Evan Carmichael argues you don't need $5,000 to start a graphic design or photography business. He built evancarmichael.com with zero budget, learning web design himself and filming early YouTube videos with a cheap camera. Talk to customers first, study how successful entrepreneurs bootstrapped, and reinvest your first earnings to grow.
Chapters
I need $5,000 to start my business. It's a question that came in from one of my YouTube viewers, Jes Wee, who said he wants to start a graphic design photography business and he needs $5,000 to launch his business. You don't need $5,000. You don't need any money. What you need is hustle. It's never about how many resources you have. It's never about what university or school you went to. It's not about what country you're from or what city you live in. It's about how resourceful you are. That's what makes successful entrepreneurs so successful. You look at successful entrepreneurs, you look at how they got started, they're not hugely capitalized, okay? They started from nothing and they found a way to turn nothing into dollars. And keep growing. When I started my business, EvanCarmichael.com, I didn't even have a business model. There was no grand plan. I just wanted to help entrepreneurs. I just created a website. I spent $0 on creating my website at the start. I had a friend of mine who knew some graphic design help me with my very first layout, and I created the content and learned how to update a website through Dreamweaver myself. I spent nothing. I hate spending money until I'm making money. Take the same approach. Find a way to get this thing started. You want to do graphic design and photography? You can get started. You don't need anything to get this started. Just start going out and talking to people. When I started doing these YouTube videos, again, I didn't want to spend any money until I had something. So I started off my, my digital camera and I balanced it on my bookshelf. And if you go back and watch the earlier ones, it's wobbly, it's out of focus, it's not great. You know, there's no microphone. The quality was, was really poor, but I got started. I didn't let not having money be an excuse for me not to do anything. And that's such a limiting belief for so many entrepreneurs. Say, well, I really want to start a business, I really want to get this thing going, but I need XYZ before that can happen. None of that is true. You don't need $5,000, you don't need $10,000, you don't need $100, you don't need anything. You just need you and your hustle to start talking to customers, potential customers, understand what they need, and go in and start solving problems. Don't accept these limiting personal beliefs that hold you back from being successful, because it's $5,000 now, and then as you grow, it's going to be something else, it's going to be something else. I'm not successful because this. I'm not successful because I don't have that. And it's never the case. The only thing holding you back is the story you're telling yourself and the belief that you have that it's holding you back. So what I would encourage you to do is a couple things, okay? One, go out and start talking to potential customers. Don't sell them anything, just go out and start talking to people, people who you think would be ideal clients for you, okay? So if you're a photographer, you're doing graphic design, you're probably talking to business owners, right? Go start talking to them. Understand what their needs are. See if they can hire you for something. See if you can solve a problem for them. Number 2, I'd go out and start modeling success. Look at the people who've had the most success in your industry and see how they got started. Learn how they got their first customer. Learn how they went from nothing to making their first million dollars. And learn from people who are not even in your industry. Learn from people who've built products, learn from people who've built software, learn from people who are in fashion. Look at the most successful entrepreneur that you look up to, whoever it is. If it's Jay-Z, if it's Oprah, if it's Donald Trump, whoever it is, and look at how they got started, because they didn't have a ton of money launching them. They started from nothing. And their stories can both inspire you to let you know that it's possible, on top of giving you specific ideas for what you can do to get your company off the ground. I know it can be really hard when you're first starting up, especially if you've never done this before, because nobody has given you the path and what to do, right? We don't teach this stuff in schools. And if nobody in your family has been an entrepreneur, you don't know what the next step is going to be. And it might make sense to go get a loan from a bank and start a business, but it's not the path. It's really— if you want to have the success, it comes from you really understanding your customers and being resourceful to solve their problems at the beginning. Find a way to make money, and then once you figure it out that way, even if it's small amount of money. You can invest that back into the company to go out and try to get bigger clients and better clients and start repeating what's working for you. Try not to spend money until you're making money, and to do that you have to get on your hustle and you have to be resourceful. Believe. Thank you guys for watching. If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up below. I want to hear from you too. I Leave a comment underneath, tell me what you think, leave a question if you have one for your business and I'll make a video response. Thank you so much and I'll see you soon.
