2 Businesses and a Day Job - Path Forward Suggestions?

[Rob_W]

Looking for honest feedback. I am operating two multifaceted profitable side businesses in addition to a well-paying day job. One is in real estate, one is a consulting service that lines up with my day job. It is a lot to run. Things are beginning to slip through the cracks and I have little help. I'm not getting massive rewards from it yet, but the potential for either of these businesses is greater than the day job. Ultimately I want to full-time into business. I think this can happen in the next 2 years.
Breakdown by business:

1. Consulting: I provide a very niche professional service to engineering firms who work for large industrial clients. I charge by the hour and have been averaging about 40+ hours per week (I have some help) over the last 3 months from a single client. This is what I do at my day job and I am known in my industry for this. I've spoken at a couple of conferences and just started a podcast related to this field. I am also actively involved in the greater professional community. I have been offered to conduct training at a local project controls training facility where I would keep most of the revenue. I've been in this industry for more than a twenty years, I like it because it is comfortable, and think I have unique solutions to an industry that has significant needs. This is an unsaturated space. My concern is scalability - I'm working for every dollar I earn and it is cutting hard into my family life.
2. Real Estate: I'm a licensed agent, have managed nine residential rehabs, am invested in a 32-unit apartment building, and recently acquired a small vacation property that I list full-time on Airbnb. I've been at this for about 2 years. I am fairly well-known in this industry locally. I run a local meetup group that has had hundreds of investors come through and am thinking of producing webinars and putting out content on YouTube. I am connected to some other investors who are doing some pretty big things in real estate around the country. There are things I love about it and things I absolutely hate about it. I absolutely love rehab projects, not real excited about agent work, love the idea of providing housing and work-space, hate how saturated and fake this sector can be. This is infinitely scalable.
3. Side note - one thing that both of these efforts share is my ability to bring people together on a community level. I think I'm naturally talented at marketing, content creation, and networking. Really enjoy creating events, putting together marketing materials, and producing the podcast. But I don't know enough about monetizing this to be a focus. I feel like this space might be saturated?

Should I keep powering through and let the best industry win? Find a way to make both work? Stop splitting my focus? Combine these efforts somehow?
Open to all suggestions. Thanks.

 

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[NMdad]

Your consulting situation shares similarities with mine: niche expertise, solid demand, but you're the person who has to do most of the work. A few options you might consider:

• Outsourcing/delegating: Depending on the type of work/project--especially if every project is different--this may be difficult or require hiring/training someone who has your expertise. I've been able to delegate pieces of what I do, but downloading my expertise into others would be a full-time task.
• Productizing your services:
  • Doing this lets you build more delegate-able business with defined price points for each type of product/service. For example, digital marketing agencies often do productized services, which lets them templatize the service and delegate the work among a team of people who are specialists in their task area (SEO, PPC, email marketing, copywriting, etc.).
  • You might also consider productizing your expertise into infoproducts, courses, webinars, etc. so you can boost your effective hourly rate.
• Raise your rates, especially if you're fully booked. It sounds like there's enough demand, and that you have the expertise to deliver value at a rate that's 20%, 50%, or 100% higher. Test out a higher rate on new clients, and nudge existing clients higher. My current rate is ~130% higher than what I charged my first clients. A higher rate means I don't have to work as much & can have time to work on non-consulting projects.

All that said, a 1-person consulting business means you've built a job. Could you take a vacation for a month without losing revenue? Not likely.

 

[Rob_W]

Edit: moved content of this response to respond to NMdad.

 

[Rob_W]

Your consulting situation shares similarities with mine: niche expertise, solid demand, but you're the person who has to do most of the work. A few options you might consider:

• Outsourcing/delegating: Depending on the type of work/project--especially if every project is different--this may be difficult or require hiring/training someone who has your expertise. I've been able to delegate pieces of what I do, but downloading my expertise into others would be a full-time task.
• Productizing your services:
  • Doing this lets you build more delegate-able business with defined price points for each type of product/service. For example, digital marketing agencies often do productized services, which lets them templatize the service and delegate the work among a team of people who are specialists in their task area (SEO, PPC, email marketing, copywriting, etc.).
  • You might also consider productizing your expertise into infoproducts, courses, webinars, etc. so you can boost your effective hourly rate.
• Raise your rates, especially if you're fully booked. It sounds like there's enough demand, and that you have the expertise to deliver value at a rate that's 20%, 50%, or 100% higher. Test out a higher rate on new clients, and nudge existing clients higher. My current rate is ~130% higher than what I charged my first clients. A higher rate means I don't have to work as much & can have time to work on non-consulting projects.

All that said, a 1-person consulting business means you've built a job. Could you take a vacation for a month without losing revenue? Not likely.

Yes, good thoughts. I appreciate it man.

