Three Steps to Starting a Business With the Skills You Already Have

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Wayfair Every Style, Every Home Today we're going to walk through how you can start a business using the skills you already have and generate revenue within 30 days. This is the Launch youh Business Podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff Writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. We're going to do something a bit different for today's episode, and my goal here is to help you generate revenue quickly without setting up a fancy website or using any complicated tools. And the easiest way for people to do that is by selling professional services, for example consulting or training. You can leverage the skills you already have from A previous job, there's no startup costs and you can start getting clients within 30 days. Great. So how do you actually do that? We're going to walk through a three step process to make that happen. First, we're going to determine your zone of genius. And these are the skills that you excel at and enjoy. Then we're going to determine your business model and this is basically how you structure your services and make money. After that, we'll go through an extremely easy process for you to get the word out and land your first client. And I realize you might be on the go right now, so it might be hard to take notes. So that's why I'm going to provide you with a document that reflects all the action items and associated next steps. You can grab it by going to my website, Terryrice Co Start. That's Terryrice Co Start. So with that, let's get started. The first step is to determine your zone of genius. What specific skills do you enjoy and would like to sell as a service provider? And to determine that you're going to do more or less an inventory of all the jobs you've had. This includes nine to five roles volunteering. So basically any job where you've had responsibilities. So start by listing out all those roles. And by the way, I'm going to give you a spreadsheet to make the whole process easier. But for now, just do it mentally to get the gist of it. On my end, I've worked at Adobe Meta and a few ad agencies, so those are all the roles I've had. Then just jot down all the tasks that you performed at these jobs. You can do your best to recall these, but it might be easier to look at your Resume or your LinkedIn profile. And again, on my end, I handled campaign planning, budgeting, writing ad copy, pretty much all the stuff involved with being a digital marketing expert. After that, you're going to assign all these tasks to various zones of competence and I'll stop now to explain what that means. In the book the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, the author shares four zones of competence as it relates to your ability and interest in performing work related tasks. Here they are. The first one is your zone of incompetence. These are the tasks that you're not good at and don't want to be good at. Next up is your zone of competence. And these are the tasks that you can do well enough, but you really don't enjoy them. After that, we have your zone of excellence. Be careful here. This is probably what you get Paid to do at your nine to five and you're good at these tasks, but after a while they may seem kind of boring and you're just not as fulfilled. The last zone is your zone of genius. These are the tasks that you enjoy doing and want to keep getting better at. They energize you as opposed to draining you. So as you're looking at all these job related tasks you performed over the years, you're going to assign each of them to these zones of competence. And as you may have guessed, your zone of genius is the most important one. You'll pick one or two of these tasks to offer as a professional service provider. And it's important to be completely honest with yourself here. You don't necessarily have to pick the skill that you're most recognized for. You want to focus on one that you enjoy and provides value to an audience. On my end, I discovered I didn't really like digital marketing that much, but I did enjoy helping people understand business development processes so they can make money and avoid confusion. So that's the first step. Determine your zone of genius. Okay, so now we're going to walk through how to monetize your knowledge. And I have a very clear approach for how you can do that by using the action model. And by the way, as you might have guessed, action is an acronym. So I'll explain what each letter means and then provide more details. The A stands for audits. Then we have consulting, training, implementation, ongoing retainers, and new opportunities. So these are the various ways you can make money. And we'll start with audits. Now, audits can be scary if we're talking about your taxes, but they're extremely beneficial if you provide them as a service to organizations or individuals. Based on your zone of genius. This is the step by step process you'll use to analyze a company or process. Your main goal here is to identify areas of opportunity or improvement. And just for context and an example going forward, let's say your zone of genius is email marketing. Based on your experience, you know what it takes to put together a good email marketing program. And you'd leverage that same step by step process to analyze your client's current setup, then provide recommendations. And again, if you grab the resources from my website, I'll show you exactly how to do this. Next up, consulting. This involves providing your opinions, analysis and recommendations to organizations based on your own expertise. Fortunately, you can use the exact same process that you already created for your audit. After that, we move on to training. You'll help individuals or organizations Develop the specific skills needed to perform their job. Now, this is different from consulting, but it's somewhat related. So maybe during your audit you discover they need to start leveraging a new process, but they don't currently know how to. That's where you come in to provide that training. Next