Top Tips for Entrepreneurial Growth | 13 Steps to Thrive

Yeah, again, the questions that come in, uh, it's gonna be randomly picked, and we're going to give away a 30-minute call with me, uh, to the winner. And then 3 other winners are going to get the Entrepreneur Heroes trading cards. So make sure you ask your questions. And also Carl and I did a lot of thinking before this webinar about how we can do more to help entrepreneurs and help people, you know, get people to keep going and to talk, to actually implement the things we're talking about and to connect them with us as well as other entrepreneurs. And so we're thinking about creating a membership site that we wanted to get your feedback on. And so we'd really appreciate if you like this webinar, if you like the last one, if you like the newsletters and everything, I'd really appreciate if you could take a couple minutes now or after the webinar just to go to this quick address here, that we've listed to fill out a couple questions. We really value your opinions on that. So I'll leave this slide up, and if you guys have questions, pump them out and we'll try to answer them as best we can. So Carl, over to you.

Yes, and if you have any questions too, future questions, that's always good feedback too. The more that we find out what you need, especially for this membership, site, the more we can help. Sojourner says, "I'm there if you make a membership site." Thank you, Sojourner. Alright. Okay, if anybody has any questions, please type them into the question box. I have a few that have already happened and I put them into a Word doc. So, um, Port Freed asks, "I have a lot of passion, however, I don't know how, you know, what to do.

When you have so many passions, Evan, how do you figure out how to narrow it down?" What I would try to do, if you can, if you really feel strongly about it, is try to combine them. Because that's something that a lot of other people won't be able to copy. So whatever your, you know, say top 2 passions are, Try to put them together and embrace the genius of the end. Instead of thinking about this or this, try to find a way to put them together, and that will be a great way to help you stand out from everybody else in your market. If you're thinking about ideas that may be exciting but you're not quite sure if you want to follow it or not, the test that I usually like to do is see how much I'm willing to work on it. So if you have your list of 10 different ideas that you could potentially work on, devote some time to doing a little bit of research on it. So maybe it's some web research, but I'd also try to set a goal of actually going to a library or a bookstore to do some research on it. And see if you actually follow through on it. You'll find that some you follow through on, and some you don't actually want to take that trip. And sure, you can find all the information probably online that you can find in the bookstore, But it's that process of investing the time and energy to go out and do it that you'll see, it'll challenge your commitment level if you're really going to have success in it or not. If you're not willing to go to the bookstore to research about your business idea, chances are you're probably not going to have a huge successful company on that idea. And from there I just narrow it down to see where did I spend my most time, which ideas did I spend the most time researching, and where was I most excited about. 'cause that's what you want to eventually narrow yourself down to. And if you do end up with two different ideas, again, see if you can combine them into one awesome idea that combines multiple passions, and that'll help separate you from a lot of your competition.

Good. Bill asked, you know, what service-type jobs look promising in today's market? You know, do you see any trends?

I don't know if I can give you a macro trend. I don't think that's necessarily the right way to look at things. With all due respect to Bill's question, I think it's a very common one. When you're looking at analyzing what you should start, I always start around a passion that I have. That's where you should start, not around looking for pain and hopefully you have the passion to solve it. You don't want to just chase the dollars because Because when you do, I can say here are the top 10 industries that are happening right now in services, right? And you can go and pick up magazines and newspapers that will tell you that. But going into that business just because you think you can make money is not the way to do it. I'd rather go in, find something that makes me really excited and I feel I can offer a lot of value to my customers, and then go out and try to find customers who have a specific pain point that I can help solve. Your business will change as you start working with customers and build around their challenges, whatever service you get into. But I would flip it on its head and go that route instead of just trying to pick an industry that I know nothing about or may know a little bit about but I'm not really excited about just because I think it's growing and has an opportunity.

Good. Carol asked, do you suggest not looking for venture funding to start up and stay You said wait until you've started and have some earnings to show?

Absolutely. And this is coming from the venture capitalist. I would try to, if possible, not go for venture capital at all. But if you really need it, then expansion money is the easiest type of money to raise. So that means you've already shown that you can bring in some customers and you're making a little bit of money. They don't want to— they don't expect you to be making a huge amount of money. If you were hugely successful, you wouldn't be going to them for extra money, right? But they want to see that somebody will buy your product. 95% of the companies who submitted a business plan to us had no traction. They had no customers. They just had an idea. And so you're competing with everybody else who just has an idea. The companies who got our attention were the ones who already had a little bit of sales, they had a little bit of a management team, in place and it looked like they had some momentum already going for them. So you want to be able to do that to increase your chances of getting any kind of investor, venture capital or a bank loan or angel investor or whatever it is. It should have some momentum. The other benefit is you'll get a much better valuation. The more you can reduce the risk at the start, a startup business is very risky. You believe in yourself, but not a lot of other people are going to believe in yourself, let alone the venture capital who a venture capitalist who doesn't know you at all. So if they were going to give you some money, they would kill you on the valuation because there's no track record. But if you can go in and show them that you already have some customers and you're already making a little bit of money, you may not be profitable, you may not be raking it in yet, but you have some momentum behind you, then you'll get a much better valuation. So you get the same money you need, but they won't take as much of your business from you. But I would also think about, you know, do you really need to get venture capital or not? Because when you do go after funding, that becomes almost a full-time job, which takes you away from being able to actually do things to run and operate your business. So if it is needed, definitely go out and try to get customers and build momentum before going to them.

