Business Q&A + League of Legends Ep. #5 ft. @RishyCupTV

Live recording. All right, we are live. Welcome back everybody, another entrepreneur AMA. Ask me your questions featuring Rishi Cup TV. Welcome back.

Thanks Evan. Hi Believe Nation, good morning, good morning.

Pretty exciting. I was up till 4 in the morning. My book came in last night and wow, yeah, Nina insisted on opening it up. That night we had a salsa night till about midnight, and then she insisted that we open it up that night. And then I got all excited that my book came in. This is just like the, the, the galley copy, so there's some mistakes in there and stuff, but it's, you know, it's nice to have the actual thing there. So yeah, so had 4 hours sleep, so this will be an exciting challenge. To, uh, oh my gosh, crush League and, uh, split my focus and be on 4 Hours Sleep. But I'm excited. Let's try that and see how it goes.

I'm gonna, uh, super exciting.

I'm gonna set up a game here and let's get into our first question.

Alrighty, Evan, just so you know, I am refreshing the page and I don't see you, so I just want to make sure you really are live. Are you live?

It says a minute ago.

Okay, good.

It says a minute ago. I'll refresh the page one more time just to make sure. The fun Twitch experiments. You guys who are watching this on YouTube, you can follow me live on Twitch. Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. Says 2 minutes ago, just making sure that it's live. While I do that, Rishi, why don't you tell everybody about what you do?

Fabulous. Um, well, I am Rishi from Rishi Cupp TV, a YouTube channel, and, uh, my channel is the place where good music, good food, and good talk intersect. And I just love being a YouTuber. I love being able to grow and share and all the fun things that YouTubers get to do. And so yeah, and I just love, I love watching Believe Evan Carmichael's channel. And anyway, it's been so much fun.

It's like I've added that to my name, Believe Evan Carmichael, my new first name. Evan is my middle name now. Twitch says It says live now under my name, so I'm assuming it's working.

Okay, good. Sorry, I don't know, it might just be my Wi-Fi. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.

Well, go, you go ahead. First question, let's do it.

Okay, let's go. All right, first question comes from Mawamiki Jose. He says, I have a dream to have my own business and to have a big company in Tanzania and worldwide. Tanzania and worldwide. And I'm now holding the bachelor degree of education based on economics as a teaching subject. I have a lot of plans, but I failed to perform due to capital problems. So can you help me to fulfill my dreams? So thanks for the question, Wanika. Sorry if I didn't say that right. We always get a lot of questions about capital problems, and so it'd be really, really probably helpful to you to check out some of the other League of Legends episodes that we've done, because there might be some really great information there for you. But capital problems usually, I think, from the feedback that I've heard Evan give a lot of people is— it— the capital problems really boil down to value problems. So when you really are providing value, then your capital is affected by that in a good way. So I really think about what is the value that you want to provide. It doesn't have any information here about what kind of business you specifically want to start. But I would just start with, you know, what is the value you want to provide? What's the service or product that you feel will really help change people's lives? And I think that's where you need to start more than being worried about the capital problems, because I think that will be addressed when you address the value problem.

Yeah, for me, I would just try to start smaller. Find a smaller way to get started. Whatever your big plan is, it's great to have a big dream, a big vision, big goal, but break that down into smaller steps. Because what ends up happening is you don't take action because I need to get these resources and this amount of money raised and this team on board, and until I get that, I don't start. And that's the mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make. Where if you want to get that dream to happen, you got to find a way just to get started on a small scale, whatever that smallest first step is. The challenge with raising capital when you're first starting up a business, one, you know, the banks aren't going to give it to you unless you do a personal line of credit. And I wouldn't recommend going out and getting a bank loan to start with anyway. I say on the channel a lot that I'd much rather see you make money before you spend money. I hate spending money until I'm making money. It's a consistent theme on the channel. But then also, if you're going out to try to get investors, you're going to get destroyed on your valuation. Like, they're going to take so much of your company that you're not going to be left with anything because it's too risky for them. On top of that, you're going to spend so much time trying to be out raising capital that you're not running a business. Raising capital is almost another full-time job that you have to go out and do. And it's really hard to then execute on your idea while you're raising capital. So I mean, all of that in, I say bootstrap, find a small way to get started, find a way to get close to your customers, understand what they really, really want, get an order in the door, even if it's, even if it's, oh, I'm going to get banned. Yeet. Did I do it? Oh no.

