Vinay Patankar, who you may know as the founder of Process Street, is a keen traveler, who initially started a business to make money as he went exploring.
He has learned how to make the most of his limited time, taking chances when they come, and ultimately, how to come back from failure.
Like many internet entrepreneurs, he knows how challenging and rewarding it can be.
Click here to grab the Vinay Patankar interview transcript >>>
It’s got his every word
[player]
Process Street provides a simple way of managing processes that any business, big or small, goes through. It offers a checklist solution to ensure all your recurring procedures are correct, as well as aiding collaboration.
Today, Vinay is sharing with us what he has learned along the way, and how he applies these to his business today.
These 6 lessons have taught him how to be a better business owner, and has helped him achieve the level of success he is enjoying today.
How to be a SAAS Superstar Like Process Street
#1 Failure Is A Badge Of Honor
Never be afraid of taking a chance and doing something new. You’re guaranteed to not succeed if you don’t take a leap of faith sometimes.
And you know what, it might actually work out. Now, wouldn’t that be lovely? But if it doesn’t work out then you should, at least, be proud that you tried.
Never be afraid to hold up your hands and admit when it hasn’t worked. It’s a chance to learn your lessons and start thinking what your next shot might be.
There’s no purpose in just trying to push through and keep doing something. It can then get to a point where you’re wasting time and money just dragging this business behind you. It won’t fix the problems.
Many people never find success on their first attempt. But for a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s a rite of passage. Like everyone, you would prefer to not fail and, of course, it’s a disappointment. But you have to give it a spin. It’s a learning experience and not a source of embarrassment.
Vinay himself went through this with an app he created. He speaks of it as being part of the process. It’s an experiment which didn’t work out. And the right thing to do after that is to assess the data. Find out what you would change for your next venture.
But also, what went right? It’s unlikely that everything was wrong. In Vinay’s case, he cites the lack of an actual problem as his mistake. However, with Process Street he has stumbled across a real need.
So whatever you do after a failure, just don’t let it put you off. Take a little time and decide what you’re going to try next time.
#2 Making The Most Of The Time Available
Vinay’s first business came as the result of reading a book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss — a book about building a business which pays whilst escaping the 9-5.
He read this just as he was preparing to go traveling, but rather than accepting that his time away would negatively affect his career prospects, he took a chance. He started his own business selling a beauty product online in Australia.
So instead of his time away hindering him, he increased his skill set. It’s an experience which has made him the success we know him as today. But even now as a successful business owner, he still has to manage his time wisely.
When you have a lot of great ideas, it’s easy to want to do them all at the same time. Vinay has learned the art of focusing on a few important things at a time. Rather than spreading himself thinly across projects, he and his team invest their time wisely.
You should always focus on what will bring in the most return for your efforts at that time. When Process Street first started out, the creation of content was his main area of focus.
#3 Focus On Content Creation
Producing content online, either for yourself or other people, is a great way of establishing yourself. It allows people to gain respect and trust for you.
And there is no point having a product if people have no way of hearing about or finding you. Lead generation is an important tool for marketing your business.
It develops the interest for what it is you have to sell. Blogs, videos and pictures are cheap, if not free ways of getting your business out there, and it will be there for years after.
It’s unlike traditional advertising, where as soon as you stop funding it, it goes into oblivion. As soon as you stop paying for those newspaper and TV adverts, people will stop seeing them. Two years later, online content is likely to still be bringing traffic to your site.
So it’s a great use of your time, especially when you don’t have a lot of funds as a start-up. There are also many free tools online to help you along the process. A great blog hasn’t got to cost anything. Everything from publishing, image creation, spelling and grammar checks.
Plus Process Street has a free checklist which bloggers can use. If you can go through it and tick everything off, then you can be sure that you’ve produced a great piece of content.
This checklist is what’s behind Vinay’s own blog posts. It’s not only how to produce a blog, but also how you can market them too.
Click here to grab the Vinay Patankar interview transcript >>>
It’s got his every word#4 Harness The Power Of Video
Posting videos on YouTube is an often forgotten method of producing content and isn’t used to its full potential by marketers.
When he first started, he recorded 100 videos over the course of 3 or 4 days. The videos are only a couple of minutes in length, which allowed him to produce so many in a short period of time.
The videos are now outdated, but despite producing more updated video content since, he refuses to delete his first ones.
That’s because years later those videos still receive lots of views and subsequently, direct people to his products.
You can record the video on pretty much anything these days, including your phone, webcam or normal compact camera. So it’s a cheap, easy and quick way of producing content.
You could do these videos about anything relevant. Use them to help people using your product, or to inform them about your latest products.
The videos need to have worthwhile information which your potential customer wants, or needs, to know.
And they don’t need to be very long at all. A few minutes is enough to interest people and want them to find out more.
#5 Managing Growth
With Process Street, one of the major ways it grows is through its customers.
When one person uses it, they might then get their whole team using it. Then, as those people start to use it, they share it with the people they work with. It self-perpetuates.
That is a good sign that you are fulfilling a real need.
But you also cannot rely on this growth engine to fuel itself. Quite often with any software development, you’ll always be improving and changing it.
One way in which they manage this is to understand and find out how people use their products and services. Once you fully comprehend that, it can drive your decisions as you aim to improve.
Another way is to study competing and similar products.
What features do they have which would benefit your software and that your customers would want? But then how can you improve on how others do something as well?
After all, many of the great inventions are not brand new ideas.
When Vinay is considering enhancements, it has to align with at least one of the main features. These are engagement, revenue and variety.
So make sure you’re going through a similar process when thinking about what your business should be doing next.
Your product still needs to conform to what you consider its main selling points to be. You don’t want to lose what people love about your products, whilst exciting your users and attracting new ones.
#6 Master Your Recurring Processes
Every business has processes which repeat themselves. It could be creating, posting and sharing your blogs and videos.
But it could also be how you produce an email, upload a new product to your website, work a machine or make a cup of coffee.
They explain the process in a step-by-step manner. There are a number of benefits of these checklists.
Firstly, if the person who usually does a process is sick or leaves, it means someone else knows how to complete the task.
Instead of getting left in the lurch and panicking about what to do, you can follow the easy to follow instructions.
Click here to grab the Vinay Patankar interview transcript >>>
It’s got his every word It also ensures quality control, because we’re all prone to forgetting things from time to time. When you produce a product or upload a blog, you can make sure they are all produced consistently.If you tick off every step as you go, then you can be sure it conforms to your high standards, even when someone else does it.
You might recognize these as being similar to a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
Many companies have SOP’s, particularly the big global brands. But the problem with them is that they often get filed away in a folder, and only see the light of day again when something has gone wrong.
The checklists on Process Street are interactive. This could enable a manager or supervisor to go in and look at your progress on a certain project. The uses are endless.
And because you’re using them regularly, rather than burying them in your desk draw, you keep them up to date. If the software changes or updates, you can update your checklist accordingly. That means when someone does go to do the process, they’re not baffled by an old dusty SOP.
And Finally
Try out Vinay Patanker’s Process Street out for yourself. From there, you can try out some of the other checklists, as well create your own for your business, and share them with your team.
Also, take a look at the Process Street blog. Then you can subscribe to the email list so you can get his steady flow of useful tips and hacks straight to your email inbox.
You could even look at all those YouTube videos he created, which he’s far too critical about in my opinion.
Connect with Vinay Patankar and Process Street