Author: Vikram Shetty

Ever wanted to start a business, this lockdown is your time.

Have you already taken the precaution to sit at home and work from home? You are planning to stay put for the next two weeks. Congratulations you may have earned 20 hours of the weekend and 10 hours of travel time per week, Mumbai. So with 60 hours in hand what are the first steps you can do to begin. The below idea would work bests for online and social media-based business. However, the most part will apply to every consulting business. The idea has to work for you by providing the service sitting at home via the medium of the internet.

If you don’t satisfy any of the above criteria and are still reading to kill time, continue reading. I have something for you too in the end. Or else you can stop right now 🙂

  1. Negotiate this time with your family and get uninterrupted hours to work on your business. If you are passionate or not this time will act as a limit test.
  2. Recruit your family, start the first hire at home. If you can’t sell your business idea to your family, how else you could you sell anyone else. Hiring is a skill you will cherish for long.
  3. Write about the business idea in a blog, LinkedIn or Facebook. If you are afraid if you can lose your job title it as “This Lockdown got me thinking about a business idea are there any takers”. Don’t worry, ideas are cheap execution is the king.
  4. If you are not good at writing, you can do the same via video or podcast its easy. If you cannot google your way of technology impediments. That could be a challenge in this current business environment. (Remember you are working from home)
  5. Identify your tribes. They are your primary customer. You have to know what are their age, gender, profession, income, individual or organization, location, and where online you can find them.
  6. Once you identify them to search them. Can you find them on any specific platform LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter etc? What do they care about? What do they talk about?
  7. Share your business idea blog/video/podcast you created with them by connecting with them. Tell if they have 5-10 min to discuss the idea.
  8. Ask if they would be ready to pay for it if they are excited to ask them for advance. If you can serve them your business is started or else return the money.
  9. Now you have all the inputs required you can craft your service; it’s delivery method and its price points.
  10. If you are still reading and you don’t have any business idea, think of 3 people with whom you should share this blog, and they will benefit from it. This thinking process could help you come up with an idea. Remember this is not for everyone.

You can put your thoughts in the comments below. I would like to get some feedback and reply.

Stay Safe and Healthy!!!

Posted on by Vikram Shetty 0

Business Idea – Healthy Habits Buddy

A friend of mine was discussing an idea to start a business. She is currently working in Corporate world and have a dream of becoming a Business women.

Her passion is around health, food and fitness and I only spoke with her like 5 minutes. I know that time is not enough to conclude anything but She didnot turned up on our first online chat meeting. I have blocked my time so I thought of creating some plan or working idea that would suit her busy schedule. Something to start part time.

So based one few Business principles

  • Starting a online service business from zero money.
  • Using the power of Whatsapp or other messaging tools.
  • Making use of wearable technology devices like fitbit.
  • Creating Systems that is repeatable and provable.
  • Indentifying product market fit.

So I am writing this article so it can be used by anyone who wants to. 😃

Business should start from a vision but partime business must start from a passion.

Because your work timing for it in Mumbai, India will be 9 pm to midnight. (You can calculate for your cities.)

The Idea

I think she can become a Healthy Habit Buddy. Her role would be to help people to take them towards thier health goals. She will do that by being a good buddy during the journey by keeping track of the tiny habit changes, providing solutions to daily challanges and checking the stats of wearable.

Remember we are not being a deitian, trainer or coach. It’s like a job of a peer who keeps a check on you when you ask. Friends use to do that in past now everyone is busy so you need to have this buddy. For example if the person wants to walk 10,000 steps a day. She can’t find time. The healthy habit buddy will talk to her and figure out time from her current schedule and hack some time out for compelting the steps. Like park your car far, take a walking meeting in office, fill the water bottle from another floor, take stairs after lunch etc. I hope you got the point.

The Clients

They have to be working women in Corporate world because then she will know exactly the challanges they are facing. She will also know the lifestyle and environment. It has to be super niche like women in her industry or even doing similar roles. To begin with the number of clients can be 1 to 10. She is currently creating success stories.

