It can be anything from doing transcription work to starting a cleaning service to offering virtual assistant services – any business where you provide a necessary service.

The service business is easy to start. You can usually start it with one person (you) and build it up as you go along. If you're really smart you'll think BIG and do what many other great entrepreneurs have done and build a mega-service business where you simply manage and delegate.

Here's how it works:

Say you offer transcription services to online marketers – You can start by doing the transcribing yourself while you build trust with your clients and start getting repeat business. Once you see there's more work coming in than you can handle or you simply decide it's time you stopped typing and started marketing, then you can hire other transcriptionists to work you.

And it's easy! You hire them as subcontractors which means they're responsible for their own taxes and all you do is outsource work to them at a lower rate than you make. You are ultimately responsible for the work, which is why you'll take a cut of the service fee.

You can start by outsourcing to one transcriptionist, then two, three and eventually you can end up with a huge team of trained quality transcriptionists. You can then hire a few editors (also as subcontractors) to edit the work and help relieve your work load even further.

You then can concentrate on marketing, training, and keeping the team morale high.

Let's take another example:

You decided to start a ghost writing service. You start with a few clients you write for and find it fairly easy… but eventually those clients start recommending your fantastic services to all their colleagues! Well at this point you can politely decline and say you're booked OR you can do the smart thing and hire other writers to help you out.

You pay them a reduced fee so that you still make a profit. Hey after all it is your name on the line and ultimately you are responsible.

By thinking big you can take what was originally a one-woman (or man) service and turn it into a huge success. The trick is to thing BIG and realize that a service business doesn't necessarily mean you're “trading your time for money”. By putting a few smart systems into place you can have your cake AND eat it too.