It's quite a challenge to start when your character has no skills. It is possible to send the slave to school to learn skills which your slaver does not possess, but it costs sparks. Ultimately you will want to raise your slaver's skills, but this takes time, and time is money. From what I read in the patch notes, it takes longer to increase the slaver's skills in this latest update. To gain income, it would be advisable to raise D quality slaves and sell them to one of the minor residences or another guild such as real estate office. There are other ways to earn money, such as chariot races or gladiatrix contests.
If you use a search engine, you can locate a wiki for the game which has a list of all the requests available from the minor residences. This can be quite helpful when planning your early game income.