99% of Beginners Don't Know the Basics of Entrepreneurship!

Cup of believe.

Cup of believe. Hello everybody, welcome to another business Q&A while we play League of Legends. I have got a serious haircut and shave, so super excited to be back. And we've got, uh, only J-Rise today. I don't know where Trainer 6 is at, but, uh, we got J-Rise in the house. Oh, I think the stream is working. That's good, I'm happy about that. And my— yeah, co-host With the mostest, Fishy Cup TV. How you doing today?

Good morning, Believe Nation. It's Monday. Hope y'all are ready, ready for this.

What's in the cup? We gotta ask the question.

Uh, cup of Taco Bell because there's a Taco Bell commercial that went on right before your screen. Taco Bell. And I'm feeling a cup of— I really, it's hard not to come out of those gratitude streams and not say a cup of grateful because you're so high off of your gratitude from your streams. Yeah, but yeah, go ahead, sorry.

No, I'm liking it. It was a good little experiment and I'm glad people are digging it. We kept it going.

People were saying in the chat, I don't know if you saw, Everybody was like, so glad Evan, you continued this. So looks like, looks like people are loving it.

Yeah, it's actually hard to get off, you know, like it takes a little bit of time because once we go live with it, it notifies everybody that goes, that it's live. So then people slowly start coming in, uh, and then I'm reading the comments and the comments just explode like, we got 1 minute left and we gotta leave. But, uh, yeah, I like, I like the 10-minute frame instead of letting it drag off for, for half an hour or something. I like, I like the condensed format there.

So I do too. I think it's great.

All right, well, uh, we're queuing up a game. I've got, uh, JRise with me, and let's get to a question while we wait.

Okay, great. First question comes from Jeremiah. Jeremiah says, "Thank you for your effort of sending me good, exciting, and encouraging emails.

God bless you." I love it, Jeremiah.

My dream— yeah, gratitude. "My dream is to become a good entrepreneur, but the big problem is capital and education about entrepreneurship." Well, we get this a lot, and I think that the first thing to embrace, Jeremiah, is that anyone who ever has an entrepreneurial idea starts with nothing, usually. I mean, that's probably 99% of what entrepreneurs have in the beginning is they have their idea, they have how they want to impact the world, but they don't have the money to do what they want to do, or they might have some kind of lack of education in whatever they think they're supposed to do. But I think if there's one tool that you can start to pull on right now is audacity. And audacity is just the— you have the audacity to believe that you can make it happen even if you don't have the resources If you believe in your idea, if you believe that you can change the world, that audacity is going to take you toward the resources and the skills that you're going to need to do what you do. So look at anyone who made big impacts. Most of them had exactly the same beginning as you. So don't let that stop you.

Cup of audacity in the morning. Monday. Happy Monday. Rishi Cupp TV, maybe that TGIM on Friday was a sign of things to come.

That's that TGIM thing, yes. I love it.

Yeah, I mean, I echo the thoughts. What episode was our famous raising capital episode? 5?

Yeah, it was episode 5. We went deep into that.

Watch episode 5, almost every question was about raising capital and so there's a lot of information to help you. In terms about the education, so I went to University of Toronto, it's one of the, one of the best schools in the world to go to for university, it's the best one in Canada and the education I got for entrepreneurship was not helpful, uh, barely helpful. And I think there's two sides of it that are important to understand. The first is the mindset, is the attitude, is the motivation, is the inspiration. It's the thinking big, it's the belief, it's the confidence, all that stuff. And I think that, uh, I think honestly my channel is the best education on the market.

Absolutely.

Whether you like my point of view or not, you can even ignore me and all you're doing is learning from these successful people every single day on important topics. And I wish that my channel existed when I was in university because I would be way further ahead. I've learned a lot from my channel and basically just get to hang around some of the world's most successful people and the best of what they've ever said, ever, and get to consume that daily. So on that side of things, I would encourage you to keep watching the videos and find the people that are most relevant to you from an industry perspective or from just general interest perspective. And then also don't be afraid to expand a little bit beyond because I've learned a lot from people that I had never heard of, but their message was pretty amazing. Every video that we put out, I am proud of. I've reviewed and I agree with the message and I get inspired by it. So it's passed through multiple filters before it gets to you. And so I definitely recommend looking at that and not feeling like, "Oh, I don't have the money to go to university or to study in that course." From someone who's been through it, I can tell you that it's not that helpful. What did they teach you there?

