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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Link to Sasha’s tools!
- Be flexible with your time for coaching—some people work with clients for 15 min, some work for full days
- Q: Write down your current work schedule and design a maximally convenient way for you to work with people
- I think if I work with clients between 2-4PM that will be ideal (to preserve morning time for writing)
- 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
- 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
- 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)
- 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
- 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)
- Free microcoaching service - an email every month sent to bug you
- Book a consultation session with Sasha: https://www.sashachapin.com/coaching-info