How to Choose the Right Consulting Idea (From the 26 That I Shared)

We are live. Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what is happening in the world of entrepreneurship? I received some interesting feedback about my video on 26 ideas to start a consulting business this year. Now the video is doing really well and getting a lot of traction. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. But something interesting came up. People weren't saying, I need more ideas. They were asking, which one should I actually choose? And that is the real problem many aspiring entrepreneurs face. And that's exactly what we're doing— what we're going to solve today. So I'm not going to review the 26 ideas again. Check out the video on the channel. I think it's interesting. You'll like it. But instead, I'm going to walk you through 5 practical filters that I use to evaluate a business idea before committing time, energy, and efforts to it. Now, these filters, all 5 of them, are tried and tested in my ventures and also with other founders that I advise. And I've been fortunate to start 7 companies, especially for those of you who are new to the channel, don't know about me. And a couple of those ventures reached 7 figures, and, and one reached 8 figures that I sold to global media giant Dentsu. So I've used these filters, I've helped others use them. So I want you to be able, by the end of this session, to quickly determine whether an idea is worth pursuing worth testing or something you should walk away from or maybe run from. And what's important is that, uh, the ideas are a dime a dozen. I remember when I started my— when I was about to start my very first business and I wasn't sure what to do, my co-founder and I, after I had that painful layoff And we were talking to a lot of our friends, people who had their own businesses, and people give you a lot of ideas. And I remember one friend, a mentor to me, he said, Feras, ideas are a dime a dozen. You just have to commit to one thing and go and do it and do it well. And I really didn't believe him, didn't think that was true. Like, what do you mean ideas are a dime a dozen? Because actually there are a lot of ideas out there. And if you think about it in your own personal life, in your professional life, in your day-to-day dealing— dealings, you'll see that there are problems. You run into issues at the grocery store, or you run into an issue when you have a contractor provide a service for you, or when you have someone do an audit or build a website for you. Whatever the service that you are getting, a lot of times we see vendors, suppliers, they're maybe too expensive or they're too slow or they, they lack quality. And every time, every time you see a problem out there, every, every time you see a pinpoint, every time you see something that people are looking for a better solution or a quicker solution, a less expensive solution, a premium level solution that is not met, that's an idea for you to start a business. So Um, I don't want to talk about ideas today in this, in this session. I want to provide the 5 filters to, to apply to any idea, whether it's the 26 ideas that I have in my video or an idea of your own. I want you to use these filters so that you make the right decision, so you make the right decision and you proceed to build this amazing consulting company that you've been wanting to build. Okay, and before we jump, jump into these 5 filters, one quick administrative item, and that is if you are new to this channel or if you've been with us for a while, thank you for being part of this community. But regardless, I would love to hear from you. I put a lot of effort into producing this content, these tips, these strategies, the things I learned, the mistakes I learned from my own mistakes of them and from the mistakes of others. I want to hear from you whether you're struggling to start, you're struggling to vet an idea, you're not sure how to do your financial planning for the business, you're not sure how to put together a sales plan, you're not sure how to market, any and all of that. If you're struggling, I am here to help. This is my mission after building these companies and exiting one. I'm here to help entrepreneurs start, build, and scale their businesses so you achieve your dream. It could be financial independence. That's very important, of course, on top of the list. To be your own boss. That's 62% of Americans according to Gallup. They want to be their own bosses. Whether it is building this amazing culture and have these lifelong friendships with your coworkers who will help you build something amazing. Whatever your goals are, your dreams are, from a business perspective, reach out, let me know the struggles you're facing, the challenges that you want to overcome, and also the wins that you have, small, short, small, big wins, I'd love to hear from you, leave me a comment on any of the channels, you can go to my YouTube channel at Startup with Feras and leave a comment there, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn, or you can email me info@startupwithferas.com, Feras like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. Okay. So that is out of the way. Now let's jump right into it. Let's step on the mat. And with stepping on the mat, again, if you're new to this channel, I'm also a 4th-degree black belt in Aikido. So you hear every once in a while, you'll hear an analogy from martial arts. And I use and I apply these timeless principles of discipline, commitment, and balance to entrepreneurship. So let's step on the mat. And those 26 ideas, as I said, for those of you who are hungry for ideas, check those out on the channel. I have— I put them also in 6 categories because a lot of times people, they're not sure where to start. They might be technical. They don't want to do things that are not technical. So I have a category on tech, a category on work culture, a category on sustainability. So they're different on some specialized areas. So check out the— and I have a spreadsheet with all these categories and the filters applied to them. So I'll put a link to that sheet of, of the ideas in the description. I also have a link to the video. So that is— that's there for you in case you're ready to jump into business and you're just looking for an idea. Now let me put— let me put this link here in case, uh, you want to access that list as we speak. It's bbsu.net, blackbeltstartup.net/26, number 26-ideas. So that's where you get access to that spreadsheet, the worksheet with all the ideas by category and also with filters applied, including, including examples as well as experience, some, some experience that you have that might be helpful, and then some experience, some skills that you are likely to need to acquire to do well in this, in this category, in this, in this, for this idea. So that is that. Um, and then, and then in terms of, again, the feedback I received— let me go back here. Yeah, cool. Give me one second. Yep. I think I was going to share it. I don't think— well, actually, let me, let me take a minute and share this, uh, uh, this spreadsheet just for those of you who are— for those of you who are listening, I will, uh, read through it. But for those of you who are watching, you can see it. So this is the spread— I'm, I'm the spreadsheet I'm referring to. So for example, uh, let's say, uh, AI training and adoption, or AI training and adoption coaching. So description, basically you go in and you train teams how to use AI in their daily workflow, put some guidelines, some guardrails, some best practices. So that, that would be the idea. And then, um, helpful, helpful past experience and skills include teaching and enablement. And then potential new skills and knowledge, obviously you want to know the AI landscape and change management. And then difficulty is green. I have, I have these icons, this legend And then speed to first dollar is fast. So, so, and again, this is not all about the AI hype out there. It is, it is, uh, the list has other things about the creator economy, about people on workplace. So, so