How do i increase my sales for engineering

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what does it take to start and grow an engineering business well it takes a lot because number one engineering is difficult right there's a lot of complex aspects to engineering you need to understand the technical background for you to be able to become an expert and grow a company but secondly business is hard right from the entrepreneurial side you need to understand how to grow a business how to hire people how to invoice how to collect on invoices profits margins the economy and so much more so it is difficult however I am thrilled that in this week's Engineering Management lessons video I have with me Richard negri Richard is the owner founder and principal engineer of geoterra engineering and Construction Consultants in Baltimore Maryland he's also a licensed professional engineer and in this video he's going to share some lessons that he's learned through starting and growing his company let's Jump Right In foreign ly working or you know where you currently are as your career um treat them as essentially like your first client um you know you wanna wherever you currently are you want to treat them as like I said you want to treat them as if they're your first client so do the best that you can do make sure you're putting your best foot forward um and um essentially make sure you're delivering um so when you kind of treat your your where you currently are as your first as your first client you know then you're going to carry that into the business as well the other part is kind of get used to you know working the typical six to 12 p.m hours you know so you've got your regular nine to five you know but then you know from 6 p.m to 12 p.m you know those are when you're burning the midnight oil on you know building your own your own thing you know the biggest thing is you know figuring out exactly where it is that you want to position yourself you know a lot of Engineers they might start out their career um in a discipline that they might they may or may not actually um enjoy so the biggest thing is definitely getting to that area where you want to apply your expertise you know figuring out what your particular Niche is figure out where you're going to particularly fit in that's going to be extremely important figuring out um if there's even a need for that particular Niche you know is it is it something that can be marketable is it something that can be scalable um you know figure out what's you know what's required and what what areas that you're willing to serve you know are you going to stay in the local community that you live in or are you willing to locate you know to provide the service that you know where you feel that you particularly fit in um figuring out essentially you know how much you're actually going to need to start up you know the startup costs um you know a lot of folks think that you can kind of just you know start with maybe just a few hundred bucks and in some cases that's true but depending on what it is that you might actually want to provide in terms of as a service equipment might be required software might be required so budgeting for all that prior to getting started is extremely important um and the the last thing I would leave you guys with is definitely develop a business plan you know similar to like how you're working with your clients you know treat it as a project you know building a business essentially is a project you know having a plan and then being able to execute that plan is is going to be key so if you don't know where it is that you're looking to go how are you going to get there so treating treating building your business and putting together a business plan that it's essentially your roadmap to your success you know I mean they say that most businesses fail within you know the first you know two to five years of business you know so it's extremely important that you you plan out for at least those first five years you know how you plan on getting started how you plan to scale how you're planning on maintaining it you know what what are the metrics that you're looking to to meet within those first five years um so those those are the those are the best tips that I feel um for most Engineers aspiring to become entrepreneurs to kind of consider so just a quick summary just you know consider your your current employer as your first client um figuring out exactly what it is what services you particularly want to provide as an engineer what area you want to provide those services and whether you're willing to relocate for uh to provide those services and then developing that business plan for at least five years out you know because you want to guarantee your success yeah those are awesome tips and and that first one I think is really important with your treating your existing employer like your first client so to speak because I do think that people don't often think about that and I think that does get you into the entrepreneurial customer-centric mindset before you even step out and start your own business and I know for me my the consulting firm that I work for became my first client when I went into coaching and training I had a good relationship with them I was doing coaching and training within the company and then when I left I kind of just kept the the conversation open with them and you know we left them really good terms and I ended up I still do work with them today so I think that's a really important point that a lot of people don't consider they kind of think like hey I want to get out of here and do my own thing but really you need to put yourself in that mindset and I guess one follow-up question I would have for you on that last point about the business plan which I think is really valuable so that business plan rich I would imagine then has like certain goals and metrics for you that you can kind of try to hit or Milestones that can kind of drive you in the growth of your business is that is that right yep absolutely definitely you know when you think about building a business especially thinking about five years out I mean it's a it's a huge goal you know you know one of the things that they say is you know how do you eat a whale you know it's and it's one fight at a time you know so that's how you kind of want to break out break down your business plan into you know what are some of the key steps along the way that you want to be able to hit and depending on you know how you are as an individual you know um you can break that down into as many bite-sized pieces as you want or you know based off of what you feel you can handle you know for some folks it might be as okay you know uh I want to start I want to have my LLC formed within the next 90 days you know I want to have Business Insurance within you know 30 days after you know forming the LLC you know I want to have you know I want to procure my first client within you know another the next 30 days after obtaining my business insurance so you can break it down as small as that you know then you can add in monetary metrics at that point where within my first year of business I wouldn't be able to have revenues of at least a hundred thousand you know within my first year you know and then by year three I wanna I wanna increase that by at least 25 percent um you know having those different metrics but then with those specific metrics what are you going to do to achieve those things are you going to um increased marketing well how are you going to increase marketing are you going to employ social media are you going to use a printed Publications um business cards a website um are you going to attend networking events or um yeah it's very comprehensive so it's all the different things that you want to think about um in terms of when you're putting your business plan together the other thing is also who's your ideal customer um because you know that's gonna that's really going to drive you know your marketing strategy and how you get in contact to them because once you know who your ideal customer is you're going to know the best way to to Market to them um you know and then kind of staying in um in touch with you know what the industry that particular industry that you're serving you know what are they looking for you know what's popular what's what's in the demand what's in the know for right now and you know staying on the pulse of those things that way you you remain relevant at the same time and then you know being personable you know uh that that definitely goes a long way as well because as we mentioned um before it's one of those things is you know if you if not only if you deliver on projects but if you're also easy to work with you know get to work with you know people enjoy working with you um you know it's it's gonna pretty much not sorry guarantee but there's a high likelihood that they're they're going to be willing to come back to work with you that's awesome all great stuff there and I do love the idea of the business plan and that it allows you to look at the short term and what do I have to do over the next couple months to you know keep the lights on keep going keep going the business but at the same time it allows you to look at three to five years down the road as well and understand that if I want to be here in five years I need to do this today or this in the next like right 60 to 90 days so that's awesome well listen Rich thanks so much for giving us some tips here I know a lot of our listeners do want to become their own business owners and I think your experience is certainly going to help them so thanks again absolutely my pleasure Anthony I hope you enjoyed those lessons that rich shared as an entrepreneur myself I feel like those lessons are gold and if you want to grow an engineering company you can please take his advice and implement it and I believe you will be successful and please consider subscribing to our channel here we put out videos like this on a weekly basis to help engineering professionals become better managers and leaders I'll see you next week [Music] thank you