How I built a subscription based communications business for no money and with very little sales experience

I love communicating. I spend every day of my life doing it in some way. Whether it's writing social posts, drafting press releases, communications strategies, or writing opinion columns, it's my lifeblood.

What I don't like is office politics and jockeying for positioning in large corporations. This is precisely why I decided to start my own consulting firm as a side hack. Now before you say "this isn't a tech company," hold your horses.

I have a background in computer science. I spent my early career far from home on a scholarship building a social network for public school teachers. While I live and breath communications, I also live and breathe technology and still try to solve the problems that I can with programming or at least the mindset of programming.

That's why I needed to find something different to stand out from the crowd. There are millions of people who do "communications consulting" and most of them are men in their late 50s or 60s who have decided to retire from the corporate world and start their own business. I am not that. I am in my 30s and have small children and a mortgage that isn't paid off yet.

I had a few things going for me though. When I began this adventure, I was (and still am) a communications executive. I do this side hack in my off time on nights and weekends and when my kids sleep. I'm like communications Batman.

That being said, I still had nothing to differentiate myself. The average consultant charged $200/hour for 30-40 hours/month for these kinds of services and generally produced lengthy slide decks that meant nothing, or took two weeks to get a draft press release to the client. I knew I had speed on my side and efficiency from my days as a programmer.

I started experimenting in my own role with using the principles I learned in Agile project management and applied them to communications. I focused on getting an MVP (minimum viable product) that may have been awful, but done, to the review stage and then iterating. I treated communications the same way I treated programming.

Then I was mindlessly scrolling one day and stumbled serendipitously onto a podcast that highlighted a graphic designer who was killing it with subscription-based graphic design. He charged a flat fee, cancel anytime for unlimited graphic design - one project at a time. I now had my second differentiator.

Some things were, of course, different. His model relied on little meetings. I need to have meetings with my clients since that is so much of communications and organizational planning, but they choose the cadence for meetings. Some of them, it's once a week while others are once every two weeks. I usually say one "big" project at a time and then unlimited smaller items (like press releases) - within reason.

When it came to how much I charge each month, if I decided to charge the standard $200/hour on the low end, I would be making substantially more money, but not necessarily providing much more value. This isn't a good experience for the client, so I have a flat fee, no matter with how much work I do. Another experience that's not fun for clients is contracts. I have none of those either (unless your company requires them). Just pay me via Stripe and I start working. Cancel anytime too. The model has been working well so far.

The crazy thing about it is how much the clients save in the long run. So many communications managers cost upwards of $100,000-$200,000 to do the same thing I'm doing for less than half that cost.

When I started this, I had no bites. It's hard to start a business. But now that things are going well, it's hard to see how this model can't work. I honestly believe that in the long run, this is the future of all work.

I believe that we will start seeing more professionals like me build their own brands and the brands of others from the ground up with the skills they have without the restrictions of being tied down by an employer. The freedom is massive, but the value is exponential for the clients too.

For the graphic designer, you're getting a senior designer for less than half the cost of a senior designer. For the full stack engineer, it's less than half for the cost of a principal engineer. For me, it's less than half the cost of a seasoned communications executive.

If you want to learn more about how I've built this feel free to reach out or visit inkandinsights.co