Scaling Organically & Hiring VA’s with Nathan Hirsch | Episode 50

 

How can you focus on the technical work and outsource the rest? In this episode, Nathan Hirsch, Cofounder at Outsource School, joins Michelle Weinstein as they talk about scaling your business virtually and how to use VAs effectively. Working with VAs for years to scale his own businesses, Nathan shares his journey and the success he found by outsourcing the day-to-day. Nathan and Michelle discuss the importance of freeing up your time to do the meticulous work of growing your business as an accountingpreneur while keeping the standards you have set in your daily operations. Tune in and exponentially scale your business virtually through the power of outsourcing.

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Scaling Organically & Hiring VA’s with Nathan Hirsch

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Our special guest is an entrepreneur and an expert in remote hiring and eCommerce. He funded FreeeUp.com in 2015 with only $5,000 as an investment. He scaled it to $12 million a year in revenue and it was acquired in 2019. He is the Founder of Outsource School, which is a company to educate entrepreneurs on how to effectively hire and scale VAs, which also means virtual assistants through in-depth courses. He’s appeared on over 300 podcasts. He’s on social media and he loves sharing advice on scaling remote businesses.

Before we welcome Nathan to the show, if you feel slightly underpaid, a little overworked, and underappreciated, then I’ve created a simple five-step process for you. You can feel confident in positioning yourself as the expert, get consistent high-quality referrals and have more clients say yes to you. It’s a simple guide that you can get over at FiveStepsToAbundance.com. If you want to stop waiting around for the busy season or you feel like you just take on any client that walks through the door, head on over to FiveStepsToAbundance.com. Now, let’s welcome Nathan to the show.

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Thank you for taking the time to join us here on the show. You bring a unique approach and discussion that we’re going to be talking about. Nathan, can you share with everyone before we start what are the businesses that you’ve created and your real niche on what we’re going to be talking about?

I’ve been an entrepreneur for several years now. I started my first business out of my college dorm room when I was twenty selling on Amazon. It’s funny my accountant, the first real hire I made, his first question to me was, “When are you going to hire your first person?” I shrugged him off. He laughed in my face saying, “You’re going to learn this lesson on your own.” In my first busy season selling in eCommerce and Amazon, I got destroyed. I realized I couldn’t run my business just by myself. That’s what got me into the virtual assistant world and the remote hiring world. I ended up growing my own freelance virtual system marketplace called FreeeUp. We scaled that organically for the past few years. It ended up being acquired at the end of 2019. Now I’m working on my third company called Outsource School where we teach people how to use virtual assistants and how to scale their business remotely.

Failure is a part of reaching out, in general. You learn from it and maybe try a different approach later, and you move on. Click To Tweet

A lot of you reading are working with VAs and getting the help that you need. What you’re saying, Nathan, is your company was called FreeeUp so you could free up your time. You could spend more time with your family and friends or do the part of your business that you truly love. For an accountant reading, if it’s tax resolution or that real technical work, how can you focus on that and outsource the other part? That’s what we’re going to talk about. If there’s anything with Outsource School that would benefit our audience, feel free to share how that might look. Nathan, when you first started in eCommerce and your accountant said, “When are you going to hire your first person?” Share with us why you were opposed to that. What was it about hiring your first person? Were you like, “No, I’ve got this on my own?”

I was making money for the first time as a twenty-year-old. In my mind, I’m thinking, “I don’t want to give this money to other people. I want to keep it all for myself. I love running this business. I can work 24/7, 7 days a week. I’ll run this business forever. I’ll be able to handle it. Plus, no one else can do it as well as I can.” That was my young entrepreneur mentality.

The, “No one can do it as well as I can,” is an accountingpreneur mentality, my mentality, and we get stuck in that mentality for so long. What had you say, “I can’t do it?” You’re busy with eCommerce and you had to bring on staff.

