Overcome Time Constraints: Discover Business Success in Just 28 Minutes

Tell them. All right, welcome to another spontaneous entrepreneur Q&A. Got a bunch of questions for those of you watching live. You can ask a question too. And that's it. Here we go.

Boom.

Let's get to it. First question. Is it, is it like shaky coming in?

Oh, now it seems okay. But what's the first question?

A little shaky. First question is over here. Okay, Angelo. I commit with my dreams, but in this point of my life with a day job, I need some cash business first. Fro from— after doing my dream project, my dreams involved a radical change to change the world and probably have not no income at all. What do you think about this? Thank you for the response. What do you think?

Oh man, I, I feel we've covered this a few times, but well, this is the first time we've done it, you know.

It's been a while.

So start— well, so, so whatever your dream is almost certainly there's a small version of it, like a doable, performable, money-making version of it that can be done. If your, if your vision is to create like a giant new city, maybe your first step is designing it on paper and shopping that idea around to investors. Or maybe it's amassing a team, building up people, collaborators who get the vision. Maybe you could coach people on cities and charge for that. Like, there's almost always a small version, a seed version of your dream that you can make money at while moving forward.

Yeah. And I'm just looking at the question again, like, my dream project involves radical change, which would have no income at all. And I, you know, I would just challenge that. Like, why can't you have income? Why can't you provide insane value to people and make an income? At the same time. Uh, and then, and then to J-Rize's point here, uh, find a small way to get started now. Like, don't take some cash business part-time thing, uh, that doesn't support your future ambition. Find a way to break it down and get going.

Help empire builders.

I love it.

Any bounces? I like the bounce, the bounce, the bounce. I was, I was supposed to queue up the next question while we're talking.

It was, it was a good question.

I got distracted. I Okay, uh, Syed. Hello Evan, and how are you? Uh, I'm fine, how are you?

I'm great.

But there you go. Thank you for the inspirational videos. I have a question. What is the best way to create your own website? Uh, like an Instagram or any other business work ideas to create your own website? What do you think?

Uh, that seems a little vague. There's tons of ways to create a website, but I would, I I would go with Wix or WordPress.com or there's a bunch of free websites that, you know, you can experiment with. I can't tell if you want an Instagram-level website. You know, I mean, again, start small, put your idea together, shop it around, see if someone wants to come on board, collaborate. Hopefully you can offer some value to them in return or they can build their portfolio or you could get an intern or try someone on Upwork or Fiverr. I, you know, I don't know.

Yeah, I like, I love the practical hands-on. Uh, I would, if I was starting over, I would look at WordPress for sure. And I'm, even though I'm not starting over, I'm still looking at WordPress anyway. So that's, that's the easiest one to go to.

Reuben advised against it.

Oh really? Yeah. Well, we'll have to chat about that.

I respect him.

We'll have to chat about that offline. Um, why did he, why did he advise against it?

He's a smart dude.

All right. Wow, from information I know right now, I would go with WordPress.

Yeah, me too.

Um, but I, you know, I'd also be starting with what's, what's the why? Like, why are you doing this? What's the impact? Start with your values. Um, because, you know, as Jerry Rice said, there's a ton of websites out there. What's going to make yours stand out is your story. Your story, your why, your beliefs, your values. That's going to make you stand out from everybody else in whatever field that you're going for. And it's, I mean, that can apply to any marketing that you're doing should always start with the why, should always start with your story, should always start with your passion. I think too many entrepreneurs don't tell their story and they have a boring marketing website, boring business cards, boring brochures, boring videos, and you're trying to be corporate where people don't like buying from companies, they wanna buy from you. If you look the same as a company, I'm gonna go with the company because they have a better track record, right? They're more established, exactly. So being able to make it personal, show how much this means to you is what's gonna make me go with you. So make sure you tell your story in all the marketing that you do. Nice. Saib, Saib, Saib, Saib, how do you pronounce that?

Saib.

Saib. I'm an entrepreneur from Jordan in the Middle East. I'm starting my own business, which is very time-consuming. I'm a mechanical engineer and designer. I used to design aircraft and many other things. "I have lots of product designs in many fields. Currently I'm concentrating on my new business. I don't have any free time for anything else, so I neglected most of these ideas, but I know they have great potential. I don't know how to sell them. So what do you think?" You know, he's got a full-time job, he's got all these ideas, he doesn't have time to do them. Mm.