this, um, this list should be very handful, very handy, very useful if you're just not sure which idea that you want to, um, to share. And I don't know, was I sharing this? Oh my goodness, was I not sharing? Okay, here's the list in case you missed it right there. So yep, and you have— you can access it on with this URL. Again, let me put it on the screen. Okay, good, good, good. So now back to move this one. Okay, so, so before I cover the, the practical the 5 filters to evaluate any idea, I want to highlight why most people pick the wrong idea. 3 things. One is chasing trends, and this is common all over social media. Um, a few years ago, crypto. Before that, um, dropshipping, and every other week or month you'll see some, some something that is hot. Here's how, here's how to make $10,000 a month with 2 hours a day. Here's how to make $100,000 in your first month of consulting. My friends, if it's too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. So, uh, the number one, uh, the number one trap here that I want you to avoid is you want to chase— you don't want to chase trends and things that are just, um, fads and people— everyone is saying, yeah, this is how you make a lot of money, here's how you make millions. No, you want to look at things that are an idea that is viable, not just a fad, and not, not just a fad, it's viable, it's also good for me, it's a fit for me, which I'll talk about more when we speak about the filter. So that's the first trap. Trap number 2 is a lot of people try to reinvent themselves. So you like this idea and you have zero experience in it, you have zero background in that field or in that segment of the industry, and then you want to, um, you want to be all over it. Now, of course, you have to reinvent yourself in entrepreneurship. If you don't know how to do sales, you have to learn sales, you have to learn marketing, you have to have a founder mindset. A growth mindset, so there is some reinventing required, but your past experience, your skills, your network are all assets you want to leverage, so you're not starting from scratch, you don't have to reinvent yourself from scratch, that's the second trap. The third trap, before we get into the filters, is that a lot of founders, Not just the rational ones, um, in general, most people, most people, except, except those who are— they just sort of like to jump into things. As, as Kiersey, um, Dr. Kiersey talked about the different personality types, is the rational— they think about what they want to do before they do any, any, any step for any steps forward. But also you have those who are the artisans, so they just jump into things and they just learn, you know, they just want to do things that they don't even evaluate enough. So, so I'm not referring to any of these, uh, any of these personality types, but in general, people put a— they do a lot of planning before they take that first step. They want to design the perfect idea, the 5-year business plan, the 3-year, um, marketing plan, the, uh, They want to talk to 200 people before they start. They want to research, you know, 50 competitors, and they want to make sure everything is perfect. Entrepreneurship tests imperfect ideas, not the perfect idea. So you have to go from thinking to doing. So for those of you who are watching, I do want to share this one slide for you, and it's summarizing These, uh, the— here you go, these traps right here. There you go. If technology would cooperate. Yeah, so trap 1 is chasing trends, 2 trying to reinvent themselves, and 3 overthinking instead of testing. So avoid these 3 traps and then you most likely will not be picking the wrong idea. All right. So on that, let's see now going back to the filters. All right. Filter number 1, founder idea fit. So you have an idea, you have a founder, you want to make sure there's a fit. You hear also founder-investor fit, so this concept of fitness is important. So people, when we talk about founder-idea fit, when I say that, sometimes people hear, I only want to do what I already know. That's one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, or maybe one extreme on the The other extreme is that we hear all these messages about entrepreneurship is about grit and you could do anything you want and then you can learn anything. And then we conclude that experience doesn't matter. I'll figure it out. So one extreme is I only will do what I already know. And the other extreme is experience doesn't matter. I'll figure it out. Now the nuance here is that starting a consulting business sits right in between these 2 extremes. So what I want you to do is to ask yourself if you're putting together like your vetting plan or your business plan, and I'm not in favor of a 50-page business plan. I want you to try things out as— I want you to plan a little bit, implement, plan, implement, iterate, iterate on the go as one of our principles at Black Belt Startup. So I want you to ask yourself, do you really understand the problem? The problem that you're trying to solve? It could be supply chain change management. It could be— someone mentioned on YouTube on a comment on the video about there's a lot of shifts in the industry and career shifts. So he wants to do consulting around career shifts, right? So that's— do you really understand that problem? Have you lived inside that industry? You're going into healthcare, into, um, into the financial sector, you're going into IT, you're going into— maybe it's a business-to-consumer type thing. Whatever the segment of the industry you're going into, do you really have— do you have— do you know that industry really well? Do you know the language? What the famous example is, when I was selling to a, a large carrier, insurance carrier, I go in and I say Hey, what do your clients— what are your clients looking for when they come to your website? And then I got a nudge, don't say clients, they're patients, they're providers. We don't use the word clients. So you look like an outsider, people won't buy from you. So do you know the language of that industry? So that's all about the market and about the industry, but also your skills. If you want to get into e-commerce, and that's when we got into our very, very first business, We had no idea how to program, although I had a technical background, but I wasn't into programming anymore, so we had to rely on a third-party vendor to help us with that. But let's say you decided you want to do it yourself, and I know you can do a lot of things today with AI, but if you haven't spent years in it or if you haven't— don't know the ins and outs of it, the learning curve could be very, very steep. So you look at your own skills. And for me, after I was laid off, I was leading professional services. I was the VP at the startup, a very established startup. We raised a lot of money at that time. And then we were in charge, my team was in charge of delivery, of planning. We'll take the product from the engineering team, and then we are in charge of implementing, documenting, providing training, you know, for the end user, and supporting. So we had all these functions under my role at that startup. And so client management, account management, delivering a solution was relatively easy to me compared to sales, which I didn't know how to do, and also compared to doing something very, very technical, programming. So when we started our very first business, I of course had to learn sales. Okay, that's, that's, that's foundational. But what really, really differentiated us, and that, that worked really well for us, is that my co-founder and I both have come from corporate and from that same area of the account management, from the delivery side of the house. We were very professional, polished, thorough in our presentations, in our delivery, in our reporting, in our status updates. And, and those— we used to sell to small, small businesses, very small businesses. So these business owners, I remember many of them would say, Feras, we've never received this level of professionalism from other vendors. So we took— in my— in the startup I was