Evan Carmichael explains why selling training to cash-strapped startup founders is hard. Instead, partner with governments that fund entrepreneur development, or with corporations like Telus that want to sponsor startup communities. Equity deals with startups work too, but require the right match.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm answering a question from one of my newsletter readers, Daniel, who wrote a lengthy email, so I'll try to kind of short it down here for you guys. So Evan, I want to know how to run an entrepreneurship training and consulting company successfully. I've made several attempts in the last year with not so great results. And it goes on. What can I do to create greater awareness and increase interest in this field? Thank you, Daniel. So, great question, Daniel. Congratulations on wanting to start up a business. I know it's really hard and tough, and there's definitely a lot of failures along the way. I think with this approach, it's really hard to create interest in a new field. Trying to create a market is one of the hardest things that you can do as an entrepreneur, where it's better to look at an existing market and solve a challenge that they're facing. So for you, if you're selling entrepreneurship consulting and training services, some things to keep in mind: entrepreneurs generally don't have a lot of money. If you're looking at startup entrepreneurs especially, you know, they don't have a lot of money and everything they make is going back into their business or just to feed their families. You know, it's hard being a new entrepreneur and so it can be really tough to to create really valuable things that people will pay for when you're selling to entrepreneurs. And so, you know, I love helping startups, I love helping entrepreneurs. Most of what I do is free just because it's— I love doing it. You know, I love helping entrepreneurs. And so, like, these YouTube videos, I don't get paid to do these YouTube videos, but I want to answer your question. You know, you asked me the question, I want to help out. And I hope others can learn from these videos as well. And can grow their businesses. So you have to figure out a way to make money from what you're doing. And so what I would try to do is look at people who may have more money who are interested in that field. And so the two ideas that come to mind, one, are looking at government. So are there any government organizations that are funding training and development and consulting services that you might be able to tag along with? I don't know what's happening in your market, and here in Toronto we have a number of different government programs where they bring in people to come and deliver training to entrepreneurs because it helps the economy. You know, the more entrepreneurs can build themselves up, hire people, build their companies, that helps the local economy. So governments sometimes have money that they can invest into that, so look at different programs. It can take longer to get in with the government. Just because governments tend to move slowly, but it's a good long-term solution to start to look at. The other thing I look at is corporations, and this is part of what I do. A lot of corporate companies will come to me and say, "We're trying to reach out to the entrepreneur community. We're trying to be seen as a friend to the entrepreneurs and provide a lot of value to them." And the hope is, you know, the more you interact with a company and see that they're trying to help you out, that when you need products or services, you're gonna go to them. So if, you know, I do a lot of work with Telus as an example. They sell phones here and phone services in Canada, and I'll create a lot of blog content for them, and the idea is the more content I create, the more people visit their website, the more Telus is seen as a friend of the entrepreneur community, and when you're ready to buy your phone, you're likely more to go with Telus than somebody else. And so approaching corporations who have an interest in selling to small business owners could be a great way to go. You're adding value for them, you're helping them get their message across. I never work with companies where it's just a sales pitch. It's more adding the value and having them seen as a, again, that friend of the entrepreneur community. But the bigger corporations have more money and can invest into it and hopefully you get paid what you're worth and you're still able to follow your passion of helping entrepreneurs and helping them get developed and trained. And seeing them be successful and be able to grow their businesses out. So I think the model can work. It's just maybe changing slightly who pays you. So you're changing your structure a little bit, but still serving the same target audience. Their two biggest challenges again are looking at, you know, trying to get money out of startups, which can be really hard, and you know, you're never gonna get paid what you're worth. And the second one is that trying to create a new market is just really tough. You know, you want to try to look at an established market and build into that than to try to create a brand new market yourself. The only real way that I can see to make money from the startup entrepreneurs, if that's still your market that you want to go to, is you partner up with them and you become a partner in the business. You own a piece of their business and you help them grow. And if you're, you know, really good at what you do and they're really good at what they do, It could all potentially work out, but it really depends on having the right people together, matching the skill sets, but also matching the personalities and making sure you guys are gonna get along. It's like getting a marriage, you know, it has to be something that you're both in for a very long period of time. And so that's really the way to make money off of a startup type of business, but it's hard on your cash flow because you're not making money right away, and it's really hard to pick the right businesses to partner up with. So hopefully I gave you a few ideas in there that you can use to, to get your business off the ground. I'm excited for you and hopefully you'll keep us posted with your progress. For those of you watching the video, if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me wanna do more for you. And I'd love to hear what you have to think if you wanna leave a comment under the video, either about this video or a question that you may have about your own company. So thank you and I'll see you on the next episode.
