10 Real LIFE Steps to Follow

Next up, Helper Desk. I thought it'd be neat to start a channel about a new passion and update your progress as you improve. For example, I love surfing, yet I've never been. Would watch me learn to surf be a good idea?

Yeah, I kind of think, again, anything. You know, I am a massive fan of a couple of things. One is visualizing success and what success looks like. And actually, it's a great way to overcome your sort of self-beliefs and limitations. 'Cause if you visualize yourself being successful, you know, it actually changes what's in your head and you believe more. The other thing that kind of is pretty significant here is I think there's a lot of things now where we live in a global village and everything's available to everybody. And it's just unimaginable what the internet's changed in our lives. So things like kind of surfing, stuff like that, and cool, incredible sports around there. So I think again, if there's a passion, there's an idea, I'd encourage everybody to be a disruptor, to innovate, innovate, innovate, and create something that's kind of very different in terms of different experience. So go for it. You'll find out quickly if you launch a business like that whether there's a lot of interest, demand, and whether it's the right time.

Yeah, I mean, to add to that, I would say as a general principle in business, if you provide value to people, you will make money, right? You provide more value, make more money. Provide value quickly, you'll make money quickly. It's about providing value to somebody else. And so, you know, if you don't know how to surf, then your value won't be in providing expert surf tips, right? Because you're not the surfer yet. But I love the idea of taking people along the journey with you because you're you're approaching it from a beginner's mind, and they will learn as you learn. And for anybody who's starting a new project, I'm a huge believer in creating a YouTube channel or in allowing people to follow you and what you're doing on Twitter or Facebook, and keep updating them. And as you make mistakes and as you learn, you create content about that. I'm writing my first book with Penguin Random House. I've never written a book before, and every week I make a video on my YouTube channel about my book writing process. Frustrations I have, wins that I'm having. I answer your questions, and I'm bringing you along the journey with me to help you understand that book writing process. I can't make a book about— sorry, I can't make a video about here's the 10 things you need to do to write a bestseller book because I haven't done it yet. But I can make those videos about my journey. And so I think, uh, I think that's the value that you can add. As a kind of side twist to this, a little curveball I'd add is I think making it public can also keep you on track with your business. I think if you are starting up any new thing, it can be exciting but also frustrating and lonely, and you may go out and you start surfing and you fall and you fail and you're like, "Ah, that's it, I'm done, I'm never going to be good at this." But if you now have a community of people supporting you and cheering you on and you're committed to them, you're much more likely to follow through. Just like when you tell your friend, "Hey, come to the gym with me," you're going to go and take that gym class. A gym appointment. And so I think that the side benefit could be it gives you a lot more motivation as well to actually execute against your plan.

Yeah, totally. And actually, Evan Carmichael, you're a viewer of My Stuff, but everybody's posting stuff on Facebook, Instagram, and it sort of paints a vision of the world that's perfect. Everybody's a celebrity, go to Vegas for the weekend, spring break. Everybody's having fun all the time. And kind of that's not real. So what you bring out is people's genuine, real-life kind of vulnerabilities. So if you're out there learning to surf and you build a community and you share your kind of vulnerabilities, that's very engaging and kind of brings people with you. And you know all the kind of Facebook heroes out there who are kind of out there selling brands now. A lot of it's based on just connecting with real-life people real-life situations, just exploring people's vulnerabilities. You write your books, that's tough. Not every day is a perfect day. Not every day comes out with the best chapter. So I kind of think there's— you're on to something there by just connecting with people's real-life emotions.