part of, I was I was implementing solutions for the Fortune 500, Fortune 100, so everything had to be very polished. So we took that experience, both the account management, the client management, the follow-up, and the professionalism that was required to serve a Fortune 100 company, and we took that, and that was just how we did things. So it was second nature to us, to my co-founder and I, and we delivered to small businesses with that same level of professionalism. And that, that was a huge differentiator, and that helped us with client retention, especially when we started to have recurring revenues and all that good stuff. So, so that is, this is the idea, is look for you as a founder, look especially if you're thinking of starting and you're not sure what idea is going to be a better fit for you, look at the industry and make sure you know it very well. Also look at your own skills and then see what, what would help you differentiate and, and give you launch, um, launch in a solid way. And, you know, a couple examples here. You have Person A who ran logistics and operations for 10 years. That's one example. Person B, they watched 5 videos, 15 videos, 20 videos on YouTube about like logistics and operations. Now both could technically learn the material, but of course clients will tell the person who has that experience, and person A who's done 10 years of work in this area is more likely to sell faster and to deliver faster and to have a more successful startup. So with that in mind, with all of that about knowing about your experience and acknowledging your experience, your expertise, your network, these assets that you have and the skills that you have, in that same breath, that's a long breath, experience doesn't mean no learning is required because when I say founder idea fit, it doesn't mean only do something you already know perfectly. In entrepreneurship, learning is, is required and is ongoing. And I think it was Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management, who had said— who said the only competitive advantage, the only competitive advantage you have is learning. And I'll add to it, applying that what you learn into your business. So the smart path, these 2 extremes. Doing only what I know and then going in it without any experience. The smart path is to expand from your base expertise rather than abandoning your expertise. So if you are a marketing professional, you can move into AI marketing and maybe in AI marketing automation, right? If you are an HR manager, move into workplace culture consulting. If you are a finance analyst, maybe an option would be to go into fintech advisory. So that is, that is, um, something to think about, is your experience is important, your expertise, your assets that you have, and also that mindset of, of ongoing learning. So let me— we've got, we got a couple of comments here, so let me go and see these. Thank you for joining, uh, appreciate it. See, let me put this question here. Um, what is the one thing consultants fix last but clients judge first? What is the one thing consultants fix last but clients judge first? Hmm, very interesting. So I mean, as a new consultant, there's always fixing going on, uh, initially You don't know how to market, so you you speak to the wrong per. You know, you you let's say you're targeting people in healthcare. That's your experience. That's your package. You go and speak with someone in finance. You don't know anything about finance about that industry, right? So the client will notice right away. Like the example I mentioned when I say clients to an insurance provider, the whisper I got from the manager who liked what we were offering said, "Don't say." Clients to my boss, he'll ask you to leave. Like this is not he'll know that you don't know the industry. So say patients or providers, right? So so there's there fixing happening all the time. Okay, so so in terms of sales, you will you'll overprice, you'll underprice, you'll you'll send a proposal too early, you'll you'll send a proposal too late. So these signals, these rejections are good signals to help you. Redirect rejection is the redirection. That's initially, especially initially early on, you want to get as many rejections as you can, and over time you want to reduce that rejection ratio or that percentage, right? So in when I started, I think I said this last week, I was closing at one out of twenty proposals. Abysmal. I mean, five percent. What is it? Yeah. 1 out of 20, 5%. Later, 10 years later, when we were pitching Fortune 50 at that time, our close rate was around 30%, 1 out of every 3, because we were better qualifying clients. We were much stronger at understanding and reading all the signals about the requirements of the clients. We had the logos, we had everything we need to impress these clients. So I think in terms of the first thing that I think, I think speaking to the— if I would, if I were to just focus on one thing, it's about speaking to the pain points of the client. It's speaking to the need of the client, really, really understanding the problem. And then, and then with your authority and with your empathy, both, right? With your expertise, with your knowledge, you show them, you, you, you have a conversation with them, or maybe a series of conversations on how your experience, your expertise, your solution address their needs. I think that would be the one thing I would focus on. Thank you. So we have another one from IBD. Okay, let me put this, another comment. So I was offered a 1099, a contracting job with an aerospace vendor for a larger prime. Okay, subcontractor. I rejected it. I rejected it, or I rejected because I didn't think the pay rate was commensurate with the scope of work. Was I too prideful? That is a very, very, very, very I would say common. It's an important question. And, you know, as a consultant, I would say it depends. So if you are an established consultant from a business perspective, you have revenues coming in, you have a healthy profit margin, you're relatively busy with projects, Someone comes with another project and they're not paying you well. Yes, of course you have options. You can be choosy and you tell them, thank you so much, but that's just not what the level of the pricing that I'm we can work with. And you can you know obviously you want to negotiate, right? You tell them and show them, impress them. Don't don't don't walk away from a deal right away. Tell them I can do less for that if money's an issue. I can do less. If it's just a timeline, I can do this in phases, I can do this— come up with a way based on the issue, understand where they're coming from, why the number is low, and see if you can negotiate. But that's one thing. Now, if you're just starting out and you haven't sold or you're struggling in selling and you haven't tested your idea and your approach and your implementation, and you haven't spoken to a lot of people and you haven't pitched, and then you have someone who's coming at you with a price way below your ideal price point, I would be all over it. I would say yes. My guidance to entrepreneurs who are just starting out is that you have to build the sales muscle. You have to build A whole lot of muscles, the sales muscle, the marketing muscle, the delivery muscle. So if you're just starting out and someone comes at you, whether it's a client that's not ideal, you want to sell to the Fortune 500 and you got this very small business, or someone like you said, sounds like a cool opportunity, aerospace vendor who's working with, you know, subcontracting to a prime, but, you know, they give you a small budget because I'm pretty sure this vendor is adding their cut, and then, and then, uh, you know, the subcontractor, and then the vendor is adding their cut. We used to sell to the government, and sometimes we sold directly, sometimes we sold through a prime. I know, I know that how that game is played. So, so yeah, you end up, end up with much less than what you deserve, and much less with what your expertise and your solution is worth. With all, with all of that in mind, you