BLACK BELT STARTUP

Full curriculum covering all key elements of starting a business and establishing the foundations for growth to 7 and 8 figures.

In the first two weeks after you sign up for Black Belt Startup, I'll work with you on a personalized roadmap to guide you through the program.

Each month, you can schedule a 30-minute meeting directly with me so we can assess your progress and discuss any questions.

Each week, two 60-minute office hours sessions will be scheduled. Any questions about any part of the program or curriculum are encouraged during the office hours.

These sessions will also give you the opportunity to interact directly with other members of Black Belt Startup community and learn from your peers.

It's recommended that you join one or both of the office hours each week.

My team and I will respond to all questions in the current or following business day.

My team and I will provide detailed feedback on all submitted assignments within 3 business days.

This will help you to gauge your progress and make sure that your efforts are steading building towards acquiring paying clients

As someone who has been through the trials of entrepreneurship, my advice is this: it's not for most people. So with that, what you won't get in the program is:

• Mindless cheerleading: encouragement, guidance, and support, but the commitment and the inherent motivation has to come from within you.
• Promises that it will be easy to start your new business: I pretty much guarantee you the opposite, but I can help make it easier.
• Simple formulas or magic pills: I provide a solid framework, but you still have to work it and make adjustments, and still stay disciplined and focused, and take advantage of the support in the program.
• Fantasy peddling about more money and easier lifestyle fast: you can potentially get there, but it normally takes years of hard work and sacrifice.
• Emphasis on passion: building a business takes a lot more than that. You don't have to be passionate about the service that you build your business on; you just have to like it enough, understand your motivations, and be skilled, and make the sacrifices. If you do happen to be passionate about the service, so much the better. In any case, you can be passionate about providing excellent service to your clients and about the success that you achieve.

Black Belt Startup is a welcoming and inclusive program for all people who want to follow a deliberate and disciplined path in early entrepreneurship, particularly in the realm of consulting and services. Familiarity with (or even a specific interest in) Aikido and martials arts is not in any way required or expected.

If you do have a background in martial arts, you'll likely find some parallels between Black Belt Startup and your martial arts practice.

In either case, the focus of the program for all participants is business success, with some conceptual foundation originating from martial arts.

No, not directly. It's intended for anyone who want to take a disciplined approach to entrepreneurship, particularly in consulting or services.

The program is relevant to people at different moments in their lives and careers:

*I sometimes share two hard truths about layoffs. The first is that many or even most people who are laid off were underperforming. The second is that even people who are skilled and hard-working can easily find themselves unemployed due to company restructuring or industry shifts. If the second hard truth applies to you, you may be a good candidate to channel your skills and experience into your own business.

People who have already have consulting experience or have started businesses may also find value:

• Solopreneurs who want to expand into a team
• Side hustlers who what to transition into a full-time business
• People who have already started product-focused businesses and want to migrate to or include consulting and services
• People who have worked at a consulting firm and now want to strike out on their own.

Some of the course content is less suited to the following, but they would still find value:

• later-stage companies
• companies selling physical products
• companies specializing in ground-up software and platform development
• brick-and-mortar companies

Regardless of your current status, If you're not prepared to work hard and stay committed long-term, Black Belt Startup (and entrepreneurship) will not work for you.

The program is intended for people wanting to start a business in any one of a range of consulting or professional service areas, including but not limited to the following.

Much of the focus is B2B, but the program is fully applicable to many B2C businesses as well.

B2B

• B2B Consulting
  • Management Consulting
  • Strategy Consulting
  • IT Consulting
• Professional Services
  • Accounting
  • Legal
  • Engineering
  • Architecture
• Marketing and Advertising
  • Digital Marketing
  • Branding
  • Public Relations
• Financial Services
  • Investment Banking
  • Commercial Banking
  • Insurance
• Human Resources
  • Recruiting
  • Employee Benefits
  • Training And Development
• Supply Chain and Logistics
  • Warehousing
  • Transportation
  • Inventory Management
• IT And Technology Services
  • Networking
  • Cloud Computing
  • Cybersecurity
  • Software Reselling and Customization
• Healthcare
  • Medical Billing
• Environmental Services
  • Recycling
  • Hazardous Waste Management
  • Sustainability Consulting

B2C

• Accounting and Tax Services
  • Financial Advice
  • Tax Preparation
  • Bookkeeping Services
• Education Services
  • Tutoring
  • Test Preparation
• Personal Finance
  • Financial Planning
  • Wealth Management
• Home Services
  • Home Cleaning
  • Repairs
  • Remodeling Services

You should plan to devote 5-10 hours of focused time each week to:

• view the course modules
• completing the worksheets, templates, and calculators for each module
• participating in office hours and coaching

Participants are welcome to devote more time to the course modules and assignments as feasible each week per their schedule.

