From $5K to $12 Million_ Secrets for Building Successful Start-Ups with Nathan Hirsch

Kasim: 00:00:11

And I'm so excited today because we're going to learn

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from a monster entrepreneur.

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I'm here with Nathan Hirsch, who's

a lifelong entrepreneur who focuses

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on his words, the unsexy or boring

parts of entrepreneurship, things

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like bookkeeping and hiring.

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He's had an exit, which I think is,

that's the crown jewel of entrepreneurship

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is when you can build a business

that somebody else is actually

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willing to buy, which either means.

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You're great, or it's the

law of the greater fool.

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And you just found

somebody dumber than you.

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But I have a feeling,

Nathan, that you're great.

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Thank you so much for

being on perpetual traffic.

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Yeah.

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Thanks so much for having me here.

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Catch me at a crazy time.

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I got two foster kids staying

with us for a week, a baby on

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the way, a basement being redone.

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But it's tough to complain.

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Life's good.

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Yeah.

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Nothing could be more important

than perpetual traffic though.

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That's right.

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When's the baby due?

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Early August or mid August.

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So July 6th.

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Yeah.

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You're on the goal line, aren't you?

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Yeah.

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At the end.

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It's starting to get real.

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Yeah.

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Do you know, and do you mind

sharing, is it a boy or a girl?

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It is a boy.

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And have you named picked a name out?

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We have picked a name.

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I don't know if I'm allowed

to share it on a podcast.

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Then don't.

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Yeah, you can't let

the cat out of the bag.

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I don't want to get you in trouble.

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But coming soon.

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We're excited.

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That's awesome, for you.

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I know I mentioned pre roll, but I'm

going to do it again just because

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they're my friends obnoxious.

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There's a mastermind specifically

for fathers called Front Row Dads.

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And I wish I joined later into my journey

in fatherhood, but man, what I wouldn't

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have given to be able to go back and just

surround myself with a bunch of dudes.

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Just guys that want to be

better fathers and husbands.

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So if you're listening and you're a dad,

regardless of the stage of life that

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you're in, go check out Front Row Dads.

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Shout out to John Roman.

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That's all we're talking

about today though.

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Today, Nathan's going to talk to

us about his unique hiring process.

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The organic marketing blueprint that

scaled his business from 5k to 12 million.

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I'm reading that right.

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12 million gross revenue.

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And we're going to chat a

little bit about your exit.

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But first I'm going to sneak attack you.

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Are you ready to get snuck attacked?

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Let's do it.

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All right.

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So every guest that we invite on

before we dive deep into the nitty

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gritty, we ask for a nugget and

the nugget can be something ultra

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basic and simple in your mind, but

Something that might not necessarily

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have occurred to our listeners.

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So if you have just that tip, trick,

hack, best practice, that quick hitter,

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that's going to take people and make them

more efficient, better, faster marketers

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or business owners, what would it be?

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So I'm a big fan of

minimum viable product.

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And I feel like I've talked to so many

entrepreneurs over the years that once

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they get 500, 000, then they'll start

building, then they'll start selling.

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And my partner, Connor and I were

the opposite when we started.

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Dropshipping on Amazon.

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We tried it out with 20 orders.

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And if the people complained or

less left us a bad review, we

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would have just refunded them

and moved on to something else.

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Same thing with free up.

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We offered some free hours of a VA, got

feedback, made sure they liked it before

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we doubled down and built software.

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Without your school launched a course.

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If they hated it, we would

have just refunded them.

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With econ balance, we got initial

clients and gave them free bookkeeping

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and saw, Hey, is there a market?

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Are these people going to actually

stick around before we double down

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and build out this whole business?

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And there's been ideas that haven't

worked throughout the years too,

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but we get in and get out quickly.

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For us, we're just big fans of putting

a little money to something, seeing

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if there's actually a market, getting

feedback from those initial customers

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before actually going all in and hire

people and putting money in or whatever

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we're trying to do to build the business.

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Dude, that's not just a nugget.

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That's a, it's a master class of thought

that needs to be integrated in every

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CMO, director of marketing, CEO, business

owner, entrepreneur, because the class.

