Evan Carmichael advises launching an ice cream business with a free Facebook page instead of a website, testing ads with $100-$500 budgets, and partnering with existing venues like malls or colleges to share a vendor table rather than renting your own stall. He points to Ben & Jerry's starting with a $5 ice cream course and a gas station as proof you can begin small.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question from one of my Facebook readers, Syed, who wants to start a new ice cream business and wanted my advice on how to get started. And he had a couple questions, so specifically he's asking about Facebook, how to advertise on Facebook, if it's worth setting up a website or a brand page on Facebook. What do I think about partnering up with shops or creating the shop in a university, college, or shopping mall? And how do you promote the, the company? So thanks for the question, Syed. I think it's a very common question a lot of entrepreneurs face when they're starting a new business, and so hopefully we can answer questions that a lot of entrepreneurs are facing right now. In terms of the Facebook thing, I think it's a good idea to have a Facebook page for your company. It's really easy to set up, you don't need to have a lot of technical skills, and a lot of entrepreneurs are using that instead of having a their own website just because it's so easy to set up and they can manage everything themselves. That may not be an ideal kind of long-term situation, but a lot of entrepreneurs will launch with just a Facebook page, and then as you're making money, you're able to afford going out and getting a designer and creating your own website. I'm a big believer in not spending a lot of money until I'm making money, so this is a great way to do it. If you just create a Facebook page, doesn't cost you anything, you make a quick banner and you start promoting your business. Before you actually go out and launch your site. Now, in terms of the Facebook ads, that can be really tough because it's really hard to make direct sales through Facebook ads. The Facebook community is more about building relationships and getting people interested in what you're doing, and then hopefully after they've, you know, built that relationship with you, they end up buying whatever product or service you're having. But for, you know, just to advertise your ice cream product, you're probably not gonna make a lot of money off of Facebook ads directly. Your better bet is to promote your page, have a lot of great content, Have some fun things that make people want to come back, and of course also promote your ice cream products, and so it's a longer-term commitment. With anything else, I like testing things, so try it out, see if it works, you know, commit a minimum or maximum budget, I guess, to it and see if you're comfortable with that. So you can say $100, $200, $500, whatever you're comfortable with, but don't go, you know, too far beyond because it's easy to spend a lot of money, right? Anybody can spend money, and I want to make sure you're the entrepreneur who can actually make money doing this. I think with any new entrepreneur venture, it's really important to test it on a small scale to see if what you have is a really good idea or not. I don't know why you chose the ice cream business. Hopefully it's because you have a strong passion for ice cream and you think you can really make a go out of it and it's not just something to try to make a lot of money. We recently posted on our website a profile of Ben Jerry's, from there, you know, the ice cream Ben Jerry's, and they started from a $5 ice cream making course and they launched out of an old gas station. So that might be an inspirational story for you to read. But I think for you to get started, what I would try to do is partner up. I think that's your best bet right now to be able to see if it works and start getting access to potential customers. So out of the ideas that you mentioned, I think your best bet would be to try to get into the universities, colleges, shopping malls, but don't do it by getting your own stall. That can be really expensive and you're blowing, again, a lot of money and you don't know if it's going to work out or not. What I would try to do is partner up with somebody who's already there and try to get a portion of their table. Maybe for a day, a week, a month, weekends, whatever it is, whenever you think, you know, you would probably get some customers coming in. Partner up with them. You can either give them ideally just a cut of the revenue, but you may have to give them a set fee. But it's going to be a lot cheaper to do that on a one-off or two-off or three-off as you test it than to try to get your own booth for a month or quarter or year. It's going to be really expensive. So that way you can test it, see if that market works for you or not. And if it does, then you can say, "Hey, this makes sense for me to get my own booth." And if it doesn't, then you haven't wasted a lot of money needlessly. So it's really important to test on a small scale. So yeah, find somebody who's also selling to those markets, see if you can strike up some kind of partnership, and from there you'll be able to discover if that is your target market or not, and if people are willing to buy your ice cream products or not. So good luck, and hopefully that answers some of your questions for you. For those of you watching, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a question, uh, that I can answer for your business or a comment about this video, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always read those and try to respond to as many as I can. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.
