5 Filters That Make or Break Your Consulting Idea

We are live. Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what's new in the world of entrepreneurship? If you've been thinking about starting a consulting business or you've started and you're refining your offer, you've probably asked yourself some version of this question. Is this actually a good idea or am I just convincing myself it is? And that is a harder question than it sounds because you've spent years building your skills. It could be in IT, in HR, in marketing, in paid ads, in SEO, in automation, change management, you name it. And you've attended conferences and you've got certifications and you have 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20 years working and, and, and showing up and, and becoming, becoming an expert in your field. So it's very, it's very easy to assume that those skills, whether those are the hard skills I mentioned or even soft skills, communication active listening, all those skills that you have developed, it's easy to assume that they should translate directly into business, into a business. But the market does not reward skills. We, we wish it did. It rewards relevance. And what I've seen over and over again working with hundreds of consultants, members of this community, and also clients is that people don't struggle because they lack expertise. They struggle because they skip the step of pressure testing their ideas. So they move too quickly. They build a website, they start writing content, they design an offer. They do like, they do like what I did. Spent three weeks figuring out our five-year strategic plan because I didn't want to go out and knock on doors. So they do all of this without asking: Is this positioned correctly? Is this aligned with what the marketing is looking for, with demand? And are there people out there who will actually pay for? as I called, are there willing wallets? So those are the questions we want to be asking. And I know in a recent episode, a few weeks ago, I covered the first 5 filters that I use to evaluate a consulting idea. And I'll recap those filters, those 5 filters in a minute. But today we're going deeper. We're covering the next 5 filters, the ones that determine whether your idea has leverage, timing, and positioning in the market. And those 5, the 5 that we will be covering today will separate ideas that struggle from ideas that gain traction quickly. And here's how I'll run this session today. I'll walk through each of the 5 filters. I'll give you examples, and then we'll apply those examples or those principles for a few ideas. And if you have something that you're considering, You've been wanting to take the leap. You've been wanting to leave corporate and, and have— and you've been wanting to have your own business and achieve your financial independence and build an amazing company with an amazing team, with an amazing culture. If that's what you want to do, and you want to make a whole lot of money to take care of yourself and your family and to share with those around you, if that's what you want to do, you want to build and scale a sustainable, profitable business. And that's what my mission is, to help you achieve those dreams. So let's get into it. And for those who've— for those who are watching, listening now or later, if you're new to this channel, welcome. My name is Feras Alhlou. I got into this thing called entrepreneurship back in 2003 after a very painful layoff. I was a VP in a very well-funded startup, couldn't get— turn that money and that product into business. So I was laid off later, a bit down the road the company folded, and then I had to provide for myself and my young family at the time. So I joined hands with a co-founder, a good friend of mine, and we started to build websites. That was back in 2003, that was cutting edge. And we got into this thing called the internet and figured things out and went from selling to local businesses to mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500, later to Fortune 50, became one of the top Google certified partners globally. And we grew that business to 7 figures, not overnight as you see on social media. It took us 7 to 8 years to grow to 7 figures. And later we grew that business to 8 figures. And then I sold it to global media giant Dentsu. And along the way, I've built other businesses. So I'm on my, I'm on my 7th venture, and my mission is to help you, those of you who want to start a consulting business, and those who started and they're struggling. I want to help you do it right, build a solid business, a profitable business, and enjoy the ride. It's not going to be an easy ride, but it will be easier with learning from others, including from my journey. My journey will be different than yours, but I'll provide you with blueprints, with maps that will make that journey easier and increase— help you increase the chances of success. All right, so let's get into it. And one, one administrative item: if you are— we— I have these live streams every Tuesday at noon Pacific 3 PM Eastern, where I cover a business idea, a concept, questions I get from the community, and then I answer all, all the things we get throughout the week. And also I answer questions from you live. So if you're attending live, leave me a question, especially about an idea that you have or an idea that you're maybe you're struggling in getting it, getting it off the ground. I'll be more than happy to help you. I won't roast it. I'll help you refine it, have it I'll run it through these filters that we're discussing today and help you launch more successfully. And I do want to hear from you, especially for those of you who are listening later, watching later. Let me know, let me know about your wins, small wins and big wins. And also let me know about the struggles you're going through. We're going through some uncertain times. I covered that actually in a recent week, and it's tough to, to manage a business and grow a business with all the tech disruptions that we're seeing with AI and other things, with economic uncertainty, with hostilities happening in one part of the world impacting what we do and what we're doing here in this part of the world. So there's a lot going on, but my mission here, I won't get into politics, I want to get into other things. My mission is to help entrepreneurs increase their chances of success. So if you have a question, a challenge, something that you're struggling with, leave me a comment on YouTube, on social media, or if it's something private or you haven't announced to the