Want a Successful Business? DO THIS

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, Ben, who's thinking of starting a business and wanted my advice. So he wrote in saying, "Hi Evan, we've been looking to start an opportunity for our own business for a couple of years now. First we wanted to buy a butchery, but then we had a closer look. The butchery was not as busy as the current owner said it was." So we left it there, then we want to buy a truck, which is currently still an option, but there's another option available in our town. How do we get started and what will we need for the bank except for a business plan? So thanks for the question, Ben. A couple of ideas in there. So the first thing, when you're starting a business, number one rule, you have to do something around your passion. You gotta start a business around something you're really excited about, something you wake up, you wanna go do every morning. This is an exciting opportunity. As an entrepreneur, you get to pick your job, you get to pick what you wake up and go and do every morning. So why not do something that gets gets you really excited. On top of that, when you are really excited about it and you bring a lot of passion to your business, then you're more likely to be successful at it. You're more likely to push through all the hard times that are ahead of you, and you're more likely to build up a company that, that you can really be proud of. You see entrepreneurs who start a business just to make money, they rarely do. Usually it's because they're not really excited about the business and they fail at the first sign of trouble. They quit and they want to go off and do something else. It may be being a butcher, it may be doing a truck business. Those are two seemingly completely different ideas, but is there something you could bring to that that's uniquely you and that you have a strong passion for? So if you're examining those businesses because you really feel an intense desire to do it, that's a potential. If you're looking at it just as something to do and hopefully make some money, then I would try to search for something else that you think you have a better shot at. I really enjoy and really love doing. So that's kind of number one rule of entrepreneurship, at least for me, is you got to build around something that you're super passionate about. And if you look at the famous entrepreneurs and how they got started, look at any famous successful entrepreneur that you admire, look back at their story and it would always be they started their business because they had a really strong passion for what they were doing, wanted to change the way something was done in their industry, or they're really frustrated with something. It wasn't, I set out to make a lot of money. So again, usually the guys who just start to try to make money rarely end up making a lot of money. So you gotta start on your passion. The next second bit of advice for you would be the amount of money that you'll make will be in direct proportion to how much value you add to your customers. So think about what you can bring that's unique to whatever business that you're, you're starting, and how can you add just an overwhelming amount of value to your customers. The more value you can bring, the more money you're gonna make. So how can you be super useful, super helpful, go above and beyond in as many areas as you can? And that's where, when you're really passionate about what you're doing, you'll start to get those kind of ideas. If you're just doing it for the money, it's gonna be hard to come up with unique ideas to be able to grow it beyond where it currently is. Hopefully that helps give you a starting point. There's no right or wrong answer. If you're really passionate about it and you're able to provide a lot of value to your customers, That's a good recipe for success right there, and it could be any industry. Your second part was about what you need to go to the bank with besides a business plan. For a startup, to be honest, banks are not really a super friendly place to go for entrepreneurs. They want to risk very little capital in ventures that they see as being risky or startups. So the chance of you getting a loan for a business are pretty poor. Typically they want to see at least 3 years of history and that you're profitable. They're thinking if your business goes under, what can they take, right? So if it is a trucking type of company, there's that truck that they can take. They want an asset that they can take back. If it's a more service type of business or you're carrying inventory that, you know, they would have a hard time selling, that's a lot harder to finance than just something where they can actually pull, you know, equipment or land or other assets back. So the only other way to do would be to have a personal guarantee. So if you have your own personal credit and then yes, it's for the business, but you're personally guaranteeing it that if the business goes under, you're still on the hook for whatever loan that you want to take out. So hopefully that helps. I always try to recommend bootstrapping if you can. Banks are typically not a great source for startups. There may be some government programs, you may be able to get an angel investor, but your best bet, especially at the start, is to try to bootstrap it as much as you can, get it to the point where at least you're making some money coming in from customers, and then see if If you want to expand by going out and getting an investor or a loan, which should be a much more favorable rate because you've done the hard work of starting up, or you continue to bootstrap it if you think that you're going to have a good go at it. So hopefully that helps answer some of your questions, Ben. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. If you have a question about starting a business or raising capital or a different question that you want answered, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always check those out and I try to answer as many as I can. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.