10 RULES to Achieve Entrepreneur SUCCESS!

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Dieter, who wrote in saying, "Evan, could you tell us about your tough times? Right now you have a beautiful life. We always read about your success and determination, but how do successful people like you "Come through the tough times? Did you cry, bake, run, hug somebody?" Thank you so much, Dieter. Great question. I think if you look at any successful entrepreneur, you have to go through a whole bunch of tough times to be able to get to the end goal. I think what really helped me when I was first getting started, it was tough in that I was making a lot of mistakes and I wasn't really quite sure what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to help entrepreneurs and that was a passion that I had, but I didn't really know what the model was. That's a big big challenge that a lot of entrepreneurs face when you're starting up. What's the business model gonna be, right? How you gonna make money? It's great that you're helping people and you're following your passion, but to make it sustainable, you have to be able to make a living from it, right? You have to be able to make enough at least to get past survival so you're paying your bills and then you can continue to grow from there. Luckily for me, I had a lot of encouragement from friends and family. I know a lot of entrepreneurs don't have that. You know, their family doesn't believe in them, they don't think they should be an entrepreneur, or their friends are jealous. And, you know, put them down. So I had a lot of support around me, which is great. But still, it was really tough getting it going. You know, the first, the first part of running a business is so hard because you want things to happen so badly, and it takes a while to get going, and you put so much work in. I think a lot of entrepreneurs just quit too soon. You put so much work in at the beginning, and you invest so much time and energy, and then you don't see the immediate results, and then you quit. And it's really driving forward so that you do something every single day to make your business grow, even just a little bit. And eventually you see that momentum start to take shape and you'll be able to build it into a successful enterprise. So what helped me was getting feedback from my customers, my entrepreneurs who are seeing the stuff that I was creating and just looking at the feedback and seeing, you know, what I'm doing is actually helping people. And what I found, especially at the beginning, most of the stuff that I did at the start was offline. It wasn't through my website, it was through seminars, presentations to entrepreneur groups, sharing different topics, lessons that I had learned from my success in business. And what I found interesting there was you go to an event like that, and I love speaking, so you go to a speaking event and you get all jazzed up, you get all excited, you see how you're helping people. And you're in that moment and you want to go home and work like crazy to get to another moment like that. And then you wake up the next day and it's gone. And how do you keep that momentum going? You know, you don't want to just stay in bed all day. So how do you get the momentum going between those highs? And what I found helpful was I made an actual little presentation, a PowerPoint that I watched every day in the morning just for a couple minutes that had some of the quotes that people had left on their feedback forms. So at the end of all the presentations I did, I had these little feedback forms to ask people what they thought and how I could make it better. And the reviews that came back were awesome. You know, people talked about how it changed their life and how I gave them such helpful information, they're gonna go home and take action. It's really inspiring. That's the part that I really love about my business. And so instead of just having that high that one night, I put it together in that presentation. It was very simple, just something I loaded up every day. I put a song to it. And it kind of got me going in the morning. It got me thinking, you know, I've been able to help these people and I want to do it again. And I want to relive that moment again and help more people. Now we're at the point within my business where I get emails every day from people who are saying how much they really like the video we made or the newsletter or the content on our website. And even on YouTube, getting the likes and getting the comments is awesome. That's the stuff that makes me want to do more of these videos. And keeps me going every day is your comments. It's not so much the money that comes in, it's the feeling that you're helping people and helping them get through times that could be tough. And just having somebody who believes in you can be a really powerful thing. And so I found that really helpful. So in terms of— I don't know where you're at with your business, sounds like you're still kind of in the early days. I try to tap into the feeling that you're helping people, because if you're motivated only by money, it makes it really hard to keep going. You know, you're gonna quit as soon as it gets really, really hard. If you're not really interested in what you're doing and you don't feel like you're helping people, you can fight it for so long. You can fight it saying, "Well, I'm gonna make a lot of money doing this," but the money usually doesn't come right away. It comes after a lot, a lot, a lot of hard work and effort. So what I would encourage you to do is think about how you're really helping people and try to remember those stories. So think about the best part you had in your business, whatever the greatest high you've had in your company was, probably something around helping somebody, you know, really solve a frustration or problem that they were facing. And just try to relive that moment every day or every week as much as you can to get yourself back into that zone of wanting to get motivated and do a lot of work and build this business up and tie back into that vision that you have for the company. The second thing I found helpful was trying to have some bigger goal that I'm shooting towards. So it could be a numerical, it could be a lifestyle goal. Maybe you want to reach an X amount of dollars, or you want to be able to travel the world. Just try to imagine the lifestyle that you want to go after and try to get to the point of frustration. So the first part is getting motivated by knowing you're helping people and seeing the feedback that comes in. The second one is getting motivated by being frustrated with where you are now. If it's really painful, your situation now, if you can make it extremely painful, you're more likely to take action and to want to change your situation. So if your goal is to, you know, go to Europe for a month or whatever it is, it doesn't have to be a massive goal, then think about what you're doing now. You know, will what you're doing now help you achieve that goal or not, right? And if it's not, then if you get angry enough at it, you know, if you're thinking, you know, if I'm not working now, if I'm not putting my best into it now, I'm never gonna be able to achieve the lifestyle that I want. And that will hopefully give you enough frustration to take action and go out and do, you know, what you need to do to grow your business. And I find that, at least for me, at the beginning, I had to reset every day. You know, I could get motivated for the day, and then I wake up the next day and you're back into your typical patterns, and I gotta get motivated again. Now luckily again for me, I get a lot of feedback every day that comes in. I just have to open up my email or look at the comments on YouTube or Facebook and see all the glowing reviews, and that gets me kickstarted for what I want to do for the day. If you don't have that yet, then you know, you want to start to try to remember the best points and also try to get frustrated at your current situation and how you want to really improve it and make it better. So hopefully not too long-winded an answer to the question, but very important question. I hope I helped you, Dieter. For those of you watching, again, I'd love to see the thumbs up come in. It makes me want to do more of these videos. And I'd love to hear what you have to think about this video, or if you have a question for your own company, feel free to leave it in the comments below. It means a lot to me. I always read them every day. And hopefully you'll leave one if you really enjoyed this video. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]