“There are over three billion people in the world who go to bed hungry for something to eat every night, but over five billion people go to bed every night hungry for a kind word, a sincere compliment, a word of encouragement.” – Cavett Robert
You may have thought what we heard from Evan Carmichael earlier was all we were going to hear from him. Absolutely not! This YouTube star is filled with valuable content and has more to offer us on how we can use authenticity to deal with difficult challenges.
Get Excited When You Hit Rock Bottom
“What do you suggest someone do when they hit rock bottom,” I asked Evan, “and when they feel like there is no way out? I’m talking about that time when they’ve been knocked down time and time again, and they feel stuck. They’ve reached the end of their rope, and after many setbacks, they are now at rock bottom.”
“Get excited,” Evan said with a big smile. “I love the rock bottom. The rock bottom setback means something big is coming. I think back to my own rock bottom moment. I had a software company making almost nothing, like 300 dollars a month, and I felt absolutely worthless. I was working on it day in and day out, and I was getting no results whatsoever.
“My rock bottom moment was when I told my partner I quit. Hearing those words come out of my mouth was devastating. I woke up the day after feeling 100% worthless knowing that something in my life wasn’t working.
“The next day, I knew I couldn’t quit and wanted to keep doing this. But I knew I needed to find a different way to do it. That’s what is so great about the rock bottom moment. It forces you to find a different way to stand. It challenges you to ask yourself, Should I be doing this or not? Is it worth the headache and anguish? Or should I be doing something else? For me, I knew I needed to keep doing this, I just had to find another way to stand.
“I realized that someone has already figured this out. I knew I had to model someone. That’s when I modeled myself after Bill Gates, and that was the beginning of the turnaround for me. Rock bottom forces you to ask yourself tough questions and make important changes, which is usually the beginning of something better.
“I had a friend who was in a really bad relationship with a girl. It took him an entire year to get out of that extremely tough situation. But when he finally broke up with her, he went and did courageous things. He went dancing. He went and lived his life. He felt free. Even though it came from something really bad and one of the worst moments of his life, it forced a change for him in a positive direction.
“A big problem for a lot of people is that their minor setbacks aren’t big enough. If you get a major setback it really forces you to look in the mirror. So if you have a big setback, get excited.”
“I love that,” I said. “Something that I share with a lot of my audiences is that there’s a hidden opportunity in every setback, and you mirrored that directly. You mentioned how you had that turning point – when you quit your business and had to find a new way to stand. You knew you didn’t want to permanently quit the industry and you found a better way to operate. I find that to be very powerful. Can you talk about that a little more?”
“One of the challenges I had with my business is feeling like I had to come up with every idea myself,” Evan said. “I’m the entrepreneur, I’m the creative person – I felt like I had to come up with all of it myself. At first, I didn’t have an answer. All I knew was that my old way wasn’t working. That in itself is liberating – recognizing that you need to do something totally different because the way you’re doing it now isn’t working.
“That’s when I modeled myself after Bill Gates, and after a few weeks, I saw results. Momentum. Sales. Something. Something to eat. When you’re starving, an apple is the most luxurious meal in the world. I’d like to emphasize that the turning point was knowing that what I was doing wasn’t working. It’s not a tweak I needed to change – it had to be a revolution, something totally different. Tweaking was what I was already doing, and it wasn’t working. Tweaking is what led me to the crash. I needed a wholesale change in my approach. That’s what led to the rise up.”
Cutting Out Overwhelm Before It Even Happens
“There are so many people who are overwhelmed in the world,” I said to Evan. “They’re overworked, and they feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time. They feel like they have an endless amount of obligations and not enough ‘me’ time. Do you ever feel overwhelmed? You are a content machine, always putting out new content. If you do feel overwhelmed, how do you deal with it?”
“It starts with the awareness that it’s all self-inflicted,” Evan said. “You choose what you’re doing. Take responsibility for your schedule. You might say, Yes, well my boss wants me to do this. Well, you chose to work there. And you chose not to speak up about the situation. There’s always an option.
