Ask Me Anything: Starting a Consulting Business (Live Q&A)

We are live. Welcome to episode 115 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What is new in the world of entrepreneurship? If you're joining us today, chances are you're in one of those 3 places. You're in a comfortable corporate job wondering if it is time to start a consulting business, or maybe that decision was made for you because you were recently laid off. And I went through that same exercise. I'll talk about it in a minute. Or you've already taken the leap and discovered that building a business is completely different than becoming Good at your profession and getting the promotions and and and doing just well well in your job. So so whether it is you're in a comfortable job today or you're recently laid off or you've already taken the leap and you're just not getting the traction, I can tell you that I know all these all these all the three scenarios very well. More than twenty years ago, I was laid off. from a Silicon Valley startup. I was a VP at the time, and the CEO walked into my office one day and said, hey, Feras, tomorrow we have a layoff and you're impacted. And that decision was very difficult. So, for those of you who are impacted or you have someone in your family or in your circles who is impacted by a layoff, give them some space. It's a really— hard situation that you go into psychologically, emotionally. You question everything around you, your self-worth. Why me? What did I do wrong? You start blaming others. So, so it's give people some space to, to mourn, to process what just happened. And for those of you who are impacted, after a week or two You have to package that whole thing. You have to wrap it up. You have to put a package around it, a wrap around it, and just put it behind you and move on. And the best thing could happen to you, whether you're young or old, whether you have a lot of years of experience or not, these big moments and these big challenges that hit us in life, they test our strength. But if you learn from them and if you focus on the future and new opportunities, great things could happen. So, that event, me getting this layoff notice, pushed me into entrepreneurship and it completely changed how I thought about work, about security, and also about success. And I can tell you that after 20-plus years of entrepreneurship, 7 businesses, after coaching and advising entrepreneurs for the last several years, most professionals discover the following very quickly. I can tell you that your expertise will get you into the boat, but sales, marketing, and business development are the oars. So if you don't row, if you don't have good oars, and if you don't row, you drift. So today I'm tackling your toughest questions, the questions that I hear from founders every week. On the average, I'm speaking to 2 or 3 entrepreneurs every week, professionals who want to take the leap and they're hesitating, those who started and they're struggling, They're making this transition and they're struggling. They're going from corporate to consulting and just a lot is going on. So I want to answer these toughest questions today, 30 of them that I have received. And then of course, for those of you who are live with us, whether you are listening or you are watching, feel free at any point to add your question. I will, I will add it to the queue and then I will and address it today. I blocked a couple hours for today. So we have time. I want to help you. I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs scale, build and scale their businesses to 6 figures, to 7 figures and more. That's the experience I've had over the last many years in building consulting businesses, including one that we grew to 8 figures and we sold it to global media giant Dentsu. So I'm here for you. And we already have a question. So, Stephen, thank you for coming back. I appreciate it. I will answer your question just in a little bit. Let me just wrap up the introduction here and we'll dive into the questions. And we'll— Stephen, you're a repeat member here. You always join us, almost always. And I appreciate you and I appreciate your question. So I'll get to your question first. But let me— for those of you who are new, you haven't been to this channel before, Thank you so much. I appreciate you joining. And my name is Feras. After that devastating layoff, as I said, I've built and co-founded 7 businesses, mostly in consulting, generated over $70 million in revenue. And I'm on a mission now to help you, as I said, get to your destination a little bit faster with a whole lot less, a whole lot fewer mistakes than the ones I made. Entrepreneurship is not easy despite of what you hear on the internet, on YouTube, and on social media. It does require a lot of commitment, a lot of discipline, a lot of hard work. But I think if you— there's no one framework that will get you there faster. You can't get to $100,000 in revenue in a month. It just doesn't work that way. Entrepreneurship does not work that way. So this channel, I promise you one thing: no hype, no get-rich-quick schemes. It is honest advice from the trenches, timeless business principles, disciplined execution, and then, as I said, practical advice to help you reach your goals, get you to your destination. with a lot fewer mistakes. So let's step on the mat. And as I said, as I promised, we'll answer Steven's question first. So, and let me put it on the screen so people who are watching can see it. And again, for those of you who are listening, hopefully if you're driving, don't type while you drive, you can park and leave me a comment with your question. I'll be more than happy to answer it. So, but Steven says, what do you think about business owners having a social media presence or personal brand to attract business opportunities? Yes and yes. So basically, all of us are, most of us are on social media, right? So my advice around that is pick one channel, the one that comes natural to you, more natural to you. It could be LinkedIn, it could be YouTube, it could be Instagram, it could be TikTok, it could be you write newsletters. I would say focus on just one channel. And once you start to get a whole lot of traction and a whole lot of engagement and more followers and more members, then you can start repurpose some of that content and you can apply it on other channels. So in our business and from what I've read and from what I've seen with others, it's really hard to do well on all the channels at the same time. There's just every— I post one thing on LinkedIn and it gets a ton of engagement. I post the same exact thing on YouTube, it gets hardly any likes or any engagement. So same audience, same me, same content. So every platform has its own nuances. It has its own followers who are looking for different things, whether it's long form, short form. So I would say focus on one platform, understand it really well, Build a habit of publishing. Maybe initially start with like once a week and then maybe twice a week. Later do it 3 times a week. And I know with AI people can generate a whole lot of content. Use AI, of course, but use it intelligently. Sit down and come up with problems you've solved in the past in your corporate job. You've solved problems. So document those and then you can remove any confidential information. And package those insights into bite-sized gems you can share on social media. So come up with your own thoughts, come up with your own, obviously your own lived experiences, what you've heard from clients, what you've heard from suppliers. You went to networking events, you've encountered certain individuals or certain situations. So talk about your own experience, your own perspective. Use AI to polish it. If you don't, you know, in the past, I used to send everything before I published anything on social media, way back then, I would send it to my marketing manager. She would review it, give it back to me. I would post or someone would post on my behalf way back then. I mean, now I skip that process. I do use AI, but as I said earlier, I use it intelligently to polish. Sometimes Eric and I, my co-founder, we're sitting down and discussing a strategy or a new initiative that we of course run all that by social media, by AI to get different perspectives, to get maybe a broader answer. So use AI intelligently. You can use it to, if you want to have something creative in terms of a design, you can use Stitch or you can use recraft.ai or you can use Stitch with Google, that is, you can use ChatGPT. So a lot of options and there are all these specialized I would call them, you know, applied AI tools that you can use. So long story, long question to your— long answer to your question, but I would say yes on using social media, yes on establishing a personal brand. You are the consultant, you are the owner, so you're the expert in your field, whether you have 5, 10, 20-plus years of experience, you want to share with your audience That you are a problem solver, that you have, you have the chops, that you have, you have experiences that will demonstrate without you pitching that you are the person who they can come to and trust you when they have a problem in that area. So, so yes, so that was a, that, that was a, that was— That question kicked us off. So now let's move on to The rest of the questions. So let me put those on screen, and I have them here somewhere. Right here. All right. How do I get my first paying client when I have zero sales or marketing experience? Let me tell you that is a very common scenario. Of course, if you used to start a business, whether you're going at it full time or you're doing this as a side hustle. You need to get clients, and how to get the first client is probably the hardest thing that could ever happen that that you you would face as an entrepreneur. Of course, there are exceptions. You you're talking to someone about about your idea. Said, "Oh yeah, you know what? I have this need. I I'll be more than happy to hire you to help me solve this problem." This could happen, but in general, you will have to. Get the word out to the world that you are now a consultant. You could be a workflow process automation consultant. You can help companies adopt AI in an intelligent way. You can be an IT consultant. You can be a financial advisor. You can be someone who someone I spoke with yesterday. They want to they they have years of experience in their field. They were approached by a legal— by a legal firm for them to be an expert witness. And they thought, oh my goodness, I know this space really well and I can provide advice in that domain. So, you know, as an expert witness, you know, so that is a consulting job. You know, we had some friends who had issues with their house, so they brought in a structural engineer and he was a consultant to provide his expert opinion on on the issue that they had in their house. So it could be business-to-business, B2B. It could be business-to-consumer, whatever the idea is. And I'm assuming here the question is that how do I get my first client, meaning you've already developed an offer, right? So with that in mind, you have to find where your potential clients are and then you have to be there and you have to start connecting with them. So So in terms of how do I get my first client, I think most of first clients in business are going to come from your warm network, people in your network who either need your service or they can connect you with someone who can use your service. So for example, let's say you want to do— you're good, you have 5 years of experience, 10 years of experience in HR. And now that you've learned a lot about all these HR and people ops tools about hiring, about resume matching with job descriptions. You've learned about— you're good with people. You can train managers on how to do performance reviews, all of that. You know HR and people ops really well. So now you want to be on your own and start a business. Who are you targeting? Small businesses, mid-sized businesses, large businesses? Are you— do you have experience in healthcare or in finance or in hospitality? So start focusing on company sizes, start focusing on a specific type of maybe HR, and then look in your network. Do you have HR managers, HR directors who potentially you can reach out to and let them know, hey, let's catch up. We haven't caught up in a number of months, and here's where I started. I'd love to know more about what you're doing so I can be of help and also let you know what I'm doing. So maybe potentially you can, you can help me out. So, so start those conversations with, with warm, with your network, and then obviously you would want to go to places where your potential clients are— local meetups, conferences, you name it. And in my video, The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Company, I go through all the templates and worksheets and ways to Get your first client. So check out that video if you haven't seen it yet, if you haven't watched it yet. All right, that's question number one. Question number two: Should I narrow down to one specific niche? Niche, niche, niche, niche. I like niche. Or sell everything I know how to do? I mean, great if you can sell everything you know how to do. That's great. I would I would start with niching down. And I was speaking with a friend yesterday who was laid off. Great guy and amazing. I've worked with him and, and he's a, a seasoned leader, senior leader. Um, he knows how to deal with any