NEVER do THIS when asking for sponsorships!

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Asanda, who wrote in about asking about getting funding for a youth center. So the question was, "Thank you, Evan, for the past few months. I've been thinking of opening a youth center in our area. I plan to speak with a ward counselor. I don't have any finances right now. We're thinking of asking for sponsorships and donations." What are the things I should be aware before I take any further steps? So thank you for the question. Great noble vision that you have here to create this youth center. A couple of ideas for you. The first thing I would do is have a big vision but start small. So instead of going after a youth center, which might be really timely, you know, costly, you know, whole set of problems that you'll come into trying to create this youth center, and it may frustrate you to the point of wanting to quit. Start with something smaller. Start with a few simple events, community events that target youth, and build up some momentum from those events. And so, you know, it's easy to show that what you're doing works, there's a reason behind it, you're having an impact, and then when you go to, you know, build your big community center, you have some momentum behind you. So that'd be my first step, is try to start on a small scale. Have that big vision, but start small, and start with something that's low cost, easy to set up, and you can start making an impact in the community right away. It'd also be rewarding for you that you can see, hey, you're actually making a difference. And it doesn't necessarily need to have a huge community center. You could do things on a really small scale and still impact people's lives. And that'll give you the juice and the momentum and the encouragement to want to go out and do it more and more and more and more and more. You know, when I started helping entrepreneurs, I did it just ad hoc, small scale, helping individual entrepreneurs and at a couple of events. And it got me hooked. I said, I got to do more of this. I love it. I'm going to really expand it. And it gave me the fuel to want to keep going. So if you start small, do a couple things, small events that you can see is having an impact, it'll give you the motivation to, to want to keep going and doing it more and more and more and more. The next thing, if you're trying to target sponsorship, I would definitely have a laser-targeted focus. So what is it that you are trying to do? Are you trying to get kids off the street? Are you trying to encourage them to learn a certain skill set? What is the goal or the vision of your enterprise? So That would really help. A lot of people have, you know, mixed bag of goals and vision, and it's hard to communicate. The harder it is to explain what it is that you do and the benefits you're gonna be able to provide, the harder it is for somebody to jump on board and want to sponsor you, or be a customer, or be a partner, right? So you have to really have a clear message and a laser-targeted focus on what it is that you're doing and the reason for your existence. So you may already know that, you didn't explain it. Point it, you know, in the email you sent, but in all your communications now you also want to say, here's why I'm doing this and here's what we're going to do, to make it really clear, and then it helps, you know, anybody who you're talking to think about ways to potentially help you. So if you just say I'm opening a youth center, you know, there's a lot of different ways to potentially help, but if you had a specific focus, then it's going to be easier for people to jump on board. And you may not know that yet, and that's fine, but before you go start talking to companies, I definitely have that laser focus. And then the last thing, I touched on it already, but it's build momentum. So as much as you can, you want to show that you're not just starting up. It's really hard for companies and for anybody really to want to back somebody who's just getting started because there's so many people who start up who aren't really serious, who don't commit to it, and their enterprise falls apart. And so you need to show that you're the one who's actually going to succeed and you're really committed to this and you're really going to make sure that it happens. So you can start, as I said, small with the events, you know, show that it's working, help people out, you know, show that you can have a meaningful impact, but expand on that and try to get, you know, some activity going on Facebook and YouTube and build up a newsletter list as much as you can to build momentum and show that people are behind this. Try to get some advisors who are maybe a little well-known in your community who can lend their name to the project as well. So that way when you go to your sponsors potential customers here, you're able to show them, "Hey, we've put on a couple of events, we've had a great impact, we're building up a following on Facebook and YouTube, we have our newsletter, and we've got these local people who are advisors to the business, to the corporation." That's something that then somebody can look at, a business can look at and say, "Hey, we want to get behind, we should be involved in this." Where if you just go with an idea with zero track record and zero momentum, you're probably going to get a no. And that just comes from my experience in the venture capital business. You know, I looked at I don't know how many business plans, too many business plans, and we rejected 99% of them, a lot of the times was because they had zero momentum behind them. Just an idea on paper is not enough to get somebody to want to put money into your company. So you have to show them that you've got something happening here, that they're going to be missing out on the opportunity, and that this is real. You're not just the average everyday startup who's going to launch an idea because they had a dream one night and then they shut it down the next week. That's the biggest fear that people will have, that you'll just go and spend their money and you won't be able to show them a return. So if you're already having an impact, then you're using that money to fuel it even more and have a greater impact. So hopefully that helps. If you guys like the video, for those of you watching, I'd love it if you can give it a thumbs up. It always makes my day and makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a comment, I'd love to hear from you, or if you have a question for me as well, just leave it in the comments below and I'll be sure to read and get back to you. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.