In this concise, four‑minute video, entrepreneur Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about starting a catering business without capital. He stresses that aspiring founders should begin small, focusing on time and effort rather than money. By choosing a service‑based model, they can keep costs variable and avoid large upfront expenses such as equipment, vehicles, or a storefront. The core process is to validate the idea by landing the first paying customer, overdelivering to generate repeat and referral business, and then reinvesting those early profits to fuel growth. Carmichael also addresses mindset, encouraging a healthy level of self‑criticism that drives quality while warning against paralyzing self‑doubt. He advises maintaining a day job while testing the business, rather than quitting outright. The video ends with a call for viewers to like, comment, and submit future questions.
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Start small. If you want to have success as an entrepreneur, then start small. Don't go out and make huge investments and put tons of dollars into your company. Use your time, use your energy, go out and talk to customers, get some money coming into your business, prove to yourself that you can make this work, and then invest in the growth. Otherwise, you're probably going to fail. Like most entrepreneurs. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe that hungry entrepreneurs deserve help, and today I'm answering a question from one of my readers, Avril, who wrote in to say, "I've been struggling for many years to start a simple business. I'm so scared. I'm passionate about catering in all forms, but I'm afraid of failure because I don't have money to waste. What stops me is I'm good at what I do, and my friends and family have said so, but I'm hard on myself, and I don't know how to stop putting myself down." Please give me some advice if you can. Avril, listen, you're starting a service-based business. This is one of the best businesses to start when you're first launching a company. The reason is your costs are low. I don't want you going out and investing a lot of money into this company, okay? Don't go out and buy equipment. Don't go out and buy a new truck or van. Don't go out and open up a shop. Don't spend money. Go out and try to make money. Anything you're going to spend on, If you have to buy ingredients for your cooking, it's all based around customers. Don't spend money until you're getting paid. That's how you prevent yourself from losing money. You're afraid of losing money? That's the answer. Prove to yourself that you can do this. If you love catering, then do it. Go for catering. You have to build a business around your passion. You can have success, but don't go out and start spending a bunch of money that you don't have. It starts by going out, landing the customers one by one, and fueling their cash back into your business so you can grow after you've shown to yourself that you can make this happen. If you're hard on yourself, that's great. It's good to be hard on yourself. It'll mean that you'll do a good job. It means that you care. It means that when you put something out, it's gonna be quality. People are gonna love it. And when that happens, they're gonna tell their friends and they're gonna order from you again. You're gonna get repeat business and referral customers, and that's a great way to build any kind of business. Business, but especially a service-based business. So you're on the track. You can't be so hard on yourself though that you don't get started. You can't be so hard that you think, "I'm never gonna make it." That's a limiting personal belief that's going to hold you back. If you love what you do, people say you're great at what you do, you owe it to yourself to try. And I'm not saying quit your job, I'm not saying go out and do this full-time, I'm not saying go out and buy a whole bunch of equipment to get this thing going. You have to try. You owe it to yourself to try, but start small. You have a service-based business. All your costs are variable. Go out and find the customer. Find someone who's willing to pay you for what you do and make a profit off your first sale. It doesn't have to be a huge deal. You don't have to have your whole vision planned out from the start. It'll come. Your customers will guide you to your path on success. Get one customer, do an awesome job for them, overdeliver like crazy, make them over the moon happy with the service that you provide and the quality of your product, and then go out and find another one. Put the money you make from them back into your business, keep expanding. I don't want you spending money on this business, but I don't want you holding yourself back either because you're too afraid. Take your shot. It's time. Good luck. For those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. And I wanna hear what you have to think about this video. Please leave a comment section below. It always makes me wanna do more for you. I really read all the comments that come in every morning. And if you have a question for your own business, please leave it in the comments below. Thank you guys. I'll see you soon.
