Your Biz Questions, My Live Answers

Hey, welcome to Startup with Feras. Black Belt here. So we are live and we are answering your questions.

Thank you for tuning in.

You've got questions, we've got answers. So I've dedicated this episode to answer the questions we got from the community. And also, if you are joining us live or listening on any of the platforms, just drop in a question and we will answer it. For you. And if we don't get to this, to answer the questions today, I'll make sure we get you the answers that you're looking for. So some of you are thinking of starting a business, some of you started and they're struggling, and some of you want to scale the business. A lot of the content I produce on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on these, on this podcast and the live streams is, is focused on, on 3 things. One, I would say the mindset. Second, about the skills that you need. And under skills, there are the hard skills and then the soft skills. And a lot of times when we start a business and we start to generate revenue, we get stuck. Some of us reach $50,000 a year, maybe $100,000 a year, and then we can't grow and we can't scale. And a lot of the questions we get— I get about, about scaling failing. Now, some is about— some, some of the questions are about how do I start, where do I start.

So I'm going to get to that.

I'm going to balance this, uh, the questions between these, uh, 2 categories: one on starting a business and one on, for those of you who started, the struggles that they're going through.

All right, so let's dive in.

And before we, before we dive in, uh, just making sure we have a good— here, tech, tech is working. Uh, But also, I'd love to hear from you. As always, let me know about, about your successes, small and big. I'd love to hear from you. And also, we do, we do, we have this episode, this live stream, every Thursday at 3 PM Pacific, 6 PM Eastern. I typically cover a topic to do with entrepreneurship and business, and then we answer questions that come to us from the community. So don't hesitate to follow us on LinkedIn, on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, um, X, whichever platform that you, uh, you, you consume content, follow us. And if you like this content, click, click like. But more importantly, I really, really would love to hear from you on what is it that you're going through, good and bad. Um, it's hard. Entrepreneurship is hard, as, as I always say. Entrepreneurship is 5 times harder than most of us think. We don't get ready for it. There's so much to learn, so many issues to face. External factors outside of our control hit us. So it's, it's good to, to bounce off ideas and check, check with those who have been where you want to go and ask, ask them for, for feedback. And I'm here available to help you and support you on your journey. Good stuff. Let's jump right in. So the first question, it's here. Make sure it's on the screen for those of you watching on how and where to start a business. So how and where to start a business? Starting a business, at least the starting part. Is not as difficult as most people think it is, and also it's not a walk in the park either. So the question is about how and where. So let's talk about the how. How to start a business— the essence of it is, of any business, is that you as a founder, as a business owner, you have some skills, you have something that you want to turn into a business, you want to turn that's something that you have, something of value, of perceived value. You want to turn it into something that strangers will pay you money for. So if you are really good in numbers and Excel sheets, and you're good with, with, with maybe reading guidelines and, and, and, and regulations, maybe that's something going into accounting and bookkeeping, later becoming a CPA, maybe later becoming CFO. Right? If you're good with people and you understand people's issues, maybe you want to go into HR consulting. Or if you're technical and maybe you experienced a layoff and you're really good in DevOps, or maybe you're good in development, or maybe in product design, or maybe in graphic design— so whatever skills, hard skills that you have today, and assuming there is a market someone is interested in buying this, the service. This is part of the how. This is how you go about vetting an idea to make sure it's a solid idea that can turn into a sustainable business. So the how part is, I think it all starts with you identifying a problem, something out there, some pain points that people have, or maybe some aspirations that people have, and you can fulfill— help them fulfill those aspirations can help them address— clients address their pain points, and you can solve a problem. So that is the how. It all starts, I think, with identifying your own skills, the hard skills. Of course, the soft skills are important, the active listening, maybe being able to network and meet people. And those are muscles that you can develop over time. But you have to assess where you are in terms of soft skills and maybe fill in some gaps, especially around sales and marketing, because most founders, 70% actually, they come into business, they start a business, and they don't have a background in sales and marketing. So a lot of the soft skills that you have to develop as a business owner have to do with sales and marketing and also with managing people, working with people, Again, those, even if you don't have them today, it's important to assess. And we have, we have actually a framework for this. We can, you can share the link in the, in this, in the description, showing for you, showing you examples of how you define, identify your, your hard skills, your soft skills. And then, and then the other thing here is, is the network, your, your close network, your family, your friends, your your ex-colleagues, ex-roommates, ex-classmates, your gym buddies, the people you meet at the religious institution you go to. This network is going to be really helpful in you starting your business, and you need a lot of support. And a lot of people supported us as we were getting established.

So those are the hows.