Like, what was it?

So I remember I had a fourth year at the University of Toronto, like most respected university in the country. I'm gonna pick my Teemo Jungle, and you look at the content, and I was already running my business at that time. I already had my biotech software company. Now, we weren't doing well, but I had it. And I look at the exercises that they give you, is you gotta make a business and What's your idea? And everybody, almost everybody wants to do a coffee shop. Like nobody wants to actually do something, not that anything wrong with the coffee shop, but it's, it's, if everybody wants to do a coffee shop, you just kind of, it's an easy answer. Like nobody really wants to do a different kind of world-changing coffee shop. It's just your typical boring coffee shop. So you can tell not a lot of thought went into it. Um, you know, you're being taught, you're being like, you know, taught in quotation marks by a professor who is not an entrepreneur, who hasn't been successful in creating companies. And so the idea that this person is going to now guide you to be successful— I was honestly, I checked out for most of the class. I brought my laptop and I was working on my business while I was in the class. And I think it also speaks to the massive lack of awareness and education that most people have because the concepts that we were covering were so basic. This is a 4th-year class at a prestigious university, and not to like, not to knock my university, it's a great school for if you want to go get a job, but not for being an entrepreneur. So back to my original point about the there being two sides. There's the, there's the mindset, there's the training yourself, the habits, the routines, the inspiration, the motivation, all of that stuff. I think, I think you'll get a lot of it from, from my channel, but also read biographies and watch interviews and all that stuff is super helpful and important. The second side though, I would say, is We don't dive deep into a lot of the tactics. So if you're writing the business plan, you know, I don't have a video— I don't have a video that's, you know, 5 hours on writing your business plan, and I don't want to either because there's so many different paths that you can go deep on. For me, once you figure out the mindset and the motivation, everything else takes care of itself. Like, you still need to go out and learn, you still need to figure out how to do it. If you're gonna, you know, if you want to open up a world-changing coffee shop, there's a lot of little details that you have to think about. And you can get some of the ideas from the channel, but you're gonna have to go out and figure out a lot of it on your own too. But if you have the right mindset and motivation, then you can. And so a lot of it is so industry-specific too that I can't have it on my channel, but other people might have it on theirs, or there might be books you can read. And it's just a constant investment in yourself to want to learn and get better. And it's not going to— honestly, I believe it's not going to come from enrolling in some course. It's going to be you enrolling in the university of yourself. I like that. And, uh, I do too. And going out and learning. Like, so, you know, I have it— I have a salsa school, right? Toronto Dance Salsa. There's no— there's no manual around how to run a successful salsa school. And if there were, it'd be horribly out of date by the time it comes into print. Because so many of the things that you do, you know, may not be relevant anymore. And nobody's building a school like I want to build. And so there's so much that you need to adapt to. And that's— it's good and it's bad. It's bad in that— and like the sad feeling is that, oh well, there's no plan. Like it's It's despair, it's hopeless, it seems like a lot of work. I just want to go to this class and it's going to teach me everything. So that's the bad part. The good part is once you realize that it's on you, you get to— you control you. You have the time to go out and do it. And if you put in the time, you put in the hustle, then that becomes your competitive advantage that will help separate you from everybody else. Good luck, man. We are in game. I am Teemo jungle, J-Rize is Heimer mid.

Nice.

We're excited to go. Stream is working. Anybody we need to recognize in the Twitch before we get to the next question?

Uh, have we shout out to Zaino? He's here this morning and right now.

Yep, I love it. Welcome back, Zaino.

Welcome back. And all right, next question comes from Stalin, and Stalin says, hey Evan, I'm doing mechanical engineering. I'm also doing a startup business part-time. I want to become a great entrepreneur, but everyone around me mocks my desire. They're in a job-seeking mindset. Please give me a solution to survive this. And it's been about 4 years, he says, that he's been dealing with this. All right. Another topic we discuss a lot here is what do you do when you— when your dream is to be an entrepreneur, but the people around you don't support that? And Friday I just talked a lot about how I think, I think there's a part of this of just not trying to escape it and embracing it because it's just part of the landscape of any person who wants to start up something and create. I mean, you're creating something where there is nothing. And that's so scary a path, and so many people will never, ever, ever choose to do it that way. It's just too scary. And people don't want to experience Stalin, what you're experiencing, which is people mocking them. And so it's pretty common to not want to do something like that. But I think It is part of the journey. Like, if you think about a pioneer, you have harder work. It's going to be harder work because you're creating something that wasn't there before, and it's just— the road is just going to be harder. And I think that if you can embrace that it being harder is part of it and not try to escape it or get out, get away from it, it's like you will just learn how to be more resilient in that environment. I'm not saying, you know, take abuse or anything. I mean, if people are mocking you, then you don't have to hang out with them. You can change who you are listening to, you know. But I also think there's a part of it where you've just got to say, this is what it is. And if I, if I wanted to do this, I just kind of have to embrace that not everybody is going to believe in me, but I am. You know, you're going to get stronger in the process, and that's something valuable that we will gain as you are on your journey.

