In this instructional video, entrepreneur Evan Carmichael explains why reaching five‑figure monthly revenue is a pivotal milestone for a fledgling business and outlines a five‑step plan to achieve it within five months. He begins by emphasizing the psychological and practical significance of earning $10,000‑$90,000, then walks through five concrete actions: (1) Get a customer – stop building in isolation and validate the idea by talking to potential buyers, collecting pre‑orders, and adjusting the product based on real feedback; (2) Network with influencers – learn the industry, volunteer, attend trade shows, and cultivate relationships with key players who can introduce you to customers; (3) Tell your story – share personal motivations and struggles to create emotional connection, using website copy, videos, and personal branding; (4) Partner up – identify non‑competing businesses that already serve your target market, negotiate commission or exclusive distribution deals (e.g., his $13,500 upfront deal that lifted him from $300/month to five figures); and (5) Use the media – position yourself as an industry expert, craft story‑focused press releases, and pitch reporters regularly to gain free exposure. Throughout, Evan intersperses personal anecdotes of being “dead‑broke” and the breakthrough deals that validated each step. He closes by urging viewers to subscribe, share their own tips, and believe in the process.
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Okay, so on my channel I usually talk about making lots of money, having a huge impact, changing the world, doing things you believe in, you know, massive big growth. But today's video is a little bit different. Today I want to talk about getting to 5 figures, and I'm going to show you 5 ways to go from dead broke to 5 figures in 5 months. And why 5 figures? For me, 5 figures is a really important mark because it shows you that what you're doing is important and has ability to grow. At the early 5 figures, you know, the $10,000, if you're making $10,000 with your business, hey, that's not a lot, but it's still $10,000. You know, that's nothing to sneeze at. That's a good part-time income. That's something that you can invest back into your business and put a little bit into your life and start living a little bit better lifestyle. And it shows you that people are willing to buy what you're selling. The high 5 figures, now if you get into like the $90,000 range, hey, that might be time I'm quitting my job, right? I'm hiring people, I'm expanding, I'm growing this thing, I'm ready to bust through. And so getting to 5 figures is an awesome platform to then be able to help you leverage that to grow. And a lot of people can't get to that level. So this video is about how to get to 5 figures in 5 months. Ready for the tips? Here we go. Number 1 is get a customer. Most people, when they have an idea, they start work on their idea, right? You start working, you're tinkering, you're creating your product, you're coming with your, your service idea, you're, you're at home, you're writing your business plan, you're, you're making Excel spreadsheets, you're, you're building your prototypes. But you never actually go out and start talking to customers. And this is a mistake that so many entrepreneurs make. You gotta talk to customers first. Reverse that whole process. Start by talking to potential customers. Call them up, have a coffee with them, ask for their advice, their input. You're not selling anything yet. You want people to say, wow, that's really cool. If you can build that, if you could do this for me, I'd be willing to pay you for it. And this was me. I remember when I was starting my my first business, I was dead broke. Dead broke. $300 a month, beans for lunch every day, can't afford anything. Can't afford beer with my friends, nothing. Feeling like crap. And I was that guy who was sitting there working on my product and working on my plan and working on the perfect pitch and spending months doing that and never actually talking to customers. And the growth came when I started going out and talking to them. I figured out that, hey, you know what, my whole plan is wrong. My assumptions were wrong. What I thought would work is not it's not going to work, we got to change everything around, once I started talking to customers. So that's how you want to start. Before you quit your job, before you start investing money into something, start talking to customers, get their feedback, get their opinions, their advice, their help. Get them to say, "I would buy that if you had that available." Get those pre-orders and then go launch the business around specific customer needs. So number 1 is get a customer. Number 2 is network with influencers. You want to start to understand the industry that you're getting into and start making connections with people who can potentially help you out. So whatever business you're getting into, if you have no idea what it's all about, you should start to learn right now. Hopefully there's something within your job that you might be able to expand your scope. You know, if you need to learn how to, how to write copy better, you need to learn how to meet certain suppliers, maybe there's a way to do it through your job and be creative and talk to your, your boss and see if there's any way you can get into this project, even if it's for free, because that's going to help you learn and make connections. But otherwise, it may mean you go and you moonlight and you volunteer for certain companies just to learn, because you want to make contacts. You want to know who the customers are, who the suppliers are, how the industry works, so that when you start and when you're out running your business yourself, you're not making all the mistakes. Ideally, you get paid to make mistakes, right? You have a job that you're learning from, not just making money from, but you want to start to get known within the industry. You want to be able to pick up the phone to somebody who's important in that industry and they know who you are. So you have to start getting those connections. You have to start going to trade shows. You have to start working with suppliers. You have to start making those key connections that might be as simple as calling somebody up or emailing them or tweeting them and saying, "I'm getting started in this business. I'd love if you had 15 minutes for a quick coffee as a quick mentorship. I want to ask you a couple questions, pick your brain. I'll show up wherever you are. I'm buying coffee, it's on me. If you could please help out a new struggling entrepreneur, I'd really appreciate the feedback." Something like just to get on the map, to start getting to know these people people so that they would recognize your name and could be great resources