Stop Asking If Your Consulting Idea Is Good — Ask This Instead

We are live. Welcome to episode 110 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Today I'm going to talk about one of the biggest mistakes new consultants make before they ever sell anything. When they're validating their idea or when they're thinking of pivoting to offer a new service, they start ask— they start asking questions, they start asking people, but sometimes they ask the wrong people. And in a lot of cases, they're asking the wrong questions, and then they mistake encouragement and politeness for validation. Now this topic was inspired by a book I recently read, an audiobook I recently listened to called The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, which focuses on how to talk to customers or potential customers and learn if your business, if your own idea is a good idea when everyone is lying to you. No. I don't think everyone intends to lie to you, but people are polite and they tell you things that don't necessarily validate your idea. And that book was— The Mom Test was mostly written for people who are developing software and product companies, but the lessons in that book apply directly to consulting and service businesses. So if you're thinking about starting a consulting business, a services business, and you want to build an offer, or if you are leaving corporate, you want to be on your own, you're sick and tired of corporate, or if you recently— if you've been laid off and you're ready to take the leap, this session will help you make sure you're not building a business on assumptions and on passion only. You're building a business on a strong foundation. Now also, this also applies if you've already started and you're still not sure if your idea is valid. And also if you're already in consulting and you've been at it for a couple of years or maybe longer, and now you're thinking to pivot because just things are not working out, this session today is very applicable. Because I want you to avoid this very expensive mistake. You build a business, or you think you're building a business, but you're building around assumptions, not real buyer signals, not real buying signals. And by the end of this session, my commitment to you is that you'll know which questions to stop asking and which questions to ask instead, and then know to tell whether people are just being nice or polite to you, or actually they're showing signs of demand. And if you're not sure what to ask and whom to ask, I have some spreadsheets or some worksheets that I'll go over today, and just leave a comment or email me at info@startupwithferas.com, Feras spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S, and I will make sure you have access to these assets. Now, before we jump in, if you are new to this channel, welcome. My name is Feras. I've built several businesses, mostly in consulting, a couple that we took to 7 figures and one we took to 8 figures and then sold to global media giant Dentsu. And since then, I've been focusing on helping founders start and start stronger and build a sustainable, profitable business. So if you have any questions, any comments, if you are struggling in your business today, let me know. Leave me a comment on, on YouTube and make sure I have— yeah, leave me a comment on my YouTube channel @StartupWithFeras, F-E-R-A-S. Um, I'll, I'll, I answer all the comments, or if it's something a bit private, you haven't told told the world that you're starting a business yet, you can email me, email me at info@startupwithfers.com. I will answer your question. My job, my mission is to help you start your business stronger and on more solid ground, and if you're also having some wins, I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to know about the small wins, the big wins, the workarounds, The things that worked really well for you, worked well for you. And as I share the questions, the challenges, the good stuff, the wins with the community so everyone benefits. I keep, of course, I keep everything confidential. I won't share your details, but I'd love to know from you on how things are going. So with that, let's jump right into it. So, so you're, you have, you're in corporate or you left corporate recently, or maybe for 16 or 17% of new college students, they want to be their own bosses. I admire that. So, so you're, you want to make sure that what you're building is viable. Yeah. You're putting together a business plan, you're vetting your idea, that's all part of the formula that you're doing the right thing, so a lot of times we go to people in our network, we go to our family members, we go to our moms, our dads, our siblings, we go to ex-coworkers, we go to colleagues, vendors, people we've met in the industry, people at the gym, and we start asking questions to make sure this is something that people are interested in, something people will be willing to pay you for. As I always say, you have, there has to be a problem, then your solution, then there have to be willing wallets, people willing to pay you, right? So a lot of us start with this very generic question. We say, do you think this is a good idea? Or do you think people will pay for it? So you're asking something about the future, you're asking something very broad, and people in our network typically, typically, they're too polite, too nice to crush our dreams, so they say yes, and they're guessing, and they're not sure. Sometimes these folks are not in— they're amazing people, they love you, they care for you, they want to— they pray for you, they're there for you to succeed, but they're not from your target audience, they're not from the people who are likely to use your service. So as a result, you start getting the wrong signals, you start getting— you start collecting weak data, and the root cause really is that you're speculating, you're asking people to speculate about something in the future that even professionals, people, investors, venture capitalists, I'm here in Silicon Valley, you hear all the stories about the successes of venture capitalists, but only 1 of 10 ends up winning, and even a smaller percentage end up making it big, becoming a unicorn, so even those who put their hard-earned money and those who invest in founders and companies, they don't get it right most of the time. So when we ask, and I think Tom, sorry, Rob Fitzpatrick, he said like wrong data is worse, wrong or weak data is worse than no data, because if you don't have any data, you're still exploring, you're still asking, you're still trying to figure things out, but when you have wrong data, you build, you have assumptions you build on this wrong data, and then you might not have it. foundation at all. So I don't want to make it too difficult. I'll have a lot of questions for you, sample questions you can ask, but just, do you think this is a good idea, is definitely not a question that you want to lead with. You probably want to remove it out of your vocabulary or out of the list of things you ask people, especially— and I know this is difficult for those of you who Just like me when I was laid off back in 2003 and I didn't know what to do and I was— I couldn't get a job interview. I couldn't get, you know, 7, 6 to 7 weeks I was sending resumes in and out asking people about opportunities, referrals, but just the market was very