Evan Carmichael and S. Kelly CEO help Daven White overcome startup fear. Focus on refining your idea and finding customers before seeking investors. Take small, repeatable actions instead of waiting for the perfect first step, like learning to snowboard: fear fades once you start.
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Daven White, I have no idea how to start a business, so I'm scared to try. I fear that investors will either not take me seriously or I will have been taken advantage of somehow. I have faith in my idea, but not my ability to make it a reality.
You just got to, number one, take that word behind Evan, believe. Right. So kind of let's not get the sequence wrong as well. Forget the investors, focus on the idea. If the idea, and then focus on who the target customers are. If you've got those right, investors will flock to you. You don't have to worry about those guys. You'll have money chasing you everywhere, but you don't want that because that's just the wrong ethos for building a business. You want to start with the idea, then go and find the customers, refine the idea, to have a winning product or a service. And then you can always find money for great businesses and growth businesses. That's the least of your problems. And probably actually, Evan, one of these we should do, how do you find kind of growth money and growth capital and all those sort of things? Because there's a whole topic in itself. But the last thing to do is go to the investors. Focus, focus, focus on the idea and get the business going. Do it now. JDI.
Yeah, I love— it's the theme of the show. I like it. I mean, I totally agree, you'll get destroyed on your valuation if you take money before you have any kind of momentum behind it and you spend your whole time trying to raise money instead of actually trying to build a company. Um, the thing I would say to add is when you start anything, you're afraid, right? Like, you want to learn snowboarding, you're afraid of going down that hill or getting off. For me, it was getting off the chairlift was freaking me out because you only have one foot on the snowboard. I was falling down every time. But anything, anything that you try for the first time, you're going to be afraid to do. And then once you start doing it, it's not that bad. It doesn't seem as bad as this huge fear that you set up in your head. And so what may help is to look at all the other things that you tried to do, whether it was, you know, asking that girl out or learning that new language or going to that new country, whatever it is. You had fear and you overcame it. And once you did it, you realized it wasn't that hard. It's the same thing with business. Just start. There's no right first step. You're going to make mistakes. You don't need to get the investors yet. Don't make it this huge, big thing. Just take one step after another, after another, after another. And those little steps will add up to big steps.
Hey, the other thing, Evan, obviously people can listen to you because you inspire people. But there's a couple of examples, both service people. So we talked about Will. We've got a lot of people in the Invictus Games who've had stuff like their legs blown off and they are saying, I'm going to be successful as an entrepreneur. So if those guys can do it, wow, you can do it. You should have no fear. The other guy who's had almost 3 careers, amazing. He was in the military, a guy called Justin Paxshaw. Amazing guy, TED speaker. But then he became an explorer and an adventurer. And he climbed Everest. I think he's sailed around the world. He's been to the North Pole, South Pole multiple times. He's taken disabled service people on these expeditions and made them believe and overcome massive physical disabilities. And he also runs— he's got a really nice jewelry business, high quality, in London town. So he also said to me, when you're getting up Everest, It's not about getting up, it's about coming down. I think 1 in 6 people die coming down or something crazy like that. And the mission for everybody in business is almost like an analogy that comes from exploring is you've got to get everybody safely landed and safely down. And he said, when you've dealt with the fear of facing death so bleakly and storms coming in, you should have no fear in your business. So I think just When you look at these people, there's so many inspirational people out there. You just got to overcome your fear. And the way you do that is always take your first step. We could quote Martin Luther King. How do you climb a giant staircase? You just take the first step. You just got to take the first step. Next Monday, just think, how are you going to do it? Build your product, take your idea to market, go and test it, go and share it with friends and family, and then you build confidence and then you find out what will work. you refine your idea, you course correct, and you'll have a product that's a winner in the marketplace. You've got to believe. I love it.
What really helped me in my company, because I didn't— my parents weren't entrepreneurs, I didn't have any entrepreneur friends, didn't have an Uncle Joe who could guide me. I just surrounded myself with stories of successful entrepreneurs and how they got started. And every morning I would read a quick story about a famous entrepreneur and how they got started and how they usually had nothing. It provided me with both the motivation to keep going, and it's like, if they could do it, then I could do it. And also some strategies for like ideas of what I could do, because you don't really learn this stuff in school. And so that really, really helped me. And so having an environment that you create, it's only easier now. There's so many YouTube videos out, there's so many books you can read, something kind of daily to get you going, to motivate you and make you believe in yourself. I think is crucial for any entrepreneur because it's a hard, lonely game, especially at the start when you don't have any momentum building up. So creating that environment for greatness is super important in my opinion.
If there's any kids out there, you know, you're 12, 13, 14 listening today, then I would say there's some amazing networks set up. One is Junior Achievers, where we sponsor those guys across the US and across the world. And again, we'll tweet the links, but they've got a whole environment. They've got these simulated towns where you can start up your own business and there's loads of entrepreneurs around to help you. And also they can set up mentoring. So if you don't have a network or a family of entrepreneurs, there's loads of different ways to actually get that. So don't feel constrained and go out and find the people who can help you. And again, there's so many voices in your head that tell you people won't be prepared to give you their time. People love to see young kids succeed. People love to be asked to help young entrepreneurs. So go and ask people, people you respect, people you can learn from, and people who have made a lot of mistakes in their own careers of entrepreneurship that can help you kind of navigate a really successful path.