up, the I stands for implementation. This is where you help your clients implement the tools or teams needed to achieve their goals. It could be onboarding a new tool or even selecting the right vendor to partner with. Again, so pretend you're this email marketing expert and you realize they should use an entirely new tool. You would help them implement it and could also go ahead and train their team on how to use it. Next up, the O stands for ongoing retainers, and this is by far one of my favorite ways to make money. With retainers. You continue providing advice and services based on your area of expertise, but you may not have a specific project that you're working on. You're just there to answer questions whenever they arise. So, for example, again, we're going back to this email marketing expert. Maybe they have a question about what subject they should use for an upcoming email. You would chime in with your advice. I strongly recommend offering retainers at the end of any project. That way you can continue generating revenue from your previous clients. Lastly, we have new opportunities, and this is the most flexible part of the model. What ideas can you come up with based on the organization, their goals, and creative ways you can help them reach their desired outcome? And I'll give you an example here. I make educational videos focused on entrepreneurship for one of my business partners. But here's what I did. I recently pitched them on a new opportunity, which is setting up an accountability program for all their program participants. This is aligned with my previous work and their mission, so they were receptive to the idea. So that's the action model. You can pick one or all of these. But I highly recommend the audits because it establishes the baseline for all your other services. So we now have your business idea as well as your business model. So you might be thinking, well, great, how do I actually get clients? And that's an important question. The answer can be complicated. So that's why we're going to keep it very simple. First of all, don't spend any time or money on complicated funnels or paid ads. You need to focus on gaining the trust of your target audience. And the easiest way to do that is to get connected through a mutual acquaintance. So here's what I want you to do. Think of 10 to 20 people you know who can spread the word about your new business. This includes previous coworkers, friends and relatives. Ideally, these individuals would have access to a relevant network, meaning they may know people or organizations that can use your services. Then you're going to reach out to them and ask for their help. And I'll read a script you can use, but again, you can also grab it on my website at terryrice Co Start. Hey Omar, hope all is well on your end. I'm reaching out to let you know that I've started a new business and I'm wondering if you could help me spread the word. In short, I help e commerce companies optimize their email campaigns so they can grow their list and make more money. Would you happen to know of any individuals or companies that would be interested in this service? If so, I'd appreciate it if you could introduce us or just forward this email. Thank you for your support. That's it. That's all you need to do. And there are three critical components. The first is explaining what you do. The next is who you help, and lastly, what outcomes they'll experience. You can send this via email or messaging on social media, whichever makes the most sense for you based on your relationship. And I know it may feel like I'm oversimplifying the marketing part of your business, but this is the best way to get started. You'll have plenty of opportunities to post on social media and appear on podcasts later. But if you follow this approach, you'll be able to land your first client. And I want to bring something up here. I know you might feel uncomfortable reaching out to your network. Maybe you feel like it'll make you look desperate or like you have no idea what you're doing. But here's what's going to happen. When you reach out to people, one of three things will take place. They'll either ignore you. They'll say, gosh, I wish I could help, but I can't, or they actually will help you. No one's going to reply saying hahaha. Or screenshot it on social media. So don't let that apprehension, that fear, that worry hold you back from activating your network. And again, this is how you're going to land your first client. And then from there, when you do reach out to other people, you'll have real examples of the results that you've helped other clients achieve. This will increase your trust and credibility among people who are not connected to you. So that's the process. In three steps, determine your zone of genius. Select your service offering. Ask your network to spread the word on your behalf and I know you're still going to have some questions right how much do you charge? How do you get more people asking for your services? And how do you keep your clients happy? So if you've been listening to the podcast or following me on social media, you may know that I have a video course that answers all those questions and more. It's called the solopreneur's Fast Track and you can learn more about it at terryrice Co. Fast. I'd love to see you in the course, but you already have enough information to wrap your head around some of the initial steps. So just keep this in mind. Everything you need to start a business is already within you and it's going to be challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. And by the way, if you like this format and by that I mean a solo episode with just me talking and want to learn more about other topics, reach out to me on social media tzteryrice or just head to my website. And again, that's TerryRice co. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at TerryRice co. Again, that's TerryRice co podcast and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram @TerryRice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife Dominique for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.