It's really about vetting the idea, assessing your your skills, knowing what you're not good at and you need to maybe learn initially. Potentially you can hire for some of these areas that you're not strong at. And then, and then you go out and start telling people about— telling, telling the world about what you do and why they should buy from you.

So this is the how. In terms of the where, it's, it really depends where, like, where you are in, in life, where geographically. I mean, it depends if you're—

if Obviously, if you're going after a local market and you offer a local service, you have to be there. But these days, a lot of the services you can offer, um, you can do online. You can, you can have a virtual team, you know, yourself can be in Nebraska and sell to someone in Oklahoma, or you can be in the Bay Area here and offer services to the East Coast. So where it really depends on, uh, on the location, in terms of location, unless you're offering something very localized and you have to be there in person. And these days, where to start, it's not as, as important as it used to be.

So that's on where and on how and where to start a business.

And, and then the, the legal part, a lot of people get stuck on, you know, should I do an LLC, should I do a C corp, an S corp? It— that's easy. Once the hard part, because you can, you can go use one of the legal services like LegalZoom or one of these other ones, or you can hire— I always advise that you work with an attorney. Find an attorney who will give you a break on their rate, um, and help you get your legal entity established. You can do— you can establish your own legal entity online, but I think it's important to have a discussion with an accountant and also with an attorney. This way you know— I mean, you know the implications, you know the different structures you can have your business. So So that legal step to actually establish the business, that's really easy. That's almost mechanical. But where most people, a lot of startups, a lot of new businesses fail because they don't do enough time vetting their business idea. They don't do enough time market research, you know, and then they run out of money. They don't get the demand. They don't find the demand in the market. that leads to failure.

So that's on, on how and where to start a business. If you have any specific follow-up question on that, especially on the where—

I'm not sure what that where meant in your question— let me know. Happy to answer it further. Let's go to the next question here. One year into it and barely making it, what to do next? So this gentleman or this lady, they've been in business for a year and they're barely making it. What to do next? Well, I need more details. And if you happen to be listening online here, let us know, um, what, what is barely making it mean? What does that mean? Are you like not making a whole lot of money? Are you— your goal is to get to $100,000 and you are at $10,000? or your goal at to get $100,000 in revenue and you are at $90,000.

So I need to know more details.

But in general, from a business assessment perspective, if I were to sit down with you and review your business, I would start to look at what were your goals. Let's say, let's say you're looking at 2020, last year, 2024, and you're looking at your performance as a business that year. So let's take, let's take a look. What were the goals for that year in terms of revenue? In terms of maybe number of clients, in terms of getting the name out to your network and to your target audience, the people that you want to sell to.

So I would always—

I'd want to start at what are, what were, or if you're looking for this coming year, what are the goals that you want to establish and assess what did not go well. Assess also what went well. You want to celebrate.

As an entrepreneur, it's already hard, it's already difficult.

issues with clients, with employees, lose a deal. So you want to also celebrate successes. So assess what went really well last year, and you want to double down on that and do more of. And then also do an honest, objective assessment on things that did not go well. So start with the revenue. I'm, I'm off by 30%. Okay, what happened? Did I not get leads? Or maybe I got leads but they were not qualified. Or maybe I got qualified leads but the bottleneck is in turning these leads into customers. So, so you have to, you have to sort of look at it. You know, I have— we have an entire video on the sales funnel, we have one on the marketing funnel. So I know things in life are not linear and, and, and there's no just straight funnel that people buy from. But understand, I think from a sales analysis perspective, from a sales process perspective, take a look at you know, for me to get $100,000 in revenue, I need to get maybe 20 clients. Did I get— and to get 20 clients, I need maybe 100 leads. So put those numbers— those were the planned numbers— and in the next column, put the actual, the actuals, and see where the gap is. So maybe I didn't do enough marketing, maybe I didn't do enough— I just need to polish my pitching skills and my listening skills. Or maybe, you know, I did all of that and I got leads and I got customers, but I lost some of the customers. So maybe I have an issue in retention or maybe in delivering the service.

So if you're not making it after 1 year and you've had some traction—

I mean, you said you barely— you are barely making it, so I'm assuming there was some traction, there was some success. So don't beat yourself too hard. It's, it's, it's just part of the process. We didn't make it the last quarter or the last year. What can I do differently? Now, insanity is doing the same thing and then expecting different results. So you have to look at, at what happened in the last quarter, the last 2 quarters, last year, and, and do this, this quick analysis that I just walked you through, and then make certain behavioral changes or business and process changes so that you can avoid pitfalls that you, that you encountered last year. And one other thing, it could be, it could be the leads and the, the funnel and, and the revenue is all good, but maybe your expenses are too high. Maybe you, you overhire, or maybe you overspent on marketing, or maybe you went to a lot of these conferences and maybe only one out of the 5 that you went to, one turned out to be a good conference with leads and, and establishing connections with your network.