want to bite the bullet and do it because You're now implementing. That's good. So you're testing the approach to implement. But even if you have, you have a strong implementation muscle already, then you've sold, you have a contract, you have revenue coming in, you have also a logo. And it sounds like a pretty cool logo, an aerospace vendor, right? So, so you have to— there are trade-offs. So there's no yes or no answer to this one. It's more about— that's not— and by the way, if let's say you sold this for $5,000 and in your mind, it should have been $20,000, you don't have to broadcast to the world that you sold it for $5,000. You don't have to sell the same service at $5,000, right? So I would say if you're struggling with sales, and if you have bandwidth, and if you don't have the logos, and if you don't have testimonials and case studies, initially pricing is not an issue. Revenue and profitability, they're not an issue initially. Of course, you cannot operate in this mode forever. You'll run out of cash. The business— no revenue, no cash, no business. But initially I would be all over it because I'll get the logo, the testimonial. I will bend over backward to make sure they're happy. I'll get all these great things that will help me to sell at the price point that I have in mind. I hope this is helpful, but this is a common scenario and a lot of people fall in that same trap. So thank you for sharing. All right. So that is— yeah, and we had another question. Let me put that question on the screen here. One second. Right here. So what if there's something really, really hot? So this is we're talking about this filter of of the founder idea fit, and and not don't just chase. This is actually one of the traps, like don't chase trends. So what if there's something really, really hot that I want to pursue, and I know very little about? So it can work. So remember what I said earlier, don't only work in areas where you have a lot of experience in because this might not be sufficient, you have to learn more things, and don't just start into something, jump into something that you know nothing about. So in this case, if something is truly trending and it's hot and you have the experience in it a little bit, you don't have a whole lot of experience, You can, you can go and, and learn about it and take, take advantage of that opportunity, but you likely need to, one, spend time learning that space you're getting into deeply so you don't sound like an outsider. 2, you can start off with maybe a small project, like small, um, maybe something pro bono or something very small so you can Get some practice. 3, partner, especially if it's something very, very complex and challenging and you see the opportunity and there's money behind it and a nice logo behind it, partner with someone who has domain expertise. And then 4, start. I wouldn't come in and pitch myself as a senior consultant and do all the strategy work. Strategy requires a lot of experience. So maybe start with, potentially start with implementation work, not strategy. This will take you longer, but it is a path to capture and capitalize this hot idea. Okay? So we have one more comment and then I'll go to the second filter. Understood, thank you. Yes, I'm fresh in— Yeah, this is the comment here. Let me put it on the screen. So yes, I'll read this for those of you who are not watching, who are listening, because we send this feed to To the podcast as well. So yes, I'm fresh in this business. I was afraid to take, take it due to having to walk away from my 9 to 5 with no guarantees 6 months out. Yeah, this is, this is very valid. This is not easy. I'm not saying any of this stuff is easy, but if you have— I mean, it sounds like if you had to leave your 9 to 5 to take this opportunity, yeah, that's actually another consideration. But if you've been planning on doing— if you've been planning on taking the leap and start your own business, that's the dream, right? And you've done some financial planning. And by the way, I have a dedicated livestream on building your 6-month financial runway. So I'll add that to the description if you want to take a look at it. So if you've been thinking of starting a business, You've built your financial runway and now you're on the fence. Am I ready? Am I not ready? Is someone going to hire me? If you've done all the prep work and an opportunity comes your way, maybe that's that nudge that you need. And then while you're working on this, you can obviously start building your pipeline to get leads and to sell at the price point that you, again, you deserve, or potentially you can negotiate with this with this. And I— some of you who are technical like myself, you know, I wasn't in sales. Like, negotiation and sales, they were all dirty words. But in business, as in entrepreneurship, you have, you have to fend for yourself. So everything is— almost everything is negotiable. So tell this vendor, instead of me delivering this in 3 months, I can deliver it in 4 months, for example, or in 5 months, for example. And then that will give you bandwidth to start building your business and potentially pick up another project so you can get revenue from that, from that other project. But yeah, these— I want to acknowledge these are serious concerns, serious decisions. But if you want, I'll wrap up with that before we go to the second filter. I'll wrap up with, if you wait for the perfect opportunity, the perfect client, the perfect pricing, the perfect situation with zero risk That's not entrepreneurship. It just, it doesn't work that way. So anyway, to summarize this first filter, the founder idea fit, without fit, you must learn the industry, the problem, the tools, the clients, and how to sell. With fit, when there's a better fit between you and the idea, you already understand the buyers, the language, the pain points, and the decision process. So with that fit, you move faster, which is critical, and I'll speak about the speed to first dollar later in the filters. So that's filter number 1. The second filter is on— let me remove this from the screen— is on difficulty level. So we're deciding, again, for those of you who joined a bit later, we are talking about not business ideas. I have a full video on 26 ideas for this year. Check it out on the channel, on the YouTube channel at Startup with Feras. But we're talking about ideas are a dime a dozen. I have 26, there are probably 260 ideas out there. You might have 5 ideas yourself. So how do we make sure it's the right idea for me? That's what I'm dedicating this session for. So you walk away from this session with 5 filters that you use to vet the idea and make sure it's a good one for you to get you to that successful and profitable business you're going after. After. So filter number 2 is difficulty level. So difficulty level is somewhat relative because it depends on, on your existing knowledge, your experience, and the resources you have access to. But there are still objective factors that influence how difficult a consulting idea will be to execute. So for example, the sales cycle. If, if you're selling to enterprise, to the enterprise or to government, or if you're selling to, you know, very big companies, the sales cycle is going to be long and there's a lot of things you have to do in that sales cycle that you might not have experience in. That's number one. Number 2, it could be some regulatory requirements before you could— before you go and do certain type of work, you have to have— you have to have to comply with these regulations. For example, we were in the marketing and analytics, marketing analytics and the data business, so every time we sign up with clients, there's a whole bunch of paperwork on privacy and we have to meet certain requirements. If you're in IT, the SOC 2 requirement, I think that's how they say it, SOC 2? Yeah, not S-O-C. You see these billboards for SOC 2 compliance all over the Bay Area here if you're driving on Highway 101. Also, another factor, is client sophistication. Selling to a client who's very, very advanced and they're looking to solve