world and your boss that you're starting a business and you don't want to put anything online yet, I get it, I understand. You can reach out to me at info@feralalhlou.com. startupwithferas.com. Feras spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. And I will read and reply to you. I reply to every email I get. I keep it all confidential. And so if you have a question, if you have a challenge, if you have an issue that you're facing with business related, do reach out to me. I'll be more than happy to help. All right. So with that behind us, Let's get into the filters. Before I get to the filters number 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, a quick recap on the filters I covered in a previous episode. I covered that in that episode. I covered 1 through 5. So the first one was founder fit— sorry, founder idea fit. So basically, if you want to get into a space, you should if you have an idea, is there a fit between you and the idea? Do you know the industry well? Do you know the problem really well? Do you know the tools? Do you know the clients? Is it something that you want to do strategy consulting and you've never done any strategic work? You're very tactical, you're very detail-oriented. I'm not saying you cannot learn strategy, I'm just saying in terms of what you want to do like right away, if, if, is there a fit between what you're trying to do and the skills that you have and the network and the resources that you have access to? So that was That was founder fit idea, and I'll put a link in the description for those of you, if you haven't seen, watched, or listened to that episode, I'll put a link to it in the description so that you can access it after you watch this video. The second thing I talked about, filter number 2 in the previous episode, was on the difficulty level. So what do I mean by difficulty level? See, different ideas require different sales cycles. So if you're doing something like you can do a quick, you do HR consulting, you come in and do an audit on the hiring processes and the retention processes, or maybe the HR policy, or maybe you just audit the employee manuals. That's just the service. That is a fairly quick, I'm not saying it's easy depending on the company size, but that is a fairly contained service you can offer. Now if you want to go in and help with employee retention and you're selling to Fortune 1000, that is a much longer sales cycle. Selling to small businesses is completely different to selling to mid-level and to the enterprise. Same skills, different arenas altogether. Like sparring, friendly sparring, as I always say in the dojo after practice. With going to a competition with rules and judges and regulations, right? So, so understand the difficulty level. It could be around the sales cycle, it could be about any regulatory requirements, certifications you must have before you can implement the work. Also the sophistication of the client, all of that contribute to the difficulty level. So you want to make sure there's— you understand what you're getting yourself into. The 3rd filter I covered, and again, this Just recapping quickly, very quickly, the 5 filters that I covered in the previous episode. Filter number 3 is speed to first dollar. Now, why do I have that? Because Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, said revenue solves all problems. So when you're starting a business, you have a financial runway. It could be a 1-month runway. It could be a 6-month runway. The longer the runway, the better in most cases, because sometimes if you have— if you're very comfortable and you have a 3-month, a year runway, you might not work hard enough, or you might just take it easy. You might not build that momentum. But the longer the runway, the better, because you have that peace of mind that rent is taken care of, family expenses are taken care of, all that is, is fine. So, so, so you have to understand, um, that some, some opportunities and some ideas, some offers tend to take less time than others. If you're doing some general marketing consulting for small businesses, that's one thing. You can go meet the business owner and sell and get that 50% upfront. If you're helping, for example, trying to sell to the government, it could be a 12-month cycle. If you're selling to— let's say you're great in process and automation and you want to do large digital transformation projects, you're not going to be able to sell this in a week. A typical B2B sales cycle could be anywhere from, according to HubSpot and other resources, 3 to 9 months. And I've seen it. I've sold to the government. I've sold to other— sold to Fortune 50. So I know how long these sales cycles are. So, and then also they pay the big companies, they don't pay you right away. A lot of times they pay you at 16, at Net 90, sometimes net 30. The small businesses, they pay you right away. So understand what you're getting yourself into. And if you, you're the ambitious type and, and you want to sell to Fortune 500, that's great, but make sure you're ready for that journey, for that ride, that you won't get that first check for 3, 4, 5, 6 months. So you might want to work with smaller clients initially to get that cash flow in And then over time you can work on these bigger projects, which, which will be amazing. Typically they're larger in terms of scope and, and revenue and also hopefully in profitability, but, but they— and they're nice for the— and you want to, you want to work. I, I would say if you, if you're into that, working with larger clients, do that. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of positives there. But if cash flow is tight, then you have to figure out a way to sell and get that money quickly. The 4th filter we covered in the previous session is market demand. So you want to make sure you're selling something that people have a need for. And you can look at, you can go on Google Trends and search. You can look into Google Ads or Facebook. Meta ads and see search volumes and what people are searching for over the last 12 months. You can look at LinkedIn job postings. You can— there's a report that LinkedIn provides, I believe 100% yearly. I think they might be doing it quarterly. It's called Skills on the Rise. So you look for the skills that are in need and people are acquiring. And typically, if employers are looking for certain things, They might not be able to hire people quickly, so they might need consultants. That's an opportunity for you. Also look for what is it that large consulting firms are already doing. Okay, look for industry