Well, you can either look at priorities, like what's important to you. And if your priorities are, this idea is most important to me, then you, you know, when your priorities are strong like that, you find a way. Like I do it at lunch at work, or I do it in the bathroom at work, or, you know, there's tons of stories of people who had a dream and they got started up in this like compressed little time period and they did whatever they could to squeeze it in. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this a lot. But the second thing is, What Evan often says is manage your time better. Chunk it, automate it, delegate it, leverage it, use other people's time. I'm like, I don't, I'm not sure your situation, if it's a priorities issue or if it's a time management thing, but you can free up your time. You can.

Yeah, there's an expression, the big rocks have to go in first. Nice, right? There's a kind of age-old time management principle where if you have a, if you have a bowl and then you have big rocks, little rocks, and sand, if you put the sand in first and the little rocks in next, and there's no space for the big rocks, where you want to put the big rocks in first and then the little rocks and the sand fills up the space. So the point is, if you're not purposely putting your big rocks in first, the things that are most important to you first, then the sand and all the little things in life will find ways to monopolize your time. And so yes, you have a full-time job. I mean, welcome to the world of entrepreneurship when you're starting out, you know. You don't just start and say, oh, I have all this time and all this money to just sit around and do whatever I want, right? Like, it's a struggle. You got to build it up. Uh, so you got to schedule in time for your idea. Half an hour a day, an hour a day, every single day. No excuses. Put it on your calendar. If it's 10:30 to 11 o'clock at night Every night, that's when you're working away on your dream. Like, you can't expect great things to happen if you're not putting in the time to make it happen. Even if it's a little bit every day to allow that momentum to grow, you're just gonna— you're gonna die with your song still in you, right? You're gonna die with all these ideas and just wish that, ah, you know, when I was younger, I wish that I took the time to actually go and do it, right? Find the time. You have the time. We all put it in your calendar, right? So a little harsh love, but you know, I mean, you can do it.

We believe in you.

There you go. There's the— there's the belief.

There's the belief.

Okay, Aruj. Hey, I recently started watching videos. I think they're amazing, very helpful. Thank you, Aruj. Uh, I have an issue with my business. I'm 16. Young entrepreneurs, shout out to young entrepreneurs. And I've been an entrepreneur since I was 9. "Because of my age, it's sometimes difficult to get people to take me seriously. My age has caused more than a few drawbacks in my business. I've been denied access to business networks, business events. How do I take advantage of my young age in the business world?" Dude, you have an amazing video about this.

I wish I could remember which one it is. You're like, if you want people to take you seriously, you're talking to another young entrepreneur. Command authority, command respect. Other people will only take you as seriously as you take yourself. If you carry yourself like, if you just put your age aside and ignore it and you like walk in with your whatever product, ideas, beliefs, and you stand firm on those, and you're ready to walk away and stand up for them and do whatever it takes, then people will feel that. People resonate. It doesn't matter how old you are. People can feel someone who's got a great product, or if you're, ready to help someone, you know your stuff can help them, then you put it all out there and you take yourself seriously. And if they're not open to it, they're not the right customer for you and you move on like any entrepreneur would.

Zeno's writing in the comments, not the age thing again. Now Zeno commented on my YouTube channel a little while ago saying that he feels he's too old, that he's 25, 25, I wanna say 25, maybe 26. He feels like he's too old. So the same thing applies, man. Too young, too old. What I liked about this, what I liked about the end of the question was, how do I take advantage of my young age in the business world?

Nice, that's actually really good.

Not just saying like, ah, I should have covered that. So he's not able to get into networking events and all this stuff because he's too young, but how can I take advantage of the young age?

Start a youth network.

Yeah, and play it up. Like turn that perceived weakness into a strength where there's a lot of companies that, You know, a lot of the deals that I get are still because I'm young. Now I'm not like massively young, but I'm 35 and I'm selling to people who are way older than me 'cause they don't understand social media and how to build a network online. And they see me as somebody who has done it and gets it. And so I play that up. At the end of the day, it's really about the value. Like having confidence that you can provide value to these guys. And I struggled with that a lot when I was younger, that why would Microsoft want to talk to me? Like, what value can I provide Microsoft? Um, but it just came from realizing after talking to them, like, I can actually really help these guys. They need some serious help. And just having confidence in your abilities. I remember when I was starting, I've told the story a couple times, so just super quick, but in my software company, I was 19 and some of the guys 3 times my age, and I was too afraid to get on the phone and talk with people and meet with them face to face. Forget it, because I figured they wouldn't want to buy from me. But when I, when I found out that they didn't care how old I was, just how much value I could provide, that, um, that's what they at the end of the day cared about. So if I'm a young entrepreneur, I'm 16, you know, a lot of the business networking events and business events suck, man. Like, I don't go to any business events. Me neither. Unless I'm speaking at a conference, I don't go to any of these things. So don't feel like that's holding you back. Just create your own stuff, get online, network with people through YouTube and Facebook, just like you're writing to me here. Seriously, like, massively overrated. I wouldn't let— I don't want you to think that that's holding you back from achieving success. Serious.

