The Basics of Becoming an Online Service Provider
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Starting a business offering services online may seem like an easy thing to do. You don’t need to find a storefront or get a bunch of inventory. You just need a laptop and a skill you can sell, right?
That might seem like enough, but there are actually a lot of steps to starting an online business that you can grow into something sustainable. It’s not as easy as putting up an Instagram page. Plus, a business means legal and tax things that can get you in some serious trouble if you don’t know what you’re doing. So it’s not a good idea to just start. You need to do some work first.
Doing this work up front will mean you can avoid some pretty serious issues:
Client disputes because you have a contract in place that covers you - and because you know how to avoid bad clients
Delivering subpar work or not delivering it at all because you’re overcommitted or not really as good at what you do as you say
Burning out because of the stress and quitting before you get your business off the ground
That’s not to say you have to get every single thing right before you start working. There will always be reasons to pivot and you can never really know everything. But there are some things you need to do first before you take someone’s money. And good news, you can do them in as little as 30 days if you dedicate yourself to building the foundations of your business.
There are 10 steps that every new service provider should do and I put them all into this guide: 10 Steps for Starting a Business as an Online Service Provider. They aren’t the typical lessons that you might find in a business course. Most of those focus on marketing a business that doesn’t yet exist. The lessons inside this guide focus on the practical side of starting a business - the things you need to know regardless of what kind of business you start. It will help you build each block of your business foundations - something solid you can use to start working with clients and eventually scale up to more revenue.
Here are three of those building blocks.
START WITH A VIABLE IDEA
You need an idea that will attract clients and that you can grow into and scale. And by scale, I don’t mean making millions of dollars on your own. I mean you need to be able to start small and build up your ability to make revenue, either by branching out or by charging more for your services.
In other words, your idea needs to be something you can run with. It also needs to be something that will let you earn enough money to live, assuming your business is gonna be your full time job. Even if it’s not in the beginning, you should be thinking about how to make decent money in your business. Otherwise, you’ll just have a time consuming hobby.
The other thing you want to consider is what you’re confident selling. What skill do you have that you would be comfortable taking money to perform? This is important because once you start getting clients, you’ll have to meet their expectations. So choose an idea that you know you can pull off.
You’ll find my formula for coming up with an idea inside the guide.
DEVELOP SERVICES YOU CAN SELL
Years ago, I was in a mastermind with a bunch of new business owners. One of them was a new health coach who wanted to charge $5000 for her first ever coaching package. She had no coaching experience. Nothing to show that she could get results. And no reason for people to trust her - not for that price. We all told her that she was charging too much and that it would be a tough sell. But she insisted. And to no one’s surprise, she did not get any clients during that mastermind.
When you’re starting out, you need to develop services you can reasonably expect to sell. Everyone wants to charge big money. But if you can’t support your price, you’re not gonna get anyone to pay it. Your services need to be small enough that you can deliver on them. Because working with clients is a skill all on its own and you don’t want to overwhelm yourself by offering big services that take a lot of time and effort.
What you offer needs to align with your skillset so you can confidently pitch your services to potential clients.
In my business guide, there are two lessons that focus solely on services and client work.
GET THE BASICS IN PLACE
You don’t need a lot to start an online business, but there are some important things you will want to have in place. It’s not enough to just open your laptop and say “I’m ready to take clients.” There are some fundamentals that you can’t skip.
One of those is a website. I’m firmly in the camp that says you need one, no exceptions. We used to be able to rely on social media - it used to be more stable. That’s not the case today. You need your own space on the internet where you can send people to learn about your business.
This is one of the reasons I started creating Squarespace templates. New business owners should be able to have a website that reflects where they are and where they are going.
You also need some processes and assets in place for when you start taking clients. This MUST include a contract. You may not know exactly how you want things to be done at first, but you can’t look scattered and disorganized. Once you get someone to agree to work with you, it’s your job to make them feel like they made the right decision.
FOLLOW THESE 10 STEPS TO START YOUR BUSINESS
Because I see so much bad advice out there about what it really takes to start a business, I decided to put everything I know into a guide that’s easy to get through and offers actionable guidance. No fluff, nothing extra. Just ten lessons that walk you through the exact steps, in order, that you need to take to get your idea up and running in just 30 days.
You can get 10 Steps for Starting a Business as an Online Service Provider here.
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