Connor Gillivan. He’s a 27-year old serial entrepreneur and published author. He started his first company out of his college dorm room and built it to sell over $20M in products on Amazon.com. After he became an expert on hiring online, he co-founded FreeeUp, an online hiring marketplace focused on connecting the top 1% freelancers with business owners. He’s the author of Free Up Your Business: 50 Secrets to Bootstrap Million Dollar Companies.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Shoe Dog
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Jira
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I knew to stay focused on what I do best”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:47 – Nathan introduces Connor to the show
01:32 – Connor makes 20% to 30% of the gross margin of a product on Amazon
- 01:38 – Net profits end up being from 5%-15%
02:04 – It was 6 years ago when Connor started his business
02:15 – Connor earned on the first year of the business
02:51 – Connor has scaled up his first company
03:00 – The company still operates with $1-2M in revenue per year
03:08 – The team is composed of freelancers who are based around the world
03:27 – The 3 founders, including Connor, are getting their pay quarterly
03:40 – Connor now spends his time on his second business FreeeUp
03:52 – Connor’s first company is Portlight
- 04:05 – Average price point was $75-100
04:25 – FreeeUp was launched in 2015
04:29 – Connor and his co-founder learned about hiring freelancers through Odesk and Elance, which merged and is now called Upwork
04:36 – They didn’t like the process of posting job ads and going through every applicant
04:46 – FreeeUp has a better solution where the business owner doesn’t have to do the upfront work
04:58 – FreeeUp finds the top 1% candidates for the business owners
05:18 – Toptal is more focused on top developers and designers
05:23 – FreeeUp’s freelancers are specialized on e-commerce business operations
- 05:35 – There’s no upfront free
05:43 – FreeeUp has a standard markup that they charge on their clients for hourly rates
06:06 – The minimum charge is $2 and 20% for the higher price
06:55 – There are over 500 freelancers on FreeeUp
07:28 – FreeeUp’s system can measure the amount they’re paying their freelancers
07:37 – The biggest metric is the hours billed to the client
08:01 – Average billing per hour is $10
08:18 – FreeeUp is keeping $60K-80K in revenue per month
09:11 – FreeeUp has around 1500 signups on the platform
09:16 – FreeeUp bills between 300-500 people who are utilizing their workers
09:45 – 2000-2500 people have been billed since FreeeUp started
09:58 – FreeeUp has a referral program where clients can refer other people who would want to use FreeeUp and they receive $0.50 for every hour that has been billed
10:28 – FreeeUp is more hands on with their client
10:56 – Most clients start slow and when they see FreeeUp’s benefits, they’ll use it more
11:10 – Team size is 20-25 part-time people
11:51 – Connor is currently in Orlando, FL
12:11 – Both of Connor’s businesses are bootstrapped
12:21 – Total transaction volume for 2016 is a bit over a million
12:33 – 2016 average revenue
12:44 – 2017 projected transaction volume is $3-4M
13:20 – Connor puts his money back into his businesses to scale them
13:47 – Connor splits the 20% from FreeeUp
14:32 – Since April, FreeeUp has grown 1000%
15:20 – FreeeUp started winning in the ecommerce industry
15:58 – FreeeUp now offers digital marketing as well and try to find different areas that will interest more clients
17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There are more business owners relying on outsourcing for their needs and share with others just how beneficial outsourcing is.
Ensure you have backup funds for your company.
Focus on what you do best.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

700: With $3,000,000 in Projects Completed, Will He Take Down Upwork and Toptal?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

700: With $3,000,000 in Projects Completed, Will He Take Down Upwork and Toptal?