I love it. Yeah, I mean, we've addressed this a number of times, and it's a constant theme that keeps showing up. And I don't know where he's from, but, you know, also depending on different cultures, the attitude and respect for entrepreneurs might be different. Mm-hmm. It might be more celebrated in North America than in other places. But just because it's easier somewhere else, you know, it's only a little bit easier because entrepreneurship is still an insanely hard battle that you're gonna have to fight to get through. So a couple things. One, I love Rishi's suggestion about recognizing that everybody goes through this. And I think even looking at what other people have gone through and using those case studies, I know that really inspired and motivated me when I was starting up. I would read a story about a famous entrepreneur every day and seeing what they had to go through to get their business off the ground was inspirational to me. And yeah, it gave me some ideas of what I could do, but also realizing that most of these people are— they started off with less than what I have. Already right now, uh, that was motivating for me and realizing that this is part of the, part of, part of the game that you have to go through. It's the, it's your test. It's your crucible, uh, to go through, to get to the other side. And everybody kind of goes through that, um, to different extents. I found that, uh, motivating. I found that feeling like I wasn't alone. Like even if I didn't have people around me who understood, this was something I had to go through, and that gave me additional confidence that I could do it. And so that, that may be just knowing that you're not alone can be super helpful. Second thing I would do is try to have a conversation with the people that are around you, if they are your friends, if they are your family. You know, a lot of it is out of love for wanting to see you do better. They just don't understand entrepreneurship, so they see the world through their eyes. And coming at it from a place of vulnerability as opposed to fighting, you know, if it's your mom, let's say, who's really upset that you're doing entrepreneurship, explain that this is something that you really want to do, that this really means a lot to you, and that even if you don't succeed at it, you have to find out because it's going to eat you up for the rest of your life if you don't. And this is really hard for me to do by myself, and I feel like I have no support, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it, and I fear that I'm going to live the rest of my life in regret if I don't give this a shot. And I would really love your support and belief in me to help me get through this. You know, if you come at it with that kind of approach, it's a lot harder It's a lot harder to be mean. You know, they understand your perspective instead of just fighting, instead of fighting with them all the time. Share the importance of it to you can make a really, really big difference. And then the last point is, if you have these people who just don't understand that and still want to hate, then you might need to cut them out of your life, or at least limit your exposure. You know, it's hard to say don't talk to your mom, but if she is the source of your pain, then— uh-oh, I'm gonna fight. Uh-oh, I'm in a fight and I died. And now I died. Very sad. I got ambushed, but it's okay. That's good. I thought I was actually gonna win that. I was surprised I didn't win that, but that's It's all good. Yeah, if your mom is your source of pain, then it may not mean cutting her out of your life completely, but it may mean limiting your exposure. And for other people who are less supportive, limit your exposure and then replace it with things that do make you feel accepted. You know, there's an entrepreneurship group that you can join, or join us on our morning gratitude streams, you know, every day at 9 AM Eastern.

Yeah!

A lot of love here in Believe Nation. Or share your fears and concerns and progress in the comments, because you'll get people who, even if they don't know what to tell you in terms of a strategy or an idea, which I think you'll still get some, just being able to share with people and have people who understand you is super valuable and relevant and helpful. And so those three things, I would encourage you to do it. And you're normal. This happens to every entrepreneur, so hang in there.

Love it. Doing good on the stream here too.

Our team is losing at the moment. And I have a death, which is rare for me, early, but yeah, it's okay. It's early game. We got it.

So speaking of more parents and/or family kind of resistance to your dream, we've got a question from Hussam.

Alright.

