5. Offer to donate some of your proceeds to a local charity. That may help you persuade people to try out your services, since you will also be doing some good for the community.
Finally, here's a tip that has always helped me: look for some element of fun to sell your services. Learn a song, tell a few jokes and, above all, smile while you work. It is amazing what you can achieve with a little humour.
Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group and companies such as Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, Virgin Mobile and Virgin Active. He maintains a blog at www.virgin.com /richard-branson/blog. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/richardbranson. Questions from readers will be answered in future columns.
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