So assess also expenses. And if you are maybe not putting the time, this is the last thing I would say on this question here. Are you burnt out? Are you maybe apathy is developing?

You're doing a lot of work and you're not seeing the result. Maybe you're getting discouraged. Maybe you haven't overcome the fear of talking to strangers about your business. So assess that as well. You know, I want you to work hard if you want to succeed, if you want to grow a business to 7 and 8 figures, it doesn't come easy. You have to put a lot of time and effort, and you have to be ready mentally, psychologically, even, even in your environment with the people maybe that you support and people are around you. You have to be ready to put the time and effort. So if you have, you have some really aggressive goals and you're falling short, maybe it is, maybe they're too aggressive for that period because you had other obligations, or maybe they're fine and you just, you just did not put the time. And sometimes you have the time to put, sometimes you don't, depending on what's going on in your life. But also examine your own mindset and the time and the energy that you are investing in, in, in this business. Okay, good. Let's move on to the next question. Should, uh, should you niche—

should I niche down or go broad?

Should you niche down or go broad? A great book I read last year was Niching Up. What was his name? Oh my goodness, um, a really good book.

Uh, not—

he's a—

he's a— he's an—

he provides search engine optimization services to attorneys, and then within a specific geography, he goes after several geographies sort of one at a time, and then he goes into personal injury attorneys. So very, very niche And he thought the book is really good. So if you're, if you're looking for a resource on niching down or niching up, that was a pretty cool title, uh, check out that, um, I think, was it David, David Dwyer? I'll double-check. But, but Niching Up, that's the name of the book. But as a quick answer here, when you start a business, I don't want you to be too narrow, too, too niche, and I don't want you to go very broad. So, so you can start— because initially when you're starting a business, especially if you don't have a background in sales and marketing, you know, you're not sure what's going to stick. So you're going to try different things, maybe in different— maybe in the healthcare vertical, maybe the next pitch will be in a lead you get in finance, another way you get in hospitality. So you can't be very choosy early on because I want you to be out there pitching, talking to leads, and, and, and as you're hoping to close a deal, you're also fine-tuning your skills, right? So, and then when you start to deliver a project, maybe you, maybe you're taking on something very, very complex and you're positioning yourself as this subject matter expert in international accounting and, and you don't have a whole lot of background in that. So maybe that's not something that you want to do. So I would say initially, um, do go over this this exercise on how to define your target audience. And we have, we have content on this. You can check, check out our YouTube channel on defining your target audience. So this way you're not too broad. And then, and then don't, don't get too stuck in one vertical. Don't get too stuck in, um, maybe in, in one company size unless you have a, a significant number of years of experience in, in a very, very niche area. I would say, I would say just go out and don't be too broad. Once you define your target audience, go out and, and, and see what works for you. And then over time, you might niche down on— maybe, maybe initially you started thinking of offering 5 services, and after that initial phase of maybe 3 to 4 months and you have a few clients on your hand, maybe you decide to go instead of 5 services, you do only 2.

So that's one way of of niching down.

Maybe initially you were working with 5 or 6 or 7 or any industry that comes your way, and now you want to focus on maybe, maybe on healthcare or maybe on, um, on the hospitality. I remember for whatever reason when we were doing websites in one of our businesses, we got a bunch of dentists to be our clients, and then, and then naturally we knew a lot about all the marketing needs of a dentist, so it was easier for us to go and sell to dentists, right? So that was something we specialized in, and then we sort of outgrew that vertical, and then we started to do other things. But sometimes it's just lucky, you ended up getting 3 or 4 leads from a specific industry and become much more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of that industry. That helps in sales and marketing, also in delivery.

So that is, My quick thought on niching down or staying or going broad.

Let's move on to the next question.

I know we can go a lot, you know, go deeper on a lot of these, but I want to make sure we get to a lot of the questions, to all the questions that we got so far.

And again, if you have a comment on what we're discussing here, or if you have your own experience that is different from what I shared, I'd love to hear from you and hear your perspective. So don't hesitate to reach out at all. And let me just do— I think I had a bit of a— my mic, right? Let me just double-check my setting on my mic, get a better audio here. I think we are good.