And Hussam has— his dad really wants him to find a job at a good company, specifically in montage, which I don't even know if I'm saying that right, but it's some editing, film editing business, and he doesn't love it, but he's also at a stage in his life where he really isn't able to identify what his passion is. So he's, he's trying to experience new things. And he kind of likes design, which means he may, you know, he may like montage, but he's just not sure. And he's wondering, you know, should I not work for a company just to experience or like to kind of explore but also make money? Because the pressure from his dad is that he needs to basically find a company so he can start making money. And he also says his dad says that, you know, finding a job that you love doesn't exist in this age. If you can do that, you should consider yourself lucky. So he doesn't, you know, he's heard your advice, you know, don't just do a job for money. But he also doesn't really know what his passion is, and he doesn't want to— he doesn't want to also waste time and, you know, not take some practical steps to start making an income. So, yeah, this is a— this is a good question. I think— I think that I'm thinking back to when I was 17 in college and how I had to make a decision on a major, and I just did not know what I wanted to do yet. And, you know, I mean, you're spending a lot of money at university, so once you start making these decisions about what you want to do, it's like there can be this pressure of I've got to get this right because this is going to be— this is not something that I just want to waste. And, you know, I remember choosing my major, but like, I just chose it because it was the one thing that I felt like I would love doing. But if I'm really honest, I wish I had chosen a different major in hindsight. So I'm just bringing this story up because I think it's incredibly difficult for, for us to know what we want to do, especially when we're early 20s. I guess some 20-year-olds, as Evan, you in your story, you knew kind of right away, but when you don't know, it can be really hard to make decisions around it because you don't know. So I would just say that I don't think there's any harm in working for a company that may open up your eyes to some skills and interests. It sounds like you have a little bit of interest in design, and maybe you'll, you'll find something about Montage that is interesting to you, and you can always quit. And I'm only suggesting this because if you don't have literally any other clue about what you'd want to do, it may not be a terrible thing. But if you absolutely can't stand it, then I would— I would just follow that curiosity to experiment with a job. That has something about it that you find really interesting and go from there. But I am just kind of feeling his pain because I get that you want to start building up some financial security and having to make decisions about your passion real early on can just be so hard.

What I hear in this is a father who loves you but doesn't see the world the same way you do. And that sucks. And what I would ask myself is really the thing that stuck out for me, just taking it one step further, was a comment about you can't find the job that you love, right? If you do that, you're lucky, but you're never gonna find it.

Yeah.

And you know what that screams to me is, okay, your dad is in a job that he doesn't love. Because if he, if he loved his job, then he wouldn't have that mindset.

Mm-hmm.

And so when listening to advice from people, have they done the thing that you want to do? So in looking at your career, your dad may be a wonderful person. He may love you. He obviously brought you into this world or helped. Uh, he may have taught you a lot of the values, uh, how to be a good person, how to, how to treat people, all that stuff. No knock against your dad, but does he have the capacity to give you the career advice that you need? Because if you listen to him and he doesn't have the same worldview as you do, then you're going to constantly be fighting against it. And if you follow it, you're gonna regret it. You're gonna be upset that you listened instead of doing your own thing.

Mm-hmm.

And it's frustrating. And, and it, you know, my gratitude stream this morning, I was grateful that my parents helped me believe that I could do whatever I wanted and always encouraged me to, you know, follow my dreams. And they were always supportive of me, and that helped me become, you know, who I am. And it sucks when you don't have that, and I get it. Mm-hmm. But that shouldn't mean that you stop. If anything, it helps you grow stronger because you're gonna have to deal with a lot of that kind of adversity as you keep growing your path, whether it's, whether it's an entrepreneurial journey or whether it's just a regular journey, a career journey. It's important that you do the thing that you feel feel is right. And sometimes that's going against what your parents tell you to do, even though again, they have your best interests at heart. Your dad doesn't want you— doesn't want to see you, you know, not happy, you know, not in the career, not having an impact, not being fulfilled. That's the intention. And his path was go get a safe job, and that makes everything okay. And he's unfortunately trying to put those same belief structures on you, which, uh, which isn't great. And something that I try to guard against too when I think about parenting and Hayden, you know, I have my set of beliefs, but I try not to put the, the ones that aren't right for Hayden on him. Like, if Hayden doesn't want to be an entrepreneur, that's fine. If he wants to go be the doctor or lawyer, he wants to be Mr. Establishment, you know, that's great. And I hope I have the courage to continue to back that up for him, just as my parents did for me. And so in terms of strategies with your dad, one, it just starts with you not giving up on what you want to do, recognizing that you have different opinions and that you don't want to live with the rest of your life in regret. You may want to look at stories like Michael Dell, who was in university and dropped out for a summer so that he could do his computing business. His parents wanted him to be doctors, and he said, "Give me a summer, let me try." to do my own thing, and he never went back. And I'm sure there's tons of other ones. We talked about Akio Morita from Sony on Friday, or one of the days last week. And so seeing those stories, I gotta want to say the answer may not be to go, you know, freak out at your dad and say, you know, you know, you're a terrible dad, you don't support me. You know, all those things. I'm not encouraging you to go and do that, but at the same point, not giving in and doing the thing that you want to do and you feel is right is important.