and all people-type issues, and he also has a good understanding on, on client-facing challenges and provides great guidance to, to his team. I've seen him in action. So, he was impacted by a layoff. Companies merged and middle management is impacted. Not an uncommon scenario. So, he's done a lot of things in his life, in his professional life. So, where do you start? So, what I discussed with him is that you'd want to Identify elements of your profession or your years in your profession on things that will make you stand out, that make you unique. So, for example, he has international experience. They've sold to international companies globally, and he also hired people in the US, in Canada, in the Middle East, in India, in the Philippines. So, he has this knowledge. And, and, and he has the tacit knowledge on, on, on managing teams across multiple time zones and different, different cultures and, and different, uh, different skill sets. So, so that is not, not a whole lot of people have that type of experience, and he's done it for years. He's also done client-facing, and also he, he manages, he managed a large team, almost, almost 70, 80 people. So, so my advice to him was to identify the skills that make you stand out and also client segments, segments of the industry that you have more experience in, e-commerce, retail, what have you. And then you can start niching down. Early on, you don't want to niche. It's something you kind of learn over time. You don't want to sell to everyone. Selling to everyone is like selling to no one. So you don't want to be just reaching out to everyone who needs what you offer. But if you can offer, if you can start focusing on, for example, small businesses who need IT services who have less than 10 people, that is a very specific specific target audience. And maybe within IT, you can focus on maybe initially a friend of mine also, he worked a lot with schools. So you take that, I'm going to work with private schools, small, smaller schools, and then I'm going to focus on just managing their entire network and computer setup, and if they need help buying equipment, I'm their go-to person. So, so yes, I'm niching down. Um, don't go too niche initially, uh, but, but, but like I said, selling to everyone— selling to everyone is selling to no one. It looks appealing. I, I have a huge— there's a huge pie, I want to get a good chunk of that. No, start with a target audience. Over time, you might tweak, you might refine, you might adjust, you might pivot. That's okay. That's just part of the journey. But initially, you do want to pick one ideal customer profile, ICP, understand their pain point, understand their language, understand the industry language, and then over time you can expand, you can broaden your services, you can do other things. So that would be my question on niching down. A lot of this stuff in business, there's the science part of it and I give you a formula and then there's the art of it and And the art is something that you can't outsource and you can't learn overnight. You have to do, and you have to do the reps. So just keep that in mind. And a lot of the business advice that you hear online, it comes from someone who's done it for many years, right? They've done the reps. They've done the 10,000 reps before they've mastered something. So for you, if you're just starting out, You have to do some of the reps, right? So hopefully, like my martial art, my Aikido instructor says, it took me 3 years to learn this technique. My job is to help you learn it in a few months, right? So you still have to do it. You still have to step on the mat. But with the advice and the coaching and finding, following a specific framework or a system, you should be able to get there. Sooner and faster. All right, the next question is, how do I price— let me put it on the screen— how do I price my consulting services so I don't look cheap or get trapped in scope creep? Well, you're talking about 2 things here. One is, well, pricing is one thing, and then not looking cheap, of course, that's one thing, but also getting trapped in scope creep. So I mean, pricing I have, I think I have, um, 3 or 4 live streams just on pricing, and I have a video on all the pricing models. So if you're new to pricing, you might want to— and I'll put, I'll put the link to all that in, in the description. I have a 21-minute video on all the pricing models— hourly, project-based, performance-based, all that good stuff. But initially, my recommendation is to go with hourly. Set an hourly rate. And, and, and present that in your proposals. Later you can do other things. I'm not saying hourly is the number one best pricing model forever or for every client. Some clients just want a project-based fee and you'll lose the deal if you don't do it that way. So, so, but initially estimate how long it takes to do this job and give them, give them Tell them it'll be between 20 and 25 hours, right? Reasonable. Don't tell them it'll be between 20 and 100 hours. No, nobody will buy from you that way. Say it could be 20 to 30 hours, right? Something reasonable. And then look around. You can look on competitors' website, you can— sites, you can check with other people, you can go to networking events. That's why I'm a big proponent of networking events because you get to meet not just customers, but also you'll meet other suppliers, other vendors, competitors, People share information. A lot of people are nice and they'll share. Some are not. So you want to know what the going rate is. And initially you might want to be lower. You don't want to be— let's say the going rate for what you offer is $150, right? Local support. If you're doing maybe— if you're going to Upwork and getting someone from a different part of the world, you might be able to get it for $50 an hour. That's different. You're not— you're competing differently. If you're local, you can come, you can go and visit them and visit the client in person. You, you work in their same, you know, time zone. There are advantages of local, local talent. So not saying that if you have, if you have a remote business or you have, you have, you work in it, you're in a different country and you target the US or Canada, that's a very viable business model as well. You compete on, on price, on efficiency, on other things. But But if you're local, I think you can check around the pricing. You can go on Upwork and see what people are charging. And then you can be— you don't have to be the most expensive consultant initially. Just lower that a little bit. So if the going rate is $150, maybe offer your services at $125. Okay? I wouldn't do it $50. I wouldn't buy— I mean, you're a consultant. You have 5, 10, 15, 20 years of experience. You don't want to come across as someone who is desperate to sell. So that's really important. So that's on not looking cheap. Just be a bit lower than, than the going rate, um, and, and show your differentiators. You have the certificates, you have the years of experience, you've worked in their industry, you know their language, the industry language, you know, just show how you differentiate. And pricing will be like one of the considerations, not the main consideration. Again, a lot of this advice here is, is for early stage if you're just starting out. Later I want you— I'm a proponent of offering premium services and don't compete on price. But initially, I want you to get the first client. I want you to get those first few projects so that you can build confidence and you can deliver and tweak your sales and your proposals and your delivery. So, so that's why I want to just, just sell initially. Don't worry too much about pricing and about, about margins initially. All right, and then get trapped in scope creep. Scope creep meaning a client wants you to do, to build a basic website. You get into it and the client then wants e-commerce and the client thinks that, yeah, e-commerce is an easy add-on, right? So that's an example, or you're an IT consultant and you go to help set up a cybersecurity implementation for your customer and you think they have one office and 10 computers. It looks like everyone works remote in 20 countries and there are 50 of them. Huge scope, right? So, or clients keep asking, can you add one more thing? Can you add one more thing? So, so again, initially be generous, offer, don't, don't nickel and dime initially. That's, that's all okay. But, but in terms of defining the scope, define what you're offering Define what's included, define what's not included. That's really important. I learned this, took me a couple years to learn, to learn to add this section to my proposal template is what is not included. And you'll learn, you'll learn that by the mistakes you make. And that e-commerce example was not just— was the real thing I went through. One client, we had no idea. He just thought that e-commerce was included early on. Heavy, very, very expensive mistake. So, so, uh, and I, I have, I have the Ultimate Guide to Writing Winning Proposals. Um, it's a, I believe it was a 53-minute video, long video as well, one of my ultimate guides. And I go over the entire process of closing a deal. And, and it's, people think of the proposal as something that you just submit and then that's when That's when you start negotiating and closing deals. The minute the proposal preparation, preparing for the proposal and impressing the customer and negotiation, all of that, they all start from the minute you start interacting with the customer. So you really have to understand what to do before you develop the proposal, during the discovery and gathering information from the client, and later. Once you submit the formal proposal, when the whole formal negotiation phase starts, understanding the process is really important. Again, I have that Ultimate Guide video on it. I'll include the link in the description as well. All right, moving on. Again, for those of you who are just joining or watching the video or listening, happy that you are— happy that you're here. I'm going through 30 questions. That I've received from founders on all things entrepreneurship and consulting. So if you have a question, you're not sure about a specific scenario, how to deal with it, don't hesitate to leave me a comment on whichever platform you're on. You can go at Startup with Feras on YouTube and leave a comment there. But if you're watching on LinkedIn or on Instagram or somewhere else, leave me the comment. It should come through to my unified interface here. I should be able to see it. But if I don't get to see it during the session, I will make sure I will answer your question later. Now, if you haven't announced to the world that you are going into entrepreneurship and you're still employed and you don't want to put your name out there publicly, you can email me. Email me at info@startupwithferas. Feras spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. And I will— .com, and I'll be more than happy to answer your question and give you some tips and some advice. So I'm happy, I'm happy to be of help. I'd rather you put the comment out there on YouTube so I can, or on LinkedIn, and so I can— I'll answer it so people, the community will benefit. But if it's something private, you don't want to share it yet, email me. I will answer your questions. All right, the next question here: can I build this business, or a business, I don't know what that business is, while keeping my 9 to 5? Or do I need a 6-month runway before making the leap? So you probably heard me talk about the 6-month runway. That's why you have it in the question. So again, thank you for being here. Can I build this business while keeping my 9-to-5? So yes, you can. And ideally, you start a business with a 6-month runway. The longer the financial runway, the better. There are always exceptions, of course. When I was laid off, I had an okay severance package. Side story here, but the employer at the time, they gave me a 4-month— I was a VP and they gave me a 4-month severance package. So I, being the smart guy that I was, I negotiated. I started negotiation. I said, 6 months. I'm a VP. Instead of 4 months, can you give me— instead of giving me a 4-month package, can you extend it to 6 months? a 6-month package. Back and forth for a week, and they reduced the severance package to 2 months. So, heard a tough lesson when I needed that money. I learned a tough lesson at the time. Sometimes when you negotiate, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. So, so anyhow, I had a 2-month severance. We had some savings, my wife and I had, and, um, I was forced into it in a way. I, I didn't choose to leave corporate at the time, and the job market was very dry. That was in 2003. And then I ended up with a, with a friend, a good friend of mine. We co-founded our very first business to build, build websites for small businesses. So, so if you're not working, if you're laid off or you have decided to leave, you have all the time in the world to focus on the business. But if you're still doing your 9 to 5 full-time job, um, you'd have to make some time in the evenings and then on the weekends, um, because you're— you want to fulfill your obligations to your employer during your working hours, but then you have to identify— you have to find time, you have to allocate time to focus on the business, especially if you have like a lot of ideas going and you're talking to a lot of people. My recommendation is It's okay to have a lot of ideas when