Evan Carmichael advises a 15-year-old running a media and marketing company alongside school to work on the business every day, even for just 20 minutes, to keep momentum. Hire part-time help or find partners so you're not doing everything alone. Turn school projects into real business tasks and pitch an elective course that counts toward grades while giving you access to university customers.
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Tips on managing school life and a business. I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Aftermath, who wrote in to say, "Hello Evan, I'm only 15 years old and I have started my own media company, events and marketing. Do you have any tips on how to balance my school life and business at the same time?" So it's a great question and I was a student entrepreneur. You're starting younger than me. I started really when I was in university. And it can be hard, you know, it can be hard when you're trying to balance running the business with all your school load plus family obligations and all that. And it can often seem— I remember being so frustrated, especially when exam time came around. And I really wanted to work on my business and felt like there was just too much happening in my life. So here are some tips, okay? Here are some tips for how you can manage your school life and your business at the same time. Number 1 is do something every day. Do something every single day for your business. And this, this applies to anybody. If you're starting a business, if you're doing it part-time, you have, you know, a full-time job, you're starting on the side, you have other commitments, every day you need to do something to grow your business. Even if you're, you know, you have an exam the next day and you're cramming and you're studying for it, you still have to find 20 minutes to do something for your business. It could be answering emails, it could be reaching out to somebody, whatever it is, momentum has to keep going. You cannot afford to take 3 weeks off and then just come back to the business. You lose too much in that process. So every day, no matter how small, do something to grow your business. Okay? Number 2 is get help. Get people to help you out. So I was fortunate I had 2 business partners in my business, so when things got really crazy, At school, I still had my partners helping me out, but I also hired people. And the first guy I hired was for 1 hour a day. Just 1 hour a day, doesn't cost a ton of money, just to help do some of the things that I didn't want to do anymore. The admin stuff that I didn't want to take care of. So get some people to help you, and this is something you have to figure out as you grow. Right now you may just be a 1-person shop, but you want to get your business to the point where you are not required in the day-to-day running of your company. So it's great practice now to get started to hire hire somebody even for an hour a day. You can be somebody local or go to websites like oDesk.com, which I'm a big fan of, and find people to help you out. So it's not just on you all the time. And then number 3 is incorporate your school projects into your business. So one of my favorite things to do when I was in university, I didn't realize this till my last year, was for the elective projects that you take on I always try to make it about my business. So if I had a marketing class and we had to do a marketing proposal, right, or think of a new marketing idea, I would always bring my company and say, okay, well, here's a project, here's a company, here's a new business that's starting. Let's do a marketing plan for this business. Whatever school project I had, I always tried to bring in my company to be the topic. You can't always do it, you know, if you're doing a project on ancient history, you You're talking about Egyptian times, you may not be able to incorporate your business into that, but as much as possible. And one thing that I really love doing that really helped my business out, which I only discovered at the end, I could create my own course. And so in university there's this option, and I don't know if there's an option in your, in your high school or not, I could make an elective course with the professor. As long as the professor said I will mentor this entrepreneur, then you can create your own course. And so there's no exam for it, You have to— basically depends on what you decide with your professor, but I was able to create a course around building my business and have a professor mentor me at the same time. So it provided a lot of great things for me. First of all, it meant one less class I had to study for at school. Second of all, I got guidance from the professor who was helping me out. And third of all, I can use the school's resources. So my software actually sold into universities, and I could go to the scientists at the universities who would be my customers and start talking to them about what I was doing in my company and the projects we were working on. They're talking to me because I'm a student at the school, I'm working on this school project, where they wouldn't talk to me if it was from this company. And so I would investigate. I didn't, uh, that option wasn't promoted anywhere. I learned about it through a friend who had done something similar. I don't know if there's that option at your high school, but there may be an option to work with one professor or teacher, I guess, there and create your own course around your business somehow where they're mentoring you and they give you a grade at the end. So definitely investigate that option. So those are things that really helped me. So again, just quick recap: do something every day, get help, and then incorporate your classes into your business as much as possible. That's my advice. Good luck. I know it's hard, but keep working every day, grinding out, and believe. Those of you watching, like the video, give it a thumbs up below, let me know what you think, leave a comment underneath. You have a question, leave it below, make a video response just like I did for this one, and click on my face to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