Nice. All right. Next question comes from Vinay. And Vinay kind of has actually interesting— these are kind of all related. Vinay is graduating from college and got placed in a company and joined the company, but he doesn't actually want to be working for this company.

Okay.

Um, says, uh, 3 weeks have passed And it was one of my professors and people around me because of why I joined. All right. The company is good, pays good, and he's having a great time, but he's not interested in this as a career. He knows he wants to be an entrepreneur, and— but he's, he's, he's saying, I don't have an opportunity to do that. It might be super risky to leave. And he also fears wasting his precious time. Interesting. So it's kind of similar as our last question in that young person desires to be an entrepreneur, has got the safety of a company job, and doesn't know, you know, whether to take the risk. And Evan, you've talked a lot on the channel about, you know, you don't always have to completely take this huge risk. And, you know, you can work for a, for a time and still pursue your entrepreneurial dreams. And it sounds like you like this company and you're having a great time. That's a good thing. Because it means that you're not miserable at your job, and it could mean that you are able to also pursue your entrepreneurship. So I just wanted to emphasize that you don't always have to just, you know, quit your job and hope for the best as you're pursuing your entrepreneurial goals. But I think the wisdom in Evan's last answer still kind of holds true in, in that it isn't going to be the safe, you know, following what you want to do isn't going to be as safe as staying in the company and kind of embracing that, knowing that that's what it is. And, but the rewards of having really built something meaningful, I think, will far outweigh the hard work. So, yeah, I just, I'd actually say if you don't hate your job, why not, why not keep working there and start doing your entrepreneurship. Oh, I guess I should also say he has a mindset that there's no opportunity for him to do that, and I— we've kind of covered that in the stream as well. You know, you don't have really anything that you think you need in the beginning, but you just start.

Cool. Um, yeah, I mean, I agree with Oh, this Kazakh. I'm taking a beating in this game. Oh, get me out! Holy cow, these guys are aggressive. As you were saying it, I thought of Alex's wife-to-be, Ruzanna, and she's been on the channel a couple times, and Alex is is the guy who helps me run Trenadance Salsa. She said something on one of the videos where— or no, she just said something in a private meeting to me where she said that she creates her own opportunities. And I, and I, and it stuck with me since, and I love it. And I think that's what good entrepreneurs do, but also successful people do, is you create your own opportunities. And so it's finding the opportunity in everything and not feeling like this job has to hand you the perfect opportunity. You have to go out and create it for yourself. Now, that may mean— so like, getting to the nitty-gritty of this example— that may mean on a practical level that you stay with the job only and start your thing on the part-time, right? So you stay with your job and you're not learning anything, you're just having a good time when you're making money, and on the side you are doing your own hustle and trying to figure out how you can create your own thing, right? It may mean within the context of your existing company, can you learn to be more entrepreneurial? Can you get close to the founder of the business and try to take on more projects? What are some of the skills that you feel you're lacking or missing, uh, that you would need to be an entrepreneur? And is there anything that you could do within your company now that you can, you can struggle and learn with while they're getting— while they're paying you instead of you trying to do it all on by yourself? Uh, it really— back to the first question of the day, about the, the education. The most important education I think you need is the mindset, is the attitude. If you have that— I'm gonna fight. All right, we got a kill, but I died. It's fine. If you have the right mindset, then you can go and figure everything else out that you need to figure out. Where right now the mindset is broken. Right now the mindset is, "There are no opportunities for me. I'm stuck in this job. It's too risky to leave." So that's the most important thing to change. Because once you change that, once you actually believe, "I create my own opportunities. I am responsible for my success." then you can figure out the how. And so watching the videos, watching the top 10 rules, all of that stuff could be really helpful. And then trying to figure out within the construct of your existing schedule, existing life— I don't think you have to go and burn the boats and quit, quit your job and go all in and be super risky. You could do it while you're still there. Just figure out if you could do something within your business, within that company now, to learn the skills you need, or start part-time on the side, or both, right? Like, if you have a dream, you got to go out and find a way to make it work. And the path is— the path is never clear in advance. You got to go out and start taking action, then it becomes clear. Right? Look at, look at my YouTube channel and how many different things I've tried and changed over the years. It wasn't just one path, right? The YouTube channel started with me just answering people's questions, and I was super awkward and super nervous, and it's now evolved to be a big source of joy for me that just started as a test. At the same time, I tested up a whole bunch of other stuff that didn't work, that failed, that like didn't even come close to working. But I didn't know going in which one was going to work and which one wasn't going to work because I loved all the ideas at the start. I thought they were all fantastic, right? So that's the challenge. And you just got to go out and start and believe in yourself and take some action.