forums on Facebook, LinkedIn groups, and see what people are talking about. So that's— you can go to conferences and speak with vendors and competitors, actually. So those are signals to help you identify if there's market demand for what you're offering. And the last The 5th one is access to buyers. People buy from people. Keep that in mind. Even in business-to-business, even long sales cycles, B2B sales, still people buy to people. So do you know people? When I say access to buyers, do you have relationships in a specific industry? Maybe you've worked in healthcare for 15 years and you know every insurance providers in your region. That is important because if you're selling to that sector, you already have people who can potentially make some warm intros for you to your potential buyers. Um, do you have past clients, partners, suppliers, vendors, contractors, people you've worked with in a specific geography or specific market, specific industry? Those are all important. Your network, your LinkedIn network, your followers or your connectors connections on LinkedIn. Those are important. Download that. You can download that. Go to the settings in LinkedIn and download that, all of your network. And for those of you, those of you who haven't built a network, or maybe some of the younger crowd, you're still building your resources and your network, make sure you connect with people on LinkedIn. And don't spam people that people you haven't met yet. But if you go to a conference, you go to a meetup, you you have a call with a customer or a partner, connect with them on LinkedIn, send them a nice message and build that relationship and nurture it over time. We can talk about nurturing later. So access to buyers is another filter. So those are all 5. I spent a long time discussing each one of those items in a separate session, but I want to, for those of you who haven't, who are new to the channel or haven't been haven't watched or listened to that episode, you now have some of that foundational knowledge that I covered in a previous episode. Today, so those 5 factors or 5 filters will help you decide if an idea is viable. The next 5 will determine how well it will perform. So meanwhile, so for those of you who are live with us, again, if you have a question, if you have a specific If you have a comment, if you disagree with something I'm saying, I'd love to hear from you. Um, so, so let me know. Or if you have a specific question you want, you want me to provide my perspective on it or my answer, please go ahead and add your comment on the social media platform you are on. All right, so we're moving from viability to positioning and leverage. So filter number 6, niching down. And niching down is probably one of the most talked about concepts in business, especially on LinkedIn. And the idea here is that generalists blend in and specialists stand out. And a lot of times when you start a business and you have, again, 5 years of experience, 10 years of experience, 30 years of experience, you're eager to help, you're eager to solve problems, And you think I want to, I want to pitch, you know, I want to have a large audience, a large market. So, so you're thinking to, to, to be broad and positioning yourself as, as a generalist, as a broad, as a, you have a, uh, sorry, you have broad positioning, which actually it's maybe counterintuitive, but it creates confusion because if I am a regional insurance provider and I have some data privacy laws that I have to comply with and I have some new systems in IT that I have to implement based on some regulations, I'm looking for an IT provider who understands healthcare, who understands insurance providers. So if, if you come— if I come across and you— if we and I meet at an event and you say Hey, I'm an IT consultant. Okay, great. But if you say, but it's broad. But if you say, hey, don't say hey. Some older folks don't like hey. So especially in email, trust me, you don't want, those of you who are young, you might be younger, casual with this. Some older folks, older millennials and Gen Xers, If you're emailing them, don't start with the hey. Just one little thing. Everything, every little thing matters in sales. Okay, so hello, right? Hi, how's it going? Hope all is well. Respond to these emails. All right, anyhow, back on track here. So, so if you go to that insurance, the, the IT, the COO or the CEO of this regional insurance carrier, and you say, I'm an IT specialist in healthcare, I've worked with companies of similar size, or that's, that's what I specialize in, it's going to resonate much better. It's going to land much better. So that niching, uh, niching down actually does not eliminate confusion because you're talking to them, to their pain points. You understand the space they're in. So that's one thing. Also, if you are thinking that if I focus my effort on a smaller pie or a smaller share of the market, I'll lose opportunities. It is the opposite because of this concept of resonating with the buyer. So keep that in mind when— and I'll give you some examples, but the idea is there's industry, there's an industry, or there's also a company size, there could be a geography, there are many ways to niche down, but you're solving a problem for a specific industry, for a specific company size with some specific outcomes. Now I hear this every once in a while, and it's a valid point. Did I niche? Do I niche down? Do I niche too far? Do I niche down too far? So of course, and it's hard, like if you're new to business, like you're not sure, did I niche down far enough? Am I not niching down enough? So some of it is trial and error. And sometimes you niche down too much and you just don't like whatever you're doing. And it just, it's not just working well with you with this type of client. So initially have a focus, have a general direction, and it's totally okay to pivot, to realign along the way. Every quarter you go and reassess what you're doing. So don't be afraid of, Definitely don't be too broad. I'm a marketing consultant. I am an HR consultant. I am an IT consultant. I am an automation specialist. That is just way too broad. So bring that down to a specific industry or maybe a couple of industries and, and, you know, dig into the types of problems you solved, the types of solutions you offered, the types of clients you worked with in your corporate life. And from that, you can further refine what makes you stand apart, stand out, what makes you stand out from your competition. So that's how I would think about it. Don't start too broad, and then over time, as