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That people are put through the

business school class, right?

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Is you plan everything out.

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You build this major

infrastructure in your mind.

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You architect it, you have your business

plan and then you go and you execute.

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And the problem is you

build a 30 story building.

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And then find out that the first

floor ceilings are 10 inches too low.

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And now I got to knock the whole damn

thing down so I can raise the first floor.

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Like just get messy, ready,

fire, aim, build as you go.

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I love that nugget.

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That's awesome.

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And I counted four.

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Successful startups.

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Did I get that right?

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Yeah, we had a free up.

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Yeah, we had an Amazon business that

was successful in the way that it,

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we sold 25 million over six years.

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It was a major castable machine,

but we never really sold it.

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Amazon became harder and we

ended up just dissolving it.

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But we have free up, we have

outsource school and then our

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two bookkeeping brands, e com

balance and accounts balance.

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Yeah, dude.

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So you're a killer.

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Everybody I, broken clock can be

right twice a day as they say.

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And when I see somebody who's

done it over and over again,

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I get one really envious, but

two just really like impressed.

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You obviously see the lanes.

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How are you choosing these opportunities?

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What are the things I

know you said in your bio?

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You're like, I like, what did you say?

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Unsexier, boring parts of

entrepreneurship, but that can't be all

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like, how is it that you're figuring

out where you're going to go next?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, so we have certain criterias that

we like in a business and we, a lot of

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it's just brainstorming and my partner

will come over to my house and we'll

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sit in the backyard and throw a football

around and brainstorm business ideas.

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But we like big markets.

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We never try to create the next

Uber for every Uber out there.

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There's 1000 ideas that people actually

want that there's no market for.

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Yeah.

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Business owners, they need to hire.

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They need to do bookkeeping.

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It applies to almost all entrepreneurs.

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And then we try to just take

our small percentage of the

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market, put our own spin on it.

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Usually around customer service

and good process and really

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valuing the customer's time.

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We like reoccurring revenue

customers that stick around.

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We don't want a business selling

Shopify stores where you're

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building at one time and then

you're always chasing new clients.

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And we want something that we

think will be around in 30 years.

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In my mind, bookkeeping

will be around in 30 years.

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I don't know if that's true, but we

like businesses like that, where the

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industry just isn't always changing.

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And we try to avoid fads and like

the, whatever the latest thing is.

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So those are just a

few things we look for.

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And then it's brainstorming

and market research.

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We like to talk to ideal customers.

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Like when we launched e comm balance,

which is our monthly bookkeeping

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service for e commerce sellers.

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We interviewed a hundred e commerce

sellers and we said, Hey, can

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you name us five competitors?

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What do you like about

your past bookkeepers?

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What do you not like?

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What softwares are you using?

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Stuff like that.

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So that we actually know what

we're getting into because.

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think a lot of times you think you're

your own customer when you're not

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in the customers, you're actually

targeting are way different than you.

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They think different than you,

they care about different things.

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And we want to know all of that

before we actually get into it.

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So I loved everything that you just said.

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One thing I want to focus on specifically,

cause it's something I'm passionate about

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too, is the recurring revenue component.

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I have a list of non negotiables

for any entity I'm involved in.

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And unless we're talking major

high ticket and even then.

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I'm just like, because traffic

is so expensive, customer

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acquisition is so expensive.

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If you're not doing something from

a recurring perspective, I think

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you're, you have a flawed model.

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And hopefully I'm not being, too

aggressive with our listeners, but

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I would like to encourage everybody

who's listening, find a way to

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build continuity into your business.

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it doesn't mean that needs to

be the core of your business.

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If you sell a house, maybe

you can also get involved in.

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or you could start with home services

or you're selling the great big thing,

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that's okay, but then turn right

back around and, you're selling a SAS

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product or a software application.

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you'll start to see the

SAS has a 30 X valuation.

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30, 3 0, and it's because of the recurring

revenue component, whereas, things

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like professional services, 7, maybe?

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So I don't know, writing's

on the wall there.