you have a system for that? That you know, like this person rejected me like six months ago, and I reached out like three times and you just keep going.

Nathan Hirsch [19:49]
Yeah, I mean, I have a hit list of like podcasts. I want to go on with people I want to work with and I’ll go through the hit list. And when the name comes up again, I’ll see when last time I reached out to them is and I’ll follow up in a different way.

Christine Schlonski [20:00]
So how many people are on your hit list?

Nathan Hirsch [20:03]
I usually try to keep it a few hundred at a time and I constantly update it.

Christine Schlonski [20:07]
Wow. So that’s part of the everyday routine then whenever you reach out to your kind of update.

Nathan Hirsch [20:13]
And you break it up into smaller things, I’m not reaching out to hundreds of people remember, I’m reaching out to three new entrepreneurs every single week reaching out to a few podcasts every single week. So it’s those small consistent things that work overtime.

Christine Schlonski [20:26]
So it’s like the small things like the compound effect, right? You keep going and stuff will eventually work out. So we talked about things like the deal, a big deal you lost. What? What was the biggest thing to win that you are totally excited about?

Nathan Hirsch [20:44]
This deal? Did I win? Um, Are you good? Yeah, almost all of my deals are negotiating because like Amazon, I was like, it’s more like hey, do you want to work with me? Do you want to be a manufacturer very rarely am I like negotiating on price or stuff like that. I mean, we’ve had affiliate partners with Freeeup who eventually worked with us and blasted us out to their community. And, those are big clients. I think the same things are happening with Outsource School as we build up our affiliate network. I mean, those are the things that get me excited. Like, I’m not necessarily like selling and buying real estate or products or anything. For me, when I get someone who I respect in the space, who I look up to as an entrepreneur, and they say, hey, I, I like what you’re doing, I see a lot of value, I know you’re going to take care of my community, I’m going to promote you to my community, a lot of times for nothing in return. Those are the deals that get me excited.

Christine Schlonski [21:36]
And what means Heart Sells for you.

Nathan Hirsch [21:40]
To me, it’s being authentic and taking care of people. I mean, I tell people all the time, I’m like, Listen, if you sign up for a membership at your school, if you’re not happy, like I’m just gonna refund you I have no interest in stealing your money. Like, my goal is to build a community that people like that helps people that benefits people, it benefits the charity, it benefits the clients, it benefits Connor and I and the team that we’re building like you, we want to create these Win Win Wins for everyone. We don’t want something where five people win and one people lose, it’s got to be that full mentality. And for me doubling down and going all in and that’s how you that’s what Heart Sells means to me.

Christine Schlonski [22:16]
Yeah, love it. And last but not least, we do want to send the people to your amazing VA Calculator, because it really helps to get clarity on what you can actually afford as an entrepreneur. And what is possible, like, can you have someone for 10 hours? Can you have full time? Can you maybe have three people all at once? And that brings a little bit of clarity? And is that like a good summary?

Nathan Hirsch [22:41]
Yeah, if you go to outsourceschool.com/VAcalculator we have this awesome tool that you can put in information about your business and see how many VA you can afford right now whether it’s full-time, part-time, whatever it is. And that’s really the starting point if you want to interview and onboard and train and manage virtual assistants down the line.

Christine Schlonski [22:59]
Awesome. Well, thank you so so much for your enthusiasm, the energy firing the answers. I just loved it and wishing you so much success with your new endeavor. And I can’t wait to see where you take that one. After the amazing success of Freeeup. I’m really sure you’re going to create something really amazing. And I just want to thank you for having been on the show.

Nathan Hirsch [23:24]
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Christine Schlonski [23:26]
Thank you. Well, what a great episode full of value and golden nuggets. I just love how Nathan manages his day, and how committed he is and how consistent he is. And that also explains why he is so super successful, right? If you take your business in only four years, from a 5k investment to 12 million in revenue, that is really amazing. And he is up to really, really great things with Outsource School, make sure you hop on over to christineschlonski.com, check out the podcast page, check out the links that lead to Nathan and his wonderful work. And also there you find the show notes, the transcripts and all the resources we talked about to support you in your business and business growth. Once you’re over there, sign up for The Empowerment notes as well. That is empowerment right into your inbox, where I share tools, advice, some motivation, inspiration and some strategies to help you grow your business and sell more with your heart and from your heart because we know Heart Sells. Thank you so much for having been here. Have an amazing day wherever you are in this beautiful world. And I’m saying bye for now.