Other offline work, such as working with a lawyer, will require additional time beyond the coursework. As you progress through the stages of marketing, sales, and delivery, you should plan to devote significant additional time outside of the course itself.

Once you become a member, we can discuss your weekly schedule as part of your individual roadmap review.

The program entails the following aspects:

• coursework
• participation in office hours and coaching
• completing the necessary offline work to close your first deals (or your first new deals) and begin delivering your service

The amount of time that it takes to go through the program depends on two main factors:

• how much time you can devote each week
• if you've already taken any steps to start your business, or if you're starting from scratch

If you can put in the recommended 5-10 hours weekly to coursework and participation and devote additional time to marketing and sales, my promise to you is to close 2-5 clients in 90 days.

If you have more time to put towards the coursework and the required offline work each week, or if you already have taken some of the steps to start a business, you should be able to achieve this goal more quickly.

If you don't quite have 5-10 hours to devote to coursework each week and additional hours for offline work, it will take you longer to close your first deals.

It's not recommended, however, that you join Black Belt Startup if you're not committed to devote one or more blocks of dedicated time each week to completing the coursework and performing the other tasks needed to start a business.

The stages of Black Belt Startup correspond roughly to the white belt, green belt, and 1st-degree black belt level in Aikido. You're considered to have earned a black belt in Black Belt Startup when you have closed and begun delivering your first deal.

However, just as in martial arts, achieving your first black belt does not end your journey of development. It represents the first level of mastery that enables deeper learning, further achievement, and growth, which continued membership in Black Belt Startup can support.

At this point, office hours and coaching can continue to provide great value as you build your business. You can also continue to access course modules on demand.

While you're encouraged to benefit from Black Black Startup throughout the early stages of your new business and even beyond, your commitment is month-to-month. You can pause or conclude your membership at any time, effective at the end of your current monthly billing cycle.

If you're currently at a well paying job, possibly years. If you're expecting your new business to provide you with lots of money and leisure time right away, you're not ready for Black Belt Startup.

As I mentioned above, my first job as a consultant was for $1400, but this eventually led to building a robust marketing analytics agency that I sold in 2019. Black Belt Startup can provide the framework and the insights to help you get there faster than I did. 

Per the previous question, however, still expect to work hard of the course of years as you build your business.

The program is designed not to interfere with a 40-hour-a-week job but instead to help you establish your business without immediately cutting off income from your day job.

Black Belt Startup is a welcoming and inclusive program for all people who want to follow a deliberate and disciplined path in early entrepreneurship, particularly in the realm of consulting and services. Familiarity with (or even a specific interest in) Aikido and martial arts is not in any way required or expected.

If you do have a background in martial arts, you'll likely find some parallels between Black Belt Startup and your martial arts practice.

In either case, the focus of the program for all participants is business success, with some conceptual foundation originating from martial arts.

If you're not able to devote close to 10 hours of focused time on the program each week, it may be hard for you to build the necessary momentum.

You can sign up for the free course to be kept updated about the membership program so you can consider to sign up if you have more time in the future.

While you do need to possess some specialized skills to start a consulting and service business, you don't necessarily have to achieve an extremely high level of expertise.  As long as you can substantively help an organization or an individual solve a pain point, you have the basis for a business. We explore this topic further in the course modules and during office hours.

While Black Belt Startup is intended for individuals who have already worked in a full-time professional capacity, the program could be suitable for students who have acquired specialized technical skills that could form the foundation of a business.

Please email [email protected] for details on our membership discount for students and recent graduates.

Sales is a particular pain point for many new entrepreneurs, so Black Belt Startup devotes a great deal of attention to this area.

If you have any concerns about the suitability of Black Belt Startup for you, email [email protected], or feel free to schedule a direct 30-minute discussion with me. 

If I don't feel the program is a good fit for you, I'll tell you so, and I'll provide any career advice that may be useful.  In addition to advising on business, I've advised hundreds of people on career development.

If you're already getting some clients but struggling, Black Belt Startup can help you get on track and build a stronger foundation for further growth.  You can also consider our high-touch consulting program.

If you already have clients as a side hustle, Black Belt Startup can help you transition to full-time.

If you already have clients in a solopreneurship scenario, Black Belt Startup can help build foundation to grow a team and scale to 7 or 8 figures.

While Black Belt Startup is designed to help you establish the first foundation for eventually building a team and growing, much of this program is fully applicable to solopreneurs who want to offer consulting or services.

Many of the principles can apply to side hustling as well, but I'm not a fan of side-hustling except in a few cases, particularly in the case of testing a new business idea before leaving your day job.

Only a very small portion of the content (particularly re: legal and accounting) includes references that are specific to the United States.  Even in these cases, the principles discussed apply pretty much globally.