So the next question is on Struggling to land high-value clients. So it sounds like you have a business, you have clients, but your intention or your plan is to land high-value clients. So high-value clients in terms of potential, they could be high margins, high revenue, maybe high revenue with a little profit now, but they're strategic for you because you can upsell them in the future. So high-value clients, I'm glad you're thinking about that. I'm actually— a lot of us, we get busy in, in terms of delivering the service and selling and repeat what we're doing. We don't pause to think about our revenue, uh, the, the average, the average size of a maybe of a deal, uh, the, the typical profit on, on a project. We sometimes we don't think about that. So, so I'm glad you're thinking about how to get better high-value clients. So I would say, go where the fish are. So if you've been successful in selling to, let's say, the SMB, the small and mid-sized businesses, and you have a good track record and you have— you're proficient at what you do and you're getting maybe closer to mastery and you really, you know, your craft really well, it's where are these these high-value clients that I want to attract. Maybe I've been going to local conferences and I've been going to maybe local networking events and maybe the Chamber of Commerce, and that's great, and maybe now I need to go to regional conferences or maybe national conferences. Maybe I want to go and have an exhibit in one of those conferences. So I would say a general guideline is to, to know the target audience in your mind, what makes, what makes a client a high-value client, and then go out and find them without neglecting what got you to where you are today. So you have to be careful. So maybe you offer a new service, or maybe you have a new packaging, or maybe you offer, uh, maybe you have, um, We used to, in one of the companies, we had white glove service for a number of clients and we had more of the price-sensitive clients, we had a different service line for them, and we would actually have that prominently displayed on the website and also when we would get leads, our salespeople would quickly sort of vet the lead and say like we have We have these 2 different levels of services. You want the white glove, we had some fancy names for that, premium service, or you want the standard, and here's what you get in both. So identify in your mind what the high-value clients are and then go after them. One thing that also I want to remind you of that don't over— don't skip over or neglect or Not dig in your existing client base. There are a lot of gems, there are a lot of gold in the existing client base. This is maybe not initially, initially you might only have a few clients, but let's say a year into it, you have 10, 15, 20 clients, a few of them might be in need of adjacent services, or maybe they need more support, or maybe they're looking for something that you can help with. So I remember we had a client who started with us, with $500 a month of, of a retainer for web, web maintenance services. And then by the time they stayed with us for, for many years, and by the time I think we, we grew and became at the time Google certified and we were getting Fortune, Fortune 50, uh, the retainer with that same client was $5,000 a month plus some other projects we would do along the way, you know, like a major, major project, like a one-off project. So take a look into— take a look at your own existing, your current existing database of clients, and identify some who can— that potentially you can upsell to. You can expand your service offering, you can deepen the relationship, you can provide maybe more support, uh, to existing clients. So don't always look for new clients. You, you sort of You know, I learned this one time, one saying. They say land and expand. So land clients and see if you can expand and offer more services, if that works in your business model. If it doesn't, obviously you have to get new clients. But yeah, those are some ideas I hope you'll find useful. Let's see what else. The next question, not sure how to stand out in a crowded market. Not sure How to stand out in a crowded market? Let's see, how do you stand out? Well, a bit of research I think would help. If you talk, I have the 10+5 rule that I always recommend founders and business owners use. Take a look at, talk to 10 of your existing clients or better, talk to 10 potential clients and understand what their needs are, what their pain points are, what is it that they're not getting from other service providers, right? So maybe they're not happy with the level of service, maybe they're not happy with the quality, maybe they're not happy with the price, maybe they're not happy with the response time, right? So there could be customers these days, customers are a bit spoiled in a good way, they, you know, they have options, we all have options today. So talk to 10 potential clients and then research the heck out of 5 competitors. I think if you do this exercise, what I call the 10+5— 10 potential clients and then 5 competitors— this exercise, and do it over maybe a week or two, span of a week or two, and then take everything you got, you got out of that, and I'm almost certain, I'm almost 100% certain, you'll find something that is missing in the marketplace. People are, are looking for something that the competitors are not doing and that you can do better. Or maybe you plan, you say, you know what, I heard, you know, 8 out of the 10 people we spoke with, they're not— they're looking for help, they're looking for support, and it takes a week for these, for these service providers to deliver the service. I can do it in 3 days. That is an advantage. And, and then once you, once you identified Once you've identified your advantage, your competitive advantage, then you can start talking about it. You can start showing evidence that you can do that with case studies and testimonials. You can, in your pitch on your website, make that very, very visible because now you compete on that thing that is an advantage for you. Again, delivery timeframe, price, whatever the case might be. So that's one way to stand out. The other way is Or not the other way, it is actually something in addition to what I said earlier. Look at certifications. Look at can you participate in maybe you have your association of service providers in your industry and become a top one percent or maybe a top five percent initially, maybe a top ten percent. So when you speak with clients, say I'm in the top ten percent of accountants in Texas. I'm in the top one percent. 1% of financial advisors in Montana. I am such and such, so I won this graphic design award. I was the such and such of the month or of the year. So find ways that will make you different and give you, put you in a better light. So again, a lot of ways to differentiate. I would say the core, in terms of the core of the business, how is it that you can deliver your consulting, your services faster or You can do it more economically, or maybe you charge higher, but you differentiate on the white glove service, you know, your level, the depth of your knowledge, the years of experience and know-how you bring to a discussion. All of those are, I think, core to you standing out. And then there are the other things that will help you more on the speaking, you know, if you're a speaker in your industry, if you're a blogger, if you publish frequently and consistently on social media, you, you know, you win awards, you get those— the necessary certificates in your industry. All those are ways to— for you to differentiate and stand out. Good, good. Moving on to— we have a few more questions.