I totally agree.

I've been to a few and yeah, there was a survey I was looking up for a friend. That 40% of people would rather go to their dentist than go to watch another presentation with PowerPoint slides.

Yeah, I'm one of them.

It's boring, man. It's boring. Drives me nuts. Okay, Abhinav. Hi Evan, sir. Sir, this is Abhinav. I watch many of your Believe videos, loving them. Love to design things differently like my idol Steve Jobs. I want to make my own interior designing company TDS. What can I do to start such a business? So somebody who wants to start an interior design company, what wisdom do you have to share?

Oh, always simple. Provide value. Help. Have you helped people design interiors? Can you help someone now design interiors? And when you do it, can you be rewarded for it? Like if you overdeliver, right? If you blow someone's mind with interior design, I know if I had a place and I had a friend or someone help design the interior and they went the extra mile and did a whole ton of stuff, I'd feel bad and guilty if I didn't reward them somehow, you know? Like whether it's like tickets to a movie or like whatever, but I would feel like paying them, you know? I would feel like reciprocating. So I feel like unless you're able to give some kind of design experience, design advice, design coaching, design portfolio, design ideas, Unless you can do that and overdeliver and get someone to feel positively towards you and reward you for it, then you got some work to do.

Yeah, you know, my thoughts on starting any new business, your value comes from how much, well, the value comes from value. You know, how much money you're gonna make comes from the value. Like, your success will come from how much value you can provide. So do you have the chops to be able to provide value to people, you know? I need an interior designer right now at TDS, the salsa business, right?

Here's your customer, fly over.

Give me something, man, give me some ideas, show your value, right? And if you don't have the skills yet, then start by working for a company that you look up to that's like 10 people or less, where you can learn from the CEO, founder, get as close to them as possible. And then start your business. You start on the side, start evenings, start weekends, start up on the side, um, just to get you going. I think a lot of people start a business without having enough experience or background in it, and then they flop because they can't provide the value, uh, and also they run out of money. You know, if you go full-time and you don't have enough cash to sustain yourself, you end up going back and begging for your old job. Um, so those two things: work for somebody who you can learn from, and if you already have the skills, then make make sure you're demonstrating the value.

Demonstrate.

Demonstrate the value. Like if I saw some, I'm looking for, it's a great example, I'm looking for an awesome dance studio interior design. I can't find one, I can't find one. Like you look online, there's nothing.

Go to the design show.

I went to the design show in my city, but I've been looking online, there's nothing, right? If I saw you had this amazing dance studio design posted, I'd be like calling this guy up, say, hey, listen, I need help to design my dance studio, right? And it— and right there, a sale is made. And so it's putting that value out there to demonstrate that you have skills that people could use. We have a call-in.

Nice, a call-in!

Good Stuff Industries.

Welcome, Good Stuff!

Good Stuff Industries is connecting.

All right, well, I'm excited and anticipating good stuff.

Good Stuff Industries.

I'm sure Good Stuff will be coming any minute now.

Okay, we got it. While we wait for the connection there— oh, there he is! What's up?

Hey, Good Stuff!

Hey, what's going on?

You hear me? Your internet's kind of fuzzy, man.

I'm not sure if Good Stuff's internet is good.

The internet is not so good. Hey, there we go, there we go. Audio only. What's up?

Hey, can you guys see— can you hear me?

We hear you.

Hey, how are you doing, Evan Carmichael?

We're good, man. How are you?

Not too bad. How are you doing? Uh, Jay Rise, right?

Ah, there we go.

All right, all right, all right. How are we doing today?

Great. You have a question?

Yeah, I have some— I have a couple questions, man. I'm ready, I'm ready to launch, man. Uh, yeah, I'm ready to launch, and, and I, and I need to know, uh, who I go to. That's what I'm doing.

What are we launching?

I am ready to launch, uh, good— I have a, I have a book, okay, a little poem book that I have already wrote called A Man Good Stuff, okay? And I have another one that is backing it, and it is going to be He got cut off, he got cut off.

I think his internet's dying.

It sounded good. He has a poem.

Okay, well, let's give some value even though he's not here. Let's give some value.

Right.

So he's launching a poem book.

It's backed by another poem book.

