Evan Carmichael explains that cheap business ideas fail, but passion-driven ones work. Start part-time from home, talk to customers, and don't spend money until you're making it. He bootstrapped a software startup to profitability with two partners and no outside funding.
Chapters
What is a low-cost business to start? It's a question that came in from a reader, Pradhop, I hope I pronounced that properly, newsletter subscriber. And he wants to start a business, he doesn't know what business to start, he doesn't have a lot of money, and he's trying to figure out what company should he start and he wants me to tell him what to do. This is a great question and it's so important because most entrepreneurs get this wrong. And it, it comes from restructuring your thinking. Because if you're just starting a business thinking, "What's a business that I can start that doesn't cost me a lot and that can make me money?" You're not gonna have success as an entrepreneur. You're gonna fail. You're gonna shut down. You're gonna be one of the 80% who never make it. You have to start a business around something that you are intensely passionate about. You have to see something in the world that you don't like something that's wrong, and you have a solution to make it better, and you attack that every day until you achieve your goal. Any business can be low-cost. Any business can be started without spending money, and it's something that I preach and I believe in. I hate spending money before I'm making money. And most entrepreneurs— hey, when we're starting up, we don't have huge backing, right? We don't have the rich uncle giving us tons of cash to get started. At least I didn't. I didn't have anybody rich supporting me. It was my blood, sweat, tears making my first business happen. Every new project that I get into, I'm not spending any money till I'm making money on it. That's the way to live as an entrepreneur. In my first business, it was a software company, and I had two partners, and we started from our apartment. And day in, day out, we grinded that thing out until we started making some money. And eventually started making good money and sold the company. Now it's not as easy as that, but you have to start a business around something you are intensely passionate about. You see a way to change the world, and you're going to do that by creating your business. And then once you found what that is, what, what business that is, You find the lowest cost way to get started. Because if it requires you going out and getting $100,000 to launch, you're never gonna do it. You're never gonna do it. You're gonna sit there on your plan trying to raise money, doing it half-heartedly, and never take any action to get this business started. Start small. Have a huge dream, but start small. Do something to launch this thing. Part-time, after hours, get started. Start talking to customers, start making this thing move. Start executing on your idea. Don't think you need to raise a ton of money to launch a successful company. Most of the, the best businesses in the world started with nothing, and that's how you should start too. So I can't tell you what business to start. Every business can be started without a lot of money, and the right one that you should start is one that you are intensely passionate about, that even when it gets super difficult and hard and challenging, you're still gonna go through because you believe in what you're doing. That's the business to start. When George Lucas created Lucasfilms and he, he eventually got on to movies like Star Wars, he said the first 6 years of his life were a total failure in business, and he thought every day about quitting and going back into a job. And the only thing that kept him going through it was that he loved filmmaking. He did it because he loved it, and now he's a billionaire. And it's not just that simple. A to Z. It took a lot of failure along the way, but he kept going because he loved doing it. So tap into your passion, find something that you love doing intensely, you want to change the world with it, and then find the simplest, smallest, stupidest, easiest way to get started. That's the business you should start. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It always makes me want to do more for you, and I want to hear what you have to think. Please leave a comment. It's the best part of my day seeing your comments come in. I'm eating my breakfast, Looking at the comments always cheers me up and makes me wanna go out and do more. Uh, and if you have a question, leave it below and I'll do a video response. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
