10 WAYS to WIN as a TEEN Entrepreneur!

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in you what I see in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey today, I'm going to talk about 7 ways to make money as a teenager. So I know I have a lot of young people watch my YouTube channel. I love it. I wish YouTube was around when I was a teenager trying to get started as an entrepreneur. And I wanted to make this video today to kind of share how you can get started, how you can make money as a teenager and start seeing some real business success and some results to achieve your goal and not have to go get that typical corporate job that you may not want to do. So today I'm going to share some of the things that I actually did when I was getting started as a teenage entrepreneur. But also some of the things that I would do if I was starting again now. So I'm 37 right now. If I was starting up again, what I would do today. Tip number 1 is understand where you can bring value. So the most important business rule that you need to understand is where you can bring value to people is where you're going to make money. The more value you can bring to somebody, the more money you're going to make. It's, it's the most important rule about money. So I'll be thinking about where can I bring value to the people around me, to companies that I know, to people that I know. What major problems have I solved for myself that may be valuable for other people out there as well? And I'd be looking for opportunities where youth is an advantage, because in some industries youth is a negative— you don't have the experience. But in some industries, youth is an advantage. This did not exist 20 years ago. Even when I was getting started 10 years ago— wait, how old? 19. My first company was 19, so almost 10, no, almost 20 years. I'm getting old, I'm getting old, guys. 37, so 19, so 20 years ago pretty much, youth was still seen as a negative. Like, you don't know what you're talking about, you have no experience. Now it's starting to change in a lot of different industries where youth is a benefit, and if you can solve a problem for yourself or bring value to somebody else, then that's a quick path for people to make some money. So understand the value that you can bring to people. Tip number 2 is start an online business. This is what I did when I was at the very beginning, my first company. Again, 19 years old, I was actually really concerned about selling to people, selling face-to-face, selling over the phone. My voice sounded really young. I was selling to people who had PhDs who were 3 times my age. And on one side it was a limiting belief. You know, all they really cared about was that I could provide them with some value, back to point number 1. But starting the online business allowed me to do something that I was good at, right? We understood websites, we understood how to sell online. It was something that people who are older— think about this, this is 20 years ago too, right? Think, the idea of having a website is not anything revolutionary right now. But starting an online business in a field where you can bring more expertise than people who are 3 times your age, 4 times your age maybe, is something that you can do as a young person and bring a lot of value. So I started online with the website, we started selling internationally, we started selling to companies again around the world internationally. And so I would encourage you to look at online opportunities that fit your skill set again where you can bring value. So not just typical fill out a survey and make some money or do some boring data entry job, right? It'd be looking at what are you great at and then how can you bring that service online. Number 3, I would look at hustle versus experience. In some businesses you need to do a lot of hustle to stay on top of the game. Game to really understand how things are working. And in some businesses, you need to have a lot of experience to understand how it has historically worked so you get a sense of your success in that field. And so you're going to have a hard time competing in the businesses and industries where experience really, really, really matters. So if you want to be a lawyer, you know, you kind of have to understand the whole legal system. If you want to be a really great leader, you have to understand all the leadership training, have gone through actually leading people before. If you want to be a great speaker, you have to put in the reps. You have to do a lot of work to be great at speaking. It's not that you can't do it. It's totally achievable. You know, if you have a big goal and you are working on it every single day, you can pass people who are more experienced than you. It's just a harder road to climb if you want to get into an industry where experience really matters versus ones where hustle really matters. So as an example, the The first thing I did when I sold my first business was I went to go work with a venture capital company. I was curious about the industry. To have all the connections in the industry takes time to build up. So what I did was I connected with people who already had those connections, and I offered to come in and hustle with them. So my role was to— I wanted to learn the venture capital industry, I wanted to learn from these guys, and my role was to go out and drum up new business. And so it was talking to new potential entrepreneurs who wanted to raise capital, who needed to grow and to expand. And then I relied on my, you know, 4 partners there to be able to provide the credentials, the experience, the connections, the knowledge, expertise, all the things that had to do with running a business, that they can give the advice, where my role was the hustle role. So your advantage as a young person is you can hustle. You can out-hustle, you can outwork a lot of the people who are older, who may have other responsibilities, who may just not care. As much about it. I look at YouTube as a great example. One, it's a newer medium, so a lot of the older people aren't even on YouTube. A lot of the great speakers of the world are barely on YouTube. That gives opportunities for people who are not as great at speaking, right? I'm not as great at speaking as a lot of people who've come before me, but because they're not on YouTube, or not nearly as much, I can win, right? And so the same thing for you guys, YouTube. People complain about YouTube's algorithm update changing all the time. That's great for you. All the social media networks with their algorithms changing all the time, it really promotes somebody who loves to hustle versus somebody who has experience. So what worked on YouTube 5 years ago doesn't work as well as it does right now, right? The idea of having consistent content and, and looking at watch time versus what YouTube cared about before makes a difference. And every time there's a new update, all you hear about