entrepreneurshipEverybody hopes to have her or his business. I am an urban designer and I want to have my own business.
Urban designers are not only a physical designer. They find solutions to qualify people’s life. In fact they are similar to doctors. They are City’s doctor. Urban designers often work in a big group in a big company. Their domain work has been limited to designing urban space and places, providing land use schemes, create an inspirational approach to urban design, architecture and public realm etc.
To me there are a lot of ways for urban designers to present their talent. For example they can be active in tourism industrial. They can establish travel agency and manage it.
If you were urban designer how do you start your own business?
Anyone can be an entrepreneur, even more in such a creative and necessary subject as yours.
Let me understand what exactly are you looking for with your question: Do you want to get some business ideas or do you already have an idea and want help on making it happen?
Well, I'll try to answer both anyway:
1 - How to have business ideas: Read a lot. Reading is, by far, the best strategy to understand what have been done properly, what others are doing poorly and what customers (cities in your case I guess) are looking for.
Always carry with you a pen and a paper - or just a smartphone - and write down all ideas you have during the day and night, no matter how dumb it sounds. Soon or later your notes/ideas will start to make sense and one day, from nowhere, you'll have an Aha! moment that maybe could become a good business idea.
2 - OK, so you got a new idea and now want to make it happen: Don't be afraid to talk to others about it. Sometimes first time entrepreneurs become afraid about someone stealing their idea. Nothing could harm you more than this. Nobody is going to steal your idea. period. And even if someone does, they won't have the passion to make it happen.
You should talk with others entrepreneurs or read about them trying to understand how they have succeed. There are a ton of blogs, podcasts and books about it.
Just to make your life a little bit easier, I'd suggest a great blog: Life Hack.
And here you can find a list with 10 great books every entrepreneur should read
The most important question when you want to become self-employed with a consulting skill is “how do I find prospective customers”?
I did not fully understand what you are doing, but it sounds to me like a niche skill needed by city planners working for city administrations and maybe a few companies. Often there will be lots of money involved. Getting such a job will likely require good contacts. Do you have a network which includes people who undertake such projects? If not, building it should be your first priority.
Who are the people who decide on the land use schemes in your city? Whose consulting service are they using right now and how happy are they with them? Who are the people who decide on their budget? And where do all these people hang out ofter work? When you don’t know, you better find out.
For what I understund you’re doing, you can start building your business by branding yourself as go-to-guy in your field. Creating and sharing good quality content related to that field, you will eventually be on everybodys lips when they look for urban designers. Congratulations, you’ve developed yourself a proper job in your field of expertice.
Now, if you’re not interested in just to trade hours for dollars, you should find a scalable model that lets you sit on drivers seat and let company do the heavy lifting. As you start to get recognition and bigger jobs by personal branding, you can hire people to work with you. As things grow, you can be more of a overseer and face of your company and reap the benefits.
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