The Method

Any service should have a proven method for gaining trusts from clients. One of the easy way would be to share a proven method to audience.

Here is one way to do that using Automic habits. She study this and buy a copy of the book too. Go through all the excerises and prepare her self.

She will have to start her own journey first. She has to put the goals out there. I will pick the most common health goal to demonstrate an example. ‘Weight loss’ So she can put the stat with current picture and share the daily or weekly progress with the audience on any social media platform.

Thus creating a proven method of not only achieving the goal but also to keeping it going.

The Process

Once she has tested her methods and if it is showing resutls every time, She has to convert it into a measurable systems and look for a volunteer who would be her first client.

On average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behavior becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact.

Here is the link for above number. So the first client will be along with her for 8 weeks. Her system should involve weekly calls and followups, Some Daily messages and guide materials in case of any challanges.

She will only work on 1 Keystone habit. Because the client can use the framework and then build on other habits based on it.

First few clients she can work for free. Then her fees can be weekly in advance to keep it more interactive and personal. This will imply that the client is sincer about changing the habit.

Unique Selling Point – Pricing

There has to be an unique way to market the business hence the pricing could be a talk of the town. So we will use incentive method to charge the clients.

Let’s say the week fee for the the buddy is INR 2,450 only. There will be task and activity clubbed for each day so 7 days. If all the activity for the day is achieved than clients will get back 350 Rs for each day. Thus for completling all the task the service can be availed for FREE.

Once the 2 months is completed and the NEW habit is formed the client can choose to give a bonus fee as per thier wish. This indicates a litmus test that they really had a great expreince with the service and the life lesson is worth the money.

Your top health can skyrocket your confidence, that’s priceless

Flaws in the plan

  • It will take a long time before you have first paying customer.
  • It could be challenging to prove that the system works with any one.
  • Scalability could be challenging.
  • There are many cracks but this is the intial thoughts in words
  • The advantage would be that she will master the art of habit. That’s a life lesson.

Let me know what do you think about this idea in comments below?

Posted on by Vikram Shetty 0

Letter to Nishanth Shetty

Nishanth Shetty, is my cousin from the city of Bengaluru, India. He is interested in starting his own business. He is at a position where most of us are when we start on our own

  1. No capital (money) to invest.
  2. No Business expereince.
  3. No concrete Business idea/plan

This is most common start everyone has, they think about what they DON’T have. Rather than thinking about what they do have. Let’s look at what Nishanth has

  1. He is an amauter photograher (Camera worth 20K + OnePlus 7 phone)
  2. He is a rider (KTM Duke bike)
  3. He knows how to posts on Instagram

Now let’s create a back of the envolope business plan for him.

So what he has to do?

  1. He has to research if the KTM dealership has an Instagram account
  2. If it has he has to ride his KTM bike to the dealership.
  3. He as to ask who takes care of thier instagram account.
  4. He explains them that he will take 14 pictures per week. Thus increasing the engagement level on social media.
  5. If they seems interested than at last tell them that he will take 700 rupees for 14 pictures
  6. Tell them they have pay after each assignment.

Some metric target to aim for?

  1. He should atleast go to all dealers that sell KTM bikes
  2. He should keep trying for a month before quiting
  3. If he finishes before a month he should write down what he learn an pivoit

Some objection he will face

  1. No one will show interest and ask him to get out (Sales Rejection)
  2. They will be interested but won’t pay him money.
  3. They will bargain and ask for reduced price.

How to negotiate the objection (rookie way)?

  1. He should mention that he will research and shoot to make the photo better each time.
  2. The objective her to make the photo more likable and enaging.
  3. The end objective is to increase the follower count and popularity. But currently I am not guaranteeing it but if I could guarantee I would have charged 3 times.
  4. He should explain that he also has to make profit form this work.
  5. He should tell that he has to pay petrol price to reach the place.

How to work with discounts?