are people complaining. I can't believe Facebook did this. I can't believe YouTube did this. I can't believe Google did this. And they complain and they complain and they complain because all the experience that they gained is now useless, or at least has been diminished. It's not as helpful to them anymore, where the value is in the hustle to figure out the new thing. I look at it in the esports world as well, where when, when Riot introduces a new patch for League of Legends— we're going niche now in esports, but I love League of Legends— There's always changes that happen in the game, and the teams that win are the ones that adapt to the changes fastest. You have to constantly be adapting to the changes that are happening, and if you just rely on your experience, then you're gonna fall apart. Now, the way that League of Legends was played last year is different than it's played right now, and that applies to some industries more rapidly than other industries. So if you want to be the next great personal development coach, you can do it, it's just a ton of work, and the guys like Tony Robbins are ahead of you, so it's gonna be hard to replace him or all the other people because they have tons of experience behind them. But in other industries where the hustle is more important than the experience, you can get to number one really, really quickly. Tip number 4 is go all in on your strengths. What you want to do is focus on the thing that you are great at. What do you love doing? How do you love spending your time? And try to provide value in that specific niche as much as possible. So for example, me, if I was starting all over again, if I'm, if I'm a teenager, I'm in high school, or I'm just starting university and I'm trying to figure out what business do I want to go into, I would look at online marketing because I love online marketing. I don't want to tell you guys to get into online marketing. You got to find the thing. Like, getting into online marketing because I tell you to is the stupidest reason ever. You want to go into the thing that you have a passion for, that you're consuming, that you're learning, you're digesting as much as possible. I love online marketing. And so I would go and learn everything about whatever platform I was using most. You know, I use YouTube the most right now as a 37-year-old, and so I would look at YouTube as the place where I would want to learn as much as I could. And really, to understand the YouTube algorithm and to start to win there, you could understand everything you needed to know about the YouTube algorithm in a day by consuming lots of other people's content and looking at the experts and seeing what they have to say. You could know more than 99% of YouTubers in one day. You couldn't do that in another industry where experience is super, super important. And I'd be looking at how can I provide that value to somebody else? How could I approach a YouTuber who I look up to and say, listen, you're doing a lot of— I love your channel, I love all your content, I watch it every day. There's some key things that you're missing that I'd love to help you with and provide value on. And I would do it for free at the start, one, to gain some experience and credibility and recognition, but also If you're providing a good service for them and they like it, they're gonna wanna hire you, right? To say, go in and help them with a couple of their videos and it works because you've done the research and they're seeing a result. You're providing value. What do you get for providing value? You get paid, you get money, right? And so if you are providing insane value to a YouTuber and their channel's exploding, they're gonna wanna keep you on board. Now, the first person you do it for, they may not wanna keep you on board. They may wanna steal your idea and do it all themselves. They may not have seen results, in which case you didn't do a good job. But if you do that a couple times, you're not going to get 10 people all say, "I'm just going to steal from you, I'm not going to pay you for your service." And so it may not work the first time, it may not work the second time, but the third, fourth, or fifth time, it's going to work eventually. You'll find the people who really value what you do. Once you're in, you can build a long-term relationship with them, you'll get referrals, you'll be able to grow this business out. And so I would focus on YouTube, but for you, Maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's Facebook, maybe you love Twitter, maybe it's Musical.ly. And find the other people who you can look at in that market who are having success but could be doing way better, or helping port people to a new market. You know, if somebody's big on YouTube like me but isn't doing as much on Snapchat, maybe you're the Snapchat king. Maybe you understand everything about Snapchat and you're on top of every algorithm update and you're on top of every filter and every strategy and every idea, and you love my content and there's a way that you can help me expand load on Snapchat and turn a real ROI on that, talk to me. Let's see how we can make something happen, right? That's the game that you want to start to get into. That's what I would do if I was starting over right now. Tip number 5 is start small. This is one of the hardest things to do because I remember being 19 years old and having big ambitions and wanting to do big things and then being frustrated with slow progress and slow results. A lot of people put in so much energy at the start and then they, they burn out. You know, they never really had a chance to let their business grow. We're starting a company, does take some time, right? It's not for lack of effort or lack of hustle, lack of work. It just doesn't happen the next week or the next month. You gotta put in consistent work. If you look at any successful entrepreneur that you look up to, they put in consistent, consistent, consistent work. So be looking at what do I need to do to start small and take daily action. That may even mean go get a part-time job. Go get a job working at— now if you're gonna get a job, it's not just to earn money but to learn. Like, if you want to know YouTube inside out, go work for a YouTuber who's having success that you look up to. If you want to learn digital marketing, go work for a digital marketing company that has 10 employees or less and take on as much as you can to really learn that business. You're getting paid to learn the industry, so that may be an option. And start on the side. Research as much as possible. Hustle every day. Reach out multiple times to people every single day. And eventually those are going to turn into wins, but you're going to get a lot of fails, a lot of small nos over and over and over and over again. And most people just quit too soon. Like, most people, you may reach out to 10 people, you get 10 nos, but really you have to reach out to 500 