Business models - eCom vs service vs personal brand vs SaaS vs platform

[martinz1995]

Hi all, I currently have 2 services businesses - cleaning + social media agency and am starting a SaaS. I am considering all the pros and cons of each business model and would like to share my thoughts on them:

Service - I currently have 2 service businesses - a cleaning business + social media agency. The difference between the two is very interesting:
In my opinion the social media agency can scale really quickly. Some social media clients can be $1k p month, while others can be $5k per month, even $10k p month. With just 3-5 clients you can easily hit $10k p month.

Compare this to the cleaning business: primarily it is residential and office cleaning. In most cases each clean is about $100-$250, and usually monthly or fortnightly. There is not such huge variation unlike the Social media agency, so it takes much longer to scale. It'll take 200+ clients to hit $10k p month.

However it is somewhat safer once you get to a certain point - if you depend too much on 1 client in the social media agency and they leave, you could potentially lose half or even more of your income. Compared to a cleaning business with so many clients, if you lose several - it will not be a huge hit to your income and you can likely recuperate them pretty soon.

eCom - great opportunity to scale quickly. Many people who are making 60k-100k a year can easily get to 10k or more in a month or more. But risky, and requires big investment in the beginning. Requires strong marketing and brand knowledge (imo). E.g. a Gucci T shirt vs a Generic T shirt has very little difference in actual use. But Gucci sells very high ticket because they know how to brand it.

SaaS - SaaS is quite similar to the cleaning example I've given. Unless you offer an enterprise plan, it'll take longer to scale. However SaaS is much easier to automate and manage compared to a cleaning service based business - which requires so many factors like location, staff availability, payroll, equipment, work health and safety. All you need is really a SaaS, good onboarding process, sales and customer support.

Personal brand - This is a great option I think - combined with strong content marketing it is an excellent way to leverage your current success and multiple it. But only works if you actually have proven success, and the problem is that there are many people scamming and selling overpriced courses with this model. It also works extremely well to offer services e.g. for social media services or other online services.

Platform - I have considered this option, I think it requires a lot of strong marketing in order to make it work. Definitely seems like something that will disrupt many service businesses. It is basically a service model but just expanded at immense scale. Also it is slightly better than a service model because it is easier to automate and requires less management of staff.

My plan is to continue to build my agency, and SaaS. I am also building my personal brand for about SaaS marketing - which I think I can use to not only close more social media agency clients in the SaaS niche but also help with growing my own SaaS. Then if I have free time I'll work on the cleaning business - I know many people mention it isn't a good idea to try do so many ventures, I am not trying to do them all equally.

My main focus is my agency (which includes personal branding as a way to market). SaaS and the cleaning business are more like side projects. It's like I do all the work necessary for my agency (outreach, personal brand videos, calls, hiring). If I've done everything and have extra time, why not work on other projects?

 

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[Harsha_14]

hey man, appreciate the work ,time and effort you put into all of these things.
the idea of handling a cleaning business ,smma, saas tryng to build a personal brand is an organic approach and quite challenging also
may i know how many members are in your team?
i also want to build a smma+saas business, i am not very interested in presonal branding
should i take a course or is it not necessary?
how much money from 10k/month would go into tax and other exepenses? do people pay you in a single payment or pay per client?
did cold calling shown effective results for you?

 

[Declag]

hey man, appreciate the work ,time and effort you put into all of these things.
the idea of handling a cleaning business ,smma, saas tryng to build a personal brand is an organic approach and quite challenging also
may i know how many members are in your team?
i also want to build a smma+saas business, i am not very interested in presonal branding
should i take a course or is it not necessary?
how much money from 10k/month would go into tax and other exepenses? do people pay you in a single payment or pay per client?
did cold calling shown effective results for you?

Hi all, I currently have 2 services businesses - cleaning + social media agency and am starting a SaaS. I am considering all the pros and cons of each business model and would like to share my thoughts on them:

Service - I currently have 2 service businesses - a cleaning business + social media agency. The difference between the two is very interesting:
In my opinion the social media agency can scale really quickly. Some social media clients can be $1k p month, while others can be $5k per month, even $10k p month. With just 3-5 clients you can easily hit $10k p month.

Compare this to the cleaning business: primarily it is residential and office cleaning. In most cases each clean is about $100-$250, and usually monthly or fortnightly. There is not such huge variation unlike the Social media agency, so it takes much longer to scale. It'll take 200+ clients to hit $10k p month.

However it is somewhat safer once you get to a certain point - if you depend too much on 1 client in the social media agency and they leave, you could potentially lose half or even more of your income. Compared to a cleaning business with so many clients, if you lose several - it will not be a huge hit to your income and you can likely recuperate them pretty soon.

eCom - great opportunity to scale quickly. Many people who are making 60k-100k a year can easily get to 10k or more in a month or more. But risky, and requires big investment in the beginning. Requires strong marketing and brand knowledge (imo). E.g. a Gucci T shirt vs a Generic T shirt has very little difference in actual use. But Gucci sells very high ticket because they know how to brand it.

SaaS - SaaS is quite similar to the cleaning example I've given. Unless you offer an enterprise plan, it'll take longer to scale. However SaaS is much easier to automate and manage compared to a cleaning service based business - which requires so many factors like location, staff availability, payroll, equipment, work health and safety. All you need is really a SaaS, good onboarding process, sales and customer support.

Personal brand - This is a great option I think - combined with strong content marketing it is an excellent way to leverage your current success and multiple it. But only works if you actually have proven success, and the problem is that there are many people scamming and selling overpriced courses with this model. It also works extremely well to offer services e.g. for social media services or other online services.

Platform - I have considered this option, I think it requires a lot of strong marketing in order to make it work. Definitely seems like something that will disrupt many service businesses. It is basically a service model but just expanded at immense scale. Also it is slightly better than a service model because it is easier to automate and requires less management of staff.

My plan is to continue to build my agency, and SaaS. I am also building my personal brand for about SaaS marketing - which I think I can use to not only close more social media agency clients in the SaaS niche but also help with growing my own SaaS. Then if I have free time I'll work on the cleaning business - I know many people mention it isn't a good idea to try do so many ventures, I am not trying to do them all equally.

My main focus is my agency (which includes personal branding as a way to market). SaaS and the cleaning business are more like side projects. It's like I do all the work necessary for my agency (outreach, personal brand videos, calls, hiring). If I've done everything and have extra time, why not work on other projects?

If you are a serial tasker, a great delegator. You wouldn't have a problem. I run a cleaning business and a short-form video agency for businesses. It's still across the same vertical, so I don't context-switch a lot. For the cleaning business, automate everything, except the cleaning part. A great first hire will make your job easier by order of magnitude.