Tell us a bit about your business.
I work with inventors and local businesses to help turn their big ideas into reality with services such as product design, 3D printing, prototyping and full manufacturing launch support.
How has your business progressed recently and what do you attribute that to? Where do you see your business in one year?
I currently run my consulting business as a side job to a normal nine-to-five engineering day job, so trying to balance everything and stay motivated has been a struggle. I hope to take my consulting fulltime within the next 12 months, but I’m hitting a plateau of the amount of work I can find (and do!). Being limited to just a few hours a night, it might take making a leap of faith into consulting to allow me to find all the work I need to support myself.
What are your favorite tools or resources that help you do business smarter, and how have they made a difference?
The Side Hustle Nation podcast has been awesome for motivation and new ideas. Wix.com is super simple to use for professional business websites. Most of my early business networking and contacts have come from free Craigslist ads.
What advice would you offer to businesses like yours just starting up?
Get a laptop so that design tasks can be done at the customer’s location. They enjoy being part of the design process and giving immediate feedback on changes. Networking is huge: Word-of-mouth advertising is free and people who approach you will already have a clear picture of what you can help them with. Just one good project can lead to many new contacts and customers. It’s not always what you know, but who you know!
Where can customers find and connect with your business?
Submitted January 2018