Evan Carmichael spent a year making $300 a month on a software startup before shifting strategy. He studied successful founders, switched to partnerships, and landed a $13,500 distribution deal within a month. Breakthroughs often come when you're lowest and willing to try something new.
Chapters
How long does it take to get your big break? I got a question from one of my YouTube viewers— love you guys— David, who wrote in to say, Evan, how long did it take you to get your big breakthrough in business? How long have you been at it? This is a great question, and a lot of entrepreneurs have a notion that it takes a certain amount of time, takes 5 years, it takes 10 years before you become successful. For me, I've had my business, this business, for— it's a good question— maybe 12 years now. 12 years. But my, my big breakthrough actually came with my first company. And I had a software company and was struggling to get by, making $300 a month, barely surviving, and got to the point where I said I quit. This is not working. I'm not making money. I'm losing self-confidence. I don't feel like like I'm getting paid what I'm worth. I'm working for less than minimum wage here. You know, I've been putting time in and it's not working out. So what am I going to do? And it went like that for about a year. I spent a good year working on this business and it wasn't working out. And my big breakthrough came at about the year mark where I realized that I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before. And I started modeling success. And I looked at guys like Bill Gates from Microsoft. I looked at McAfee. I looked at Intuit. I looked at how they got started, how they made their first First Million, because that's what I was trying to do, because I was trying to come up with all these ideas myself and it just wasn't working out. For whatever reason, all the ideas I had were not working, and it wasn't for a lack of effort, and it wasn't for a lack of trying, and it wasn't for a lack of wanting this business to do well. It just wasn't working. And once I made that change— so there's one part of Microsoft strategy that worked really well that I wanted to apply, and it was partnerships. And it's basically find people who are already selling to your target market and find a way to I said, "You know what, it's worth trying. I've tried everything else, nothing else is working, so let's give it a shot and see what happens." And within a month I had my first deal. And I started reaching out to people who already were selling to my market, they were selling other software to my target market, and I partnered up with them. And I convinced one company to pay me $13,500 upfront to be our distributor, to be our partner here. And I was overwhelmed. Like, $13,500? Are you kidding me? $13,500? That's so much money. That's crazy. And looking back now, you might think, but $13K, man, Evan, come on, that's nothing. What are you doing? I was making $300 a month, man. $13,500, that's good money. That gave me confidence, like, somebody actually believes in this thing. Like, this could actually take off. And so that one deal that one deal maybe wasn't a huge, huge, huge number value-wise, but it created the breakthrough moment for me because it was easy to replicate. So I could do that deal and then do another one like it and another one like it and another one like it, and pretty soon had a business that was making some serious money, and I got acquired. And so that one moment became my breakthrough moment. It happened about a year after I I joined the business and became an owner and came basically after so much frustration that I almost quit. And when you're at that point, you're willing to try anything. At least I was, because I wanted to save this business. I wanted to make it work out. And so it took me about a year. It doesn't have to take you that long, or it may take you longer. There's no rule, at least in my book, that says you have to be around for X number of years before it takes off. But really it was at that point where I was at my lowest low that I discovered that, you know what, I have, I have to try something else because what I'm doing right now, it's not working. And Modern Success was the answer for me. So try it out for yourself. Find somebody who's already done what you're trying to do. Look at how they did it. Look at how they went from the idea to making their first million, not how they make an extra million dollars now. It doesn't matter. Zero to one. How did they go zero to one? Look at those strategies and apply them to your business, and hopefully you'll see similar growth. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, thumbs up below, leave a comment, ask the question, I'll make a video response, and click on my face to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