You were banned this quickly?

I just got a— no, I got a 6-minute penalty. Ah! Because I had to ban a champion and I didn't do it. And so now I'm banned from the game for 6 minutes.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, not great. Yeah, that split focus. OK, well hopefully that's the only flaw of the day here. But it's 6 extra bonus minutes of chat time and helping entrepreneurs.

There you go, providing value.

Yeah, so that's it. Just find a way to start smaller. Don't expect somebody to come in on a white horse and save your business and give you the money you need. And don't wait, you know, don't sit there and complain that somebody's not giving you money and don't wait until that happens. Too many entrepreneurs do that. Just find a small way to to get started. If you need money to raise capital for a product, you know, start with a service. Get close to your customers, get cash flow coming in, and invest that money into building a product for your business. It's a little bit slower growth, but one, it helps make sure that something's actually happening on your business, and two, it dramatically increases the chance of your business being successful.

That's it. Awesome. All right, next question comes from Hamza.

Hamza.

Hamza.

Hamza.

All right, very cool names here. Um, Hamza says, I'm 20, I'm in college, my true passion is to be an entrepreneur, but I don't know what sort of business I want to start. How can I overcome such a problem? Is this natural to happen. Absolutely, Hamza. I think this is probably pretty typical of a lot of people who are passionate entrepreneurs. They want to, they want to make an impact. They want to change the world, but they may not know, you know, where to start and exactly what it is that they want to do. I have to plug the One Word book now because if you don't know, Evan Carmichael's book is and pre-launch. And this is— I can't, you know, think of a better place to start because I think a lot of— I don't know, Evan, you're gonna have to chime in on this, but I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs just as a people, they are on purpose. They want to change the world. They want to kind of— anybody, if it's not change like the world, maybe they just really want to make change in a specific area. They want to really leave this legacy. And so, I feel like you can't talk about that without addressing purpose. And so, the book is one really powerful way that you can start asking questions and tapping into purpose. And I really think that that is a step toward finding out what kind of business you want to start. Another thing that I'll just add is, you know, is it a— do you want to provide a service, you know, right away? Because even if you don't know what the full business plan is, you can start providing a service to, you know, your community, people around you, and that is a way that you can start to, I think, really identify the business that you want to be in because you start really being able— what are you passionate about? How are you passionate about serving others around you and just improving the lives of the people around you now? That's all I got.

I like it. I like it. Appreciate the plug for the book too. Yeah, I would say, I mean, I agree. Understanding the book helps you with your self-awareness, understanding what you stand for, helping you live a life and run a business on purpose. So, you know, I would humbly recommend that you check it out too. To add to it, I would say, I would say it's super common. I think one of the questions was, is this common that I don't know what I want to do? I think it is super common. I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs who get started on something and they find that it's not for them and they don't know what to do next. Or people who haven't gotten started yet because they haven't found their one idea. I think some people have clarity from the beginning, like, I need to try this idea, and a lot of people don't. They just want to be an entrepreneur. They want to set their own rules. They want to be their own boss. They want to have an impact. And so if that's you, The worst thing you can do is try to box yourself in too quickly. The worst thing you can do is try to just go down a lane because you see an opportunity to make money, but it's not really what you're passionate about. The best thing you can do is explore. That's what you just need to do. You need to explore and explore and try new things until you find the thing that you get really excited about, super jazzed up about. That you just can't put down. We just did a video— it's not coming out yet, it's coming out soon— on Novak Djokovic, the tennis player. And he was from Serbia, and when he was growing up, everybody was talking about soccer and all these different sports, and then suddenly they built a tennis court in his area and he just fell in love with tennis. And he was out there playing tennis every single day, 10 hours a day. He wanted to be out there hitting balls against the wall as much as he could. And the path wasn't super clear for him to make money from this. He just fell in love with tennis and couldn't stop playing it. And so you need to find the equivalent for what you do. I love helping entrepreneurs. I can't help it. When I'm playing League of Legends, I want to help entrepreneurs. I can help entrepreneurs all day long. Today is an insane day packed with Hangouts and phone calls and meetings to help entrepreneurs. And so that's my calling. That's what I really enjoy doing. And I didn't know at the start. I didn't set out on this plan to say, "I'm going to be an entrepreneur guru and help a ton of people." You know, what happened was when I sold my first business, I was honestly bored and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I got invited to speak at a YMCA and they said, "Can you come talk to our group?" And I said, "Sure." I was just trying a bunch of stuff. Say yes to a whole bunch of things. And I went into the room and was disappointed that there were only 3 people there. But I loved it. I loved helping them and I loved impacting those 3 people and I had to figure out another way to make this work because I wanted to keep doing it even if I never got paid. And in looking at it, a lot of times the things that you love don't make sense at the start, don't have a logical business plan, or you're not clear how you're gonna make money from the start. From that YMCA thing, it was a free event and I promoted it and they promoted it and only 3 people showed up. You know, how am I gonna ever turn that into a business? If 3 people show up to something that's free, right? And that's the kind of— that's the kind of thing that people would look at and say, oh, well, you know, I can't do this, this isn't going to be a business. But if it's something that you love, then you'll find a way. Like, for me, it wasn't doing more public speaking yet, it was turning into a website, turn into a YouTube channel, and that led to more public speaking. But years later, like, When did I give that speech? I must have been 22 or 23. You know, now I'm 30— what year is it? 36. And so it took some time to build up, and you don't know how the business model is necessarily gonna work. You may have to switch your business model a ton of times, but it's just pursuing the things that you love. And if you don't know what you love, then you need to explore until you find the thing that you love.

