Exporting Business - How to launch an exporting business - Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Salomon, who is a budding entrepreneur in Colombia and wants to start an exporting business to export sugar, coffee, t-shirts, and a whole bunch of other products from Colombia. And wanted my advice on how to get started. So, Solomon, congrats on wanting to start a new business. Very exciting time. In terms of my advice for you, what you need to do, I would suggest, is start around what you're really passionate about. So you want to tap into one of your passions. You listed off a whole bunch of different products in your email to me, and that's great, but what I want you to do is focus in on one that you really are passionate about and know you can have a real impact with. So if you look at the most successful entrepreneurs, they didn't start their business because they want to make a lot of money, although that's helpful, but it's not their only ambition. They usually are super passionate, super excited about whatever product line they're getting into. The ones who get in it just for money, funny enough, rarely make a lot of money. So pick one of the ones that you're really excited about. If t-shirts are, you know, your passion, you love t-shirts, you can make money with t-shirts. And you're going to spend a lot of time going out and finding the best people to make your t-shirts and sourcing the best cotton for your t-shirts and building a whole process around creating some of the best t-shirts available in Colombia to export. So whatever it is, I want you to really focus on finding something that you're super passionate about, that you really want to export, and you're not just doing it to try to make a quick buck. The next thing I would do is start to define who your customer is. So who's going to buy your t-shirts or whatever product it is? Who's going to actually be the ones buying it? So are you selling to a North American market? Are you selling to a European market? And if it's, you know, once you figure that out, Who are the individual people gonna be? So if you're selling to North American market, who's gonna buy your t-shirts? Are they gonna be retailers, manufacturers, business owners, consumers? You wanna make sure you do your research to find out who are the type of people who are gonna be potentially buying your product and tailor your solutions to be able to service that demographic. So if I'm a manufacturer, my needs are gonna be a lot different than if I'm a retailer or if I'm a consumer. So you don't wanna just go in and say, "Hey, I can sell t-shirts to anybody." you wanna make sure you have your process in place and you know exactly who you're gonna be selling to. So you can talk to them a little bit better, more easily. Their story is gonna be more believable because you've done your work and you're able to show that you're really targeting that specific community. So customers really buy when you're the everybody shop, right? If you're selling to everybody, it's really hard to actually go out and sell to everybody. So you're, you're a lot better off targeting a specific customer, really showing that you understand their needs, and then tailoring all of your marketing, all of your advertising towards that target market. So since you're kind of starting up, you may not know yet what your passion is and what your product is. What you might want to do at the start is talk to potential customers and figure out is there a pain, right? So I'll put a question mark here because A lot of entrepreneurs start their business just because it's exciting, but they're not actually solving a problem. So with your own business, think about something you're passionate about and you can also solve a real problem with. So maybe t-shirts are your passion, but is there really a pain in the North American market where people want to buy t-shirts and they have a huge pain, a huge problem that they have right now, and you can help them solve it by exporting your t-shirts from Colombia? So is there a pain? So you want to start doing your research, start talking to potential customers, and I would even do that before you start your business and commit to it. Start talking to potential customers, try to get somebody lined up. The best way to start a business is around the paying customer who has a problem and who's willing to pay you to solve that problem. So I'd make sure that there is a pain in the market, start talking to potential customers and see if you can help them solve that pain. So if you find out that there's no pain, you could still have the passion, but you may have to start finding a different customer who has a different pain that you can go in and help them solve. So these would be kind of my first steps to helping you get started. It's great that you have all the ambition, excitement to get your business off the ground. To improve the chances of you being successful, I'd really encourage you to tap into your passion, define your target customer, and then again, make sure that they have a pain that you can help them solve. So hopefully that helps, Solomon. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below, and I'd also love to hear what you have to think if you want to leave a comment under the video. And stay tuned for next episode.