Bill also wanted to know, he loved the quotes, if you have them on your website somewhere We are recording this and we will try to get it up on YouTube for you. So, you know, that's always a possibility. But I don't know if you keep these quotes anywhere, Evan?

Yeah, I do. Now, this is a selection. So we have— on our site we have the largest collection of famous entrepreneur stories. So along with that comes a ton of quotes. On my site, not on the homepage but on any inside pages, at the top you'll see a link that says quotes. And I pick my top 10 quotes that I really enjoy that I find help me with my business, and then under there, a whole bunch of famous entrepreneur quotes that I find inspiring as well. And a lot of these are mentioned here too. And then for any of these famous entrepreneurs, we've done a profile on our website, and there's a whole page of their best quotes as well that you guys can check out. We will be recording— or we are recording this, and then we will be releasing it, so As long as you guys pay attention to the newsletter email, I guess, you'll see some of the updates about when the videos are coming out.

So Jorna asks, what's the best way to keep yourself accountable? What would you recommend as a good kick in the tush to keep your business moving forward?

Mm, that's a good one. I do a couple things. First is with my mastermind groups, We have an annual goal that we set. It's usually— it has to be a numeric goal, so most people pick a revenue goal, but it has to be something numeric. So it's not, "I want to feel good about my business." It's, "I want to hit XYZ," something measurable every month. And they help keep me accountable, and I help keep them accountable too, every month when we have our meeting. So that helps. Also, in our forums online, we do a monthly goal setting that any of you guys can participate in too. Where we say here's what our goals are for the month, and we try to hold each other accountable. At the beginning, people may say, oh, you didn't hit your goal, you know, too bad, keep working on it. But if you have the same goal on there for 3 months, people will start to get a little harder on you, right? Like, hey, what's up? You've had this goal on here for 3 months, you haven't done anything on it. So I find by committing to other people, you're more likely to follow through on it. Through other Mastermind groups and through the forums and maybe through the membership site, put that down as an idea. That could be a great option too. When you involve other people, you're more likely to follow through. The other thing I find that sometimes I think is pretty common, you put down goals that are aspirational that you want to get done but for whatever reason you're not doing it. And sometimes it doesn't mean you should do it. Often it means you should cut it and focus on something else. A lot of times when you put a goal down, you listen to me and say, "Hey, that was a great idea Evan had," and then you just, whatever reason, you don't think it's going to fit for your business. Having something there for 3 months or 6 months that you don't do, sometimes it means you shouldn't do it and you should move on to something else that you are a little bit more excited about. You can only force yourself to do something for so long, so you have to end up tying it back into something that you're really passionate about. But I think the biggest kick in the pants, like Sojourner asks, comes from the Mastermind group where people know me and I've stated my goals, and that makes you a little vulnerable to say you're going to do something that you're hoping you can do but you're not 100% is going to happen because a lot of the factors may be outside your control, but having those people there to say, hey, you know, you didn't get this thing done. We have a weekly phone call between some of the members. That kind of makes you want to keep going because you know you're going to meet them in a week on the phone or in a month in the meeting, and you want to look good and say, hey, I got this done, and not face the fire every time you go home. So I find that's the biggest help for me.

Cool. Well, it's 3 o'clock Eastern And we probably should pick these winners because probably some people have to leave. I picked 4 winners. I hope I didn't pick any people from who won last time, but if so, then you had a really good question, so I went with you. Bill Helm won the free half-hour call with Evan.

Great.

So please, Bill, email Evan at evancarmichael.com. And Packs of Cards, Gary Bartlett, Ron Bartlett, and Heather Chernovsky. They all did a fantastic job of— oh, sorry, Rhone Gibson was the number 2. Gary Bartlett, Rhone Gibson— I miswrote that— and Heather Chernovsky. Great job, everybody.

So I put my email up on the slide there if you guys want to email me. And if you had a question but I didn't get to it, I know there's a whole bunch of questions, shoot me an email and I'll try to answer quickly too for you. And we're thinking about our next one too. The topic is growing your business, building a marketing machine, so getting beyond the startup stage and now really growing a business. And I've set a tentative date. I say tentative because I haven't told Carl about our date. So Carl, hopefully September 13th works for you, but that's the tentative date, so I'll keep you guys updated. And please, if you if you can. We'd really love your feedback here too about the Google Doc and the potential membership site. So thank you, and thank you, Carl, too, for helping us set this all up.

Oh, it's great. I always learn a lot too, and these questions were fantastic. I really loved how active everybody was, and Evan, you did a fantastic job once again.

All right, well, thanks, guys, and I look forward to hearing your emails and Send me those pitches. I want to read them and give you some feedback too.

Alright everybody, have a great day and thanks so much for joining us. Bye.