Evan Carmichael answers a viewer scared to start a business. His framework: clarify why you care, launch part-time with just an hour a day, and don't spend money until you're earning it. Build momentum through direct customer contact and resourcefulness before quitting your job.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. This is a special edition brought to you by Telus Talks Business. They've launched a new contest with the Globe and Mail where they're giving away $100,000 to a Canadian entrepreneur. If you want to enter for your chance to win, you can go to theglobemail.com/evancarmichael. The Challenge. So today I'm going to answer a question from one of our Tellestocks Business readers, Liz, who wants to start a business but is scared and wanted my advice on how to get started and overcome that fear. So there's a couple things for you to keep in mind. The first, why are you starting a business? And I try to get excited about it. So why is it that you want to start that business? What are you really excited about? What are you passionate about? Who do you think you can help? Where do you think you can add a lot of value to? And let that fuel your excitement, right? You should be excited to wake up every day and want to do something with your business. If it's something just to make money and doesn't really interest you, then maybe you should look for a different opportunity that you can get more excited about. So if you look at every famous successful entrepreneur, they had that burning fire inside of them to want to start that business because they had a passion for what they were doing. So let that fuel you and let that get you excited and want to, want to move forward with your company. The next thing to kind of reduce the risk and the fear is start part-time. You don't have to start full-time, quit whatever job and income source you have right now. Start on a part-time basis. Start for 1 hour a day, you know, start on a small scale, let momentum build up, let you start to get excited again about why you're doing this business, let some customers potentially start coming in, start talking to people, you know, get that momentum going with your business. It's better to do something on an ongoing basis even if it's as little as 1 hour a day just to start building up some momentum with your company and that fuels you to want to keep going. So you don't have to start full-time, Start part-time, talk to your customers, get close to them, make sure you're building a product or service that really helps solve their problems, and continue building around that. The last part, again, to also make sure you're reducing your risk is don't spend money until you're making money. Whatever business you're in, you usually don't have to spend a lot of money to get it started. And you can start, especially if you're doing a service type of base business, the only amount that you have to invest is your time. And I encourage entrepreneurs not to focus on how much resources you have, but how resourceful you can be. And that's going to be what determines your success. So don't start spending a lot of money. That's what's scary, right? You're going to lose whatever nest egg you built up for yourself. Spend a lot of time building it up, talking to customers, getting close to them, understanding their pain points, seeing where you might be able to help. And then as money starts coming in from small sales that you're able to make, then you can invest that back into your business and you have cash flow to start supporting your company. And eventually you can get to the point where you can quit whatever job you have, whatever other income sources you have that take up your time, and focus on your own company. So get excited about what you're doing, let that fuel you, let that kind of get you going, get your juices pumped up to want to get that business launched. Remember, you don't have to start full-time, you can start on a part-time basis. And don't spend a lot of money, don't spend until you're making money. Try to focus on making that money first before you start letting it flow out of your wallet. Because anybody can spend, but not everybody can earn. So that should be your focus. Hopefully you guys liked the video. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. If you have other questions or other comments for Liz, it'd be great to see it in the comments below. And again, if you're a Canadian entrepreneur who wants to enter the contest to win $100,000, go to thegoldenmail.com/thechallenge. I'm one of the judges, so hopefully we'll see you there. Thank you, and stay tuned for the next episode.
