Transcript

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[00:00:00] Questions. Oh, I get questions. I get your questions every day. There’s more lyrics to this song that’s actually about mail, but I can’t remember them and I couldn’t find them in a Google search. Hey there, Chef Shelly here. Don’t worry, I’ve never sung on this channel before and I promise I’ll never do it again.

What I actually do is help passionate cooks like you start a personal chef business so that you can get paid to do what you love on your own terms. If that’s something you’re interested in, be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the little bell so that you never miss one of my weekly videos. So these are the top six questions I get from people who’ve decided they want to start a personal chef business.

Number one, the question I get the most often is, Where do I start? What do I do first? And this is the absolute best advice I can give you. The absolute first thing that you have to [00:01:00] do is figure out what you want. I talk to people who haven’t even figured that out. So how can you do anything else, right?

Do you want a personal chef business just doing weekly meal prep services? Do you want to do catering? Do you want to teach classes?

Do you want to teach classes? Do you want to do one of the million other things that a person in a personal chef business can do? Do you want to be full time or part time? Or is there a certain amount of money you want to make? What do you want to cook for clients? Oh, or a s Do you want to be full time or part time or is there a certain amount of money you want to make?

These are all decisions that you need to make before you can figure out what you need to do to start that business. You need to know what kind of business, what you want to do, right? Number two, why do I cook for clients? Assuming that you’ve [00:02:00] already done step one and you know what services you want to do, because doing, if you’re just doing meal prep services, that’s different than if you’re doing catering.

What do you like to cook? That is a great place to start here. What do you like to cook? What are you passionate about cooking? Now think, will other people want that food too? If it’s American comfort style food, yep. If it’s vegan, vegetarian, yep. If it’s gluten free, paleo, keto, yep. Healthy, yep. Now if it’s super, super niche ethnic food, then you’re going to need to think about the community where you are and if there is a large enough pool of people that want that exact style of food and most importantly, are willing to pay you what you want to make for it.

That is how you consider what to cook for people. Number three, what do I need to be able to [00:03:00] cook for other people? And I just did another little video, I’ll put a link here, about eight things you don’t have to have. Pretty much, if you’re doing personal chef services, you probably already have most of what you need.

You can download guide. There’s a link right by this video on how to do meal prep services for clients. And once you’re starting to do that practice, you will very quickly find out if you need anything and if you do what it is. Number four, where do I get a license? Do I need a license? Where do I find all that out?

All you have to do is go to your city, find out about the business requirements like licenses, go to your city health department. You can do this online. You don’t need to do this in person. Find out if you can cook from home or you need to cook in the client’s home. Go to the state that you live in to find out if you need to charge sales tax.

This is not an answer I [00:04:00] can give you. I’m good, but I do not know everything about all 50 states in the country and what they are going to require of you. But you can Google that. Super easy. Number 5. Do I have to have an LLC? Well, honestly, it depends on what you want. You can do business as a sole proprietor with a DBA, that stands for doing business as, if you’re going to mark it under a business name instead of your personal name.

If you do that, you can still write off business expenses. What an LLC really does is protects you personally. For instance, if somebody gets food poisoning and sues you, if you have an LLC, See, and are doing everything correctly. Your personal assets like a house or a car or whatever are protected. Are you ready for all the fine print?

I’m not an attorney. This is not legal advice. You might need to go talk to a legal professional to get [00:05:00] answers for your specific situation. All The question of all questions, the big mama of questions. Where do I get clients? All right. First of all, you know, I’m always going to tell you straight.

Honestly, you do not need to worry about getting clients. Until you are ready. Until you have everything set up first. So please don’t get ahead of yourself. You do not need to panic about that, and here’s why. If you want to do meal prep services, usually known as personal chef services, here’s an example of how many clients you would need.

If you want to cook one day a week, just every week, one day a week, that’s one client. If you want to cook two days every week and be part time, that might only be two clients, two people that you cook for every week, week after week, two cook days. And if [00:06:00] you want to be full time, if you want to be doing personal chef services, 16 or 20 cook days a month, honestly, that could only be eight people, two weekly clients, two every other week clients, and four monthly clients.

That literally fills up four days a week. So do you live somewhere where you think there might be eight people who want your services? So when you’re thinking about getting clients, It’s nothing you need to buy ads for or go on radio or TV or get a billboard. You can do that with just meeting people, telling them about your services, and making an offer to help them.

You can build partnerships with doctors to get referrals. You could do a presentation to a mom’s group or an expensive high rise community. You can network in online groups. There are literally a bajillion things you can do. to get eight [00:07:00] clients. But first, first, you need to be set up professionally. You need to know how to do your services very well, and you need to be able to clearly and compellingly explain your services and prices.

to start taking on all those hungry clients. Do you have even more questions? Get my free guide below on how to do meal prep services for clients. I’ll start sending you some emails. You can learn more about a personal chef business and see if it’s the right fit for you. You can start making those decisions, start getting your practice in and get yourself set up for success.

Because what do I always say? The clients are out there and they’re hungry for what you’re cooking.

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