Discover how Nathan Hirsch, co-founder of EcomBalance, scaled his Amazon business using virtual assistants. Learn actionable strategies for managing VAs, optimizing your e-commerce operations, and achieving long-term success.
Listen
Watch
Nathan Hirsch’s Journey from College Entrepreneur to E-commerce Expert
Nathan Hirsch shares his journey from selling textbooks in college to building multiple successful businesses, including FreeUp, which he scaled to $12 million in annual sales by leveraging virtual assistants.
Building and Managing a Team of Top 1% Virtual Assistants
Nathan dives into how FreeUp became a marketplace for top VAs, offering valuable tips on hiring, onboarding, and managing virtual assistants to optimize your Amazon business.
Key Tools and Strategies for Effective Outsourcing
Discover the essential tools Nathan uses to manage his VAs and why starting small and scaling up is crucial for success. Learn how to create an efficient workflow with tools like ClickUp, Slack, and Clockify.
Financial Management and Growth Strategies for Amazon Sellers
Nathan emphasizes the importance of having a monthly finance meeting and understanding your financial statements. Learn how EcomBalance provides the necessary financial insights to make informed business decisions.
Resources From This Episode
- FreeUp
- Outsource School
- EcomBalance
- ClickUp
- Slack
- Zoom
- LastPass
- Clockify
- Helium 10
- Jungle Scout
- Nathan Hirsch on LinkedIn
In Conclusion
Nathan Hirsch’s journey offers invaluable lessons for Amazon sellers. By implementing his strategies for hiring and managing virtual assistants, and using the right tools, you can significantly boost your Amazon business’s efficiency and growth. Explore the resources mentioned to further optimize your e-commerce operations.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: We had built this, this army of virtual assistants for our Amazon business, mostly because college kids were, were super unreliable. And I mean, we started offering these VAs and freelancers to other e commerce sellers. This was when like amazing and all these places started to teach
people how to sell on Amazon.
So all of a sudden there’s all these Amazon sellers, they need VAs and freelancers. We had all these ready to go. And that gave us the idea of our next business free up.
[00:00:27] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: All right, so today I’ve got my friend Nathan Hirsch on the podcast. He has sold over $25 million on Amazon, uh, started when he was 20 years old. Since then, he’s built multiple businesses, including one called Free Up. That he exited for, uh, well, that brought that to over 12 million in sales per year.
And that was a company that helped people find virtual assistance in the Philippines, which is what we’re really going to be diving in today to help you understand how to grow your business. VAs and how to manage that. But Nathan, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little more about your background?
[00:01:16] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I know we’ve been planning it for a while. I’m a longtime entrepreneur. I’ve never had a real job. I got into Amazon when I was in college. I, I started buying it and selling textbooks out of my college dorm room, uh, competing with the school bookstore until. One day they sent me a cease and desist letter and I didn’t want to get kicked out of school.
So I pivoted and I had this Amazon account that I was selling books on. And back then Amazon was just known as a big bookstore. They weren’t as big as like selling every product as they are now. And I just started experimenting. What else could I sell? And through trial and error and checking out different deal sites, I, I came across baby products, high margins, everyone buys baby products.
I just had a baby. Yeah. I’m buying a lot of the same products and, uh, easy to return, easy to ship, um, lots of variety. And we, we started building these relationships with all these us manufacturers that made baby products. They didn’t have their own e commerce store at the time because it was new. They were just selling to stores.
So my pitch to them was, Hey, I’ll get you extra sales. You keep my credit card on file. Um, you ship it where I tell you to charge my card. I’ll mark it up and I’ll make the difference. And that was the business model. Um, eventually we, we got, uh, We got more savvy and started to negotiate discounts and stuff like that.
But I mean, with this business took off, it was the wild, wild, wild west days of Amazon where you could do anything. There was very little software stuff like helium 10 and all that didn’t exist. PPC didn’t exist for the first few years. So you just listed stuff and Amazon would get you sales. And it was quite a crazy business to run in college.
[00:02:52] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. I love that. You just started, you seen an opportunity with the textbooks and you just kind of jumped in and started flipping it. And that’s how your Amazon business essentially began. Now, are you still selling on Amazon now, or you’ve gotten out of that? No,
[00:03:11] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: we haven’t sold since 2015, 16. So, I mean, when we started and we were crushing it, we thought we were going to be the next e commerce giant and take down Amazon.