Here's one.

So this is from a person who owns a construction company that specializes in exteriors, And they also, they have another electrical business and they're 1 year into this business and things are getting big. Congratulations. And I started this with the goal to sell the business in 5 years. How do I scale? So they have an established business in construction and they specialize in exteriors and they've been at it for a while and things are getting big. So that's a sign of growth, of success. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, said, life is about growth. You grow or you die. So I am super delighted to hear that you have demonstrated growth and now you're looking for ways to scale. So, so one thing is, if you are serious about scaling any business, it can't be just you. You have to let go of certain things initially. So this is— it contradicts what I always tell What I always tell founders, year 1, I want you to learn everything because you have to learn sales and marketing and back office and payroll. Otherwise you can't discern how to hire someone, a qualified person to take this off of your plate. So initially, if you've heard me saying learn everything, yes, I want you to do that. At one point for you to scale, you have to find people, qualified people who will take things off your plate. And start with things that are back office, accounting, operations, anything to do with IT, anything you find yourself do in a mundane way and repeatedly, find helpers who will help you take care of these things. And then as your business grows, they'll also grow. There'll be new opportunities for them to do fun things as well. So this is more of a mindset that I need to start thinking of ways to offload things, you know, from, from my task list to someone else, someone competent who can do this for me. The second thing is, I would say, is systems and processes and SOPs. Uh, it's really important to have checklists even if you're a solopreneur. You'll forget if you want to— how do I onboard a new client? And we have an article on onboarding, by the way. Like, we Here's the things I should do. What do I do before I sign a deal? How do I run a marketing campaign? Like, what is it that I need to work with a graphic designer? So every, for every aspect of your business, identify a list, identify the tasks that are needed and then develop a checklist. And you can use an Asana or a Notion, or you can use a Basecamp, any of these systems, they're all good. I don't have any affiliation with any of them. Uh, we used in one of the businesses, we used ClickUp, um, uh, ClickUp, we use Asana, we use Notion. So they're all good tools. Notion requires a bit more, more of a setup than the rest of them, but systems and processes. And the importance of that is when you hire someone, you can point them to the systems and the processes. And it's not, you know, you don't have to sit down and go over things with them. So that's one thing. And then in the future, when you want to sell the business, trust me, if you don't have systems and processes and things that you've shown scale and how you pass on the knowledge, you'll get a fraction of the value of what your business can get. So from a long-term perspective, systems and processes, boring mundane stuff, maybe to you because you want to be out there selling and delivering, but sitting down maybe late, you know, on Friday afternoons or maybe on the weekend or maybe at night and think of, evaluate, you know, what is it that I've done this last month? Can I automate it? Can I make it more efficient? Can I document it so I can do it faster in the future and more effectively? So that's, I think those are 2 things is that mindset of having to let go and delegating. And the second thing is about setting up systems and processes early on in your system. The more of that you have, the better. And obviously, there are things about pricing and value. If, for example, if you're making, you know, on the average, you're at maybe you have a 10% margin on every project. Can we increase pricing? Can we do things more efficiently so I can increase my profit margin? I think that those are things to look at as well, because once you have more profit margin, you can hire, you can market, you can go after bigger clients, you can invest more in the business.

Cool. So that is that.

