Page 55 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

don’t have paying clients yet, do the work for free with someone you
know)
c. Pricing details (always be up front about fees; never make potential
clients write or call to find out how much something costs)
d. How to hire me immediately (this should be very easy)

I will find clients through [word-of-mouth, Google, blogging, standing on
the street corner, etc.].

I will have my first client on or before ____·[short deadline].

Welcome to consulting! You’re now in business.

*You can create, customize, and download your own “Instant Consultant
Biz” template at 100startup.com.

When I met Megan Hunt at the co-working space she owns in Omaha, it was 6
p.m. and she was just coming to work. Megan keeps odd hours, preferring to
work through the night with her infant in tow. Unlike most of our stories, Megan
was determined to be an entrepreneur from a young age. “I started when I was
nineteen and a sophomore in college,” she said. “I never intended to do anything
but work for myself. I always knew that I didn’t want a conventional job, so I
never expected to resign myself to a fate other than the one I wanted as an artist.
I worked a few eight-to-five desk jobs, but I wasn’t discouraged because I only
saw them as the means to an end: gaining enough capital to start my own full-
time venture.”

Megan now makes custom wedding dresses and bridal accessories full-time,
selling them to women age twenty-four to thirty all over the world (42 percent of
her customer base is international). After earning $40,000 her first year, she’s
now scaling up by carefully hiring two employees as well as founding the co-
working space where her business is situated. (Since she’s the owner, no one can
complain about her night-owl work habits.)

Almost every business owner we’ll meet in our journey has at least one
disaster story, when something went off track or even threatened the life of the
business. In Megan’s case, the big disaster came right before the holiday season
in 2010. After spending seventy hours crafting high-end flower kits for two
customers, she shipped them out via the U.S. Postal Service … and the packages