Evan Carmichael advises a 15-year-old with an energy business idea to find a mentor who has navigated patents and licensing. He recommends researching local experts, requesting coffee meetings, and considering co-patenting. Carmichael credits his own mentors John and Janie with teaching him sales and dramatically improving his video delivery.
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Get a mentor. Today I'm answering a question from one of my YouTube viewers, Taylor. Love you guys. Taylor is 15 years old, wants to start a company in the energy business, but just wants to basically sell the idea. Doesn't have the money, doesn't have the funds, doesn't have the experience to go out and get the patents and the expertise to kind of launch that and sell it. And wanted my advice. How does, how does, how to get started? How do you do this? How do you sell your idea when you're 15 years old, you don't have any resources or connections? My best advice here is go get a mentor. You need somebody to help show you the ropes here. You need the patent. You're gonna need the patent. You go out and you talk to an energy company, they're gonna say, "Do you have the patent?" If not, then they're gonna go do it themselves. They're gonna screw you out of your idea. Why do they want to pay you millions of dollars when they can just shortcut it and do it themselves? It's only because you have the patent. But what I would suggest you do is go find somebody Who has done this a couple times? Go find somebody who's close to you, ideally in your city, who has created some patents and licensed some technology to companies, and go learn from them. Work with them and tell your story. Listen, there aren't that many 15-year-olds who are, who are go-getters like you. I don't get that many 15-year-olds writing to me with business ideas and wanting some advice. Your enthusiasm is infectious. People want to give back. People want to help. What I would suggest for you to do is go find somebody who's done it. Ask them for coffee. Ask to meet with them. Tell them about your idea. And maybe you co-patent your first idea. Maybe you co-patent your next 5 ideas together. But there's somebody showing you the ropes. Because you're going to learn so much more by working with them and commercializing an idea than just trying to figure it all out yourself and getting frustrated that you're not making progress. The easiest way to learn something is to work with somebody who's already done it before and for them to show you the ropes instead of you trying to figure everything out yourself. In my first business, one of my mentors was a man named John who had a tremendous impact on our business and showed me how to sell a product and to market yourself and how to behave in a, in a meeting and how to create excitement and energy. And I took that with me to to my future businesses. Even this, so for those of you guys watching, if you've been a loyal viewer of my YouTube channel, you go back 2 years ago and you look at my older videos and the content may be great but my delivery sucked. Like, I look at that and I'm like, "Ah man, those videos are so bad." They're way better now. Why? Because I'm working with a mentor, Janie. She coaches me. We have weekly sessions. I talked with her for an hour before I got in front of the camera today and started recording these videos. And her advice and her wisdom and her experience that she spent her whole life accumulating is quickly transferred to me, and I could pick it up in a short amount of time and see huge improvements. Things that I may not have been able to ever figure out on my own, or if I did, it would take years and years and years and years and years. So she shortcuts my path, my path to learning, my path to success. And that's really what you need right now. You need to find somebody who's done it, who's taken ideas, patented them, sold them, commercialized them, licensed them, and work with them, learn from them. And just start it off simple. Do your research, find the people, ask for coffee, see who you connect with, see who you have a relationship with, because people like giving back if the student is genuinely interested, if the student is taking those lessons and applying them. There's such a great feeling, such a huge high you get when you're helping somebody out and you help them accomplish their goals and you see their face light up and you get enthusiasm and energy from them. But there's also nothing worse than giving advice to somebody, really trying to help them out, and they're lazy and lackadaisical and they don't care, they don't take your advice. People don't want to be in that kind of relationship. So go find your mentor and get started. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video. You can subscribe to the channel, see more videos just like this. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