All right. Now the next question is from someone who owns an accounting firm and it looks like they're making some traction, only going at it for 2 months. All right. So again, thank you for— I love it when people take the leap and they're serious about starting a business, but then in the midst of all of this, The challenge is that they work full-time and I have— the question is a bit long, so I can't put all of it on the screen here, so I'm summarizing, but they're trying to, you know, while they have a full-time job, they're building their side hustle and then like, you know, how do I manage all of this? How do I maximize the use of my time and how do I get leads and And you know generate revenue, and you know they said that they can convert pretty good because they're just they have a knack for sales and persuasion and closing. So that's good. I mean this skill of persuading persuading people, the skill of closing, it's it's hard hard to come by. So glad that you have that in addition to your technical knowledge in accounting. So I think. The short answer here is since your time is limited because you do have a full-time job, I think, can you, based on what has led to business today, like assess if you tried 3, 4 things, 3 or 4 things, like which one maybe was easier for you, generated better results? Like, is it LinkedIn? Is it cold emailing, cold calling, referrals? I would say Look at ways where, since you're so limited on time, look for ways to make whatever part of the process that's taking you time now, make it more efficient, and some of it just comes with experience, so if you've been going at it for 2 months, like, don't beat yourself too hard, you just started, so, because in 3 or 4 months from now, you look at what used to take you 3 hours, now you can maybe do it in an hour, Vetting a lead might have taken you 2 or 3 meetings. Now you probably, you've developed that muscle of vetting a lead and you can do it maybe in just on, in the first few minutes of a call. So part of it is just doing the, you know, you got to do the reps as I always say, and once you do the reps, you start to gain experience, you build those muscles, and then you can do things faster. You can do things more effectively. So look at areas where it's taking you a lot of time and see if you can improve that, you know, improve that process. The other one is in terms of maximizing the time, and this is more a broader point here, since I don't want you to be in this— this is my guidance, this is my recommendation for all of you out there who do a lot of side hustling. I don't want you to be stuck in a full-time job and a side hustle for the rest of your life. That is not a sustainable model. It is okay to do it for a short time if you need the cash. You have difficult situation financially, you need the cash. I get it. If you want to, if you want to do this to learn a new hobby, that's fine. But from a career perspective, from an entrepreneur entrepreneurial entrepreneurship perspective, you got to focus on one thing. The one thing has to be your full-time hustle, your full hustle. And I get it that you have a full-time job now and that you have a salary and benefits and and the 401k and and and the 2-3 week vacation. That's all great, but there will be a period where you have to do that and pay attention. You owe it to your employer to, to do the job properly and give them, you know, deliver on your commitment to them. But at the same time, you're building a business on the side, so it is taxing on your time. But I think if you plan on doing this for, let's say, for 3, 4, 5, or maybe 6 months— and I have it, we have an entire video on, on, on, um, I think we call the, uh, the 6-month, um, runway, uh, to, to that point where you have— I don't say financial freedom, it's, it's an overused and abused term, but you can have a, a, a, um, a runway where you are working hard, it is taxing on you for a few months, but you reach a point where you cover your basic expenses. You maybe you're not saving at that time, maybe you're not going on a vacation, maybe you're not maybe you dropped 2 of the 3 hobbies that you have for a period of time, that is okay. Because if you reduce your expenses significantly and you reach a point with your side hustle where you're covering your base expenses, at that time you have a solid foundation, I think, or a launching pad that where you can resign, send that resignation letter, and then focus all of your energy on what used to be your side hustle, which now will turn tomorrow to be your full hustle, right? So work on it where you can reduce your expenses and then get to a point where you're making enough money from your side hustle to cover your expenses, and then that would be a good time to resign and put all of that energy into the new business. And if you are spending 2, 3 hours a day and you reach a point where now you're covering your expenses. Imagine if you put 8, 9, 10 hours on top of what you used to put into this business, you will do well if you follow this model. So good question. It is a tough period between sort of before taking the leap and securing your baseline of revenue to cover your expenses. That is a tough period, But no one said entrepreneurship and success and becoming a millionaire and reaching 7, 8 figures is easy. It does require some sacrifice. So do that and let me know if you're getting stuck or this just doesn't work for you for whatever reason. I'd love to hear your perspective. A couple more questions and we will wrap it up for today. And let's see, the next one here is, okay, I am in web design and marketing. I am at $10K a year now, so not making a lot of money yet from a few projects like web design. And then the biggest challenge is time, similar to the previous question, because this person served in the armed services. So thank you for your service. And, um, he's making a certain amount of money, um, and he spent, um, some, some money on, on ads and whatnot, so he doesn't have He doesn't have a whole lot of experience in marketing and getting clients, and his time is limited because he's serving. So similar to what I said earlier to the previous question, you gotta figure out a way to reduce your expenses and figure out a way to get the revenue from your side hustle to start inching up and get enough to where you can cover your expenses. that's a good time to move on and do your— take the leap and focus 100% of your energy on the business. And I remember, I mean, you mentioned you had a question about ads and ads not working. Yeah, I mean, with Google Ads and Meta Ads, they do work. That's why Google and Meta, they make a lot of money. But most people, at least in my experience with small business owners, it's so easy to spend the money. You can click on a, on a couple of buttons, add maybe a, a picture or write some copy for the ad and add your credit card and click go, and then you start serving ads. So, and then if you're not setting ads properly, you're not targeting a specific audience. If you sell to the enterprise and you're targeting small businesses, you're wasting money. If you're, if your service is local and you're advertising at the state level or nationwide, you're wasting money. So I would say if you're struggling with ads, 2 things, either learn how to run ads, and that's just another part of entrepreneurship, you have to learn things on your own, or you can hire someone who works with small businesses and they'll charge you a fee for running your ads, and if they know what they're doing, the fee is worth every penny of it. So you'll set a budget for your ads, let's say $1,000 a month, and maybe $200 a month for them to manage that budget for you and make sure the ads are— the campaign is targeted and you're getting the right clients.

