Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Ravi Bajnath, Founder of Ravi Bajnath Design, located in Hollywood, FL, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Ravi Bajnath Design is an independent creative agency focused on designing technology for local community development.
Tell us about yourself
I've worked in technology companies for almost my entire professional career and originally wanted to downshift from the managerial grind of directing many varying teams across several companies. I have a passion for learning, education, and educational technology. With a background in scaling high-performance customer service teams and digital product design, my activities include demonstrating communication strategies, implementing affordable technology solutions, and providing training for managers and team members to scale their activities for growth.
Transitioning to start a private consulting company focused on User Experience Design during an emerging period of the buzzword "UX" was a bit of a challenge to overcome. However, I found the opportunity to help businesses outside of tech companies to succeed more enjoyable and expanded my vision of community organizing.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Developing quality B2B relationships with people you want to succeed with provides enjoyment in what I am doing and what I can offer to others. Keeping my mind focused on listening to customers' needs has helped me uncover pathways for mutual success. Besides money, especially if your aim is a community, your reputation working with people in your community can extend benefits and relationships otherwise not afforded in a corporate setting. Recognizing this is half of the battle in determining success for myself and what I can accomplish.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
Small businesses come and go with the demand of the world around us; I've been fortunate enough to stay afloat and adapt during the pandemic. By witnessing how companies succeeded and failed at implementing remote work, it gave me many opportunities to reach out to companies for work. Often times that did not play out due to the uncertainty the pandemic generated. This presented a learning opportunity to continuously improve my process and turned some of the hardest moments into rewarding myself with the knowledge to prepare.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Teach yourself how to learn and do new things. There are many benefits to self-directed learning that I cover in coaching sessions where connecting personal motivation to business opportunities. Developing a mental toolkit for learning has helped myself and others learn to do in fast-paced industries.
- Communication and dialogue are the keys to success. Organizations tend to design their business systems as a reflection of their communication; often times this is confusing and hard to understand. It would reflect on how organized your documentation is, how well people understand the jobs that need to be done with the technology that is used, and whether or not everyone can teach each other this method.
- Unionize. If you're running a solo consulting business, then this does not apply. However, if you and people you trust are incubating a product, unionizing offers far greater advantages in the long-term sustainability of a business and against the exploitation model of work we are imprisoned with today.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.ravibajnath.design/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ravibajnath/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ravibajnath
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravi-bajnath-37273860/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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