Yeah, absolutely. And what I'm really seeing from your channel too, Evan, is just there are the things that you do and there's the things you can't do. It's like you're doing this just every day, you're taking massive action, and then one day you just happen to be in the same airport and happened to run into Chase Jarvis, world-renowned photographer, and that leads to an incredible interview. And just, it's amazing when you make— when you're at— there's something about just taking action, and when you're on your path, there are also all these things that you can never predict or plan for that happen along the way that I think just also speak to, you know, just do what you do. Go as hard as you can on your mission, and then there'll also be these really cool things that happen that you could never plan. You could never, you know, you could never put it together. It's just, it's just cool. Yeah.

And so for that story, I was in, I was in Seattle doing a thing with Microsoft, and I met at the airport Chase Jarvis, who's got a— he's a YouTuber, I've seen his videos, and a world-famous photographer. And we did an interview last week on my channel. He shared a lot of great wisdom and advice, and, you know, I have a connection now that I can call on if I need for other things, projects I'm working on. You know, so yes, like, I happen to be in the right spot at the right time to be able to meet Chase. But at the same time, how many other thousands of people were in that airport and had no idea who Chase was and didn't say hi, right? Like, if it were 6 months ago, I wouldn't have said hi either because I didn't know who he was, because he has a YouTube channel, but he's not insanely popular yet. He launched the 30 Days of Genius video series that now helped in that. Now he has more exposure. So I gave myself the chance because I said, "Hey, you know what? I want to be inspired. I want to consume great content. I'm watching my own videos, and I also am curious what else is out there and who else I can learn from." And that's how I found Chase. And then when it came across the video, you know, when I met him, I said hi. And so I gave myself that chance to be lucky, where a lot of people aren't giving themselves enough of a chance.

Very cool. Alright, how many wins— you got how many? 24 deaths and 16— is that— am I reading that right? 24 deaths? No, 24 kills.

No, no, 20— we're the blue team, so 24— we've had 24 deaths and 16 kills. I'm not doing well. This is the worst game, I think, in terms of kill/deaths that I've had on the stream, but I'm still confident. Because I get stronger with time, so it's gonna, it's gonna happen. My team is, is doing some work too, uh, so it's rough, it's rough, it's rough. It's a hard game, this is a hard game.

Alrighty, shout out to Damasta in the house today.

Welcome back, Damasta. Yeah.

Evan, do you have any clue who Damasta is?

No, I don't.

Okay.

I feel like I should though, and now I feel bad.

No, no, you shouldn't. It all remains a mystery, but I was wondering if you have any— if you thought about it and had any hunch on it.

Oh, no.

Okay.

Am I gonna— Come on, Damasta, you're not making me feel like, uh— Like I belong on my own stream here.

Maybe Damassa will reveal himself by the end of the stream. We'll see. All right, next question comes from, from Lester.

Lester.

Lester loves traveling and he really wants to travel indefinitely. He's actually Yeah, he's actually calculated how much money he needs to generate every month so he can just travel.

All right.