Cool.

Let's see one more question and that is it for today. So I run a SaaS company, software as a service. Let's see. I think I— yeah, let me make sure we have the right question on— I think I answered the last 2 questions together, so let's move on to the next question. I run— I ran a, a SaaS-based company, software as a service. I make over $2,000 a month. I struggle with finding freelancers to give tasks to or finding an agency to run it completely hands-free. So he sells, he sells the service, software as a service, the product, and then he's looking for people to do the work on his behalf, and he will, you know, he'll make money. Smart Smart man or smart woman here. But I struggle with marketing. I basically don't do any. And then I struggle with increasing prices even though the competition charges far more than I do. So it is tough. And he says, you know, it's tough, he or she, they say it's tough running solo, especially when you're at this stage where you can delegate but you don't know who to trust. So a lot going on in this question. So I'll address the point on delegating and finding people to support your business. I think initially, I don't want you to delegate. Initially, you have to, if you're serious about growth, you have to know every aspect of the business. So get in, get your feet wet, understand what's involved to deliver, what's involved to delight the customer? What are the bottlenecks? And then as you're doing this, as I said to the previous question, start developing checklists, processes, systems, task lists. And as you do this and you have documentation around how certain things should be and can be and should be done your way, your style, because you're the founder, you want things to be done according to your to your approach and to your liking. Once you've done that, then it'll be much easier to delegate tasks to other people because now you have a system, you have a process. You tell them do A, B, and C, and then if this happened, go D. If this happened, go E. And then, and then you have documentation, you have templates, you have systems to support the implementation. So that, that would be my recommendation. And then in terms of your question on pricing, on marketing. My friend, marketing— no one was born knowing marketing or knowing sales. Um, you don't have to go and learn every aspect of marketing, but I always say to entrepreneurs, go out and network. Find opportunities to meet people in person. That's probably the hardest thing to do. Um, you can hide behind the phone or behind a website. Yes, it works in certain, certain cases, but in a lot of cases, you can go and meet people and network with people, meet them, get to know them, get get their business card, follow up, and you start to create some traction. So in terms of marketing, you can run ads, as we said earlier. You can set up a newsletter. You can develop, start to produce content on your website or maybe on social media. All of these are tools at your disposal. I recommend that you focus on one or maybe most 2 things and learn them Do them yourselves or find someone to do them on your behalf, but don't do it blindly. Learn what these things are so that when you look for an agency to help you, small agency to help you, you know what to ask them, you know how to vet them. So without any knowledge about the domain you want to get yourself into, be it email marketing or blogging or social media or just good old maybe you know, Google or Meta ads, just learn about it before and do it yourself, or if you become proficient, or find someone to do it on your behalf. I think that's it. And oh, there was, there was a question about pricing. Pricing, uh, we, we have a, we have a whole entire video on pricing, the different pricing models— hourly, project-based, value-based, retainer, tiered pricing, a bunch of, bunch of different ways. So check out, we have it, we have a We have a live stream actually spent probably an hour and a half going over that, and we have a video, The Ultimate Guide to Pricing for Services and Consulting. So check, check that out. But I would say, uh, look at whatever you started, maybe hourly and, and, or maybe project-based. Hourly probably is the most common. And as you get better at things, you can start increasing your prices. And yes, you might lose some customers, but I always say it, you know, Jokingly, but I also mean it. If you have 20 clients and let's say your prices are way, way, way low, if you double your prices and you lose half of your clients, you still make the same amount of money and you're doing less work. Now, if your prices are already high, doubling pricing just won't work unless you're doing significant positioning in the way, you know, about what you do and what you offer. So those are my thoughts on pricing, on marketing. And again, a lot of questions, a lot of good stuff. Today, if you have, before we wrap up here, if you have any other questions, any other comments, leave us a comment on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Instagram, on X, Facebook, wherever you're at, we're there. Would love to hear from you and answer your questions next week. As I reminded you, we are here every Thursday at 3 PM Pacific, 6 PM Eastern. And we do have a comment that I did not see. Sorry, uh, from Matt.

I mentioned that earlier.

