I am writing this post to the new batch of B.Sc.(IT) and B.Sc.(CS) students for Nagindas Khandwala College. We were the first batch of B.Sc.(IT) of the college.
Names of the companies and cities/countries, me and my friends work:
73bit Limited – Mumbai, India
73bit Limited – Mumbai, India
JPMorgan Chase – Mumbai, India
Newtrition Plus Health & Wellness Pvt. Ltd – Mumbai, India
Kronix X Ray & Allied Products – Mumbai, India
ABSG – United States of America
IDFC First Bank – Mumbai, India
Spark – Auckland, New Zealand
Pelican.ai –Mumbai, India
IBM – Mumbai, India
IBM – Mumbai, India
KPMG – Mumbai, India
Capgemini – Mumbai, India
Travelex – Mumbai, India
AegonLife – Mumbai, India
BNP Paribas – Mumbai, India
TCS – United States of America
Retransform – The Annet Group – Dubai
New York Flim Academy – California, USA
Deloitte – Hyderabad, India
SAP –United States of America
eBay – San Francisco, USA
Westpac – Adelaide, Australia
WorkSafe – Wellington, New Zealand
Optus – Sydney, Australia
JPMorgan Chase & Co – New Jersey, USA
Self Employed – Mumbai, India
BNSF Railways – Texas, USA
Transport for NSW – Sydney Australia
Reliance Capital – Mumbai, India
Cipla- Mumbai, India
Indialinks – Mumbai, India
3i Infotech – Mumbai, India
IndiaFirst Life Insurance – Mumbai, India
Rustomjee International – Mumbai, India
Aaditya Pigments & Chemical Industries LLP – Mumbai, India
Independent Contractor – Wellington, New Zealand
I hope this was useful for you to learn more about the companies or professions you can work on. If you liked this post and are currently a student. Answer the following question in the comments below
This post is written for Mr Ajay Vora. He is my uncle and even though this was written as a stragey to help him create his instagram page with continous content atleast once per day for an year. If you are creative person you will find ways to apply same for your work of art.
by Ajay Vora
So we have 1 painting what can we do with this.
1 The painting.
2 Mr Ajay Vora holding the painting and taking a picture.
Estimate each of the dogs below in dog points, assigning each dog a minimum of 1 dog point and a maximum of 13 dog points. It may be hard for you to understand this without a context but in Scrum software development the fibonacci serries of estimation has a refrence to dog points.
A dog point represents the height of a dog at the shoulder.
Dachshund – 1 point
Bulldog – 3 points
Labrador Retriever – 5 points
Greman Shepard – 5 points
Saint Bernard – 8 points
Great Dane – 13 points
Other Dog points for your reference
Terrier – 1 point
Poodle – 1 point
Irish Setter – 5 points
I hope you got an idea about how you can imagine each points are relatively diffrent from each other and easier to estimate. The idea is to work with the natural strength of human mind.
This post is for Sonam. She is my sister in law. She is an Bharatanatyam Dancer. Due to the current Covid-19 situation she has changed the way to teaching to online classes like most of the education world has done.
I think Solo Artists like her can use the a combition of mutliple professions to get new students to teach. Here is an idea on the same direction.
Niche Workshop
A workshop is typically a 5 day class in which you learn a specific dance choreography or technique (I am not an expert so it may differ). Now the trick here is to pick a Niche Workshop.
Back to Dance – A workshop to take back to your dancing memories
So your student will have Bharatanatyam skills but are in diffrent profession. Like you would have been a CA. They could be Analyst, HR or any other profession but in the past they use to do Bharatanatyam dance. Some may be doing today as well.
Where do you find your student?
Simple answer is LinkedIn. You will ask but how? Let me show you. There is a search feature in LinkedIn called “Skill: Bharatnatyam” The underline word can be changed to anything other skills. See the example below:
The first person from HR has a skill of Bharatnatyam. There are more than 1000 results and there is another spelling of Bharatanatyam too.
Why will they join your dance workshop?
Because you will offer them a FREE weekend dance workshop preview. In which you will not only take them through the topic of 5 days workshop but also do a live activity that will be similar or part of the actual workshop.
So once you find them send a connection request with the link of the zoom meeting in which you will offer the preview. You can also create a linkedIn post with video of explaing it and mentioning the zoom link in comments fo them to join on Staturday with other details. This post link can be also an invite text when sending the request.
What happens after Preview?
You offer at the end detail about the Workshop and the fees for the same. Those who have enjoyed your preview will join Back to Dance Workshop
How many invite should I send per week?
If we go with the law of average. You have to reverse engineer the numbers. It depends on the number of student you need in your workshop. If you need 5 students. Here is the math with 25% moving forward at each stage.
So for preview you need 20 people, which means you need 80 people accepting your preview invitation, which means you need to send 320 LinkedIn invitation.
Once you do this and you find the numbers don’t match you can recalculate based on your percent of people moving forward in each stage. Mostly with 5 Workshop you should be able to find your number.
I cannot have 20 people in preview, It will reduce the quality
Okay, In that case you can keep 1 workshop per month and keep 3 weekend prior to that for preview so that you can have fewer student in the preview session. You should also charge 30% advance as a booking fee. So that you can know how many more preview you need the following week. That will make you keep the workshop with high quality and few student so that you can pay extra attention.
You can also have 4 such concept per month and run mutliple preview for diffrent audience and thus keeping you busy for whole month.
I hope this was useful to you and the others who are reading it right now. Do the work and let me know the results.
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 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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?
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.
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.
Now you have all the inputs required you can craft your service; it’s delivery method and its price points.
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.
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.
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?
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
No capital (money) to invest.
No Business expereince.
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
He is an amauter photograher (Camera worth 20K + OnePlus 7 phone)
He has to research if the KTM dealership has an Instagram account
If it has he has to ride his KTM bike to the dealership.
He as to ask who takes care of thier instagram account.
He explains them that he will take 14 pictures per week. Thus increasing the engagement level on social media.
If they seems interested than at last tell them that he will take 700 rupees for 14 pictures
Tell them they have pay after each assignment.
Some metric target to aim for?
He should atleast go to all dealers that sell KTM bikes
He should keep trying for a month before quiting
If he finishes before a month he should write down what he learn an pivoit
Some objection he will face
No one will show interest and ask him to get out (Sales Rejection)
They will be interested but won’t pay him money.
They will bargain and ask for reduced price.
How to negotiate the objection (rookie way)?
He should mention that he will research and shoot to make the photo better each time.
The objective her to make the photo more likable and enaging.
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.
He should explain that he also has to make profit form this work.
He should tell that he has to pay petrol price to reach the place.
How to work with discounts?
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.
He has to set a monthly target first. Say for example he wants 20,000 per month.
So if 7 are ready to pay and 3 ask for discount. Say no to the one who are asking for discount.
If 3 are ready to pay and 3 are asking for discount. They he can take the discount.
If there is only 1 or 2 asking for discount. Offer free work for 1st week.
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 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.
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
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.
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).
Rs 30-60
Rs 100-150
Rs 100-500
Rs 200-700
Rs 800
Rs 1500-2500
Rs 4000-6000
Rs 9000-15000
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.