you're brainstorming initially and then zoom in on one idea. A person, a man who's chasing 2 rabbits will end up with one. Great quote. Don't know, don't know, don't recall who said it, but a great quote. So in the brainstorming phase, have 200 ideas. That's okay. But as you start getting ready to start a business, you want to filter out things that will help you. And we're probably getting questions on this already. So hopefully I'm expanding more on the answer here. But basically you want to identify opportunities where there's market demand, of course, and then opportunities that you have more skills for, soft skills, hard skills, your network, right? So that is Uh, that's— that takes time. That takes time to vet the ideas, to talk to others, to maybe go to some events. I mean, setting up the business, the LLC or the S corp, that's easy. Work with one of the legal services, work with an attorney, that's easy. But vetting the idea, validating the idea— I have a whole video on, on vetting and validating the ideas, check that out. I'll show you, I'll add all of those to the description. But that— the time has to come somewhere. So if you have someone important in your life, you have a spouse, you have, you have kids, you have aging parents, you have responsibilities. Make sure you get them on board that, hey, I'm very serious about taking the leap and I'm going to cut down on some of the leisure activities. That, that shows that you are committing to this venture and you'll earn the trust of those around you and those who love you and care for you. Tell them that I am really serious about taking the leap and I am going to be spending a couple hours every evening working on this idea, and then maybe one of the weekend days. So it is doable. Just be ready for a very busy schedule. If you cannot put the time for whatever reason, then don't kid yourself. I would say put these ideas, jot down these ideas every day, jot down the ideas that come across, come to your mind. And then when you want to start and you have time to put into it, then you have A pool of ideas you can choose from. All right. Next question. Why am I getting ghosted after sending outreach emails and how do I turn cold silence into real meetings? So my friend, you are not alone. I get, I don't know, 20 cold emails every day. And funny thing is I do read, I do click on all these emails. I want to see how people are pitching. Just part of me learning from everyone. So, but it is the name of the game. In cold, I don't know if you're cold emailing or if you're sending this to existing people in your network or maybe people whom you've spoken with and they're interested, but they're just not getting back to you. They're ghosting you. So if it's cold email, the response rate is going to be low just by design. Just read about this stuff. I have— Yeah. I have some videos on this, but basically if you send to a qualified— if you do all the best practices, you think through the proper subject line, the preheader, a very relevant introduction, very professional. You've done some research about the company's services and their competitors. And so, you know, spend a little bit of time even if you're using Instantly and Apollo, and you're using a lot of the automation with AI, and you have a very, very strong cold email with all the best practices, even if you do that, you're not going to get 10 responses out of 100. You might, I don't know what the recent, most recent industry stats are, maybe 1 to 3%. You might get 1 to 2 to 3 replies. So that's, that's if you're following all the best practices, and a lot of people don't. And actually, I, I just, I have this black belt breakdown today. I posted that on LinkedIn showing like not a great way of starting an email. So you can check that out on my LinkedIn today. But, but the idea here, don't get discouraged if you are not getting the replies. Now, if you're sending this to existing contacts or people that you have met and they've shown interest and you've identified a problem that they have and they're really interested in working with you, but they're not replying, I still don't want you to give up because from my experience with over 2,000 proposals and over 600 projects over the years, and from what I've read on HubSpot and other stats, It takes anywhere from 6, 7, 8, 11+ touchpoints to close a deal. And of course, those numbers, the higher the numbers, the larger the project, the largest— the larger the deal, the larger the scope, the more complex the scope, the larger the company, the more touchpoints and the longer the sales cycle is. If you're selling to small and mid-sized businesses or business-to-consumer, the sales cycle might be 1 to 8 weeks. If you're selling to the enterprise, it could be 3 to 9 months. And then if you're selling, let's say like Fortune 50, selling to the government, it could be 12+ months. Sometimes they do a whole lot of research, these big companies or governmental agencies a year prior to actually needing to select a vendor. So long story short here is there are a lot of touchpoints. My recommendation to founders, to entrepreneurs who are new to sales, don't just email. Don't be lazy and say, I am just following up on my previous email. Of course you're following up. No, take some time. Take 5 minutes to think about something of use to the customer and add it in your follow-up email. Of course you're following up. Of course they know that you are following up. If they are so annoyed by your If the client, if the lead is so annoyed by your following up, they can tell you, thank you so much. I'm not interested. Please take me off your list. But in general, people are busy. People have competing priorities. Your customers are not just sitting waiting for you to send the proposal. So continue to follow up, continue to add value in every touchpoint. If there are opportunities to meet them in person at a conference, at a networking event, at a place where they congregate, do that, and they'll tell you they're just genuinely very busy, or they're waiting on the CFO to give the go-ahead, or they have a huge implementation of some other technology that they have to wait before they introduce yours, or there's some internal politics. Someone internally wants to do the work that you are proposing, or someone else in the company want their cousin Jimmy to do the work. It all depends. So don't text someone at 8 PM on a Friday night. Don't call them 5 times a day, but don't just go weeks without doing some, some follow-up. So, so it's a balance, but put it part of your, part of your process that you will follow up. And if you're not using a system to track all this all this outreach, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. So, so if you're just starting out, you do not need to buy a CRM right away. You can use my DIY CRM. It's a Google Sheet that has some of the most needed fields. So this way you can track every interaction and then you track what to do next. In one week, you can put the date and you can sort by date and Use that spreadsheet to help you manage this process. It's a really critical, essential habit to establish for you as a founder, this follow-up. Even if you're right-brained and you're very creative and you hate spreadsheets, you have to track your sales activities somewhere. Later, once you have 50 or so qualified leads, I highly recommend you invest in a CRM. And I have a few live streams on how to select the right CRM for your business. You can go with Salesforce, Salesforce for small businesses. You can go with HubSpot. You can Pipedrive. There are many, many out there, and I don't, I don't get any commission from any of these. But the important part is to track your sales activities and follow up. And it looks like we have a couple of live comments. Let me get to those. This is from Sydney. Thank you. Okay. So from Ritesh, how do I? Let me put the question here on screen. How do I? How do I go about finding my first couple of business opportunities if I don't have any sales marketing experience or strong network to decision makers? So Ritesh, thank you for your question. Actually, that was the second question I answered earlier in the livestream, so you can go back and listen to it. But quickly, your first clients are likely to come from your network, from your warm leads. So if you don't have— I don't know what you sell, but if you don't have people in your network who are the buyers of what you sell? Do you have people in your network who know those who buy what you offer and then they can make some introductions? So that's the gist of what I said earlier and you can start establishing a network. So I tell people, you can, if you're selling locally or in your region, you can go and attend events and meet the folks and add them to your LinkedIn. And the second thing is, and this is something I did many, many years ago, back, this is 2004 when the Yahoo groups were the thing where people were, people of different, of specific interests, they would join these Yahoo groups. Now there's Slack groups, now there's LinkedIn, Facebook groups, but the same concept. So I used to go, and this was a group about analytics, about web analytics, and we had specialized in that by that time. And I would go and just answer questions. And if I don't know the answer, I'd have one of my colleagues and I'd say, hey, my technical colleague said this. And I kept just adding value, helping others. I love helping others. At the same time, my— I don't want to say my status, but all that contribution, all that good karma, all that help, it paid off significantly. A lot of people would then reach out to me personally and say, hey, thank you so much for the help. I have a follow-up question. I would answer it. And then when they got really stuck, other consultants who were selling marketing services, but they knew nothing about analytics, they'd come and hire us to be their behind-the-scenes analytics agency supporting what they're doing. And then companies who needed our help would come out to us. So I think there was a Yahoo group with like 700 people. And again, you don't pitch their rules, their etiquette. A lot of people do this on Reddit the wrong way. I did it the wrong way, trust me. But the idea is not to pitch on these groups, but to go out there and listen, see what the vibe is and start adding value. And then you establish yourself as a trusted advisor and then business will follow. And you can also do things on LinkedIn. I think I mentioned this earlier. So a question from Steven earlier, You can start building a following on social media. Pick one channel and produce, consistently produce quality content, not generically and auto-generated content from AI. Use AI intelligently, but add your thoughts, the problems you've solved. If you want to be a consultant, you have some years of experience, 5, 10, 20 years of experience. So show that you have solved problems and you understand the ins and outs of that scenario. So that's my idea. Thank you for your question, Ritesh. Another question actually from the live audience. Thanks for sharing your experience. You are most welcome. This is from Oz here. Okay, so what could you recommend for someone with extensive knowledge in project management office and process management and PE portfolio company experience? You know, I learned project management when I moved from technical to do some— to non-technical, in a non-technical capacity. I did account management working with clients, and there was a project management element to it. So I never got my PMI certification, but I think I understand project management really well, and I'm just good at organizing things. So I think project management is always in demand. So that's a good thing. And you mentioned process management. I can tell you for certain that with the AI era that keeps evolving and companies wanting to adopt AI and they're not sure how, and then they do it wrong, there is a huge need for process improvement, process automation, Technology adoption in general has always been a thing. And if you look at the top, and I did, I have a video on AI, consulting in the age of AI. Again, I'll link to that in the description after the livestream. But if you look at, and I did, Eric, my co-founder and I, we research all what all these companies are doing, the Deloittes, the PwCs, you know, the top 4 and others. And they're seeing the opportunities. First, they're adopting AI internally. So they'll have 40,000 people and 20,000 agents. So that's one thing. But then also they're seeing the opportunity where companies are struggling with adoption of AI. So you might, a company, a big company might have a pocket of AI users and they're doing very well, but the rest of the organization is actually slowing down the progress. So you can generate, I think the example, I forgot who is the president of Deloitte or someone, who said, yeah, AI can generate a legal agreement now in minutes, but then if it has to wait 3 weeks in line to be reviewed by an attorney, then where's this optimization that we are talking about? There's no optimization because there's still some manual processes. So long story short, if you're good in process management, I think that is from my research and from what I see and what I've seen in the industry when CRMs were a thing, when ERPs were a thing, when mobile was the thing. With all these tech revolutions, there's always a need for consultants who can come in and help companies adopt the new tech, adopt these