you work with a specific segment, if it's just not working out, you can pivot a little bit. Just pivoting is part of business. There's no formula. I can't give you like, here's how to niche. It's trial and error, just like everything else in business. There's a science part to it and there's an art part to it. The science part is easy. I, I'm giving you the approach. The art is you have to experience it. You have to figure it out on your own. But hopefully, hopefully with these tips and guides or guidelines I'm sharing with you, it'll make your experimental time more efficient. So you don't, you don't spend a year figuring out your niche. Now, an example, there's a great book called, I think it was Chris Dreyer, Dreyer, yeah, Niching Up. Uh, quick book, quick read, very, very well written. Um, actually, I listened to the audiobook, so it was really well put together. And he talked about how they, he and they provide search engine, he and his company, they provide search engine optimization services to personal injury lawyers. I mean, very, very specific niche. And he talks about— oh, he goes on this topic, um, at length. I, I definitely recommend that book. So, so I can tell you from my own experience, when we started selling and we struggled with that, we pitched restaurants, we, we pitched people, people we know, people that we've been paying money for it too. So restaurant owners, and our first client was Athena Grill, a small restaurant here in Santa Clara. And then a friend of mine knew another restaurant owner, so we spoke with another restaurant. And for whatever reason, then my dentist was actually my second client. So it happened that, again, some of it is because of where the doors we were knocking on. And some of it, it just happened that, that we closed that first, those 2 businesses. And then I figured, well, now I know a little bit about how to build a website for a restaurant. You need a menu, you need pricing, you need, you need a form for people to ask questions. I mean, this was 2003, things were much simpler when it comes to the internet. And same thing with dentists. You want to have a page with like before and after. You want to have Their credentials. You want to have testimonials. You want to have the services. So I can tell you with certainty that selling to the second restaurant was much, much easier than that first restaurant, and selling to the third restaurant was even easier. So we were able to close. We were able to charge. We were able to charge more. We were able to pitch and reduce that sales cycle from weeks to from three four weeks to. Couple weeks because we understood the language of this, the, the buyer. We understand the issues that the business owner or the dentist was— were having. They wanted to show something. Again, 2003, they— it was websites were more like a brochure, like an online business card. So how you show your credentials, how to show— you wanna, you wanna show the services, you want to make some things a bit more efficient. So, so we helped because people call, ask about your hours, ask about the location, all of that. So, so helping them become more efficient was, was a thing. Um, so selling to the same type of customers was much easier. We were closing faster, we were charging more, and we were able to deliver the work much more efficiently because we just We just like when you ride the bike, I always say this, when you ride the bike, it was very difficult the first time around, still difficult the second time around, the third time around, but over time it becomes easier and easier and easier. So, um, that's same, same thing here. So when you work in a specific industry, um, that helps you. That's, that's just one idea of niching down. And later as we grew the business, we wanted to go beyond selling these basic websites. E-commerce was just becoming a thing, and we, my partner and I said, you know what? Let's get into it. So we read about it, we found a vendor who has an okay product, an e-commerce product, so we did not have to develop things from scratch, so we were packaging, we were using, leveraging the e-commerce product from this one vendor, and we went out, and it took some courage because it was difficult going from selling to, to small businesses and selling basic websites and now e-commerce with payment gateways and shopping carts and the whole new thing. But we sold the first one. We didn't make a whole lot of money on that first one. It was a $5,000 project. And then, and then we, we just got much more comfortable delivering. The customer is very happy. We bent over backward to make sure they're happy. And then we use that as a case study to sell other e-commerce, smaller at the time, smaller e-commerce projects, and we were telling these new or these business owners, e-commerce will level the playing field. You can be like the big guys, and that, again, it became easier and easier and easier as we sold more of these e-commerce sites. So, and over time, again, we went and applied to become a an authorized seller or agency, a marketing agency to the US government, and there's a whole lot of process to go through, and we did it, and then we— I freaked out the first time. The first time we landed this government client, I was so happy, I was so excited. It was $95,000. That was the contract, and it was multi-year. I loved it, of course, but I was also very nervous, like, how do I deliver to the government? We've never done any work for the government by that time, but we learned the protocol, we learned how you can't, like, for example, asking for testimonials, asking for case studies, the government agencies, they're very, very conservative when it comes to these things. There are guidelines that the buyers and the team members, you know, on the government agency side, they're not, they're not supposed to promote a specific vendor. So things you do, uh, naturally and casually in a commercial setting, you cannot do with a government agency. So we learned all of that, and then over a span of maybe 5 or 6 years, we became the number one provider to the U.S. government in terms of digital analytics at the time. And it was every, every new deal we got was easier to sell. I'm not saying it was easy, but we understood the process. We understand the language. We understand what is an RFI, an RFP, an RFQ, all of these things, understanding the GSA schedule and how government agencies buy. So it wasn't just knowing the technical skills and what the buyer was looking for, but also the whole— The whole aspect of the sales process and how to present