Sasha Chapin - How to Start a Service Business

  • Selling time for service - easy to start
  • Think outside of the box: E.g. perfume concierge, annoyance audit, non-denominational spiritual counselor
  • People generally don’t think about how to do what they do better
  • Stories of people who offer service for free, then encounter a rich person who pays for their lives

Q: Write down something helpful you have done for someone

  • Meditation coaching
  • Writing coaching
  • Listening
  • AI fluency with a human focus
  • Technical troubleshooting
  • Tell them about the latest products available to solve their problem

Getting Started

  • Slip into DMs and offer service business as a beta tester, charge a medium rate, ask for a testimonial and a public review, frame as a partnership
    • Don’t be defensive about negative feedback
  • Q: Come up with a specific person that you know you can help with something
    • I think I can help a busy executive with staying informed on the latest tech, and also make time for their personal reflections re: meaning, purpose, compassion. It’s similar to what I am trying to do now with https://humanintellect.co but more 1:1 with this prompt.
  • Don’t coddle people with the service—challenge the client with a different frame
  • Offer an amount and see if the person wants to do it
    • Practice saying the dollar amount to yourself

Q: Practice saying how much you charge OUT LOUD

  • I charge __ per hour! Per workshop! Say it out loud!
  • Practice 10X, especially every time you raise your prices

Pricing Strategy

How to know how much to charge?

  • You won’t know at first, pricing is a combo of confidence in service x how much value you can provide
  • At first you will undercharge and that is ok
  • At some point you will charge double and lose half your clientele and that is a good thing
  • You can charge more for businesses that have clear business outcomes / ROI
    • Even for not superbusinessy stuff like enneagrams / energy work—$800 / hour, 1 year waitlist - as long as you know how to speak the client’s language
  • Sometimes it makes sense to work for free - the kind of superconnector person who will recommend you to many more people
  • But generally don’t “bargain down” prices, they don’t tend to be easy clients
    • Generally don’t take family referrals, they tend to be awkward
  • If pricing is unclear, then ask people how much they would pay to solve certain problems

Q: What is a problem you solve that is abstract that not a lot of people face?

  • Being understood, clarity, etc.

Q: What is a real life situation where someone would act differently once you work with them?

  • Feel more peaceful in their lives, knowing that they are doing the right thing

Skills and Services

  • There are corporate consultants who are therapists in disguise
  • Example microskills (from Cate Hall)
    • Not talking over people
    • Being a good active listener
    • Responding to emails promptly
    • Giving straightforward feedback
    • Enjoying conversations with people you’ve never met
    • Doing a gratuitously nice thing for people
    • Note-taking and record-keeping
    • General administrative nonsense
    • Writing/creating promotional content
    • Scheduling calls
  • One can start a service business with less of a network than one thinks—build network along the way
  • When offering two different services in parallel
    • Have different landing pages
    • Friend offers normie strategy consulting and more woo illegible career coaching

Mental Frameworks

The number 1 thing that impedes service business is “imposter syndrome”

  • But this label doesn’t give you any actionable ways to deal with it
  • It’s composed of a number of feelings—the primary one is not being ok with doing things wrong
    • Being ok with doing things wrong = important microskill

Service business can be weirdily unsatisfying - important mental framework to consider

  • There’s crunchy work and squishy work
    • Crunchy work is like building a nuclear reactor, starting a restaurant
    • Squishy work is people work—people don’t give you all the information, etc.
  • In service work, you can provide really good service and still not feel really helpful
    • E.g. Sasha Chapin worked with performance coach a while ago and only implementing the actions now
    • Need to practice being OK with this
    • Already Being Free book with contemplative exercise: we avoid bad feelings that might happen—just practice having the feeling of doing things wrong
    • https://www.brucetift.com/already-free-book/

Meditation interlude: imagine that one time you feel you didn’t do a great job: remember the thoughts and feelings

  • Remind yourself that they will pass
  • They are OK feelings to feel
  • Increase agency by reminding yourself that is OK to feel these feelings and equip yourself with better skills

Operations

Link to Sasha’s tools!

Marketing and Sales

  • Ask clients if they know any intelligent cool person who you can work with
  • Put out knowledge about what you do—don’t assume that people know what you do—demonstrate your passion about what you do on an ongoing basis
    • Don’t be afraid of someone duplicating you or think that working with you is redundant
      • If you put out 4-5 pieces of information about a topic you probably know even more about the topic
  • Q: What would you write about that you are exceptionally good at?
    • Intertwining spiritual practice with everyday life problems, such as writing
  • Put your own distinct energy into sales
    • Don’t try to be David Perell if you aren’t David Perell
    • You sort people in and sort people out by putting in your own energy
  • If you feel self-conscious about selling, this has less to do with what the audience thinks vs what you think about yourself
    • It’s better to sort the people who don’t know how they feel about you into liking and not liking you (!)
  • No one cares about credentials—they care more about showing up authentically, if they resonated with your writing
    • E.g. Joe Hudson has no credentials but people work with him for \(\)$
  • You can offer collaboration as a service as well
  • Assess how comfortable your type of audience is to promotion (e.g. Sasha feels his audience can handle about 3 to 1)

Building Your Offering

  • Runway needed has to do with your skills
  • Doing “mundane” coaching service—it will give you data, but each type of coach will have different specific skills that are needed
  • Build it and they will come, e.g. River Kenna / somatic meditation—he talks about ways it’s been helpful for him
    • Move down the ladder of abstraction (!) e.g. value of expressing yourself well (abstract)—talk about more specific benefits e.g. start a business more easily, make friends more easily, be concrete

Client Management

Client selection: 4PM on a Friday rule

  • If you see a client call you at this time, are you happy or unhappy?
  • Having said that, it takes decades to get here so don’t feel bad if you don’t only have clients in this pool
  • During the journey, you will also learn to work with more kinds of people

Q: Name a person in your life that would be a good collaborator, what is their energy? Can you pattern sense this to match a future person you will work with?

  • Open-minded, non-demanding, willing to follow through with exercises (like C.L.)

Try to be unusually helpful

  • Or at least give credible signal that you have tried hard
  • There is no ceiling to this
  • Everyone has their own bottleneck—learn skills that you are not good at

Giving negative feedback: don’t expect to control people’s reactions, conversations can sometimes go negatively and that is ok

  • Can’t learn this without making a bunch of mistakes! Learn to be at peace with this (e.g. meditation interlude)

Additional Ideas

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