Evan Carmichael tells a structural engineering student planning a construction company that launching without industry experience is a mistake. Work at a construction firm first to learn how the business makes money, then start service-based and bootstrap it: find a client with a real problem, solve it, get paid. Hire only after you have stable revenue.
Chapters
If you're trying to figure out where to start with your business, you don't know anything about it, go get some experience in the industry. Otherwise, your chances of failure are going to be really high, and I don't want you to lose your shirt, lose your money, lose your time going down the wrong path. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe that hungry entrepreneurs deserve help. Today I'm answering a question from one of my Facebook readers, Roy. Thanks for writing in, Roy. Roy said, I like the way you help people here. Thank you, Roy. I would like to have a suggestion from you. I'm a student doing master's in structural engineering. I want to start a construction company. I don't know where to start. I have the workforce, but I need to know how to get financial support and I want some suggestions. Thank you, Roy. Hey, Roy, congrats. I want to start a business. That's great news. I'm excited for you. Here's the thing. If you start a business now, you're probably going to fail because you have no experience in it. It's great to know the technical skills, but you have to know how to run a business. I don't want you to go out, hire a bunch of people to work for you, hire a team, have to pay these people every week, and not have business come in, and you end up having to close your doors. You lose your savings, and you go up getting some job that you hate. The path to success here for you is you have to learn about the business. You have to know what makes one of these companies successful. Go work or intern, summer job, part-time job, full-time job on a limited basis, whatever it is, go work for a company that you respect, who's done it, who has a team. Learn about the industry, see if it's for you. Understand how it works, understand how they make money. Put the pieces together so when you go launch your business, you're ready to go. You give yourself the best chance of success. And when you do it, you build around the customer. Don't go out and hire a big workforce, bring on a bunch of costs. Start small, you bootstrap it up. Find a customer who has a pain, has a need, and will pay you to solve it for them. You don't need a lot of money to start a service-based business. You don't need any money. It's your time. If somebody has a problem, you can solve it, and they'll pay you for it, you're in business. Congratulations. And if you need to bring on people as subcontractors, do it. You said you had the team ready to go, but they're all part-time workers, subcontractors, until you are able to get this to a point where you have more stability. So that's how you start. Learn, and get paid to do it by working at another company who you respect, a small shop where you can learn a lot of the ins and outs, figure out if the business is for you and how they make money, how they generate business, then when you start, you're bootstrapping. You start small. You don't need a huge financial investment. Just go find a customer. It's a service-based business. Find someone who has a pain, solve it for them, get paid for it, hire people if you need to, put the money back into your business, and go off to the next client. It's the best way to build your company. Good luck, Roy. Thanks for the question. Great question. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. And I also want to hear from you. Please leave a comment under this video. I love seeing them come in. I always read them. I really appreciate it. If you're commenting on this video or you have a question for your own business, please leave it below. Thank you guys. I'll see you soon.