Right, so how does he launch his poem book? How does he get it out there?

You could give away teasers, right? Demonstrate. You want to show people the value of your work. You can give away a teaser with a good clear call to action at the end. You know, if you enjoyed this poem, Go here to purchase. Simple, clean, clear. You can do what you're doing with your book, build up an audience, you know, campaign, launch, do a book series, a video series on it. I don't know, there's tons of ways to launch it.

Yeah, and so I mean, I'm going through this right now because I'm building, I'm creating my book that should be out in December or January, we'll see. A couple ideas. One, you want to connect with influencers, right? What's the book about? What kind of poems are you writing about? And then connect with people who have that audience. Like, if they're entrepreneur poems, then connect with me and maybe I'll share one. Both with like the subject matter. So like there are people who love poems. And so you can give them the poem book and it'd be something that they could potentially review. And then whoever the kind of general audience would be. Is it lifestyle? Is it, you know, entrepreneurs? Is it for, Is it people who have pets? Is it like whatever? Who's the audience? And then find influencers in those spaces to connect with. And if you send a sample, you know, one poem as an example, it should be something that moves them, right? Like if you sent me an awesome entrepreneur poem, I should be moved by it, right? And then you send them copies and they review it hopefully and send it out to their audience and give you some exposure. The second thing I'd be doing is creating content. Creating consistent content, talking about what's— either you're doing like readings from your poems or whatever the message is. Like we're doing right now, right? Like, pull 'em back. Everything we're doing now, right, is gonna go to YouTube. This all helps me build my platform for then when my book comes out, it has a greater reach. So you need to be creating consistent content, whether it's the songs. I know you've written some songs that you've played on your channel. Doing readings from the book or just sharing whatever your mantra is or your thought of the day, doing collaborations with other artists.

Interview other poets.

Yeah, just build consistent content that is good stuff, right? Like Zeno in the comments says, he better have some good stuff to share, right? I agree. If you're sharing good stuff, right, that's in your name, then people are gonna follow you, pay attention, and be interested in what you have to offer, right? You're not just gonna go up to somebody and say, hey, buy my book, but if they're following you, they like your videos, they like your newsletter, they like some of the samples, right? The more they get to know you, like you, trust you because of the consistent content you're putting out, then they're more likely gonna wanna buy the book. So those two things, collaborations and influencers, and then create your own consistent content to generate attention. Nice. Question from Andy here. Have you been in environments that became politically charged to the point where it affected operations Also, have you ever had relationships disturbed by business? If so, how do you deal with it? This is a— J-Rize has some interesting different perspectives on these things, so I'm curious. This will be exciting.

Here we go. Yeah, well, uh, yeah, so I've been in all these situations. I have pretty unique views on a lot of things. Those views, I stand by them. I stand for them. I believe them with all my heart, and I take a lot of pride in making sure that I'm spot on with them. A lot of times I get in a clash with my environment or the people I'm around. I've walked out. I've quit jobs. I've fired people, let people go. I've stopped talking to my family, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles. Because to me, if you're on Earth to fulfill a mission and to fulfill a dream, if you have an idea, if you're going to be an entrepreneur and you believe in something, you have to stand by it no matter what is happening. And I mean, it can get pretty awkward and pretty messy, and it might not be— like, I don't wish it on anyone, but I did it, and I wouldn't take it back. Like, I'd do it again. And I feel like no matter what's going on around you or in your life, like, the most important thing is that you have integrity with yourself and authenticity with yourself and you stand up for what you believe in.

So.

I like it.

So in terms of the environment, you know, if you guys have watched any of the videos on my channel recently, I go on and on about the importance of a good environment. It's in a new book too, let's show you. Plugging the book. See, we're creating content.

It's an amazing book.

