Business Tips for Engineers or any Specialists
This post will be focused on my own experience to start a business that I could have as income replacement and better. I am targeting specialist as we always tend to think of a business as just doing the same things at our regular day job for ourselves. Basically, working for yourself. This is a big mistake and I will try to explain in this post.
If you want to give the appearance of working for yourself, the simplest thing to do is incorporate a business, call yourself President/CEO then look for work as a contractor doing the same work as a full time employee. While you could probably get a better salary with this, it will be very difficult to ensure you will always get work. The frustration here is that when you get work, you would probably get several offers. However, when that contract is over, you run the risk of waiting for awhile before more work is available.
A few simple twist to the contracting model above. Focus on being a consultant that focuses on solving specific project problems. You can charge a lot more this way and you could take on multiple projects at the same time. Another twist is to get full time contracts but get other specialist to place on contract under your company. This way, you will get some income when you are not working directly. Long term you could convert the company into a consulting firm if things are in high demand.
Now, lets get into the mechanics of real business, still assuming its around your professional area.
Lets use the example of a good software developer for this case. The assumption here is that you know how to develop code for some type of products and you would prefer to do this on your own.
1. Try to think about what you want to accomplish for your life and how the business will help you achieve it. Then think about how you want the business to be. How big and what type of revenue ideas you have in mind. This process is important to set context of where you want to go long term.
2. You need to find a market problem to solve. Actually, anyone can write software if they really want to do this. Thus its not your ability to write software that will make money. Its solving real problems for businesses or consumers. This means you need to brainstorm on what problem you want to solve. This could be as simple as training other programmers or implement some patentable technology that you develop.
3. Do market research on the problem and existing solutions. Also look into how you would deliver your solution. Actually, a good way to do market research is to speak directly with potential customers to validate the idea. Get as much data from established sources as possible before you move forward to build the solution.
4. Plan out your business implementation path. Now with some market validation, you need to plan how the business will look for delivering the production. This business will be in phases, so you want to focus in on what exactly is required at each stage. This is where you need to step out from just being a specialist and look at the big picture of each business function and when you need them. Most experts will say you need marketing and sales right upfront. All of this can be captured in a business plan. You also need this plan now, so in case things are really successful, you have plan to deal with that right away.
5. Focus on selling the solution. Most engineers and specialist hate sales but no business can survive without selling, so you need to focus on getting people interested in your product and gauge the interest. This could save you time down the road from building something people don’t want. Even if its a software product, you could start a website or information sessions around what the solution intention is. Get people to sign up and share ideas with them.
6. Hire the needed talent. You need to acknowledge again that you can’t do everything in a real business, so you will need to get help. This could be outsourced partners or part time employees initially but at least get help in some ways. If you can find partners that will share the load that can be useful depending on how you want to pursue the ownership part of things. If you are planning to spend over a $1M in this early stage you may want to consider a CEO or someone that can take care of operational issues. Definitely, hire sales and marketing in some ways early.
7. Build and Deliver the product. Now its time to build the solution and get it to your customers. You will be good at this from experience, so now you want try to be more of an architect in your approach as oppose to just being a developer. yes, you will do lots of the work but you need to look at the big picture in getting this done. Work with your sales team to get the product to market as soon as its ready.
8. Grow the business. This is the stage where you have your own product and its selling based on your early work to test the market out. At this stage, you really want to consider how organize you are to deal with customers and growing. Customer Support will be critical at this stage as well as all the other simple issues with running a business.
I will have more on this topic soon. A good book to read on the stages of business growth is “Ready Fire Aim” get it here – Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to 00 Million in No Time Flat (Agora Series)
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Along the lines of “If You Build It Will They Come?” I have a book with that title that covers all the aspects of Market Validation; how to figure out if there’s a market for your product or service before developing it. It gives you the detail on how to apply the points in this blog post the tablet market and gives you insight to see things outlined in point 4 of this blog post. The book “If You Build It Will They Come?” is available at all booksellers and the more details are at http://www.drrobadams.com.
Rob Adams
28 Apr 10 at 12:45 pm