  1. Firslty don’t answer any one right on spot, get the phone number and tell them you will get back to them in few days.
  2. He has to set a monthly target first. Say for example he wants 20,000 per month.
  3. So if 7 are ready to pay and 3 ask for discount. Say no to the one who are asking for discount.
  4. If 3 are ready to pay and 3 are asking for discount. They he can take the discount.
  5. If there is only 1 or 2 asking for discount. Offer free work for 1st week.
  6. If no one is ready to pay at all. Work for free for 2 weeks i.e. 2 visits and 28 photos. To build your portfolio of work

So the bottom line is economics is demand and supply.

So Nishanth wish you all the best. See if this simple business plan works for you. Let me remind you its simple but it may not be easy. You may face a completely diffrent challange on the ground. Keep your focus on your learning business.

Posted on by Vikram Shetty 0

20 tiny content ideas in 2020

A short checklist for anyone who is looking for what to post on LinkedIn

  1. Share the idea of a blog post under 200 words – Sustainability is the new Green, literally!
  2. Image text from your article – Best Practices (♻️)
  3. Create a quote image from the comments on the post – This example is from the above post Comment by Kim
  4. Interactive Question from data – Gender pay gap 200 years (♻️)
  5. Screen capture from public website – Equal Measures 2030
  6. Give 3 or 5 pointer list – Innovate Benchmarking
  7. Create quote from article on indexes – SeaFood Index (♻️)
  8. Ask any benchmarking related question. – Susty Insights
  9. Sustainability Job posting – World Benchmarking Alliance
  10. Emoji text posts – 17 SDG
  11. Insights from a report – Gender pay gap (♻️)
  12. Screen capture from report – SDG compass (♻️)
  13. Create one page PDF using google document. – 20 Chapters
  14. Data points from other Linkedin post – ZSL SPOTT
  15. Screen capture from UN organization from Instagram – UNWomen
  16. Your orginial thought related #globalgoals – Listen
  17. Adding content to your clients LinkedIn post – Share Action (♻️)
  18. Quote question from any LinkedIn comment – ISS (♻️)
  19. SDG Target image (similar to your industry) – SDG2
  20. Screen capture from a video – Use Data (♻️)

All images should have company name on top right. If you are preparing a image for us put 73bit.com on top right. Thank you in advance.

PS: ♻️ icon means option to repurpose the idea into a dozen post.

Bonus Examples

  1. 5 points Pdf document – Legal documents
  2. New paper article – Diversify Business
Posted on by Vikram Shetty 0

Digital Collaborator Q&A Session

Poll taken – Fee estimation to a digital collborator per collaboration

We had this Q&A with college students on 19th Decemeber 2019 in Mumbai, India. There were 9 students in the room. The early adopters who wanted to try and understand this new job role. This post has few of the important questions asked by those students from this session.

What is the first thing I need to do?

You have to pick the business niche and the digital creator theme (photography, graphic design, illustration, blog writing, video etc ). Because the student where from Information Technology or Computer Science. I suggested them to pick the business as Software SaaS business. Pick the business with team size between 10-25 people. You can look them in LinkedIn or Twitter. Re-Read this article again and go to section “What do you have to do and how can you make your side money?”

How to connect with digital creator?

You can put a comment on the Digital Creator’s Instagram post, asking if they would like to collabrate. “I liked the image you have created.” OR “I love the use of colour” OR “I like the way you have use the shadow effect” and add it with “Would you be open for Free collabration with small business to gain more awarenesss for your work?”

Here is an example that I did with one of the Digitial Creator

Use this 1.80 dollar strategy by Gary Vaynerchuk. Re-Read this article again and go to section “What do you have to do and how can you make your side money?“

How do I reach out to Businesses?

Once you pick you business niche, search for the business on LinkedIn and/or Twitter. Once of the offline mode of doing this is by visiting Business Centers or Commercial Complex in and around your area. Once you reach the office ask for a person who is incharge of social media marketing?. For the students in the room I mentioned following Business Centers in mumbai western suburbs.

  1. Sej Plaza Malad
  2. PlamSpring Malad
  3. Profit Center Kandivali
  4. Xth Central Mall Kandivali
  5. Raghuleela Mega Mall Kandivili

Re-Read this article again and go to section “What do you have to do and how can you make your side money?”