dry. The job market was very dry and I couldn't land it. Not even a— not a job. I couldn't land an interview. So, but I was competent. I had some experience, 10+ years in corporate, and I was managing accounts, and I understood technology, but I wasn't technical. I was more on the client sort of people side of things on project management and account management. So I came into entrepreneurship with competency, with good work ethic. I was in a startup before my first startup. I was in a company where we raised $96 million. So I learned the value of hard work and having a strong team with you, uh, building. But then I had zero experience in selling, let alone, let alone knocking on doors and speak with restaurant owners and small business owners and convincing them. At the time, I was convincing them to buy a website, 2003, that was cutting edge. So, so when When you're out there validating your idea, when you're out there talking to potential customers, you could be nervous, you're not sure what to do, what to ask, that's okay, that's just part of this exercise, of this journey of building a business, so it's okay if you're not comfortable asking questions to start with, but at one point, when you start to ask people questions to validate your idea, I want you to be asking the right questions, and avoid the wrong questions. So when you go to former colleagues or friends or family members and they say, that sounds valuable, you might feel good about it, but that is— that's biased. So it doesn't— it's not demand. It's not a strong signal from the market. It's an encouragement. Maybe take it as such, but leave it there. And I want— it's the distinction. In my mind, the distinction is very clear. Encouragement feels good, but it does not create demand. And it could be misleading because now you feel good about it and you continue building, going the wrong path. So demand, real demand has to come from the market and has to come from people who are likely to buy your service. So when someone has a pain point, when someone has a painful problem, and they've tried to solve it, and they also have a budget, or they can influence a budget decision, and then they're willing and ready and able to take that next step, that's what— that's when demand is there. That's what demand is. So a polite answer that, hey, that sounds good, yeah, yeah, I would buy from you, that is different than actually going through the process of proper validation. So with that in mind, let me go over the 5 points I want to cover today. The first one is on what not to do, so stop asking people to judge your idea, right? So for those of you who are with us live, listening or watching, appreciate you. If you have any questions, any comments on vetting your idea, validating your idea about what questions to ask, what questions not to ask, leave me a comment, I will answer them during the session, and for those of you who are watching or listening later, leave me a comment on the YouTube channel @StartupWithFeras, and I will make sure I'll get back to you. So the first point, stop asking people to to judge your idea. As I said earlier, people's opinions, even those who invest and those who their full-time and day job is to predict the future or figure things out, they don't get it right. So again, don't confuse compliments with potential purchase orders. So the question— let me give you an example. Let me walk you through a sales consultant, someone who offers consulting on sales. So these are the questions that I don't want you to be asking, or here's an example. What companies or would companies pay for sales strategy? That's future. That's about, do you think? What's your opinion? Instead of that, I want you to ask, when was the last time your team missed a sales target? Now that's a pain point. What happened then? Did we not get leads? Did we not close leads? Did we struggle in sending proposals on time? Right? What did your team try? See, you asked about something very specific. The last time a sales target was missed. And this happens a lot in companies. And then, you know, you ask, what did you try? Who was involved? What did it cost you? Did you bring in outside help? Did you figure it out on yourself? Did you attend a workshop? You're now digging deeper into the problem, the core business problem, missing sales targets. And then what is it that the customer or the lead in this case, what is it that they've done about it? So you're getting a whole lot of context from this conversation instead of saying, hey, would you pay for a sales consultant? And then when you're asking these questions, I'm going over these questions very quickly, but I want you to of course pause and listen and take good notes because these are gems if you can get a few people to share with you that type of exp— that level of details about their experiences, you are now properly validating and vetting your idea. It looks like I have a question here from— let's see, from Rise True Love 2106. Hi Feras, loving your content. Haven't taken the leap into consulting yet, but your content is giving me a lot of good A lot of food for thought. Well, thank you so much for being on this livestream, and thank you for the kind words. I know it's not easy to take the leap. I always tell people, I don't think I had the courage to start on my own. It took a layoff to get me to take the leap. So I understand, and I think if today, I don't know a lot about your current situation, but if you have a full-time job and you have, a salary and you have the PTO and the 401, this is the most opportune time to plan the steps to take the leap. So I have some, some videos on, on building your financial runway so that you take the leap and, and finances are taken care of. And then also other things that you can do. You can do a lot of things while you're working full-time. It will tax You have to spend some time on weeknights and then the weekends just to prepare and plan for the business, but typically, if you have a full-time job and your finances are taken care of, you're in a better position to plan for the business than if you have to do it maybe after a layoff or you just have a very short financial runway. So yeah, I'm glad you're finding the content useful, and if you have any specific question, about the business idea itself or the steps to take, just leave me a message here or email me at info@startupwithferas.com. I'll be more than happy to answer it, but thank you, thank you for jumping in and leaving a comment, I appreciate it. Alright, so we talked about the questions, what questions, stop asking questions where people, you're kind of leading people to judge your idea, right? But dig deeper into what is it that what pain point they have, what is that painful problem that they have, and then what is it that they tried and how and whom they brought in to fix it. All right, so that was point number 1. Point number 2, ask— as I said, this is to highlight what I said earlier— ask about the past, not the imaginary future. So if you notice that the questions that I listed earlier, they're all about the past. So if someone, for example, says, I would definitely buy your service, I would definitely need help with that, they might be very sincere, but they also might be very polite and maybe they just don't want to, you know, I would buy it someday, one day I would buy