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What's up everyone it's Purzouq here and today i am Composing a article about how i started my consulting business and all about that we're getting into nitty gritty details if any of you guys are curious are wanting to start your own consulting business or just wanting to start kind of like a digital based business in general I think this article is going to be helpful for you and I'm really excited to film this this has been a very highly requested article since i announced my consulting services back i believe in like September is when i announced it maybe October um but it's been super highly requested and I am excited to jump right in i wanted to thank squarespace which is the sponsor of today's article and i will be talking about them just because they play such a huge role in how i started my business but i did just want to say thank you to them for sponsoring this article okay so before we get started into the how I really want to talk about the why why did i get started doing a consulting business for those of you guys that don't know i have a consulting business where i do one-on-one consultations with individuals or with businesses where I kind of help anyone with their personal branding growing on YouTube going on social media making social media into a business and just building your brand i also do help businesses with their marketing strategy finding their audience social media strategy and all of that sort okay so the why why did i decide to start consulting I think is a very important question when you are thinking of starting consulting or when you think that you want to start consulting but you don't really know how what exactly to pinpoint it on like what do you consult exactly so the way that I started was because i have always been the person that people go to when they are looking for advice with starting a YouTube starting a blog starting a website anything social media related people have come to me and asked me how do i start that like how do i make this successful what do i do give me some advice.
I'm talking about people in my personal life I've even had friends parents ask me because they're trying to start their Instagram and I've been meeting with them and talking to them about it I've met up with so many friends I've helped so many friends start their YouTube channels and I've always encouraged it I have always been that friend that's like annoying that's like oh my god you should start a YouTube channel like without fail i think i have literally told every single one of my friends that they should start a YouTube channel I feel like because of that a lot of people have felt comfortable asking me like hey can you give me some help with it and I've always been one to be very willing to give people help and offering my help and my expertise if you will because i have been on you tube for nine years now and then i also have been an influence for a few years now i mean YouTube is my full-time job that i feel like i really have a good understanding of both sides like the business side of it and front being in front of the camera side as well so with content creation so i just thought it gave me an advantage and i just really thought that this was something that i was good at so i realized i was like wait i really love this like marketing strategy i love like coming up with these ideas i could tell other businesses that and then i can also help individuals because i didn't see other like people doing consultations one-on-one with individuals as much so i was like I could do both like i could do businesses and people and that's what sparked the idea of how i should do consulting and why so i encourage if any of you guys are trying to start consulting you don't know what to do just think of things that you're already good at think of things that your friends come to you for what is some advice that you're always giving and that's kind of how you can think of what you can do with consulting consulting is the broadest term ever so if you're trying to go into it figuring out what people come to you for i think is a really great start my first step was honestly asking my followers and my audience already what they thought and i know that you're gonna say that I have an advantage because i have already a following and maybe some people starting out don't necessarily have a following i think that anyone that has people in their life has some sort of following start reaching out to the people immediate in your life even if you have 100 followers on Instagram ask them what do they think about this see if there's a need go on reddit and ask people see what is out there already and if people are looking for this so if you're consulting for example on job application tips or whatever and you see online if there's a ton of people that are asking and inquiring about job apps and they have so many questions and they have personal experiences that they want to share that could be a market for you;
So i think that just really seeing your audience and your potential audience i knew that my followers were going to be a potential audience of mine seeing if they would like your services i think is step number one number two scoping out other people in your industry seeing what they're doing what you can be doing better what whole are you going to fill you don't want to just do what everyone else is doing but i have a little bit of a different model .you don't only want to be the exact same thing or why would they hire you versus this other person find out ways that you can differentiate yourself pick out other people in the industry and then the next thing that i did which is super important is built my website so this is where squarespace really comes in handy i built my website using squarespace i actually was on squarespace prior to ever composing any article with them ever doing a sponsorship with them I researched the best website hosts and I had previously used actually a previous website host for my blog and also a previous website builder host for my online store and they always had some issues like maybe the online store one was really great for an online store but if i ever wanted to do anything other than sell products wasn't the best the blog one was good for a blog but if I ever wanted to do anything else it wasn't the best squarespace has it all I'm not just saying this because I'm sponsored I'm saying this because I chose squarespace over all the other website builders the reason why i liked squarespace is because it was customizable and i knew that i wanted consultations but i knew that this was just the first step i eventually wanted to become an agency always and still help with consultations but i knew that this was really just a temporary thing before i pivoted I wanted to make sure that whatever website builder i decided on was able to be customized no matter which way I went no matter which direction i went in so that's why i really like that it's very customizable so whether i had a blog whether i had people scheduling me and people booking me whether i had my services listed out whether i wanted to show like case studies or a portfolio squarespace had the capability to do all of that and more and all of that in one it's not like you have to choose just an online store template and that's it like you could do all of that just on squarespace i actually bought my theme off of big cat creative big cat creative is a third party site where you can buy a theme off of there for squarespace alone and they help you implement it into your own website so basically they the base is a squarespace theme and then they tell you instructions on how to make it look like their own so they'll give you like images to download they'll tell you which settings to change and what colors to change them to and how to make the website look like the one that you purchase pretty much but it's still all using squarespace so my theme is an original squarespace theme but I wanted to highlight big cat creative which if you guys are looking for really pretty themes that you can really up your squarespace game and customize your website then definitely go to bigcatcreative.com made 180 for my theme that is a one-time purchase and I'm really happy with it .
