Omar Faruc

Service Businesses Are Modern Slavery

↓

This might sound weird coming from me.

Especially if you’ve seen my content before. Where I’ve said more than once that if someone wants to make money, starting a service business is usually the fastest way.

And I still believe that.

But only in a very specific context.

If your goal is to make money quickly, service businesses make sense.
Low capital. Low barrier to entry. Skill in, cash out.

But if your goal is to scale, to stop feeling stuck inside your business, to stop resetting every month…

That’s where I pause before recommending it.

Because service businesses come with a problem most people only discover after they’re already in deep:

👉🏾 You are the product.

If you don’t show up, nothing moves.
If you’re tired, overwhelmed, distracted, or burnt out, revenue slows down with you.

I didn’t learn this from theory.
I learned it inside one of my first real service businesses.

Photography.

Below are screenshots from when I was just starting out.
Date stamped: April 2019.

Someone asked how I charged.

I replied:
​₦5,000 per hour.
​That was roughly $4 at the time.

And immediately after I even added: “it’s negotiable.”

They replied saying they only needed 30 minutes.

Meaning I was about to earn ₦2,500 ($2) for my time, skill, and energy.

Here’s the actual chat.

What stuck with me wasn’t just how low the number was.

It was that:

• I didn’t know why I charged that
• I didn’t know how to stop negotiating
• I didn’t know how to create demand
• I didn’t know how to make people see value without me explaining myself

I was improving my skill.
I was showing up.
I was doing the work.

But demand was accidental.

And that’s where a lot of service businesses quietly suffer.

Not because the owners are bad or lazy. But because demand isn’t intentional.

For a long time, I thought that was just how service businesses worked.

It isn’t.

I’ll explain what actually changed and why this matters for you in the next email.

Omar Faruc

P.S. Yes, photography eventually became very profitable for me. But not because I got better at photography. That part comes later.