The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Business not conform to CENTS - iterate or move on?

Surge5x

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
114%
Mar 13, 2019
35
40
London
Hey everyone,

It's been a month since I first posted in this forum about my consulting business IdeaChecker. I received some very actionable advice from the members here and tweaked the copy and proposition. Since then I've been able to get a steady flow of paying customers (3-4 a week) each of whom I am charging £499 per project. There's clearly a need for it and feedback from customers has been 100% positive, BUT:

My main issue now is that it takes so much of my time to get new customers and actually deliver the work that I don't see how the business can fulfill the commandment of time (cenTs). Having started a consulting business I knew this would be an issue, but the initial hope was that as I get customers, and understand what their needs are, I would be able to identify a few core problems that are common and create a digital product that solves for this.

The reality is that my clients have varying needs and no 'one thing' stands out as a big enough pain point to create a digital product around... Would love to hear from the forum members here on what is the best way for me to think about proceeding here.

What I'm thinking:

Option A:
Continue doing the reports manually to increase my sample size and hopefully with time a pattern emerges that I can execute on

Option B:
Be honest that while this business is a good source of some extra cash, it doesn't set up a recurring revenue stream that is independent of my time and the best course of action is to focus my energies elsewhere

Option C:?

Thank you in advance for your help!
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

astr0

Grinding
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
140%
Dec 3, 2017
356
500
36
Lviv, Ukraine
Option C:
Hire & train consultants. Focus on sales yourself.
Hire & train salespeople. Manage your team.
Hire a manager later. Build independent units of scale that can live pretty much on their own.

Normal services always consume time, but it doesn't have to be YOUR time.
 
Last edited:

bingnanxu

Take Massive Determined Action
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
113%
Mar 16, 2019
61
69
Also, you can build up to a point and sell the business, always a option, but not really recommended at this stage
 

MHP368

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
161%
Aug 17, 2016
794
1,277
37
Sahuarita AZ
I just looked at your website. Why cant you train someone to do all of that?

They have an AI program that fleshes out an entire content strategy for digital marketing firms with like 10 minutes of human input they glean from a client meeting

You should spend the next few weeks with a notebook and write down everything you actually do for the xlients from onboarsing on , im 99.999% certain you arwn't the only human being in the world with the capability to do all those tasks.

If you can do it , you can train someone to do it.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
445%
Jul 23, 2007
38,025
169,129
Utah
To satisfy TIME on a manual / consulting basis, you have to create a human resource system.

Can't you hire someone to do the work while maintaining reasonable margins?

This is something I would have figured out prior to going into business.

Either way, it might be a great business to create cash flow until you figure out how to move forward.
 

Surge5x

Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
114%
Mar 13, 2019
35
40
London
Hey everyone, sorry for not replying to this earlier... Didn't get any email notifications for this thread for some reason!

@MJ: Agree with you that this boils down to an HR system... before I hire someone though I'm working to fill out my sales funnel first. To be fair, I was hesitant to start a consulting business for this reason, but I'm still hoping that I can create a digital product for early entrepreneurs that lets them research their ideas before taking the plunge!

@MHP368 : Could you link me to this product? Would love to understand their on boarding process and how they've managed to automate. My ideal outcome would be to start automating parts of the workflow that I can then offer at a MUCH lower price point and focus on sales myself.
 

MHP368

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
161%
Aug 17, 2016
794
1,277
37
Sahuarita AZ
Could you link me to this product? Would love to understand their on boarding process and how they've managed to automate. My ideal outcome would be to start automating parts of the workflow that I can then offer at a MUCH lower price point and focus on sales myself.

ahh, I didnt bookmark any of that, was tearing through a bunch of digital marketing stuff and saw that offer. Lets see what I can find...

some finds that are relevant if not exactly that...

"MarketMuse is an AI-driven assistant for building content strategies. The tool will show you exactly what terms you need to target to compete in certain topic categories. It'll also surface topics you may need to target if you want to own certain topics."

"Crayon - When creating content strategies, lack of fresh ideas can be a major time waster, as anyone who has hit a creative wall can attest.

Crayon uses machine learning to give you competitive intelligence on exactly what your competitors are doing online. You’ll be able to see how the main pages of a company’s website change over time, which in turn reveals insights about their content strategy, targeting, and messaging."

"BrightEdge is a global leader in SEO and content performance marketing that blends search intent discovery, optimized content creation, and performance measurement into one integrated solution.

The solution uses AI to discover what people are searching for and help you create a content strategy to capture traffic and consumer interest. "

"CONCURED uses artificial intelligence to show marketers exactly what topics drive engagement and what to write about next.

The result is an AI-powered Content Strategy Platform that automates content audits, topic research, the creation of data-driven content briefs, content promotion, and performance tracking."

"HubSpot Content Strategy Tool
HubSpot's Content Strategy tool uses machine learning to help marketers discover new content ideas that perform well and validate those content ideas in the most efficient way possible."

so thats predictive intelligence content strategy offerings, then lets look at content intelligence tools (whatever that means right?)

"TrendHub is a cloud-based, AI powered content and market intelligence solution that provides teams with predictive trend, industry, market, and content insights. "

heres on for automated analasys of your website vs competitors on multiple factors

headline here being "you can outsource and automate a bunch of this work"
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
D

Deleted50669

Guest
Hey everyone, sorry for not replying to this earlier... Didn't get any email notifications for this thread for some reason!

@MJ: Agree with you that this boils down to an HR system... before I hire someone though I'm working to fill out my sales funnel first. To be fair, I was hesitant to start a consulting business for this reason, but I'm still hoping that I can create a digital product for early entrepreneurs that lets them research their ideas before taking the plunge!

@MHP368 : Could you link me to this product? Would love to understand their on boarding process and how they've managed to automate. My ideal outcome would be to start automating parts of the workflow that I can then offer at a MUCH lower price point and focus on sales myself.
The app you're describing is what I'm releasing in June.
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top