So now how did i launch slash how long did it take me to launch i came up with the idea that i wanted to start this consulting services around may beginning of the summer and i didn't upload or launch i believe until October it took me a long time the way that i did it though is that I worked backwards i probably didn't actively start like hustling hard at this until probably around July i will say um and then i was moving so that took up a lot of time but i worked backwards i would say whichever day i wanted to launch i came up with a checklist so i was like okay everything that i need to do before launch i write it down and i would reverse engineer it and put it into my calendar with like when i wanted everything to be done by so like for example when did i want the theme to be in implemented by put it on the calendar when did i need my scheduling system to be set up put it in the calendar when did i need my like g suite like email domains to be set up put it in the calendar and i would work backwards so that I could i made sure that i had everything that i needed to be done logo legal stuff all of that put that in your calendar no matter what type of business you are trying to create if you want to be successful and put it in your calendar that is what i would recommend another thing i want to touch base on is how did i promote my services a lot of people are probably wondering if you guys are starting consultations how do you promote these services like how are you going to actually get clients how are you going to announce that you're starting this and for me i really wanted to make sure that i was doing something a little different than other people and like highlighting those differences when i originally looked at consulting services a lot of people do courses or they'll do like long boot camps where it's like a group of 50 people a group of 20 people and you pay like a thousand dollars for this like four-week boot camp and you have like one-on-one calls with the instructor but like you're doing it with a lot of people or you're paying like 300 for a course that you buy or and then you're in a Facebook group or you're doing a consultation like uh like a four-week consultation recurring consultations and there they cost like 300 each and it's whatever I've seen a lot of those um so i decided that i wanted to make market mine as you only need one like you really only need one consultation that's it some people just need a push some people just need one hour and that's it i don't wanna i don't wanna take people's money five hundred dollars for four weeks if they only need one so i tried marketing it that way and I tried announcing to my followers like hey guys if you want to speak with me just one hour a day that's it 75 bucks here's my link schedule i had the advantage i had a following other things that i did though that I never really talk about on YouTube is at my co-working space for example I have a co-working space that has a networking board and so i would always write in there like hey guys this is what I'm offering these are my services if anyone needs it um i would ask i would ask people if anyone needs any social media helps just contact me.
let me know i would actually get clients that way as well i also was on a lot of people's podcasts uh podcasting helped so much so on other people's podcasts they would ask me questions about what I do what my consulting services are and i would announce on the podcast so that their listeners would then come to me I actually got a ton of people from podcasting as well and not from my own but from being a guest on others i hosted a skill pop class so using my expertise with what i am consulting on i did a whole class about everything that i know about building your personal brand and people that loved the class then asked me if they could hire me for consulting and i would send them to my link so i think it's just putting your information out there for free putting yourself out there no matter what platforms you have even if you don't have a big following putting it out there and sharing your knowledge to a group of people is just going to increase their trust in you and they're going to want to hire you because they already trust you because they already got value from what you were putting out in the first place i think putting out all your value for free and then building that trust and getting those clients is something that's really really really helpful so if you are doing consultations and you are starting a consulting business one of the biggest things that i suggest is to already have a website where you have a blog have a linkedin have a YouTube channel where you're already talking about what you are consulting about to show that you actually are an expert in that and then people will come to you i think a lot of people are scared because they're like I'm gonna give away everything for free and then no one's gonna wanna hire me but the opposite is actually true people are gonna realize that you actually know what you're talking about and they're going to want to hire you now i want to talk technical what tools i use all my apps that i use so the first one is obviously squarespace highly highly highly recommend i cannot recommend it enough i think that it is the best website builder like I've said before and all of these other tools that I'm going to mention are all integrated so nicely into squarespace and that is why squarespace is the superior website builder i use squarespace for my website i also use their scheduling so i also use squarespace scheduling so it's really really easy basically all you do is implement it into your site it's literally like a calendar option like it's so easy and then on your site you can actually start taking bookings and you can do the payment on there you can do the like you can block off times on there you can make them fill out forms you can make them agree to terms and conditions like it is so seamless and so integrated so I do use their scheduling software which is another reason why i just really love them how easily everything is integrated.
So i don't need to keep buying these like third-party sites and stuff i can really just use squarespace and have everything kind of in one dashboard which is so nice you guys because when you do have a business when you do have a consulting business or any business in general it doesn't have to be consulting you know that you have like 30 tabs up and it's like your email this app this app this app this app it's just really nice that it's kind of all in one email marketing campaigns and building email lists is another thing that i use and that's also integrated into squarespace i sound like a broken record guys but it's just generally because i really like them and i want to help you guys out i used to use another email marketing website and it was just so complicated i hate having separate billing for that i hated that i just like it i just like didn't understand it it wasn't as intuitive i think it's squarespace is so i actually ditched that got rid of it switched my email list over to squarespace and now i am building my email list on squarespace i have a whole email list so whenever people download a document from my website whenever they download my monthly budget whenever they sign up for an appointment with me i collect their email and bring them onto my email list so this is just great because whenever you do have other announcements in the future you can send it out to those people because you know that those people already have interacted with your stuff before and lastly i use zoom so zoom is super popular right now i feel like when i first started consultations people didn't know what zoom was i didn't really know what zoom was when i first started zoom is now a household name anyways i use zoom for my consultations again whenever i schedule on squarespace it automatically creates a zoom link and it sends it to me and to the person that booked it.
So we both have the link in our calendars and it integrates it with google calendar as well auto generates a zoom link and we're good to go so it's really easy really seamless again and that's just the biggest thing i recommend trying to find the most seamless ways to do things because if you're constantly emailing back and forth with clients it can get really confusing now i want to talk about costs squarespace is 216 a month for the business annual plan i am paying for the annual plan but it starts as cheap as 12 a month if you guys are interested in the more basic plan which i still think is really good you guys can always start off that way but i have good news for you i have 10 off your first purchase or your domain go to squarespace.com Purzouq or just put Purzouq in the promo code so i am paying 216 yearly that is an annual fee and i have renewed it already for two years so yeah definitely not planning on leaving that host anytime soon the theme was a one-time fee of 180 but again all of squarespace's themes are free if you do want a third-party theme which you do not have to then that for me personally it was 180 a domain i actually have two domains that lead to the same exact website which is and Purzouq.blogspot.com i wanted both of them because i really want to start branding it as Purzouq agency but Purzouq.blogspot.com is also it's kind of like my website i bought both of the domains and it is 20 a year for each domain so I'm paying 40 a year for that domain the scheduling that I'm paying for is 15 a month so even though it's integrated into squarespace you do have to pay for it if you do decide to use it so it's 15 bucks a month literally the best 15 a month that you will spend the zoom that i use is free i don't pay for any premium zoom membership because it's usually just one-on-one consultations I also pay for google drive storage just because i do keep everything on google drive and that is two dollars a month it's so cheap i also paid for some legal fees with going into consulting I recommend getting some terms and conditions getting a lawyer you just never want anyone to sue you anyone to claim that you're not doing something that you promised them so i lay it all out in the terms and conditions i had a lawyer make that for me and his charge his rate was 350 an hour it's expensive so i paid 700 for a contract which was the terms and conditions that i have everyone agree to before they are allowed to book my services so that was a one-time fee of 700 so each year i will be paying about 460 dollars a year and then the one-time fees were 980 starting off the bat of course you don't need a lawyer you don't need to buy a theme that.
I'm just letting you guys know what i did and what i recommend if you guys are starting a business another thing i want to touch on is how to determine your rate so one thing that i want to mention is once you figure out how much you are spending a year you want to make sure that you are making that and more kind of working backwards again what is your ideal lifestyle what is your ideal monthly rate how many clients would you need if you charge this amount how many what is your ideal monthly income and then how many clients you want to take a week and then how many how much you would have to charge to get to your ideal income that is the best way to do it you might have to fluctuate because i know some people are like i want to make 300 000 a year and then you're gonna have to be charging a lot of money for your consultations because there's only so much time in a day so really think about it as one consultation how much do you think is fair um you can look at other people and how much they're charging and see if you want to do better than them but you also have to take into account that everyone charges differently based on their own experience based on their audience based on so many things so i think the best way is to work backwards and figure out how much you want to be making from this how many people you want to see what's your like mental capacity for clients and all that good stuff so i hope that answered your questions on how to start a consulting business if you guys have any other questions let me know and i wanted to thank squarespace again for helping me with this article and for sponsoring this article you guys know i love them everyone knows I've talked about them how many times i don't even know but thank you again to squarespace if you guys want 10 off I'll have the link down below but i will see you guys in my next article and if you guys are starting a consulting business drop it in the comments