yourself and how to pitch to, and how to, I don't know if you can negotiate, and how to make sure that government is getting the most favorable pricing, all of those things we had to learn, but once we learned them, once we did a couple of those, we doubled down and it paid off really well for us. So these were some examples on how we niched down, and sometimes, like I said, you niche down into something and it doesn't work out, so you pivot. I had, don't think it was all easy and always worked out. I had a whole lot of challenges where we picked a service, we focused on it in a specific area, it didn't work out, so we had to pivot and drop it or just call it quits on that specific thing and move and put our energy and resources on something else. So that is on, that was filter. Number 1 from this episode, or in total, that's filter number 6, niching down. So the one thing I do not want to hear from you is, I'm a marketing consultant. I am an HR consultant. I am an IT consultant. I'm a change management consultant. Focus it some more, niche it down a little bit, and then go after that specific market and that specific segment. All right. So if any of you who are live with us, if you have An offer, an idea that you'd like me to run through this niching down filter, feel free to add it in the comment. If not, we will move on to filter number 2 from this episode, or total filter number 7. And that is ride the wave. So I don't surf. Well, I've been in California for many years, didn't get Too much, you know, just focusing my hobbies on a few things, martial arts and a couple other things. But riding the wave is a thing and it's about timing. It's about how timing amplifies results. And there's a difference between fighting the market versus aligning with the market. So we have, I mean, we have fads and we have trends. So you have to figure that out, and we'll talk about it in a little bit, but think of remote work, think of compliance when there are specific regulatory changes in your industry, data privacy regulations, privacy, HIPAA, the health— the GDPR, the Data Privacy Directive, the HIPAA, Health Personal Information Directive, all of these are regulations that hit us or the specific industries, and then companies want to be compliant, otherwise they cannot continue to operate, or if you're in IT, companies want to be SOC 2 compliant. So if you happen to know about SOC 2 and all that good stuff there, you can provide a service. So compliance is something to look for when there are changes in regulations. Tariffs, again, not getting into the politics of it, but when there are new tariffs, new regulations, everyone in that supply chain area, they're impacted. So can you come in and help companies identify what works, what doesn't work? And I did a whole episode on tariffs from that perspective. Again, not the politics of it. We can talk about the politics of it offline anytime. And then AI, of course, AI. What What can you do with AI if you're not a developer, right? You can use, as I hear it used, applied AI. How do I use AI in HR? How do I use AI in IT? How do I use AI in finance? How do I use AI properly in marketing? So there are certain trends that you can— those are the waves, and you can ride the wave. And as they say, they say in in corporate, um, a rising tide lifts all boats. Of course, it could do other things with these boats, but we're thinking positively today about riding that wave and, and, and, and getting, getting lifted by this big wave. And if you think of, of timing, you want to make sure you choose the right timing. So if everyone is calling people back to the office, which is happening in a way, especially the big companies. They're saying no more full-time remote. Now it has to be hybrid, 3 days in the office, some companies 5 days in the office. So doing things on remote work at this point, maybe, maybe it's not the best timing. 2, 3 years ago during COVID during the pandemic, Great, if you happen to be working in a region where there's conflict, like in— we have a business in Dubai, and we have some folks decided to work from their home countries, so, and if you've never done any remote work in that environment, then maybe you can come in and help these businesses who now have to work, they're asking their employees to work remotely for personal safety if they have specific reasons to leave. So, so, so there are opportunities sometimes because of external factors where a specific thing becomes a need. So, so that's when, when I describe timing. I do have— I did a, I did a, um, a video on 26 ideas for this year, and these are not some random ideas. I did a lot of research, and let me actually share with you Give me one second right here. Some of those ideas, because they are— if you're struggling to find an idea, I know this is more of a sidetrack here, but it's important because some of you are struggling to find ideas to start a business. You want to start a business, but you're not sure what to do. So let me, let me share with you. Give me one second here. So Here. So I have— if you go on the channel, if you go on the channel, um, this is the book. It's called, uh, a bit of an aggressive thumbnail text here: Quit Your Day Job. Make sure you, you properly— you plan properly before you do that. But, uh, 26 Business Ideas for 2026: Stop Struggling to Start. So you can check out that video. It's about 20 minutes, but These are the ideas that I covered in that video. I won't go through all of them today, but just to give you a flavor of what's out there. So I started with tech and transformation, AI workflow and implementation, for example. And in, in the video I described, here's the idea, here's what it means, here's some examples, and then the experience, some past experience that's helpful, some past skills that are helpful, and also Give me one sec here. Make sure, make sure you— oh, I want to make sure why— oh, you're not seeing— uh, how come, how come, how come? Hold on, you're not seeing what I'm seeing. Give me one sec, please. Give me one sec. Share window. Yeah, sorry. Here you go. Sorry about that. Uh, so yeah, so, so here's the idea, like tech and transformation, AI and AI workflow and implementation, and then the description, the examples, the past experience, past skills that are helpful, and also potential new skills and knowledge that you need to acquire. And then I had 2 other columns. One is the difficulty level and one is the speed to first dollar. So, um, and, and I had 6 categories to help you. Sometimes if you just think of ideas, it gets just overwhelming. So I