That's fabulous.

That's it. I think that was pretty on point. I'm pretty impressed for 4 hours sleep. I'm feeling that one. That was a good one.

Hey, that story is just so, so inspirational anyway. I love the YMCA story.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we didn't get into it too much detail, but a quick shout out to Rise Online and Guilt Summer 5196 for joining on the livestream. Thank you guys. Let's hit up our next question.

Alrighty, next question comes from Luis, and he says, I'm 28 years old and I'm a huge fan. I used to work with IT and marketing for about 6 years. At the moment, I'm a director of clothing, a clothing store. But he's always had a passion to be an entrepreneur. His father owned a local supermarket, and he worked in the supermarket when he was a child. Um, and they sold it when— about 7 years ago. Now he's interested in buying back the supermarket, and he wants to make this into, uh, kind of like a step-by-step move into a chain of small supermarkets like a 7-Eleven. Um, so the problem he won't— he's having though is he can't buy it back because he doesn't have the money to buy it back. What should he do, borrow money or find an investor. Okay, so I know why— so I know, you know, your thoughts about seeking investors, but in this case, when there is a kind of like a pre-existing business, and it sounds like he knows the business, I'm wondering if your advice is the same. I guess in a way this could be considered expansion capital because— just to clarify, there's a really great video if you guys haven't seen it. It's called "Do You Really Need an Investor for Your Business?" It's a video with Evan Carmichael and Stephen Kelly from Stage, and they have a really good discussion on that video. Again, it's called "Do You Really Need an Investor for Your Business?" And they have a really good discussion there about, you know, kind of when is the right time, and so you might want to check that video out. But yeah, in this case, you know, you're not bootstrapping, so what do you say, Evan?