processes. And I think industry experience matters in this case. So if you have some background in healthcare or maybe in, you've done with a lot of clients in retail, I think you couple, you know, you add all your skills and the industry experience, and then that gives you another edge altogether. So keep that in mind. I hope this is helpful. And we have another— okay, so I have a lot of questions to answer, but I've got some live ones, so let me get the live ones first. This is from Raw Mosafi. Thank you so much for being here again. So network audit to determine who to chat with Do you start with small deals first, deliver, get testimonials, and sharpen positioning as a result and go larger from there? Yes, and yes, and yes. So I can tell you from my experience, not just for the very first business but also for the second business, when we took the same business model that we had here in the US and we started a business in We had a business actually in Dubai selling analytics at the time. And initially when we were building websites, I was knocking on doors of very small businesses and I had come from, again, a VP position selling, not selling, I was actually professional services. I was managing projects for infrastructure, multi-year projects. That was the startup I was part of. earlier. And then I was laid off. And then what do I do? Okay. Websites are a thing. Let's sell websites to small, very small businesses. So we started with very, very, very small businesses. My very first client is Athena Grill. It was Athena Grill, still thriving here in Santa Clara, California. And it was $1,400 for a basic 4-page website, something you can do in 5 minutes today. But it took us 3 months to deliver. And later, my dentist, was my— the second victim. She was amazing. She believed in us and we helped her have a very nice website eventually. So that was a more complex website. And then gradually we started because part of it, and people say that, like we were big on growth. My partner and I, now I remember Phil Knight's quote, life is about growth. You grow or you die. So we always wanted to grow and get bigger clients, bigger deals. And we started to go after mid-sized businesses. We got into e-commerce. That was hot at the time. And we went from selling something for $2,000 to $5,000. Eventually, I think, well, eventually not, I think we got to 6 figures and multi-year contracts later, 10+ years down the road. But I would say, if you're, especially if you're new to consulting, I would say, You know, you know the domain, you know your domain expertise really well, but what you don't have the reps for yet— sales and marketing, networking, how to start a conversation about your business, how to ask strangers for money, and then all of that. But once you close a deal, what you also don't have a lot of experience in yet is delivering the project. So there's a lot You can know the technical components really well, but there's communication. There's a long list of things on what it takes to have a client who believed in you in the sales process, have them to be a reference for you and give you, as you mentioned, the testimonial and the case study. So, and I do have an ultimate guide. I think it's an hour and 4-minute video, long one, the ultimate guide to mastering service delivery. And it starts again from the proposal phase. All of this stuff is interconnected. So I start from the proposal phase, setting the right expectation, then how to do a kickoff and handoffs and then managing planning, execution, all that good stuff. So long story short, yes, start with, I would say start smaller and don't worry too much about pricing. I know you didn't ask for that, but I said that earlier. I want you to talk to leads. I want you to turn leads into customers. I want you to deliver projects. to these customers, build those muscles, and then gradually you can go and, and I love the fact that you want to go and work on bigger clients. Yes. I had a consultant actually, I was advising, he and a few other consultants, top-notch in their very niche field, but they've done it all. They've done work for Fortune 100 and, and They struggled initially because they were just focused on selling to Fortune 100 or Fortune 50. And I told them, that's great, but just keep in mind that these companies, the sales cycle for a Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 is very long. So if there are a few of you as founders and you're waiting on this revenue to pay rent and it's going to take 6 months to close a deal, then it's going to be dry and, and, and it— you might just quit. They ended up actually, uh, not, not dissolving the company. So, so I told them, I, I'm all for position— positioning yourself as a top consultant for Fortune 500, for the Fortune 500. But meanwhile, for cash flow purposes, go get that project with the nonprofit, go help the small business owner. You don't have to put— I know this sounds Maybe not grateful. You don't have to put the logos of people who are not in your target audience on your website, but you can service them. You can fine-tune your processes, get the cash flow, build that confidence as you are working toward closing these larger deals on these larger customers. So hope that helps. And there's a follow-up question. Let's see. And Oz, yeah, you are most than welcome. More than welcome. Happy, happy to. Hopefully that was helpful. And then do new deals come through from outreach? Because can't rely long-term on just warm network because that could run dry quickly. Quickly, right? You are absolutely right. So as I said earlier, your first clients are likely to come from your network. Now, once you have, let's say, let's say, and I, in my Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business, I walk you through this process. I want you to go to LinkedIn. And let's say you have a network of 2,000 people or 1,000 people. You can actually download that into a spreadsheet, put it in a Google Sheet, and then see if you can categorize those. Some names you don't even remember. Okay, cold. Some people you met at a conference. Yeah, you've liked their posts. You've connected with them. So these are kind of mid-level. And then there's some who are maybe 10% you've kept up with. They know you, you know them. So start with the Warmer, warmest leads in this case or contacts and just do that initial outreach and just introduce yourself, not to sell to them, but just reconnecting, catching up, making them aware of where you are. And then also learn about them and see if you can be of help. Reciprocity is a thing in the universe, in business. So you're out there to help them out and they're there to help you. Most people are nice. Most people will want to help. Some people are busy. Not everyone is going to get back to you. So I would say exhaust— I'm a big proponent of leveraging the warm network and then also to the extent that you can attend and participate in networking events. The more face-to-face events you can attend, relevant events where your target audience are likely to be, the faster you are at at mastering and understanding the pain points of your clients and also of pitching, starting conversations, kind of learning how to, you know, on the spot sort of come up with answers and then going back home and, you know what? I just answered this question. It took me forever to answer a simple question. You learn from those experiences. So I'm a big proponent of Focusing on your warm network initially and also networking events. And then, as you mentioned, of course, you'll run out of contacts. But by that time, of the 100 people, let's say the warm contacts, if you've got 2 or 3 clients and you bent over backward to make them happy, you get the testimonial, as you said, you'll get the case study, you'll get the referral from them. So at that point, you're starting to also get business from referrals from these clients, especially if your service lends itself to— well, no, you get referrals from those clients and also potentially you can sell ongoing support, ongoing maintenance, quarterly audits, whatever your service. If your service lends itself to do like a monthly kind of retainer. So if you need $10,000, that's your goal, $10,000 a month. After you get your first few clients, you'll have some, let's say, $2,000 or $3,000 a month from recurring work. Then in terms of getting new sales, you only need $7,000 now, not $10,000, right? So there's all those dynamics that you have to keep in mind. And you might run into a customer who would Need a lot of help, and that could bring up your monthly revenues—that that incoming recurring stream to five thousand dollars, right? So so those those those those are factors at play. All right. Oh, you are most welcome. Thank you for being here, and thank you for for answering these questions. And yes, they're on the spot, and they they they they got they get me thinking. And again, I love to be of help if there's anything else. Any any any other follow up? Don't hesitate to to reach out, or just you can just email me at info at. startup affairs. Happy to be of help. So moving on to the next. How do I stop feeling like an imposter? Oh yeah, that is one that I want to spend some time on. Let me put this on the screen so people who are watching can see it as well. Give me one sec. So how do I stop feeling like an imposter when pitching to high-level executives who have decades more experience than me. I mean, if you know your stuff, then that's one thing. If you're, you know, if you're faking it, that's another thing. But, but I'm assuming here again, those who are— those who visit the channel, those who are serious about consulting, you have some years of experience. I would say you're in that room If you are pitching to high-level executives, trust me, I've— later in our business after we got beyond selling to small businesses and mid-sized businesses and we got into Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500, later we sold to Fortune 10. We were selling to Salesforce and others. It's not easy to be in those rooms. I remember one time we were pitching Salesforce and we were an existing vendor at that time. We were an existing partner. We were helping them. Actually replace Adobe Analytics with Google Analytics 360 at the time, the enterprise edition. And it was a multi-year project and we had to go and present to the execs. There were one senior VP who reported to Marc Benioff and then 3 other VPs. I mean, it took us 2 weeks to prepare for that 30-minute meeting. So I hear you. And by that time I had all the logos as a company. We had all the logos. We are one of the top, I think we were like 3 or 4 on Google's partners list in analytics globally. And Google came in and helped introduce us to Salesforce at the time. And even then, it took us 2 weeks to prepare for that meeting with my good friend and consultant, senior consultant, Aryan at the time, and she did an amazing job in preparing for that meeting. So, and I think I spoke, I just what I need to say. As the principal consultant, I had to be there and say a few things. And I did. I stayed in my lane. Arianna did all the heavy lifting at the time and our partners at Salesforce. So, it's hard. I hear you. And this was not even a sales— we're already a vendor and we're already the chosen vendor and recommended by Google. But it wasn't easy. So, I think if you've done the work, I think the issue that consultants run into is that you've done the work. You have, again, whether you have 3 years of experience, 5 years of experience in corporate, you've done similar type work, but you haven't done it by yourself. You haven't done, you haven't sold it, right? You haven't marketed it. You haven't been there. You've always had other people support you. But from a technical perspective, I'm assuming you are a consultant. You're an expert. So, you just go there. And I think the 5 Ps, prior preparation prevents poor performance. And my co-founder actually says, you can't say prior preparation because preparation required. It should be only 4 Ps, preparation prevents poor performance. So, I would prepare as much as I can in terms of really understanding From the direct reports of these executives, what do these executives worry about or care about the most? Budget, timeline, them looking bad in front of the CEO, whatever it is, right? And then learn about each of the executives. See what they— if they're on LinkedIn, see what they say, see what's important to them. Just do as much preparation as you can. And now use AI intelligently. Say, I'm going to meet these executives and this is my solution and this is the question I've they they might have what else they could be asking me about what do I give me short answers like like just do a lot of preparation and then you just go in there and you perform and this gets easier it never gets easy it never gets easy this is just sales you enjoy it but it's not easy I I love martial arts I I get on the mat a few times a week. Sometimes it's never easy. It's hard if you're training with someone who has 10 or 20 years more experience than you. It's hard to apply technique on them. Very difficult. But that's how you learn. And I enjoy it. So I think preparation is important. And then getting as much information from the direct reports of these executives so you are ready for that meeting will help you navigate through that. that tough session. But if you don't know your stuff, and again, this is what the no hype, no get-rich-quick