“With any challenge you’re facing, you need to accept the personal responsibility that’s on you to get out of it. Most people just default to complaining. You blame your wife, you blame your kids, you blame your parents, you blame your boss, you blame the President, and it’s always somebody else’s fault. Because complaining feels good. You don’t want to do the hard work of actually doing something about it and changing the situation.
“That’s why it starts with the awareness of knowing it’s self- inflicted. The solution comes from knowing you have the power to get out of it. The way I deal with overwhelm is by constantly evaluating my schedule and my time. For me, the hardest part isn’t being overwhelmed. It’s being willing to let go of things that are good. If it sucked, it would be easy to drop it. But if it’s good, it may not be as easy to drop. It’s not amazing, but it’s not horrible. The key is to develop the courage to leave the ‘good’ behind and go for something better. Good keeps you in your comfort zone. Good keeps you safe. Good provides an income. Good keeps you where you are, but it doesn’t push you forward.
“I’m constantly asking myself, Am I doing something great? Is this activity worth it? I use my schedule a lot. If I feel like I don’t have enough time to do something that I really want to do, that’s when I know I need to make a change. I’m constantly evaluating my schedule. I recently took on a new business opportunity that takes up five hours per week. I didn’t take that on and leave everything else how it was; I took on the new opportunity and dedicated Tuesdays to it. I then took the ‘good’ activities I was doing on Tuesdays and eliminated them from my schedule.
“I don’t allow myself to get overwhelmed. I do that by not letting things build up. For a lot of people, it’s the buildup that gets them. For six months straight, you let someone else dictate your schedule. For six months straight, you let things slide. As soon as I start to feel a little bit of it, I adjust my schedule immediately. This is what cuts out overwhelm for me. I allow what I’m doing to serve me, which means letting go of some things that don’t serve me and a higher purpose.”
Make the Change
“That’s excellent,” I said. “Making changes and letting go of good is very important, as good can be the enemy of great. What would you say to someone who is in a job they don’t like? They’re not yet a full-time entrepreneur, but they still need a job to pay the bills. Would you tell them to get a job better suited for them first?”
“First off I’d ask them if they really want to be an entrepreneur. If that’s their heart’s desire and something they truly want to do, I’d tell them to go work for someone who already has done what they want to do. Get as close to the sun as you possibly can. For example, if I wanted to be a TEDx speaker and write three books I’d want to learn from you, Jeff. Go find a job where you are going to learn. The goal isn’t to make a huge income from your job. The goal is to make the connections, have the resources, and build the knowledge base ahead of time so that when you do make the jump, you can make it work.
“In general, if anyone is in a situation where they’re not happy with what they’re doing, then get out and go do something else. Have the courage to do that. For example, if you are in a university class because your parents want you to be a doctor, you need to ask yourself: Are you living your parents’ life or are you living your life? A lot of people like to blame others, but it’s your life. At what point are you going to cut the cord and say, I’m an adult and I’m making my own decisions? Stop blaming others, take the personal accountability and responsibility, and make the change. Do you want to be happy? Then make the change.”
Are You as Good as You Think You Are?
“I go to a lot of networking events, and I know a lot of entrepreneurs and friends,” I said, “who are putting out lots of content but not growing their YouTube channel the way they’d like. Being that you are one of the top YouTubers in the world, how did you get to where you are today? How did you get from Evan at point zero to as successful as you are today?”
“I’ve done 3,600 public videos and another 1,000 private videos. You’d have to be really slow to not learn something after doing all those videos. Practicing is important, and quantity leads to quality. Be prolific. You speak, Jeff. I’m sure you’re much better at speaking now than you were when you did your first or second speech. Every time you speak you get better. If you speak 100 times a year, you’re going to get really good. If you speak two times a year, don’t expect to get amazing at it.