Yeah, so just a quick update for the people watching live, I was in a game and I forgot to ban a champion, so I got kicked out of the game and given a 6-minute penalty, and now we're having a hard time finding a new game, so we're just going through the questions and seeing what comes up. Oh, we got a game! Look at that. Let's hope it sticks. So, one, I mean, I love the nostalgia. I love the idea of taking something that you started with and it has some, you know, family connections and ties to and love. I think that's great. A couple, couple things that I see for you. One, it can be super challenging to get one specific thing, right? Like, I want that store that my parents used to have. You know, maybe I want the Evan.com domain name, but it doesn't mean that the guy wants to sell it to me, right? So just because you want that one thing, it doesn't mean that you're gonna be able to get it at an affordable price. It may take years to be able to get it. You may have to wait for the person to pass on, and it goes to their kids before you're able to get it, right? Just depends on how much they love the business and when it's time to sell. I— you know, we got a new game again. I remember having a meeting with an angel investor and he was talking about how he acquires businesses and one of the things that he mentioned was he would talk to business owners and say, hey, you know, when you're ready to sell I'd love to be the first guy that you talk to. And a lot of times people don't have an exit strategy, you know, for grocery store. A lot of times people don't, you know, you can't go public with it, you know, you can't issue, you know, big shares against it. There's no real mergers and acquisition opportunities. So they may not have an exit strategy beyond give it to my kids. And so this is a chance for for them when the timing is right. Just like if you want to buy somebody's house, you know, they may not be selling. So it can be hard to get that house. So just put it on their radar, talking to them and saying— let me make sure I ban my champion properly this time, I don't want another— there we go. Just let them know that there's opportunity. It still will likely mean you paid an inflated price, but not something over-the-top crazy. So be prepared that it may take years for that to happen. If that happens, and then, so what are you going to do now, right? Assume it's going to take some time. What are you going to spend your time on now? How can you learn more about the industry, or how can you get started in a smaller way? Back to the first question about raising capital, start smaller. What can you do to start in a small way to build up experience, build up customer base, understand the product and the product marketing again. Do you go work for another grocery store and just get back into it, or do you start your own thing potentially on the side and start learning again? And then when an opportunity does come, it is something that you could potentially finance with a bank. I don't think an angel investor would want to have a grocery store. I mean, unless Unless it's somebody in your family who has a connection to it and wants to see you revive it, you know. I don't know if your parents are still around and if they're interested, or a brother or sister or cousin or uncle or aunt. There, there might be a connection, but for an angel, it's just not an attractive business. The growth isn't there for an angel investor. A bank would look at it, but they want to see the assets. And they don't put a high value on inventory in a grocery store. It's not like you're sitting on gold, or precious metals, or something. The value rapidly erodes. So it'd be hard to get any kind of inventory-based loan. But to buy the building, you know, if you're buying the building instead of just taking over a lease. Let me pick my champion. There we go. That could be interesting, and they would potentially look at that if they have existing sales and you're buying a business more than 3 years old, then they would look at that and potentially give you a loan on that. The industry is, you know, pretty low margin, and if you're paying any kind of premium, it's going to be hard to to get the banks to say yes and finance it. So you'd have to get a pretty sweet deal on it, but it's possible. You know, I would, you know, the other, another alternative is you might be able to do a payout over a certain number of years. So instead of having to go out and get outside financing and buy 100% right away, you could take it on and then have a debt structure where you're not putting money down at the front, or it's really minimal money at the start, and then you're paying them every year. So maybe for the next 5 years they get X number of dollars, and so the business is financing it, and they have an incentive to kind of still mentor you and help you and guide you. And at the end of those 5 years, then they get paid.

That's a great idea.

A couple options there. Yeah, don't, don't assume it always has to be just going out and raising Capital. We have a game! I'm excited, and I got my Teemo. Last— for those of you watching live again, last time I got, I got banned. Uh, Teemo got banned. I had to play a new champion. We still won though. Did we win? I'm pretty sure we won on Tuesday. We won, right?

Yeah, you won on Tuesday.

Yeah, we won, we won. Okay, good. The memory is coming back here. All right, good. Yeah. I love it. All right, what's next?

Bernard, um, Bernard asks, I'm currently working on a tech project and proposal and it's underway. I need your advice the best way I can reach out to potential investors.

Oh wow, this is like the raising capital day.

Yeah, this is raising capital day. Yeah, well, um That's it?

That's the whole thing?

I think that's it. Okay. So I guess the first thing is all of— we love the questions that you guys are sending, and it'd be really great too if we— in your questions, if you could include what exactly you're working on, because I'm not sure what kind of a proposal this would be. But in terms of the advice for potential investors, I think hopefully so far there's been lots of value given in that— in that direction as far as, you know, are you considering potential investors to kind of swoop in and save you to do what it is that you could do by bootstrapping "So is it too soon?" I would ask the question, is it too soon for you to already be reaching out to potential investors? And let's say he is on the— he is at the place where he should reach out to potential investors. Evan, do you have any thoughts on what the best way to do— if he's at that stage where it is the right time? I think you talked about that on Tuesday as well.

Yeah, so I'll do a quick rundown of the different options that you have, and then you can figure out what works best for you. Come on, Ash, come help me. I need help here. Come help me with the jungle. So again, first off, I'd be looking at bootstrapping, not giving up equity, not even trying at the start because you'll waste a lot of time and give up too much of your business. But let's say that it does make sense, that this is something that you need to go with. Your options to start with are one, your friends and family, it's called love money. This is typically— did he say how much he wants to raise or no? We don't know how much.

No, not more information than that.