scheme part of this channel, part of me, is if you don't know your stuff, then you're going to make a fool out of yourself. And if you don't know your stuff and you want to be a consultant, then learn something. Learn something, experiment with it, work with smaller clients, do something for a nonprofit, build the skills. And then, and then you can grow. There's nothing wrong, you know, nobody was born a senior consultant, but I'm assuming you have some basic foundation before you start out, go out there and sell, selling. All right, we have another, um, let's see, we have another comment. Yeah, from . Okay, so a lot of, a lot of folks in the tech space have been trained to be employees and independent ICs, independent contributors and implementers. Shifting into consulting requires them to flex completely, completely new muscles, but the payoff equal larger if successful. That— thank you for the comment. It is absolutely right. I mean, and I think you mentioned in the tech space, of course, but even in other disciplines, you're focused on your job, especially in a bigger company. The bigger the company, the more specialized typically. If you're working in a smaller company, in a startup, you end up having different hats. Just met a young guy who is son of family friends who just moved to Silicon Valley and he's working in a startup. And I don't know, I think he's 23 maybe. And he said, oh, I'm a new manager now. They just asked me to manage 4 other young people. And he's excited about it. He's learning about it. So sometimes in a smaller company, you end up wearing different hats and you learn, I think, Horizontally, you end up learning more. In a bigger company, you're right. Your point is, I think if you are— if you have— if you want to start your own business and if you want to reach that financial independence and you want to build this amazing culture and you want to be your own boss and leave a legacy, all these great objectives of entrepreneurship, you can have some of them or all of them, whatever your dreams are. In entrepreneurship, it does take some preparation. And if you are working in corporate today, see if you can raise your hand to take on some of these, some of these, to learn some of these skills. So for example, if there's an opportunity to travel with the sales team to be the sales engineer or to be the technical person, so go and see how these salespeople are doing things in real life. Or if you can, maybe if the company is not allowing you some opportunities, volunteer. Go and help a nonprofit. Go do something where you can, you know, build something on your own. You can obviously do a side hustle. I'm not a big proponent of side— long-term side hustles. I mean, if you have an immediate need for cash, that's different. That's a different story. But, but if you want to do a side hustle so you can build those skills while you have a full-time job, I think that will make— increase, significantly increase the likelihood of you succeeding in entrepreneurship. So yes, good comment. Thank you for the follow-up. Okay. Question from Steven. What are your thoughts on productizing your services? Please share your experience. Yes, yes. And in my pricing video, The Ultimate Guide to Pricing Models, we listed hourly, project-based, performance-based, all that good stuff, and then I did say product productizing. So, you can do an audit as a product. You can package certain things. So, from a selling perspective, you can say 1, 2, 3, and 4. Those are the 4 things I offer. And then, that's one product. And then, you can do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. That's like tiered and productizing. So, we did package training at the time. Audits were definitely a product for us in a way. We would come in and do their tool of like a light audit. And sometimes if it was a huge opportunity, we'd do it at no charge, like a very, very, very sort of— and we tell, we set the expectation, this is a mini audit. And then you come back with some amazing insights and the customer say, oh my goodness, for this mini audit and for free or for a small amount, look what they found. Imagine if we hire them. and they do this larger project. So, so you can definitely— and you can see what others are doing in your, in your space. But, uh, something that is— I, I talked— I covered with more detail in, in the Ultimate Guide to Pricing Models. So check that out, Stephen. All right, moving on. Um, good, good stuff. Good, good stuff. Okay, how do I avoid getting trapped by entitled clients who demand 24/7 access to me? Well, you know, I, I was reading a book recently, um, The Almanac of, uh, uh, what's his name? Oh yeah, Naval Ravikant. So, so he says when there's something positive, always look at the— when there's something negative, like, look, is there something positive out of it? So this could be an opportunity. You can offer 24/7 and charge them 5 times. I mean, if you want to do that. So you can, and you can buy a cell phone just for that, you know, a phone number and give it to that client. So if someone wants 24/7, offer it as an option and charge them 5 times as much or 3 times as much. That's one approach. Or it goes back to what I said earlier about the proposals. So a lot of scope creep or unreasonable demands, it's because We as consultants have not set the right expectations with the clients. So do that. I think in your conversation, say we offer 2 levels. We offer a 2-hour response time during regular business hours, and we also have this extended plan where we cover from 8 to 8 local time, and it's an extra, you know, 20%, and then we don't offer— and that's it. Now, Now, if your service, you provide IT and security maintenance and monitoring, you might have to offer 24/7 and that's just, you have to build that in your business model. So again, depending on your service, I would definitely look at it as an opportunity. Now, if you have some, we do get every once in a while, not a lot, but most people are nice, man. Most people are professional, but you have jerks just That's life. That's part of life. You learn from that. And what is it that I did in the sales process and the proposal process that led me to this so I can then in my next pitch, in my next proposal, I add language and I set the right expectations proactively with the client? I would say preemptive. There's that preemptive conditioning that is required. You as a consultant, most clients, especially if they haven't hired consultants before, They don't know how consulting works. So it's on you, the consultant, to set the right expectations. Now, initially, again, I want to emphasize this. If you are just starting out, don't put a lot of limitations between you and a lot of obstacles between you and selling. So bend over backward for the customer. That's okay. Deal with it. If they give you a headache, if they're calling you a lot initially, it's okay. Get Get that sale, deliver the project, get that customer. If you make this unreasonable client happy, then you can make every other client super delighted, right? So you can't operate in that mode forever, but initially the goal is to get the reps, to get the muscle, the sales marketing delivery muscle. All right, next one. Should I build a complex software, custom software platform or start with a simple service/existing tool? I don't know a lot about your industry and what this is relating to, so I can't really answer this like thoroughly, but basically if there's market demand, then the answer is yes and yes, not or. I mean, there's a market demand for a solution, a software solution where you can maybe come in and customize. Yeah, and then don't spend 6 months building. You can do something a pilot, an MVP, minimum viable product. Go out there and see if people are willing to pay for it, and then you can expand as you go because it does take more time and effort and money to build a product than to sell a service typically. And I did actually, I did a video recently, and I'll put the link in the description as well on, I read the book by Rob Fitzpatrick on, he called it The Mom Test. And he says, you know, we go and we ask our moms and we ask people we know and friends and family members about our idea, and they think, yeah, it's a great idea. People say this is a great idea, and that's the wrong question. Don't think, is this a good idea? You have to do the proper vetting. So check out that video on before you build software. 100%, check out this video to make sure, um, that you— there's demand for what you're offering, whether it's a product or a service. But If you can sell your service and you can have a product that you build or a product by a manufacturer, that's better. In our case, we were selling at one point, we upgraded our status with Google from a consulting, from an approved or an authorized consulting company to an authorized reseller. So we were selling the Google licenses. and we were selling consulting. So the license revenue ended up becoming the most foundational element for our growth into 8 figures because we have licenses, our annual licenses, and the clients renew. Enterprise-level software is not easily replaced. So we had We have multi-year contracts. We had customers who were with us for a long time with just buying the license and then we would sell our monthly retainers or implementation work. So yeah, if you can find a tool that supports, that adds on, adds more value to your service, you can become a reseller and become an authorized supplier with that company, whether it's IT or HR or marketing automation, you name it. That's, and I do talk about, about this partner marketing component actually in, I think, in a livestream a few, maybe a few months ago. All right, let's see the next one. What should I do when my co-founders drop the ball or aren't putting in equal effort? So what should I do when my co-founders drop the ball or aren't putting in equal effort? Okay. So now, we're going to people issue. This is difficult. We can have a whole entire session on co-founders. So, you have the most consequential decision you make in business is choosing your business partner, just like in life, the most consequential decision is choosing your life partner, your spouse. So, be very careful in choosing your co-founders and making sure you have— I would say there's several things. One is shared values. You all believe in work ethic. Let me back up. So, 3 things. One is shared values, work ethic, the way you treat others. that this is a priority for you, right? That's one. The second thing is, I would say, complementary skills. So, so you're the big picture thinker, they are detail-oriented. That's good. You're a— you're the, the go-getter, they're more deliberate. So find, find— because you need, you need all those different perspectives. And, and when you have tough, tough situations, you want people to come in with With, you know, another set of eyes would actually be super helpful. So look for that. And then make sure everything is in writing, whether it's about equity or about sharing decision-making, whether it's about equity or how you come to decisions or how do you resolve issues. And I would say definitely use AI to get to get you a draft partnership agreement so that you read it on your own and understand what those aspects of a partnership agreement are. But always, always, always get an attorney involved to set up the partnership agreement with you and your co-founders, and in there include expectations. So, that's what you have to do proactively. If you haven't done that and now you're running into issues, then it's time to— Do a— do have this awkward conversation. If you don't have awkward conversations in business, end up failing in business or having worse scenarios or worse situations. So you got to have that honest discussion with your founders and go back and understand what's going on. And you might have to readjust equity shares and You might have to adjust who does what and titles and all that. So don't envy you there. These are tough things to do, but that's just part of running a business. All right. The next question, how do I translate deep, complex technical expertise into language a non-technical buyer will buy? Good question. You don't want to sound professorial or sound like standoffish and you know this stuff. They're talking to you. You're the expert. So, I think the more research you do upfront when you're validating your idea, part of validation is to talk to people even before you even sell. And I have the 10+5 rule— talk to 10 people, at least 10 people, and research 5 competitors and understand what the real pain point that people are, are having. Not what is it that they'll buy in the future from you, but what problems they were having last month, last week, yesterday. What is keeping them awake at night? What is it that is costing them more money? Reducing revenue, impacting customer or employee satisfaction. Once you understand these problems, then you turn your pitch, your conversation starters, your copy, your text on your website, your graphics, all about those pain points. So they say, you know, we sell benefits, we don't sell features, right? So you can list your features and list everything that you can do and list your certifications and all of that. That's great, but you want to focus on the benefits to the business. And again, it does come. You can ask AI all of that. That's good, but I want you to hear it from people. You can do it virtually if you live in a