this service, like when is this one day? Maybe 10 years from now, right? And you need to get revenue next month, right? So people are not very reliable when it comes to predicting the future, and many circumstances could change their perspective, their opinion about your service, your product. So again, would you buy this in the future? Not a good question to ask, but dig deeper into the past into the problem, into was it was the problem urgent? Was the problem did the problem need immediate an immediate fix, or or was it something that was just more of a nuance and more of a of a causes small small headache, but they they have a workaround, or maybe they can bring the company could bring in an intern. and the intern can take care of it for whatever, $10 an hour, whatever. So, so, so you want to make, you want to make sure the problem is painful and you want to make sure you, you hear, you capture from this lead or the person you're speaking with the emotions. Like, are they frustrated? They do, like, you know, like if someone, a business owner, they keep getting Their productivity is impacted because their IT system is not properly set up and they don't have backups and they lose data and they get hacked and they just don't have a solid infrastructure in place for IT. And if the owner is not sleeping well at night because of all of that, that's what you want to be looking for. Not asking about what is it that you'll buy in the future, or would you buy this from me, or do you think this will solve your future problems? No, it is the pain points, the frustrations, the delays, all of these things that are caused by the problem. So now if you're hearing all of that, again, you want to be very attentive, and that's something definitely worth exploring. This is good data to have. Which leads me to the 3rd point today, and that is on listening, active listening. And those of us who have been in relationships, I can speak from many years of, long years of being married, happily married for now 39 years. Listening is probably better for, more for men than women. Learn that skill. Trust me, it helps you in life, in business, everywhere. So, so in these conversations, you want to be listening attentively. You want to be taking notes. And I have a, I have a full video on, on active listening in sales. And you want to be— you don't want to jump to solutions. I know you want to share your experience, you want to demonstrate your technical authority and your thought leadership, and you've solved these problems before. I know you want to do that, but in these conversations, you want to really listen carefully and attentively to what the leads are sharing with you. So if, for example, They tell you, yeah, man, back to the IT example, yeah, we were hacked last week, and then you jump into all this cybersecurity certifications that you have and all the problems you've solved in the past, and you start to talk about it, but the problem, the core problem is that maybe this customer, they have an IT person on staff, but this IT person is not doing their job, and they can't just bring you in because they have to deal with this IT person that they have, so you really have to understand, So let's ask these questions and take mental notes. And if you're— if you can take actual notes, that's great if it's a formal interview. But understand, listen very carefully and then engage. Always have that curious mind where you're digging a little bit deeper, you're acknowledging, summarizing what they're telling you, and then going back and say, yeah, that's what I heard. And that's what I— that's— yeah, that's— I've seen maybe other clients have similar issues, but keep digging. digging deeper. Now, the one thing to, to keep in mind, because some of you have asked before, like, who do I speak with and what do I, uh, what do I ask? Well, I have a list of questions in this live stream today, um, but, but how do I go about it? So I have this— let me share this with you— I have this what I call the 10+5 validation, 10+5 rule that I want you to go through, and this is especially relevant if you're about to start or if you started and you want to validate because you haven't done the validation of your idea, or if you've been doing this consulting for a long time and now you want to pivot and you're not sure about this new direction. So let me share this with you here. All right, so I have this 10+5 worksheet. So basically the 10 is about talking to 10 people, the 5 is the competitors. We're not talking about competitors today, but it is relevant to vetting the idea, so I'll cover it briefly. But basically you can go to this— I'll have the link to this, to this worksheet in the description. And you go to this first— well, I have some instructions here, but basically think of people that you have worked with, right? I have this blank sheet you can use right away, and then I have one with sample data. So, um, is it a former colleague? Is it a business associate? Is it a vendor, a supplier, someone you met, um, your ex-college roommate and now they're doing something similar to what you want to sell. So what I want you to capture is what you see here on the screen is do they have a need for what you offer? Okay? Do they have— or do they hire or contract for the service or do they do it in-house? And again, the sample data is around IT. I think everybody gets IT, so I made that sample data relevant to IT. If you've done— if the customer, the lead you're speaking with, they've hired other consultants in the past, what did, what did other consultants miss? Sometimes people, people like quality, of course. Some people like responsiveness, and the consultants that they've hired in the past were not responsive. They offered poor quality. Sometimes maybe they're too expensive. So understand what is it that the previous consultants missed, because that's, that's that will give you a signal on how you can differentiate your offer. And then any other notes, right? So I say 10+5, I think sufficient enough to validate the idea. If you're building something bigger and you're building something maybe in different markets and something more complex, you might want to speak to more than 10 people. I was speaking to a professor at Berkeley, and his students mostly are going to be building things around software and tech and platforms. So he says he has his students ask 100 people. So the homework I'm assigning to you is 10 people. So that's easier, right? So that's a worksheet you can use right away. And then I won't spend a lot of time on competitors, but it is very valuable in my mind to understand the market, also from other providers and what is it that they're providing. So I have this other spreadsheet. You can go and check out their website, their LinkedIn profile, their Facebook. If they have reviews on about their services on, on one of the review, review websites, check out what they do on X. They might be active on all these platforms, they might be active on just one. So check out, do a thorough review of social media platforms and see which platform this competitor is active on and collect, collect that information. So this is, this is really gold. If you research 5 competitors, you talk to 10 people, you should have a very good idea about the pain points and how these other competitors are solving this problem. And that will give