At the end of that first year, after I didn’t listen to my accountant, I got destroyed. I was working twenty hours a day and my social life plummeted. My grades went down. I was still in college. I got to the other side in January and I was like, “My accountant was right. I need to start hiring right now.” I tried to hire college kids, interns and that didn’t work out for me. I was frustrated. I wasn’t their top priority. In the real world, no 30-year-old wanted to work for me as a twenty-year-old entrepreneur.

I ventured into the remote hiring world. I’m hiring virtual assistants and freelancers to do projects that I already have a system and process for. I’m teaching them how to do it or doing something that I didn’t know how to do like graphic design and build a website. I’m even hiring experts for stuff like Facebook ads that I didn’t have the time to learn how to do. I’m figuring out, “I can hire followers, doers, specialists, or experts. How do I put these pieces together so that I can focus on what I’m good at?” That was the key to me scaling that business.

That is one of the things I want to talk about. Pretend you’re wearing your accountant hat. You’re a 30-year-old CPA and you’re taking your firm. You’re not going to work for one of the big firms. You’re not going to work for anybody. You’re going to do it yourself and you’re about to scale your firm remotely. From everything that you’ve learned, Nathan, what do you think is the first thing that an accountingpreneur should do? As we’re going to be talking about organic scaling, how to grow this organically without spending any money?

The first thing you want to implement, and this depends on what state you’re in because I know there are different regulations, but some kind of affiliate program or referral program, if you can’t do that, some way to thank people for sending you business or to encourage people to send you business. That’s the baseline and you want that on your website. You want to make sure that you end every phone call being like, “By the way, if you know other people in my niche, I’d love any referrals and recommendations.” That’s that base point. From there, I try to break it down between networking calls, podcasts, influencers, partnerships and content. With networking calls, the first thing that I do every single morning for seven days a week is I reach out to three new entrepreneurs.

 

That’s how you and I connected. I use Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. I don’t try to pitch them and I don’t try to sell them. I just try to connect with them and see if we can set up a networking call. In those networking calls, I learn about them and their business. I share a little bit about me and sometimes, they turn into a client, you can add value to them, or maybe they become a partner. Other times, it is great meeting other entrepreneurs. As you do this, years later, you’ll look back and say, “My network has grown and I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the space.”

You reach out to three people every day for seven days a week. I’ve never heard anyone doing it that often. I love how you said ending every single call by saying, “Do you have someone for an accountant?” This is something I would say. Especially if you’re working with business owners. “Do you have any unique business owner friends similar to you who are unique and special that I could help and support?” Something like that at the end of every single call because you want to try to get more clients that are similar to your favorite ones. I love that you’re reaching out to three new people a day. Let’s take an example, an accountant who wants to work with keynote speakers. From everything that you’ve learned in your entrepreneurial days and growing and selling companies, where would you find three people a day to do your networking calls and reach out to three keynote speakers every single day?

I try to avoid randomly reaching out to people occasionally. If there’s a partner or a podcast I want to be on or something like that, I might do it, but I try to find some connection. For example, if I look on Facebook and someone is friends with an entrepreneur that could be a potential client or is in my space, then I’ll reach out to them. I’m one connection away. Another great way is keynote speakers. Let’s say I attend a conference, I’m going to look up every single speaker at that conference. I’m going to reach out to three of them every single day and say, “We’d love to connect. I own XYZ accounting firm.”

They’re only going to respond in a few different ways. They’re going to say, “Thanks for reaching out,” and they’re going to be nice like most entrepreneurs are. You can set up that phone call. They’re going to ignore you and you maybe have to follow up or maybe they’re too busy. Failure is a part of reaching out in general. You learn from it and maybe try a different approach later and you move on. That’s the way that I approach it.

We’ve got asking for the referral, growing your referral network and ending every single call that way, then reaching out to three new people a day and/or schedule a networking call depending on your niche. There are a lot of people reading who do have a niche, be it dentist, keynote speakers, restaurants, government contractors or HVAC contractors. What’s the third way, Nathan, that you would recommend?

