Evan Carmichael explains why service businesses struggle: they ignore their existing clients. Over-deliver to current customers with extra services or perks, promote their experience across channels, and they'll refer others. Start with competitive pricing and low-cost tactics like postcards and local partnerships to fill seats, then raise prices as repeat business grows.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my YouTube viewers, Wax Cabanaloy, who wrote in, "I have a waxing business and I have no money for advertising. I mainly use postcards and current clients. Do you have any ideas for this type of business?" So it's a service-based business, which is great. A lot of entrepreneurs start up in the service industry. I think for you, your best opportunity will come from current clients and over-delivering. So when you start off your business, it can be priced competitively. You want to make sure you can attract new people to come to the business, and maybe you do your postcard campaigns and, you know, partner up with other businesses, maybe get a little bit of media attention to get people into the store. But your best bet of growing the business will be getting the customers who do come in to come back and to refer their friends. And how this happens is by over-delivering. So whatever you can do, think of ways to add as much value as you can to that experience so that they can't wait to come back and tell their friends about it as well. So a quick example from my own experience, hopefully it can help you. I have a service as well and I work with a lot of brands who are trying to target the entrepreneur community and I'll create content for them. So as an example, one client hired me to write 300 to 500 words for their blog and it was a great 'gig,' so I started doing that, but I went more than just the 300 to 500 words, and I'll often write 1,500 words, so 3 times more than what they expected, and then I'll help promote it. So I'll tell my newsletter list about it, I'll do a YouTube video about it, I'll put it in my forums and put it on Twitter and Facebook and drive people to that post as well and add a lot more value than what they expected of just somebody writing a post for them. And as a result, they want to keep doing work with me. And then they tell other companies that they were partnered up with and other people see the results of it and I end up having a lot more business on my hand. And as you start getting more people coming into your business because they see what great service you're providing, you can then start to increase your price. As a service-based business, you're always going to be limited by how much time you have, right? There's only so many hours in a day when you can operate your company and you can expand by bringing new people on, but also your own personal time you start changing the price, you start increasing the price because you're adding a lot more value than just the ordinary person who is starting up their new company. So I hope that helps. Again, the biggest way I think you're going to be able to grow that business is again overdeliver. So I don't know too much about the waxing business, but think about anything you can do to add as much value as you can and make people love coming to see you and want to come back and refer their friends. It's going to be your best bet. So I hope you guys enjoyed the video. Please leave your comments if you did. I'd love to hear what you have to say. And also give it a thumbs up if you liked the video. I love seeing those thumbs ups, and we'll see you for the next episode.
