Growing a team by utilizing a marketplace with highly vetted freelancers in a gig economy…

Nathan Hirsch, Founder and CEO of FreeeUp (FreeeUp is a marketplace offering pre-vetted freelance talent) joins Thomas Kutzman for a conversation about growing a business with the right talent. MouthMedia Network studios are powered by Sennheiser. Presented by Prevu.

In this episode:

• The gig economy, and accepting the fact that entrepreneurs are not equally good at every part of their business
• How FreeeUp provides access to great talent all over the world to help build business
• FreeeUp’s original start in ecommerce, then marketing, then real estate agencies (10-15% of their current client are in Real Estate)
• An example of a virtual assistant
• What’s driving the trend of freelancing
• The way FreeeUp provides a lot of vetting, only takes the top 1%, and when they let them in
• How FreeeUp started with $2k and grew to millions – only using freelancers from their own marketplace, and running a virtual company
• How they didn’t look at FreeeUp company as a software business initially – looked at it as people who matched people — but when they looked at it as software and kept improving it, the company turned a corner
• Why freelancing is part of the next wave of the business economy
• How FreeeUp has a good foothold — pain points tough to fix, and hard to copy when fixed – looking at any competition in the business—and the vetting process is challenging to get right
• Freelancers have multiple clients each with their own styles, agendas
• Spending extra time at beginning setting best expectations will help save countless hours of clarification
• Solid communication, feedback to freelancers is critical when employing them
• The biggest error: assuming everyone’s expectations are the same
• Diversifying is important different people for different functions
• What would you do with extra hours?
• An important business lesson, and how Hirsch’s entrepreneurial career began with — selling baby products out his dorm

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