for you to introduce you to customers. So number 2 is network with influencers. Number 3 is tell your story. This is a big thing that a lot of entrepreneurs miss. People like buying from people, and so you want to tell your story, right? Tell me why you're passionate about this. Tell me why you started this business. Tell me what you're hoping to accomplish with it. Tell me how you went through these struggles and came to this solution, right? If I'm talking about entrepreneurs and I tell the story about how I'm an entrepreneur and I struggled with my first business and I almost went broke and I told my business partner I quit and I was making nothing and then how I turned it around. Telling a personal story connects you to me better and it makes it easier for you to digest the information I'm giving you. More likely to want to work with me because I'm showing the human side of it. And that's your big in as an entrepreneur is that you can tell your story where most corporations, the guys you might be going up against in your market, They suck at telling their story. It's so impersonal. Nobody likes buying from a company. So tell me your story. Put your picture up on your website. If it's on your business card, tell me why you're doing this. Let me feel some passion out of it. Make a video if you want. Write your text on your website, right? Tell me why this is important to you and what you're trying to accomplish, because if I can feel connected to that story of yours, I'm much more likely to want to buy from you, to buy more from you, to refer my friends to you, to write about you, to introduce you to people. Make me feel Sell something, tell your story. Number 4 is partner up. Find people who are already selling to your target audience and find a way to partner up with them so that everybody that they introduce you to and they make a sale from, you get a commission. So they have an incentive to want to do it. This is what saved my business. My first company when I was dead broke making $300 a month, couldn't survive, this is what saved it. I started modeling Microsoft's success and it was through partnerships and I started reaching out to companies who were selling to my audience. My audience was scientists, and I found all these companies who were selling to scientists and said, "Hey, I have a product. Scientists love it. You guys can make some extra money selling it too." And some of the companies— I remember this one company, my first deal, I managed to get an exclusive arrangement with them so that they would be the only ones selling our software in a certain country, and I negotiated an upfront payment from them. And they had— they paid me $13,500 for that. And for a guy making $300 a month, $13,500 up front was life-changing. That was a huge amount of money. Right there, I went from making nothing to 5 figures. And more importantly, it gave me a strategy to continue to expand. And I sold another distribution, another distribution, another distribution. So whatever product or service you're selling, make a list of all the different people who have access to your customers that are not direct competitors to you and find a way to reach out to them, introduce what you're doing, and give them an incentive and a reason to want to promote you so that everybody wins. So number 4 is partner up. And number 5 is use the media. It's never been so easy to get your story out there, right? We backed up to number 3 is tell your story. Now use your media to get that story out there. With my software company, the first one, what really helped was I was positioning ourselves as experts in the industry. And anytime there was something that came out that was related to our business, I sent out a press release and I used our founder, who was a scientist, as, as the expert and got him quoted and got him featured. And anytime he got picked up in a major publication, it led to sales for us, right? If you think about Advertising in a magazine or on a website, it's expensive and people, they're bored of it, right? How often do you pay attention to advertising? And as an entrepreneur who's just starting up, you can't afford that. But how about a story? When you read a magazine, what are you looking at? You're looking at the stories. When you go to a blog, what are you looking at? You're looking at the stories, right? So to get featured in those stories could be gold for you. People are reading those publications, they're looking for information, they see you as an expert. Expert who solved the problem, and they are likely to want to visit your website and buy whatever product or service you're selling. So what I would do is at the start, I did this for my business too when I launched EvanCarmichael.com, was I made a list of all the reporters who covered my industry, and every 2 weeks I would send out a press release. And the press release wasn't the boring, self-serving, promotional crap that most people do in a press release. I would write a press release like it was a story, like it was something that they could just copy and paste and put onto their website, in their blog, in their newspaper, and some people did. And then they didn't even let me know. And I saw a Google News alert saying I was featured in whatever newspaper, and it was just a direct copy and paste of what I sent them. With every story, remember, there's an expert, right? There's somebody who's quoted when they're showing facts and figures and talking about some news story. There's always an expert. That expert should be you, right? You should know your industry, you should be one of the best in the world at what you do, and you should be featured as an expert, and you are making the jobs of the reporters so much easier because they always need experts to reach out to. And knowing that someone reliable who knows what they're talking about, who will respond quickly to phone calls and emails, makes it easy for them to reach out to you on every story that comes across their desk. So you start by making your own list, by sending out those press releases every 2 weeks, and then by being accessible and available to reporters for future interviews. Use the media. So in summary, the 5 ways to go from dead broke to 5 figures in 5 months Number 1, get a customer. Number 2, network with influencers. Number 3, tell your story. Number 4, partner up. Number 5, use the media. And believe. For those of you watching, like this video, subscribe to see more like it. If you have tips on how you got to 5 figures, leave it in the comments below so others can learn from it as well. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'll see you soon.
Hi, Raquel English here with Mermaid Junkie TV. Are you on Evan's newsletter subscription? If not, you should be. I read every single one, and you should too.