complex problem is different than solving for a client who doesn't know anything about this area and they need some much less sophisticated solutions. Also from a difficulty perspective, credentials and certifications. In some areas, It takes a long time and effort and case studies and exams to pass to get those certifications that the clients are looking for. So I want you to think of opportunities across a spectrum from low complexity to medium complexity to high complexity. That's one aspect. And then I want to give you an example on that. And then I want to go these other scenarios and give you specific examples and see what applies So I remember when we were selling websites, simple websites to small business owners, a dentist or a restaurant, and the first project we sold was $1,400. The second project was $2,000. Basic websites, just listing of the services and a simple form. Later, as I was learning about sales, I heard that you should go after bigger clients and get larger deals. You'll have more leverage. a much better revenue margin. So with my go-getterness, despite my co-founder saying, Feras, slow down. We're not ready. I was able to close a $16,500 deal to build a portal, a matrimonial portal with a whole lot of complexity in functionality. There's an e-commerce component, very, very complex website, and we had a vendor who was supporting us. Long story short, we didn't know how to gather the requirements, how to document the requirements. The clients could have also provided more details. He's a great guy, he's still a friend. I owe him a lot because he was patient with us, but it took us forever to deliver. What we delivered was still lacking. We had to stop the project, basically put the project on hold because we were not delivering what the client was expecting, and it was a much, much bigger project, and we ended up wasting a lot of money and resources, not just our time but also paid our third-party vendors. So we lost, lost our shirt on this project. So if you're just starting out, taking on something complex might not be the right step to take unless you have obviously some support system, people who can help you address the complexity. So the, the lesson for me was clear: the higher the complexity, the the higher the risk if you don't fully understand what's involved. Now another example is about certifications. So if you want to get into, let's say, become a Google partner in cloud consulting, so there's Amazon, they have AWS, Microsoft has Azure, Google has Google Cloud, GCP, so if you want to be a certified partner because there's a huge demand for clients moving their data and their ops, certain level of ops to the cloud, and you can help clients move their data to the cloud or manage their data in the cloud. There's just a whole lot of things that can be done there. So you want to be a consultant for Google Cloud, and it's a crowded space, so you might decide you want to specialize in cybersecurity. Now, to be recognized in that space and to get that certification, you have to— and I haven't looked at the application process. We were Google Cloud certified in the last company, and in the company in Dubai now, eSense, we are Google certified. So, so last time I checked at the process, there's a whole application process. 2 or more of your team members have to be— have to pass technical exams, not easy exam, very difficult exams. And then in a lot of cases they ask you for case studies. Show me a client that had a difficult problem and you solved them for them. You solve those problems for the client. So if you don't have experience— so let's say you have experience in the technology but you don't have enough experience to pass the exams, or you don't have the case studies, you won't be able to get that certification, and that will prevent you from getting being listed as a Google partner and getting the leads and all that good stuff. So it's for you to decide. I'm not saying this, don't take on something difficult. I'm sharing this so that you understand what's involved. That's my job, is to make sure you understand what the journey is going to be like. Your journey will be different than my journey, but I've been there and I can— so like a map, I can tell you, here's what it takes to get from point A to point B. your route will likely be different than mine. So I want you to think about the level of difficulty so you understand what's involved to get to that Google Cloud Certified Partner, and the leads will start flowing in. And that is, you have to be, you have to have the time, the bandwidth, the tenacity to study and take those exams and pass those exams. And then while doing that, you're selling and solving some problems that you can then include in your application as case studies of— to show, to show that you know the stuff. So that is, that is one thing. Experience in the field, uh, is really important, and it could, it could, it could have— it could just not prevent you from starting a business, but it just could— it would require you to, to, to maybe spend a whole lot more time than you thought before you can take on bigger clients or get that certification. So that is about the experience in the field, but the other factors like the sales cycle, as I mentioned earlier, the regulatory requirements, the client expectations, all will shape how difficult it is to enter that consulting space and how quickly you can build momentum. So that is on the second filter on difficulty level. So let me also go here. And just for those of you who are following, maybe some of you are taking notes. So we are here. Let me share this right here. So, so far we talked about the traps, why most people pick the wrong, wrong idea, and then we talked about so far filter number 1, founder idea fit, and then difficulty level. All right, so now back to number 3, filter number 3. Speed to first dollar. Speed to first dollar. The mighty dollar. And if you're if you're joining us from outside the U.S., whatever your currency is, so speed to that first pound or lira or whatever it is. So and we have we have a question. So let me put that on the screen. Amjad, thank you so much for joining. Let's see. Let me put this on screen. How do you make sure you don't lose the momentum while trying to meet? Regulatory requirements. Oh, my friend! Ah, yeah. I mean, I remember we saw we used to sell to the government in the U.S. and also in in the the MENA business in the Dubai business. I mean, these the this process, the onboarding process, and to get approved, it could take months, not weeks, months. So. The good thing is there's a lot at the end of the funnel. Typically, these contracts are lucrative. They're long-term, multi-year. You establish your presence. You can upsell. So there's a lot of positives about it. To get to that point is difficult. So I think first, in terms of just how do you— you don't want to lose momentum. Part of it is the founder mindset. Um, let me just make sure. Yeah, this is showing. Uh, oh no, I'm showing the wrong one. Sorry, my bad. Oops, something's happening on my screen for some reason. Something is showing that I don't want to show. There you go. Yeah, okay, so I don't know why this is happening. I mean, there's something that's showing that. Yeah, okay. Figure it out. I got to figure out technology. It seems like every week. So I think in terms, you know, from a momentum perspective, so the mindset is if I think that I can get through the regulatory requirements in 2 weeks, and then realistically this takes 2 months, there'll be misaligned expectations. I'll get frustrated. So I think ask around, research, obviously ask AI, but also speak with other vendors and other potentially competitors if you go to industry events and people talk about sort of their experience and just do your own research and you'll be aware of what's involved. So that's just, okay, so this thing is, you know, 3 to 4 months, not just 1 to 2 weeks, and then understanding what's involved and preparing for it. And I actually, I did a Um, not this last video. I have a video on the, on the, on the channel, on