had tech and transformation, then content and creator economy, people and workplace, risk compliance and sustainability, global and local markets, and then specialized expertise. So take a look at the video, and then after you watch this video, and then also you can download this— in the description of that video, you'll see a link to download this worksheet here with the 26 ideas. So that is something that is about riding the wave. You want to look at things that are in demand today, things that people are investing in. There's an ecosystem around, right? So that is— those are some things you can look into today. AI, of course, AI is everywhere, but in your space, if you are a change management, uh, process improvement type consultant, that's what you want to do. Look, and let's say you have— you've done work in hospitality, so look at every AI tool out there in hospitality, in your, in your change management space, and, and learn it and, and get a free demo and Get a free account and play with it and add it to your resume. So now when you go in to pitch your services, it's you and your copilot, you and AI. You're not competing against AI. You and AI are coming to the, to the company to help them, to these companies to help them solve their problems. So, and I'll have— actually, I'm working on a, on, on a video on this topic of AI, so If you're not following the channel, the YouTube channel, make sure you click follow. If you're liking this content, and of course a like is always appreciated, and leave me a comment about specific questions you have about AI and consulting, as I'll be addressing those in an upcoming video. So that is on— that was filter number 7, the second filter in today's session. Now next one is filter number 8. Boring is bountiful. So a good friend, good friend of mine, Alex, always, always used to always say that. And he was in consulting as well. He was a competitor, then we got acquired and he became, he became my, my, my boss. Amazing guy. Um, and he always used to say in consulting Of course, cash, you know, cash is king, but boring is bountiful. Everyone wants to chase the sexy problem, the shiny object. They want the cutting-edge solution. Yes, these things have appeal, but I can tell you from over 20+ years of experience in consulting, in sales and marketing, that unsexy problems equal reliable revenue. A lot of people don't want to touch boring stuff. So number crunching, back office work, some, we used to say plumbing work. When we used to do data and analytics, there's the plumbing work, like making sure the data is accurate and the data has higher degree of a higher degree of accuracy, the data is scrubbed and ready for analysis, and then there's the core work of analysis. So that is when you go and find insights and derive these insights and then present them to management and get that bonus, right? Everybody wants to work on the shiny executive dashboard, but there's a lot of plumbing work that has to happen under the hood. to get to that fancy dashboard. So looking for opportunities, especially operational problems, things that companies always have a need for, there's a consistent demand. So for example, updating in an hour, in my example, we were selling websites and that was again cutting edge at the time, We found out after listening to a— attending a sales course. I remember Marvin, the sales guy, the sales teacher, the sales course instructor, he was saying, hey, Feras, if you want to grow a sustainable business, look for ways to create recurring revenue. And I'm building websites, my partner and I, so how do we have recurring revenue? So we found 2 things. One is when you build a website for a company, you can host it locally. That was common actually in the old days. 2003 is the old days, yes. Or you can host that website in the cloud. So we found a very reliable hosting provider, and I think they would charge us like $20 a month or something like that. And then we would go and sell that package for $49 a month, $99 a month, just hosting, hosting the site. Of course, if the site goes down We, we had to, we had to follow up with the hosting provider and provide that customer support to our clients. But, but we found a reliable provider and we were reselling that hosting package. You think about it, you get it at $20, $25, you sell it at anywhere from $50 to $100. There's a nice margin for a small business at the time. And if you have 20 of these, so let's say it's $50 a pop, times 20, $1,000 of recurring revenue without you having to do a whole lot of work. So that was— I'm kind of mixing recurring revenue with this boring is bountiful, but there was a nice revenue stream for a small company our size at the time from selling hosting. Later, we had a whole lot more with hosting. So, and we were hosting ecommerce websites, we were charging more. So that's one thing. Also, instead of just focusing on building websites, we want to— these restaurant owners, we want to— these small businesses say, well, you should update your content. Your content will be stale. You want people to come back to your website and find useful information. So we can have a $100 a month retainer where we come in, we have a call with you, we meet with you, we get the new information, we put it on the website. Boring stuff, listing, updating content on the website. But that created that revenue stream for us. And later when we were selling to the Fortune 500, we also became— we became very good at what we were doing in analytics consulting. And then we became a Google Analytics reseller. So we were reselling the license. It was enterprise level. So $150,000 a year. And then obviously you have to pay a good chunk of that to Google, but we had a nice margin still. So being a top-line consulting, solving the most complex problems with analytics attribution and how to improve your conversion rates and all that jazz was what people wanted to talk about in conferences and and as consulting companies, everybody was bragging about, anyway, sharing information and bragging about how complex of problems they were solving, and then we were not there yet, although we had an amazing team, but we're still not at that level, so we focused on selling, reselling those licenses, and then people were concerned on my team, hey, we'll have this reputation of just being resellers, It's not shiny, it's not sexy, but I can tell you those amazing margins that we ended up getting from selling so many licenses enabled us to invest in improving the skills of our team, hiring senior talent, and then going back and pitching