Okay, so typically if it's under $25,000 to $50,000, then you're looking with friends and family, again called love money. It's people who know you, they like you, they want to help. They may want some kind of investment return, but they're not sophisticated, they're not used to investing. They're doing it mainly because they like you. So you think about kindergarten classmates and next-door neighbors and all those kinds of people. Because if it's under $25,000, it's just not interesting enough. For an angel investor. It's not enough. The amount of work that goes into doing the research on the deal and mentoring you and all that, it's just not worth it. And so like no angel is going to put in money unless they have some personal connection to you. So it really depends on how much money you're trying to raise. Next up, you can deal with angel investors. They're looking again between as a low point, $25,000, $50,000, up to half a million dollars. And what they want to see is they understand your industry, they like you, they see the opportunity, they see a potential to give back and advise and set up connections for you. And you want that too. If you're bringing anybody on board into your business, you don't want what they call dumb money, and that is someone who's just giving you money. You want somebody who can help you out with more than just money, right? They give you ideas, connections, resources, customers, mentorship. If you're giving up a piece of your business, you want to make sure that, that you structure that well and bring on the right people. I would also add you want to make sure you bring in people who share the same values as you. You know, I guess back to the one-word idea, and there's a section in the book talking about raising capital and investors. A lot of people just look at investors as, oh, you know, they have the skills and they have the money, but do you guys get along? Right? Like Uncle Joe may be a great potential investor, but do you want to be working with Uncle Joe every day? Is that something that, you know, is that gonna ruin your family dinners at Christmas and all that stuff? Or, you know, can you take feedback from him? Can you guys work together? Together. Super important. Most people don't consider that enough. They're just trying to chase the dollars.

Yeah.

Over half a million, you're looking at venture capital. And again, like, that's the lowest. VCs don't want to do small deals. Often it's easier to do the $50 million deal than the $500,000 deal. They do it because they see potential and they see your growth and they say, hey, if we if we help you out on this round, you're gonna come back to us for the future rounds. So they have to see a lot of potential return. For angels and VCs, they want to see 30% return a year, which some businesses can throw off, but a lot can't. Like the last question about the grocery store, that's why I said that it's not a business an angel would care about because they're not gonna make 30% a year. It's like just that industry doesn't create those kinds of margins. And they don't expect that right away, but they expect that over a period of time. So an angel will, will figure on being in your business for 5 to 8 years, and then they want to see that you're kind of selling out, you get acquired, there's an exit strategy. A VC has a shorter horizon, you know, 3 to 5 years, they want to be in and out. And over that time, you have to make them 30% return average per year. So it's tough. Other options are your bank. Bank wants to see 3 years of business. So it's not gonna— it's not going to apply to where you're at right now. But otherwise, they're gonna want to see a personal guarantee. So it all really depends on your personal credit. Once you get past 3 years in business, you'll have more options in dealing with the bank. But until then, like, if you have the personal credit to do it, you can do it. I still don't recommend it because I hate having to pay money again until I'm making money. But you have an option there. And then what else? You got government. Government is either in the form of a loan or in the form of a grant. The only difference is you pay back a loan, you don't pay back a grant. And it sounds super attractive to say, oh, I get free money, right? I get, I get money without having to pay it back. That's awesome, I should go chase that. The, the downside of the government is they're just super slow, you know. As an entrepreneur, you want everything to happen yesterday. You want it to have happened already. You know, we're impatient. We want our dreams to take hold right now. Where if you apply for something with the government, it may be 6 months until you hear anything back. Another 6 months before you get your money. You know, so it's, do you want to really wait that long? And for me, I've never really gone down that road because I just, I don't have the patience. And they'd rather just get stuff done. So that's a quick overview. I guess the other category would be pre-sales. So using, using places like Kickstarter, what I'm doing with my book, right? I'm pre-selling the book just through my own network. And that's, that's honestly one of the best ways to do it because you're not giving up any equity in your business. So when you put something on Kickstarter, you're— it's just marketing, you know, you're selling your first units, you're giving some free bonuses away, but you never actually give up any kind of equity in your company, and you're not paying people back. There's no debt structure that you have to worry about. So that's my— that's one of my favorite ways to do it because I hate you're gonna give up so much equity as a percentage in your business that it sucks as an entrepreneur, and it may prevent you from raising capital down the line because you've already given away too much of your business. So, you know, I guess one last thought about Kickstarter is it works, but you have to do the work too. It's not just a matter of throwing up a project and, hey, it's gonna sell well because somebody else raised millions of dollars. I am too. You got to promote it, you got to get media, you got to make partnerships, you got to, you got to do the work to get exposure for it. Otherwise, you know, it's not going to work just hoping that you put it up a website and it's going to take off. So with all that being said, I still think bootstrapping is the way to do it, but those like, that's like an overview of your options to raise capital.