And We were naive 20 something year old. So we, I mean, Amazon got harder. There were more sellers, dropshipping became harder. All these manufacturers that we sold to realize that they could sell themselves on e commerce. Um, so we topped out at around six, 7 million a year. And then after that we would do like three one year and to the next and then 3.
5 and it became a lot less fun. We. We also weren’t really building a business. We were just adjusting to what Amazon would change every single year. And it was all other people’s products. We never had our own brand. So we had built this, this army of virtual assistants for Amazon business, mostly because.
College kids were, were super unreliable. And I mean, we started offering these VAs and freelancers to other e commerce sellers. This was when like amazing and all these places started to teach people how to sell on Amazon. So all of a sudden there’s all these Amazon sellers. They need VAs and freelancers.
We had all these ready to go. And that gave us the idea of our next business free up, uh, which was, was a lot more fun than the Amazon business because it was B2B. We got to build our own website, our own brand. We weren’t dependent on the Amazon changing the rules all the time and adjusting. Um, and we had got to learn like marketing, going on podcasts, SEO and, and everything in it.
So we, we quickly got rid of the Amazon business after that and focused on free up. And that ended up being one of our better business decisions.
[00:04:44] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Very good. Very good. So you shifted from Amazon and used your VAs to create FreeUp, and you basically hired those VAs out to other people and helped them find VAs for their Amazon businesses.
[00:04:58] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, and then we ran out of VAs, so we had to start recruiting and, um, building a, I mean, at some point we were getting like a thousand applicants a week to get on our platform. So, uh, we definitely did a lot on the marketing side, both to get clients, but also to get talented VAs and freelancers on the platform.
[00:05:14] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: All right, very good. So before we shift into that, uh, what are your thoughts on people who are looking to start selling on Amazon now? I mean, you got to treat
[00:05:23] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: it like a business. I think I kind of got into it because I was able to treat it like a side hustle and it was just a thing I was doing. I mean, it blew up bigger than I could imagine, but at the beginning it was just a, Way to make a little extra beer money when I was in college.
And it’s something that I had the goal of being able to quit my job, quit my internship and just do that to make side money and, and all that. And I feel like now you have to treat it as a business and there’s a lot that has to go right from logistics to trademarks. So much that needs to go right from start to finish that you need to be focused.
Just like, like I start new businesses all the time. My business partner and I are growing a portfolio of different businesses and we just launched a new one and. We if we can’t focus on a full time because we have a lot of companies, we’re hiring a team that’s going to focus on a full time because that’s what it takes to run a business in 2023.
And, and Amazon is no different. I think that the days of making a quick buck or treating it as something you’re doing on the side. Maybe they’re not over for everyone, but it’s definitely on the harder side to do than it was before.
[00:06:24] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. I would agree. I mean, I think you can still do it as a side hustle if you just want to make 500 to a thousand bucks a month.
But once you try to start scaling that into the millions, you really got to be a hundred percent in the business, treat it like a real business, not a side hustle or get quick rich. Like a lot of people try to portray it. Absolutely. So with free up, let’s dive into that and walk us through kind of your process of building that or actually not the process of building it so much, but the process of how you helped people find good VAs and how people who are currently selling on Amazon can do the same.
[00:07:07] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah. So, I mean, keep in mind, we were a marketplace. We weren’t an agency. We weren’t training VAs. We had initial VAs, like the first 15 VAs we had on our Amazon business that we gave out to people. Sure, we knew them and we trained them and whatever, but after that it was a marketplace. Our whole proposition was we would get thousands of applicants every week.
We’d vet them. Top 1 percent would get on the platform. You tell us what you need, graphic designer, customer service, Amazon Lister, whatever it is. We introduce you the same day. Um, and you could hire them right away, knowing not only do we vet them, but we’ll back it up if anything goes wrong. If you’re not happy, we’ll refund you, give you credit, get your replacement.
If they quit, we’ll cover all replacement costs. So that was our, our proposition and free app still operating today. Um, even after we sold it, but I mean, like any business we start, whether it’s our bookkeeping business or our trio SEO, our SEO business, like We do minimum viable product. We gave a bunch of free hours of VAs out to people and we saw if they like it, if they came back for more, and we listened to feedback and we adjusted and we launched with a, Bare minimum software that did very little, um, and just recorded VA hours.
And that was it. Um, and we slowly built on that as we proved the process. And we, we kind of the mentality that most businesses fail. And if, if there isn’t a market for what we’re selling, we’re just going to move onto something else and people aren’t happy. We’re just going to refund them. We’re only interested in running businesses that people are happy and that there’s a real market for it.
