Episode 91: The Service Provider Formula

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey everyone, this is Julie. Welcome back. Today I'm doing the second formula in a series that I've been doing. Last week I did the coaches formula which was a ten step, easy to explain formula to help people get started with daily different online business models. So today I'm back and you guys loved the coach's consulting formula. So I am back today with the service provider formula. A couple things about this formula, it is specifically for done for you services. So you could swap the term service provider and you could call it the social media manager formula, or the ad agency formula, or the copywriter formula, or the freelancer formula, or the funnel builder formula, or the virtual assistant formula. The idea is anything where you're doing actual work that takes time using your hands, not just your brain. That's kind of how I say it will work for this formula. The last one I did, the coaches consulting is simply for people who do brain work, meaning they're just selling their advice or their expertise. I still think that the service provider formula is the easiest way to enter the online space, especially if you don't have an expertise or a following yet. So if that's you and you're listening, I would definitely follow along. Keep in mind that if you're starting from scratch and you don't have any online specific skills, it will take you a little bit longer because you do have to learn those skills and build out the business. But if you already have some skills that people would pay for, this can happen really fast. And unlike the coaches formula where I suggested it would be about 18 months, you can actually get your first paying client in a service based business in as little as 30 days. You could be booked solid within six months. It's a pretty fast way into the online space and doesn't take a tremendous amount of money to get started nor a huge audience and you can earn anywhere from 30 to about $75,000 in that first year. That can quickly accelerate to 100k if you are choosing higher priced skills like funnels and ads. So the first two steps of this formula are the same as the coaching and consulting formula which is step one, set up your online presence on social media. Make sure to do it under your. I know that some people worry, well what if I want to run a big agency? Don't I need an agency name? You could, but I'm telling you that it's going to be a lot harder to build out an agency with a brand that nobody knows than it is a person. And the lovely thing is you can always change your name, you can change your business name later or you can just add an and co. A couple examples of this are my client Katie, she runs KW Content Agency which is Katie White content. And I know there was, I had a client a long time ago, her name was Miranda Namias and now her business is Namias and Co. So you can, there's lots of things you can do it's easier to set up under your name. Just trust me on this one. So that's step one and step two is to go ahead and get a domain professional email address. You can use something like Google Workspace which was G Suite. Okay, so those are the first two steps. They're the same first two steps as a coach's formula. It's pretty much the same two steps for any formula. Now in step three, this is where we're going to deviate a little bit from what I gave you in the last episode. So step three, we're going to set up a service provider website. We have in fgfunnels a 5 page website already. It's in the styles of minimal and magic. If you sign up right now, if you're listening to this down the road, it may be a different style, but we always have a premium style and a basic style. When you sign up for an FTFunnels account that allows you to get your five page service provider website up very quickly. So you're going to determine your expertise or your service suite. When setting up your website there are two options. You can be a project based business which means you're doing something like copywriting or funnels, or you can be retainer based which is things like virtual assistants, online business management, social media, copywriting, etc. So that's what you're going to do in step three, get your website set up and decide on your service suite. Step four is really focusing in on the services page of your website. That services page should lead to a discovery call. The good news is in our pre built templates it already does. We also have services automation in our simple collection for FG funnels. Or you could build your own. The idea is you really just need to get people on the phone. Once you're on the phone, you're going to do one of two things. You're going to sell a business intensive which leads to custom project work, or you could just simply quote them retainer services and start the engagement. So again, it depends on what kind of business you're running. Is it a project based business or is it a retainer based business? Either way you're going to get them on the phone and what you sell them might be slightly different. Now, if you don't have any skills yet to market in step four, this is where we recommend getting into a training program for the area that you want to focus on. I know so many training programs for things like bookkeeping, virtual assistants, online business management, WordPress coding, Pinterest ads, Facebook ads. And then of course the one that I run in Funnel Gorgeous with Kathy is FG Society. And I highly, highly recommend it for anyone getting into the online space. But especially if you're a service provider and you are interested in funnels copy or design. So you can work as you learn and you can, you know, just charge a little bit