Getting on a podcast. Let’s say you’re an accountant for eCommerce sellers. You could find an eCommerce podcast and go on there and talk about accounting, just like I’m on here talking about organic scaling and virtual assistants. That’s going to do a lot of things. First of all, you get in front of thousands of people at once that are in your niche. Second, you build relationships with hosts that could lead to other referrals, other partnerships and you getting on other podcasts.

Third, it’s good for your branding. You can use that to pitch other podcasts and say, “I’ve been on XYZ podcast. I’d be a good fit for yours.” Lastly, it is good for SEO, backlinks, and building brand authority on your website. I could go on and on. There are a lot of benefits for podcasts but you should be trying to go on at least a podcast a week in your niche. I’ve been at conferences where people are like, “I heard you on four different podcasts. You’re famous in the space.” In my mind, all I did was go on a podcast a week for a few months.

There's a lot of benefits for podcasts, you should be trying to go on at least a podcast a week in your niche. Click To Tweet

I did the same thing when I started the Pitch Queen empire back in the day. Even for those of you reading, you probably heard me on all the accounting podcasts. If you’re working with the eCommerce niche, go on there and share that one tax-related niche deduction that the potential audience has no idea about, and this is your opportunity to shine. One thing I want to touch on, Nathan, is it could be 1,000 up to 10,000 or 20,000 people listening to you at one time.

If you’re going to go to your local networking events, the old school way of the “networking calls,” this is an opportunity for you to have your voice heard by 1,000, 10,000 to 20,000 people in one sitting. Nathan, I’m sure you’ve never been to one of those. They hear you 4 or 5 different times on different podcasts, and then you go to an in-person event one day in the future and you were famous. For those of you reading, you probably saw me at QuickBooks Connect. Nathan, it was because of what you said.

I did many podcasts that they reached out for me to speak at their huge conference for accountants, so it was a great opportunity. One thing leads to the next and it’s a great way to build your client base with the clients that you love. Do you have a bonus thing that you do that we haven’t talked about how to organically scale? It sounds like small things consistently is the key. It’s the ending every call the same way and reaching out to three people seven days a week. That’s 21 people a week. Also, focusing on trying to be a guest podcast expert on at least one podcast a week. That’s 52 in a year.

I put out content. I write content every Sunday for three posts a day, morning, afternoon, and night, so 21 posts for the week, and then I post them throughout the week on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. From there, I try to partner with other people in the space that don’t do the same thing as me. I’ll go back to the eCommerce example. If I was an eCommerce accountant and I’m going to go to maybe an Amazon software company, they don’t provide accounting services and I don’t provide Amazon software, I’m going to see if they want to do a content swap.

Maybe I write a guest post for their blog about accounting and they write a guest post for my blog. Maybe it’s a podcast swap, a social media blast, or an email blast to their community. You can manage this with VAs. You can build up partnerships with lots of people in your space, where they’re constantly promoting you consistently every 3 or 6 months, or however you set it up and vice versa, you’re promoting them, and it adds value to both sides. The last thing I’ll add in as a bonus, and this is a more advanced level, is working with influencers.

You find a Facebook group of 50,000 real estate entrepreneurs and your market is entrepreneurs. Partner with the people that own the Facebook group, be the go-to accountant for that group and build a relationship with the owner of the group. Show that you not only add value and that you can answer a question in the group, but that you can be trusted and that you’re going to take good care of their community because they’re the gatekeeper of their community. They don’t want to let anyone in that’s going to hurt their customers.

Show that you can add value and that you’re going to treat people well and over time, if you’re working with these influencers, they’re going to promote you and it all goes together. That could lead to being on their podcast and someone could read your content. That could lead to them being an affiliate. They all go together. It’s small things that you do every single day to slowly build up your network and the people that you’re working with.

 

I’m going to put my accounting hat on and tell you what they’re all thinking right now. For all you reading, you can send me an email and tell me if I’m right. “Michelle, that sounds great. What you and Nathan are talking about is exactly what I want to do, but I have so much work. The laws are changing. The government changes things on us. Every single day, things are changing. I have clients calling me up the wazoo. I have an abundance of work sitting here I can barely even get to. How the heck am I supposed to have time to do any of what you’re talking about, Michelle?”