Awesome.

There you go. Yeah, there should be. So I just came back from Sage Summit in Chicago, and one of my presentations was on raising capital. And I think on Friday of this week, we're gonna put that up, the full presentation. It's either this week or next week, and maybe next week, I don't know, we'll see. It's with my editor. But that will give you— I spoke for an hour on the various ways to raise capital.

Um, great.

Yeah, and so that hopefully came out well. I haven't seen the recording, but, um, that could give extra content since we seem to have a lot of raising capital questions today. That could be some valuable content for, for people who, uh, want to raise money.

Great. All right, um, we have— how's the game going? Because I, uh, you don't see my little— my screen is just— I'm really behind for some reason. I'm not— I'm lagging on this Wi-Fi. So how are you doing on the game?

The game is going along, uh, my team is winning, which is great. I haven't had much of an impact. I'm running around doing the safe stuff without really helping my team too much. So yeah. It's coming. It's coming.

All right. Awesome. Next question comes from Mamdo. And Mamdo says he has an idea. It's related to tourism. It's a vacation idea and that doesn't give much more detail than that, but it says, "I'm planning to present this to a prince in the Middle East." An investor! Another investor. So the prince in the Middle East to financially support this project.

Oh my gosh, you're running good.

So he has 4 questions. Start with number 1. Can I patent a tourism idea? Well, the next question, let's put these together. And what's the best way to do that? So patents, I'm going to trade that to you, sir, because I— I would love to hear what you have to say about patents.

Yeah, so potentially it depends on what— it depends on what it does. When you're getting a patent, it has to be something new, has to be something different. Usually you're looking at inventions. There could be a— there could be a certain process that you do that's differently that you want to patent. I think you'd honestly have a hard time getting a patent for a service kind of business, it's doable, but you need to, you need to check in with a patent lawyer. I think you have a hard time though, and just in all honesty, thinking about it, um, he does say this is not an invention, so this is more just a tourism idea at this point. Yes, it's— the answer is maybe, but probably not, uh, if I'm being honest. Which I try to be on these Hangouts. Also, the thing with patents is you need to get a patent in every country that you want protection of. So you do a provisional patent at the start, which gives you a year of kind of global coverage to be able to go out and commercialize a product and see if there's a market for it. But then you need to file a patent in every country and there's filing fees with that. So if you're only selling to the US, great, not a huge deal. But if you're trying to sell it in multiple countries where if you're like doing tourism, that sounds like it's more international and you're dealing with a prince who, as far as I know, there's no prince of the United States. So you're, you're maybe the Kennedys. I don't know. So you're off. You're off, you're off selling to somebody in other countries. So, so you'll need multiple patents and that gets expensive. But, um, yeah, I mean, honestly, talk to patent lawyer. It's probably a no, but if you're, if you really want to get some confirmation, have a chat with somebody. You need to patent it before you commercialize it. So to get a patent, it has to be before you start selling. Once something is commercially available, you can't patent it. You can only patent the improvements that you make on it. So you want to do that now before you, um, before you start selling it. And a patented— a patent can be great when you're talking to investors. It shows that there's something there, and investors love seeing patents. Yeah, it's worth a conversation with the patent lawyer, although again, I don't think it's gonna work out, but give it a shot. Have a conversation. Doesn't hurt to have a conversation.

Yeah, and you addressed the, one of his questions was, could the patent be internationally covered? So we addressed that you'd have to get the patent individually for each country.

Yeah, so again, you do, you have a year of the provisional patent, and I think you can also even file an extension potentially, but it runs out. You know, you would need to then decide what markets you want to have the patent for, and then, and so it's paying to get it there as well as paying for annual maintenance, I guess, like to keep it alive you have to pay every country every year. So usually you pick the biggest markets. For the big companies, you know, Google and those guys, that's nothing, but most on the entrepreneur level will just pick the markets that they want to focus on.

How long do patents take? Let's say he talks to the lawyer and he actually does have a patent-worthy idea, how long would that take?

Um, it really depends. It really depends on how much of his stuff is already together. So you need to document everything that's different about what you're doing. And so, um, the patent lawyer will have a general understanding of what you need, uh, but you need to provide the documentation as to how It's truly different.

Okay.