“If I look at where I am now,” Evan continued, “in both a good and a bad way, I deserve to be where I am. In a good way, my channel has many millions of views. I deserve that because I provided good quality and value to my audience. On the other hand, you say I’m one of the largest YouTubers on the planet – I have half a million subscribers, which is big in the entrepreneur space, I guess, but relative to who’s out there, I’m still a medium-sized fish. And I deserve that. I don’t deserve to be more. My content needs to get better. I need to get better. The editing needs to get better. Everything needs to get better for me to get to where I want to go. If I put out a video and someone doesn’t instantly share it, or they don’t leave a comment, then I didn’t do a good enough job to impact them that day.
“As I get better, I reach a greater percentage of the population, with more people sharing. But I don’t deserve more success because I’m not good enough. A lot of people will say, My content is really good. Well listen – you had 50 people watch it. How many of them shared it? Did they go home and tell their friends, You need to watch this video, it’s crazy! No, they didn’t. For a lot of people, their content isn’t good enough yet, and they need to work on getting better.
“In a market like YouTube, and on all the social platforms, the talent will rise. No one is holding you back. We’re not in the early days of NBC and the TV networks when you needed to get through the gatekeeper. For example, if you want to write a book, you don’t need Penguin Random House to say, Yeah, we pick you. Just publish it. If it’s a good book, people will read it, share it, and it’ll take off. There are no gatekeepers anymore. It’s on all of us to work harder and get better. I need to get better. If I want to have the impact I feel I can have, I need to work harder. My point here is that I deserve all the success I’ve had, but I also deserve the lack of success, because I need to work harder and get better.”
Before we move on to the next section, let’s take a quick pause here. Evan is giving us a lot of valuable insights, all of them practical. Let me point out something incredibly powerful going on right here: I’m talking to an enormously successful individual, someone who casually has YouTube hangout sessions with legends like Brian Tracy. Evan could easily think he’s better and above others, but he doesn’t. He’s humble and always looking to get better. A common theme throughout our conversation is his emphasis on the importance of personal responsibility, and not getting ahead of yourself. This is a common thread with genuinely successful, authentic leaders – they fully believe in themselves and at the same time are grounded enough, in reality, to know that they can do and be more.
Also, keep in mind that Evan is not saying you are not good enough; he’s saying your content may not be good enough. You are fully worthy as a person, and you aren’t at all to blame for a generally unhappy person who sees your awesome content and criticizes it for no reason. He’s saying to keep the focus on what you have control over by staying humble and remembering your skills can always improve.
Start Your Business for the Right Reasons
“I give you a lot of credit,” I said. “Here you are talking about how you need to get better and keep growing, yet there are so many people out there who get complacent. And if that’s what they want, that’s great. At the same time, I give you a lot of credit for saying you need to grow. Given where you are right now, it would be easy to not have that mindset. You have a winner’s mindset.
“Let’s say someone wants to get from point A to B as an entrepreneur, and there are landmines everywhere. What would you say are the biggest landmines where entrepreneurs may get stuck?”
“It’s important that people have equal parts humbleness and confidence,” Evan said. “I feel like I’m not playing at the same level as Tony Robbins and Les Brown. I’m not as good of a speaker as they are and I’m not able to impact people as quickly as they can. But I also don’t think I’m bad. I think I’m really good; I’m just not there yet. There are people who are ahead of me. A lot of people don’t have the balance. They either think they’re great and don’t do anything to get better, instead choosing to complain about why they don’t get more customers or views. Or the opposite is that they’re too humble and they never think they’re good enough, so they never charge enough or get the results they want because they’re too humble. So the mindset of being both humble and confident is important.
“As far as entrepreneurship, a lot of people start their business for the wrong reasons. They are chasing the money, the opportunity, but they forget about the passion. They aren’t doing it for the right reasons. The number one trait you’ll find in not only any successful entrepreneur but also any successful person, in general, is the passion for what they’re doing. It comes down to doing what you do for the right reasons. Money is important – your business is not a charity, and you’re not doing this for free – but money is number two. There has to be a greater reason than money. If money is your number one reason for doing something, then you’re in the wrong thing. You’ll fail. You might have a little bit of success, but you’ll never hit what you could hit.