Um, Long term, long term. So that, that’s kind of our mentality. And I mean, off the ground, we started to learn SEO. My business partner became an SEO expert over the years, just from spending hours on it every day. I started to go on podcasts. I started to reach out to other people in this space. Other people like the Helium 10s of the world, Jungle Scout, different software companies who didn’t provide VAs, didn’t provide freelancers, but I didn’t provide Amazon software, but we had the same target market.
So we’d build partnerships and we’d cross promote. A lot of those big companies now, um, weren’t that big at the time. So we formed partnerships while we were small and we both grew together and helped each other, um, throughout the years and, and stuff like that. So we really treated, um, treated free up as like our testing strategy for what marketing works and what it doesn’t.
And. We actually have an organic marketing blueprint of everything we did to not only grow out or to grow free up, but we use it for all our other businesses as well. If people go to outsourcerschool. com slash organic marketing, um, you can grab that and it’s everything from podcasts to backlinks to, um, putting out content to partnerships and, and how we do it for our companies.
And the same thing still applies it in 2023.
[00:09:41] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. You, you put out a lot of really great resources when it comes to hiring days and such. So I definitely would recommend people grab that document and maybe even sign up for outsource school if they really want to get serious with this. But. What is your reasoning for going with VAs in the Philippines versus other locations?
[00:10:04] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, I mean, first of all, there, there’s great VAs all over the world. Um, I don’t want to discount that. I mean, for, for me, if you’re a new entrepreneur and you’re trying to hire VAs for the first time, What you don’t want to do is go out and hire two people from the Philippines, two people from Pakistan, two people from India.
You’re just adding a lot of extra work to your plate. There’s different time zones, different cultures, different communication styles. You have to get them all to work together simultaneously. Like that’s a bad way to approach it. For me, it’s start with one place, master that. When you master it, sure, you can branch out.
And Philippines is a great place to start. They speak English at a high level. They consume a lot of the same media. Uh, they’re used to working U. S. hours. They’re used to working with U. S. clients. And there’s a lot of stuff, stuff off of that. So, it’s a great place to start. Everything we teach at, at Outsource School, we, like, works whether you’re, whether you’re hiring people from the Philippines or wherever.
Um, and for me personally, now I’ve just hired so many people from the Philippines. So I just have enough referrals from the Philippines that it just doesn’t make sense for me to look anywhere else.
[00:11:07] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, and I’m the same. I’ve, I’ve got, I believe, eight VAs right now and they’re all from the Philippines and they’re just really easy to work with and like you said, when they’re, when they’re working together, when they have the same culture, it makes it easier on that side as well.
So, when people are looking for hiring a VA, What kind of things were you looking for at free up? What, what made them the top 1%?
[00:11:36] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, it’s skill, attitude, and communication. That’s a trifecta that we look for at free up. It’s the same thing that we look for in all our companies. Now it’s the process we teach people at our company, outdoor school, where we teach people our hiring process.
Um, a lot of people, they just hire for skill and then they get burned and they’re like, how did this Person who’s so talented, not work out. And it’s because they don’t have the attitude or the communication to go with it. And we want people who obviously speak English, but can also get on the same page quickly.
We don’t want to chase people down or wondering what they’re doing and attitude. You want people who aren’t just motivated by money, people who are positive, people who are a team player, people who put the business first and buy into what you’re doing. And those things are so important to go with.
Obviously they have to have the skill that you need to work with them.
[00:12:19] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve found too, that it’s really important to find people who offset your deficiencies, right? Because like, for example, I’m very good at big picture thinking and thinking of awesome new ideas that I want to do. I’m not so good at doing all the little detailed things along the way.
So hiring people who have high detail. are really good for me to kind of help offset my lack of attention to detail.
[00:12:51] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, I mean that that’s completely fair. I mean, you definitely want to hire people that, that support your, um, your weaknesses, whatever they are. And we all have different ones and that’s a good activity too.
I mean, my business partner and I do this all the time. Uh, we’ll, we’ll meet up and we’ll say, Hey, like, what are we doing now that we’re not good at, or what should we be doing that we’re not good at? And what do we have to hire for it? And what are we doing that we are good at? We know how to do it, but it’s just a bad use of our time and we have to delegate it.
[00:13:17] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. So what is the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen people make when hiring VAs that make it kind of be a failure? Yeah.
[00:13:27] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: So if you think of hiring into four parts, you’ve got interviewing, onboarding, training, and managing. Uh, where people go wrong a lot of times is the onboarding, the setting expectations you, they might have a good interview and they get the person started, but we, we call it our sick interview process, schedule issues, communication, and culture.
