How to find service business ideas FAST (using skills you already have)

Starting Strength Online Coaching

Who: Fitness newbies who want to get strong — but don’t know how.

What: Starting Strength Online Coaching shows amateur weightlifters how to apply Mark Rippetoe’s famous strength building program to their workout routine.

How: Online coaching (duh).

Where: StartingStrengthOnlineCoaching.com

Marketing for Hippies

Who: Green and “holistic” small business owners looking to up their marketing game.

What: Tad Hargrave shows holistic business owners (i.e., hippie business owners) how to market themselves and their services. This is especially helpful since the same business owners he markets to don’t typically view marketing as the most exciting thing in the world.

How: Hargrave offers coaching and consulting packages.

Where: MarketingForHippies.com

Love Your Journey

Who: Recently divorced or separated women who want to cope with their struggle.

What: Annie Huang helps divorced women learn to love who they are and find a new direction in their life after separation.

How: Huang offers 1:1 coaching as well as workshop sessions.

Where: Annie Huang

How to find a profitable service business idea — with the Demand Matrix

Finding a good service business idea can be simple … but it’s not going to be as simple as doing what other people are doing.

Too often, wannabe entrepreneurs get caught up in fads and think that’s where the money is.

• “A lot of people are becoming social media consultants, that means I should be one too!”
• “Whoa, all these people are starting successful drop-shipping businesses. I’m going to start one.”
• “My friend just talked to me about crypto in a single breathless hour-long rant … I guess that’s where the money is at?”

When in reality, a good business idea isn’t about what’s good for other people — it’s about what’s good for you.

That means finding the intersection of:

• Profit. You’re trying to make money after all.
• Passion. You’re going to love doing it.

That’s why I want to show you a system that’ll help you find service business ideas that intersect with both those frameworks. When we’re finished, I’ll give you access to our profitability checklist so you can be 100% sure your business will make money.

Step 1: Ask yourself the 3 big questions

Below are the three questions you should ask yourself if you’re looking for a profitable service business idea.

For each question, I want you to write down three to five business ideas. By the end, you’ll have a solid list of 9 – 15 service business ideas that you can run with. That might sound daunting at first but you’re going to quickly find how easy this process is.

The goal here is to tap into your current well of passions, knowledge, and expertise that’ll allow you to create a business idea.

Question #1: “What skills do I have?”Like Liam Neeson intimidating his daughter’s kidnapper, you have a very particular set of skills that can be very profitable to you (and deadly depending on your expertise …).

Think about the knowledge you know and have already acquired. Some examples:

• College degrees
• Languages (e.g., Spanish, French, American Sign Language)
• Fitness (e.g., yoga, weightlifting, CrossFit)
• Instruments (e.g., guitar, piano, singing)
• Skills classes (e.g., improv, writing, dance)
• Mechanical / trade skills (e.g., plumbing, woodwork, car repair)

Any and all knowledge you’ve received is a potential business since there are people out there willing to pay you to teach it to them.

Of course, it’s easy to think that since you’re not the best at something, it means that you can’t teach it — but that’s not true.

Good example: Legendary boxing trainer Freddie Roach.

Roach began his boxing career in the late ‘70s, and while he wasn’t a bad boxer, he certainly wasn’t the best. Physical deterioration forced him to retire at the age of 26.

After retiring, though, he began his career in training and teaching. He’s since gone on to train some of the greatest boxers who have ever lived, including Manny Pacquiao and Oscar De La Hoya.

Oh, and he has a net worth of more than $20 million to show for it.

So here was a guy with deep knowledge in a specific skill. He could have just stopped boxing and found a job elsewhere, but instead he used his knowledge and built a profitable business from it.

You can do the same too with your skills.

Question #2: “What do I do on Saturday mornings?”We all have things we like to do on our mornings off work that have nothing to do with making money — and everything to do with things we’re passionate about.

These are things that you can actually leverage for your service business.

For example:

• Researching your genealogy and ancestry while building out a family tree. This is something plenty of people struggle with and would pay you good money for.
• Weightlifting for both strength and size. This is the ultimate fitness goal for millions of guys out there — guys who would pay you to teach them how.
• Painting or working on an art project. This is an impressive skill many unartistic and burgeoning Rembrandts would pay you handsomely for.

So what is it you like to do in your free time — and how can you turn that into a business?

Question #3: “What challenges have I overcome?”Sometimes all it takes to come up with a good service business idea is immense physical and emotional trauma.

Seriously. Your most painful and tumultuous moments can be very impactful. They’re also likely not very novel, meaning there are others out there who have experienced the same thing.

You can help those people — and they’ll even pay you money for it.

Two examples:

• RockstarWomenWithMS.com. Lisa Cohen has MS — but that doesn’t stop her from kicking ass. She helps other women cope with the disease and get past the mental barriers it can put up through coaching services.
• CrohnsColitisLifestyle.com. Dave Johnson uses his knowledge and experience from having Crohn’s disease to help others with it reach their fullest potential in the realm of fitness.

All of these entrepreneurs struggled (and still do) with the cards life dealt them. The difference here is that they were able to turn their trauma into an opportunity to make money while helping others.

If there’s a better way to make money, I don’t see it.

So ask yourself: What pain or challenges have I gone through — or am currently going through? How can I use my experience to help others?

Once you have your 9 – 15 service business ideas, it’s time to plop them into the Demand Matrix.