It really is. Um, you know, I try to, I try to design an environment that supports me to be the best version of myself and create greatness, like that inspires me to be great and do something beyond, stretch myself every day. That's— I create that environment with intent every day. Uh, and so part of creating a great environment is not being in a crappy one, right? So I don't know what your environment is right now, if you have a job and you're working at a bad company or you have a bad boss. For me, I would be looking at moving on. I would be looking at, even if I'm just being an employee, maybe you're not ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship, but finding a place that, you don't want to go somewhere on a regular basis that sucks, that drains your energy, right? You want to go somewhere that makes you a better version of yourself, you're learning something, you're growing. You're contributing somehow. And so if that was an environment that I was going to on a daily basis, I'd have to change it. And you have the control to change it. You may think, "I'm an employee, I can't change it." Well, go find a different job. There's tons of jobs. Here's an example just of changing an environment. I took over Tra La Danza Salsa, and it had fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lights kill me. Like, I can't handle it. It, you know, the flickering gives me headaches, and so the first thing I did was I changed out all the lights, 'cause I wanted to create a better environment for myself as well as for the students. Now we're doing a bunch of things in there. Our one word is family, so we have a family tree. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Yeah, there's a bunch of things, and I want people to have an emotional reaction coming by my storefront, right? I want them to feel something coming by. So I wanna feel something, and I want them to feel something. And so you wanna create an environment that builds that up for yourself. And if you are an employee, again, you can go find another job. But also think about your room. Like, think about what you wake up in, right? Is there stuff on the walls that inspires you, or is it just a boring room? Think about your commute. Are you taking the subway? Are you driving? Is there anything in your car that makes you come alive? Are you listening to audiobooks, or is there something on the steering wheel? Like, everything matters. Every 10-minute chunk in your life matters, and you want to have it as something that builds you up to think of great things, and then that lets you go off on deep tangents. We went off on a great one today. We were just brainstorming because of the great environment we had, and then it's like I shut down for an hour and just go intense and creation mode, and we're creating something that is going to change— it's pretty amazing.

The entire dance industry.

Yeah, so, you know, but that came because we created the environment for that, right? You can't come up with great ideas if you're in a crappy environment. And so look at everything that's around you. There's a reason why this is on the wall. There's a reason why my logo is an airplane. You know, other stuff in here, there's a reason why it exists. And as much as possible, you want to create a positive environment for yourself.

And bring it back to people because his question was all about relationships and politics and people. And so out of changing your environment, to me, the most important change you can make is the people. We do great things here, but if I thought there was a person around that was not like I couldn't vibe with or it was negative energy or it drained me, I'd be gone. I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Because people are one of the most important parts of the environment. You can decorate everything all you want with as many inspiring words as you want, but the people on your team and your staff and your life, your family, your friends, super important.

You're saying it's in school, so that's for the scheduling.

Sure, yeah.

So I mean, but you change schools. Yeah, and you know, and there's a lot of time that you're not in school, right? And you can plan that. You need to make sure you're carving out time for your business and not just— if you say, I'm going to do this after school, right? And they go, okay, after school is done, then you go get a job. I'm going to do this. Like, you keep deferring it.

I dropped out.

You keep deferring your life, and then you never get anything done. And you look back and say, where did the time go, right? So you have more time now that you're in school than you will when you have a job.

You will.

So now's the time to go out and do it. In terms of, has a business ever impacted my relationship? I've hired, the first guy that I hired on an almost full-time basis was my best friend, was the first guy that I fired too. Thanks for the props. Who is that? We'll cover over, we'll cover over. I can't see. Jonathan! Jonathan, thank you, bro. Thanks for the props, man. Lots of props. Yeah, Andrew was his name, and he's still a friend, and I think the key is just honest communication, you know, like the challenge in that specific case, and maybe there's some context for you, was he was a writer and I needed content for my website and he loved to write, but he took like every word for him had to be perfect. And when he wrote, I needed content, like I needed it, I needed good content, but not like 2 weeks to write 1 article content, right? I needed it a little bit faster than that and it just, our timelines weren't working. And instead of yelling at each other and freaking out on each other, we just sat down and said, you know what, this is probably not, it's probably not worth it. Like, you're not happy, I'm not happy, I want to still be friends, let's move it on. So I've never had, I've never had a business, and I've hired my sister, you know, I've hired tons of friends, I've gained friends through hiring people, but I've never had a relationship destroyed because of business. I think it's just how you approach it.

Can I give you props?

There's a guy who was a friend who I hired and then we let go, and we just went to his Facebook page and his profile picture saying thank you to my mentor Evan Carmichael was from January or something. So whatever, like, you know, I think it's just a matter of trying not to say things that you regret out of like heat of the moment. Passion, excitement, and just open communication because you're gonna likely, you know, if they think about it too, it's probably not gonna be a fit for them. If they're not happy either, so you guys have to work on it. I think if you just talk about it instead of yelling and doing things behind each other's backs, you're much more likely to have the result you want.

Really good question.

Yeah. J-Rise and eBelieve. I'm eBelieve now. Telling nothing but the truth. Your environment is so important. Amen. Cool. Well, we gotta head out. Thank you guys for the awesome fun. We'll probably post it to YouTube. What are you gonna do? Believe is the other hand. You gotta do right hand. You gotta match the plan here. Believe. And we'll see you soon. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys. See you soon.