Evan Carmichael breaks down three principles for entrepreneurial success: start with genuine passion for the problem you're solving, build around a specific customer pain point, and add more value than competitors to earn trust and higher pricing. Money follows passion and value, not the other way around.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Gabriel, who wrote in asking, "Hi, I'm Gabriel and I have a question. What are the features and attributes that lead to success in entrepreneurship?" So thanks for the question, Gabriel. Big question. A lot of people have that on their mind. I think, you know, you ask a lot of different people, you get a lot of different answers. But from my perspective, there are 3 things that I want to quickly touch on. The first, in terms of success as an entrepreneur, I believe you have to start around something you're really passionate about. So you have to start around something that gets you really excited. You think you can add a lot of value to people's lives. You get out of bed and you want to just go, go, go. You're doing it not because you're trying to make a lot of money, but you're doing it because you really feel that you're adding a lot of value and you're really excited that you're helping people. So that's number one. If you find that if you are doing that, the money comes. And that may be hard to believe, but a lot of people starting a business just trying to make money, they don't care what the business is. Like, I'm just trying to make a lot of money. Those people rarely make a lot of money. It's the ones who really love what they're doing that gets them really excited and they're really helping people. That's— those are the guys who make a lot of money and have a lot of success as entrepreneurs. The second thing is I tried to build around the customer. So especially if you're first starting out, try to find somebody who has a problem that you feel that you can help them solve and build around them. Too many entrepreneurs start a business with a great idea that doesn't end up going anywhere because they can't find customers. And they spend all this time, money, effort, energy creating this product or service that never takes off because they can never find customers. So reverse it and go and find the customer first and offer to build a product or service that can help solve a particular pain point that they have, and you have money coming in the door and you're able to grow a successful business off of that. So try to build around customer pain points. You know, the problem that you think you're solving is never actually quite the problem that you're gonna solve once you start talking to customers and you get them to, you know, support you by, you know, you're helping each other out, right? You're giving them a solution to their pain point and they're paying you and helping you launch your company. So that's number 2. Number 3, in terms of making money, the money that you're going to make is going to be dependent on how much value that you add to your clients. So if you want to make more money, you got to add more value. You got to be more helpful. So this is especially true if you're in a really competitive industry. It can be hard to stand out. You're going to stand out by adding more value than your competition. And if you want to make more money quickly, add more value more quickly. And that's really the bottom line for, for any business. If you want to get paid, you got to add a lot of value. Always look for ways to go above and beyond, add way more value, especially in startup phase, add way more value than your competitors to win the loyalty, earn the trust of your customers, and get repeat business and referred customers as well from them. Hopefully that helps. Start something that you're really passionate about. That's where you're going to be at the foundation of your business. Build around your passion. Try to build around the customer, and then remember that the amount of money you're going to make is going to be dependent on how much value you add to your customers. So Gabriel, I hope that was useful. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I love seeing those come in. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a comment or a question, I'd love to hear what you have to think. If you want to leave it in the comment section underneath the video, and we'll see you on the next episode.