you the data that you need to formulate your own offer and your own differentiators, your unique value proposition, your unique selling proposition. So let me go back to— there you go. All right, so, so that was, that was— we were, we were at point 3 about, um, listening and, and talking to people. So, so one thing That is really important is that, and I mentioned this earlier and I want to reiterate here, is that you might be thinking, hey, Feras, I'm, I'm an HR person, or I am a financial advisor, or I am someone technical, and I've never done any of this. I've never talked to people about sales, about marketing. This is just very difficult. How do you expect me to do that? Well, I can tell you that is probably 90% the opposite of, of what, what you see on YouTube and on social media. My job here is to help you get to your destination and make that journey easier. I never say it's easy. Entrepreneurship is not easy. Being your own boss is not easy. Being— reaching 7 figures and 8 figures and, and having this amazing company with amazing lifelong friends, that co-founders and, and your employees who will help you, your team that will help you reach to your goals, and, and having financial— and reaching financial independence and having the luxury to do other things in the future once you're established That is not, it's not an easy journey, no matter what other people tell you. I don't want to sugarcoat it. I don't want to, I don't want to give— it's bad service at this point, especially after all this gray hair and all the hard work we've done over the years. There's just no way. There's no— only on YouTube, only on YouTube and only on social media, you find people who are preaching that they have 3 businesses each. bringing in a million dollars a month and they spend 3 hours a week working. Like, my friend, there's no way. There's no way on earth that this is real unless you've built these businesses and now you have CEOs running these businesses and you are a board member, an advisor, and you meet once, once a week and you provide strategic advice and and you're working in a board member capacity, yes. But you're not building— it's a disservice for those who are just about to build a company, for those who want to get into entrepreneurship, and they think the journey is so easy because you follow a specific model or framework. I'm all for frameworks and models and worksheets and templates and systems and processes. I have them, right? But this journey is not— It's not a quick, quick thing. It takes time. It took me 7, 8 years to reach to 7 figures. Now, the second— for the second consulting company that we built, it took me 4 years, 3 and a half years, 4 years to get to, to 7 figures. So we cut that time in half. And now, after all the, all the years and the experience and, and working with all, um, all the amazing people, the founders and the the entrepreneurs who reach out and people in our community, we can get these 7 figures faster, but not fast, not easy. It's just a lot of work. So I want you, I want you to pursue entrepreneurship. I think it's very rewarding, but it's not for everybody. And it's, as I, as I always say, it's 5 times harder than most people think it is. So if— went on a tangent there— but if you are Saying in your mind, you're saying, you know, this is very difficult. I can't talk to people. I've never done it. That is okay, my friend. You can go to a local Chamber of Commerce event. You can go to a small meetup. You can start practicing asking questions. If you want to have your own business, you have to get over this fear of talking to people about business and asking them for money. And initially in terms of vetting the idea, the topic for today's livestream, you're asking people to share their experiences, so you're not even yet asking them for money. So if you're thinking this is difficult, this is hard, you're not built that way, I can tell you that entrepreneurship is not for you, but that's the wrong answer, that's the wrong statement. The right statement is you can learn all of that, just like every other art or, or, or skill or hobby. Remember the first day you rode the bike. Remember the first day you jumped in the pool, or someone threw you in the pool, or you're learning how to swim. Remember the first time you were starting to, to drive. So, so It was very difficult. You were tense, you were stiff, you were fearing for your life. This is all natural, just part of the process. So luckily in business, you don't have to fear for your life if you follow— if you follow the— you don't have to follow my advice, but I always say follow and listen to the advice of those who have been to where you want to go. They've gone through a similar journey. It will not be the same exact journey as yours, but they've gone through a similar journey. So all of that to say, what I'm asking you to do today is to ask questions. So that requires you building that muscle to ask questions. And I have a lot of videos on how to do that, including a recent one on that, on sales for the non-salesy, non-sleazy way to approach sales. So you have to build that muscle, and then now that you've built that muscle, I don't want you to to waste your time asking the wrong questions, and that's why I have this live stream today because a lot of people ask the wrong questions. So back to our point. So we covered so far three points. The first one was stop asking. The first one was on stop asking people to judge your idea. Right? What is it that they think? The second point was on emphasizing on the past, not this imaginary future. And then the third one was on the one skill that you will always need as a consultant, and that's listening, right? Listening for pain, for urgency, for patterns. And then I shared with you the worksheet that you can use and to take notes after those conversations. And then we went off on a tangent. About this has been hard but learnable. Consulting is— and the steps to build a consulting business and learn how to sell and how to market and how to manage people, all of that is learnable. I had to learn from scratch. I had background. I have some background in account management and client interface after a sale took place, but I never had any sales background. So I think if I learned it, a lot of people can as well. So let me walk you through all this theory. Now let me talk to you about— let me walk you through an example. Let's say you are a management consultant or a leadership consultant, and you might hear from a friend of yours who is a CEO, or maybe he's a director, or he or she are a VP, and they say, our managers need training. No, I think great, you offer training, so I've got, I've got a deal. No, that is still very vague. So think of that, our managers need training. Think about that for a second. Now compare that to, we promoted 3 technical managers— sorry, we promoted 3 technical people and now they are in a management role. And 2 of them are struggling big time with difficult conversations. And then every week I get this complaint in HR. HR is getting pulled in every other week. And we're losing people because these amazing technical people have been promoted to managers and now they don't know how to manage people. They know how to manage code or whatever the case might be, but they don't know how to manage people. Now this is a real problem. I can compare all of that context with we need training, right? So the training they need is people who were technical and now they're managers, and those who don't have good people skills, they've never managed before, they don't know how to have awkward or difficult conversations. So, so now This is strong data. These are strong signals from potential buyers. And of course, there's urgency because these new managers are poorly managing people and people are leaving, and then HR is getting involved. So this is a real problem with severe business consequences, and then you can come in as the trusted advisor, as the consultant who can solve this problem. Okay? So that is on those first 3 points. Now the 4th point is compliments are not validation. And this is really, really important. If someone says, this is a great idea, Don't just take that compliment and them being polite and feel great and just go home and continue building. Of course, I don't want you to argue with them. If someone says this is a great idea, thank them. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's very kind of you. But do not stop there either. So, so this compliment and that you know, they're engaged with you in a conversation, use it as a doorway into a better question. So you can say something like this when someone says, hey, this is a great idea. Thank you. Where have you seen this problem show up recently? So that's start to, start to dig deeper. And remember the first, the point earlier, point number 3, about don't ask about the future, ask about the past. So where have you seen this problem show up recently? And then even a better one, who inside your company usually owns this? Because sometimes, especially in a larger, I would say medium-sized and larger companies, you might be talking to one stakeholder and then there are 3 or 4 or 5 or other, depending on the stats you read, there could be up to 10 or sometimes 20 other stakeholders, especially in B2B, large enterprise sales. So asking first, where have you seen this problem show up recently? And then who inside your company owns this? Because you need to find a way to get to this person who owns this problem. And then you can ask a follow-up question, what happens if this problem is not fixed? So now you're zooming in, you're focusing in on the problems, you're focusing in on business impact. It could be lost in productivity, it could be employee or client dissatisfaction, it could be ways to cost savings, uh, they're missing, the company's missing on, on some cost savings, or it could be lost opportunities to generate more revenue. So, so when you ask these questions and when you take that compliment, don't seek the compliment. It feels good to be to be wanted. It feels good when people praise us, but that's a weak signal from a business perspective. So take that compliment, thank the person for it, and then dig deeper to talk about the past, not the future, to talk more about the pain point, the issues, and then the impact of those issues on the problem and the urgency. The more urgent the issue is and the the results of this issue, the more of a serious impact they have on the business, the more likely the business owner or whoever owns this decision is going to be looking for someone to come and help them solve this problem. And that leads me to my 5th and the last and the final point for today, and that is on what to look for. So you want to look for commitment or some sort of next step or some advancement. Now I say this depending on where you are in the process. If you're still not selling, if you're just, I want you to sell and I want to sell very quickly, you know me about my approach on taking action, on confidence is built with stepping on the mat in martial arts or in life. You gotta knock on doors, you gotta be out there. That's how you build your confidence. Of course, some planning is required. Not 6 months of planning and 100 pages of a business plan. No, that is— you're overplanning, you're overthinking this. That's not going to help you build confidence or build a business. So if you're still in that, having said all of that, if you're still vetting the idea, then you're not pitching yet. You're just trying to collect data. You're collecting data. But let's say you've done that and now you're going to a networking event, to a meetup, to an industry conference, and you're in the happy hour talking to— or in the exhibit hall talking to people, and you start that, and you have— you've done your homework and you've listened to my videos on how to have an informal pitch and how to have your 10 and 20 and 30-second pitch ready, or this conversation starter ready. If you're there, you might be in a position to find the right lead and then start asking, not selling right away on the spot, but getting that rapport established and that trust established so you can have a second meeting. Or maybe you can— you impress this person enough that they, they will be— they will be willing to introduce you to a decision maker. Or maybe they— you impress them enough to give you permission to do a short diagnostic of whatever the case might be, whether it's IT, HR, automation, finance, whatever the case might be, whatever the service you offer. Typically there's a current status, there's the current situation, and some kind of audit. A lot of you out there selling consulting, you package one of your services to come in and do an audit. So establishing that rapport and that trust and you being an attentive listener and sharing a little bit about your services and your background, you might have established enough rapport and trust in those conversations where someone would be willing again to set up a second meeting for a more detailed discussion or maybe for a demo or maybe they can introduce you to someone else. Or again, they say, yeah, we'll be more than happy for you to take a look at our systems and do this mini audit. So that is, that's what you want to be looking for, that commitment or that advancement, that next step. Again, it's in a B2B sale, depending, business to consumer is different. Sometimes you can sort of sell on the spot, but in a business to business type consulting, typically There's a fair amount of steps between when you start a conversation and when you close a deal, and I have a full video, 20-minute video, on the sales funnel for consultants, and then how you go through after you acquire the lead, how you go through education and then evaluation and then negotiation and then closing the deal, so there are a lot of steps to it, so the goal of every Part of the sales process is to get to the next step. And in this case, the next step could be, again, a demo, a second meeting, an introduction, or, hey, yeah, I'm more than happy to give you access to our system, and then you can come in and do a mini audit. And maybe we have to both sign an MNDA, mutual non-disclosure agreement, so that you can have access to our system. So if someone is giving you these next steps or they're open to these smaller commitments, you want to take them right away and you want to act on those. But if someone gives you none of these, they may like you and give you all these compliments, but they're not yet showing buying behavior. So I gave you some examples of those buying behavior, but This is part of sales that is more on the art side