people. You're just not putting in enough reps. So start small and understand that with patience and dedicated action, you're going to grow. Tip number 6 is model success. One of the great things about any business is you can reverse engineer. If somebody has figured out how to do it, if somebody looks like you and has had success, you could do it too. A lot of young entrepreneurs came online because they saw Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook take off, and they see this young guy who becomes a billionaire and gets everybody's respect, say, "If he can do it, I can do it too." And so if there's somebody that looks like you who's on— who's made it, you can make it too. And being surrounded by that, I think, is important because young people more and more and more and more are getting respect in the business world because you can provide real value. But you may not feel it from your immediate environment. Your parents might think you're crazy, like, "What are you doing? You want to be a gamer? What are you talking about? You can't make money on video games." Like, the people around you who are older, who grew up in a different generation, they love you and they're looking out for you, but they may not understand how today's economy really, really works. And so it's hard to stay dedicated to that thing that you really want to do when everybody around you is so negative. And so create a better environment for yourself, modeling success. Modeling success is what saved my company. I was 19, I wanted to quit, I told my partner I quit, and looking at Bill Gates and how he started Microsoft gave me a strategy that I can use for my company, and we started to make money. And so that really helped save my business. You could do the same. It's even easier now because there's people to reach out to. People doing live Hangouts, people who you can send an Instagram message to and they're gonna write back to you. Like, I wish Hangouts was a thing when I was 19. I was still going to libraries, you know, and studying at libraries and getting research from books, right? I mean, books are still great, I have my own, but I wish I had the internet. I wish I had people that I can connect with. You know, I do Hangouts almost once a week on my channel. You can reach me, you can reach Gary Vaynerchuk, you can reach other business leaders. You can reach people on Twitter. You can connect with people and ask real questions and get feedback on. And so I would use that to my advantage. You know, being a young person gives you that advantage where people want to give back. If it seems genuine, if it seems authentic, if it feels like you really want to make this thing happen, people like giving back because they see themselves in you. They see, like if you write to me, anytime somebody writes to me and is like, "Hey, I'm a 13-year-old entrepreneur," I think of myself at 13. I was like, "Man, how awesome would it be to be able to reach out to somebody who's accomplished more than me when I was 13 and get direct feedback?" And so doing the work. If you're gonna ask for questions though, ask for one question. Don't ask for a million questions. One question and then do the work. Do not come back to that same person and ask another question until you did the work on the first thing that you asked for. Otherwise, you're wasting their time. And then tip number 7 is create a great environment. And I talked a little bit about that on the Modeling Success, but you have people around you who are discouraging you and you're trying to do one of the most difficult things in the world, which is start a business. It's no joke. It's not an easy overnight thing. There's a lot of dedicated work that has to go into it. And if you have people around you who don't support your vision, it's really hard to get that going. And so I'd be looking at my environment, my physical environment. Like, where are you working? Working out of your bedroom? Great. What's on the walls? What are you looking at? Every day, what inspires you? What's your morning routine? Every day you need to start your morning with something that inspires you, makes you feel like you can be an entrepreneur and have success. Whether it's watching one of my videos, reading a book, watching somebody else's videos, tuning into somebody's Snapchat, like whatever it is, whatever the thing is that gets you feeling confident that I can go out and do this, do that every single morning. Because otherwise you're gonna get too discouraged, you're gonna have moments of excitement and I can do anything, And then you're gonna fall back down and you're not gonna work for a week because your parents are hating on you or your friends are hating on you or your teachers say you're never gonna do anything in the entrepreneurship world. You know, so having that daily consistent action to make you feel bold, confident, powerful, entrepreneurial is super important. Whatever that thing is that gets you juiced and motivated, every single morning start with it. And it can't be the same video. Like the same video or the same song will phase out. You could watch this video once and be motivated, the next day a little bit more motivated, and then it'll start to, right, it's gonna fall off. So you need a source. That's why I make videos daily, because there's always something new for people to digest and consume and feel good about themselves on and learn something from. But if it's an author you like, you know, read a different book of theirs, you go through a couple pages a day. Or again, somebody who's consistent on Snapchat, it's not about that one snap 6 months ago that they did. It's the next one that you do and the next one that you do. So having a constant source of new motivation for you every single day and starting your day with it is super important. So those are my 7 tips on how to make money as a teenage entrepreneur. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know which was your favorite tip. What did you enjoy the most? Did I miss an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Leave it down in the comments. And if you're responding and leaving a comment in the first few hours after this video went live, you have a chance to win one of our two 2 daily prizes. I made this video because Moises Molina asked me to. If you want to vote on the next top 7 ways video I should make, check out the link in the description. You can go there, give us your suggestions, and maybe you'll get lucky. I also want to give a quick shout out to @shlomoawoke. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, taking that picture, posting to Instagram. I really appreciate it. I see that my book is on the left side, and so I'm assuming you're reading from left to right, and So that'd be awesome as a first choice to read on that list. But thank you so much again for sharing, and I really hope you enjoy the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.