How to Start a Service Based Business

How to Start a Service Based Business

I’ve been speaking to a lot of people lately, students and followers within my community, about getting started with a service based business. Service businesses are a little different than product businesses because it’s not all about creating something and putting it out there, you have to develop your own personal skills first, organize your offer and then seek out clients that need the skills you have. If you want to start a business as a life coach, stylist, personal shopper, professional speaker, designer, photographer or any of the other thousands of possible service based businesses, this article is going to teach you how to get one up and running and how to get started promoting it!

Step #1: Get the Experience

I’m often asked how one goes about getting the necessary experience to start a service based business. Depending on the service, you may have to go to school or get a specific certification for it, like being a lawyer or a health coach. But if your service doesn’t require schooling or any specific certification in order for you to practice it (which you find out by researching the field and the norms associated with it) then you need to get yourself some real world experience. A web developer or designer could gain experience by getting a job in the field and practicing their skills, or a life coach or public speaker would want to find some clients (perhaps friends or family) to test their skills on. In this period of time, you are either working for someone else, working for low cost or no cost at all. Think of this as your intern stage where you are gaining the skills you need to eventually earn an income from your service.

Step #2: Put Together Your Offer

Once you have some good experience under your belt and feel like your trial clients are happy with their results with you, you can develop your offer. Your offer is whatever your specific service will be, in some form of packaged form. For example, a public speaker would put together some speeches on topics they have experience on and develop a price that they can offer to businesses and events looking for such speakers. If you’re a wedding planner, you will want to work up all the services you will perform for a customer and price them out individually and as a packaged deal so when you meet with engaged couples, you have a clear outline of what you can do for them and how much it will cost. A photographer may work up an offer that’s based on an hourly rate with examples of how many usable photos will result during the time frame. Whatever your service is, work up the offer, do some market research for other similar services in your area and use your trial clients to help you determine a reasonable price for your offer.

Step #3: Brainstorm Opportunities

Once you have experience and an offer worked up, you then need to start thinking about who needs your service and where you can find them. Depending on your business you will want to understand your ideal client and research where you can make contact with them, either in person or online depending on your offer. Once you have a list of people, other companies or places where you can find opportunity, you then need to start making cold calls. Cold calls are when you approach someone about an offer that did not seek out you or your services. Cold calling can be tough, it really can be, there is no way around that. But, it is necessary for you to build up your network of contacts. You can always work with your trial clients to see if they have contacts for you and work on a referral basis, but you also need to put yourself out there and find opportunities for yourself. Your goal for each cold call should be to present your offer to a decision maker with the ability to hire you, hopefully closing a deal with them, or getting the contact information for someone who may be interested in your services. If you have done your research, the person you pitch your offer to should have a need for your service so if they don’t hire you for one reason or another, they should at least be able to direct you to a new contact. From there, you will continue to make cold calls and develop a network of contacts, closing some deals and growing your list at the same time. This is one of the reasons why having an active social media presence can be a lifesaver, especially if you run a service based business. It makes finding opportunity much easier. If you are in this boat, with a service based business you want to get off the ground and you want to make the road a little easier for yourself by developing your presence online, I would highly suggest checking out my online business program, Empire Building. In Empire Building, I teach you the 5 pillars to successful online communication using the exact strategies I used to build my website page views to over 200,000 a month, and gain a social media presence of over 50,000 followers! Most of this growth happened within a six month period of time, that helped me to replace my income after I left my day job, so no matter where you are starting, Empire Building can help you grow if you apply the information to your business and execute! Thankfully, Empire Building is packed with worksheets that help you take the lessons and apply them to your scenario, so you don’t have to build your own success blueprint from scratch, I give you the tools that streamline everything for you!

I hope this information helps you get your service based business off the ground and if you have any other questions for me, I’d love to help you work through them, so leave me a comment or send me an email!

xoxo,