Evan Carmichael advises someone wanting to start a car dealership to work unpaid at a successful dealership first. You'll learn inventory, sales, marketing, and finance without risking capital. The apprenticeship also tests whether you actually love the business or should pursue something else in cars instead.
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If you want to learn about a business, learn about an industry, go get some experience by working for somebody who you respect in the business, and they'll teach you the ropes and minimize your chances of failing when you start your own business. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe that hungry entrepreneurs deserve help, and today I'm answering a question from a YouTube viewer, Evil Alice Productions. Thank you for writing in. Love you, YouTube guys. Wrote in saying, "Hi Evan, can you please make a video where you tell how to start a car dealership business? Would be really happy when you make a video or you reply to me. I graduated high school, don't have a job right now. I'm pretty young, have a lot to learn. I want to start car dealership because I'm interested in cars since I was 2, and I want to make a company that's connected to cars." Thanks for writing in, Evil Alice, Evil Alice Productions. Great question. I like that you're starting off from a place of passion. It's something I really believe in. You have to start a business around something that you're passionate about. That gives you the greatest chance of success. You're more likely to follow through, to keep going if you love your business instead of just trying to make money. So the fact that you love cars since you were 2 gives you a great advantage to be able to have success in the car business. Now you're young and that's great. I mean, when I had my first business, I was young too, so there's nothing against young people. What would really help you in this stage of life is to get some experience in the business. If you want to start a car dealership, Go work for a car dealership. Look at the most successful car dealership in your area and offer to work for them, even for free to get started. You are there to learn. Because if you try to start a car dealership now, it's gonna cost a lot of money, it's gonna cost a lot of time, you're gonna have to take out loans either yourself or through friends and family, and your chances of success are really low because you don't know what you're doing yet. And you're gonna lose all that money. And I don't want that for you. To give yourself the best chance of success, go work for someone who's already done this and who's doing really well. Don't just go work at some crappy car dealership. Find the best one, the one that you emulate, the one you want to look up to, the one who's killing it right now. Go work for them. Learn the ropes. Try to do as much as you can in the dealership. Get exposed to as many opportunities and jobs as you can in that dealership. Get to know the owner. Make connections. Learn the ropes. You are getting paid to learn how to start your own business. Instead of having to hire consultants to help you launch, you are getting paid and to make mistakes while getting paid. You're gonna learn how to run a business, how to get it started up, how to hire people, how to bring in new cars, how to promote them, all the ins and outs of that business. You're gonna learn and get paid to do it. Now, you don't have to go work for them for 10 years and get locked into this company. If your ambition is to start the business sooner, then you can't. But you'll at least have the knowledge and the connections to be able to launch this new company. That's your best bet. The other thing it's gonna tell you is if you really wanna start a car dealership or not. I know you love cars, that's awesome. You're gonna start a business that's connected to cars, that's great. But it may not be a dealership. And the only way you're gonna know is either to launch your own or to start working for somebody else. And if you're working at a job at a car dealership and you find out like, this isn't what I thought it was. You know, sometimes you intern at companies and you realize, wow, this field is not what I really wanted to do. That just saved you huge dollars. Instead of starting that dealership up and then realizing that, you know, this isn't the business you want to be in, you do it on somebody else's dime. And if it's not a car dealership, maybe it's something else. Maybe you're building cars, maybe you're racing cars, I don't know. It's cars. I know you love cars. That's great. You gotta find out what the business is, and the best way is to take on little opportunities working at different companies, the best in their field. Learn from them, see if it's for you, learn the ropes, and when you start your business, you'll have the best chance of success. Good luck and thanks for watching. For everybody who is watching this video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me wanna do more for you, and I'd love to hear what you have to think about this video, or if you have a question for your own business. Please leave in the comments below. I really do read those every day while I'm eating my breakfast. It makes me smile because I see the great comments coming in. So even if you're just saying, "Hey Evan, love the video," that's great. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
