 The first thing to do when you're starting your service-based business as a solopreneur, you don't have a team, right? You got to keep it really simple and lean. The first thing to do is not to build a website. I've seen so many people make this unfortunate mistake of spending months, sometimes even longer, to build their website when they're just starting their business. Let me tell you why that's not a good idea. Because when you're starting your business, you don't really know what your niche is going to be yet. So my first recommendation also is to not figure out your niche yet. Because if you hire a coach to help you figure out your niche, okay? You are working, even with the coach, you're working in isolation. You are detached from your market. Let me explain to you, where does your income come from? Let's get really clear about this. Your income in your business comes from other people believing you can help them and paying you money. So your money comes from other people spending. What that means is you need to talk to enough other people to understand what they're willing and happy to pay you for before you understand your niche. So actually, I recommend that you get your first 50 paying clients before you clarify your niche and before you create your website. Now, this is not usually what you hear, but I've been coaching so many new businesses get off the ground in the last 10 years. I can tell you people are wasting money on branding packages, on messaging packages, on website building things, services, okay? I recommend that you delay the building of your website for as long as you can. I'm talking about build your website in the second or third year of your business after you've gotten a bunch of paying clients first. So let me tell you what I believe are the first five actions to take as a solopreneur service provider. So I'm talking to those of you who would like to become a well paid coach or a consultant, a mentor, healer, facilitator, author, speaker, a solopreneur like me. I don't have a team and you probably don't have a team backing you up either. And you probably don't have a huge budget, okay? Like me when I started. So here are the first five steps. Step number one is to get clear on what your schedule of work is going to be, okay? I have a lot of articles on my website about joyful productivity and I recommend that you read those so you get inspired about creating a schedule of consistent work because now you're working for yourself. You no longer have a boss telling you when to come into work, okay? What to do, when to take breaks and when to go home. You have to be the one to figure that out. So you have to be the one first step is to figure out a consistent and joyful and sustainable schedule when you're going to start work every day, when you're going to take breaks, when you're going to do your self-care, when you're going to go home, meaning when are you going to stop work, okay? And what you're going to do during the during the work time. So number one is to prioritize setting up a schedule and following your schedule. I recommend a service called focus mate, which I use multiple hours a day. Yes, I already used two hours of focus mate today. I use focus mate every day to help me keep consistent in doing the work for my business. So I recommend that to you as well. So step one, get consistent with a schedule. Step two is to schedule time with your friends to help you one to one and giving you feedback on how you're describing the service you want to provide for people and the kind of person you want to have as a client. So let me explain that again. Schedule some meetings with your friends who are supportive of you and say, I would love your help as I start my business. I would kind of, can we just talk for half an hour? Let me just try to explain. I'm going to practice how I'm describing who I'm trying to serve and what my service is going to be. And I'm going to see if you can instantly think of somebody that meets that criteria. And if you can't think of somebody, then you can help me ask me some questions. Maybe I need to change how I describe my service. Maybe I need to change what service I provide and for whom. So this is another key point in that in the beginning, you might want to provide three or four different services for different people because you don't yet know what you're going to focus most of your time on. In the beginning, don't just provide one service for one audience because you're just painting yourself into a tiny box before you've even talked to a lot of people. How can you do that? Right? You're just putting yourself in a corner. No. In the beginning, you need to have options for what you could provide and what kind of people you might serve and see if your friends can go, oh yes, out of the three options you just named, I could totally think of Bob and Jane for option two that you just said, because I could see that they could need your help. Option one and option three, I couldn't think of anybody, but option two, I could think of someone. So then you talk to 20 of your friends and get their votes on which of the three options you could provide that they could introduce you to and then they'll introduce you. Okay. Step number three. So step number two is scheduling time with friends, get feedback on how you're describing a service center. Step number three, start creating content every day. Now I'm assuming that you have at least 10 hours per week to work on your business. If you have less than 10 hours, maybe create content once a week, but you've got 10 hours or more, create content every day. Whether it's writing or making videos or recording a podcast, you have to get the experience of talking about your message, of exploring your ideas. Your content might be quite varied. There might be a lot of variety in the beginning. That's okay. You're practicing communication and you're practicing figuring out what you really want to say and what you want to help people with. Start creating content and wherever you want to create it is fine. Step number four is occasionally make a call to action where you create content, telling people about your service again. Okay. And step number five is to then start putting some logistics together. Your scheduling tool for clients, how people will pay you, how you organize your documents, those kinds of things. Anyway, I have a blog post on this stuff if you want, but anyway, I'm going to end the video now. I'm George Cal, authentic business coach. I hope this helps you to start your business in a more effective and efficient way. So I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Thanks for joining me.