So, you know, how quickly can you get that stuff together? How quickly can you prepare it? How quickly can you do screenshots and flow diagrams and kind of all the stuff that needs to get done to create it? Maybe you're like— a lot of people are able to do their own patents as well, but you have to be super detail-oriented and get all your all your stuff together. Just like, just like anything else, you know, if you want, if you want somebody to help you sell something, you need to give them the materials, you need to give them the content, you need to help them through the process. So the patent lawyer will definitely speed up the process compared to you doing it yourself, but you need to give them the right documentation.

Right?

Yeah, it's like, it's like a website. How long does it take me to get a website up? It's one of the questions that, that website designers hate answering because it's like, well, I can work fast. It depends. I need content from you, right? I need pictures from you. I need you to tell me what, what you want. Okay, so great. How quickly can you get your stuff in? Mm-hmm. Yeah, but it's a good follow-up question.

Great. And say hi to the prince in the Middle East.

Yeah, good luck with that.

All right, next question. Neela. Neela asks— oh, Neela's a 16-year-old. All right. Love it when we get these I love it when we get these young entrepreneurs.

Yeah, feeling it.

And he says he needs money. Whoa.

Wow. I don't know that I have much else to say. I have gone over— well, let's see what else. What else is he saying? Let's—

yes.

Okay.

He's 16 years old. He needs money to fund his racing career. He's a car racer. And so he basically Well, a couple of things. This is, this is cool because he's saying first, number one, how can I make money online? And he's talking about like €200 a month he needs to make to do it himself. So this is cool. He really wants to, to, you know, bootstrap and get the money himself. But he's asking, you know, do you have anything in terms, any feedback in terms of online? How can you make money online? We'll start with that question first. It's funny because when you watch YouTube as much as I do, there's so many— they seem super scammy to me, but there's just so many people constantly offering, you know, make all this money online. And so the first thing that I would just say is be wary of things that you might see as ways to make a lot of money fast online, because there's just so many weird stuff out there. But yeah, there's a lot of really just great— you might want to check out the website, what's it called, well, flexjobs.com is a great website you might want to check out. As well as the website thepennyhoarder.com is another website in terms of ways that you can make money online that are flexible and can work with— you know, it looks like your racing career is your priority, so you really might want to check there because they have a lot of great resources for how you can make money online, flexible, your own hours. They actually also give a lot of companies that are reputable that you know are not scammy, that you know, you know, you're gonna have legitimate work. And so yeah, I'd suggest starting with those two websites. So it's flexjobs.com and then it's thepennyhoarder.com. What do you think on that online, making money online? He needs like $200 a month. Any suggestions there?

So the— just to summarize again, he— I just got a kill, so I've been running around the map doing stuff. My whole team is freaking out on me that I'm not helping them enough, although one guy is being very supportive, so we'll see. We'll see how it goes. We are still winning. He wants to be a race car driver. He doesn't have the money to do it, and he wants an online job to help him raise money to support his passion, is that it?

Part of what he wants to do, yeah. He does want to— there's another part of the question, but yeah, the first thing he wants to know is how can he make money online, and he needs to make €200 a month.

I hate the idea of doing something just to make money. What I would suggest is I would be looking— if it were me, I would be looking at how can I do something that's within the realm of what I'm interested in? How can I build up momentum for my racing career and give value for my racing career, uh, and turn that into something helpful and interesting? Um, so if I was trying to find a way to make money, it would still be within the racing industry. I wouldn't try to just sell info products or, you know, do something totally unrelated. I try to keep it within an industry where I can build momentum. So a couple things: one, you know, does it even have to be your own business? Can you go work at another race— at the racetrack or for another team and While you're doing that, you're, you're making money but also gaining experience, gaining contacts, understanding how the industry works, all of that fun stuff. Um, can you document your journey and make a YouTube channel about, uh, how you're trying to become a race car driver and the ups and the downs and the struggles and the triumphs and all of that stuff to, you know, let people in on what you're doing, just like I did behind the scenes with my book. Can you provide some kind of— can you reach out to, to potential sponsors? Like, who are the people who are sponsoring race car drivers? Are you, you know, are you winning now? Are you, you know, do you provide enough value right now already to potential sponsors that would be interesting for them? There's a lot of different ways to skin that cat, but I would make sure that I'm spending my time within the world of racing and not try to do something totally outside of it. Because if that's your ultimate goal, then everything that you're doing will, will ultimately help your race car career, as opposed to doing something totally unrelated. You're not asking for a lot too, like you can get a part-time job doing that. It's not— I guess he still has school and everything else, but right, it may not have to be like— if it's just making money, you'll make more short-term money working for somebody else than trying to do your own business. If your goal is €200 a month, you can get that working in the racing industry somehow, um, as a part-time job, and you'll learn and make connections and build and grow. If you're building your own business, like doing a YouTube channel or whatever it is, then that can also work. It's a bit of a longer-term commitment though. Yeah, those are my thoughts. I'm excited. I love it. I love the ambition, man. I love it. I love where he's trying to take it.