And we’ll go through this with the VA before they start, we’ll go through the schedule. We need them to work. The common issues people have with VAs like power outages, internet outages, personal issues, computer issues, uh, making sure they’re backups for everyone and that we won’t put up with, Hey, my computer broke.
I can’t work for a month. We go through our communication styles, what tools we use, what happens if your power goes out? How do you contact us? And then we go through just the overall culture in our business. So those are, that’s where people go wrong. Spend 20 minutes before you start with the VA setting expectations and Give them a chance to back out because you’d much rather they back out saying, Hey, your expectations too high.
This isn’t the right fit. It’s not what I’m looking for. Then then have this, then find that out two months after training them.
[00:14:33] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. And in the beginning I was definitely guilty of, you know, bringing someone on and then You get all eager to start training them in the beginning and then that very quickly becomes tedious and then they just, you kind of let them do things on their own and that goes downhill really fast.
So I learned that the hard way at the beginning. Exactly. Very good. So, what other tips would you have for people who are looking to hire either their first VA or maybe their 10th VA?
[00:15:05] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, I mean, start small, right? Like, one of my favorite things, if you’re an Amazon seller, this might not apply, but B2B, like, We have a podcast outreach formula that’s really popular.
It’s a great task to start hiring a VA for, because like, what’s the worst thing that can happen? You just don’t get on some podcasts, but a lot of good things can happen. You can learn how to hire people. You can learn how to set expectations. You can learn how to give feedback. You can be less scared to delegate and build some trust and that’ll give you some confidence.
So for me, find tasks in your business that. That you can hire for that are low risk that if it doesn’t work out, it’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to set you back months and start there and build up hire a VA for five hours a week. And you’re going to learn so much from that process. I mean, obviously if you want to skip the learning curve and grab our system, go to outsource school, but start small build up.
And I mean, no one just wakes up and hires 14 people. Like you, you, we all start somewhere and build up from there.
[00:15:59] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s always a learning experience. You’re always improving, things like that. Do you have any particular tools that you like to use for when you’re managing your VAs?
[00:16:12] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, I mean, we use ClickUp, we use Slack, we use Zoom, um, we use LastPass, we use a billing tool called Clockify. Pretty standard, like nothing too crazy there. Um, I know some people go really heavy with their tech stack. We’ve always kept it fairly simple. And even like our bookkeeping business, econ balance, we, uh, we use ClickUp cause there’s a lot of going on and a lot of processes.
Um, we’ve gotten by with Google docs. When we sold free up, we had 50 pages of SOPs and Google docs and that worked and it was totally fine. So I wouldn’t over complicate it. You can build as you go there for, for me, simpler is better. Don’t only use tools. If you’re going to actually use them. Um, and they add a lot of benefit to your company.
[00:16:52] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, sometimes tools can actually make things more difficult, more complicated, when you could have just done it in a Google Doc, for sure. I know I’ve, I’ve played around with some SOP software thinking, you know, it’s going to be the holy grail for your SOPs, and sometimes it’s just simpler to do it in Google Docs.
Google docs or spreadsheet or something like that.
[00:17:13] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah. I mean, if you want to say off of that, if we want to talk about failed businesses, Connor and I tried building an SOP software and that’s one that like didn’t work out. There’s just, isn’t that big of a market for it. Um, and like Google docs, like I said, is, is pretty good.
[00:17:26] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. We can dive into that real quick. If you want to hear about people’s failures because they’re not really failures, right? Learning experiences,
[00:17:34] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: right? Exactly. I mean, we have a great developer. He built the free app marketplace. He was part of the exit. It worked out well for us, worked out well for them, um, et cetera.
Um, and yeah, I mean, like we, we just built a software as like an add on for outdoor school. Again, minimal viable product. It’s not like we put in 500, 000 into this software and we’re We, we put a few grand behind it. We tested it out. We got people’s feedback and the feedback was pretty much like, like you said, it just was unnecessary, nice to have a little extra hassle for people.
And there just wasn’t a market. And we ended up selling it back to the developer and made outsource school, just what it is today without the software. And people still love outsource school and you just move on. So that’s why I’m a big fan of just minimum viable product with, with free at will with dropshipping, even going back farther.
I drop shipped five products and I even told my, my dad, um, I said, Hey, if like I get bad reviews for this or something happens, I’ll stop drop shipping. I didn’t call it drop shipping, but I’ll stop this business model and, and move on to something else. With free up, we gave people free hours. If they hated it or fired all their VAs, we would have moved on to something else.