One of the side effect of this activity both online and offline is you (as a student) will be able to learn more about local software business and could open up an opportunity for intership or first job

What if Digital Collabrator do not agree to do free collabration?

You move on another person

How to convince the Digital Collabrator to do a free collabration?

You don’t because this is not for everyone, Its for people who are willing to do the free work for getting more work. Only thing I can think about is share this article “Blueprint for More Work in 2020” with them.

What should I do if business don’t pay me?

You do the work for free, till the time you can. Make sure you do atleast 100 collabration to get an expereince and learn some craft of negotiations.

Should we share the name of digital Creator on the post?

Yes, because the creator is not getting paid and the only way you are giving value to them is giving them awareness on thier work and the image or video they create will have the instagram or other social media handle at the bottom or top of the content.

What if I want to become a digital creator, am I not creating competition by sharing thier name on post and business?

Even if you aspire to become a digital creator, currently you are not so you can be a student and learn the craft by helping who are ahead in the journey. It will create an oppurtuntity to network with professionals and also find a mentor for you to grow. I think you should not worry about competition but learn more about the craft.

What is the price I can get for each collaboration?

Pricing is a very tricky part of the whole process. However it validates the idea because it gives a value to the work that Digital collabrator does. We ran a small exercise around this and asked every one to put a ballot poll on the price range. You can see the image on top of this article for per collabration (1-3 images per company).

  1. Rs 30-60
  2. Rs 100-150
  3. Rs 100-500
  4. Rs 200-700
  5. Rs 800
  6. Rs 1500-2500
  7. Rs 4000-6000
  8. Rs 9000-15000
  9. Rs 10000-15000

The pricing was all over the place of the amount of work between 1 hour to 4 hour per transaction.

I hope this was a useful post for you. I have a question for you.

Do you think Digital Collaborator role can be done you or any students?

Put your answer in YES or NO in the comments below.

Posted on by Vikram Shetty 6

Content Creator

This is not a blog post but a job description for the role of an content creator that I am looking for my LinkedIn Profile. To begin with let me explain you my school of thought behind the content. There are 4 forms of content namely written, images, video and audio. Now the most I use on my LinkedIn profile is written and images. This role will be mostly about writing. I could have asked for only content writing but I want you to put on your marketing/sales cap too.

I don’t want a keyboard junkie, who is expert in writing 1000 words per minute and slam me 20 blog post under 20 minutes.

That brings me to the first requirement of this role to you. You will have to write 20 blog posts per month. The idea here that It would be intresting to post 1 per day and we can experiment which 5 days we pick for the week. Don’t worry you won’t have like daily deadlines. We will plan a week in advance so you will be alway writing for the following week. How do I know about planing ahead of time. I wrote 63 articles for my LinkedIn.

If you wonder where will you get the content to write the blog post, that’s a good question. Here are few guidelines to find them:

  1. The content is for Sustainability benchmarking & assessments Experts
  2. We have written an ebook Benchmarking Innovation. (Read Introduction)
  3. You can go through my LinkedIn Profile for recent posts and articles.

Now that brings me to your first Test.

Interview Test No 1 You will have to send me the topic on which you will write the first blog post. You will have to write a short description of 3-5 lines about what you are going to write.

Interview Test No 2 If I think it looks like a good blog post idea and I haven’t written anything like that before. I will ask you to write a summary with 1300 character or less roughly around 200 words. It has to be around 1300 characters including space because LinkedIn post has that limit. I will post it on LinkedIn. We won’t see at the vanity metrics.

Side note: If you get this job. The next step would be to write a blog post based on the vanity metrics. Which means if there is any comments or likes. Write a 1000 words blog post. So the initial 3-5 lines becomes a tweet. 200 words becomes a LinkedIn post and 1000 words becomes a LinkedIn article.

Now this will be your pillar content, you will create images using the text of your content. Few examples are shown below

1) Quotes created by the comments on one of the LinkedIn post

2) Caption image for an article we wrote here

3) Screen shot with the brand from instagram of related industry topic

There are more than dozen such ideas that I will share with you in order to make your work easy. You can find 100s of them on Internet too.