Absolutely. And you mentioned sponsors, which he was kind of part of his next question because he when he moves into higher divisions of racing, he does plan to try to attract potential sponsors. So Evan, if you were someone who would be a potential sponsor, like, what, what would attract you to want to sponsor someone? Does this go back to all the things that we've talked about in terms of the investors? How can he position himself to really attract sponsors when he does do that?

I just died. Very sad. Very sad. Yeah, it is. It's sad. It's sad, guys.

I don't want to die.

It's very sad. It's sad when I die. So what do sponsors want? Sponsors want Sponsors want attention, sponsors want awareness. So do you have that? Like, are you winning, right? Sponsors want to be part of a winning team. Are you offering any other kind of value? Like, are you doing— if you had your YouTube channel, for example, right? I get sponsors for my YouTube channel because I can give them awareness. So what's the equivalent for what you are trying to do? How can you give them that extra kind of awareness? Uh, but at the end of the day, it's what— what the traditional path is: winning. The more you win, the more sponsors will come to you and be interested. There's already some people who are in the racing industry and do these kinds of sponsorships and would already be attuned to your message and what you're trying to do. So those are great starts. I hate trying to convince somebody of something new that they're not already on board with. So like, if somebody wanted to deal with entrepreneurs, uh, but they've never worked with any other advertising or YouTuber or influencer, it's harder. There's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of education. And if they're— if somebody is already in the game, it's a lot easier to get them onboard. So I'd be looking at who is already coming, who's already sponsoring other race drivers, especially close to your, your size, like not NASCAR but whatever the circuit is that you're racing at, right? Who's already sponsoring those guys, and then how can you, you know, reach out to them, and can you give them enough value? So again, they want to win, that's ideally what they want, but if not, do you have another way to generate attention? Are you big on Instagram and mentioning them gets them a lot of exposure? Even if you're not— like, so for example, I look at League of Legends, this is what we're playing now. There are some guys who stream like I am right now, but they're actually good at the game, you know, and they get a lot of attention and they get sponsors, right? Uh, they're documenting their journey, their process. So there's also like entering competitions and trying to win. Um, but some of the people you watch because they're good, right? Some of the people you watch is because they're entertaining. There's this guy, Sky, who is not a very good player, but he's really funny. And so he makes videos and it supports his his, you know, business. I forget how many subscribers he has. I think he's closing in on a million. I want to say he's closing in on a million. So he's got a base, but he's not very good. Like, you could generate attention and awareness without being good at what you're doing in terms of the skill, but he's just funny. And so that's an option. So you just need to basically find a way to provide value to— just like everything else, right? You got to provide value to your audience. And, uh, oh, I killed somebody and I'm gonna die. Am I gonna die? I died. I got 2 kills and I died, so that's pretty good. Oh, 2 for 1 is good. 2 for 1 is good. Um, yeah, so that's it. But, but Exciting. And the more you do your— ah, we won! Haha! The more you do your side hustle, right? Like how you're raising money, the more you can keep that within your industry, then the more options you have when you're trying to sell something because you have more attention.

Great point. Yeah. Cool. So we've got a— this is a little bit of an interruption from the questions because I just— it says this is from Jorge and he says, hello Evan, I hope you are good. Are you good?

That's a good one to end on. Jorge, I'm good. I'm feeling good. I was tired. I had 4 hours sleep. I called Rishi. She answered the phone saying "believe," which was exciting. We got into a game, we answered a lot of raising capital questions, hopefully helped some entrepreneurs. I am good. How are you, Rishi?

I am great. I am doing fabulous. This is always so fun, Evan. Thanks for having me.

Alright, well, that's it for this session. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you, Rishi, for co-hosting. You can check out her channel in the description when this thing goes live on YouTube, and we will see you soon on a future episode.

Continue to believe.

That's it. Take care, guys. Bye.