And he wants to know— he's on a quest to build a business that can basically get him this money, and he wants to know from you, do you know how long it will take for him to build a business that generates $1,000 a month? And he's thinking about blogging and blogging about travels and then monetizing his audience by selling merchandise. All right, so, um, you know, it's interesting because you see all over the place on online, you know, just there are businesses set up online to target people just like Lester, you know, and they're basically just going to say, here, you can build this business, make this much money, and live the life of your dreams. And so that exists out there for sure. And I'm sure there's plenty of different things that you could do to get this done, but I— for me personally, I just think that you're going to have much longer— the life of your business will be that much more fulfilling and have that much more longevity If you aren't starting from the mindset of how can I create a business around the money I want to make, I mean, let's keep it real, we all need to make money, but I think it needs, if you're really gonna be an entrepreneur, it needs to start with what value are you going to give? If you're starting with the what can I get, I just think in terms of entrepreneurship, the real entrepreneurial spirit is about how can I impact and change the world for good. I could be wrong about that, but— so this isn't— this wouldn't be how I'd approach it, and we've talked a lot about that on this channel. But it does sound like you love travel, so there is a potential here for a travel, you know, traveling, blogging, and all of those sorts of things. But don't expect it to be a get-rich-quick because you probably won't.

Alright, the real talk comes out from Rishi Kupp. Cool. Well, first off, it's never been easier to do this, right? Like, there are lots of people who do this now. There are some early pioneers in this field where people, you know, they already went through all the "it's not possible to do this" and they figured out a solution. I think, can it be blogging? Sure. Can it be a YouTube channel? Sure, you know, there's a lot of different options that you can go through. It's where are your strengths and where's the value. So to Rishi's point, right, about changing the world and doing something positive, it's about providing the value to your customers. So where is that going to be in this model? Is it going to be like, are you good at writing? You know, do you enjoy that? Can you, can you provide value through that? Can people learn from your story? And have success, right? What are you going to talk about? Are you going to talk about like what's your unique angle? Is it how to travel the world on $1,000 a month? Is it, you know, is it all the different travel hacks that you've learned? Is it taking a risk and betting on yourself? Like what is it that you are— whoa, I'm almost dead there. What is it that you is, you know, what is unique to you that you want to be able to share and spread? And then what is the execution? Maybe it's product, maybe it's hosting your own show, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can go out and do it, but it's— there's only one way that will work for you right now, and that's what you need to figure out. And so how long does it take? I don't know. How good are you at providing value, right? Like, can you, can you help somebody right now with your knowledge, or are you not good enough yet? Do you need— do you still need to work harder at that, right? Um, so Yeah, I mean, I'm in the middle of a huge fight here. Almost died again. Pretty exciting. The team is kind of coming back, I think. Um, but at the end of the day, that's what it's going to be about. So yes, I echo Rishi's point about don't doing it just for money. It's great that you have a goal of, you know, how much you need to make, you know, to be able to survive. And if you do change the approach to what value can I provide for that $1,000 a month or more, you know, like you don't have to only— I get that's your minimum, but it can be a lot more than that, right? You can have a much bigger impact by trying to reach a bigger audience. Yeah, and then what execution works best for you? So, you know, Tim Ferriss has his podcast, I have my YouTube show. Some people sell products, right? Don't do it just because somebody else is doing it. Do it because it feels right for you.

Yeah, and Evan, is there anything that you can say about like, um, Lester, you know, wants to make this money so that he can have this lifestyle? Nothing wrong with that. Is there something to be said about, well, he, he obviously doesn't have to start a business to generate this money. He could go work for a company, right? So I would ask, what is it that makes him want to start a business versus just working to go get the money? Because I think if he really, truly does want to be an entrepreneur, and it's not just about making money, then I think he could really tap into that value. Whereas some people might just think, well, I want to make the money, I'm going to start a business. I think you want to really know the difference between just generating income and being an entrepreneur, because I think most entrepreneurs I see, they are just on fire for a cause. And, you know, is entrepreneurship really what you're about? Because I think if you are, that value will come clear by thinking about what are you really passionate about? What do you really want to see happen through your business versus I just need to make $1,000 by this time?

Yeah, I mean, we default to entrepreneurship a lot since that's the lens which I see the world. It may not be the best path. He did say, I believe, that he wanted to travel indefinitely. And so that is, you know, like, there are some jobs that allow you to do that and get paid to do it. You might not have the flexibility and freedom that you want. So how important is that, right? Like, if you are a flight attendant, you will travel indefinitely. But you may not be in the countries that you want to go to, right? And so how important is that for you?

Great. Next question comes from Sasasi.