small town away from big cities and networking events, but you must get that input from real people. I was speaking with a professor of entrepreneurship at Berkeley. A while ago, and he said, he said he on one of their classes toward graduation, graduating students, and he says he asks his students to speak with 100 people. So you want to, maybe that's a bit excessive for services. I mean, he was talking about product companies. For service businesses, I think, you know, 10 is good. 10 is a good number. And then you might have to go and dig a little bit deeper with some of these folks. But, but check out my— I have a 10+5 process for that. I'll include the link to it in the description. And in my Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business, I go into that process with a whole lot of detail. All right, how many hours a week does— the next question. Oh, I'm gonna love this question. How many hours a week does it really take to get a consulting business off the ground? The more the merrier. I'm going to have some haters out there, but my friend, my motto in life, work hard, play hard, and give back. So initially, people can tell you about using a system and a framework and doing things efficiently and working smarter, not harder. Doesn't work. I haven't met a single successful business person, and I've been in Silicon Valley for now almost 30 years, who did not work really hard. Now, you don't have to work really, really hard your entire life, but initially, in the initial phases of starting a business, there's no escape. There's so much to learn. There's so much to learn in every aspect of the business. So that by itself requires time. And then there are so many mistakes that we all make when we start businesses. So you have to recover from those mistakes, right? And there are market conditions. If you're in the supply chain space and then you have now tariffs, new regulations. If you're in the marketing space and analytics space, now you have GDPR and data privacy regulations. You name it. If you're in HR, there are new employee and employer regulations. So there's just so much to learn. So I would say work hard. If you can put 60, 70 hours a week, do it. If you can do more, do it. But that's not sustainable, especially if you have other obligations— family, aging parents, children, wife, husband, all that good stuff. So important things you have. And I mean, I always say that business and establishing and growing businesses and reaching your goals— 7 figures, 8 figures, making it big, becoming a millionaire, all that good— that's good. That's part of business. I want you to be successful and reach those goals, but they shouldn't be at the expense of key relationships in your life. So maintaining— at times you have to, and I did that with my spouse, with my wife, my amazingly supportive wife. That hey, this phase is going to be really, really tough. I'm going to be spending days and nights and weekends, so be there with me. And we do always make sure there's some quality time even in the busiest of days. And and and she's been supportive, infinitely appreciative, appreciative of of what what what what you know the way she has supported me throughout the years. And then I've supported her when when when she was busy with with her career later. when she went back to school after we raised our kids, and then she went back and did the mid-career shift from teaching to becoming a social worker. So, you know, we do our part, but at the early phases of entrepreneurship, there's no escape. You have to put the time. But get people who are impacted by these decisions, make sure they're on board, they're supportive, they're consulted. And then the thing that you have to sacrifice, not the relationships, But leisure time. If you have 3 hobbies, drop them, or drop at least to 1. Work out, eat healthy, have time to read, but the focus should be on this venture. It will pay off significantly in the future. All right, how do I— hold on, where's the next question? Right here. How do I turn one-off project— how do I turn a one-off project into a predictable monthly recurring retainer? So, so, uh, good, very good question. I'm a big proponent of retainer because I learned— and when I was learning sales, I attended this sales class by, uh, my, my friend Marvin, and he said, Feras, you have to build a recurring revenue stream. So what is that? That sounded gibberish to me. He said, can you turn one of, one of the things that you do into ongoing support, maybe $100 a month of— we were selling websites at the time, just website maintenance. I update your website, I make sure the site doesn't go down. There's the website hosting. So we bundled that. I think initially we started with like $50 a month, $100 a month. And then later when we got into 7 figures and later into 8 figures, we had a number, a large number of clients, I think, 35%, I forgot exactly, maybe 35, 40% of our business was recurring at the time, repeat customers coming back. And we were selling licenses at the time as well. So I think you have to look at your specific service. Not every service lends itself to ongoing support, but can you help the clients in maybe other areas, adjacent areas? I always give this example. If you do graphic design, for example, right? I know we can do graphic design with AI. You still need a graphic designer for serious work, right? So maybe you can design their website. That's the project. And then they have a weekly newsletter or a monthly newsletter. You can design that for them. They want to have some social media assets. You design that for them. So once you do that first project with the customer and understand their needs and their issues and their challenges, and their business model, see if you can find— you create opportunities. Sometimes you have to, and there's an artful way of doing it. You don't just go and pitch. I would say talk to the customer after you've delivered something and they're very happy with what you delivered. Say, here's what else I can do for your business. So that would be definitely think of ways and check with GPT and Claude and find ways to identify opportunities for a recurring retainer. It will give a lot of stability to your business. You know, every month, even with some churn, 10%, 15% churn, you still have this recurring revenue stream. It gives you a lot of stability. So keep that in mind. All right, going on to the next question. What do I do if I get laid off suddenly and have no leads or business plan? First, I hear you. I went through that myself, and I know a lot of people go through it, including some very close friends that I learned about last couple weeks. Amazing talent, very, very— some of them are senior, some of them are mid-level in terms of where they are in the corporate hierarchy, but talented people. But there were mergers and bigger companies buying smaller companies, and then there's just a duplication in, in scales, and, and someone had to be asked to leave, you know, had to, had to be asked to leave. So, so it happens even if you're a top performer. Sometimes, in a lot of cases, companies lay off the bottom 20%. That is a hard truth, but it does happen. So you have to evaluate how you are doing as an individual. In some cases With corporate restructuring or with mergers and acquisitions, entire branches or layers of management are asked to leave. So it is a reality. I would say the one thing that you have after that initial reflection and mourning phase, go through it, then put it all behind you and focus on the future. I would say the one thing that you have when you're laid off that you don't have when you work is that you have time. You have time on your hand. So if you're still not sure about pursuing entrepreneurship, I would say spend 4 hours a day, 4 or 5 hours a day looking for a job, and then 4 or 5 hours, 4 to 5 hours a day thinking about ideas for, for, for business. And my recommendation is not to rush into something unless you have a very, very short financial runway, I would say just take a bit of time to tally up your experience, your experiences, your skills, your network, and then understand the market demand and potentially find a co-founder, maybe someone else who was laid off. So spend some time before you jump into something right away. I know there's pressure. We have to pay mortgage and rent and college tuition and other things. But to the extent that you can do a little bit of reflection and big picture thinking, I think I would recommend that before you jump into something very specific and then finding out, you know, $10,000 later and a month later that this is not something that you want to do. All right, next question. How can I build authority and get leads without spending money on paid ads? So there's nothing wrong with paid ads, by the way. I recommend paid ads, but initially, initially, if you're just starting out, I want you to avoid ads, not because they're bad, just not the right mix initially. I want you to have conversations. So either go to events, network within your industry, within your association. If you live in a place where your— if your clients are in a different geography, in different market, different country, find online groups to be part of, start producing some things on content, useful thought leadership content on social media. If you have a newsletter, start capturing leads, emails, and producing, get into that habit of producing quality content. And there are just a ton of ways to market. And when I got laid off and got into business, one of the books we read at the time, Guerrilla Marketing, we were on a shoestring budget and we didn't want to spend a lot of money on things, so on marketing. So we just read that book, ended up meeting, what's his name? Ah, I forgot his name now. Great guy. And the book was really awesome. Guerrilla Marketing. Still, maybe, okay, maybe it's not everything is relevant today, but a lot of it still is the mindset of doing, you put time and effort instead of money. Into marketing, right? So there are a lot of ways you can. I think you can. You can volunteer. You can be out there. Just understand what you want to sell and who the audience is, and then find ways to meet the audience. That's really what what what what is required. Ads can be done later, and if you want to do ads, make sure you know what you're doing. Learn about those systems because you can you can burn dollars very quickly with ads. So either you learn the system, Google Ads or Meta ads, or now GPT has ads, or Amazon ads. But then, but then either learn those, one of those systems, and set up the campaigns and the ads and A/B testing and all that good stuff yourself, or hire someone who works with small companies with small budgets. I think that that's definitely something you want to look into. Next question, how do I price when a massive corporate client wants a custom quote? A massive corporate client wants a custom quote. When it comes to pricing for these, these larger clients, I mean, one thing to keep in mind, and that's something I experienced when we were going from small and mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500, if I, if I told a business owner this project is going to cost you $10,000 That money is coming out of his son's or daughter's college fund. If you tell a corporate manager there's going to be $10,000, that's coming out of his budget, not out of his pocket. So a mindset shift has to happen for you as the consultant, as the person selling. So that's one thing. And I think if you do a good job in defining the scope and in your discovery phase when you're talking to clients before obviously send the proposal and understand their needs and understand what is it that they're doing today, how much money they spent on consultants before, if you've done some competitive research and see what other people are charging, all of those are signals To help you initially, you can, you can socialize the quote before you put it on a— before you put the quote in a document and send the proposal. Socialize this. You can say something like this. Say, Steve, based on what I've learned from you so far and based on projects we've done in the past, a project of this scope would be anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000. And pause. And see what they say. They might come back and say, yeah, we've done something similar. So now you know your— now you know your range. So bring that proposal at $24,500. Okay, so if you put it $25,000, it might sound too calculated. So just make it $24,500. So, or $25,500. I don't know, $26,500. So, so So yeah, and in my Ultimate Guide to Winning Proposals, I talk about this. Like you are setting expectations, you are projecting inspiring confidence and projecting authority, and you're becoming this trusted advisor that they want to buy from you. You're doing all of that in all the interactions in the sales process at the same time. You're gathering information. You're a sponge. You want to get every piece of information that you can to make sure the proposal is customized and personalized for this client. So, so check out this video, my video on the ultimate guide to writing a proposal, to winning proposals, and I go through all the steps with the tools and the worksheet that you need. To to to close more deals this year. All right, next question. What is the best way to handle rejection when 90% of my prospects say no? What is the best way to handle rejection when 90% of my prospects say no? I