328: How to Start a Service Business to Replace Your Income, Step-by-Step

<p>Starting a service business on the side is one of the fastest ways to build extra income. It's flexible, low-overhead, and you can probably start with skills you already have.</p> <p>“I had a lot of drive underneath me," Abbey Ashley told me, about starting her service business back in 2013. "I was super pregnant and I hated my job so much,”</p> <p>Abbey started offering her services as a virtual assistant, and connected with her first clients at local networking events in Washington, DC. My the time her maternity leave was up--just a few short months--Abbey had booked enough work to not have to go back to that job she hated.</p> <p>On top of that, she only had to work 20 hours a week to do it, and could work from home.</p> <p>There are almost no barriers to entry to starting a freelance service business, and the startup costs are minimal. (All Abbey did was make business cards for networking.)</p> <p>In fact, it was a service business, a house painting business in my case, that was one of my first entrepreneurial adventures.</p> <p>Over time, Abbey scaled her virtual assistant business from just herself at $20-30 an hour, to her own little virtual agency, to $75 an hour and up for some specialized work. Before long, the questions started coming in:</p> <ul> <li>How can I do what you do?</li> <li>How can I work from home and set my own hours?</li> <li>How can I do work I enjoy?</li> </ul> <p>In response, she built up a complete training program for would-be virtual assistants. She's helped thousands of people start their own service businesses and has built <a href= "https://www.facebook.com/groups/vasavvies" target="_blank" rel= "noopener">a thriving free community of virtual assistants</a>. </p> <p>If you want to dive in deeper, check out her <a href= "http://thevirtualsavvy.com/shn" target="_blank" rel= "nofollow noopener">free training called Become a Booked Out Virtual Assistant</a>. (That's an affiliate link; if you buy her full program, I'll receive a commission.)</p>