the YouTube channel, The Ultimate Guide to Winning Proposals This Year. It's an hour and 4-minute video. It's the longest video I've ever produced, and it's truly the ultimate guide. And there's a section in it toward the end about selling to enterprise, and I did talk about this point. That is, if you're used to selling to small and mid-sized businesses, that's one mindset, and that's what one set of documentation, one set of processes, one set of negotiation skills. If you're selling to the enterprise, it is a completely different skill set and mindset and same skills, same technical skills, different arenas. So it's like martial arts. It's like one-on-one friendly sparring at the dojo after practice, and then go into a competition with rules and judges and all that good stuff. So I think understanding what's involved. So when we applied, I remember, I'll give you this example. When we applied to be a government contractor, to sell to the government, sorry, here in the US, there's something called the GSA schedule. You want to be on that GSA schedule. There are other ways to sell to the government, but we figured we'd go and become a vendor on this schedule. And I spoke— this is 2010, I think, 2011. We were specializing in analytics at the time, and we started to have our logos on the Google website, and we got to know analytics really well. So I spoke with a couple of consultants who sell these services. They want to get us to become a certified partner in the GSA schedule, And they were quoting me like $15,000, $20,000. And I said, I'm not gonna pay that kind of money. And I wasn't sure if we would actually get deals from that channel, from the government, right? So we had an intern, my son. So I said, hey, I'll pay you $500 to figure this process out, and then I'll give you another $500 once we pass, once we get the certification. Now, the consultant was going to do it in like 3, 4 weeks. It took us 3 to 4 months, and we stumbled, and, and, and it was really difficult. And all the, all the paperwork they required was just overwhelming. We had to go and, and read and ask and research. There was no AI at the time. Luckily, there was Google. So, so eventually we figured out it cost me $1,000 instead of $15,000 or $20,000, and we, we got on that GSA schedule. It was very frustrating throughout the whole process because we, we get these forms from these archaic websites. We would download them and we had to fill out all this information that I had no idea about, but I knew there's potential. I knew that, that these, these lucrative contracts could await us. Not lucrative in, in the sense that, um, you're overcharging and amazing margin. It was a good margin, but a lot of these government contracts were multi-year contracts. We had a 2-year contract, a 3-year contract, a 5-year contract. So that gives a lot of stability to the business. And that's what I was going after at that stage to help us launch from 7 figures into 8 figures. So long story short, understand what's involved and you got to have the stamina when you're selling to enterprise, when you're selling to these companies with a lot of regulations. But if the opportunity— if the opportunity is there, it's worth the effort, worth the time. All right, and we have Purex joining. I am here from India. Well, I'm so glad you are joining us from India. It's probably very late on your time, so if you have a question, I'll be more than happy to answer. But for now, I'm going to move to the 3rd filter, speed to first dollar. For those of you who are just joining, We're talking about filters to help you vet the idea and make sure it's a good fit for you. So speed to first dollar. Now this is huge for new founders because you need revenue, you need cash flow, not to stay in business, but also to be able to provide yourself, to grow that business, to make sure you hire, you need cash as Eric Schmidt the ex-CEO of Google said, revenue solves all problems. So revenue is really important, and in early stages, not only— you don't only need the revenue to stay in business. Sorry, you don't need— you don't— can't speak today. You don't only need the revenue to pay the bills, but also Even if you have a very solid financial runway, like you can survive personally and at work for a year without revenue, let's say that's your situation, you're in that fortunate situation where you don't need cash right away, you don't need revenue right away, even if you're in that boat, you still need revenue early on, the earlier the better, because it's proof that your idea has legs. I mean, if you wait for 11 months to get that first project, and then you're getting very little money for it. Nobody's buying. That's— you kind of waited too long. So, so that speed to first dollar is really important. And I'll give you an example that I came across. A, a founder I was providing some consulting for, he and a few other very capable seasoned consultants started a business And they have a lot of experience selling to Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 actually, and their strategy was to focus exclusively on the Fortune 500. So that sounded great because they had the expertise, they've done work, they've worked in these environments before, they can deliver. But the issue here is that as business owners now, not as employees working for someone else, they severely, at least from my They severely underestimated the enterprise sales cycle, so they put all their eggs in the Fortune 500 basket and spent months pursuing a few large opportunities, and these opportunities did not materialize in time, so they went months without revenue, and when you have 2, 3, 4, how many partners, however many partners you have, and there's no revenue, these meetings and, and the whole vibe is different, and people question if they made the right decision. They left corporate, they left a very, a very, uh, strong position they were in, um, they were making good money, and now there's no revenue. So you start to question everything. Is my partner doing their— is my partner doing their fair share? Are they working as hard as I am? So when there's no revenue All these issues come up. So that's why I'm, I'm a big, big believer and a proponent of getting that first check, getting that first project. Even if your ideal client, your ICP, your ideal client profile is here, sell— selling here is okay. Instead of selling a project for $5,000, selling something for $1,000 is, is okay. Is actually recommended because you've practiced, as I said earlier, you practice how to send a proposal, you practice how to negotiate, you practice how to collect, how to send the invoice. All of that is really important. So understanding when you're going into a business, understanding the likely path from here to that first dollar is really important. And potentially, even if you're targeting, potentially if your plan is to target clients that take longer to collect or to sell because of the long sales cycle or because of regulatory compliance items you have to check, whatever the case might be, if that is the plan, my recommendation is pursue that plan for sure, but also in the interim, as you get that big deal on that big client, sell smaller clients or less complex problem, uh, less, less complex, uh, clients and less complex problems so that you get to practice your marketing, your sales, your delivery muscles. So that's really important. And then from a financial planning perspective, if, if the sales cycle is 6 months, is different than if the sales cycle is 1 month, because if you're planning on having 3 customers and it takes 6 months to close them, you really have to have coverage for, for you, for the business, for those people that you provide for. Okay, so, so that is— I mean, some examples: if you're doing marketing consulting for small businesses, typically according to many, many industry reports and my experience, small businesses, typically 2 to 8 weeks you're done. If you're selling process improvement or large digital transformation to the enterprise or maybe to government, you're talking about anywhere