I mentioned simply SOP, uh, the, the, the software for, for SOPs, outdoor school, we, we sold this course. If everyone hated it, we were just going to refund it. Bookkeeping, we gave all these people two free months of bookkeeping. If they didn’t stick on, we would have moved on next business. True SEO, we’re starting right now.
We just gave people, our beta clients, some extra free articles in the first month. And if they don’t like it or the SEO service doesn’t perform, which we are confident will, but you never know. Again, we’re going to move on to something else, making sure that we’re not screwing anyone over and that everyone’s happy with us and that we keep their relationships intact.
So that’s kind of the only way that we do business. And it’s, it’s why, even though I’m an entrepreneur or whatever, um, I don’t consider myself a big risk taker because I’m always really testing something before I’m investing a lot of time and effort into it.
[00:19:28] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. Minimum viable product. That’s an important thing to keep in mind, especially in today’s world where things change so quickly, uh, just to be able to test ahead of time to see what’s going to work.
Now, one thing that I’m curious about is you’re running several businesses right now. You’ve built several successful businesses. How do you stay, you know? Motivated and focused when you’re growing these businesses and stay on track.
[00:20:02] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah, good question. I mean, I find it fun, like growing businesses for me is, is an adventure.
I never really feel like I’m working. I think my mentality has changed where I’m doing a little less of like the nitty gritty and I don’t really do stuff I don’t like doing. Um, I hire people for it. Like trio SEO, our, our SEO business that we just started. Yeah. We hired a full time, um, ops person like two months before we even launched because we, we, and we spent six months plus, maybe even longer than that, um, looking for that person.
And we weren’t starting this business without that person. Cause I mean, Connor and I have a portfolio of companies. Like we can’t focus full time on one company. That would be impossible. So we, we build in really good ops people into the business before, and that allows us to focus on the stuff that we’re good at, which is the, the marketing, the, the building, the operation, the systems before passing it off.
Um, and then also just anything along, like the sales process and just being strategic decisions, whether it’s hiring or other decisions that just come up, um, as a business owner. So that’s it. That’s how I approach it. It’s fun. And yeah, I don’t know how it stands to that.
[00:21:07] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Essentially it sounds like outsourcing.
You outsource a lot of the things that you don’t necessarily want to do to people who are probably better at it than what you would be.
[00:21:16] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Absolutely.
[00:21:17] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: So, when do you think is a good time to start doing that? For example, someone to hire their first VA or maybe hire you guys to do their bookkeeping. At what point do you think?
Do you recommend people do that? So
[00:21:33] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: I’ll, I mean, bookkeeping, for example, like that’s, that’s my first hire in any company I start with the Amazon business. It was a mess. I was doing my own books. I was hiring college kids to do books and I just had to just kept paying for it to be redone. And I had no idea how my business was doing when we started free up.
One of the best decisions we ever made hired a bookkeeper from day one before we were profitable, right. When we were testing the MVP. Yeah. And when we, not only did it help us make great decisions, even when we were small, especially when we were big, but when we sold the company or when we were going to sell the company.
We crushed due diligence because we had four years of immaculate books going back to day one. We didn’t have to hire anyone to clean it up. So for us, we do that. Like if you’re starting a company in your mind, just like paying the monthly Amazon fee is a necessary business expense. There’s no way around it.
Paying a bookkeeper is a necessary business expense. Bookkeepers are relatively inexpensive compared to lawyers and other things you’ll also probably need. Um, and especially when you’re small, they’re even less expensive. You’re probably not going out of business because of your bookkeeping costs. You will go out of business if you don’t understand your numbers and you’re not making good decisions on those numbers.
So for me, it’s start early. And then I, I mean, you’re either higher in terms of other roles, non bookkeeper, hiring too early or too late. Like you’re never going to get it exactly right. And there’s a lot of costly things that come from hiring too late. It’s something that’ll set you back and hurt your company.
So the earlier that you can get in, even if it’s five hours a week, 10 hours a week, the, it’s only going to help you going forward.
[00:23:06] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, I would definitely agree that the bookkeeping. Get that off your plate as soon as possible. It’s one of those things that can outsource and you know that the people you outsource it to are going to probably get it right.
There’s not really any training or anything you have to do. Someone like you guys are going to know the business, know how the books are supposed to work. Make sure you’re getting those numbers. And I preach all the time. Knowing your numbers is one of the most important things. Absolutely.