mean, that's not unusual. Not everybody's going to is going to buy from you right away. I mean, 90%, 50%. I can tell you. My own win rate was 5%, 1 out of 20. So if your win rate is 10%, you're double what I did, what I had when I started. And then later, as we got into 7 figures and later to 8 figures, our win rate with the sales team that we had, we were doing 1 out of 3, 33%, 35%. So because you get better at it and also you get better at qualifying and filtering the prospect that's just not a good fit for your company. So it could be when you have a high rejection rate, some of it is normal. Not everyone's going to buy from you. And even if you're the best consultant, the best fit, the best budget, the best timeline, even if all of that is accurate and true, the timing could be off. They have a budget freeze on spending. Right, so so so in sales you won't be closing every deal no matter how good you are. No matter how good you are, sell me that pen. Not everybody's going to buy a pen no matter no matter what you do, no matter how good you are. So just not everyone is going to buy. Your your goal is to here's your baseline. I'm getting ninety percent rejection. Okay, how do I produce? How how do I reduce that to eighty percent? And you could do that by improving the way you pitch, the way you send proposals, the way you manage and lead the sales process. And also in terms of qualifying the leads, you're not just sending proposal to every person you meet. You're making sure there's some level of filtration before you work on a proposal. All right. The next one, should I pause my passion project to focus on boring cash-generating businesses? Well, if you have a boring cash-generating business and you don't want it, let me know. I know I can have someone work on it. Boring is bountiful. My friend Alex used to say that boring is bountiful. So your passion is optional. Sacrifice and skill are not. It's one of my principles. So you can have, you can, Passion can be through a hobby, through something you do on the side. It doesn't have to be work. If you speak with some of these attorneys or CPAs or financial folks, I don't know, they're passionate about spreadsheets or reviewing redlining contracts. So, passion I think is overrated. I think you don't want to work on something you hate, of course, but focus on where there's a market demand and then you have skills. That can be part of offering a solution to meet that demand. Um, and, and then over time, I, I read this— I forgot which CEO of very, very established tech startup here. I don't know if it was Airbnb now or, or, or Uber. I forgot. But one of, one of the top, top companies here in the Valley. And he said Passion might get you started, but a few months into it, once you hire people and have customers and partners, and you have to hire and fire and manage payroll, like, the passion about the idea itself is not going to disappear, but it's going to be your— most of your work, most of your wake For most of your waking hours, you'll be focused on running the operation or focusing on one aspect of the business, maybe while your CEO or co-founder taking care of the rest of the business, but you're in the thick of it. And whether it's something you're passionate about or not, the day-to-day activities will almost be the same. So of course, if you're working on solving— cancer. You know, that's very inspiring. That's something, something, you know, you're helping humanity. But still, even with that, and that's the overall, you know, vision for the company, but in the day-to-day activities, you still have to deal with hiring and firing and suppliers and vendors and customers and payroll and accounting and board meetings. So, I think focusing on skills and focusing on this idea that I want to build, I want to grow, I want to have this amazing culture, I want to have this— these lifelong friends that they're here building with me. Those, I think, will make the journey easier. And then the boring part of the business is something that then you'll manage okay. I think that you can do a lot of things about passion outside of work as well. How do I convert? Excuse me. How do I convert warm social media interactions, direct messages and comments into booked sales calls? Well, if you're having engagement, I mean that's a good sign. At least people are interested in what you're offering in terms of content. So that's that's a good signal. So can whatever whatever wherever you're getting engagement keep. Doing more of that. And then I think just, just like in real life, in personal life, you don't just ask someone to marry you right away. There's a process that we go through. There's that initial, the initial meetings and the attraction and holding hands and then engagement and then, right? So same thing in business. Um, they connected with you, let's say on LinkedIn You can follow up and thank you so much for your comment. That was very nice of you. It looks like you're having this issue, or it sounds like your company is doing this. I've done similar things for other companies. Is this going to be helpful? Just start a conversation and don't be pushy. Don't be like the pushy salesperson. You want to understand more. You want to establish that connection, build some rapport. Share something of value to them, ask for a call, ask for a meeting, learn more, and build that relationship. So, so yes, it's not over. Again, depending on what you're selling, but there is that process. There is that sales process. And again, if you're new to consulting and you're new to sales and you don't understand the stages of, of selling consulting services, I have the ultimate guide to sales funnels for consultants. So check out that link. I'll put it in the description as well. All right, next one. How do I get my first 3 to 5 clients if I have no case studies or testimonials yet? It is a common challenge. It is a very common challenge when you start. No logos, no customers, no references. But I can tell you that you as a professional, you as a consultant, you've done work before. Even if you only have 3 years of experience and you've worked hard in those 3 years, you've done projects and you've built expertise based on some work. So you can take— even if, even if you don't have a client name associated with a case study, which is ideal, and the bigger the logo and the more known the client, the better. But even if you don't have that, you can still turn the projects or the experience, the expertise you have into, I would say, an anonymized case study. So that would be one thing. If you've done some work for a nonprofit, they can give you maybe a quote, a testimonial. If you've done a webinar about the topic itself, people can leave you testimonials, right? So the testimonials initially might not be specifically related to the service you're offering, but it's telling people that this person is professional, this person is knowledgeable, This person is nice to work with, right? So, so I would say build your own case studies from based on previous work. Again, keep— don't use any confidential information, any proprietary information, but the stuff that you've done yourself, you can package it. So you can say solved X for top healthcare providers. The challenge was ABC. I approached it this way and the results were XYZ. You did not mention the name of the client. You did not mention anything proprietary or confidential. You just showed and demonstrated what the problem is and then how you addressed it and what the solutions were. So that is, that would be one way. A lot of times when you are talking to new clients, when you're new and looking to get new clients, they'll sense it that you're new and some people will say, you know what, we don't have a lot of budget, but if you do this project for us at a smaller budget, we'll be more than happy to publish a case study with you. So also I would say find ways to get that ball rolling on case studies. All right. How do I pitch my consulting services when a corporate client has complex IT gatekeepers. So if your service requires the help of IT and the blessings of IT, you got to get on the good side of IT. That's not easy, not because IT people are difficult, but that's their job. Their job is to protect their network. Their job is to make sure that the information of their companies is protected. So I think And we've done this. I remember when, because we dealt with the analytics businesses we had and we were working with governmental agencies at that time, we had to learn how to answer the questions we were getting in these RFPs, in the requests for proposals. Are you SOC compliant or SOC 2 compliant? And are you this and are you that? And so we learned how to address those. So we went back to the manufacturer of the software that we were using and we were customizing and and implementing, and we got all their certifications. So we told our clients that your data is on the Google servers and, you know, and we're not dealing with that aspect of it in terms of IT security. So there are ways to highlight if you're using a third-party technology, you can leverage their certifications. But I think you have to get their— the list of their demands, and the bigger the customer, the bigger the The bigger the company, the more of these restraints you'll have, and the more of these requirements for insurance, for IT compliance, for data privacy compliance, the more of that you'll have. So back to one of the questions that we answered earlier, that's why initially cut your teeth on smaller clients, smaller interactions, smaller projects, that's okay, and build the capacity, not just in terms of bandwidth, but also in terms of the legal, the IT, the insurance requirement and capacity to, to address all of those concerns. I remember one time we had— we were selling to an insurance carrier, a national insurance carrier, and they wanted to get this one specific type of insurance for a liability of $20 million, and that's going to be like thousands of dollars like $7,000 a year. And like, we had nothing to do with what they're looking for, but that was on their list. Their procurement department said, you will not get into this business, you will not get this business if you don't have this compliance. So we had to go back and forth, and we had secured, verbally secured the deal. The client really wanted us, the business people. So we went back to them and reasoned with them, say like, hey, you know, I'd love to do this, but I mean, this is going to eat up all of our margin for the first phase. So we worked with them, our business partners with the customer, to convince IT to remove that one specific set of requirements that was not applicable to us. It was on one form. So you have to be creative, but at times we also sign up for insurance for $1,000 a year or $2,000 a year so that we don't have This back and forth because, because time kills all these. The more you delay these things, the client might not sign. So, so I want you to also take some of those, be proactive about having some of those insurance liabilities, having some of those IT forms readily available so you can, you can return them back to the customer as soon as you can. And in my Ultimate Guide to Proposals, I do list all of those. This, the typical type of things you want to have as a business owner so that you can win deals with, with bigger, bigger companies. All right, we have 8 more questions to go and then we'll wrap it up for today. And for those of you who are watching live with us, thank you so much. Again, if you're listening or watching, if you have a question, leave me a comment. I'll be more than happy to answer it before we wrap up the session. Can I start, can I start offering consulting services before officially registering an LLC? Short answer is yes. I'm not an attorney, of course, but you don't have to have an LLC— see, but you don't have to have an LLC or an S corp or any structure to start business, uh, just doing— to, to start selling. If you're doing this as a side hustle, you don't need any of that. Now there's some corporate protection, you know, you separate yourself from the entity, from the business entity. That's important. So I am a big believer and a proponent of starting your LLC or your S corp early on because it gives you that protection plus other benefits. I talk about it, I believe, in one of the live streams from a couple of years ago on the legal aspect of things. But it also can— I think it's also another internal factor or force that, yeah, I'm serious. I've started my LLC. Again, it's not a big deal. You can go to a legal service like LegalZoom or some of the other ones, or, or speak with an attorney and get you set up with, with the state that you're in. That's easy. It takes a little money and some paperwork, but it does solidify the intent that, yeah, and now I have the LLC. So now remember, when you set up your LLC— before you set up your LLC track the expenses in a spreadsheet initially, track if you're paying people, if you're paying for activities, all of that. And then when you are a legal entity, and later if you want to do your taxes, obviously you have to do your taxes for your company. And if you end up not having an LLC by the time you have tax— you, you have to prepare your taxes, you can still also Use those expenses toward a business initially before before you have an accountant, before you have the full the full structure. So so track your expenses regardless if you have an LLC or not, and