and winning some, some amazing brands, um, for strategic consulting, for premium consulting, for solving amazing problems, challenging problems, for solving, for replacing a very established implementation that Adobe had implemented, let's say, for, for a client, without mentioning names. I'm not sure if they want to— they want me to share some of this information, although it's now old, but we were We had a Fortune 50 who hired us. It was a multi-year contract to put a strategy and support implementing of putting Google Analytics in and removing the Adobe system. So those were, over time we had more than $1 million of consulting revenue from this one client. So we were able to do that because we had an amazing margin from reselling the unshiny, unsexy stuff for a while, but that margin enabled us to do all the cool stuff later. So if you're looking for prestige, if you want to have those amazing logos and you want to do this service that you have in mind, that cutting-edge service, you might not be— it might not help you get to revenue very quickly, So you might want to do— you might, you might want to, I don't want to say like humble yourself a little bit and do some, some of that legwork, some of that plumbing work, do some of that work that is not very shiny, get revenue, get, get profitability up, hire people, and then you can focus on these big shiny projects with, with obviously they'll give you a whole lot of, a whole lot of boost to your reputation in the industry and those clients that you help solve these complex problems, they'll tell their peers, they'll tell their friends. People move around from one company to another, and you get more of those types of clients. But at certain times, it is okay to do the boring stuff because boring is bountiful. All right, let's see if we have any comments here, any questions. We have a couple, a couple more filters, and then we'll wrap it up. So for those of you listening, Live. If you have a question, do let me know. I will be more than happy to answer it. Filter number 9, which is filter number 4 for this episode, ecosystem leverage. So a lot of times when we start a business as a founder, it's you yourself and maybe a co-founder, right? So it's me, Feras, and I. So, and, uh, you think we have to do everything on our own, which is— it's— there's truth to that. You have to learn a lot of things, but you're not alone. Um, just, you have contractors, you have experts you can tap into, you have friends, you have a network. If you don't have a network, start building one. All of that is, is, is, is there. You can hold 2 truths in our minds. We have to do things on our own, but also we can leverage the help of others. But from a demand perspective, you don't have to build demand from scratch. You have ecosystems in your field, and I'll bring examples from marketing. I think everyone, everyone gets marketing. You have providers in marketing that focus on developing tech and they're not in the professional services business. So they focus these companies, HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Google Ads, you name it. If you're thinking of IT, Cisco and other, let's say like a router company, they focus on routers, but they need authorized suppliers. They need certified partners to implement their tech. They're looking for people to put a strategy behind the implementation, to implement, to audit existing— the existing situation. They're looking for people to train the users, the end users, on this technology. So these are the things that consultants offer: strategy, implementation, training, education, ongoing support. If you're in accounting, there are whether it's QuickBooks or higher-end type accounting systems, Sage and others, they are looking for— sometimes they have, those companies, sometimes they have their own professional services teams, but in most cases, that's not sufficient. In most cases, the professional services team is focused on specific types of accounts, typically the premium accounts, but if you're in the analytics space, I know Google, had a wide network of analytics providers. Our business in Dubai, eSense, we are a Google partner. Enor, the old business, we were a Google partner on 5 or so products at the time. All of— if you're in healthcare, if you are in— if you're implementing like an ERP system, whatever you are you know and you're focusing on in your vertical, in, in the area, the technical area that you know, look for providers, manufacturer for, for, for the lack of a better word, and, and, and see what sort of a system, what sort of ecosystem they have. A lot of times you go to their websites and they have a list of certified partners, authorized resellers, authorized consultants, what whatever the name they use, and typically they have a process for you to be certified and to be on that list, and once you're on that list, then every company that's buying that technology is going to go to that list and look for a partner. A lot of companies look, okay, there may be 25 partners, okay? How can you over time— initially the goal is to get listed on that partners list, and when you go out to tell people, if you say I'm a Cisco partner, that elevates your positioning. If you say I'm a Google partner, I'm a Salesforce partner, I'm a HubSpot partner, I'm a Sage partner, any authorized partner, that gives you a whole lot of, a whole lot of credibility, more credibility. It elevates your positioning. You can have that logo on your business card as well because you are a small business owner. You might have 5 patents and you might be the most amazing consultant in your space, But people, as I said earlier at the beginning of this episode, the market does not reward demand. It rewards relevance. And when we see someone who has the certifications and has the 5-star reviews and has all the street cred, all of that, they are more impressed with you and they are more likely to buy from you. So look for this. This is, I think, an underutilized area for consultants. Identify platforms, systems, software, hardware, vaporware, whateverware, anything that is related to what you offer and see if you can become a certified partner, an authorized partner for that in that ecosystem and leads, and then invest in that partnership and work with your partner manager at that company and show them case studies you've done. They love for other consultants to brag about their technology and to show how the technology is solving problems. They'd love to get end-user feedback, so become— don't only— it's a two-way street, you have to reciprocate, and