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!
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O_fHJSMOBzZE93uqpefDtvJtpV9yIV1LL1unPNXVWHg/edit
• 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