The tool you may have to learn is https://www.canva.com/. Its a free tool and you can find good tutorials online.

Now your second job requirement is to create 5-7 content per day and keep a check if I am posting them at regular interval.

Interview Test No 3 The last test would be to create an image or pdf document using canva. Here are 8 examples to get inspired from. List Document, Infographics, Quote, Power point Deck, Data Point, Flow Chart, Question of the day and Screen Capture

The outcome of your job should be, that your content makes atleast 20 people per month reach out to me and ask what I do. I understand that it will be practically difficult to measure this. However this is the experiment which I want to test and recently some one reached out to me and I normally ask them how did they came to know about me. He said it was because of a piece of content I posted.

I know I am making it sound all mechanical but this is an hard problem and I welcome you to solve this together. So if you are still reading this post then welcome to this experiment of remote content creation with a sales cap on your head. I will be waiting for your email to confiablesolutions@gmail.com

Thank you! If you agree with this idea but not intrested in this job. Please feel free to share this idea with your friends and family.

Posted on by Vikram Shetty 0

Digital Collaborator – Job 001

My last post got an overwhemling response and I got many questions. One of the student reached out to me showing intrest in doing the role. I thought it would be great if we run an experiment along with the help of the student and see the practical implementation, challenges and learning.

I will document the whole experiment and the outcome of the exercise in the post. You can use this as a refrence guide and also ask question in the comments below. I would be happy to reply them.

Let’s begin, If you have not read my previous article, I would suggest read it to have a better understanding of what we are trying to do here. (click here to read my previous post) You will play the role of Digital Collaborator for this article.

Let’s go step by step for the question “What do you have to do and how can you make your side money? ” from the previous post.

  • Pick a niche – Software is the business niche I picked for “The Digital Collaborator” (you can email me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com and I will guide you with next steps) for this experiement.
  • Select 1 skill – Illustration (I picked it for you)
  • Format of content – Cartoon Strips for educating customer (I picked it for you)
  • Content with business – Since in this case the business is mine www.73bit.com.
  • Contact wih Digital Creator – This is the part where you will be working
  • Find the right fit – Now based on the previous points the right fit will be illustrator doing cartoon strips will be right fit. (In actual end to end work the digital collabrator has to figure this out on thier own)
  • Once post is live – We will wait for this in future to update with the work of “The Digital Collaborator”

The Task

To create a comic strip explaning a concept from my older posts. Here is an 2 examples. The output will be 1 single image that will be posted in LinkedIn. It will should have the link text http://www.73bit.com in the image. Like in the example below there is @garyvee. (DONOT COPY the theme from this example, it’s only for inspiration and idea, use your creativity on this brief). The message has to be positive or growth.

View this post on Instagram

Expectations are poison ☠️ I’m desperate to get people to consider the audacity of expectations, we need so much more humility in the business world, let alone life. I listen to people complain in DM, in the office, text (1-212-931-5731) and so much of it is based on their expectations of others. So many lack the simple characteristics of empathy to consider maybe the world 🌍 doesn’t revolve around you or at least not at this moment. Too much expectations from many who have no leverage in the first place and are looking for something from that person in the first place. How can you expect when you are asking for something in the first place !!!!!! Perspective up! More humility less audacity

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on

For 73bit Limited, we would like something similar but the topic of conversation should be based on any of the following topic

  1. Name and Shame vs Name and Fame – 498 views (read comments)
  2. Bees – 404 views
  3. Tell your friend about climate change – 1039 views
  4. Waste Management – 681 views
  5. 61 days left in 2019 – 513 views
  6. Less then 2 dollars – 770 views
  7. Co-author – 390 views (read comments)
  8. Sustainbility Community – 1068 views
  9. Analyst Carrer Advice – 225 views
  10. Individual vs Team player – 332 views

Let me explain you how to work with any one topic from above list. There is a story in each post and it conveys a message. Let’s take the 1st example from it. Name and Shame vs Name and Fame.