from 3 to 9 months, and I know for some deals it was more than 12 months. They do their RFI, the request for information, or RFP or RFQ, one year, and then they're planning for their next fiscal year to buy. So be aware of that concept of time to first dollar or or speed, sorry, speed to first dollar and adjust your planning accordingly, right? So, and speed early on, especially early on, early on in the journey, speed often matters more than scale, and it doesn't mean that, you know, don't just be stuck on one path to get to that one deal or that one client. You should really diversify initially and get some speed. some cash in as you're really planning for that bigger client and bigger deal and for these lucrative contracts. All right. Let's see. Filter number 4, and for those of you watching here, we have— we talked about founder idea fit, difficulty level, speed to first dollar, and market demand. Now market demand is something that requires a whole lot of time, maybe a specific session, but the idea, the simple question here, are people already paying to solve this problem? Are there willing wallets? That's what I like to say. So you want to make sure what you're offering, there's demand for that, and check around, you can do your own research, You can look on— one example is something I talked about last week is, or in the last video, is about look for skills in demand. And one thing I want to share here is there's a nice report that comes out of LinkedIn and it's called the Skills on the Rise. They do this, I believe, every year, maybe quarterly, I think every year. I've seen that 2025 one, and you see here on the screen for those of you who are watching is that Skills on the Rise 2026, the fastest growing skills in the US. So with that in mind, if you're not looking for entrepreneurship, of course sharpen your skills in this area so you can advance in your employment. But if you're an entrepreneur, these skills are in demand. Of course, AI engineering and implementation. Of course, operational efficiency. with automation and AI. But there are other things, business strategy, AI business strategy. But some of these skills are distinctly human. Executive and stakeholder communications, another one. Financial operations and reporting. Leadership people— leadership and people management. So check out not just this report, but other reports and— and see the skills that are in demand. Look for LinkedIn job postings. What is it that people are hiring? I remember I read something on LinkedIn. Someone says people thought search engine optimization, SEO, is dying because now you have results show up without having to go and click on, on links, right? Um, but I think it was Anthropic or OpenAI, they had a job opening for an SEO manager for $350,000 or something, some large, nice salary. So SEO, the old way of SEO might have been or might be dying or maybe dead, but the new way of SEO, search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, AEO, that is— those are the skills that you can learn. You can take whatever you've learned in traditional SEO, now you can learn new things, test new things, do different experiments about, about what's going on, what's coming up in chat, how much traffic is coming from ChatGPT to your website. So there are things you can do, and you can now upskill and sell this new service. So, so make sure there's dark— there's, uh, make sure there's a market demand. And again, I won't spend a lot of time on this because I covered this entire thing, this entire market demand and vetting your idea in my Ultimate Guide on Starting a Consulting Business. Um, it's, it's a video I have from about 6 months ago, and it's still getting a lot, a lot of positive feedback, a lot of traction. And I, in it, I talk about this idea of 10 plus 5 to validate that there's demand. Talk to 10 people and research 5 competitors. And I go, I go into that concept in detail in that video. So check out that video Again, I'll put all these links in the description after, once we're done with the stream, and feel free to comment, ask me questions if you're not sure. So I have a question here. Let's see. All right, so from ParthP5674. Hello, Feras. Hello, thank you for joining. Okay, I was a career consultant who consulted, who counseled clients, wrote resumes, optimized LinkedIn profiles for clients. I also delivered interview preparation. Sessions, but now due to AI, people are turning to ChatGPT, etc., for all these things, and our company is losing business. How should I proceed? Um, uh, so could you, could you guide me a bit? Uh, it would be really helpful. Thank you. Of course, uh, I'd love to share my thoughts here. And this is not actually— I'm working on a video about this specific thing. I mean, there are specific industries that are getting impacted faster and in a more maybe elaborate way than others with AI. So I think this is where you have to look at what you did before, and instead of thinking AI is replacing me, which I thought that we all might be thinking about as a society, How can I use AI so I can be more efficient, I can be more effective, I can do a better job, I can scale what I'm doing? So that would be, you might have to do some pivots here. So it's like, what are the core skills that you have as a team? Can I, I'll keep those and then can I complement that with AI, with things that AI will make more efficient, more and more effective. So if it— I mean, everybody is using AI today, almost everybody's using it, depending— there's some studies on, actually, unfortunately, by different socioeconomics and by different sections of the society, there's more adoption, so that's another societal issue we have to deal with, but in the context of business, I would say, what can these core skills, including the skills that are distinctly human, those will always be in demand. So if, let's say, let's say in the past, let's say I was your client and you want to enhance my LinkedIn profile, you want to help me maybe with some content on my website. So now, of course, I can go and ask ChatGPT, but that's still something I have to do. But I'm happy if someone can come and do it effectively for me, And if they tell me it's going to take them 10 hours, now I'm going to call them out because I know with ChatGPT, with Claude, or with Gemini, whatever tool you use, it could take 2 hours. So you might not be able to sell 10 hours for something that used to take you, you know, 10 hours. You might have to now sell it for 2 hours. So I think those are— again, this is evolving. I think some industries are impacted faster than others, and you see just last couple weeks you had, it was, who was it, Block, they had a layoff, 4,000 people, that is about 40, 45%, 40% of their company. I think I saw JP Morgan had another layoff, 2,500 people, they did mention both companies AI intelligence was a factor. So this is not going anywhere, so for us, whether we are consultants, we have a consulting company, or ourselves, or we are thinking of taking the leap, we can't ignore this macro trend, the meta trend, so we have to, I think, look at our processes, our systems, can we make it more efficient? Can we make it— can we add this distinctly human aspect to our offering? And help people solve problems. I think that these are my thoughts on it, but trust me, everyone is getting impacted by this in one way or another, and the one thing that will always stay with us is, well, a few things. One is this mindset of learning, this mindset of pivoting when we need to as business owners, and also, you know, just be better, you know, better better at what we do. And then, um, the, the one last thing, I'll end on this point here, that the founder of NVIDIA, the CEO of NVIDIA, um, said, um, about radiologists. He said with AI and technology, people thought all this automation in reading, scanning these reports, there'll be less, there'll be less needs for, for radiologists. He says now there's a need for more radiologists because now it can be done cheaper. Some parts of that process, the assessment, can be done faster, and more people are