Sasasi.

Sasasi. "Fasasi is a young student chasing my dream. I have a goal and seems accomplished 90%." Okay, so he's really far ahead in his goal. He has done research and is capable of earning the amount that he is shooting for, but he doesn't know how to market his invention. Yeah, so congrats, Vasasi, on you knowing what your goal is being accomplished already. 90% research, all of that good stuff. I wish I knew more about what specifically you are about to market, but I would say the best thing would be to find some people locally that you know are in a similar market and maybe share your idea with them and get some feedback from those people about, you know, what they have done. And— or maybe just reach out to other people who've had inventions and Here are different ways that they've marketed their, their product. And yeah, it's hard to know exactly how to give a little bit more without more information, but I think a great place to start would be to find people locally where you are who are in a similar market and get some ideas.

Can you, can you get the question back again?

Yeah, yep, it's young student chasing his dream. He's got an invention, he's got 90% accomplished, and basically doesn't know how to market his invention.

Got it, okay, well, so if you don't know how to— if you're not marketing it, you're not 90% done. like you may be 90% done in completing your product or whatever, but you're not 90% done in what you need to get done for this business to be a success. Oh, I died again. This is a rough game. Yeah, so first I'd be trying to educate myself, trying to be looking at what other successful inventors have done. You know, whenever you don't know what to do, you model success. Find someone who's done what you've already done— or sorry, find someone who's done what you want to do and read their stories and learn from them. That's what I did when I was in my first business. I was in software, and it was— again, your invention is something so new and different, you know, hasn't been done before. It's an invention. That's the kind of nature of the business. And so there's nobody who's done exactly what you've done before, but there are people who have done something close or similar, or in a different industry that you can still model and learn from. And so I'd be trying to understand what helped them get there. I'd also do some self-awareness to figure out, are you the business person here or not? You know, maybe you need a partner, maybe you need somebody to help you out. Oh, we lost the game.

GG.

GG. You know, in my first business, I was not the inventor. I came in to be the business person to help structure deals and get media and get some exposure. GG, Willpay. So summary here, I had 3 kills and 6 deaths, which is my worst game ever on stream. But I still got an S. I got the best score on my team, but it ended up in a loss. So anyway, it was fun though. So yeah, so like, are you the business person? Do you want to be the business person? Because if you do, then go out and learn, right? Model people, learn all of that stuff. If you don't, then that's not going to be the best use of your time. You know, last night I was looking at my website for Toronto Dance Salsa and I needed something fixed and I don't know how to do it. It was programming. It's not something fixed, something new that I want to add in and I don't know how to do it. And I started trying to figure out how to do it and then realized, you know what, like somebody who knows this could figure it out super quick and here I am trying to figure it out and it's just not going to be a waste of my time. I have no— I want to solve the problem but I have no interest in being a programmer. And so I have some limited skills, but then realize, you know what, I need to get somebody to help me out with this. And that can be for everything. It could be for a small project, and it could be for something much bigger as well. You're talking about a much bigger initiative. You might need a business partner to help do the marketing business stuff. The fact that you say you're 90% done, but you don't have them, like you haven't figured out how to market it, kind of makes me feel like you're totally disrespecting the marketing business side of things, which maybe means that shouldn't be you who's out doing it. So just some self-awareness to figure out, are you that business guy? Do you want to be? Like, you may not have the knowledge now, that's okay. When you're passionate about something, you'll go and figure it out. But if you're not and you see that, ah, I have to go out and do this sales call, that's your mindset going in. Then you need to be off of that as soon as possible and find that person who can help you run it. That's it.

Well, love it.

GG. We, uh, I like the questions. We like the questions. Um, so overall, yeah, we, we got pretty stomped in that game. But I still got an S, so decent start. Cool. Well, we'll be back again tomorrow for another stream. Rishi, what do you want to leave us on today?

Yeah, just a lot of love for all you young entrepreneurs. Most of the questions today were young, young ents. And just keep believing, and thanks for the great questions.

Thanks for the fun, everyone, putting in the chat. Yeah, we don't— we don't— we basically go in order, so it's not one person gets in over the other. We didn't pick the theme of young entrepreneurship or raising capital, but it was good to see, fun to see, and looking forward to answering more questions tomorrow. Thank you guys for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe.

Believe.

Whatever your one word is, go check out Rishi's channel, and we'll see you soon.