Hi there, this is the weekly Letters By Elgwaro. Today’s newsletter is coming in a little late for two reasons.
First, I’ve let loose 1400 or 3/5ths of my subscribers from this list who never opened any of my past 11 letters. So if you’re getting this email, you must’ve read at least one of my letters and didn’t unsubscribe. By extension, it means you feel my letters can add value to you. That’s all the motivation I need.
Letting them go was painful because it took years to gather the list plus I really wanted to add value to them. But also it felt pretty relieving. I can only relate that feeling to when I periodically had the confidence to delete the WhatsApp chat and contact of a crush who had blue-ticked my 3 subsequent good morning texts back in campus.
Secondly, yesterday I was out with close friends for a fun day. We rode the Scream Machine at Juja City Mall and graced Spur Mall’s heated rooftop swimming pool with our damn sexy bodies.
Later at night, we made some sweet layered chapatis and tucked them into our stomachs with scrumptious chicken nuggets cooked in some soul-comforting spicy soup. And that’s how the day ended without me writing today’s letter.
None of it had been planned. A friend just woke up on Tuesday and asked what I’d be doing on Wednesday. I was planning to relax at home and do some online work. Then he came up with the wild idea, ‘Let’s go out tomorrow and have some fun’. Hell yes. That’s the kind of freedom a solopreneur or freelancer can have.
I bet you too dream of such. That’s why I’ve got something that could radically change how you see the whole self-employment idea.
Entrepreneurship Doesn’t Have to Be a Startup.
You see, most people think of entrepreneurship as coming up with a genius idea or solution that solves a problem facing millions of people, getting enough capital, hiring the right people, building the idea into a product or service, and marketing the hell out of it until it makes them a millionaire.
Well, surprise surprise, 99% of people who take this route fail. It takes a tremendous amount of hard work, skill, and pure luck to succeed this way. But there’s a much easier route to set yourself up for entrepreneurship success.
Consulting.
It’s the business of positioning yourself as an authority in a certain field.
It means you’ll be solving a real problem facing your prospective client.
It also means you are genuinely interested in the niche so you’ll not require too much willpower to put in the time and resources needed to become the best at it.
As a consultant, you avoid the mistakes most startups make; building a product for months and then realizing their intended customers don’t really need the solution and also that they don’t have a way to generate traffic for the product.
With consulting, you get the opportunity to start small; acquiring one client, and making them happy before you move to the next.
You get the opportunity to learn, make mistakes, improve your offering, and ensure you are adding real value to your ideal customer.
You also get the chance to start generating a profit and not necessarily have to wait for years like startups do before they become profitable.
And the best part about it is that it doesn’t matter where you are. All you need is the courage to decide what you want to be and give yourself time to grow into that person.
If you’re currently employed, that’s perfect. At least, you can meet all your bills while you build on the side.
If you’re unemployed, that’s also perfect. While your colleagues have at most 6 hours daily to build, you have 16 hrs. You have all the time to focus and grow. You can get there 3 times faster.
There are many ways you can start your consultancy but here is a simple route you can take.
- Identify a problem in your life, work, or industry that you really want to sort out
- Find a solution to the problem.
- Write or talk about the problem and your solution on social media
- Use learnings from your work experience or past engagements as inspiration for content.
- Engage with interested people in the comment section and offer to help them solve their problems.
- Start selling consulting services to the people you’ve already built a connection with.
- Rinse and repeat.
That’s all for now. See ya next week.
Chao!