that's what we did when we were Google partners. We were writing about the product, we were promoting the new features, we would, like the minute a new feature was rolling out, we would have a blog post on it, We would send the newsletter, email newsletter to our clients about the new features. We would provide feedback to Google if there are some issues. We would pass on the feedback to Google and they appreciate it. A lot of times I got introduced almost on a monthly basis, go to the Google office and meet with product managers. They want to hear from me, from our team, What is it that our clients are asking for? What is it? Are the clients happy with the product? So when you invest a little bit of that time, you can allocate it as marketing time. It's building that relationship. And then good things happen when you have strong relationships with people. You trust them, they trust you, certain level of energy happens, and then the goal here is to help the end client. solve a problem, and you're doing that, you're solving a problem with the help of these tech software or hardware or a solution that someone else is building, so that is something that is underutilized in my discussion with founders and with people who want to be entrepreneurs, look for platforms, or tools or ecosystem that you can attach your idea to. All right, filter number 10, which is filter number 5 for this episode, stress test. Okay, so every idea has friction. See, we fall in love with the ideas, our own ideas, and I always say treat your idea as a hypothesis Not as something you love or something that, not like your baby. Your business idea is a hypothesis, not your baby, because if you are focused so much on, like if you fall in love with the idea prematurely, at times, there'll be a whole lot of blind spots. You're not looking at things objectively, just like when you fall in love with someone else, with someone. So, Sorry. So I want you to focus on, you want to poke holes in this idea. You want to understand dependencies, the market, in terms of the complexity of implementing this idea. You want to also, from a stress testing perspective, at a bigger picture, what happens when things go right? What happens when Things go wrong. What could go wrong? Can you survive a slow start? If you watch this previous episode on on on the the pass the speed to first dollar, if it takes you six months to close a deal, can you survive that? Do you have the financial runway? Is your partner at home, your spouse? someone who is impacted by your decision, are they okay with you having no revenue for 6 months or are they going to panic? So from stress testing, I want you to stress test the technical idea and that there's a market demand for it. I also want to make sure to step sort of outside, look at the business from the outside. There's working in the business, there's working on the business, and ask those questions. What has to go right? What could go wrong? And then can you survive? Can I survive a slow start? And it's not again about being a pessimist or lack of positivity and lack of optimism. It's about realism. It's about preparation. So I want you to stress test that. Again, all of that, there's always context. When I'm saying stress test, it doesn't mean that You stay at home. Let's say you decided to take the leap. Let's say you're laid off and you want to start a business. You want to look for a new job for the first 3 hours of the day, and then for the next 7 hours, you're working on your dream idea. So what— when I, when I say stress test, I don't want you to spend 3 weeks sitting at home stress testing. No, allocate 2-3 days to go through all the plans, talk to others, research online That's enough. And then I want you to go out and speak with people. I want you to go out and talk to potential buyers or people who know buyers and research competitors to make sure you validate your idea. And on this idea of validation here, if— let me share my screen one more time. If you, um, I just, I just published actually last Thursday, last Thursday. Yeah, just recently, this video on how to know if your business idea will actually work. So I go— I went into these, um, in this video I go into all 10 of, of these filters in one video. So if you want to have— you want to go through it there, go ahead. And if you also want to download the spreadsheet and, and put together— I have here the Make sure everybody can see this. Yeah, it's showing up perfect. Yeah, let me make it larger. So you put your idea and then you look at these validation points. These are the 10 filters I've been discussing today and in the previous episode. And then put an evidence next to each point and then score yourself. And then maybe you want to have some specific actions or, or, or tests you want to run to improve the score. And then you have a final score at the bottom. You might not be very good at this stuff, you might try it, and, and, but it's going through this exercise and thinking about it and then asking others who've gone through a similar exercise, and, and people who may be in adjacent industries who've started a new business, talking to people about it and talking to potential clients and doing your research will help you get better at validating an idea, because at times, well, always, always, always, you want to validate the idea when you start, but later, a year from now, 6 months from now, a year from now, you might want to pivot, so you want to try a new service, new segment, new market, you want to upsell, you want to do other things, you want to resell, and you want to sell consulting and resell a product, it's always a good idea to go through this validation process to make sure you you are on the right track. So that is it for today. Again, thank you for— thank you to— a big thanks to all of you who send emails, who leave comments on YouTube, on the channel. I do get inspired when people say, hey, I tried this and it worked out, or hey, I tried this and it's not working out, can you help me? I am here on— my mission is to help you. Grow, scale, reach your goals of building an amazing consulting company where you make a lot of money, where you hire amazing people, you treat these people well, you, you share from what you're making, and then, and then you grow, and, and then whatever your dream is, you'll be able to, uh, to achieve it. Okay, success is never guaranteed, but following these guidelines studying entrepreneurship will significantly improve your chances of succeeding. With that, um, I will then see you next time. All right. Have a good one.