than the science part. And in sales, as I always say, there's the science and the steps and the tactics, and then, and you can learn those fairly quickly. And then the art of sales, you really have to do the reps. So I gave you some examples of buying behaviors. And if you go into one of my playlists on the YouTube channel, I have a lot of those. But it does take a little bit of time for you to really identify those buying signals. It'll be second nature after a while because if you've talked to 100 people or 200 people after a few years of doing business, you've probably seen 95% of all the situations, so you'll be able to pick up that thread very quickly and build on it and then show how you can help the customer. So those examples I mentioned earlier are good signals, but if you're not getting any of these signals, then again, the buyer is not showing a buying behavior. Maybe they're not a buyer. So if you hear something like, sounds interesting, weak signal. If you hear something— we dealt with this issue last quarter or last month. It's a better signal. Now, can you talk to my partner or my department lead on this specific issue that we are facing last week? Now that's a very strong signal. So those are the things to look for. Now, of course, a better signal, the best signal would be, what would it cost us to hire you and help us solve this? Because we really need this issue fixed. So again, these are just examples. As you speak with people, as you interact, as you are out there networking and meeting others, and I'm a big proponent of you being out there, whether you started a business or, um, or like the, the person who left us a comment earlier, um, they're not yet there, they're not ready to take the leap yet, uh, but if, if you're in, in that phase, uh, it's really important to start building those muscles of, of asking questions and meeting people, meeting people. And there's so many ways to meet people. You can do things online, you can watch YouTube videos, you can watch this video and hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. I'd appreciate it, but that's not a substitute, um, of you going out there and connecting with people. It's true. Now, if you happen to live in a small town, you don't have, or maybe you are in a different country and you're targeting another market, you can't really be physically in person, you can't be physically at a place where you can speak and connect with your potential buyers, obviously find alternatives, do a lot of research, read, and then do some virtual networking, attend events. There are a lot of virtual conferences and they have chat rooms with other people. You want to, you can join, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, you can— in the old days, I used to be part of this Yahoo group where people were talking about online marketing when we got into online marketing and analytics, and I would go and answer questions for people, and over time, I was sort of the go-to person for these issues around analytics and how to measure website traffic, and that led to a lot of things including leads and business and then speaking opportunities. So, so the idea here, my question here, that sort of the prerequisite to all of this is that you want to build the muscle of being out there and, and talking to people and interacting with potential buyers. And then I want you to use the content that we use today to ask the right questions. Now that you're there, now that you have mustered the courage to be in front of potential buyers, I want you to be asking the right questions. So that is— before we end today, actually, I have, I have some questions that we got from— I received from the community. And, and for those of you who are watching live again, or listening live, if— don't hesitate to drop a comment with a question that you have about validating your idea or about business in general. I'll be more than happy to address it. I have time. And then for those of you who are watching or listening later, leave me a comment @StartupWithFeras on YouTube, and I will address the question that you have. So let me go over these few questions that we got. How do I validate my idea without sounding like I am selling? So how do I validate the idea without sounding like I am selling? Well, don't sell if you're still in that— again, like I said earlier, depending on the phase of the business you're in, if you're just not really ready to sell, you're just thinking about this business idea, I want to be an HR consultant, I want to be in AI workflow automation, I want to go into these small and mid-sized businesses and help them do what the big companies, I want to do what KPMG, what PwC, what Deloitte, what Accenture is doing for the enterprise, I want to do the same thing for at a different scale for small businesses. That could be a very, very valuable offer. Of course, vet it. Don't just take my word for it. But how do you validate your idea without sounding like you're selling? If you're not— if then. So if you're not ready to sell yet, then you're not selling. So you tell them, I don't have anything to sell. To kind of, don't let, you know, help them drop their guards because you're really not selling. You don't have anything to offer. So if you're in that position, now, if you are ready to sell and you have an offer and you have a package and you know the milestones and the cost and all that, then you really have to decide. You can't say I'm not selling and then you start to pitch, you lose credibility. So I think going, kind of going into these conversations depends on, again, what phase of the business you're in, but you're either selling or not selling, so if you are selling, you cannot say, I'm just here to collect data, I'm here just to interview you, and then somehow, yeah, I'll follow up with you with a proposal, or you start saying, yeah, well, I offer a service. You have to be very careful there, so now you can start, let's say you meet someone, Let's say this was an informal setting, and I have a video on— actually, it was very well received by the community— on short video, 4-minute video on informal and formal pitching and selling. So if you're at an informal situation, so let's say you're at the gym, or let's say you're at a business event, or even at a social event, and hey, you met an old friend or someone, friend of a friend, and be like, hey, how's it going? What are you busy with today? What are you working on? and they say, I just started a consulting company and here's— and hey, by the way, yeah, especially if it sounds like they have— they're in a domain or in a space or they can be potential customers, if you get that signal from them, you can start asking some questions and you're not selling at that point. Remember, you're getting the agreement, the approval to have a second meeting, a follow-up. So you can tell them, yeah, yeah, that's what I do, and I have some— we've done some amazing, amazing work with clients like you. I'll be more than happy to chat with you later when, you know, just, just connect on LinkedIn and I'll follow up. That could be the end of it, right? So decide if you're selling or if you're not selling, and then proceed, um, as follows, uh, proceed accordingly. Now this is the other question I got. Let's see. How many conversations are enough? I don't want to say the more the merrier