I enjoy both of the businesses and have a hard time prioritizing one over the other. I'd love to break out of the W-2 now, but honestly it provides a lot of value for my family and me. Because it is so closely related to the consulting gig, there is a lot of cross-over value in both directions.

It is a bit too specialized to outsource much, if anything. I am working on ways to outsource things like data-entry, but even that is difficult.

Productizing is most definitely on my mind, but no work has been made on that front. Another thought is to monetize this podcast and other content I create.

Raising rates is coming, but with that I'll need more sophisticated clientele. My current client is very transaction based and price conscious.

Side note - looks like both our profile pics are with our sons in NM!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Consulting: I provide a very niche professional service to engineering firms who work for large industrial clients. I charge by the hour and have been averaging about 40+ hours per week (I have some help) over the last 3 months from a single client. This is what I do at my day job and I am known in my industry for this. I've spoken at a couple of conferences and just started a podcast related to this field. I am also actively involved in the greater professional community. I have been offered to conduct training at a local project controls training facility where I would keep most of the revenue. I've been in this industry for more than a twenty years, I like it because it is comfortable, and think I have unique solutions to an industry that has significant needs. This is an unsaturated space. My concern is scalability - I'm working for every dollar I earn and it is cutting hard into my family life.

This seems most promising to me due to your skillset and entry barriers. Can you focus on the training aspect for scaleability? How about contract consulting ... you train and manage consultants, you get a cut for booking the work?

While I like the other option (RE) my concern is always the saturation level of the industry.

Either way, seems like you're doing well for yourself, just some logistical matters to solve and you're on your way.

I'd say "welcome to the forum" but it seems you've been here a bit! Hope to hear more on how you move forward.

 

[Rob_W]

This seems most promising to me due to your skillset and entry barriers. Can you focus on the training aspect for scaleability? How about contract consulting ... you train and manage consultants, you get a cut for booking the work?

While I like the other option (RE) my concern is always the saturation level of the industry.

Either way, seems like you're doing well for yourself, just some logistical matters to solve and you're on your way.

I'd say "welcome to the forum" but it seems you've been here a bit! Hope to hear more on how you move forward.

Thanks man, I didn't expect you to respond, MJ. You made me think of something with your training comment. I have some pretty unique experiences on both the contractor and owner side of the table that I think would serve both well. For instance consulting contractors on getting and maintaining owner clients and/or consulting owner clients on effective management strategies of contractors. I know that is not what you were saying exactly, but that could be another arrow in the consulting quiver. Of all the things I could do in that realm I think training would be the most scalable.

Honestly didn't realize I had already signed up for this forum and found it again in a google search. Glad I'm here now! Appreciate the positivity!

 

[NMdad]

Yes, good thoughts. I appreciate it man.

I enjoy both of the businesses and have a hard time prioritizing one over the other. I'd love to break out of the W-2 now, but honestly it provides a lot of value for my family and me. Because it is so closely related to the consulting gig, there is a lot of cross-over value in both directions.

It is a bit too specialized to outsource much, if anything. I am working on ways to outsource things like data-entry, but even that is difficult.

Productizing is most definitely on my mind, but no work has been made on that front. Another thought is to monetize this podcast and other content I create.

Raising rates is coming, but with that I'll need more sophisticated clientele. My current client is very transaction based and price conscious.

Side note - looks like both our profile pics are with our sons in NM!

For my consulting, I've found that I can outsource pieces of things once I do the scoping/speccing, then break down the task so someone with more generalized skills can do it without needing my specialized knowledge/expertise. That said, I still think much of what I do would require extremely time-intensive training to get others do to most of what I currently do. So, longer-term, I'm working on building other income sources that are more delegate-able & scalable. Even though the consulting pays well, it requires--and will likely always require--a big input of my time.

And, yes, I'm in NM, though my profile pic was from UT. And my son is heading off to college this year--how time flies!

 

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[Kid]

Write a book or sell a course

 

[Rob_W]

For my consulting, I've found that I can outsource pieces of things once I do the scoping/speccing, then break down the task so someone with more generalized skills can do it without needing my specialized knowledge/expertise. That said, I still think much of what I do would require extremely time-intensive training to get others do to most of what I currently do. So, longer-term, I'm working on building other income sources that are more delegate-able & scalable. Even though the consulting pays well, it requires--and will likely always require--a big input of my time.

And, yes, I'm in NM, though my profile pic was from UT. And my son is heading off to college this year--how time flies!

Wow man. Mine is a senior in HS this year. Crazy. Haven't been to UT yet. We go up to Taos and Santa Fe every other year or so.

I think you are onto something with breaking down the tasks that can be handed off. Perhaps that is something I need to figure out how to implement into my processes.

 

[Rob_W]

Write a book or sell a course

On it!

 

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