Want to be a rich consultant in a year? Watch this.

Yelp as a consulting opportunity in 2012 was an idea I had after returning to Denmark. I imagined someone could become an expert in the new medium and help shops, cafés and restaurants become more visible.

Yelp as a consulting opportunity in 2012

I compared it with the people who’d embraced Google early and built extensive knowledge about search engines. Later, experts in Facebook and Twitter had emerged too.

What interested me was that you could learn a medium while it was still new and gradually build both experience and a brand people knew and turned to for help.

My expectations for reviews and local shops

I’d seen how much reviews mattered to local businesses in the US. So I expected Yelp could become a big factor in Denmark too.

I imagined work helping shops and restaurants with their presentation and understanding customer reviews. Perhaps a few experts could make a living from that knowledge.

Those were my expectations in April 2012. The video describes an opportunity I saw back then, not a documented subsequent result or a forecast of earnings today.

Learn something early if you want to become an expert

The broader idea was to watch new media and take the time to learn them thoroughly. A good consulting brand comes from the knowledge and experience you build over time. You’ll find more of my experiences of finding opportunities and building a business in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

Back home in Denmark with grey skies and a bouncing phone

So I’ve bloody well arrived in Denmark. Little car and grey skies. We’re fucking home, then. The picture’s bouncing because I’ve found a phone holder that isn’t very good. That’s what I’m trying to make work so I don’t have to hold the mobile phone in my hand.

On the drive, I think about the people who embraced Google when it was new. I mention Mikkel deMib and Thomas, among others. They took the medium seriously, gathered knowledge over many years and built a brand around search engine optimisation. I say they now live like kings and barons off that knowledge.

Later came Facebook and Twitter, and experts emerged there too. People who grew with the media and benefited from learning them thoroughly.

Yelp as a consulting opportunity in 2012: Could you become the person people ask?

I’ve just made a video about Yelp. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch my video about Yelp in Denmark first. I can’t even remember whether it was the previous one or the one before that, but that doesn’t matter much either. There I explain the American service and my expectations for it.

I think Yelp is well made. I call it hugely viral and am convinced it will become big in Denmark and challenge Krak and AOK, among others. That’s my expectation at the time of the video.

If in a few years you want to be one of the experts who can charge a lot per hour and be relatively well known in your field, I see an opportunity here. Perhaps you’ll become the mainstay the press relies on when questions arise about the area. That requires you to get involved and learn the medium.

Shops, restaurants and cafés could need help

I expect Yelp could have a major impact on whether a physical business makes money. In the video, I say very bluntly that a retail business with bad reviews could be fucked. That’s how I imagine developments from the US playing out here.

So I also see a possible market for consulting: How can a business present itself as well as possible on Yelp? How does its visibility interact with Google? I point to the stars you see next to search results when looking for a restaurant and imagine the work could become extensive.

Perhaps Yelp won’t become as big as Google or Facebook. But I still imagine room for two or three experts who could, in a few years, make a living helping cafés, restaurants, cinemas, hair salons and other local businesses.

I also mention working to get customers to rate a business as highly as possible. That’s my wording from 2012 and part of the opportunity I saw back then. The existing text above places my expectations in their historical context.

You still have time to learn a new medium

Would you like to be a social media expert, but never really got involved with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or the others? Then the point of the video is that you can get ready to go. A new opportunity can arise even if you weren’t there at the beginning with the earlier media.

Surely the sun must start shining at some point. At least my car has a roof, so I’ll manage. Have a fantastic time.

And welcome home, Thorborg… "Thank you very much, it’s lovely to be back" 🙂 Best wishes, Martin