because there's a point of diminishing return, so I have in my framework for consulting business, not for product or software, for product and software and platform, that's different, for consulting and a specific consulting, especially if you define a specific vertical, healthcare, finance, hospitality, and if you've defined the size of the business as well, small and mid-sized business, or even in a consumer product, if you're doing a consumer service like B2C, business to consumer, if you've defined your target audience well enough, 10 conversations will give you very, very strong signals. Again, 10 conversations with potential customers and then 5 5 competitors, research 5 competitors. So, um, I mean, it could be 8, it could be 12, it could be 15, but I don't think you need to speak to 100 people. If you want to offer tax services, you're a CPA, you want to offer tax services to those who sell or have businesses overseas, and they sell overseas and they're impacted by different tax laws than and maybe just a regular business here. Yeah, you don't need to talk to 100 of those in my mind. So I would say again, 10+5 is sufficient, but if it's highly specialized or sometimes if it is— if the service you're offering is a bit more complex and there's a long sales cycle and it requires— there's a side to it that requires maybe specific technology, maybe a bit— a few more conversations, but I would start with 10 plus 5. That will get you really, really good grounding and solid data to build from. The next question, should I validate before I build my website? That's a good question, and of course you can also— it's good to have a professional website. It's not really too fancy. It has to be professional. Home, About Us, Services, Contact Us, right? Very professional. And it could be a LinkedIn profile that you update. It could be if you're active on a specific social media channel, make sure that is, that is relevant to your audience, the content you produce, the description, the links, all that, right? So the question though, should I validate before I build my website or my social presence? Um, that's a good question. It depends. Consultants, we say it depends a lot. So it depends on where you are in the process. I think setting up your LLC, your business, or your S corps, setting up— because I get the same question. Should I start? Should I incorporate? Should I start a legal entity before I validate the idea? I start a business? Should I design a logo? There's all these questions that you can really do before or after taking the leap or before committing to the business. The reason I like the approach of doing all the above, starting the S corp or the LLC, the legal entity, and having a logo and having a business name and building a website, all of that, is because all of these are things that you need, and the more you have of those behind you, I think it adds to that commitment that, you know, I've taken these steps. Now, I don't want you to spend a month working on a website or 3 months interviewing attorneys on how to set up a basic standard LLC or an S corp entity. So, so I want you to actually spend as little time as you need, as, as, um, as little time as possible to have a professional logo and a professional website and, and do some of that basic foundational, you know, the legal entity and all that. I want you to do that, but I want you to spend most of your time, 95% of your time, out there validating if you haven't done the validation, right? So, so keep that in mind. So yes, I would say I'm in favor of doing these small steps, important steps but small steps, because it, it helps build that commitment, that momentum that I'm serious about starting and growing a business. All right, we have, um, Stephen. All right, uh, thank you for being here again, appreciate it. I will repeat, um, attendee of these live streams and participants. What should the mindset shift be moving from solo consulting to getting employees? Good question, Stephen. So, so what should be the mindset shift, um, or what should the mindset shift be moving from solo consulting to getting employees? Solo— there's nothing wrong with being solo. So I, I always start with this: there's nothing wrong at all with being solo, and you can be— you can generate a healthy revenue stream and you can generate a healthy margin and you don't have to worry about employees and growth and payroll and all that jazz. You still need an accountant and a lawyer and all that, but, but, but there's nothing wrong with solo. The only thing you have to be aware that in 99.99% of the time you are going to reach a cap in terms of revenue, in terms of growth. No matter how efficient you are, no matter what systems and frameworks you use, you will run out of times. You'll run out of hours to to grow that business. So so if you're content and if your goals are met with being a solo entrepreneur, solopreneur, do it. Stay with it. No issue at all. On the other hand, if you really want to grow the revenue, the profit, the the potential to in the future have a very, very profitable business and package it and sell it, then, then just that path is completely different than, than the solopreneurship path. Because at one point, you as a business owner, you have to change the mindset from me doing everything myself because I'm the best person who can do it and and I don't trust anyone else. You have to kind of let go of certain things. And I think, yeah, a few weeks ago I had a whole livestream on delegation and on the, actually the, I have a worksheet called the Founder Focus Optimizer that will definitely highlight and help you, it'll help you identify what you can delegate safely. So it is really that mindset of, do I want this or that? That's a big decision. Solopreneur, Or I want to have a growth path and I want to maybe get a co-founder, and so it's just a whole different discussion, and might need to borrow money to grow the business and invest more, so it's a completely different discussion, but the mindset is, that's the first, I think, question to ask, and to answer in your own mind, and talk to a few people, I'd say talk to people who went that solopreneur path, and then talk to others who built companies, And, and, you know, my job, my job is to not to tell you— not just talking to you, Stephen, you know, to, to, to people who ask this question— is not to tell you what to do. It's my job, I think, is to help you understand what's involved in each path and the level of commitment, the level of sacrifice, the resources, um, the type of energy that, that the things that is required to help you, that are needed to really grow a sustainable, profitable business that will hit 6 figures, then will hit half a million, then will hit a million, and then beyond, right? Depending on the resources you have and ambition and other factors, sometimes external factors beyond your control. So long answer to your question. And the last question I had from the community, How do I ask about budget without making it awkward? That's a good question. That's part of the art of sale, not the science of sale. Yeah, the science of sale, yeah, learn the science of sale and learn how to ask about the client's budget. I think a lot of people actually, in my experience, I don't know, 30% or so would offer, would just on their own willingly without you asking, they'll share. I think in my experience, most people don't share. So there are different ways to do it. And that probably, that can do an entire livestream on that one. But remember, in a B2B environment, the sales cycle is longer. If you're working with mid-sized businesses, with small businesses, the sales cycle is anywhere from 2 weeks to— 2 months. 