taking advantage of that service. So obviously, there are counterpoints to all of that, but from a business owner perspective, from a consultant perspective, 2 things will not go wrong with these is You have that mindset of growth. Okay, there's something, a wave is about to hit me. How can I pivot? How can I ride that wave? And how do I learn? The second is learning, ongoing learning and optimizing your own processes. I hope this is helpful, but I am doing some research and hopefully I think in a month or so I'll have some additional content on this with some specific examples. And let's see. Yeah, just for those of you who are listening, not watching, so thanks a lot for your valuable advice. I started my first business at the age of 13. Congratulations, 13, that's very impressive. Have read 200+ books. Oh my goodness, very impressive. Was a member of Toastmasters, plus, plus, plus, and then a bunch of stuff like delivering presentations. So yeah, that's impressive. But honestly, I can feel that I want to cater to only high-profile clients. My biggest strength is communication, negotiation, and research. So yeah, so I mean, in terms of catering to high-level clients, like I said, the video I mentioned, actually I have a video that's launched already, The Ultimate Guide to Proposals. I talk about pitching to bigger clients, and I am working on another video that we will launch in the next few weeks on selling to SMB versus selling to the enterprise. So actually I'm in the process of— I already recorded that, so be on the lookout for that video. Check out the proposal video. It has, it has a lot of details. All right, uh, so good stuff. Now moving on to the last filter. So fill— and let me just remove this. Yep, filter number 5, and that is access to buyers. So remember, let me, let me share my screen again so that we know where we are. So we are— oops, where are we? Right here. So founder idea fit, difficulty level, that's filter number 2. Filter number 3, speed to first dollar. Filter number 4, market demand. And then filter number 5 is access to buyers. Now you might think this is, you know, a no-brainer. Of course you have to access the buyer. But as you are planning either on starting a business or pivoting, access to buyers is another consideration. So what do I mean by access to buyers? Access to clients. And you can think about it, of course you have to market, of course you have to go and pitch, of course you have to start conversations and you have to find your ideal client profile, where do they congregate and I want to be there, but in your assessment, if you have like 2 competing ideas in your mind and you're applying these 5 filters, and you're scoring each of these filters, then see, look at this access to buyers from this perspective. Like, how is my— if I want to go into HR, HR consulting, I want to remote hybrid work culture, it's still issues with that, right? So do I have people in that industry? So I want to look at industry relationships in, in that space. Do I know a lot of HR managers? Do I know people who are close to HR? Do I know maybe COOs, right? I look into my list of past clients, partners, suppliers, and vendors. Do I have people who provide solutions, HR solutions? I look— I also definitely looked within my LinkedIn network. Do I have a lot of people in that space? And by the way, a trick— not trick, a tip— you can go to your LinkedIn settings and, and, and there's an option to go and download, download your, your network, right? All your friends or connections, and you can sort those by job title. I forgot, they give you 2, 3 metadata pieces of metadata, so you can go in there and see anything that anyone that has people, people ops, people management, HR in there. So if you see that you have industry relationships, you have past clients, partners, suppliers, vendors, you have a good amount of a good number of people in your network who are in that space, and then maybe potentially you have some sort of— you have a relationship with people who are maybe distributors, or there's like a distribution channel in that space you're in. All of these, if you score high— if you have 2 business ideas and one of them, they're equal in everything, and one of them scores high on, on the access to clients, I would definitely favor that one because it will make your job easier. You already have— you already have connections, you already have people who have that, who trust you, and sales is all about trust. So consider this, don't just say, yes, of course I have to have access to clients. Think of if I have 2 competitive ideas or 2 competing ideas, which one I have a wider network, um, that I can then through, through this network I can, um, start conversations. And in, in almost, I don't say 100%, but in my experience and all these 250+ vendors, consultants that have advised, the first clients are most likely going to come from your network. So this whole access to your network or access to buyers is really important. And one here, one pro tip, and that is after all this vetting, after After applying these filters, one thing I want you to keep in mind is that your business idea is not a baby, it's a hypothesis. So think of your business idea as a hypothesis, not as a baby. So don't fall in love with the idea, because with the baby, you love the baby. They're cute, they're lovely, they don't talk back to you. They make you wake up at night. So, but in general, it's a pleasant experience. A hypothesis on the other side, on the other hand, is the way— is something you test, is something you poke holes in, is something that you question, is something that you want to improve and tweak and refine and maybe pivot away from. So keep in mind that throughout all this vetting and filtration, don't be defensive. Of course you want to like what you're doing, and you take pride in it, especially if you put a lot of time and energy into it, but treat your business idea and the early stages of the business, treat them as a hypothesis, not as a baby. So, and the goal at the end of this whole thing, the goal here isn't to find the best idea. What I want you to think about is to find the best idea for you, something that matches your experience, solves a real problem and allows you to start testing quickly. So now you're now equipped to apply these 5 filters on how to vet the idea and to make sure it's a good one for you. And then if you're looking for ideas, as I said earlier, I have those 26 of them. Um, let me go to my channel so you see it. It's right here, this, this Let me just make this a bit larger. Yeah, right here, this thumbnail, Quit Your Day Job, Make Sure You're Ready Before You Quit, but 26 ideas for, um, in 2026. So stop struggling to start. That video, if you're just short on ideas, check it out. And then as importantly, if you're looking to start the consulting, you've got the idea, you've done your vetting, and now you're not sure how to start, I want you to check out this video. Let me go to it. One second. Yeah, right here. The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business This Year. So check those out. I know it's a lot of content to consume. These are not short videos, but I give it— I share everything I've learned myself from my mistakes, from the mistakes of others, from all the founders that I advise. Um, that is pretty much it for today. If you have— let's see, we have some— let's see if I make sure we don't have any other questions. Um, uh, we have one more. I went through a lot of stuff. Okay, let me see. Uh, Prathip, yeah, go ahead. Can I get in touch with you on LinkedIn? Of course, you can just go search my name, uh, connect with me on LinkedIn. Happy to answer any follow-up questions. And then for those of you who've been with us on this livestream, thank you so much for your questions, for your comments. for your participation. And for those of you who are joining later or listening later, don't— if you're liking this content, click subscribe to the channel on YouTube, click the like button, and let me know if I can be of any service. See you next time. Thank you.