Uh, sorry, I, I, I did not see the comment. Let me put it here. So Matt is asking, is, is it that the business owners— is it, is it the business owner's responsibility to build out the financial models when starting up a company for banks and investors, or is it usually outsourced to a financial pro? I don't want to be lazy. A very good question. Again, sorry for missing your comments from earlier. It is, the buck stops here. So it is the business owner's responsibility to develop a financial plan or a business plan or a financial model. Now, if you, because you know the product, you know the service, you've done some research, market research, maybe you've studied the competition, so you're the subject matter expert in that sense. Now, in terms of the specific financial models and how you project revenue and financial planning, if you're going to pitch to investors or maybe to business partners, yeah, you want to run what you have done yourself by a professional, so I would say depending on why you need to put together a financial model, if it's for your own business, and you have some experience with numbers, you're good with like P&Ls, and you understand projection, and you understand, you know, some fundamentals in accounting, I think, you know, do it by yourself is fine. If you're about to present to someone like an investor, definitely work with a professional who has done that. And I think, depending on your business model, depending on the revenue, You know, if there are complex things, if you have inventory, and if you have a lot of employees, and if you have different markets, and you have, like, you would want to work with a professional. The more complex your setup is, the more I think professional help you would need, but I'll tell you one thing that worked really well for us is initially in my first business, I didn't see a need for a CFO, nor that We needed one, but what happened is that we— I spoke with— I went to lunch with a friend of mine and he said, Feras, your business now is too big for you to do it all yourself, accounting that is. So I said, you have— you can go and hire a fractional CFO. And this is, oh my goodness, so many years ago, 15 years ago, this concept of fractional was new. Today it's commonplace. But basically, I ended up hiring a CFO and we were We were doing well by that time. We were like well into our 6 digits and getting closer to 7 figures at the time. I only needed 4 hours of a CFO, someone who— Keith was an amazing CFO, and he stayed with us for a long time until we actually exited a couple of the businesses. But initially, I would get the books from my bookkeeper, from my accountant, and then Keith would look at them, and then he developed a financial plan for us. in Excel, and we kept evolving the plan over the years to have something very, very sophisticated with like dials on if I hired, if I didn't hire, if I lost a client, if I got, you know, a whole lot more clients. So I would say a combination. If it's a very small business, I don't think you need the sophistication of— excuse me— of financial planners. But if you have something complex, I think do your own sort of first round and then find go on any of these systems, go on like Upwork and others and find people. And when you vet, uh, there are a lot of 5-star people, top talent, inexpensive talent, and you can hire them for a couple hours. And I would say maybe interview them before you hire them, but find someone who has helped people. Maybe doesn't have to be in your industry, but in the same maybe company size, the same business model, because there is something When it, you know, there's just some, you know, experience in your field, experience in a company your size, and experience in a business model similar to yours. I think those are important things to have for the professional that you want to hire. But again, it's not expensive these days. You don't have to hire a full-time person or pay someone thousands of dollars. But again, it all depends on the complexity. The more complex your setup is, the more the more support you'll need. So hope that's helpful. If not, feel free to add to your comment or just go to startupwithferus.com and email me. I'll be more than happy, Matt, to help you out. But I'm glad that you're thinking about financial modeling, about maybe pitching to investors, and I'm glad, you know, I love your comment, I don't want to be lazy. This is the attitude, my friend. This is the attitude. You know, you got to give it your best and you got to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing is to get help from others, so you're on the right track. Good, good. So let's wrap it up here. Thank you for those who have been with us, and thank you for those who have submitted questions. As I said, next week we'll talk about a way, you know, if you follow us on social media, you'll see the topic. We'll announce, we typically announce those topics on Friday or Saturday, so follow us on on whichever platform you're on, and click like and share, we'd love that, and Matt, thank you, I'm here for you, I appreciate it, and before we wrap up, a quick reminder about the YouTube channel @StartupWithFeras, follow us there, and also about our Black Belt Startup program that we have, we have a free course, a course you can finish in 1 hour, it's the essentials of startups, and then we also have a training and a coaching program, where you have the full, the entire curriculum from vetting idea to growing and scaling your business and everything in between, and it's a month-to-month, no long-term commitment, and we have office hours once a week. You get a chance to ask me questions real time, so check out this at all at blackbeltstartup.com, and we've also introduced a recent course on pricing. I think it's $29, and We cover every aspect of pricing that you need, and actually you get a 20 minutes with me if you have a specific question on pricing for your company, and we do have a promotion actually. We do have a code for those of you who follow us, who listen to our podcast, and also follow us on live streams. It is BBSU20, Black Belt Startup, B as in boy, B as in boy, S as in Sam, U as in Sam, as an up, so BBSU20, 2-0, and you get a 20% discount on our course and on our programs at blackbeltstartup.com. Thank you again for being with us today, and we'll see you next time.

Have a good one. Thank you.