[00:23:38] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: People hate finances, but I mean, that’s the beauty of it.
Like you don’t need to actually do the bookkeeping. You should never be doing your own bookkeeping. You don’t even need to log into QuickBooks. You do need to learn how to read an ink entertainment, a balance sheet, cash flow every single month, and then be able to make decisions on what the numbers are telling you.
[00:23:54] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Absolutely. So with, uh, with your, uh, bookkeeping business, econ balance, what, uh, what kind of statements and stuff do you guys offer every month?
[00:24:06] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah. So we only do one thing and that’s monthly bookkeeping, charge you on the first books by the 15th income statement, balance sheet cash flow in an easy to read format, um, built by sellers built by entrepreneurs.
We know what people want in a bookkeeping service, but we don’t do anything else. We don’t do CFO. We don’t do tax. We don’t do add on services. So. We’re strictly doing the monthly bookkeeping. Um, great customer service behind it. Like we try to build in all our companies, but our goal is to give you accurate books on time that you can read and understand and make decisions on.
[00:24:35] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Okay, so you are doing cash flow statements for people though, because in my experience, a lot of bookkeepers just provide the profit and loss statement and then the balance sheet every month.
[00:24:46] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: That’s weird. Usually you should provide like if you’re doing the PNL on the balance sheet, you should be able to do the cashflow.
But yes, we provide the cashflow. Keep in mind, there’s a difference, um, between cashflow, like your monthly cashflow and the cashflow forecasting. We don’t do forecasting, but we do provide the cashflow statement.
[00:25:02] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Got it. Yep. I was thinking of the cashflow forecasting. I thought you were talking about. Okay.
Yeah. That’s the forecasting cashflow is, uh, one of the very tricky parts of a business to get that right. There’s not any really great software that I’ve found to be able to do that. It’s, it’s
[00:25:19] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: tough. I mean, forecasting is only as good as your, your business is going and it can change pretty quickly. Um, we do have a, like an econ balance, uh, directory.
If you go to econbalance. com slash partners and we have CFOs and other people in there where that’s the, their specialty, they will, they help. Do forecasting, whether it’s sales forecasting, cash flow, inventory, stuff like that. So, um, while we don’t do it, we’re more than happy to point you to reliable partners that can do it.
Yeah.
[00:25:45] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Okay. Very good. Yeah. We’ll put that link in the show notes for anybody who’s interested in checking that out. Uh, all right. So any other things we should dive into, uh, that you think would help potential Amazon sellers or current Amazon sellers that are out there right now?
[00:26:03] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Yeah. I mean, Yeah.
Absolutely. Have a monthly finance meeting every single month. That’s the meeting where you should be reviewing your, your income statement balance sheet cashflow. That’s the meeting you make decisions on. You don’t make company decisions based off gut or anything like that. Um, you make it based on what the numbers are telling you because you have this finance meeting on your calendar that you do every single month.
If you go to econbalance. com slash agenda, you can grab our finance meeting and just go through the same agenda Connor and I have been running. Every single month for seven plus years now. Um, that’s a big part of it. And, and start hiring, go to, um, go to outsourceschool. com, grab our free hiring packet, and we’ve got a lot of stuff in there that can help you point you in the right direction and get your feet wet.
If you want to scale your, your Amazon business, you got to learn how to hire. If you don’t, it’s going to hold you back. Learning how to hire just, it makes everything else easier going forward. And if you don’t know how to hire, it’s always going to set you back.
[00:26:56] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: I agree 100 percent and let’s just wrap it up with this, uh, any key books that you’re reading right now that you would recommend to the audience?
[00:27:06] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: Um, I’m actually on a non business book kick right now. I’ve been into thrillers, um, and now I’m blanking on names. Actually, let’s look it up. Um, the book I’m reading now, I actually would not recommend. I’m going to probably stop reading it, but there was a book right before that. I don’t know if you want non business books, but
[00:27:25] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: it’s a, I think it’s good to read outside of business sometimes because the same thing.
All the dangerous
[00:27:33] Nathan Hirsch | Co-founder of EcomBalance: things and a flicker in the dark. Those are the two that I recommend. If you like thrillers, if you want something to take your mind off of business, which I I’ve actually found the power of doing that. Cause it’s tough for me, like a lot of entrepreneurs to shut your brain off sometimes.
Uh, those are two that I would recommend.
[00:27:48] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Absolutely. All right. Fantastic. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, Nathan, and uh, talking with everybody here. It’s been, uh, great having you. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Alright, have an awesome one.