less. So that's in step four. You're really focusing in on that service page and getting, making sure you have the skills to actually deliver. Now in step five, we're going to do the hardest step, the step that is the most important, the one that people resist most. And it is network in Facebook groups, through podcast interviews, social content clubhouse and go ahead and get your first three to five clients. Now the good news is FGSociety teaches this. We also have a directory now so that all of our certified marketers go on hireamarketer.com they're listed on the directory. We also send out job. So there are lots of different types of these sites. I know there's one for online business management. I know several virtual assistant programs that do this. So this is why it's so important to invest in a program depending on what you want to focus on because you're going to be able to tie into a network and get clients more quickly. All right, so step six, once you have your few first clients, it's time to create your first case study report. So use a lead magnet template for Funnel Gorgeous. Use the free lead magnet funnel we give you in FGFunnels. You're going to focus on how much easier, better, more efficient, more profitable it is to work with you. You're going to showcase the ways in which a business could change with you there to help. You could also do a video with your PDF case study and you're going to make that a lead funnel. Put this on your website, your social media. Now, depending on how good the case study is, you could run traffic. But for most providers when they're just starting, they're just going to share it organically. It's just a great free thing to start building email list. You're going to get a very, very slow trickle of leads organically, but you need to make sure to email those leads. So that's step seven because what we want to do is email those leads regularly with valuable content and encourage them to book a discovery call off your services page. This is incredibly important because we want to see if the case study lead funnel that you set up is actually getting the right people on your list. So that's what what is in step six and seven. Now step eight, once you have five people to say yes to you or if you're booked solid, it's time to raise your prices. You're also going to want to hire an assistant to help you with things like proposals and onboarding and client management. This is also a great time to start reading the book Built to sell. It helps you productize your agency or your service based business as much as possible so that you don't end up with horrible, horrible scope, creepy. So that's step eight. Now step nine. It's time to figure out an easy introductory service based offer. This is something that you see your clients needing. It could be a fast, easy fix, something you can do a lot of isn't too time consuming. Things like audits, migrations, tech setups, speed optimization. For example, we have providers that offer the FG funnels setup. You want to make sure that that introductory offer is less than $200. You want to do something that's super concrete, painful and obvious that they can say yes to. And you're going to build this as a simple like hybrid services sales page. It's going to be a sales page in an order form and you are going to be able to start talking about this on social media, on email, in Facebook groups. You can also attach it to the back end of your case study lead funnel. If there's a relationship between those two, the free case study and the offer. Now sometimes I recommend people actually demo this in a service provider webinar, which we teach, but you don't have to do that. You can just do a sales page if you want. But this introductory offer is a great way to get people to test out what it's like to work with you. And then finally in step 10, we're going to start adding some additional revenue to your business besides done for you work. So the easiest way to do this as a service provider is to start building an affiliate arm of your business where you recommend tools and software that you use so you can get some recurring income without having to work for it. Another so software is great, right? FG Funnels has a 40% recurring commission. Affiliate program hosting offers affiliate programs. So if you are a project based service provider, it's going to be really important to kind of stabilize your revenue. If you're a project based service provider, you might also want to think of any sort of ongoing services you can offer after the project is done. If you're retainer based, you might want to incentivize your clients to refer you to others with a referral program. So in step 10, you're really sort of expanding out your revenue besides just your done for you services. Within 18 months you should be booked solid and really feeling the burn of an agency that's growing quickly. You may need to hire, you may need to dial in your services so that they're even more specific and scalable. And this might be the time where you would start thinking about some digital assets that you could sell to keep your income growing while you manage your current client load. So that is the ten step formula for service providers. I hope you guys liked that and appreciate that. If you do, please leave a review. Subscribe, tag me on Instagram, Tell everyone how awesome my podcast is. I do such a horrible job of promoting it, so I just try to give amazing content so you guys will share it. I think the next one I'm going to do is the course creator formula that will be coming next. Appreciate you all. Talk to you soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to create your YourLaptopLife. Com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.