and then I would say if you're serious about taking the leap and you've done that initial vetting, go ahead and get the LLC going. And if you're not sure about the name, you can do a DBA later doing business as, but. Again, don't rush it, but it's one more thing that you have to do if you're serious about starting a business. All right, next question. How do I transition from a full-time corporate role into a consulting business in the same industry? I think we covered a lot of it today. And again, I covered this in detail in the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business video. So, so check out that video with all the tools and the worksheets you need. But first of all, you want to have— it's a mindset. I want to do this. You want to have that thirst, that hunger that I want to do this. And then do the vetting. Talk to people. See what problems people have that you can solve. So that's vetting the idea, market, making sure there's market demand. From that point on, it's all about knocking on doors. So you have to start getting into that mindset that I have to sell. You cannot outsource. You cannot— I don't want you to outsource sales initially. Later you can. Initially, you as a founder, you have to sell. You have to be out there. You have to listen to clients. So, so I would say if, um, plan for it ahead of time, spend an hour or 2 hours every evening, maybe half the weekend on this idea if you're serious about it. And then within a couple months, you've done some of that initial business planning, some of that initial vetting. You've got the offer, you've talked to people, and now you're ready to go out and sell. And if you can do this while you have a full-time job, while you maintain all the— obviously all your responsibility to your employer, you can then take the leap with some revenue, right? If you have a full-time job and you started a side hustle and you start to get generate revenue. So when you take the leap, you have some revenue coming in. So you're not starting from scratch. So the only thing is that you have to invest time and effort while you're working full-time. And that most people, you know, don't have that discipline, that commitment. 60 million Americans want to be their own bosses. It's from one stat. And then another stat, 9% of people end up actually starting a company. So it does require some time and effort, and that has to come from somewhere. All right. Next question. How do I get existing clients to spend more money with me instead of constantly hunting for new leads? Good question. We talked about recurring revenue before. We talked about tapping into existing— into revenue from existing clients. If you can identify as you work with your client on your first project and you've done a great job and they have given you a testimonial and maybe a case study as you've done that. And when they're very happy with you, you can go back and share with them what else you can do for their business, especially if you've identified things that they're missing in their processes, things they're not doing as well as they could. And now that they've trusted you, and now that they've, they've seen the results of your work, you don't have to establish trust anymore. You've already earned that trust. So now you want to build on it, and, and you don't have to pitch hard. You can just plant the seed. Like, I've seen those 4 things, those 4 things that, that can be improved. I can help those with you. I can help your business improve these 4 things, and we can set up a second project or a recurring business. So that's Initially, I think it's really important to take care of the client for the first project. And then from that point on, it's building on that trust and adding more value. And again, I have the whole recurring business concept. I have some videos on it. I'll include that in the description as well. How do I package and pitch a B2B SaaS or tech product when I'm a non-technical founder? Well, if you're a non-technical founder, how did you get the B2B SaaS or tech product? So I'm assuming you either have a development company or maybe a co-founder who's doing this for you. So if you're not a technical founder, that is okay. Actually, even some of the super founders, those who've— the book I've read recently, who've gotten to billion-dollar companies, unicorns, It's— they're not all technical founders, even in the tech space. So you don't have to be a technical founder to build a technical company. You do need to have a CTO. Potentially, you can have a co-founder who is technical, who's managing that piece of it. So I would advise against outsourcing the technical component. to a company, if you don't know, if you're not technical yourself, if you're not a product manager, if you're not that type, you haven't managed technology and what's involved to produce a product, most people will get it wrong. So I would definitely recommend that you find someone either as a co-founder or someone as a first employee, as a CTO to help you do that. So that is, that's my recommendation. All right, a few more questions and we're done for today unless we get some more questions from the real— from the live audience. So again, don't hesitate to leave your comments. I'll be more than happy to address them before the end of this session. What is the best way to utilize an existing email subscriber list to launch a new offering or new offerings? Well, if you have an existing email list and they sign up with you because you sell X, you don't want to email them about Y. They sign up with you because they're interested in— let's say you are a financial advisor and you have these amazing weekly tips that you send on personal finance. So all of a sudden you're sending things about crypto. Okay, 10% might be interested in crypto, they'd appreciate it, but others will unsubscribe. So I would say make sure If it's the offer is adjacent, let them know. But I would be very careful whether it's a YouTube channel or whether it's LinkedIn or whether it's social media. If you have an audience, not just an email list audience who's used and is engaged with you on a specific topic, you don't want to lose that audience. So I would say just find ways that this new offering is helpful to them and then continue to add value on on the topic or the, the area that they sign up with you for, and then maybe have a section of that newsletter where you talk about the new offerings, right? And then maybe there's some promotion, maybe, maybe it's something that they can upgrade to. So ease them into it. Don't just surprise them with something that is not relevant. So relevancy is really, really important here. Okay, the next one: how do I stand out in a saturated market like public speaking, coaching, or general business advice? Yes, this market is very, very saturated, sometimes by people who are not actually qualified. So back to what we said earlier about niching, niching down, focusing maybe on a specific audience, on a specific market, in a specific geography, something that's unique, something that if you're— When we started Startup with Feras, Eric, my co-founder, Eric and I, We, like, who do we serve? We can talk about tech startups, we can talk about consulting, about services, we can talk about people who want to grow their businesses, people who want to start a business. So eventually we landed on, after doing a lot of market research and talking to others, we've decided to focus on 0 to 1, not 1 to 10, on people who want to start a consulting business and, and someone who started and they're struggling. So zero to one, I can talk about a lot of other stuff. I was in a tech startup, we raised $96 million. Um, I— we've grown businesses to 7 figures and to 8 figures, but you don't see me talking about any of this stuff, or hardly any of this stuff. I have— I do some one-on-one consulting with founders who are doing some of that more growth level work. But for everything I say on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on social media, aside from martial arts and some corny jokes every once in a while, everything else is on consulting people who want to start a consulting business. So I would definitely keep that in mind in terms of standing out. Like, you got to focus on a niche. You got to focus on an area of specialization. All right, next question. We have 3 more to go. How do I pitch investors or VCs when I'm building a healthcare or enterprise startup? So, I mean, there's a lot of content on YouTube and on social media online on how to pitch investors. The one thing I would say, just research the investors really well. There are different types of investors, whether it's angel investors, whether it's family and friends or angels or— VCs, just make sure that you understand what types of industries they invest in, what type of companies are they, early stage, late stage, what type of things they've avoided in the past, you know, understand the managers, what portfolios they follow. I think more research On them and then sending customized messages to them, personalized messages to them on that. And then in terms of the formal pitch, I mean, initially you have to connect with them to schedule the pitch. So initially I would do the research before I even speak with them at a— even at a casual event because everything they know, they're pitched all the time. So every time someone speaks with them, Every time someone speaks with them, they expect it. They assume it's a pitch. So even in that small talk, make sure it's relevant, make sure it's professional, make sure it's polished, and then secure the time for the formal pitch. And then you can— there are a lot of, a lot of different ways to, to download the typical pitch decks like But the problem is the target, the TAM, the market, the size of the market, your solution, you, the roadmap, the needs for funding, all of that. There's set structure that you want to put in a pitch and you have to tell a story at the end of the day. It's all about telling stories, not just pitching some Some some numbers. All right, the question before last year: How do I balance launching a business with major life milestones like getting married or having kids? Yeah, yeah. There's no there's no balance. There's no work-life balance. It's it's it's a myth. I think you have to manage the imbalance, and this is not just playing on words here, but it's a lot of hard work to raise kids. It's a lot of hard work. If you're just about to get married, maybe this is not the opportune time or the optimal time to start a business. So stagger it a little bit and make sure your life partner is on board with what you're doing. So I would say you have to have the not just the time of the day, but you have to have the mental space to think and live and breathe this new idea. All of all what I'm saying is. Will significantly increase your chances of being successful. The failure rate in startups is high, all kinds of businesses, because people don't follow these steps. So make sure, get married, wedding, honeymoon, all of that, come back, settle, and then get your life partner on board with what you're doing and let them know that you are committed to this, you are disciplined about it, and show them by deed, not by words, that you are dropping some hobbies. You are not watching 3 hours of TV every night. You're not doing 2 hours of video games every night. And you're putting that time— doing a little bit of that, good for— good to have fun, but keep it to a minimum in this, in this launch and in this, in this building phase. And do not— key relationships are important, more important than business. If you end up becoming a millionaire and you've gone through family issues and you're not taking care of your kids, that's not something to be proud of. That's not something that you want to put yourself into. So I'm big on working hard and building businesses and making a lot of money, but not at the expense of key relationships that you have, that we all have. It's a tough balance. Um, don't, don't— I don't claim that I've, I've done it well in, in throughout my life. I give it my best and I try, I aspire to always be better in this, this category. All right, the last question for today: what is the ultimate secret to building a multi-million dollar business and exiting successfully? There's no ultimate secret. I have the ultimate guides to help you get there. Yeah. You have to really— the secret is to that entrepreneurial mindset of working hard, learning from failure, resilience, about taking on some risk and finding the right people to be with you as co-founders, as employees, and taking care of them. It's all these different components. I think it's— you'll get lucky along the way. You know, I don't think there's something There's such a thing called luck. Luck is preparation meeting opportunity. So in a way, you create your own luck. Of course, we get lucky once in a while, but if you're not ready to take on this opportunity, if you're not ready to take on this opportunity, then what's the use? So yeah, the ultimate secret is work hard, play hard, give back, my motto in life. Okay, thank you so much for being here, for all the questions we got from the live audience. And then for those of you who are listening to this later or watching this later, if you're liking this content, click the subscribe button, click the like button, and share it with your friends and those who would benefit from it. I would appreciate it. See you next time.