“The other thing is to keep trying by running experiments and running tests. So many people get caught up in their own heads about waiting and having to be perfect, and they never actually do anything. Then someone else goes out there and makes tons of money off of your idea, and you blame that guy, but it’s your fault! You had the idea but didn’t do anything about it. Take action. Start small. You don’t need as much equipment as you think you do. Just start. You want to make a YouTube video? Take out your phone, hit record, start, and make your first video.
“I lost a forty-million dollar deal because of this with my first company. I was so worried about having everything be perfect with the perfect plan that we were too late, and a big company ended up buying our biggest competitor instead of us. I spent way too much time tinkering and not enough time doing. I now don’t wait because of the sting of losing a forty-million dollar deal. Hopefully, the people reading this book will learn from this lesson and not have to lose a deal like that themselves. Or maybe you need to go through that rock bottom pain moment to really apply the lesson in your life. What I’m telling you is that if you get an idea, go out and try it. Do it and experiment. Expect it to suck, but keep doing, doing, and doing. Keep growing. This is much better than having all these ideas but never doing anything about them.”
There’s No Need to Jump Off the Cliff
“I’m wondering, how do you balance enjoying today with also being responsible, frugal, and smart with your money?” I asked Evan.
“Even if you don’t have the budget to do bigger things,” Evan said, “you can still make time for what’s important. With my first business, when I had little to no money, my business partners and I would still make time for what mattered. We would celebrate a win when we got a new client. We would celebrate it by going to McDonald’s and getting French fries – and the three of us would share the fries.
“With where I’m at today, I might celebrate a little differently because I have more resources – for one of my businesses, every quarter we do something fun. Coming up we have a day of snow tubing and then dinner, and I can pay for that. The idea of celebration is the same concept regardless of the resources you have. It started with McDonald’s French fries and now has evolved into something bigger, but the idea is the same.
“When my book was published, and we saw it in the bookstore, I celebrated with my wife by going to McDonald’s and getting French fries. Even now, I still associate those fries with victory because I ingrained that into myself. Over time your financial flexibility will improve, but the concepts stay the same. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re trying to get something off the ground, I wouldn’t go all-in. I’m not the guy who says to put a flame- thrower to your boss’s office and burn every bridge you have, making it a forced decision. I like the planning – I’m much more risk-averse as an entrepreneur than most people think you have to be. You don’t have to be a crazy, risk-loving person to have success in business.”
“I love what you just said there,” I said to Evan. “Some people will tell you to jump off the cliff and grow wings on the way down. I tried that twice in the past, and it didn’t work for me. I wasn’t foolish or reckless or anything like that, but on several occasions I dove head-first into entrepreneurship before I had systems in place and before I really knew what I was doing. I was gung-ho and all-in, and to my credit, I genuinely worked my butt off, did my best, and made progress. But it just wasn’t happening and didn’t bring in enough sustainable income to do it full-time. It wasn’t the end of the world, and I was able to get through it by taking on jobs, but I learned from the experience that it’s not about putting your finances into reckless endangerment to make your dreams come true. It’s about building a bridge while you have income and taking it one step at a time. That’s why I love your practical approach to the entrepreneurial process. When I hear someone on a YouTube video telling their audience to go all-in right now, I don’t always agree with it. It sounds great in a motivational video but isn’t always reality. I’m not saying it can’t happen, and if or when someone pulls it off, I genuinely applaud them. I’m just saying it’s a lot harder than one may initially think or realize. I learned that the hard way.”
“Exactly; I’d ease my way into it,” Evan said. “Again, I’d try to find a job where I’m making a paycheck, and I’m learning, picking up valuable experience. If you want to be a real estate agent, you don’t get there by working as an accountant. You get there by going and working for a real estate company, and seeing if you can improve yourself. You get there by doing real estate on the side. Try to get your own real estate business going. Start to get some friends and family to invest in a fund that would allow you to buy a house.
