The BEST business to start in your 20s

I have always been a freelancer and have closely noticed what separates mediocre freelancers from the elite.

I was a mediocre freelancer designing social media posts for the clients I found on Upwork and I used to feel superior about it only until I realized that these people were ripping me off and I was undervaluing my time and my skills.

In 2019, I ditched all the freelancing platforms and became an independent freelancer.

In 2020, I started a social media marketing agency (Plause Media). I tried to get clients and build a team but I failed miserably. I just couldn’t get the results I wished for and I was always burnt out because of the lack of structure and systems in the agency.

Some of it was because of my lack of knowledge and some parts because of the nature of generic marketing agencies.

• I was creating different proposals for different clients

• Wasting time on creating contracts

• Getting on calls every day with clients

• Catering to random requests from clients

All these things were essential at that time and made me the Entrepreneur I am today but I realized it is impossible to scale without hiring a huge team with this model because every client has different requirements and catering to unique requirements used to take up a lot of my time.

It was just not the way forward!

So I shut down my agency in 2022 and moved to Mumbai

My curiosity and research on the internet got me introduced to the productized service business.

In simple words - This model would allow me to sell my services as a product.

It was intriguing because it eliminates all the bad things about a service business and solves the issue of scalability.

I started my productized service business by the name ContentFloww in September of 2022 and it has been one of the best decisions of my life.

It doesn’t matter what you do as a freelancer, you can productize your service today - You can free up your time and scale at the same time.

If you are an aspiring freelancer or a freelancer trying to scale and make more money, this business model will be your best bet.

Here is everything you need to start your productized service business today:

1. One Skill

I see agencies flexing how they can provide all digital marketing services under one roof and I laugh every time.

What they flex about is the exact thing they shouldn’t have done.

A productized service business eliminates the biggest loophole of a generic service business - “Selling everything to everyone”

If you want to position yourself as an expert and charge premium prices you must only sell one skill to a specific set of target markets.

Start by picking one skill that you are good at!

• A skill that you want to use as a value exchange

• A skill that people will gladly pay you money for and position yourself as an expert.

2. Productize your value

Productization of a service is just packaging it as a product and making it available on the internet for people to buy.

Your packaging should have everything mentioned below:

• What do you offer?

• Who do you offer it to?

• What is the price?

• What are the different packages you have?

• What are the benefits and perks of your service?

• What are your past results?

• What do your past clients have to say about your service (Social proof)?

• A call to action

Answering all these questions will take some time, doubts, and confusion and still you will not get absolute clarity in the first attempt.

You will keep changing it as you go and for the exact same reason you don’t wait!

Build a landing page and display your expertise for everyone to have a look at.

I built the first landing page of my company on my own using carrd.co

These are some of the excuses you might have:

• I don’t have money for a website

• I don’t know how to make a landing page

• I don’t want to do it myself

Shut up and just create the landing page!

To get more clarity on this, check out my website and study it closely - ContentFloww

3. Traffic and Sales

The next step is to get traffic on the landing page so people can visit, read, understand, and directly buy your service as a product.

You solve traffic in 2 ways

1. Build a personal brand online - Read this

2. Learn how outreach works - I cover this in-depth in ‘Clients on autopilot’

Once you have the landing page ready you don’t have to worry about

• Proposals

• contracts

• creating invoices

• Following up on proposals

This allows you to invest your valuable time in generating more traffic and getting better at sales - Tasks that generate 80% of results in any business.

4. Automate

For every touchpoint or click on your website from the potential customer - Automation can be created.

I cannot cover this in-depth in this post but here are some examples of automations to give you clarity.

Take this seriously because without automation your business will crumble when you try to scale!

1. Stripe payment → Create client database in Notion → Create client channel in Slack

2. Stripe payment → Send an email with onboarding videos

3. After 1 month → Send an email for review

4. New file added to drive → Notify the client

5. Waitlist entry on website → Notify team on Slack → Add the lead to close(CRM)

The list goes on and on and on!

The idea is to pay attention to redundant tasks in your business and automate those tasks with tools like Zapier and Pabbly.

5. Experience

Providing world-class experience to your clients should be your topmost priority!

Sacrifice everything to provide the experience of a lifetime to your customers.

The goal should be to acquire one new customer per client from referrals - Word of mouth will always bring you the best clients.

There are a lot of moving pieces in any business but the mentioned above will act as solid pillars you will build your service business on.

Be bold, and keep adding and subtracting things in your business.

This is the new era of freelancing and you must adopt!

The upside is limitless if you are ready to pivot, experiment, and get creative!

“If you do what everyone else does, you will get what everyone else gets.”

-Akshat