A lot of what we teach in Outsource School is how to hire a virtual assistant. We live in an incredible time. If you go back many years ago, you had to hire people full-time in your town or the towns around you. You need an office to put them in. Fast forward, now you get access to people all over the world that have different price points and skillsets and you don’t have to hire them part-time or full-time. You can hire them project-based or part-time. For me, my main focus would be, how do I get ten hours a week back? What would ten hours a week do to change how you run your business?

It doesn’t take me long to network with three new people every day. It’s about ten minutes. It’s the first thing I do every single morning. How do you get those ten minutes back? An example of that is one of my first hires. I hired someone to clear my inbox from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM. I wake up at 7:00 AM and they would say, “Nate, I left these two emails for you. Everything else was cleared out.” That’s two hours a day, so that’s ten hours a week and it cost me $5 an hour. I’m hiring a VA from the Philippines. That alone gets me my ten hours a week back so that I can focus on the content, partnerships, and other stuff outside of my core competency.

I do the same. I’ve got an amazing VA here in the States. That was one mistake I had with my last company so I said, “This time around, I’m going to do what I do best and hire out the rest.” When you look at what you teach in Outsource School and how to hire a VA, what do you think is the number one thing for a reader? Let’s use the example of outsourcing, figuring out how to get on people’s podcasts and doing all that work. For a CPA or an accounting professional reading, that seems daunting and I know that because I’ve already done it myself in the past.

What would you recommend is the best thing to look for when you’re hiring for all these different skillsets? Are you hiring ten different VAs? Do they have to manage ten different people? Do you recommend hiring 1 or 2 to do everything that you can think of? I don’t know about giving someone the task to read my email. That would give me anxiety. For some people, that would help them have clarity and a great way to wake up in the morning. What do you think is best?

We have a course called the Podcast Outreach Formula that teaches you how to wake up every day. It’s a list of podcasts that you can review and reach out to. For me, I’m hiring that 1 or maybe 2 VAs to diversify if you have a lot of work. You don’t want to run into a situation where you’ve never hired VAs before and you’re hiring ten. Like anything else, you want to start small. The biggest tip that I can give people and if you take anything about hiring VAs from this podcast, this is it. I always mention that there are four parts of hiring a VA. You’ve got interviewing, onboarding, training and managing.

Most entrepreneurs know that you need to interview someone, train them, and on some level, you need to manage them. It’s the onboarding that everyone either messes up or they skip and that’s before they start after you interview them. “That was a great interview.” Before you jump into training, get on the same page with everything, what you’re looking forward to and what their schedule will be. We call it our SICC method, Schedule, Issues, Communication, and Culture. We talk about the schedule. What clients do they have? When will they be working for me?

It's the small things that you do every single day to slowly build up your network and the people that you're working with. Click To Tweet

We go through issues like computer issues, personal issues, weather, internet, power and things that in the US we take for granted. If you’re hiring VAs for other parts of the country, those are issues. How are they going to handle those issues? How often do those issues come up? We go through communication. How are we going to communicate? Do you like Slack? Do you like Asana? Do you like Skype? Whatever that is. What’s expected for each channel? We go over the culture in the business because I’m a big believer in culture and someone who brings their own feedback and their own ideas to the table.

I remember my first VA, I said, “I’ve never hired a VA before. Tell me about your good clients. What do they do? What do your bad clients do? Let me know what I need to know.” I want someone who won’t just be a robot and can be a part of that culture where everyone’s trying to get better. Spend that extra 15 to 30 minutes getting 100% on the same page with expectations, and even give them a chance to back out before you jump into training. You’d rather that they say, “After talking to you, this isn’t the right fit. It’s not what I’m looking for,” than to invest time and energy into them, and to figure that out later.