For the cartoon strip image. There will be 2 colleagues talking to each other. First person tells to second person “Name and Shame is a great driver of change” the second person replies “Is that ethical?” (this could be the top part or the left part). The First person asks “Do you have a better solution?” and the second person replied “How about Name and Fame?” (this could be the botton part or the right part)

I could suggest 3 types of theme to create your comic strip image

  1. Problem vs Solution
  2. Do you know vs Ahh! moment
  3. Pure humor

You can pick your creativity that sends in positive and progressive message to the audience.

How will you connect with the Digital Creator (Comic Strip Illustrator)?

Step 1 – Read this method and understand it well : https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/instagram-for-business-180-strategy-grow-business-brand/

Step 2 – Search the hashtag with following for this experiment #comicstrip #CartoonStrip #CartoonistOfinstagram #comicpanel #comicartists

Step 3 – Pick the images which you think are close to the requirement we have above as 2 examples.

Step 4 – Put a comment in it, first genuinely appreciate the work and ask “Would you be intrested in collabration?” or “Would you like to collabrate with a software business?” or “How about a collabration for more awareness to your work?”

Step 5 – Once they agree to collabrate, DM this article to them and ask them to go through The Task section. Answer any question they may have. If you don’t know the answer ask me on the email and reply back to them.

Step 6 – Once the Digital Creator understands the task. Ask them to send across a short write up on what it would look like in case I have any feedback.

Step 7 – Share the final copy with me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com.

You can use the above steps for your own niche, 1 skills, format and connect the correct business. Configure the steps according to your needs.

What did “The Digital Collaborator” do and what was the outcome and timelines of this experiment?

Now it’s upto “The Digital Collaborator” to carry out this activity. I would like him to record the time spend and the dates on which you sent a message and got replies. You can use pen and paper to record it.

Let’s start with the first one image from the list“The Digital Collaborator”

Statistics to record for him for each digital creator

  1. How much time it took for searching the creator? (time in minutes)
  2. When was the first message sent? (date)
  3. How much time it took to explain the task? (time in minutes in case you did back and forth to answer any questions)
  4. When was the writeup sent to you on the final work? (date)
  5. When did the final post sent to me? (date)

Disclaimer: I am not sharing how much I am paying “The Digital Collaborator” to do this job because I think it will block your creative mind when it comes to pricing. I will ask him to write in the comments if you are happy with payment.

I will update this post after we are done with the experiment. If you want to become “The Digital Collaborator” email me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com

Annexure

Other ideas that came during the conversation. Including them below as side notes of this experiment

This is one of the collabration I personally did using the above method along with Artist Mehna – It was viewed and reached more than 1500 in all platforms(LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter). In LinkedIn alone it was 700+

This is another collabration I did using the above method along with Artist Vranda. She created 2 images. The collective viewed and reached more than 1300 in all platforms(LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter)

View this post on Instagram

Photo credits to @nolikeearth Do you think kindness work like an asset in the business? How much kindness matters to you? . . . The human part of the business seems to be back again. Business is often lead by profits and revenue. Purpose-driven business is heard more these days. . . . Social media platform are playing a major role. You can easily tell if the person connecting with you on LinkedIn is a person or an automated message/bot. . . . You start developing the relationship as a good citizen of the internet world. You will get instant value or have an insightful conversation. . . . There could be 1 or 2 recommendations that will give you a great outcome. Isn't it a good idea to have a long term relationship with your community. Community thinking over transactional thinking is a good idea. I know the work will be more and you will have to put in a lot of heart. . . . Do you support kindness? Type Yes below. . . . Thank you Vranda Agarwal for this great image. . . . #SDG #SDG2030 #Inclusion #globalgoals #sustainabledevelopment #sustainability #green #gender #paygap #UN #ClimateStrike #ClimateChange #environmental #resposible #photooftheday #kindness #heart #World

A post shared by Vikram Shetty 🌍 (@shettyvikram) on

Example of a good illustration:

Posted on by Vikram Shetty 1