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Community Q & A
Question: How to Shut Down a Service
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Thanks so much for sharing this! I’m still in lurker mode while I ease back into thinking about how I’m approaching the course in 2024 but I love seeing what people are upto
I think I’m in for a 2024 re-up! I had a pretty eventful ’22/’23 and b/c of some family stuff ended up shelving my consulting business for a minute but joining a startup that’s working on a project that’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years. The class didn’t show up in my life exactly how I expected it to but it changed something in me and I’ve been really happily riding that wave, personally and professionally. Basic skills like thinking about my values, reflecting on my skills, and being really intentional about what and who I want to work with have really reshaped how I spend my time and energy.
I’m really excited folks are going to do another go-round and I think instead of focusing specifically on getting my business up and out of the gate I’m going to focus on how to build a cohesive thread in my chaotic universe of community work and side projects. Wishing everyone another year of growth and looking forward to catching up.
I decided to give myself more time to launch and do more “work” to support the time it takes me to build my business. I am happy to report that I am now booked part time for the summer well enough to meet my floor which has bought me the peace of mind, freedom, and creativity to work on my business the way i want to.
And also since other people seem to have similar website goals would anybody from the accountability team like to form a “can you look at my website and give me feedback” subcommittee?
LOVE THIS!
I have a placedholder landing page up for my site. By May 2nd I will have an open for business version up. It does not have to be perfect it has to be done!
Susanne, I LOVE YOUR DRAWING!
I took a big step back and have gone back to the beginning of the workbook to further refine my primary offer. I still need to work while I’m working on my business but I’ve done very few consulting jobs before and all of them were bids on a specific project. It’s important to me to not commit to rates before I figure my what out but also important to me to earn enough income to tide me over through this figuring out period.
Given all of that, here’s how I used the pricing module:
While I’m in figure out phase my floor is my childcare payment + my mortgage payment adjusted for the fact that I have to pay taxes differently as a business. My ceiling is to not let the work I’m doing for income crowd out the time I need to spend developing my network and my business.
When people approach me with work I let them know that I’m working on something really cool but that I’m a competent professional excited for the opportunity to work with them and grateful for their support while I’m taking this step. I ask about the duration of a project and then give people a rough sense of my ability to commit time. If it’s 1-1.5 days a week I asked for childcare or mortgage times 1.5. If it’s more than that I ask for both. I also instituted a flat “research consultation fee” which is a version of the pick your brain fee.
The first thing that happened after I started doing this was that I stopped worrying about meeting my basic expenses. It also priced me in a place where I could be picky. The truth is I’m undercharging at the moment but I’m doing so because I’m not giving these projects my all…I’m saving that for my business. By being open about that I’m giving people the feeling of getting a good deal while also assuring them that I will deliver and then some on this work.
The second thing that happened was these people in my network took on a different attitude towards me and my work…they were excited to steer things towards me because it felt like they were supporting the growth of my business. They were much lower stakes about offering stuff (“dont worry if this doesnt work now, we have a bunch of stuff coming up over the next few months) which made it easier to say no…something I historically struggle with especially when I’m worried about finances.
Not sure if this is a victory lap but I just made a new copy of the workbook and started again. I have a lot of feelings about this but I’m declaring it a victory b/c I know it’s the right thing to do.
Congratulations, Zoe! I love how many different directions you’re winning in and also congratulations on having in home laundry.
Here’s another one for you:
I just got off a call with someone in my field to talk about some early stage ideas and the state of the field and he said “you know what I want to send you a link. There’s this newsletter by Stephanie Evergreen…”
Yesterday I was listening to the marketing module about being top of mind and this feels like a perfect example. Anyway, I happily told him that I was in the class 🙂
We had a nice “hey this isnt working out” chat and agreed on a fair price for us to close out our work. It was one of my first tough calls as a solo business and even though it was tough Im glad i did it.
Hurray for wins!
This week I
– invoiced my first client
– got my first rejection
– worked on my brand voice and tried it out on socials and got a little traction
– went to office hours
– scheduled my first study session with a B&B classmate
My biggest takeaway came from the rejection. It was the proposal that I mentioned in my first entry on this thread. Reading it this week I can see how far I’ve come in refining my thinking about what I do. Obviously I would choose a contract over not a contract at this stage but looking over it I feel confident that future projects I scope will keep getting more aligned with what I want to do.
Your workshop testimonials are so great. Thanks for sharing the process. The phone interview is such a smart idea and I think it comes through in the testimonials that people are speaking about their enthusiasm and not just organizing their thoughts in a form. So cool!
It’s probably a small thing but it would be great to have the steps laid out together right up top as well as being able to scroll through them. I also think that last sentence about how for you it’s about more than beautiful pictures is so catchy. It jumped out at me when you said it at office hours. Is there a way you could incorporate that into a picture of the 4 steps of your workflow?
Also, this made me think of a cool company I know locally. They do graphic facilitation which is very different than what you do but it’s similar in that when they pitch to clients they have to make a case for visual communication, specifically why it’s worth investing in and why if youre going to do it you need a pro. Here’s their website: https://inkfactorystudio.com/ Hope you might find some inspitation there!