I don’t know what you teach when it comes to the training department but for me, making videos step by step and thinking of your SOPs and procedures because if you do that on the front end, it’s made everything else flawless. I don’t know, Nathan, if you guys have experienced the same thing. They’re able to have their training materials and they don’t have to bother you for help.

I like to teach to make SOPs into three parts. The middle part, everyone knows that’s a step by step. “This is how you do it.” The top and the bottom part are as important. At the top, you need to put the why. “Why are you passionate about your business? Who are you trying to help? Who’s your niche? Who’s your target audience?” How is the task that they’re doing impacting the business as a whole? You’ve got the steps. At the bottom, the important reminders. For example, if you have someone monitoring your inbox, say, “If my lawyer emails, don’t respond to that email. Leave it for me. Don’t leave the important stuff hidden somewhere in the steps.” Have those reminders at the end. If you structure SOPs like that, you’re going to have higher success when you’re working with VAs or any hire in general.

Any hire in general, it’s important to start out with the why, who you’re going to impact and why they’re even doing that task. It’s missed by a lot of us every day because we just want to get to work. You’ve got taxes stacked up for businesses and individuals. It seems like it’s an all year round thing, but to have our team help us the best, knowing why they’re doing it, and then also leaving the important reminders so they’re clear is super key. Is there anything else, Nathan, when we’re talking about how to hire a VA or outsourcing or scaling organically? Can you share a little bit more in-depth as well to your story when you sold FreeeUp? You said you started with $5,000 and you sold it for what?

I can’t share how much we sold it for, but it was an eight-figure business when we sold it. The only reason people wanted to buy it is that we had our systems and processes in place. Not only did we have good people, but we had team leaders and we had assistant team leaders, and we also had good SOPs. When they were going through their due diligence, they said, “How do you run customer service? How do you run billing?” We say, “Here’s the SOP for that.” Everything was documented in steps. I didn’t just wake up one day and write 200 pages of SOPs. I slowly chipped away at it and made it better and then made the people that I hired responsible for updating and maintaining those SOPs, so it’s important.

With FreeeUp, we took it to market with the bare minimum product. We got it out there with a crummy software, great customer service, and a personality where we wanted to help people and great VAs. People liked it. We did everything we talked about. We created that affiliate program where you got $0.50 for every hour that we bill to someone forever. We went on podcasting. I started networking. I started partnering with people in the space. We went after eCommerce and marketing entrepreneurs. We started partnering with others in the eCommerce and marketing spaces.

 

Everything we talked about, I did. We grew it for four years until one of our clients reached out to us saying they wanted to get in the space. They didn’t want to build it from scratch. We did a lot of due diligence on them, just like they did on us to make sure that they weren’t going to run into the ground and they were going to treat our team well. We took $500,000 from the sale and gave it to our team in the Philippines to make sure they were taken care of and make sure that their jobs are secure, and all of that.

It comes down to that hustling, not giving up mentality. I can’t tell you how many podcasts I’ve been rejected on. I can’t tell you how many people have said, “Nate, I don’t want to set up a networking call with you,” for whatever reason but it’s not about that. You don’t get aggressive, angry and frustrated. You understand that everyone is in their own place. They might be having a bad day or they might be busy entrepreneurs. You continue to stay positive and stay consistent little by little every single day while making your systems and processes better over time.

It’s exactly for everyone reading. You know you own your own accounting firm and these SOPs. Everything being documented is how you can grow your team and free up your time by outsourcing and starting to grow with a virtual team. How do you get ten hours back? How do you get five hours back? Thank you, Nathan, for sharing. Is there anything else that you’ve learned over the last several years as it relates to outsourcing people on your team? I love how you’re generous and took $500,000 from the sale and gave it to your team.

I was working with one of my clients during the pandemic. She gave out $2,000 up to $3,000, depending on what that person did in this team as a bonus during this time. They feel valued and a part of why they’re working hard during these tougher times. Is there anything else that you’d like to share that we haven’t talked about that would be a good golden nugget for an accountant reading who wants to scale organically and get some of their time back?