“When it gets to the point where your side hustle is bringing in enough income to support you full-time, then you can think about making the leap. I’m not talking about luxury. I’m not talking about buying a Lamborghini or anything. I’m just talking about making enough to support you at a basic level, like paying for a place to live, food, and Internet. Also, you want to be at a point where you feel like you’ve learned enough from your job. Then go full-time on your business. Some people have different thresholds as far as what their standard of living needs to be, but that transition is what would be best to do for someone who is starting out now, especially if you have a mortgage and kids.
“Some people need to go all-in because that’s the only way they get committed, so if that’s your personality type then think about that option, but otherwise plan a much safer approach.”
Ego or No Ego?
“This is great stuff, Evan,” I said. “There’s one school of thought out there that is totally against ego. And there’s another school of thought out there that says it’s good to use ego to your advantage, that it can benefit you. I know you talked earlier about having a balance between humbleness and confidence. Is there a balancing point between those two schools of thought which seem to contradict each other? Some say you need ego to be successful, and others say if you have ego you’ll come across as arrogant.”
“Sure there is,” Evan said. “For a lot of these things, we default to one side, but you gain a lot of personal power and impact by learning more about the other side. For example, someone who is super-humble and has zero ego has a visceral reaction to anyone who has any ego. Those kinds of people can’t deal with ego at all. They then get concerned that if they get a little bit of ego, they are going to fall off the deep end and become an egomaniac.
“Here’s the thing: That person will never become an egomaniac. It’s never going to happen. They get so concerned with becoming an egomaniac that they make it a point to stay where they are. They are so humble – from their upbringing – that they could use a little bit more ego and confidence to help them. But they’re never going to fall off the deep end.
“And you’ll find this dichotomy everywhere, not just in business but in life. You get some people who only want to plan, plan, and do more planning. They need everything to be perfect, and they never take any action. Then you have people who constantly take action, but never plan; they just fly by the seat of their pants. Neither is good! You need a combination. The planner needs to act more, and the person taking action needs to plan more. You’re never going to go off to the other side. The over-planner is never going to not care about planning again and just go crazy in taking action; this is what they’re concerned about. They’re concerned they are going to lose their core to go chase this crazy thing. The solution is to move a little bit closer to the middle. You may not ever get there, but move a little bit closer to the middle because you’re still going to keep your core. But at the same time, the skills you’re going to learn and the mindset you’ll gain with that better approach will help you go off and accomplish exactly what it is you’re looking to accomplish.
“The key to remember here is that you can learn from the other side without having to go off the deep end.”
I asked Evan this question because I had a friend (who, for the record, is a great guy) who criticized me for showing a little bit of confidence at a networking event. He said I wasn’t being humble enough. My whole life I’ve been overly humble, and after a long, transformative process, I’m now finally integrating the other side into my actions. Low and behold, someone who is purely humble didn’t like that. He falls into the camp of viscerally reacting negatively to anyone who shows even the slightest bit of ego. I’m glad Evan cleared this up for me – his negative reaction to me was more a reflection of his own internal workings than it was of me. I share this with you so that when someone criticizes you for finding that balance, you can let it go in one ear and out the other.
Parting Shots
“Evan, do you have any parting shots for someone who is struggling right now, someone who is in the trenches and pushing daily, yet also struggling? What do you have for them?”
“Just believe,” Evan said. “Believe in what you’re doing. Believe it’s going to work out. Believe in the project. This is going to be the hardest thing you ever do in your life. You’re going to have tons of roadblocks along the way, and that’s why you’re going to have to love what you’re doing so much – because you’re crazy. A normal, rational, sane person would quit, give up, and go do something logical and safe. Accept that: It’s normal, failure is part of the process, and if you have a deep passion for doing it then just continue on. Believe. Don’t quit too soon and then regret that decision for the rest of your life.”
“Your insights are so powerful, Evan,” I said. “I definitely appreciate the discussion, and I’m looking forward to featuring you in my book.”
“Thanks for the great questions, Jeff,” Evan said. “I’m sure you’ll hit me up when this book is done. Good luck with the writing process.”
This is chapter 8 of The Power of Authentic Leadership: Activating the 13 Keys to Achieving Prosperity Through Authenticity.