6 to 8 weeks, and if you're selling to the enterprise, the sales cycle is anywhere from 3 months to 9 months. This is my experience from many, many other resources, including HubSpot and others, and if you're selling to the government and sometimes like Fortune 50, like we did at one point, the sales cycle could be more than a year because they start with an RFI, an RFQ, request for information, request for a quote, request for proposal, they have an existing consultant, they have an incumbent and you'll be the replacement, so if you are working in a B2B environment with a longer sales cycle, my point here is that you'll have a lot of points of interaction with the customer, so in those points of interaction, whether it's an in-person meeting or you have a Zoom call and you're speaking with your champion or maybe other stakeholders, You can start assessing what is it that they're doing today? Who is it that they're working with? So if they mention the name of the competitors, you can go and check the competitor's website and see if there's any information on how much they charge. So that would be one signal. You can also, the way I would usually ask, like, do you have a budget for that for next year? Again, some people say, ah, we're not sure yet, or yeah, we do, and some people will just offer They will tell you what that number is. And then another approach, and again, like I said, I can spend the whole time, a whole hour on this, but to keep it brief, another way I would say, I like that approach a lot. After I've done a bit of research about the customer and what they've done and the other, the types of consultants that they've hired, whatever I can find online or I can ask today, obviously you can ask AI and get all that information. I like this idea of giving a Pretty, not a narrow, a wide range in terms of services and in terms of budgets. So I'd say when we started selling analytics, this is I think 2009 or so after we became Google certified, and that brought us Fortune 1000, later brought us Fortune 500, I wasn't sure how much to charge. We used to charge $500 a month for the quarter for, for a customer, and now I'm in the major league, major league. So, so, um, we started saying, yeah, our audits are anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 because I wasn't sure. So we would go in and do a quick audit— not quick, we would do an audit, quicker audit but not an extensive audit, um, on, on a client's website or mobile app and understand how messy their data is because we came in and helped them collect better data so that they can have better insights. So the approach that worked well for me, say like anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000. I didn't say $1,000 to $20,000. That would be too crazy of a range, too wide of a range. So, and a lot of people say, yeah, that's, they just give you that signal. Okay. I mean, you can, if it's in person or on Zoom, you can You can also see their body language and see how they're reacting to this, but some of them would just say, yeah, somewhere in between would work for us, and later we brought this to between $2,500 and $7,500 for actually about a year or so, and we were selling smack in the middle. We were selling at $5,000, and then later as we got better at what we did and we started to have larger clients and our implementation got much more sophisticated, we started to sell these audits at $25,000. So, and then even then I would give a range. I would say from $20,000 to $50,000, right? So that range approach, me proactively sharing a range, that worked out really well for us. Now that I did that later, as I learned more about the industry, as I learned more about competitors, as I learned more about Not— you're typically pricing not about how much it costs you or the time, it's about the value you offer to customers, right? So that's just a general pricing mindset. So, so initially, for those of you who are— I'll wrap up with this. If you get one thing out of this, um, live stream, I'm happy. If you're just starting out, or if you've started and you're struggling, don't worry about pricing. I want you to build the sales muscle. So initially, the first 2, 3, 4, 5 projects, it's okay if you break even. It's okay if you lose some money on these first products. These are— you can chalk those up to learning, to training. Take care of the customer, bend over backwards to make them happy, to make them delighted. They'll be— they'll sing your praises, they'll send you referrals, they'll be good references for you, they'll help you write a case study about the problem that you've solved and how amazing of a consultant you are. So initially, if you're just starting out, just go out and sell. Practice that muscle and, and get that whole loop from marketing to selling to delivering to, to close to, to maybe retaining the customer and selling some sort of monthly service. That's what's important initially. But of course You can't live in that mode forever. You'll run out of business. You'll burn out or lose all the money that you have saved for this business, and then you'll close shop. That's not the idea. But for the first few clients, don't worry about pricing. Go out and sell. And then with that, you can come back, and now that you have, you know, a few deliverables under your belt and you've got these testimonials, and you'll feel better about it, and you can you can upsell from there. You can upsell to the same customers, but you can also go and more confidently sell to new clients at a much higher price point. That's it. And for those of you, I do have actually one thing I forgot to share. Where was it? Right here. Yeah. Let me just go back. So in addition to this 10+5 worksheet that I have, there's also a relatively recent video I launched on How to Know If Your Business Idea Will Succeed. This is about a 10-step framework for— I was bashing frameworks earlier, but I'm not saying this framework will make you millions overnight. I'm not saying that, but this is a great— it's a very thorough video. I think it's one of those— yeah, it was about 15 minutes here with all these validation points. Problem and solution, niching down, a lot, a lot of things from the trenches, what I learned over the years. So, so check out this video and also this accompanying worksheet. I'll make all this one and the 10+5 available in the description of, of this live stream so you can make your own copy. And then leave me a comment if you have any question about, about anything to do with entrepreneurship. and starting a business, growing a business, taking the leap, hiring, you name it, I am here for you. Thank you so much, and we will see you next time, Tuesdays at noon Pacific, 3 PM Eastern. I cover a topic and then answer the questions we get from the community and answer live questions. So, um, be there. And if you're liking this content, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, share it with others. That would be much appreciated. Thank you so much. Thank you.