When people hire and this is in the interview section, they’re focused on experience. “This person has five years of experience. They know XYZ software,” or whatever it is. They don’t focus on attitude and communication. To me, it’s a three-part triangle. Experience is great, although not everyone you hire needs to be a 10 out of 10 when it comes to experience. You can hire people that are 3 or 5 or 7 as long as they’re honest about what they can and cannot do. You want someone with a great attitude where money isn’t their only focus.

They’re the bigger man or the bigger woman when things don’t go their way because stuff happens. They don’t get aggressive. They’re professional and they treat people well. They have those same values and beliefs. You want people that can communicate at a high level. Especially if you’re hiring remotely, communication becomes key. You don’t want to be chasing people down or going in circles on Slack having a meeting because you guys can’t get on the same page. Focus on finding people that have that trifecta of skill, attitude and communication. That’s how you’re going to make good hires long-term.

Thank you, Nathan, for being here with us on the show. Thank you for making me one of your three networking outreach calls because clearly, it worked. Kudos to you. If an accountant wants to look into maybe getting some help on organically scaling, getting a VA to help reach out, to get on a podcast. If they want some support because they can’t figure this out or don’t want to, how do they get in touch with you or your business? What’s the best way?

Focus on finding people that have that trifecta of skill, attitude, and communication. Click To Tweet

First of all, I still recommend my old company, FreeeUp, for getting the VAs and freelancers. Check them out. They’re awesome. The new owners are great. For me, I’m one of the easiest people to contact online. Nathan Hirsch on Facebook or LinkedIn and RealNateHirsch on Instagram or Twitter. Feel free to reach out to me if I can help you in any way. My new company, Outsource School, teaches you everything you need to know about using virtual assistants in your business. We have this free VA calculator that you can put in information about your business and it tells you how many VAs you can afford right now, whether it’s for full-time to part-time, or whatever it is. If you go to OutsourceSchool.com/vacalculator, you can grab that and it will help you budget before you start hiring.

Thank you for being here with us on The Abundant Accountant podcast. It was an honor to have you. I love the virtual model. For all of you reading, this is your way to work from the islands of Fiji or in the mountains of Peru and still be able to help your clients and keep going 24/7. Thanks for being here with us.

Thanks for having me.

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Thank you all for joining Nathan and I on another episode. I want to share with you a story. One of my students, David, he’s been able to scale his business organically. One of the things that he does is tax resolution, which means for all of you reading, all the people who have issues with the IRS. He focused on a Facebook group and he got past the gatekeeper by sharing his knowledge and help on having mail opening ceremonies with potential clients. It was a Facebook group of all moms, wealthier moms and mom’s talk. What David realized was after he had one happy client and he fixed all their problems with the IRS, all the moms started talking.

Now he is able to post different things and educate within this Facebook group on how he can help them get the IRS off their back and have no more of the mail coming to their house. I invite each of you to think about having to have your niche, and then which Facebook group could you become friends with the owner of the group or the gatekeeper of the group. Think about that and put that into action. Also, you can check out Nathan’s websites, his old company FreeeUp.com or OutsourceSchool.com, and start gaining some time back. A lot of you I talked to are overworked and underpaid, working 12 to 16-hour days, 5 to 7 days a week. It’s not good for your health.

If you also want a little bit more help, I’ve created a simple five-step process for you so that you can feel confident in positioning yourself as the expert before you reach out to these Facebook groups and get consistent, high-quality referrals in the door. If you want some help, go to FiveStepsToAbundance.com right now and stop waiting around for the busy season to get those clients. Have the practice of your dreams with high-level clients happily paying you the fees you deserve and appreciate the work you do for them. I will see you in the next episode.

Important Links:

• OnTheClock.com
• FreeeUp.com
• Outsource School
• FiveStepsToAbundance.com
• Podcast Outreach Formula
• Nathan Hirsch – Facebook
• LinkedIn – Nathan Hirsch
• RealNateHirsch – Instagram
• Twitter – RealNateHirsch
• OutsourceSchool.com/vacalculator

About Nathan Hirsch