RSS

Monthly Archives: January 2014

How to kick-start your part-time business without going broke?

Have you ever thought of starting your own business? If so, were you successful in doing so? If not, what is holding you back? Have you ever thought about it? Though I might not be an expert on the subject, I have some experience in starting my own part-time gig, which I would like to share here with you. In this blog post, I will provide you with some advice on how to kick-start your part-time business that you have always thought about, but you didn’t know where to start.

Calculate before you jump-in: Let’s say, you are making $4000/month from your current full time job, and you are saving around $400/month or so. Now, let’s assume that you want to open up a new part-time business of photography, and you are unsure about it being successful or not. In this situation, instead of jumping into the business directly, and getting loans from other people to start your business, you can just calculate the worst case scenario. Assuming that your equipment, advertisements and operational costs being $4000, you can save this much money in 10 months. Let’s say, if you can make this much amount of money in 10 months through your photography contracts, it might not be a bad business after all. Other thing that you want to calculate before entering into the business is….how much will be your operating costs vs. how much money you are expecting to make. Though it might not give you a perfect answer, it will give you a definitive starting point of your finances.

Test your business model: Once you are convinced that you really want to start your part-time business, and once you have done all of the calculations, now it’s the time to test your business model. In order to test your business idea, you might want to meet with your prospective customers to test the assumptions of your business. For example: If you want to open up a new photography business, it would be a good idea to take 1-2 contracts for free. This will not only build up your portfolio, and provide you with some good references, but it will also test your business model. If customer feedback suggests any changes to your current strategy, then go back and modify the appropriate building blocks of your business. And repeat this process with other prospective customers, until you have some amount of confidence in implementing the same business model for money.

Jump in: Once you have tested your business model, now it’s the time to jump in and make some real money. In order to do this, you should capitalize your older customer base to expand your business. Word of mouth definitely helps you to get some business (at least in my experience). Obviously, having some external help from some advertising contractors wouldn’t hurt either. Once your business is up and running, you should continuously assess your business’ profit potential every month. You might have couple of months with some losses, but make sure that you can afford these losses through your current full-time job’s savings. If you are continuously losing money in your business, which can’t be recuperated through your primary job, then it might be the time to get out. On the contrary, if you are making enough profit from your business for more than 6 months, and if you can sustain yourself from that profit, then maybe it’s the time to convert your part time gig into a full blown business.

I hope, these tricks will help you kick-start your own part-time business within few months. Do you guys have any other ideas regarding this subject? If so, please share your ideas through comments below. My readers would be delighted to hear your take on this.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

1 Comment

Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on January 30, 2014 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: business management, business model, Entrepreneurs, Leadership, part time business, return on investment, Self leadership, small business, Start your own business, start-ups

Why can’t the software industry survive without project managers’ help?

22 Jan

What do project managers do? What are they good for, anyways? I am sure, if you have worked in the software industry, then you must have asked this question multiple times to yourselves. I don’t blame you either, since most of the time project managers are not that technical, and sometimes they don’t understand very specific details of an engineering problem. But that doesn’t mean that they are not important at all. Project managers often bring lot of skill-sets, which an engineer or engineering manager might not have. Thus, in this blog post I am going to educate all of you engineers on the specifics of what exactly project managers do, and why they are an irreplaceable part of the software development life cycle.

Provides the focus: Software development is a creative work, and hence, sometimes engineers can’t constrain themselves to focus on the priorities (or project scope). For example: If you don’t know how big is the space in your kitchen, how can you buy a refrigerator that can fix in your house? Even if you find an ideal refrigerator, which satisfies all of your needs, but if it is slightly bigger than the space in the kitchen, then it won’t work out for your house. Project managers resolve these kind of issues by project planning, project monitoring, and helping the team to deliver what the customer wants. For an engineer, it’s easy to get sidetracked during a project, since they might come up with better solutions or additional problems to solve, which usually cost more, take longer, and can potentially kill the project with overruns. Re-arranging your pantry while preparing food for a dinner party could result in hungry guests. A project manager will avoid these kind of disastrous situations by looking at the big picture, and prioritizing all the tasks.

Provides planning: Some software projects grow up too quickly, and become too complex within a short period of time. Due to this changing scope, without a clear-cut plan, engineers can’t concentrate on one thing at a time, and they can get pulled in every direction. When you look at the big picture, you will realize that the needs of a marketing department is different from the needs of the sales team, while these needs might not even connect to the reality in any form or shape. Sales team can sell a dream software, which might be unbuildable, or it might require constant changes to the existing product to deliver that dream software. Project managers make these tasks easier by scheduling, planning, budgeting and controlling all the tasks associated with the product. They also uncover most of the needs and issues up front, and if changes do occur during the software development life cycle, they change the project plan to make it easier to adjust the course of the project.

Though it is desirable to hire a technical savvy project manager, it is not practical to do so every time. Finding a project manager with management and software development skills is hard to get. And hence, sometimes your project manager might not understand the specifics of your software development issue, but that doesn’t mean that they are good for nothing. Project managers are, and always will, be the critical part of the software development life cycle.

So, next time when you think that your project managers don’t understand your engineering issues, then try to educate them, instead of blaming them to be dumb and stupid.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi