A startup that is ramen profitable generates enough cash to pay all expenses, including the founder’s living expenses. Instead of taking a part-time job, securing a paid internship, or living exclusively off work study funds, use your time in college to build a ramen profitable business.
Not only will this give you more options once you graduate college, but you will learn a tremendous amount about sales, marketing, accounting, and social media.
Service startups vs. product startups.
A service-based business is one where you exchange your time for money. However, rather than being labeled an “employee” of a company, you own the company and are labeled as a “consultant” or “contractor.” Instead of customers, you have clients.
A product-based business is one where you create a product, which you sell to customers. This product can be physical or intangible, like a website or a mobile app. It costs money or time to create the product. The hope is that you will generate enough cash from the product over a span of time to justify the investment.
In my experience, it’s much easier to create a ramen profitable service business than a ramen profitable product-based company. This is mainly because you are dealing with your own or another’s skill set in a service company. Likely, there already is a demand in the job market for the skill set you, your partner, or your employees have. The hard part is securing the initial clients and keeping the jobs coming in. For this reason, the focus of this blog post will be on how to build a service-based business in college.
Evaluate what you are good at.
In a service-based business, you will be selling your skills to potential employers, be they individuals or other businesses. Begin to take stock of what you are good at, what you know better than most people, what “skills” you have, and how you can prove it.
For example, if you know how to do front end development work or make wordpress websites, this is marketable skill that you can build a service-based business around. If you are a good writer, if you are good at video editing, or if you know how to use adobe photoshop/illustrator, these are all awesome skills that can be at the foundation of a service based company.
Evaluate what people on your campus are good at.
When you start a service company, the skills of you, your cofounders, and your employees are what your’e selling. If your campus has a lot of talented web developers, designers, or video producers, you should make use of the resources around you.
Form a relationship with another person that has a highly marketable skill and make it your mission to find contract jobs for them. You can start the business together. After you begin making some initial income, you can bring on subcontractors for jobs to help ease the burden on your cofounder or business partner.
Don’t have a skill?
Even people that don’t have a marketable skill or know anyone with an in-demand skill set can build a service company. They just need to begin learning the basics of sales. With a willingness to learn and work hard in sales, you can generate leads for other companies or sell affiliate products and services.
Identify companies in your area and their needs.
What types of companies operate near your college campus or your friend’s campus? What problems do they experience in their respective industries and what role do college interns have at these companies? By identifying the problems that companies in your area experience, you will be able to brainstorm services you can provide more easily.
For example, if the companies in your city have trouble reaching out to students at local colleges and the career service departments do a horrible job of linking up companies with students interested in internships, that is a problem that you could solve. Why not organize events between students and employers or start a website where students can connect with other students that interned at local companies. They could then learn more about what it’s like to work at various companies in the area for the summer.
Identify individuals in your area and their needs.
The best way to brainstorm business ideas for service companies is to identify the problems that your peers and other members of the university community experience.
For example, if many people on your campus have trouble with writing essays, an easy service idea would be to create an essay writing or reviewing service. If parents of students on campus live far away from the college, you might consider creating a gift-packaging service where you will send students gifts on behalf of parents that include goodies such as homemade cookies, brownies, and candy.
Get business cards and a website.
Once you’ve identified your skills, the skills of the people on your campus, and the problems of individuals and businesses near your college, you should be able to come up with a few service driven business ideas. Pick your best idea and come up with a name.
It’s absolutely essential that you get business cards. Potential customers may ask for one and often times business cards are exchanged at networking events.
I use VistaPrint and Moo for business cards. I also highly recommend getting a website, twitter account, and setting up a company LinkedIn profile. You should get a personal LinkedIn profile if you don’t have one already.
You can purchase a domain name from Godaddy or 1&1 and use a cheap hosting provider like Bluehost or Hostgator to set up a website. In addition, there are many free wordpress templates out there you can use to create a professional looking business website in minutes.
Try it out for three months.
Try it out for a definitive time period and analyze the results. Test your hypothesis that there is a demand for this kind of service and that you can fill that demand. Questions? Leave a comment below.